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Balance threads suck.. But, just like you need to have a beer and bitch about work on a Friday afternoon, sometimes you gotta have a place to post your unreasonable balance takes on TL. |
Competitive gaming is built on the foundation of fairness, in most sports/games (e.g. chess) that means both sides have the same units/pieces. SC2 is different in this regard, and therefore race balance, as unreasonably prohibited as the topic is, is critical to the success of individual players. When someone goes through an entire premier tournament like Katowice with a single map loss (by no coincident, only to another top Zerg), coupled with the fact that Zergs have been dominating major tournaments for a long time, it's a clear indication that balance is off, to the extent that competitive gaming is no longer meaningful at the top level.
Will we ever see a Terran player stronger than Maru and Clem? Personally I doubt it. And if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral, a reasonable person can be expected to question the validity of the balance. Indeed the Terran/Protoss communities have complained about this for years, but their voices are often dismissed as 'whine', reflecting the neglect of Blizzard, failure of the 'community' balance team, and head-in-the-sand attitudes of major forums/casters. If we know which race/player will win a tournament before it starts, it takes away the thrill of the audience and it's unfair to the participants.
Some examples of where I believe the game is most broken:
When SC2 was introduced, Terran's strength was in defense. It was the necessity of containing the Zerg economy before it generates endless swarms, and the talent of players like Maru, that drove Terran's transformation into an offensive race. But such play styles (with mobility) carry a high cost of multi-tasking. People have long acknowledged that Zerg has an advantage by being able to a-move. The point that's not often made, however, is that advantage is amplified into game-winning ones AT THE TIME OF ENGAGEMENT. By coordinating ling/bane run-bys, burrowed lurkers while fighting the Terran army head-on, Zerg abuse its strengths when it makes the most difference. Maru/Clem's ability to multi-task is frankly superhuman, but despite the appearance they literally cannot be at more than one place at a time. In addition, Terran's arsenal is quite limited, and Zerg has effective counters to both bio/mech styles that can be SWITCHED QUICKLY.
Infestors
How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? Let's not be tempted to conclude that such mistakes are what's causing the losses, because as we all know, humans make mistakes over a lightening fast game regardless of race. The point is that if someone can control infestors as well as Serral, he is BOUND to hit Terran at critical moments that decide the outcome of the game. It's a matter of WHEN, not IF. After all, Infestors are cloaked and incredibly powerful. Imagine if ghosts can immobilize/nearly-instantly deal game-winning AOE damage！
Lurkers
If tanks can cloak, siege/un-siege quickly, attack nearby units/with speed - they would be called lurkers. Lurkers are incredibly powerful as both offensive/defensive units, and can take out detection (missle turrets). Terran has to devote a disproportionate amount of attention to neutralize their threats.
One common argument is if Zerg is OP as a race, why aren't Reynor and Dark as dominant as Serral - but the fact is they already HAVE BEEN winning premier events, and Serral, being the best Zerg, is taking advantage of spellcasters to even greater extent. There's a human limit to what Terran players can do and it's simply impossible to deal with a master Zerg who can fully abuse OP units. Clearly not everyone can play Zerg like Serral, but the point is it's POSSIBLE, and Serral is using thIs advantage to dominate the game to an extent that is IMPOSSIBLE for other races to deal with.
Frankly if I were a pro Terran/Protoss player, I would boycott tournaments until balance is restored. Until then, expect Serral, Reynor, and Dark to win a lot more tournaments. While some Zergs may rejoice at this predictable future, bear in mind the game cannot survive on one-race alone, and we, the fans collectively as a whole from all three races, decide whether it has a future.
Finally, to those that will shout 'you aren't even a GM why should your opinion matter', I say, you don't have to be a chef to know your food stinks.
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France12761 Posts
On February 13 2024 01:33 Netto. wrote:
Serral > Maru
Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ
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On February 13 2024 01:38 Poopi wrote:Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ
Why haven't the Koreans gone to Finland to train? Are they stupid?
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On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
Will we ever see a Terran player stronger than Maru and Clem? Personally I doubt it. And if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral, a reasonable person can be expected to question the validity of the balance.
What does this even mean considering Clem beat Serral 3-1 at their previous meeting and Maru 2-0'd Serral in the Masters Colloseum group stage?
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France12761 Posts
On February 13 2024 01:43 StasisField wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 01:38 Poopi wrote:On February 13 2024 01:33 Netto. wrote:
Serral > Maru Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ Why haven't the Koreans gone to Finland to train? Are they stupid?
It's too cold there
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Ooooh, a good old balance whine! In before the ban!
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Legendary copium, I'm honesty impressed. At the very least, should draft a better writer to attempt this. You guys honestly do a disservice to Maru, whose legendary play stands on its own and doesn't need this kind of puerile whining. For TvZ of all match-ups.
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Maru copers overdosing.
Serral once again proved he's the GOAT.
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Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10.
Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years.
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okaaaaaaay I'm not even a Serral fan and this is silly
Zerg has arguably had periods of being OP over the past 3-4 years, but this is not one of them. TvZ is very balanced atm. Serral is just actually very good, and in any case he beat Maru in large part through effective planning and cheeses anyway. given different circumstances and minset Maru is capable of doing better or even beating Serral, at least in shorter series (Serral seems to have his number for longer series).
Clem and Maru will continue to do well, and there will continue to be lots of TvZ series at the highest level that go both ways.
obviously Protoss is another story
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The assumption that the skill level at the top has to be insanly narrow simply is false.
The best example for that is in the "perfectly balance" game from your example, chess:
Magnus Carlson dominates it for like 10 years now to a point where he still wins in competition, even if he Shows up late and misses half his time on the clock
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Author of this post is most likely a troll (at least I hope so), but small patch that requires Ghosts to be uncloaked to use snipe/EMP is a great idea I haven't thought about before.
It will probably fix the insane surviveabililty and volleys of stealth pewpewpews that forces Infestor usage (imagine, you HAVE to use unit that is directly countered by Ghosts to have a chance against them).
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I don't mind.
It freed up my Sunday because all the Protoss had been eliminated.
Incidentally, The Iron Claw is a really good movie.
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Classic terran balance whine post after Serral wins a tournaments
Only if you use the same energy when Clem won DH or when Maru won the GSL. But when the Zerg saviour Serral’s wins, but but OP!
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Man Serral played really well this tournament, let him have his victory. I would have rather have that Maru won but he did'nt no need to make up a bullshit post about how OP zerg always has been, there will always be a best current race. But this is the beauty of SC2 the difference is small between the races even for protoss who are probably the weakest race currently. Let us not be bitter and enjoy the fantastic games we had this tournament for the time we have left in SC2.
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I don't really get why it takes this much time to remove such a clearly poorly worded bait post. I will say that I appreciate Team Liquid over the years for hosting interesting conversations regarding the SC2 scene. Here's to at least quite a few more years of our game tournaments.
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A player that still refused to wall his third or put a planetary on forth after getting ling run by for 10 times doesn't deserve to win. Serral outplayed Maru plain and simple.
if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral
Clem and Maru both have weaknesses. Clem has best mechanical skills (macro/micro/multitasking) but his strategies and decision making are not on the level of Maru. Maru is the most experienced and smartest Terran but his micro and multitasking has fallen off from his best years. He's also known to have mental weakness on international stage.
On the other hand, try to name one weakness of Serral. Macro, micro, multitasking, strategies(build orders), tactics (army maneuver), mentality, as of now, he's top of the chart on everything. And he performs super consistently. To beat perfection, you have to be perfection yourself.
Clem always try to overwhelm his opponent by relentless attacking, which works most of the time because he's just that good, but against someone just that's just as mechanically skillful but much smarter like Serral, he hit a wall. But to Clem's credit, he's still the Terran that has the best record against Serral in recent years. He did beat Serral just a while ago in Atlanta.
Maru could match Serral in his deep bag of strategies and late game turtles, but when both player play standard long macro games, you can see his reaction and micro is just not on par any more. Clem could sometime overwhelm Serral with his relentless attacks, Maru used to be able to do the same before 2022, but now he just don't have that mechanical skill anymore. He has to rely on his turtling to have a chance in late game, but in G2 after getting caught by infestor too many times in mid-game and forgot to mine gas for a crucial minute late game, he lost by a razer thin edge.
The last two game Maru tried his greedy openings, but Serral recognized it and busted it open with timing attack in G3. You can see Maru's mentality was at the brink of collapse on that last game, and it showed as he was too eager to finish Serral off with his Mech push and refuse to wall his expansions, eventually died to endless run by.
At the end of the day, the better player won.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
You know that meme where there’s the guy on the gallows going ‘first time?’
As a Protoss player (well, now fan) this is how it feels having Terrans complain about balance.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years.
I mean I really feel Aligulac needs a filter of some kind so you get a parallel ranking that just includes major/premier competition.
It’s still a great tool for lots of things but going to its ranking list only to see MaxPax as the second best player in the world, just feels intuitively off to me.
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On February 13 2024 02:59 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. I mean I really feel Aligulac needs a filter of some kind so you get a parallel ranking that just includes major/premier competition. It’s still a great tool for lots of things but going to its ranking list only to see MaxPax as the second best player in the world, just feels intuitively off to me.
Dude if Maxpax played offline protoss would win everything (forget the fact that Maxpax hasn't won shit other than weekly cups online)
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Serral was the best. He outsmarted Maru in the build order department in all of the games. Literally only 1 map went late
Although I do agree Zerg played like that is imba, especially on map like that. If they got ghosts nerfed because zergs struggled then they need to nerf Infestors, there's no counterplay to them. Maru rushed 7 orbitals and scanned his army 3x before fights and STILL got hit with fungals.
Or at the very least don't let maps like that in the pool. But Serral rightfully chose that map to play lategame knowing he shouldn't lose. There's a reason he chose to allin on Maru's map picks, even Reynor said Maru wins the split map
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 03:02 Durnuu wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 02:59 WombaT wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. I mean I really feel Aligulac needs a filter of some kind so you get a parallel ranking that just includes major/premier competition. It’s still a great tool for lots of things but going to its ranking list only to see MaxPax as the second best player in the world, just feels intuitively off to me. Dude if Maxpax played offline protoss would win everything (forget the fact that Maxpax hasn't won shit other than weekly cups online)
Aye, or even consistently making top 4 in Euro regionals. Or going deep consistently in online internationals at major/premier level with good fields.
It’s frustrating, he’s a great talent and it’s not remotely his fault but people go so ridiculously overboard on Maximus Paximus it’s unreal.
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Serral was just better than Maru, and everyone else, plain and simple. And this is absolutely not a case of Maru playing the the limit of what is possible since a peak Maru was better than what we've seen. If you're really a fanboy and followed him you can't deny he is not as fast, as sharp as he used to be.
And if you watch that game 2 again, while being incredibly good, you can still find many decision and action that were not that good. That would not need inhuman level to correct, just a bit crispier. And at these level that all that matter.
Also it's funny that you talk about Clem and Maru as being the peak of what's possible, since both of them would benefit the actual strengh of the other : Maru would need that speed and precision from Clem, Clem would need the decision making and methodical play from Maru. None of them got it all.
And this is what Serral is atm, the combination of the best, micro, macro, decision making, speed, scouting, strategy etc
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I think they nerfed banelings correctly and Serral still stands out far and above all other Zergs and all other players. He is the best. I wish they would add a few units of health or shield to Zealots and Stalkers. In Brood War scouting a few Zealots together used to give me nightmares. In SC2, the Zealots are soft and cuddly marshmellow men.
DISCLAIMER: i play 50% of the time as Terran and 50% of the time as Random.
On February 13 2024 02:28 MJG wrote:I don't mind. It freed up my Sunday because all the Protoss had been eliminated. Incidentally, The Iron Claw is a really good movie.
Fritz Von Erich is pure evil. btw, suicide amongst american men is at an 80 year high.
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Was Oliveira the best player in the world after winning Katowice?
Tournament wins are very disconnected from who the best player is.
Ofc Maxpax hasn't won any tournaments you deem prestigious, he hasn't attended any, he'd probably need to attend many in order to win 1 anyways....
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On February 13 2024 03:52 LostUsername100 wrote:
Was Oliveira the best player in the world after winning Katowice?
Tournament wins are very disconnected from who the best player is.
Ofc Maxpax hasn't won any tournaments you deem prestigious, he hasn't attended any, he'd probably need to attend many in order to win 1 anyways....
When you start to stack these wins a pattern emerges...
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On February 13 2024 03:54 youaremysin wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 03:52 LostUsername100 wrote:
Was Oliveira the best player in the world after winning Katowice?
Tournament wins are very disconnected from who the best player is.
Ofc Maxpax hasn't won any tournaments you deem prestigious, he hasn't attended any, he'd probably need to attend many in order to win 1 anyways....
When you start to stack these wins a pattern emerges...
You should look at winning in general not just tournament wins specially not just the tournaments you subjectively care about, like they're playing another game on weeklies.
Maxpax is a strong player, maybe if he attended those other tournaments he might win some of them.
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On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
One common argument is if Zerg is OP as a race, why aren't Reynor and Dark as dominant as Serral - but the fact is they already HAVE BEEN winning premier events, and Serral, being the best Zerg, is taking advantage of spellcasters to even greater extent. There's a human limit to what Terran players can do and it's simply impossible to deal with a master Zerg who can fully abuse OP units. Clearly not everyone can play Zerg like Serral, but the point is it's POSSIBLE, and Serral is using thIs advantage to dominate the game to an extent that is IMPOSSIBLE for other races to deal with.
This is my favorite bit out of this absurdity. "Reynor and Dark did poorly this tournament, but they have won tournaments in the past (I believe on different patches?), so clearly their race is OP!"
So...Clem and Maru have never won anything?
Also funny to blab on about competitive integrity and then wanting to nerf an entire race because of one player. One. If you nerf Serral on a level he would get destroyed in the Ro12, no other Zerg would even reach the close-qualifier for these kind of events. The imba-imba-IMBA race Zerg had literally the least representation at Katowice.
I know, as a korean elitist and/or Maru-Fanboy (not looking at any particular TL-Writer or something) "Zerg OP roflrofl" is literally your only saving grace, but maybe, just maybe, accept the fact that Serral "right now" (as in the last six years, but the last two especially) is above the curve. Doesn't mean he can't be beaten, just means the very best need to play their very best. And that is a thing you might find hard to accept: Maru didn't play "like a god" in that series, except for the 2nd Map. On all three other maps, Serral was always one step ahead.
Can we stop the copium at some point? In Germany, there is a saying that translates to "Skill is, when Luck becomes a regular thing". So really, at some point you might just have to face the music here...
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 03:52 LostUsername100 wrote:
Was Oliveira the best player in the world after winning Katowice?
Tournament wins are very disconnected from who the best player is.
Ofc Maxpax hasn't won any tournaments you deem prestigious, he hasn't attended any, he'd probably need to attend many in order to win 1 anyways....
If we wanted to show who was the most latently skilled and consistent player, we’d throw a couple of million into each server and dish out prize money after 6 months/a year based on ladder rankings. I actually think that would be pretty cool, albeit unlikely.
But as we don’t do that, people aren’t looking at ladder MMRs to make tournament predictions, because everyone knows pros use it to keep themselves ticking over, experiment and stay in form for the next tournament that rolls around.
Weekly cups are a step up from that, with some more stakes but pros still use them for much the same reasons.
There are flaws in the odd tournament defining who’s the best, most skilled player around sure, but that’s always been the bedrock of SC2’s pro scene and what they prioritise.
Every sport going has tales of the training ground monster, or excellent practice partner who clearly has the skill, but couldn’t bring it to the stages that count. Hell SC2 has a fair few ladder monsters, or guys who always get shoutouts as great practice partners even when they’re not making a dent in tournaments.
Hell MaxPax can still not go to offline events, but if he’s to be in the conversation he has to make that step up and keep going deep in the likes of EU regionals, and the international tournaments that he can play in.
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On February 13 2024 04:07 LostUsername100 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 03:54 youaremysin wrote:On February 13 2024 03:52 LostUsername100 wrote:
Was Oliveira the best player in the world after winning Katowice?
Tournament wins are very disconnected from who the best player is.
Ofc Maxpax hasn't won any tournaments you deem prestigious, he hasn't attended any, he'd probably need to attend many in order to win 1 anyways....
When you start to stack these wins a pattern emerges... You should look at winning in general not just tournament wins specially not just the tournaments you subjectively care about, like they're playing another game on weeklies. Maxpax is a strong player, maybe if he attended those other tournaments he might win some of them.
I think there is a very big difference between the weeklies and offline tournaments, let alone Katowice or other world championship tier tournaments. Sure, it's the same game, but players will train harder before, play more mind games, there are often more bo5+ series and they will use refined build orders. And then there is the pressure of an offline competition.
It's not at all the same. And there have always been players who have been strong in one format but not the other.
Maxipaxi is strong, and I would love to see him at offline events. But I think he would have to learn how to play at his best level there.
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Hahahaha.
OP is trolling, of course, but comically enough, the level of copium presented is not too far from that seriously embraced by a certain minor share of the community.
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Those are some great points you guys brought out and I agree with most of what you guys have said if not everything.
But Aligulac's goal is predicting winners in SC2 games, in weeklies they're still playing SC2, yes it's possible maxpax will perform worst in big offline tournaments, but until he goes there we have no way of telling.
If there was money to be made on the ladder, and you got rid of smurfing, I'd absolutely judge who the best players are by who is #1 on the ladder.
PS:Serral's Aligulac ranking got questioned for the longest time, so did Clem's.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 04:08 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
One common argument is if Zerg is OP as a race, why aren't Reynor and Dark as dominant as Serral - but the fact is they already HAVE BEEN winning premier events, and Serral, being the best Zerg, is taking advantage of spellcasters to even greater extent. There's a human limit to what Terran players can do and it's simply impossible to deal with a master Zerg who can fully abuse OP units. Clearly not everyone can play Zerg like Serral, but the point is it's POSSIBLE, and Serral is using thIs advantage to dominate the game to an extent that is IMPOSSIBLE for other races to deal with.
This is my favorite bit out of this absurdity. "Reynor and Dark did poorly this tournament, but they have won tournaments in the past (I believe on different patches?), so clearly their race is OP!" So...Clem and Maru have never won anything? Also funny to blab on about competitive integrity and then wanting to nerf an entire race because of one player. One. If you nerf Serral on a level he would get destroyed in the Ro12, no other Zerg would even reach the close-qualifier for these kind of events. The imba-imba-IMBA race Zerg had literally the least representation at Katowice. I know, as a korean elitist and/or Maru-Fanboy (not looking at any particular TL-Writer or something) "Zerg OP roflrofl" is literally your only saving grace, but maybe, just maybe, accept the fact that Serral "right now" (as in the last six years, but the last two especially) is above the curve. Doesn't mean he can't be beaten, just means the very best need to play their very best. And that is a thing you might find hard to accept: Maru didn't play "like a god" in that series, except for the 2nd Map. On all three other maps, Serral was always one step ahead. Can we stop the copium at some point? In Germany, there is a saying that translates to "Skill is, when Luck becomes a regular thing". So really, at some point you might just have to face the music here...
What is the actual German for that? It’s such a melodious language. Are you German yourself? I’d always assumed French, I have no idea as to why mind.
Back to your point, how do you nerf one guy? Before people bring up Byun’s reapers, or Maru’s ravens, there is a slight difference. Those guys were pulling strategies off that nobody else could, so nuking them didn’t affect the rest of the Terran collective. Serral is playing, more or less the same stragegies as the rest of the swarm, merely better. So you can’t nerf him in isolation, there’ll be a ripple effect.
I just rewatched the Solar/Clem series for example, some excellent StarCraft from both players there, and Serral taking him on and then Serral/Maru. When properly paying attention you start to notice a few things:
1. Solar F2s his army a lot more when scrambling to defend, not always, but noticeably more than Serral does.
2. Solar eats a couple of mine hits here or there. Serral almost never, ever does. No diss on Solar, if you watch games from Innovation’s first, terrifying parade-pushing incarnation, Solar’s anti-mine micro is still way better than anything from then.
3. Solar got some joy with burrowed Infestor play, but his infestors weren’t always synced with the army as well as Serral’s so he couldn’t capitalise as much, his setup isn’t quite as elegant.
4. Solar struggled to make much hay with nydus play, Serral slightly less so. Serral times his positioning so he can draw attention away at just the right moment, and maybe his multitasking is just that little bit cleaner.
5. Solar’s macro and creep spread are top-notch, Serral’s are a bit better again. Serral found the time to load an overlord with Queens just to start spreading creep at the top of the map against Maru, that little kind of thing is cute too.
6. Serral actually utilises droperlords rather well, most other top Zergs do judiciously timed runbys on the ground just as well as Serral can, but Serral asks that slightly different question and grabs a bit of extra value by asking that one extra question.
And this is Solar, since Rogue departed he’s clearly been a top 4 Zerg, I’m certainly not being overly critical of his play, but these are the kind of edges Serral gains by being Serral.
With the replay pack released I may delve even deeper, that is one nice thing about IEMs, plenty of study material!
I’m not even opposed to a slight Zerg nerf, but what do you nerf?
One suggestion I heard was cut the Queen’s anti-ground range by 1, so they’re just a little less effective as a barrier against pokes. Add a little off-creep speed as compensation. At first glance, doesn’t seem a terrible idea but it has quite a lot of knock-ons. Sure maybe it lets bio push a bit more boldly and keep a Zerg honest, but does it push the needle too far and make hellion/cyclone too abusive? Does it make sniping banelings in early game ZvZ that little bit too difficult?
Just one example but it’s tough to think of something to nerf when balance is maybe not perfect, but pretty close. Creep maybe? But even with creep as it is the matchup is relatively balanced, a tweak too far and it potentially swings way too far in the other direction.
I think there’s an additional problem, which is balancing by maps, a suggestion many are making, and I have too. I may make a separate thread but, given every map is played in every matchup, how do you make better TvZ maps that don’t negatively effect PvT? Which IMO is already a harder matchup at the top level than TvZ to begin with.
Smaller maps, tighter, more chokey areas, more high/low ground zones would help TvZ absolutely. In PvT smaller maps will just be a net negative for Toss unless there’s some clever mapmaker magic. And, depending where they are situated chokey areas and low/high ground will benefit one or the other. Toss may have an easier time holding certain bases, or it makes tank pushes really hard to deal with.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 04:35 LostUsername100 wrote:
Those are some great points you guys brought out and I agree with most of what you guys have said if not everything.
But Aligulac's goal is predicting winners in SC2 games, in weeklies they're still playing SC2, yes it's possible maxpax will perform worst in big offline tournaments, but until he goes there we have no way of telling.
If there was money to be made on the ladder, and you got rid of smurfing, I'd absolutely judge who the best players are by who is #1 on the ladder.
PS:Serral's Aligulac ranking got questioned for the longest time, so did Clem's.
Hey you’re copying my point :p Nah I kid.
The thing with SC2 is it’s very, very fast and demanding. So I think how seriously people take a particular venue of playing does have a pretty appreciable impact.
In a crude sense there is probably a bigger gap in level between ladder Serral and the Serral that showed up for the Master’s Colosseum warmup into Katowice, than there is between say, Magnus Carlsen playing casual chess and playing in a high-stakes tournament.
Even the Aligulac crew concede that they can’t really model for these kind of intangibles.
As I said it’s a fantastic tool, but it has limitations too. I’d love to crunch the numbers but alas am lazy, I’d wager that knowledgable TLers probably outperform Aligulac when it comes to predicting winners in Liquibets, because they can better account for those intangibles, even if it’s purely by gut feel.
Would be an interesting thing to find out if anyone is inspired to check!
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On February 13 2024 05:11 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 04:35 LostUsername100 wrote:
Those are some great points you guys brought out and I agree with most of what you guys have said if not everything.
But Aligulac's goal is predicting winners in SC2 games, in weeklies they're still playing SC2, yes it's possible maxpax will perform worst in big offline tournaments, but until he goes there we have no way of telling.
If there was money to be made on the ladder, and you got rid of smurfing, I'd absolutely judge who the best players are by who is #1 on the ladder.
PS:Serral's Aligulac ranking got questioned for the longest time, so did Clem's. Hey you’re copying my point :p Nah I kid. The thing with SC2 is it’s very, very fast and demanding. So I think how seriously people take a particular venue of playing does have a pretty appreciable impact. In a crude sense there is probably a bigger gap in level between ladder Serral and the Serral that showed up for the Master’s Colosseum warmup into Katowice, than there is between say, Magnus Carlsen playing casual chess and playing in a high-stakes tournament. Even the Aligulac crew concede that they can’t really model for these kind of intangibles. As I said it’s a fantastic tool, but it has limitations too. I’d love to crunch the numbers but alas am lazy, I’d wager that knowledgable TLers probably outperform Aligulac when it comes to predicting winners in Liquibets, because they can better account for those intangibles, even if it’s purely by gut feel. Would be an interesting thing to find out if anyone is inspired to check!
" I’d love to crunch the numbers but alas am lazy, I’d wager that knowledgable TLers probably outperform Aligulac when it comes to predicting winners in Liquibets, because they can better account for those intangibles, even if it’s purely by gut feel. "
AFAIK~ the creator of aligulac was #1 on liquibet way back in the day by just inputting whatever aligulac said.
At the moment Im guessing people use it as a baseline to make predictions for sure.
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On February 13 2024 04:59 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 04:08 Balnazza wrote:On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
One common argument is if Zerg is OP as a race, why aren't Reynor and Dark as dominant as Serral - but the fact is they already HAVE BEEN winning premier events, and Serral, being the best Zerg, is taking advantage of spellcasters to even greater extent. There's a human limit to what Terran players can do and it's simply impossible to deal with a master Zerg who can fully abuse OP units. Clearly not everyone can play Zerg like Serral, but the point is it's POSSIBLE, and Serral is using thIs advantage to dominate the game to an extent that is IMPOSSIBLE for other races to deal with.
This is my favorite bit out of this absurdity. "Reynor and Dark did poorly this tournament, but they have won tournaments in the past (I believe on different patches?), so clearly their race is OP!" So...Clem and Maru have never won anything? Also funny to blab on about competitive integrity and then wanting to nerf an entire race because of one player. One. If you nerf Serral on a level he would get destroyed in the Ro12, no other Zerg would even reach the close-qualifier for these kind of events. The imba-imba-IMBA race Zerg had literally the least representation at Katowice. I know, as a korean elitist and/or Maru-Fanboy (not looking at any particular TL-Writer or something) "Zerg OP roflrofl" is literally your only saving grace, but maybe, just maybe, accept the fact that Serral "right now" (as in the last six years, but the last two especially) is above the curve. Doesn't mean he can't be beaten, just means the very best need to play their very best. And that is a thing you might find hard to accept: Maru didn't play "like a god" in that series, except for the 2nd Map. On all three other maps, Serral was always one step ahead. Can we stop the copium at some point? In Germany, there is a saying that translates to "Skill is, when Luck becomes a regular thing". So really, at some point you might just have to face the music here... What is the actual German for that? It’s such a melodious language. Are you German yourself? I’d always assumed French, I have no idea as to why mind.
Yes I am and no, definetly not French. After four years of French I recollect maybe 20 words and two phrases at best 
In German the saying would be "Können ist, wenn Glück zur Gewohnheit wird"
As for your question "how to nerf one guy": It really is a tricky question, because the honest answer should be "you don't". This is a skill-based game. If someone does something no one else can even attempt to do, why would you nerf that? It is also highly subjective.
For example, Marus Ghost-control is ridiculous, has been for years. Imagine Serral wasn't a thing and Maru would be able to actually win anything outside of Asia (btw: I'm really curious to see if Riyad is still asian-enough for Marus curse to not kick in...), I bet you anything people would cry out for a Ghost-nerf.
In Serrals case it is even harder, because he doesn't really rely on one singular thing. His spellcaster-control is definetly the best in the game by a mile, but that isn't everything. But you can't just go from there and nerf all Zerg spellcasters to the ground, because then every other Zerg will just be insta-dead. It's not like burrowed infestors are a "choice" you make and pick it because it is imba. You pick it because it is literally the only working counter. Same for the Viper. Or the Queen. I remember when people suggested to just remove the Queen from the game (or have it only as an infuser/creepspreader). Like yeah, sure...Zerg would be insta-dead against any kind of Banshee-Push or even just Oracles, but hey, atleast we nerfed Serral?
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People have long acknowledged that Zerg has an advantage by being able to a-move.
Troll post confirmed
yeah, "amove ling bane" derp
and Amove their spellcasters-oh wait, they don't even have auto attacks like ghosts or HTs.
Yeah there's a reason why zerg is 24% of GM https://nonapa.com/races?region=-1&mode=1&league=6&chart=1 and it's not because "zerg OP".
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I'm not sure it's a balance issue at the moment, especially in the tvz matchup. What does help Zerg is the game design/race design. Reactive play has to be good enough for a Zerg to scout react and be ok. So that means IMO these responses need to be slightly overtuned when put in the hands of a Serral or other zergs at their absolute peak. Because if they're not slightly overtuned a lesser Zerg is getting rolled for not playing "perfectly".
We've seen Toss builds in the past get nerfed because they're too ambiguous between an all in or macro play, essentially putting Zerg into a guessing game. Which obviously a coin flip is not fun on either side.
All that to say Zerg is the best race in the game based on the meta/game state at this point. The longer any patch is out the more it favors Zerg. I don't think it's something that can be fixed by tweaking some numbers, it's just the result of the way the race was designed.
Serral just makes it look even worse than it is because he is so steady and methodical. So when people already have these types of opinions it just brings out the balance whine lol
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On February 13 2024 02:54 Nasigil wrote:A player that still refused to wall his third or put a planetary on forth after getting ling run by for 10 times doesn't deserve to win. Serral outplayed Maru plain and simple. Show nested quote +if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral Clem and Maru both have weaknesses. Clem has best mechanical skills (macro/micro/multitasking) but his strategies and decision making are not on the level of Maru. Maru is the most experienced and smartest Terran but his micro and multitasking has fallen off from his best years. He's also known to have mental weakness on international stage. On the other hand, try to name one weakness of Serral. Macro, micro, multitasking, strategies(build orders), tactics (army maneuver), mentality, as of now, he's top of the chart on everything. And he performs super consistently. To beat perfection, you have to be perfection yourself. Clem always try to overwhelm his opponent by relentless attacking, which works most of the time because he's just that good, but against someone just that's just as mechanically skillful but much smarter like Serral, he hit a wall. But to Clem's credit, he's still the Terran that has the best record against Serral in recent years. He did beat Serral just a while ago in Atlanta. Maru could match Serral in his deep bag of strategies and late game turtles, but when both player play standard long macro games, you can see his reaction and micro is just not on par any more. Clem could sometime overwhelm Serral with his relentless attacks, Maru used to be able to do the same before 2022, but now he just don't have that mechanical skill anymore. He has to rely on his turtling to have a chance in late game, but in G2 after getting caught by infestor too many times in mid-game and forgot to mine gas for a crucial minute late game, he lost by a razer thin edge. The last two game Maru tried his greedy openings, but Serral recognized it and busted it open with timing attack in G3. You can see Maru's mentality was at the brink of collapse on that last game, and it showed as he was too eager to finish Serral off with his Mech push and refuse to wall his expansions, eventually died to endless run by. At the end of the day, the better player won.
This, right here.
Maru isn't the same player he used to be during his peak. Serral arguably has reached a second peak. Maru going for risky strategies in games 1 and 3 might have to do with him respecting Serral too much. It all comes down to mind games. If Maru thinks he can't beat Serral straight up, he's trying to cut corners - either by going for a semi-allin like in game 4 or by playing greedily. Lesser zerg players usually can't punish him for doing stuff like that, but Serral immediately pounced on him.
Timing windows are incredibly small in SC2. There was one game between Maru and ByuN which was decided by Maru exploiting the only weakness in ByuN's defense at the perfect moment. If he hadn't done that, ByuN would have been miles ahead.
But there's another issue:
Korean SC2 is pretty much dead. Korea used to have the largest talent pool, but those days are long gone. All that's left are a few veterans like Maru, herO, Dark etc. The last "new" player to be semi-good was... Zoun? Meanwhile, the EU scene is a lot healthier, even though it has shrunk by quite a bit. Serral, Reynor and Clem emerged in the late 2010s. The game is basically figured out, it takes a lot of effort to reach the top. You only can do that if playing the game full time is actually sustainable. In Korea, GSL is on its last legs, the only way to earn some money is by playing a shitload of online tournaments.
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On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years.
Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in.
Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2.
Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO
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I was here.
btw I just wanted to say that two things can be true at the same time. Serral is clearly the best and most skilled player right now and has been for quite some time AND zerg is definitely a bit broken and is clearly the best race to play on the highest levels of competitive circuit if you want to win trophies.
Hope I helped 
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Zerg "looks" op since the dawn of time because they run away with a game so ridiculously fast when unpunished. No race scales as fast and hard as Zerg, this is not new.
What I'd like to see since basically the classic era was more ways to strategically punish Zerg for its choices. Yet the Queen is still in such a strong spot that makes it nigh impossible to do so. E.g if Zerg was forced to build more defensive structures , the droning would be a lesser concern.
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Terran and Zerg are just fine, Toss needs the buff obviously... The winning% of Katowice speaks for itself
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United States33170 Posts
Fighting games with small userbases have been on my mind since around 2019~2020 as something we might see in SC2's future. As the pro/competitive player base shrinks, the character/faction choices of the most talented players end up having an outsize influence on what we perceive as "balance."
Not that I spent a ton of time browsing mortal kombat or smash melee communities, but my impression is that people just accept that this is the nature of things (ofc they still complain cause complaining is inherent to gaming).
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
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On February 13 2024 18:14 Waxangel wrote:
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
I agree.
Sometimes it makes sence to shift the balance slightly to cater to the playerbase of other races. Zerg has been historically good during every era. Terran was strong during stretches and bolstered by a large influx of legacy Korean Terrans. Protoss arguably had the worst performance overall suffering by either a medicore TvP or TvZ.
And quite frankly to this day I can't really decide for myself if it is Serral being so much better than all other pros or if he is basically the only one who figured out the full potential of his race.
I think we have seen the peak of Protoss & Terran performance during SC2s lifespan and at its absolute top it is just a few % lower than a perfectly played Zerg. Statisically it makes little to no difference in the grand scheme of things and needs no fix.
On the other hand it is undeniable that 4 out of the top 5 players of all time are Zerg. I find it hard to believe this come down to individual skill. If anything Maru is the outlier that plays above his expected races' potential while Serral being the one playing the best race AND being the best player making the gap as enormous as it seems.
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such a lame post discrediting serral's ability. he's the sc2 goat.
And of course, it's made by a very low level player. You should just enjoy the spectacle that is sc2 and try to find a way to see the greatness of serral. There's enough complaints about protoss, but there's no reason to believe that terran is weak against zerg right now whatsoever.
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On February 13 2024 18:14 Waxangel wrote:
Fighting games with small userbases have been on my mind since around 2019~2020 as something we might see in SC2's future. As the pro/competitive player base shrinks, the character/faction choices of the most talented players end up having an outsize influence on what we perceive as "balance."
Not that I spent a ton of time browsing mortal kombat or smash melee communities, but my impression is that people just accept that this is the nature of things (ofc they still complain cause complaining is inherent to gaming).
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
I disagree with most of that. It's usually not only very clear to see or 'feel' balance but the objective data is always there.
DK's takes were always just him hiking his pants up trodden around the pile of shit to give an acceptable PR answer.
I think the thing most people sleep on is that fun will always overshadow poor balance, and that is the mark that sc2 missed.
Instead of removing 'unfun' elements they opted to double down and force them.
Old games like Smash64 are a good example. Balance is terrible but it doesn't matter. I personally think it's a dogwater competitive game, but it is still played and enjoyed that way. Isai or Boom would have won every single tournament if they just played pika or Kirby.
The age old issue is how you address it.
If it were up to me I would just periodically ask the top few players of each race their thoughts on each match-up (even the one they didn't play). Then make my decisions based on that collective, as it would be very easy to identify emphasis and bias.
My changes would be focused on looking to negate any frustrating aspect, before moving onto numerical balance changes.
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On February 13 2024 17:30 Kitaen wrote:
Zerg "looks" op since the dawn of time because they run away with a game so ridiculously fast when unpunished. No race scales as fast and hard as Zerg, this is not new.
What I'd like to see since basically the classic era was more ways to strategically punish Zerg for its choices. Yet the Queen is still in such a strong spot that makes it nigh impossible to do so. E.g if Zerg was forced to build more defensive structures , the droning would be a lesser concern.
This is actually good point imo. It would be nice, if the early game would allow more options to make zergs life more difficult and make them choose what defense to use in each situation. Although that sounds like a "minor" thing to fix, its actually a huge can of worms that would need to address before any queen nerfs. Otherwise zerg just dies too easily. I also think this is more related to the change of starting workers going from 6 to 12. But anyways, its prolly a too drastic change at this point of games life cycle to be happening. In addition, I do not think the balance is that far off especially in TvZ that it needs any big changes anyways. Protoss however is a different subject entirely.
On February 13 2024 17:56 CaRn1FeX wrote:
Terran and Zerg are just fine, Toss needs the buff obviously... The winning% of Katowice speaks for itself
Yes. /lock the thread.
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How can anyone say Zerg isnt too good at the Premier tournament level? Is it coping, bias, or straight up being dishonest xD
I don't care how much the casters try to convince us that Serral is just that much better at the game than his counterparts of the other races, if he loses four queens to five Reapers in the early game against the best TvZ Player in the world at the moment (maybe tied with Maru), there is no way he should win that game, let alone comfortably. That game is a microcosm of ZvT and ZvP - Zerg simply has too big a margin of error compared to Terran and especially compared to Protoss (Protoss is the main issue here, which I will get to later). Zerg is straight up absurd - it obviously has the best macro/defensive style available. Sure, that's how it was designed to be. We can even say it should have the edge in lategame. But it also has the strongest early game and now, with the new Infestor play, a very punishing midgame. Let's be real here - we talk about the supposed Book of Protoss Bullshit but that doesnt even work anymore at the pro level. Zerg all-ins and cheeses are far more potent, and are far more forgiving if they fail, because Zerg is capable of taking huge damage and making comebacks (as we saw when Serral lost 4 Queens). Zerg simply has too many tools. It's very telling that Infested Terrans were removed and replaced with something that is never used, and Banelings were nerfed, and Infestor Baneling still trashes Terran better than any Protoss splash does (Protoss is supposed to be the best splash race). Goes to show you can take the most OP thing out of the game and the Race still dominates hard. Meanwhile Protoss just gets hit with Nerfs lol. No real compensation.
Let's not act like it's only Serral either. For the last several years, whenever big tournaments come around the corner, It's just been Zerg dominance. Let's be real - nobody really cares as much about weeklies, or even smaller Premier tournaments like ESL, super tournaments, etc. What matters is when the big tournaments come around all the top Zergs have to do is turn on the jets and one of them wins, except for Oliviera's miracle run and Maru half the Code S. You take out Serral and you still have the Lion's share of big tournaments going to Zerg even if you include Code S as well.
There is simply no excuse for this.
The biggest Problem still remains, however, is how trash Protoss is. For the last several years it didn't matter how deep the Protoss talent pool was - they simply could not win anything big except HerO's single Code S. We are talking about Stats, Zest, SoS, Peak Trap all falling flat on their faces on the biggest stage. It happened against both Zerg and Terran, but obviously Zerg was the biggest culprit by far. In that same time period Soo, Serral, Reynor, Dark, Rogue, Solar, Maru, Cure, Ty, Oliviera, Innovation all won bigtime.
But yeah - with regard to the topic, there's no reason Serral should just be able to make someone like Maru look like a player 1000 mmr lower. Maru is probably the biggest freak of nature this game has ever seen - has won/dominated in multiple eras of the game, was never weak, was a top 3 most fearsome team league player of all time, dominated the hardest region bar none in all of LotV. He is no less a player than Serral, sorry. He plays a race that doesn't have the margin of error of Zerg, though. It's why he can drop series against Cyan while Serral could streamroll every player that isn't Zerg (telling that ZvZ is his worst matchup, which Maru has always been bar none the best TvT player all the time).
Why is the Infestor allowed to burrow move anyway? Make them sitting ducks like Protoss High Templars
I repeat again, though - the biggest Problem by far is how outclassed Protoss as a race is. I believe all it will take is a big buff to a late game unit locked behind Fleet Bacon. Doing meme things like increasing the movespeed of gateway casters is not going to do anything especailly when it's always paired with huge nerfs xD
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What competitions would you consider the big tournaments?
And just to clarify: ZvZ is Serral's worst match up. He is also currently (Aligulac) the best ZvZ player in the world and the best vZ player in the world.
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On February 13 2024 21:12 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
What competitions would you consider the big tournaments?
And just to clarify: ZvZ is Serral's worst match up. He is also currently (Aligulac) the best ZvZ player in the world and the best vZ player in the world.
I would consider it any of the Huge Prize Pool Tournaments (Blizz Con, IEM Katowice, WESG whenever it had a big Prize, and now Gamers8) or GSL Code S
I am not saying Serral is a bad Player or anything. It is telling that his worst Match-up is Zerg though. Especially in Big Tournaments. It's the difference between playing player with the same amount of tools as you and players who are much smaller margin of error and fewer tools than you.
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I mean: as long as we understand that Serral's worst match up is still the match up in which he is the best in the world. Serral currently has the highest rating of every player vs zerg. There is no one as good vs Zerg than Serral at the moment.
Let's take a look at the claim 'If it wasn't for Serral, Zerg would still win the majority of tournaments'.
- Iem Katowice: Serral vs Maru final. => Terran
- Master's Colloseum: Serral vs Hero final => Protoss
-- Esl Master's Winter: Clem vs Serral => Clem actually won so => Terran
- ESL master's winter Euripe: Serral vs Clem => Terran
- GSL => Sollar vs Gumiho => Zerg
- Master's colloseum 6: Serral vs Cure => Terran
- Gamers 8 => Reynor vs Cure => Zerg
- GSL => Maru vs Dark => Terran
- ESL masters Summer= > Serral vs Gumiho => Terran
- Esl Masters summer Europe => Serral vs Maxpax => Protoss
- GSL => Maru vs Cure => Terran
- IEM Katowice => Oliveire vs Maru => Terran
So if Serral didn't exist, we would have in the premier tournaments, since katowice 2023:
8 terran wins
2 protoss wins
2 zerg wins
The methodology I used was just to look at the final and take the other finalists, if it was against serral, as the actual winner. You can argue that this is a problematic methodology and it is, in a sense, but it's a reasonable approximation for the purpose of this.
Now, let's say 'Serral' is his own race. If we then look at the major tournaments, here are the victories for the 4 races:
- Zerg: 2
- Serral: 6
- Protoss: 0
- Terran: 4
Take into account that in 3 of these serral did not participate (gsl), that means Serral won 6 out of 9 tournaments he participated in. And if he didn't exist, all 6 of those would have been won by a terran or protoss, because none of those were a zvz final.
Let's look at it even more detailled:
- Iem Katowice 2024: The other zerg semi-finalist was Dark, who already lost earlier 2-0 to maru.
- Master's colloseum: Hero was beaten by Reynor, but also beat Reynor in the loser's final. So toss up if that had gone to zerg or not imo.
- Master's winter Europe: Serral beat Reynor in the winner's bracket, Clem beat Reynor in the Loser's bracket. So again, a reasonable toss up. But just like before: it was the non-zerg who went through to the final.
- Master's Collosseum 6: Serral was actually knocked down to the loser bracket (3-1 by Clem). Serral then proceeded to go 19-3 in maps vs Lambo, Dark, Maxpax, Maru, Byun and Cure. But anyway. If Serral didn't exist, this would easily been taken by one of terrans.
- Esl masters summer: we would perhaps have had a final between Reynor and Gumiho. This could have been won by a zerg, yes.
- Esl masters summer europe: serral was the only zerg semi-finalists. A protoss or terran would reasonably have taken this.
I mean: if we just look at the objective available evidence, claims such as 'the lion's share of big tournaments would go to zerg' appears to be not true. It would probably be far more equal to the extend that we can deduce something based on counterfactual data estimates. I realize that this isn't a perfect method by any stretch of the imagination, but the evidence definitely doesn't support wide accusations of 'it would be zerg anyway!!'
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On February 13 2024 21:20 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 21:12 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
What competitions would you consider the big tournaments?
And just to clarify: ZvZ is Serral's worst match up. He is also currently (Aligulac) the best ZvZ player in the world and the best vZ player in the world. I would consider it any of the Huge Prize Pool Tournaments (Blizz Con, IEM Katowice, WESG whenever it had a big Prize, and now Gamers8) or GSL Code S I am not saying Serral is a bad Player or anything. It is telling that his worst Match-up is Zerg though. Especially in Big Tournaments. It's the difference between playing player with the same amount of tools as you and players who are much smaller margin of error and fewer tools than you.
No mate it's actually not. Serral is by far and away the best late game ZvZ player there is. When he loses, it's because of timing attacks and the larva mechanic, and other things that make the matchup volatile (Mutas.). If you were familiar with serral's game, you wouldn't be talking such nonsense. 'It is telling'. Laugh.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 18:14 Waxangel wrote:
Fighting games with small userbases have been on my mind since around 2019~2020 as something we might see in SC2's future. As the pro/competitive player base shrinks, the character/faction choices of the most talented players end up having an outsize influence on what we perceive as "balance."
Not that I spent a ton of time browsing mortal kombat or smash melee communities, but my impression is that people just accept that this is the nature of things (ofc they still complain cause complaining is inherent to gaming).
At the same time I'm reminded of a somewhat old interview TL did with David Kim, where he said perception of balance is as important as statistical balance (or something to that affect). I guess in an actively supported SaaS-type game, that basically must be the guiding principle to keep fans happy—it doesn't matter if the game is "truly" balanced as long as it feels balanced. But we're long past that state of support for SC2 (or are we?).
I feel Kim is correct, but he’s not really talking pure balance I guess.
I think that perception is certainly important, but really what folks are talking about is ‘is my race as fun as the others?’, or alternatively ‘are the demands on me fair?’
I think some of the most consistent issues have stemmed from these two questions as much, if not more so than pure balance. Can you beat x, well sure, you just have to play a certain way, and you may not have fun playing that way. Even though the game is ‘balanced’ in this hypothetical, it’s not really, to you anyway.
I remember way back, inspired by my beloved Liquid HerO and trying to ape his PvZ style. I wasn’t terrible at my dubious ‘peak’ and had some pretty decent games, nonetheless my PvZ sat in the 30% range, luckily compensated for by my PvT being in the 70s. I just sat with a replay or two, a TL guide when strategy was more active and had a blink allin and Parting’s ‘Soul Train’ grinded out well relative to my level. Then just started to win rather a lot, but to me I didn’t really enjoy it. I wanted to play a straight-up macro game, I just wanted to win a bit more! At my level, or even above that the matchup was theoretically balanced sure, but if you have to play in a way you don’t enjoy to win it still absolutely feels imbalanced.
The game is just full of a lot of frustrating interactions, sometimes going both ways. A good example I think being the disruptor, especially in PvT.
It doesn’t feel fun, or fair if you just eat a purification nova that came from outside vision range when you were looking away, or you make a micro flub, or maybe just aren’t good enough to split bio well yet. Equally, on the other side of the equation, if your opponent is looking, has mastered splitting, it also feels frustrating that you’re never landing a blow, because there’s actually nothing you can personally do to impact that, you’re just hoping your opponent messes up.
If there’s not effective counterplay, or there’s a big disparity in execution on the attacker/defenders side it will definitely move the needle in terms of perceptions of balance, even if a matchup is ultimately balanced.
I’m unsure why the FG community are a bit more sanguine on balance versus us RTS folks, I guess there are more moving parts to the latter.
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On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO
The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world.
Here's his last few games:
02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852
02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online
02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online
02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online
02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online
He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player.
I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant.
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I haven't followed Sc2 since Wings of Liberty, but I was drawn to this thread for some reason and thought I'd have a look in TLPD to see who Serral is and the ELO ranking there has him 19th, but it's for HotS.
Is ELO still calculated? The top 10 someone posted on the front page seems to have numbers way too high to be the same formula
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
Bunny barely plays, MaxPax plays a lot, and a lot of weeklies.
ELO inflation is a thing with Aligulac, even the folks that run it have conceded that is the case.
Since January 1st 2023:
- Bunny is 151–148 (50.50%) in games and 56–52 (51.85%) in matches.
- MaxPax is 1592–554 (74.18%) in games and 706–161 (81.43%) in matches.
Bunny made a Ro4 in GSL in this period, MaxPax made a Euro finals too, I think an argument can be made that MaxPax may currently be in better shape, and slightly favoured but it wouldn’t be by a huge amount.
But his ratings are massively, massively inflated compared to a guy who’s roughly on the same level (and I picked Bunny specifically because he doesn’t play weeklies)
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On February 13 2024 01:46 Pandain wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
Will we ever see a Terran player stronger than Maru and Clem? Personally I doubt it. And if they COMBINED, while playing at/near their top form, cannot win a single map against Serral, a reasonable person can be expected to question the validity of the balance. What does this even mean considering Clem beat Serral 3-1 at their previous meeting and Maru 2-0'd Serral in the Masters Colloseum group stage?
That sc2 has a luck factor at the highest level. And anyone can beat anybody on a given day.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
(3482) MaxPax 0-0 Bunny (2849)
-----------------------------------------
43.23% 3-0 0-3 1.45%
31.63% 3-1 1-3 3.29%
15.42% 3-2 2-3 4.97%
-----------------------------------------
90.29% 9.71%
Median outcome: MaxPax 3-1 Bunny
Estimated by Aligulac. Modify.
Not to belabour the point but there’s flawed and there’s almost useless.
I don’t think there’s anyone here that gives a 90% chance of MaxPax beating Bunny, a player with more tangible competitive achievements in a meaningful tournament.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 13 2024 23:12 DropBear wrote:
I haven't followed Sc2 since Wings of Liberty, but I was drawn to this thread for some reason and thought I'd have a look in TLPD to see who Serral is and the ELO ranking there has him 19th, but it's for HotS.
Is ELO still calculated? The top 10 someone posted on the front page seems to have numbers way too high to be the same formula
There’s a website called Aligulac that uses a similar but different (iirc) system and is now the sort of standardised stat repository for the scene.
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Bunny, in recent match history:
vs Clem: 1-2 (loss)
vs Stats: 2-0 (win)
vs Cure 0-2 (loss)
vs Oliveira: 0-2 (loss)
vs Shin: 2-1 (win)
vs DRG: 1-4 (loss)
vs Oliveira: 1-2 (loss)
vs Firefly: 0-2 (loss)
vs Hero: 0-2 (loss)
vs Hero: 0-2 (loss)
Let's take a look how Maxpax did vs these in his most recent match recorded:.
Maxpax vs Clem: 3-0 (ESL cup; end of January)
Maxpax vs Stats 1-1 (SCboy WTL 2023 Winter; October 22) OR 2-1 (Kung Fu Cup; May 3rd)
Maxpax vs Cure: 2-3 (SC2 Online OSC Championship season 11; februari first) or 2-0 (ESL cup; January first)
Maxpax vs Oliveira: 2-0 (Esl Open Cup)
Maxpax vs Shin: 1-3 (SC2 Online OSC Chamionship season 11; februari first) or 2-0 (Master's Coliseum #7 Main event; January 16)
Maxpax vs DRG: 2-0 (SCBoy WTL 2023 Summer; May 8th)
Maxpax vs Firefly: 2-0 (Master's Coliseum, January 14)
Maxpax vs Hero: 2-3 (Master's Coliseum; January 23) or 3-1 (Wardi TV, January 21st)
There is a definitive argument to be made that Aligulac is not perfect in the sense that it can't rate the "impact" of different games. It gives an equal amount of points to winning in a Katowice final as to winning in an ESL open cup. In that sense, it's probably a bit unfair to compare Maxpax to Bunny's performance in the way I do here. So yes, the winnings of Maxpax have to be put in context, because the context of the game is important too.
90% estimated win chance for Maxpax vs Bunny is probably an exaggeration. But given the data, it's probably not that far off with estimating Maxpax over Bunny.
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On February 13 2024 21:46 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
I mean: as long as we understand that Serral's worst match up is still the match up in which he is the best in the world. Serral currently has the highest rating of every player vs zerg. There is no one as good vs Zerg than Serral at the moment.
Let's take a look at the claim 'If it wasn't for Serral, Zerg would still win the majority of tournaments'.
- Iem Katowice: Serral vs Maru final. => Terran
- Master's Colloseum: Serral vs Hero final => Protoss
-- Esl Master's Winter: Clem vs Serral => Clem actually won so => Terran
- ESL master's winter Euripe: Serral vs Clem => Terran
- GSL => Sollar vs Gumiho => Zerg
- Master's colloseum 6: Serral vs Cure => Terran
- Gamers 8 => Reynor vs Cure => Zerg
- GSL => Maru vs Dark => Terran
- ESL masters Summer= > Serral vs Gumiho => Terran
- Esl Masters summer Europe => Serral vs Maxpax => Protoss
- GSL => Maru vs Cure => Terran
- IEM Katowice => Oliveire vs Maru => Terran
So if Serral didn't exist, we would have in the premier tournaments, since katowice 2023:
8 terran wins
2 protoss wins
2 zerg wins
The methodology I used was just to look at the final and take the other finalists, if it was against serral, as the actual winner. You can argue that this is a problematic methodology and it is, in a sense, but it's a reasonable approximation for the purpose of this.
Now, let's say 'Serral' is his own race. If we then look at the major tournaments, here are the victories for the 4 races:
- Zerg: 2
- Serral: 6
- Protoss: 0
- Terran: 4
Take into account that in 3 of these serral did not participate (gsl), that means Serral won 6 out of 9 tournaments he participated in. And if he didn't exist, all 6 of those would have been won by a terran or protoss, because none of those were a zvz final.
Let's look at it even more detailled:
- Iem Katowice 2024: The other zerg semi-finalist was Dark, who already lost earlier 2-0 to maru.
- Master's colloseum: Hero was beaten by Reynor, but also beat Reynor in the loser's final. So toss up if that had gone to zerg or not imo.
- Master's winter Europe: Serral beat Reynor in the winner's bracket, Clem beat Reynor in the Loser's bracket. So again, a reasonable toss up. But just like before: it was the non-zerg who went through to the final.
- Master's Collosseum 6: Serral was actually knocked down to the loser bracket (3-1 by Clem). Serral then proceeded to go 19-3 in maps vs Lambo, Dark, Maxpax, Maru, Byun and Cure. But anyway. If Serral didn't exist, this would easily been taken by one of terrans.
- Esl masters summer: we would perhaps have had a final between Reynor and Gumiho. This could have been won by a zerg, yes.
- Esl masters summer europe: serral was the only zerg semi-finalists. A protoss or terran would reasonably have taken this.
I mean: if we just look at the objective available evidence, claims such as 'the lion's share of big tournaments would go to zerg' appears to be not true. It would probably be far more equal to the extend that we can deduce something based on counterfactual data estimates. I realize that this isn't a perfect method by any stretch of the imagination, but the evidence definitely doesn't support wide accusations of 'it would be zerg anyway!!'
Why did you ask me what my criteria for "big tournament" was if you're just going to ignore it and use all Premier tournaments xD Do you not think it's important that for years all but one of the "World Championships" have been won by 5 different Zergs (Serral, Reynor, Rogue, Dark, Soo)?
IEM 2024 - Serral beats Maru
GSL Code S S3 2023 - Solar beats Gumiho
GSL Code S S2 2023 - Maru beats Dark
Gamers8 2023 - Reynor Beats Cure
GSl Code S S1 2023 - Maru beats Cure
IEM 2023 - Oliviera beats Maru
GSL Code S S3 2022 - Maru Beats Ragnarok
GSL Code S S2 2022 - HerO beats Maru
GSL Code S S1 2022 - Rogue beats Creator
IEM Katowice 2022 - Serral beats Reynor
GSL Code S S3 2021 - Cure beats Zest
GSL Code S S2 2021 - Dark beats Trap
GSL Code S S1 2021 - Rogue beats Maru
IEM Katowice 2021 - Reynor beats Zest
GSL Code S S3 2020 - Ty beats Maru
GSL Code S S2 2020 - Rogue Beats Stats
GSL Code S S1 2020 - TY beats Cure
IEM Katowice 2020 - Rogue beats Zest
Blizzcon 2019 - Dark beats Reynor
Code S S3 2019 0 Rogue beats Trap
Code S S2 2019 - Dark beats Trap
Code S S1 2019 - Maru beats Classic
WESG 2018 - Innovation beats Serral
IEM 2019 - Soo beats stats
Blizzcon 2018 - Serral beats Stats
Code S S3 2018 - Maru beats TY
Code S S2 2018 - Maru beats Zest
Code S S1 2018 - Maru beats Stats
WESG 2017 - Maru beats Dark
IEM 2018 - Rogue beats Classic
Blizzcon 2017 - Rogue beats soO
SSL S2 2017 - Stats beats Dark
Code S S3 2017 - Innovation beats sOs
Code S S2 2017 - Gumiho beats Soo
SSL S1 2017 - Innovation beats Solar
Code S S1 2017 - Stats beats soo
IEM 2017 - Ty beats Stats
WESG 2016 - Ty beats Maru
So even if we include Code S where Serral doesn't participate and which doesn't have huge prize pools Zerg still edges Terran out and that's with Maru carrying the race via in GSL.
Z - 15
T - 13
P - 1
If we go back to 2017, which is the last time Protoss won something big regularly, only then Terran pulls ahead and that's the year before Serral's rise
Z - 17
T - 18
P - 3
I think we know what happens if you remove GSL...
There is clearly something going on here. Zergs can seem to just turn on the jets in the biggest tournament and win most of them, while Protoss players are only stuck winning the smaller tournaments with lower prize pools and people care less about.
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The fact that this post was written because a terran lost, after 5 years of protoss basically winning nothing, in a context where terran is probably the most favoured race balance-wise, is evidence that when the death of Starcraft 2 as an e-sport happens, it will be deserved.
That being said, I want to add that it's a bit annoying when people say "Serral is actually very good", because 1) everybody knows that, you're not answering anyone's argument, 2) You're implicitly saying that everyone else is not very good and therefore not deserving, and 3) Even people who are very good are affected by balance, you can watch Serral play PvZ in 2019 and watch him play PvZ today, if you think it's the same thing you basically don't understand PvZ.
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On February 13 2024 23:32 WombaT wrote: (3482) MaxPax 0-0 Bunny (2849)
-----------------------------------------
43.23% 3-0 0-3 1.45%
31.63% 3-1 1-3 3.29%
15.42% 3-2 2-3 4.97%
-----------------------------------------
90.29% 9.71%
Median outcome: MaxPax 3-1 Bunny Not to belabour the point but there’s flawed and there’s almost useless. I don’t think there’s anyone here that gives a 90% chance of MaxPax beating Bunny, a player with more tangible competitive achievements in a meaningful tournament.
I agree with Aligulac tending to overrate players who play in a lot of online cups but I think the Bunny vs. Maxpax comparison is a bit unfair. If we're talking non-premier online events, I would favor Maxpax massively. Maybe not to the extent Aligulac does, but the Glicko system it uses simply isn't all that well suited for sc2 (or any game with an element of luck); it underrates the winrate of underdogs in lopsided matchups because the formula for winrate as a function of rating difference is too simple. So this is a problem not unique to the Bunny/Maxpax matchup or to online vs. offline players in general. It would also overrate Maxpax's chances of beating an online grinder with significantly lower rating.
That said, Maxpax has generally underperformed in (online) premiers but I'll give him the benefit of doubt and say that this is in no small part due to nerves and inexperience with higher stakes games.
As for Serral, the people (not so much in this thread but I've seen it often) who say that his rating is inflated are off mark IMO. He gained rating vs. supposedly underrated Korean players at Katowice. While there indeed used to be a significant disparity between Korean and non-Korean ratings back when the players pools where more divided, it's significantly diminished now, at least for the top players. Took a while for it to even out of course.
Look at the rating changes for Katowice: The Korean players gained about 1.5 points on average while the non-Koreans lost 3.5. So while Koreans did perform better than Aligulac expected, it was a minor difference. Compare this to major international events back in the day where Korean players would regularly make massive rating gains, stomping similarly rated foreigners.
Moreover, if you restrict to the top 6 for each group (arbitrary cutoff at roughly the top half), the foreigners went +11 to the Koreans' -1, so they actually overperformed on average.
Also, look at the events Serral plays in these days. Except for the EU regionals and Homestory Cups, they all include Korean players and since he makes deep runs, he plays them often. If there were a substantial rating gap, Serral should be calibrated pretty well to the Korean level, except possibly right after EU tournaments.
The truth is simply that Serral is the best player in the world right now, and by a large margin at that. Even with all the results he's had through the last 6 years, I don't think he's ever looked further ahead of the competition. Even that crazy ZvP win streak he had back in 2020 is arguably not as good as the one he's on now: it was longer, both in time and in matches, but included far more map losses.
You could argue that the shrinking player base and decreasing level of competition in Korea plays a role here but that doesn't really seem to be the argument people are making.
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On February 14 2024 00:07 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
Bunny, in recent match history:
vs Clem: 1-2 (loss)
vs Stats: 2-0 (win)
vs Cure 0-2 (loss)
vs Oliveira: 0-2 (loss)
vs Shin: 2-1 (win)
vs DRG: 1-4 (loss)
vs Oliveira: 1-2 (loss)
vs Firefly: 0-2 (loss)
vs Hero: 0-2 (loss)
vs Hero: 0-2 (loss)
Let's take a look how Maxpax did vs these in his most recent match recorded:.
Maxpax vs Clem: 3-0 (ESL cup; end of January)
Maxpax vs Stats 1-1 (SCboy WTL 2023 Winter; October 22) OR 2-1 (Kung Fu Cup; May 3rd)
Maxpax vs Cure: 2-3 (SC2 Online OSC Championship season 11; februari first) or 2-0 (ESL cup; January first)
Maxpax vs Oliveira: 2-0 (Esl Open Cup)
Maxpax vs Shin: 1-3 (SC2 Online OSC Chamionship season 11; februari first) or 2-0 (Master's Coliseum #7 Main event; January 16)
Maxpax vs DRG: 2-0 (SCBoy WTL 2023 Summer; May 8th)
Maxpax vs Firefly: 2-0 (Master's Coliseum, January 14)
Maxpax vs Hero: 2-3 (Master's Coliseum; January 23) or 3-1 (Wardi TV, January 21st)
There is a definitive argument to be made that Aligulac is not perfect in the sense that it can't rate the "impact" of different games. It gives an equal amount of points to winning in a Katowice final as to winning in an ESL open cup. In that sense, it's probably a bit unfair to compare Maxpax to Bunny's performance in the way I do here. So yes, the winnings of Maxpax have to be put in context, because the context of the game is important too.
90% estimated win chance for Maxpax vs Bunny is probably an exaggeration. But given the data, it's probably not that far off with estimating Maxpax over Bunny.
Yeah Aligulac is a great tool but can't be taken in a vacuum. If you are a bit knowledgeable about the scene it's a good addon.
For example some players thrives offline, others are chokers, so obviously you take that into account to make an educated guess.
Maxpax doesn't play offline at all so it's basically useless to take his rating into account for imaginary matches. His score is only relevant to the environment in which he operates.
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On February 14 2024 00:43 Nebuchad wrote:
The fact that this post was written because a terran lost, after 5 years of protoss basically winning nothing, in a context where terran is probably the most favoured race balance-wise, ...
... in a premier tournament where literally five out of the top 8 players were terran, while zero of the top 8 players were protoss, is testimony to a mind-boggling level of audacity.
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On February 14 2024 00:32 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 21:46 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
I mean: as long as we understand that Serral's worst match up is still the match up in which he is the best in the world. Serral currently has the highest rating of every player vs zerg. There is no one as good vs Zerg than Serral at the moment.
Let's take a look at the claim 'If it wasn't for Serral, Zerg would still win the majority of tournaments'.
- Iem Katowice: Serral vs Maru final. => Terran
- Master's Colloseum: Serral vs Hero final => Protoss
-- Esl Master's Winter: Clem vs Serral => Clem actually won so => Terran
- ESL master's winter Euripe: Serral vs Clem => Terran
- GSL => Sollar vs Gumiho => Zerg
- Master's colloseum 6: Serral vs Cure => Terran
- Gamers 8 => Reynor vs Cure => Zerg
- GSL => Maru vs Dark => Terran
- ESL masters Summer= > Serral vs Gumiho => Terran
- Esl Masters summer Europe => Serral vs Maxpax => Protoss
- GSL => Maru vs Cure => Terran
- IEM Katowice => Oliveire vs Maru => Terran
So if Serral didn't exist, we would have in the premier tournaments, since katowice 2023:
8 terran wins
2 protoss wins
2 zerg wins
The methodology I used was just to look at the final and take the other finalists, if it was against serral, as the actual winner. You can argue that this is a problematic methodology and it is, in a sense, but it's a reasonable approximation for the purpose of this.
Now, let's say 'Serral' is his own race. If we then look at the major tournaments, here are the victories for the 4 races:
- Zerg: 2
- Serral: 6
- Protoss: 0
- Terran: 4
Take into account that in 3 of these serral did not participate (gsl), that means Serral won 6 out of 9 tournaments he participated in. And if he didn't exist, all 6 of those would have been won by a terran or protoss, because none of those were a zvz final.
Let's look at it even more detailled:
- Iem Katowice 2024: The other zerg semi-finalist was Dark, who already lost earlier 2-0 to maru.
- Master's colloseum: Hero was beaten by Reynor, but also beat Reynor in the loser's final. So toss up if that had gone to zerg or not imo.
- Master's winter Europe: Serral beat Reynor in the winner's bracket, Clem beat Reynor in the Loser's bracket. So again, a reasonable toss up. But just like before: it was the non-zerg who went through to the final.
- Master's Collosseum 6: Serral was actually knocked down to the loser bracket (3-1 by Clem). Serral then proceeded to go 19-3 in maps vs Lambo, Dark, Maxpax, Maru, Byun and Cure. But anyway. If Serral didn't exist, this would easily been taken by one of terrans.
- Esl masters summer: we would perhaps have had a final between Reynor and Gumiho. This could have been won by a zerg, yes.
- Esl masters summer europe: serral was the only zerg semi-finalists. A protoss or terran would reasonably have taken this.
I mean: if we just look at the objective available evidence, claims such as 'the lion's share of big tournaments would go to zerg' appears to be not true. It would probably be far more equal to the extend that we can deduce something based on counterfactual data estimates. I realize that this isn't a perfect method by any stretch of the imagination, but the evidence definitely doesn't support wide accusations of 'it would be zerg anyway!!'
Why did you ask me what my criteria for "big tournament" was if you're just going to ignore it and use all Premier tournaments xD Do you not think it's important that for years all but one of the "World Championships" have been won by 5 different Zergs (Serral, Reynor, Rogue, Dark, Soo)? + Show Spoiler +
IEM 2024 - Serral beats Maru
GSL Code S S3 2023 - Solar beats Gumiho
GSL Code S S2 2023 - Maru beats Dark
Gamers8 2023 - Reynor Beats Cure
GSl Code S S1 2023 - Maru beats Cure
IEM 2023 - Oliviera beats Maru
GSL Code S S3 2022 - Maru Beats Ragnarok
GSL Code S S2 2022 - HerO beats Maru
GSL Code S S1 2022 - Rogue beats Creator
IEM Katowice 2022 - Serral beats Reynor
GSL Code S S3 2021 - Cure beats Zest
GSL Code S S2 2021 - Dark beats Trap
GSL Code S S1 2021 - Rogue beats Maru
IEM Katowice 2021 - Reynor beats Zest
GSL Code S S3 2020 - Ty beats Maru
GSL Code S S2 2020 - Rogue Beats Stats
GSL Code S S1 2020 - TY beats Cure
IEM Katowice 2020 - Rogue beats Zest
Blizzcon 2019 - Dark beats Reynor
Code S S3 2019 0 Rogue beats Trap
Code S S2 2019 - Dark beats Trap
Code S S1 2019 - Maru beats Classic
WESG 2018 - Innovation beats Serral
IEM 2019 - Soo beats stats
Blizzcon 2018 - Serral beats Stats
Code S S3 2018 - Maru beats TY
Code S S2 2018 - Maru beats Zest
Code S S1 2018 - Maru beats Stats
WESG 2017 - Maru beats Dark
IEM 2018 - Rogue beats Classic
Blizzcon 2017 - Rogue beats soO
SSL S2 2017 - Stats beats Dark
Code S S3 2017 - Innovation beats sOs
Code S S2 2017 - Gumiho beats Soo
SSL S1 2017 - Innovation beats Solar
Code S S1 2017 - Stats beats soo
IEM 2017 - Ty beats Stats
WESG 2016 - Ty beats Maru
So even if we include Code S where Serral doesn't participate and which doesn't have huge prize pools Zerg still edges Terran out and that's with Maru carrying the race via in GSL.
Z - 15
T - 13
P - 1
If we go back to 2017, which is the last time Protoss won something big regularly, only then Terran pulls ahead and that's the year before Serral's rise
Z - 17
T - 18
P - 3
I think we know what happens if you remove GSL...
There is clearly something going on here. Zergs can seem to just turn on the jets in the biggest tournament and win most of them, while Protoss players are only stuck winning the smaller tournaments with lower prize pools and people care less about.
I don't think it's relevant to include multiple different balance patches to comment on current racial balance? That's a different point altogether.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 14 2024 00:49 Zzzapper wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 23:32 WombaT wrote: (3482) MaxPax 0-0 Bunny (2849)
-----------------------------------------
43.23% 3-0 0-3 1.45%
31.63% 3-1 1-3 3.29%
15.42% 3-2 2-3 4.97%
-----------------------------------------
90.29% 9.71%
Median outcome: MaxPax 3-1 Bunny Not to belabour the point but there’s flawed and there’s almost useless. I don’t think there’s anyone here that gives a 90% chance of MaxPax beating Bunny, a player with more tangible competitive achievements in a meaningful tournament. I agree with Aligulac tending to overrate players who play in a lot of online cups but I think the Bunny vs. Maxpax comparison is a bit unfair. If we're talking non-premier online events, I would favor Maxpax massively. Maybe not to the extent Aligulac does, but the Glicko system it uses simply isn't all that well suited for sc2 (or any game with an element of luck); it underrates the winrate of underdogs in lopsided matchups because the formula for winrate as a function of rating difference is too simple. So this is a problem not unique to the Bunny/Maxpax matchup or to online vs. offline players in general. It would also overrate Maxpax's chances of beating an online grinder with significantly lower rating. That said, Maxpax has generally underperformed in (online) premiers but I'll give him the benefit of doubt and say that this is in no small part due to nerves and inexperience with higher stakes games. As for Serral, the people (not so much in this thread but I've seen it often) who say that his rating is inflated are off mark IMO. He gained rating vs. supposedly underrated Korean players at Katowice. While there indeed used to be a significant disparity between Korean and non-Korean ratings back when the players pools where more divided, it's significantly diminished now, at least for the top players. Took a while for it to even out of course. Look at the rating changes for Katowice: The Korean players gained about 1.5 points on average while the non-Koreans lost 3.5. So while Koreans did perform better than Aligulac expected, it was a minor difference. Compare this to major international events back in the day where Korean players would regularly make massive rating gains, stomping similarly rated foreigners. Moreover, if you restrict to the top 6 for each group (arbitrary cutoff at roughly the top half), the foreigners went +11 to the Koreans' -1, so they actually overperformed on average. Also, look at the events Serral plays in these days. Except for the EU regionals and Homestory Cups, they all include Korean players and since he makes deep runs, he plays them often. If there were a substantial rating gap, Serral should be calibrated pretty well to the Korean level, except possibly right after EU tournaments. The truth is simply that Serral is the best player in the world right now, and by a large margin at that. Even with all the results he's had through the last 6 years, I don't think he's ever looked further ahead of the competition. Even that crazy ZvP win streak he had back in 2020 is arguably not as good as the one he's on now: it was longer, both in time and in matches, but included far more map losses. You could argue that the shrinking player base and decreasing level of competition in Korea plays a role here but that doesn't really seem to be the argument people are making.
On Serral, yeah agreed. He plays WTL and at worst major and usually premier tournaments, and his rating is reflective of his results in those domains. He barely ever plays weeklies, his result set is mostly from real meaningful tournament play.
Which isn’t the case with MaxPax at all. His numbers would be more meaningful if the likes of Serral and Reynor consistently played weeklies, but they don’t.
Regardless of that, I still do think MaxPax has the best PvP in the world currently, that’s absolutely fair. But in a meaningful tournament do you really fancy him to go deep versus say herO? I don’t think many would, but I may be wrong so I’ll include a poll!
Poll: Who would you bet on to make it deep in a Premier?herO (16) 73% MaxPax (6) 27% 22 total votes Your vote: Who would you bet on to make it deep in a Premier? (Vote): herO
(Vote): MaxPax
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I think Maxpax has the potential to be to protoss what Serral is to zerg if he keeps playing, but honestly I wouldn't want him to become that, it would take so much more effort than it took Clem or Serral, and there won't be as much reward as there is for them because obviously he can only tie the best zergs or terrans, if he ever has better results than them he will be patched out immediately.
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How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled?
I Really have to disagree here tho, its by their own doing.. Terran stubborness to make a Raven ...., Maru even made like 10 turrets everywhere instead of just creating a freaking Raven ....
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On February 14 2024 01:21 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 00:49 Zzzapper wrote:On February 13 2024 23:32 WombaT wrote: (3482) MaxPax 0-0 Bunny (2849)
-----------------------------------------
43.23% 3-0 0-3 1.45%
31.63% 3-1 1-3 3.29%
15.42% 3-2 2-3 4.97%
-----------------------------------------
90.29% 9.71%
Median outcome: MaxPax 3-1 Bunny Not to belabour the point but there’s flawed and there’s almost useless. I don’t think there’s anyone here that gives a 90% chance of MaxPax beating Bunny, a player with more tangible competitive achievements in a meaningful tournament. I agree with Aligulac tending to overrate players who play in a lot of online cups but I think the Bunny vs. Maxpax comparison is a bit unfair. If we're talking non-premier online events, I would favor Maxpax massively. Maybe not to the extent Aligulac does, but the Glicko system it uses simply isn't all that well suited for sc2 (or any game with an element of luck); it underrates the winrate of underdogs in lopsided matchups because the formula for winrate as a function of rating difference is too simple. So this is a problem not unique to the Bunny/Maxpax matchup or to online vs. offline players in general. It would also overrate Maxpax's chances of beating an online grinder with significantly lower rating. That said, Maxpax has generally underperformed in (online) premiers but I'll give him the benefit of doubt and say that this is in no small part due to nerves and inexperience with higher stakes games. As for Serral, the people (not so much in this thread but I've seen it often) who say that his rating is inflated are off mark IMO. He gained rating vs. supposedly underrated Korean players at Katowice. While there indeed used to be a significant disparity between Korean and non-Korean ratings back when the players pools where more divided, it's significantly diminished now, at least for the top players. Took a while for it to even out of course. Look at the rating changes for Katowice: The Korean players gained about 1.5 points on average while the non-Koreans lost 3.5. So while Koreans did perform better than Aligulac expected, it was a minor difference. Compare this to major international events back in the day where Korean players would regularly make massive rating gains, stomping similarly rated foreigners. Moreover, if you restrict to the top 6 for each group (arbitrary cutoff at roughly the top half), the foreigners went +11 to the Koreans' -1, so they actually overperformed on average. Also, look at the events Serral plays in these days. Except for the EU regionals and Homestory Cups, they all include Korean players and since he makes deep runs, he plays them often. If there were a substantial rating gap, Serral should be calibrated pretty well to the Korean level, except possibly right after EU tournaments. The truth is simply that Serral is the best player in the world right now, and by a large margin at that. Even with all the results he's had through the last 6 years, I don't think he's ever looked further ahead of the competition. Even that crazy ZvP win streak he had back in 2020 is arguably not as good as the one he's on now: it was longer, both in time and in matches, but included far more map losses. You could argue that the shrinking player base and decreasing level of competition in Korea plays a role here but that doesn't really seem to be the argument people are making. On Serral, yeah agreed. He plays WTL and at worst major and usually premier tournaments, and his rating is reflective of his results in those domains. He barely ever plays weeklies, his result set is mostly from real meaningful tournament play. Which isn’t the case with MaxPax at all. His numbers would be more meaningful if the likes of Serral and Reynor consistently played weeklies, but they don’t. Regardless of that, I still do think MaxPax has the best PvP in the world currently, that’s absolutely fair. But in a meaningful tournament do you really fancy him to go deep versus say herO? I don’t think many would, but I may be wrong so I’ll include a poll! Poll: Who would you bet on to make it deep in a Premier?herO (16) 73% MaxPax (6) 27% 22 total votes Your vote: Who would you bet on to make it deep in a Premier? (Vote): herO
(Vote): MaxPax
I don't think we need a poll for that, at this point it would be kinda crazy to suggest otherwise.
Granted, Maxpax is still improving at a steady pace and with time he might get there. Unfortunately, even if he did get to a Serral/Maru kind of level in a few years, it seems likely that the scene will have declined too much for that to be all that meaningful.
My point about Aligulac was more that if you follow the game and spend some time thinking aboout how its ratings behave, it's not that hard to figure out it specific issues and what players it tends to misestimate. Rogue is probably the best example, he never made #1 and iirc was only even top 5 in brief periods after his big wins. But then, everyone had a hard time anticipating exactly when he would show up in that seemingly unbeatable top form and when he would go out unceremoniously in a first group stage
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I wish I could blame balance for Maru's loss but if I'm being honest I can't anymore. 2023 and now 2024 is the first time the "it's just Serral" crowd was actually correct. Without Serral Zerg wouldn't have done as bad as Toss but it would have been a mediocre performance for sure and Terran would have outperformed Zerg dramatically. Even if you remove Maru and Serral together. He is unbelievably good right now. I do think many of his past results including his other Kato did have significant balance issues though and reverse was true back then. If you removed Maru and Serral together it was Terran that was hurt far worse.
Looking at their series Maru's problem was the same here as it has been in most of his international losses for the last few years including to Cyan in this very event. He just gets read and predicted so easily and then tilta. Against most players he is so much better that it doesn't matter but every now and then someone like Cyan will make him look like a fool with a couple perfect builds. And against Serral he of course just can't afford to get read like this at all.
Serral seemed to know that those roach builds in games 1 and 3 would kill him on those maps at those moments. It was perfect build choices against how Maru was playing. Maru needs to be less predictable.
In their one macro game Maru actually looked like the better player imo if it was any map that was possible to split he would have won. Even without the map split he probably could have won if his control was just a bit better. 2018 Maru wins that game. It's a shame Terran is so hard on players bodies. Every Terran great has had extreme wrist/shoulder issues which has led to noticeable mechanical loss. The occasional Zerg has too but nowhere to the same extent. If Clem starts having wrist/shoulder issues in the next couple years I think it becomes definitive that there is just something about Terran that makes it impossible to play long term without breaking your body.
Game 4 was just sad. Maru was clearly tilted and ready for the series to be done. He had given up and didn't care enough to go for a respectable match score. It's sad because that's the one game he actually got a big lead in. Put him in a similar position in game 1 or 2 and he wins for sure but he had already decided he was done. It's unfortunate because a 4-1 or 4-2 would have been a far more fun series.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 14 2024 03:03 JJH777 wrote:
I wish I could blame balance for Maru's loss but if I'm being honest I can't anymore. 2023 and now 2024 is the first time the "it's just Serral" crowd was actually correct. Without Serral Zerg wouldn't have done as bad as Toss but it would have been a mediocre performance for sure and Terran would have outperformed Zerg dramatically. Even if you remove Maru and Serral together. He is unbelievably good right now. I do think many of his past results including his other Kato did have significant balance issues though and reverse was true back then. If you removed Maru and Serral together it was Terran that was hurt far worse.
Looking at their series Maru's problem was the same here as it has been in most of his international losses for the last few years including to Cyan in this very event. He just gets read and predicted so easily and then tilta. Against most players he is so much better that it doesn't matter but every now and then someone like Cyan will make him look like a fool with a couple perfect builds. And against Serral he of course just can't afford to get read like this at all.
Serral seemed to know that those roach builds in games 1 and 3 would kill him on those maps at those moments. It was perfect build choices against how Maru was playing. Maru needs to be less predictable.
In their one macro game Maru actually looked like the better player imo if it was any map that was possible to split he would have won. Even without the map split he probably could have won if his control was just a bit better. 2018 Maru wins that game. It's a shame Terran is so hard on players bodies. Every Terran great has had extreme wrist/shoulder issues which has led to noticeable mechanical loss. The occasional Zerg has too but nowhere to the same extent. If Clem starts having wrist/shoulder issues in the next couple years I think it becomes definitive that there is just something about Terran that makes it impossible to play long term without breaking your body.
Game 4 was just sad. Maru was clearly tilted and ready for the series to be done. He had given up and didn't care enough to go for a respectable match score. It's sad because that's the one game he actually got a big lead in. Put him in a similar position in game 1 or 2 and he wins for sure but he had already decided he was done. It's unfortunate because a 4-1 or 4-2 would have been a far more fun series.
Agreed, especially the bolded and I think I said as much myself, if not in this specific thread, then elsewhere.
If Maru isn’t just straight up more skilled than an opponent, or if someone on his level hard counters him with prep, he comes unstuck quite frequently. It’s just rarely an issue because he just is straight up more skilled than most.
Most of Maru’s biggest body of work come in GSL, and he’s got the benefit of his team to help him prep and work his gameplan out. When left to his own devices he’s prone to making bad calls in set planning and he can get away with it against players he can just outplay, he can’t get away with it against a Serral.
This isn’t to discount his greatness, absolutely not. But it’s basically the longest pro career in the scene, and a pattern we’ve seen again, and again, and again. Enough times for it to be a pattern worth recognising. When untethered from SoS prior to doing battle, who my headcanon just assumes was GAGW’s chief planner given his skillset, it’s SoS who dismantles Maru at Blizzcon. When Maru’s got Reynor on match point after resolutely dismantling him in macro games, he picks garbage builds, and in one case even executes a garbage build game badly and gets reverse swept. After forever being basically unassailable with a TvT that while not precluding aggression, whose defining feature was resolute, superior tactical and positional play and defensive solidity, Maru picks a WC final to start donating armies against a player he’s absolutely better than.
How many times does it have to happen before the conclusion is that Maru is monstrously skilled, and will stomp anyone on his day, but he’s just not clutch outside of GSL and that format? And likewise his Proleague record, as impressive as it was I do regard that as being a team effort.
Maru is greater than Mvp, I think most would agree there. But does anyone think Maru could be competitive if injury impacted his mechanics to the degree he couldn’t play his favoured styles, have a micro or macro advantage and remain relevant with pure brains and set planning, as Mvp did?
I’m aware Maru has had injury issues before anyone mentions!
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On February 14 2024 00:32 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 21:46 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
I mean: as long as we understand that Serral's worst match up is still the match up in which he is the best in the world. Serral currently has the highest rating of every player vs zerg. There is no one as good vs Zerg than Serral at the moment.
Let's take a look at the claim 'If it wasn't for Serral, Zerg would still win the majority of tournaments'.
- Iem Katowice: Serral vs Maru final. => Terran
- Master's Colloseum: Serral vs Hero final => Protoss
-- Esl Master's Winter: Clem vs Serral => Clem actually won so => Terran
- ESL master's winter Euripe: Serral vs Clem => Terran
- GSL => Sollar vs Gumiho => Zerg
- Master's colloseum 6: Serral vs Cure => Terran
- Gamers 8 => Reynor vs Cure => Zerg
- GSL => Maru vs Dark => Terran
- ESL masters Summer= > Serral vs Gumiho => Terran
- Esl Masters summer Europe => Serral vs Maxpax => Protoss
- GSL => Maru vs Cure => Terran
- IEM Katowice => Oliveire vs Maru => Terran
So if Serral didn't exist, we would have in the premier tournaments, since katowice 2023:
8 terran wins
2 protoss wins
2 zerg wins
The methodology I used was just to look at the final and take the other finalists, if it was against serral, as the actual winner. You can argue that this is a problematic methodology and it is, in a sense, but it's a reasonable approximation for the purpose of this.
Now, let's say 'Serral' is his own race. If we then look at the major tournaments, here are the victories for the 4 races:
- Zerg: 2
- Serral: 6
- Protoss: 0
- Terran: 4
Take into account that in 3 of these serral did not participate (gsl), that means Serral won 6 out of 9 tournaments he participated in. And if he didn't exist, all 6 of those would have been won by a terran or protoss, because none of those were a zvz final.
Let's look at it even more detailled:
- Iem Katowice 2024: The other zerg semi-finalist was Dark, who already lost earlier 2-0 to maru.
- Master's colloseum: Hero was beaten by Reynor, but also beat Reynor in the loser's final. So toss up if that had gone to zerg or not imo.
- Master's winter Europe: Serral beat Reynor in the winner's bracket, Clem beat Reynor in the Loser's bracket. So again, a reasonable toss up. But just like before: it was the non-zerg who went through to the final.
- Master's Collosseum 6: Serral was actually knocked down to the loser bracket (3-1 by Clem). Serral then proceeded to go 19-3 in maps vs Lambo, Dark, Maxpax, Maru, Byun and Cure. But anyway. If Serral didn't exist, this would easily been taken by one of terrans.
- Esl masters summer: we would perhaps have had a final between Reynor and Gumiho. This could have been won by a zerg, yes.
- Esl masters summer europe: serral was the only zerg semi-finalists. A protoss or terran would reasonably have taken this.
I mean: if we just look at the objective available evidence, claims such as 'the lion's share of big tournaments would go to zerg' appears to be not true. It would probably be far more equal to the extend that we can deduce something based on counterfactual data estimates. I realize that this isn't a perfect method by any stretch of the imagination, but the evidence definitely doesn't support wide accusations of 'it would be zerg anyway!!'
So even if we include Code S where Serral doesn't participate and which doesn't have huge prize pools Zerg still edges Terran out and that's with Maru carrying the race via in GSL. Z - 15 T - 13 P - 1
So you are making a big deal out of this, how Zerg is "is far ahead over every other race, even without Serral" and then...it is by a margin of TWO wins? I don't think tournament wins are any real balance-indicator, but if they were...mate, I get that Protoss is pissed, but TWO tournaments won more actually in your mind make Zerg imba compared to Terran? What?
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 14 2024 03:28 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 00:32 NoMacroNoHonour wrote:On February 13 2024 21:46 AdrianHealeyy wrote:
I mean: as long as we understand that Serral's worst match up is still the match up in which he is the best in the world. Serral currently has the highest rating of every player vs zerg. There is no one as good vs Zerg than Serral at the moment.
Let's take a look at the claim 'If it wasn't for Serral, Zerg would still win the majority of tournaments'.
- Iem Katowice: Serral vs Maru final. => Terran
- Master's Colloseum: Serral vs Hero final => Protoss
-- Esl Master's Winter: Clem vs Serral => Clem actually won so => Terran
- ESL master's winter Euripe: Serral vs Clem => Terran
- GSL => Sollar vs Gumiho => Zerg
- Master's colloseum 6: Serral vs Cure => Terran
- Gamers 8 => Reynor vs Cure => Zerg
- GSL => Maru vs Dark => Terran
- ESL masters Summer= > Serral vs Gumiho => Terran
- Esl Masters summer Europe => Serral vs Maxpax => Protoss
- GSL => Maru vs Cure => Terran
- IEM Katowice => Oliveire vs Maru => Terran
So if Serral didn't exist, we would have in the premier tournaments, since katowice 2023:
8 terran wins
2 protoss wins
2 zerg wins
The methodology I used was just to look at the final and take the other finalists, if it was against serral, as the actual winner. You can argue that this is a problematic methodology and it is, in a sense, but it's a reasonable approximation for the purpose of this.
Now, let's say 'Serral' is his own race. If we then look at the major tournaments, here are the victories for the 4 races:
- Zerg: 2
- Serral: 6
- Protoss: 0
- Terran: 4
Take into account that in 3 of these serral did not participate (gsl), that means Serral won 6 out of 9 tournaments he participated in. And if he didn't exist, all 6 of those would have been won by a terran or protoss, because none of those were a zvz final.
Let's look at it even more detailled:
- Iem Katowice 2024: The other zerg semi-finalist was Dark, who already lost earlier 2-0 to maru.
- Master's colloseum: Hero was beaten by Reynor, but also beat Reynor in the loser's final. So toss up if that had gone to zerg or not imo.
- Master's winter Europe: Serral beat Reynor in the winner's bracket, Clem beat Reynor in the Loser's bracket. So again, a reasonable toss up. But just like before: it was the non-zerg who went through to the final.
- Master's Collosseum 6: Serral was actually knocked down to the loser bracket (3-1 by Clem). Serral then proceeded to go 19-3 in maps vs Lambo, Dark, Maxpax, Maru, Byun and Cure. But anyway. If Serral didn't exist, this would easily been taken by one of terrans.
- Esl masters summer: we would perhaps have had a final between Reynor and Gumiho. This could have been won by a zerg, yes.
- Esl masters summer europe: serral was the only zerg semi-finalists. A protoss or terran would reasonably have taken this.
I mean: if we just look at the objective available evidence, claims such as 'the lion's share of big tournaments would go to zerg' appears to be not true. It would probably be far more equal to the extend that we can deduce something based on counterfactual data estimates. I realize that this isn't a perfect method by any stretch of the imagination, but the evidence definitely doesn't support wide accusations of 'it would be zerg anyway!!'
So even if we include Code S where Serral doesn't participate and which doesn't have huge prize pools Zerg still edges Terran out and that's with Maru carrying the race via in GSL. Z - 15 T - 13 P - 1 So you are making a big deal out of this, how Zerg is "is far ahead over every other race, even without Serral" and then...it is by a margin of TWO wins? I don't think tournament wins are any real balance-indicator, but if they were...mate, I get that Protoss is pissed, but TWO tournaments won more actually in your mind make Zerg imba compared to Terran? What?
Yeah I mean ‘edges’ is the operative word in ‘edges out’. It’s close enough for someone to have a monster tournament, or a big favourite to have a bad one to swing it.
Zerg and Terran trading complaints as a Protoss observer is like two supermodels quibbling over who’s fatter and uglier with each other while I’m unable to get up from my chair to join in the conversation because I’m that damn morbidly obese
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MaxPax has to win some serious online tournaments before I can really hold him above herO.
Clem was often criticized for unable to match his online success with offline tournaments. But he has an AMAZING resume of online achievement! 5 fucking DH Europe titles, each one won by beating Serral or Reynor or even both of them! That's wild stuff. If Clem hasn't played offline all these years, you bet I will be hyped to think about how he will change the landscape if he does play.
MaxPax won a few Major tournaments but haven't done anything close to what Clem did on Premiere online tournaments. Farming those 500$ weeklies is not cutting it for me. He looks like someone that's between herO and Showtime, closer to Classic, while Protoss will definitely welcome another elite players, he doesn't look like someone that will actually make huge difference to the scene once he starts playing offline.
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On February 14 2024 03:25 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 03:03 JJH777 wrote:
I wish I could blame balance for Maru's loss but if I'm being honest I can't anymore. 2023 and now 2024 is the first time the "it's just Serral" crowd was actually correct. Without Serral Zerg wouldn't have done as bad as Toss but it would have been a mediocre performance for sure and Terran would have outperformed Zerg dramatically. Even if you remove Maru and Serral together. He is unbelievably good right now. I do think many of his past results including his other Kato did have significant balance issues though and reverse was true back then. If you removed Maru and Serral together it was Terran that was hurt far worse.
Looking at their series Maru's problem was the same here as it has been in most of his international losses for the last few years including to Cyan in this very event. He just gets read and predicted so easily and then tilta. Against most players he is so much better that it doesn't matter but every now and then someone like Cyan will make him look like a fool with a couple perfect builds. And against Serral he of course just can't afford to get read like this at all.
Serral seemed to know that those roach builds in games 1 and 3 would kill him on those maps at those moments. It was perfect build choices against how Maru was playing. Maru needs to be less predictable.
In their one macro game Maru actually looked like the better player imo if it was any map that was possible to split he would have won. Even without the map split he probably could have won if his control was just a bit better. 2018 Maru wins that game. It's a shame Terran is so hard on players bodies. Every Terran great has had extreme wrist/shoulder issues which has led to noticeable mechanical loss. The occasional Zerg has too but nowhere to the same extent. If Clem starts having wrist/shoulder issues in the next couple years I think it becomes definitive that there is just something about Terran that makes it impossible to play long term without breaking your body.
Game 4 was just sad. Maru was clearly tilted and ready for the series to be done. He had given up and didn't care enough to go for a respectable match score. It's sad because that's the one game he actually got a big lead in. Put him in a similar position in game 1 or 2 and he wins for sure but he had already decided he was done. It's unfortunate because a 4-1 or 4-2 would have been a far more fun series. Agreed, especially the bolded and I think I said as much myself, if not in this specific thread, then elsewhere. If Maru isn’t just straight up more skilled than an opponent, or if someone on his level hard counters him with prep, he comes unstuck quite frequently. It’s just rarely an issue because he just is straight up more skilled than most. Most of Maru’s biggest body of work come in GSL, and he’s got the benefit of his team to help him prep and work his gameplan out. When left to his own devices he’s prone to making bad calls in set planning and he can get away with it against players he can just outplay, he can’t get away with it against a Serral. This isn’t to discount his greatness, absolutely not. But it’s basically the longest pro career in the scene, and a pattern we’ve seen again, and again, and again. Enough times for it to be a pattern worth recognising. When untethered from SoS prior to doing battle, who my headcanon just assumes was GAGW’s chief planner given his skillset, it’s SoS who dismantles Maru at Blizzcon. When Maru’s got Reynor on match point after resolutely dismantling him in macro games, he picks garbage builds, and in one case even executes a garbage build game badly and gets reverse swept. After forever being basically unassailable with a TvT that while not precluding aggression, whose defining feature was resolute, superior tactical and positional play and defensive solidity, Maru picks a WC final to start donating armies against a player he’s absolutely better than. How many times does it have to happen before the conclusion is that Maru is monstrously skilled, and will stomp anyone on his day, but he’s just not clutch outside of GSL and that format? And likewise his Proleague record, as impressive as it was I do regard that as being a team effort. Maru is greater than Mvp, I think most would agree there. But does anyone think Maru could be competitive if injury impacted his mechanics to the degree he couldn’t play his favoured styles, have a micro or macro advantage and remain relevant with pure brains and set planning, as Mvp did? I’m aware Maru has had injury issues before anyone mentions!
I agree with pretty much everything here about Maru.
Funny you should mention Mvp. I was just thinking that even in 2024, 12 years after Mvp was relevant to the top level of competition, we have still never seen a Terran player who could plan a series as well as Mvp. If Maru was as good as Mvp at planning a Bo7 vs someone who is his mechanical equal in many parts of the game, maybe Serral still wins, but it would take 7 games to get there.
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United States1804 Posts
On February 14 2024 04:51 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 03:25 WombaT wrote:On February 14 2024 03:03 JJH777 wrote:
I wish I could blame balance for Maru's loss but if I'm being honest I can't anymore. 2023 and now 2024 is the first time the "it's just Serral" crowd was actually correct. Without Serral Zerg wouldn't have done as bad as Toss but it would have been a mediocre performance for sure and Terran would have outperformed Zerg dramatically. Even if you remove Maru and Serral together. He is unbelievably good right now. I do think many of his past results including his other Kato did have significant balance issues though and reverse was true back then. If you removed Maru and Serral together it was Terran that was hurt far worse.
Looking at their series Maru's problem was the same here as it has been in most of his international losses for the last few years including to Cyan in this very event. He just gets read and predicted so easily and then tilta. Against most players he is so much better that it doesn't matter but every now and then someone like Cyan will make him look like a fool with a couple perfect builds. And against Serral he of course just can't afford to get read like this at all.
Serral seemed to know that those roach builds in games 1 and 3 would kill him on those maps at those moments. It was perfect build choices against how Maru was playing. Maru needs to be less predictable.
In their one macro game Maru actually looked like the better player imo if it was any map that was possible to split he would have won. Even without the map split he probably could have won if his control was just a bit better. 2018 Maru wins that game. It's a shame Terran is so hard on players bodies. Every Terran great has had extreme wrist/shoulder issues which has led to noticeable mechanical loss. The occasional Zerg has too but nowhere to the same extent. If Clem starts having wrist/shoulder issues in the next couple years I think it becomes definitive that there is just something about Terran that makes it impossible to play long term without breaking your body.
Game 4 was just sad. Maru was clearly tilted and ready for the series to be done. He had given up and didn't care enough to go for a respectable match score. It's sad because that's the one game he actually got a big lead in. Put him in a similar position in game 1 or 2 and he wins for sure but he had already decided he was done. It's unfortunate because a 4-1 or 4-2 would have been a far more fun series. Agreed, especially the bolded and I think I said as much myself, if not in this specific thread, then elsewhere. If Maru isn’t just straight up more skilled than an opponent, or if someone on his level hard counters him with prep, he comes unstuck quite frequently. It’s just rarely an issue because he just is straight up more skilled than most. Most of Maru’s biggest body of work come in GSL, and he’s got the benefit of his team to help him prep and work his gameplan out. When left to his own devices he’s prone to making bad calls in set planning and he can get away with it against players he can just outplay, he can’t get away with it against a Serral. This isn’t to discount his greatness, absolutely not. But it’s basically the longest pro career in the scene, and a pattern we’ve seen again, and again, and again. Enough times for it to be a pattern worth recognising. When untethered from SoS prior to doing battle, who my headcanon just assumes was GAGW’s chief planner given his skillset, it’s SoS who dismantles Maru at Blizzcon. When Maru’s got Reynor on match point after resolutely dismantling him in macro games, he picks garbage builds, and in one case even executes a garbage build game badly and gets reverse swept. After forever being basically unassailable with a TvT that while not precluding aggression, whose defining feature was resolute, superior tactical and positional play and defensive solidity, Maru picks a WC final to start donating armies against a player he’s absolutely better than. How many times does it have to happen before the conclusion is that Maru is monstrously skilled, and will stomp anyone on his day, but he’s just not clutch outside of GSL and that format? And likewise his Proleague record, as impressive as it was I do regard that as being a team effort. Maru is greater than Mvp, I think most would agree there. But does anyone think Maru could be competitive if injury impacted his mechanics to the degree he couldn’t play his favoured styles, have a micro or macro advantage and remain relevant with pure brains and set planning, as Mvp did? I’m aware Maru has had injury issues before anyone mentions! I agree with pretty much everything here about Maru. Funny you should mention Mvp. I was just thinking that even in 2024, 12 years after Mvp was relevant to the top level of competition, we have still never seen a Terran player who could plan a series as well as Mvp. If Maru was as good as Mvp at planning a Bo7 vs someone who is his mechanical equal in many parts of the game, maybe Serral still wins, but it would take 7 games to get there.
TY is the answer you are looking for.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 14 2024 04:51 TheLordofAwesome wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 03:25 WombaT wrote:On February 14 2024 03:03 JJH777 wrote:
I wish I could blame balance for Maru's loss but if I'm being honest I can't anymore. 2023 and now 2024 is the first time the "it's just Serral" crowd was actually correct. Without Serral Zerg wouldn't have done as bad as Toss but it would have been a mediocre performance for sure and Terran would have outperformed Zerg dramatically. Even if you remove Maru and Serral together. He is unbelievably good right now. I do think many of his past results including his other Kato did have significant balance issues though and reverse was true back then. If you removed Maru and Serral together it was Terran that was hurt far worse.
Looking at their series Maru's problem was the same here as it has been in most of his international losses for the last few years including to Cyan in this very event. He just gets read and predicted so easily and then tilta. Against most players he is so much better that it doesn't matter but every now and then someone like Cyan will make him look like a fool with a couple perfect builds. And against Serral he of course just can't afford to get read like this at all.
Serral seemed to know that those roach builds in games 1 and 3 would kill him on those maps at those moments. It was perfect build choices against how Maru was playing. Maru needs to be less predictable.
In their one macro game Maru actually looked like the better player imo if it was any map that was possible to split he would have won. Even without the map split he probably could have won if his control was just a bit better. 2018 Maru wins that game. It's a shame Terran is so hard on players bodies. Every Terran great has had extreme wrist/shoulder issues which has led to noticeable mechanical loss. The occasional Zerg has too but nowhere to the same extent. If Clem starts having wrist/shoulder issues in the next couple years I think it becomes definitive that there is just something about Terran that makes it impossible to play long term without breaking your body.
Game 4 was just sad. Maru was clearly tilted and ready for the series to be done. He had given up and didn't care enough to go for a respectable match score. It's sad because that's the one game he actually got a big lead in. Put him in a similar position in game 1 or 2 and he wins for sure but he had already decided he was done. It's unfortunate because a 4-1 or 4-2 would have been a far more fun series. Agreed, especially the bolded and I think I said as much myself, if not in this specific thread, then elsewhere. If Maru isn’t just straight up more skilled than an opponent, or if someone on his level hard counters him with prep, he comes unstuck quite frequently. It’s just rarely an issue because he just is straight up more skilled than most. Most of Maru’s biggest body of work come in GSL, and he’s got the benefit of his team to help him prep and work his gameplan out. When left to his own devices he’s prone to making bad calls in set planning and he can get away with it against players he can just outplay, he can’t get away with it against a Serral. This isn’t to discount his greatness, absolutely not. But it’s basically the longest pro career in the scene, and a pattern we’ve seen again, and again, and again. Enough times for it to be a pattern worth recognising. When untethered from SoS prior to doing battle, who my headcanon just assumes was GAGW’s chief planner given his skillset, it’s SoS who dismantles Maru at Blizzcon. When Maru’s got Reynor on match point after resolutely dismantling him in macro games, he picks garbage builds, and in one case even executes a garbage build game badly and gets reverse swept. After forever being basically unassailable with a TvT that while not precluding aggression, whose defining feature was resolute, superior tactical and positional play and defensive solidity, Maru picks a WC final to start donating armies against a player he’s absolutely better than. How many times does it have to happen before the conclusion is that Maru is monstrously skilled, and will stomp anyone on his day, but he’s just not clutch outside of GSL and that format? And likewise his Proleague record, as impressive as it was I do regard that as being a team effort. Maru is greater than Mvp, I think most would agree there. But does anyone think Maru could be competitive if injury impacted his mechanics to the degree he couldn’t play his favoured styles, have a micro or macro advantage and remain relevant with pure brains and set planning, as Mvp did? I’m aware Maru has had injury issues before anyone mentions! I agree with pretty much everything here about Maru. Funny you should mention Mvp. I was just thinking that even in 2024, 12 years after Mvp was relevant to the top level of competition, we have still never seen a Terran player who could plan a series as well as Mvp. If Maru was as good as Mvp at planning a Bo7 vs someone who is his mechanical equal in many parts of the game, maybe Serral still wins, but it would take 7 games to get there.
TY was also pretty damn good at it. In terms of planning sets he’s run a fair few clinics. Also I think latter-day TY just wasn’t fast enough, or a micro monster to win TvZ slugfests, but that didn’t stop him taking out the Zerg trash with some use of the grey matter. And I recall him dismantling Parting when his PvT was giving a lot of people problems.
I’ll give props to Gumiho but I don’t really think he’s a good set planner, he’s more an ‘off-meta’ player who brings weird stuff folks aren’t familiar with
But yeah since Mvp mostly Terrans have won on mechanics and latent skill. Innovation was a macro monster, with control to beat and he just steamrolled people. Byun won a Starleague and a WC on obscene micro and pretty damn good macro. Maru’s mechanics are thus that he can run you over with straight up pushes, pick you apart with multitasking, or be a defensive brick wall. And now Clem has stepped up and is in the conversation, all his notable tournament wins and results stem from him just outdoing his opponents (well, especially top Zergs) in macro slug fests.
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United States1804 Posts
On February 14 2024 05:01 WombaT wrote:
Byun won a Starleague and a WC with reapers and the 2/1/1.
fixed
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I can't believe we're doing this AGAIN.
A. We've already established years ago (might be pre-covid, would need to dig threads) we need to look at offline winrates vs Koreans if we don't want to overweigh weeklies and minor international tournaments. Aligulac is a biased estimator because of this, but you can de-bias if you write some code and crunch the numbers. On that basis, Serral is still the best and most consistent player ever, by a mile. I'll write an article next week if I find time.
B. Stop with the offending logic of the 7-1 Clem+Maru combined win. He also did that to Dark+Reynor (exactly 7-1 between Kato and Master's Coliseum). By that logic, Zerg is underpowered and needs a buff.
It's all about the aggregated winrate, and every attempt to discredit a single datapoint in isolation is an insult to every previous tournament that Serral has won (and their organiser). At that rate, that's basically the whole community.
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On February 14 2024 01:26 CerebrateHector wrote:Show nested quote +How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? I Really have to disagree here tho, its by their own doing.. Terran stubborness to make a Raven ...., Maru even made like 10 turrets everywhere instead of just creating a freaking Raven ....
Tell me you don't play Terran without telling me you don't play Terran.
Ah jeez, maybe all these Pro Terrans players are just dumb and should've listened to a random guy in the chat instead. You think maybe there might be a reason why people don't make Ravens late game against Zerg?
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On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant.
So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10?
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Protoss fan here, please dont use Protoss' crappy balance to lend credibility to Terran tears, Terran tears are already the most valuable kind.
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On February 14 2024 07:29 Zambrah wrote:
Protoss fan here, please dont use Protoss' crappy balance to lend credibility to Terran tears, Terran tears are already the most valuable kind.
To be fair terran tears has been flooding the forums since the beginning of WOL. That’s how they got blizzard to constantly nerf zerg/toss to compensate the terrans lack of skills compare to their peers
We Protoss take nerfs like a champ on the chin. We use our collectively minds to find a new creative builds until that gets nerfed to the ground as well. Rinse and repeat
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On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10?
He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"?
I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate.
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Remember when Terran was completely doomed because Ghost Snipe was given some counterplay? For whatever reason, Terrans will always be the biggest whiners easy, at least on TL.
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On February 14 2024 07:21 Brutaxilos wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 01:26 CerebrateHector wrote:How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? I Really have to disagree here tho, its by their own doing.. Terran stubborness to make a Raven ...., Maru even made like 10 turrets everywhere instead of just creating a freaking Raven .... Tell me you don't play Terran without telling me you don't play Terran. Ah jeez, maybe all these Pro Terrans players are just dumb and should've listened to a random guy in the chat instead. You think maybe there might be a reason why people don't make Ravens late game against Zerg?
Consider how dumb these pro terrans decison making are, ya they should listen to a random guy. Let’s keep doing the same thing that has proven to be ineffective (ie not building a raven )
Let’s build MORE medivac instead of a raven at the ultra late game. Ultra late game spellcaster > most units
Tell us you don’t understand the game without telling us you don’t understand
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On February 14 2024 15:16 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 07:21 Brutaxilos wrote:On February 14 2024 01:26 CerebrateHector wrote:How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? I Really have to disagree here tho, its by their own doing.. Terran stubborness to make a Raven ...., Maru even made like 10 turrets everywhere instead of just creating a freaking Raven .... Tell me you don't play Terran without telling me you don't play Terran. Ah jeez, maybe all these Pro Terrans players are just dumb and should've listened to a random guy in the chat instead. You think maybe there might be a reason why people don't make Ravens late game against Zerg? Consider how dumb these pro terrans decison making are, ya they should listen to a random guy. Let’s keep doing the same thing that has proven to be ineffective (ie not building a raven ) Let’s build MORE medivac instead of a raven at the ultra late game. Ultra late game spellcaster > most units Tell us you don’t understand the game without telling us you don’t understand
Except for the banter I totally agree. Just because something isn't part of the meta doesn't make it a poor strategy. One example from this tournament actually. Serral spreading creep with queens in overlord. This has been possible for years but is not part of the meta. Why? Idk. Probably because it's just one more thing on top of the heap of other things u have to execute; making the game even harder.
I suspect that's also the reason why ravens aren't part of the meta in any ultra late game composition. It's just really hard to execute. Or is there any other reason why you wouldn't want AAM in any big engagement? Minus 2 armor upgrades on a big chunk of the enemy army in any battle you take (IF you can execute it)... like, why not? :>
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Or build some extra barriers (auto turrets) for ling/ bling flood. IMO Terran shouldn't build one Raven but multiple Ravens in the ultra late game. Obviously one Raven would get abducted sooner or later leaving the army again without detection
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On February 14 2024 09:15 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10? He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate.
My take is that unless the prize pool is significant enough that he would be absolutely foolish to ignore - he has nothing to gain by competing at 'lan' events.
One might argue this event falls into that category but it still might not be worth it for him. Absolute worse case I think it's fair to assume he breaks even if he covered everything himself out of pocket. Realistically he makes a few thousand dollars even with a 'poor' performance by our standards.
The only real thing he'd gain in these situations is experience. Only he can place value on that. Perhaps he doesn't see himself playing that much longer. Maybe he has crippling anxiety. Regardless it doesn't really matter. His skill is clearly visible in the games we do get to see of him and it doesn't matter the location. To dismiss the notion he isn't a top player because he doesn't want to attend a live event is ludicrous.
I'd certainly implore him to consider attending one. If nothing else just for the experience outside of the game. The events I attended are some of the fondest memories I have.
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France12761 Posts
I mean if the guy can’t even bring himself to play offline, he would never be able to handle the nerves that come with offline play. Being an online is worthless in Halo and even an insult compared to being able to perform on LAN. Dunno why people give that much credit to MaxPax: even during « mere » important online tournaments, more often than not he does not perform as well as expected, even worse than ShoWTimE.
Being a « ladder » / EPT cup hero is worthless if you want to cement yourself as a good player in StarCraft.
HeroMarine did not do well these last few months in EPT cups, yet guess what? He made freaking top 8. That is a huge achievement.
Also guess why aligulac rating is inflated?
Look at the games between Cure and HeroMarine. Their rating isn’t much different, yet there was a visible gap in those games. Cure just looked at what HeroMarine did to Gumiho, it was enough to grasp how to prepare vs what HM has in store: relatively quick and easy 2-0. Then he does a 2rax because he can afford to and wins in less than 4 minutes against the 2nd best Terran in Europe. That’s insane to be able to do that « this easily ».
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On February 14 2024 15:16 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 07:21 Brutaxilos wrote:On February 14 2024 01:26 CerebrateHector wrote:How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? I Really have to disagree here tho, its by their own doing.. Terran stubborness to make a Raven ...., Maru even made like 10 turrets everywhere instead of just creating a freaking Raven .... Tell me you don't play Terran without telling me you don't play Terran. Ah jeez, maybe all these Pro Terrans players are just dumb and should've listened to a random guy in the chat instead. You think maybe there might be a reason why people don't make Ravens late game against Zerg? Consider how dumb these pro terrans decison making are, ya they should listen to a random guy. Let’s keep doing the same thing that has proven to be ineffective (ie not building a raven ) Let’s build MORE medivac instead of a raven at the ultra late game. Ultra late game spellcaster > most units Tell us you don’t understand the game without telling us you don’t understand
There is a pretty clear reason for not building the ravens. I can guarantee that the players and even that guy understand the game far more than you, judging from your comments.
Maybe you're just new, or perhaps some prodigy we'll see later on, but the simple answer is if something is that easy, impactful, or game altering then players would have begun incorporating it. The reality is in these situations, if you're somehow in their ear and get them to build a raven, they're just going to lose even harder.
Players will do things when and if they are able to do it. Visible execution gaps and things like that highlight the beauty in Serral's play.
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On February 14 2024 19:41 Poopi wrote:
I mean if the guy can’t even bring himself to play offline, he would never be able to handle the nerves that come with offline play. Being an online is worthless in Halo and even an insult compared to being able to perform on LAN. Dunno why people give that much credit to MaxPax: even during « mere » important online tournaments, more often than not he does not perform as well as expected, even worse than ShoWTimE.
Being a « ladder » / EPT cup hero is worthless if you want to cement yourself as a good player in StarCraft.
HeroMarine did not do well these last few months in EPT cups, yet guess what? He made freaking top 8. That is a huge achievement.
Also guess why aligulac rating is inflated?
Look at the games between Cure and HeroMarine. Their rating isn’t much different, yet there was a visible gap in those games. Cure just looked at what HeroMarine did to Gumiho, it was enough to grasp how to prepare vs what HM has in store: relatively quick and easy 2-0. Then he does a 2rax because he can afford to and wins in less than 4 minutes against the 2nd best Terran in Europe. That’s insane to be able to do that « this easily ».
The reason why people hype up Maxpax is because when you watch him play vs Clem or Dark, it's very often competitive games, in a way that no other protoss can make it look apart from herO, and herO's playstyle is harder to root for because it doesn't make any sense.
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On February 14 2024 20:00 Agh wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 15:16 FFXthebest wrote:On February 14 2024 07:21 Brutaxilos wrote:On February 14 2024 01:26 CerebrateHector wrote:How many times have we witnessed Maru/Clem losing a game because their key units got fungaled? I Really have to disagree here tho, its by their own doing.. Terran stubborness to make a Raven ...., Maru even made like 10 turrets everywhere instead of just creating a freaking Raven .... Tell me you don't play Terran without telling me you don't play Terran. Ah jeez, maybe all these Pro Terrans players are just dumb and should've listened to a random guy in the chat instead. You think maybe there might be a reason why people don't make Ravens late game against Zerg? Consider how dumb these pro terrans decison making are, ya they should listen to a random guy. Let’s keep doing the same thing that has proven to be ineffective (ie not building a raven ) Let’s build MORE medivac instead of a raven at the ultra late game. Ultra late game spellcaster > most units Tell us you don’t understand the game without telling us you don’t understand There is a pretty clear reason for not building the ravens. I can guarantee that the players and even that guy understand the game far more than you, judging from your comments. Maybe you're just new, or perhaps some prodigy we'll see later on, but the simple answer is if something is that easy, impactful, or game altering then players would have begun incorporating it. The reality is in these situations, if you're somehow in their ear and get them to build a raven, they're just going to lose even harder. Players will do things when and if they are able to do it. Visible execution gaps and things like that highlight the beauty in Serral's play.
I mean there must be a reason. If you know this "pretty clear reason", please do enlighten us
On February 14 2024 19:41 Poopi wrote:
I mean if the guy can’t even bring himself to play offline, he would never be able to handle the nerves that come with offline play. Being an online is worthless in Halo and even an insult compared to being able to perform on LAN. Dunno why people give that much credit to MaxPax: even during « mere » important online tournaments, more often than not he does not perform as well as expected, even worse than ShoWTimE.
Being a « ladder » / EPT cup hero is worthless if you want to cement yourself as a good player in StarCraft.
HeroMarine did not do well these last few months in EPT cups, yet guess what? He made freaking top 8. That is a huge achievement.
Also guess why aligulac rating is inflated?
Look at the games between Cure and HeroMarine. Their rating isn’t much different, yet there was a visible gap in those games. Cure just looked at what HeroMarine did to Gumiho, it was enough to grasp how to prepare vs what HM has in store: relatively quick and easy 2-0. Then he does a 2rax because he can afford to and wins in less than 4 minutes against the 2nd best Terran in Europe. That’s insane to be able to do that « this easily ».
The same thing Serral did to Maru. He saw him playing vs Dark in group stage and finished him "quick and easy"
On a more serious note, Cure is a TvT monster vs everyone but Maru. And even in those games he had the advantage at times but could never end it
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On February 14 2024 03:03 JJH777 wrote:
I wish I could blame balance for Maru's loss but if I'm being honest I can't anymore. 2023 and now 2024 is the first time the "it's just Serral" crowd was actually correct. Without Serral Zerg wouldn't have done as bad as Toss but it would have been a mediocre performance for sure and Terran would have outperformed Zerg dramatically. Even if you remove Maru and Serral together. He is unbelievably good right now. I do think many of his past results including his other Kato did have significant balance issues though and reverse was true back then. If you removed Maru and Serral together it was Terran that was hurt far worse.
Looking at their series Maru's problem was the same here as it has been in most of his international losses for the last few years including to Cyan in this very event. He just gets read and predicted so easily and then tilta. Against most players he is so much better that it doesn't matter but every now and then someone like Cyan will make him look like a fool with a couple perfect builds. And against Serral he of course just can't afford to get read like this at all.
Serral seemed to know that those roach builds in games 1 and 3 would kill him on those maps at those moments. It was perfect build choices against how Maru was playing. Maru needs to be less predictable.
In their one macro game Maru actually looked like the better player imo if it was any map that was possible to split he would have won. Even without the map split he probably could have won if his control was just a bit better. 2018 Maru wins that game. It's a shame Terran is so hard on players bodies. Every Terran great has had extreme wrist/shoulder issues which has led to noticeable mechanical loss. The occasional Zerg has too but nowhere to the same extent. If Clem starts having wrist/shoulder issues in the next couple years I think it becomes definitive that there is just something about Terran that makes it impossible to play long term without breaking your body.
Game 4 was just sad. Maru was clearly tilted and ready for the series to be done. He had given up and didn't care enough to go for a respectable match score. It's sad because that's the one game he actually got a big lead in. Put him in a similar position in game 1 or 2 and he wins for sure but he had already decided he was done. It's unfortunate because a 4-1 or 4-2 would have been a far more fun series.
This is 20/20 hindsigth. Maru has the most variety of openers and build orders and his disposal and he is hard ot read. You can point out how Serral plan worked perfectly ( he probabnly watched rogue vs Maru ) because it did. Similarly, you could talk how Maru plan worked beautifully against Reynor and do the reverse analysis as you did.
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On February 14 2024 19:41 Poopi wrote:
I mean if the guy can’t even bring himself to play offline, he would never be able to handle the nerves that come with offline play. Being an online is worthless in Halo and even an insult compared to being able to perform on LAN. Dunno why people give that much credit to MaxPax: even during « mere » important online tournaments, more often than not he does not perform as well as expected, even worse than ShoWTimE.
Being a « ladder » / EPT cup hero is worthless if you want to cement yourself as a good player in StarCraft.
HeroMarine did not do well these last few months in EPT cups, yet guess what? He made freaking top 8. That is a huge achievement.
Also guess why aligulac rating is inflated?
Look at the games between Cure and HeroMarine. Their rating isn’t much different, yet there was a visible gap in those games. Cure just looked at what HeroMarine did to Gumiho, it was enough to grasp how to prepare vs what HM has in store: relatively quick and easy 2-0. Then he does a 2rax because he can afford to and wins in less than 4 minutes against the 2nd best Terran in Europe. That’s insane to be able to do that « this easily ».
I don't think that you can look at a single Bo5 series and make the sweeping conclusion that the ratings are inflated. If you look at the last year, since January 2023 through now, his record looks perfectly respectable to me; 20–19 in games and 8–6 against Koreans in offline tournaments. There aren't many offline events in which he gets a chance to play Koreans but going essentially 50–50 against the kind of competition that makes it to the big events isn't bad.
And it's not like online is completely incommensurate with offline, either. In the same period, against Koreans online, his record is 53–54 in games and 17–20 in matches. It's basically a wash with his offline performance. There's more of a difference in his performance vs non-Koreans in off vs online: (56–26; 68.29%) and (494–175; 73.84%). But again, it's not wildly different, especially in matches (79.51% vs 79.31%).
I'm not going to sit here and tell you that online is as impressive as offline. I know it's not. But I do think that performance online against top competition is at least suggestive of your potential against that same level of competition offline. Isn't it the case that, MaxPax aside, the same people who are expected to perform well at offline events also perform well online?
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On February 13 2024 01:19 goldensail wrote:
When SC2 was introduced, Terran's strength was in defense.
I think you lost your argument here. When SC2 was released, Terran players would all-in off one base with SCV's in their army and crush everything in their path. Maps were tiny... a Siege Tank at the natural of Steppes of War could hit the center of the map, and tanks did 60 damage to all targets when in siege mode. The sheer number of all-in builds Terran would perform off one base with success was dizzying.
Suffice to say...Terran's strength was not defense.
The rest of the argument isn't based in reality either unfortunately. This is a ranting balance whine thread.
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I'm big Maru fanboy and terran apologist but even I can see that this is not it. Maru has always had the tendency to just flop over in international tournaments, there's a reason he has a bunch of GSL under his belt but very few international championships.
I don't know what is the reason but it just always happens.
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There's been months and probably years of discussion of whether Terran should add Ravens to late game TvZ compositions. I have seen multiple commentators that are master/GM level player themselves asking the same thing, although none of them actually plays Terran. But pros just never did it.
Oliveira once joined a Chinese stream and explained his point of view. He said late game Terran army has too many units with ability to cast, Ghosts need to snipe and EMP, Libs need to siege, Bios need to stim, Tanks need to siege, Mines need to burrow, the only way to reliably do everything perfectly ASAP when an engagement starts is selecting everything (sometimes F2) and use TAB to cycle through all the units and abilities. Ghost is always the top priority. When you build Ravens it overtakes Ghosts in priority list and throws a wrench into their well-established muscle memories.
Now if you always have Raven, you could probably adapt to the new muscle memory. But the problem is you don't need too many Ravens in the mix because their spells are not that useful in TvZ, at best you need a couple just for anti-cloak, and they are hard to keep alive, one Viper drag is all it takes. So unable to guarantee you always have Raven in your army means the whole "TAB through unit abilities" priority list would change from time to time depends on whether your Raven is still alive. And messing up those spell castings especially from Ghost in a big late game fight will straight up lose you the game. Pro Terrans found it to be simply not worth all that trouble for just some extra anti-cloak. Radars cost practically nothing in late game and turrets could be built everywhere, they would rather rely on those instead of dealing with the uncertainty that Ravens bring.
So there you have it, it's a perspective from one top player. Whether it's convincing enough is up to you.
The pros sticks with the old way because it does work, most of the time. None of the Zergs other than Serral could use burrowed infestor consistently, and even Serral often have to sacrifice multiple infestors to Radars to get one good fungal, and the fungal often wouldn't do that much if his banelings don't instantly roll in with perfect sync. When Terran gg from burrowed infestors, its often because they are already on the losing side against Serral, that last fungal was just the nail on the coffin instead of something instantly changing the tide of battle.
If Serral don't have burrowed infestors, he will likely still win vast majority of those games, it will just drag a few mins longer, and he would probably finish the tournament something like 20-3 instead of 20-1. The only game in this entire tournament where you can say "he's gonna lose that if not for burrowed infestors" was probably Finals G2, where he had like 6 successful fungals in the middle of the game, which still drags out for another 20 mins.
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I think game 2 of Serral vs Clem the burrowed infestor was pretty decisive too, like clem was pretty well established and it snowballed hard after that, but probably lot of panic reaction aswell. Wouldn't have changed the grand scheme of things for sure.
Interested to see how this evolves in the next months. It can be exciting from a spectator pov, like game 2 Maru vs Serral were there were so many butt-clenching moments. Altho I can see how it can "ruin" some back and forth game if they end in a single fungal. That's sc2 tho, we already have so many underwhelming game ending stuff at least this requires set-up and coordination.
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On February 13 2024 01:43 StasisField wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2024 01:38 Poopi wrote:On February 13 2024 01:33 Netto. wrote:
Serral > Maru Obviously, finland training is superior to KR training, Maru should work harder on his TvZ Why haven't the Koreans gone to Finland to train? Are they stupid?
don't come up with logic. thats not how it works...
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Balance has nothing to do with the strength of SC2 as a competitive sport. I personally feel like top level sc2 is fine. The problem with StarCraft is it its not a game for normies, it requires a specific type of person. A person who doesn't mind pain and misery.
Terran players need to stop complaining about balance, its not a good look.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 15 2024 00:25 Nasigil wrote:
There's been months and probably years of discussion of whether Terran should add Ravens to late game TvZ compositions. I have seen multiple commentators that are master/GM level player themselves asking the same thing, although none of them actually plays Terran. But pros just never did it.
Oliveira once joined a Chinese stream and explained his point of view. He said late game Terran army has too many units with ability to cast, Ghosts need to snipe and EMP, Libs need to siege, Bios need to stim, Tanks need to siege, Mines need to burrow, the only way to reliably do everything perfectly ASAP when an engagement starts is selecting everything (sometimes F2) and use TAB to cycle through all the units and abilities. Ghost is always the top priority. When you build Ravens it overtakes Ghosts in priority list and throws a wrench into their well-established muscle memories.
Now if you always have Raven, you could probably adapt to the new muscle memory. But the problem is you don't need too many Ravens in the mix because their spells are not that useful in TvZ, at best you need a couple just for anti-cloak, and they are hard to keep alive, one Viper drag is all it takes. So unable to guarantee you always have Raven in your army means the whole "TAB through unit abilities" priority list would change from time to time depends on whether your Raven is still alive. And messing up those spell castings especially from Ghost in a big late game fight will straight up lose you the game. Pro Terrans found it to be simply not worth all that trouble for just some extra anti-cloak. Radars cost practically nothing in late game and turrets could be built everywhere, they would rather rely on those instead of dealing with the uncertainty that Ravens bring.
So there you have it, it's a perspective from one top player. Whether it's convincing enough is up to you.
The pros sticks with the old way because it does work, most of the time. None of the Zergs other than Serral could use burrowed infestor consistently, and even Serral often have to sacrifice multiple infestors to Radars to get one good fungal, and the fungal often wouldn't do that much if his banelings don't instantly roll in with perfect sync. When Terran gg from burrowed infestors, its often because they are already on the losing side against Serral, that last fungal was just the nail on the coffin instead of something instantly changing the tide of battle.
If Serral don't have burrowed infestors, he will likely still win all those games, it will just drag a few mins longer, and he would probably finish the tournament something like 20-3 instead of 20-1. The only game in this entire tournament where you can say "he's gonna lose that if not for burrowed infestors" was probably Finals G2, where he had like 6 successful fungals in the middle of the game, which still drags out for another 20 mins.
This is a subtle, but a very good point
For basically all of SC2’s existence I felt that not being able to customise unit priority is genuinely a problem with complex armies and makes some blends harder to control than others, even if on paper they sometimes look equivalently difficult.
And yes of course multiple unit hotkeys is a thing, but there are plenty of times where you’re gonna want to box and move what you have on screen, or a particular area rather than whole pre-set army groups.
I can’t be the only Protoss who’s accidentally boxed a Templar and missed forcefields because it took priority over my sentries and I wasn’t quick enough to shift around. And yes I’m aware I suck at the game, it’s only an example.
The order you want to cast spells in a typical engagement, or how often is to me more important than how high tier a caster is.
As per my example, more pertinent in WoL/HoTS given how FF was more integral to Protoss, you (generally) want to safeguard your army/segment the opponents, then drop the lightning.
With current priority, assuming 1A that’s tab, cast forcefields, shift tab, cast storm. If you swapped them it’s FF, tab, storm. It more elegantly maps on to what you’re generally gonna want to do, in order.
Same with Terran with ghost/bio. If someone gets the drop on you, especially a Zerg with banes rolling in, you almost always will want to stim first to panic split, but there’s that additional selection cycling to do.
I’m not advocating making 1A play easier, but I do think this should be a customisable thing, it may make certain comps slightly more playable, and is just an overdue QoL change. It just makes things slightly less wonky when you, as sometimes is necessary are boxing over decent chunks of army with a degree of complexity.
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Waiting for the next terran evolution that won't spam all army key but hotkey raven seperately.
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On February 15 2024 04:52 Comedy wrote:
Waiting for the next terran evolution that won't spam all army key but hotkey raven seperately.
Even without f2 a flying caster is pretty easy to accidentally box while you're box stim splitting especially if you're advocating moving this thing up front to help with detection.
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I think in a macro game TvZ is balanced. Maru almost won on Radhuset despite the map being Zerg favored and Serral getting off huge fungals (without them Maru probably wins).
My only pet peeve is with the way game 1 and 3 turned out. Zerg has the ability to get insta-wins just because of the way build orders work out while the other way this dynamic doesn't really exist. Sure there exist some things like proxy 2 rax, Hellbat push or 2 port BCs but those shouldn't really work at the top level barring a major fuck up from the Zerg, which is why we barely see them anymore. It just seems that in longer bo series that puts Zerg at a quite big advantage if the Zerg is willing to abuse this dynamic to its fullest like Rogue did and now Serral. Dark does it too but his macro game has regressed so much by now that Roach allins are basically the only thing Maru has to worry about.
How to fix that - no idea, can't really nerf Roaches or Ravagers
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On February 14 2024 09:15 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10? He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate.
His last game against another top 10 Aligulac player is literally two weeks ago.
A loss 2-3 against Cure, nr. 10 in the list. And then right after, a 1-3 loss against Shin/Ragnarok who is nr.12. All the following games are against lower level players.
Classic and Oliveira, who you mentioned, are solidly in the middle of top 10-20.
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On February 15 2024 05:52 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 09:15 Mumei wrote:On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10? He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate. His last game against another top 10 Aligulac player is literally two weeks ago. A loss 2-3 against Cure, nr. 10 in the list. And then right after, a 1-3 loss against Shin/Ragnarok who is nr.12. All the following games are against lower level players. Classic and Oliveira, who you mentioned, are solidly in the middle of top 10-20.
A compelling case. I wonder if there's a reason why you decided to stop specifically at february 1st, but there's probably nothing, if I scrolled slightly down to january 29th I wouldn't see anything remotely relevant probably.
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On February 15 2024 05:32 Charoisaur wrote:
I think in a macro game TvZ is balanced. Maru almost won on Radhuset despite the map being Zerg favored and Serral getting off huge fungals (without them Maru probably wins).
My only pet peeve is with the way game 1 and 3 turned out. Zerg has the ability to get insta-wins just because of the way build orders work out while the other way this dynamic doesn't really exist. Sure there exist some things like proxy 2 rax, Hellbat push or 2 port BCs but those shouldn't really work at the top level barring a major fuck up from the Zerg, which is why we barely see them anymore. It just seems that in longer bo series that puts Zerg at a quite big advantage if the Zerg is willing to abuse this dynamic to its fullest like Rogue did and now Serral. Dark does it too but his macro game has regressed so much by now that Roach allins are basically the only thing Maru has to worry about.
How to fix that - no idea, can't really nerf Roaches or Ravagers
Game 1 and 3 looks more like isolated instances to me. Greedy openings either gets beaten by timing attacks or it will overwhelm a normal macro build, a tale as old as time.
Maru opened with insanely greedy builds against Reynor in G1, Reynor didn't scout it and let Maru run away with it, then easily got overwhelmed by mech push. Heromarine also got a greedy opening going against Solar in G2, got near 200 supply at only 8 min and crushed Solar in one easy push. Are those "build order win"?
Reynor tried to all in Maru in G2 but failed, while the exact same scenario played out differently in finals G3. The only difference I think was the engineering bay placement. They were in Maru's main base against Reynor, safely building upgrade advantages as he held Reynor's all in attempt.
But in G3 against Serral, Maru put them in his natural, so when he successfully defended Serral's first push, the engineering bays were left vulnerable in the natural. There was no way Serral could attack into Maru's high ground - the tank was already out. But he went for the two bays, and Maru was too eager to protect them he moved his whole army out into to the open field to stop it, which proceeds to get surrounded by lings. That's how Maru lose that game.
The same greediness lost Maru G4 when he gained the similar advantage as his G1 against Reynor, but this time he didn't bother to wall his third and refuse to use planetary on forth which eventually make him die to endless ling run by.
It's really the execution that determines the game of this finals.
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On February 15 2024 06:13 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 05:52 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 14 2024 09:15 Mumei wrote:On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10? He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate. His last game against another top 10 Aligulac player is literally two weeks ago. A loss 2-3 against Cure, nr. 10 in the list. And then right after, a 1-3 loss against Shin/Ragnarok who is nr.12. All the following games are against lower level players. Classic and Oliveira, who you mentioned, are solidly in the middle of top 10-20. A compelling case. I wonder if there's a reason why you decided to stop specifically at february 1st, but there's probably nothing, if I scrolled slightly down to january 29th I wouldn't see anything remotely relevant probably.
A weekly ESL cup win, the whole thing everybody in this thread who's commented on Maxpax besides you has cited as the single main source for Maxpax's inflated ranking? Yeah you're right he won on Jan 29th. GJ. What happened Jan 24th?
We can go on like this for a while lol
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 15 2024 05:19 Moonerz wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 04:52 Comedy wrote:
Waiting for the next terran evolution that won't spam all army key but hotkey raven seperately. Even without f2 a flying caster is pretty easy to accidentally box while you're box stim splitting especially if you're advocating moving this thing up front to help with detection.
Indeed, see my wall of text above on that very subject.
Rigid army hotkeys are great proactively, when you’re comfortably moving around or pushing. Defensively, or reactively less so, sometimes you just gotta box, there’s not another good option. You may not want to pull all your bio and ghosts back for example, just the ones in a particular dangerous area. But if you accidentally box a ghost you can run into the issue where you miss stim where you assume you’d just chunked off your bio. Or if you accidentally panic box a raven and think you’ve caught ghosts, a potentially crucial EMP.
Hell herO doesn’t hotkey his army in a standard manner with a bunch of hotkeys, and has this system where his 2 hotkey is the last thing he looked at and he relies on boxing a lot. Seems a nightmare to me but he makes it work!
Quite interesting insight that Pig pointed out in casting and we got to see a little bit via the FPV cuts that Katowice used, props to the production there.
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On February 15 2024 06:19 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:13 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 05:52 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 14 2024 09:15 Mumei wrote:On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10? He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate. His last game against another top 10 Aligulac player is literally two weeks ago. A loss 2-3 against Cure, nr. 10 in the list. And then right after, a 1-3 loss against Shin/Ragnarok who is nr.12. All the following games are against lower level players. Classic and Oliveira, who you mentioned, are solidly in the middle of top 10-20. A compelling case. I wonder if there's a reason why you decided to stop specifically at february 1st, but there's probably nothing, if I scrolled slightly down to january 29th I wouldn't see anything remotely relevant probably. A weekly ESL cup win, the whole thing everybody in this thread who's commented on Maxpax besides you has cited as the single main source for Maxpax's inflated ranking? Yeah you're right he won on Jan 29th. GJ. What happened Jan 24th? We can go on like this for a while lol
Mate you tried to argue against someone who said that he plays against the top 10 quite often, they even provided statistics that demonstrated that. You answered with some arbitrary period of time that starts right after the day he 2-0ed Solar and Dark and 6-1ed Clem. How do you expect not to be made fun of.
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On February 15 2024 05:52 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 14 2024 09:15 Mumei wrote:On February 14 2024 07:24 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 23:01 LostUsername100 wrote:On February 13 2024 16:01 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 13 2024 02:09 LostUsername100 wrote:Literally over 300 rating #2 on list, a bigger difference than #2 to #10. Can we stop the copium? It's been 6 years. Irrelevant ranking inflated by the fact that EU has 5-10x more random online events for players to farm tier 2 pros in. Of course the half-dead scene (EU) will have more tournaments and games being played to inflate rankings than a totally dead scene, like Korean SC2. Maxpax #2 in the world when he hasn't played a single game of SC2 on LAN LMAO The difference between #2 MaxPax @ 3473 and #20 Bunny @ 2858 is already 615 rating, you do understand this is a RATING not a POINT system? MaxPax is getting 0 points for "farming" anyone bellow #30 in the world. Here's his last few games: 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 3–1 P KR Classic 2852 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CN Oliveira 3038 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P CA Maplez 1757 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3455 MaxPax DK P 2–0 P US Heaven 1273 unrated LotV online 02/12/2024 3502 MaxPax DK P 2–0 T CL Crown 1155 unrated LotV online He's not getting rating from beating Maplez, heaven, Crown, but from beating Oliveira and Classic, he absolutely is a top player, maybe not top2, but a top player. I'm not saying he's perfectly rated, but aligulac is faaaaaar from irrelevant. So you proved my point? He's sitting around playing top 10-20 players, and then the site places him at top 2 in the world for it because he avoids most of the actual top 10? He's actually played more games against people in the top 10 (1277) than he has played games against people currently 11–20 (689). Is that what it looks like when someone "avoids most of the top 10"? I think it's perfectly reasonable to be skeptical that he would be as successful offline as offline given that other people have struggled with the transition in the past and he seems obviously particularly uncomfortable with the prospect so maybe he'd struggle more than normal. But his rating isn't going up because he dodges good players; his rating is far too high to go up without playing against and beating high level competition at a high win-rate. His last game against another top 10 Aligulac player is literally two weeks ago. A loss 2-3 against Cure, nr. 10 in the list. And then right after, a 1-3 loss against Shin/Ragnarok who is nr.12. All the following games are against lower level players. Classic and Oliveira, who you mentioned, are solidly in the middle of top 10-20.
Isn't that just because top 10 players weren't participating in those events in the last couple of weeks? And besides that, in this period you're talking about his rating went down 8 points because he went 24-5 instead of 25-4.
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We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two.
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On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two.
Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making.
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On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making.
My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. Maybe he in reality is the lower end of top 10, maybe he's in the higher end of top 10-20, difficult to say when his match list and average opponent is simply not comparable to the other players with similar Aligulac ranks (Serral, Maru, Clem, Dark).
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On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players.
I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this.
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France12761 Posts
On February 14 2024 23:58 Lexender wrote:
I'm big Maru fanboy and terran apologist but even I can see that this is not it. Maru has always had the tendency to just flop over in international tournaments, there's a reason he has a bunch of GSL under his belt but very few international championships.
I don't know what is the reason but it just always happens.
I mean, Maru « choked » to some extent last year (but not as much as people think, Oliveira was playing godlike very often, just not as consistently as better Terran, and he was a bit too « raw »). But this year he played very well: a surprising loss to Cyan, he did not play that badly but it’s some sort of MeomaikA moment. Afterwards he simply destroyed the other top dogs in his group except herO, who was very close to beating Maru (they are usually playing close series so not surprising).
In the playoffs, he played well. Even in the finals both Maru and Serral played insanely well: they played at such high level and to a similar ability that even the slightest difference in tiny mistakes / map imbalances or whatever turned the tide in one way or another on rhaduset. The other maps were mostly Serral being better prepared in terms of build (if Zerg has an advantage on stable patchs compared to T/P is another debate)
This Katowice result was the most rational outcome: Serral and Maru above everyone else, Serral winning
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On February 15 2024 06:20 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 05:19 Moonerz wrote:On February 15 2024 04:52 Comedy wrote:
Waiting for the next terran evolution that won't spam all army key but hotkey raven seperately. Even without f2 a flying caster is pretty easy to accidentally box while you're box stim splitting especially if you're advocating moving this thing up front to help with detection. Indeed, see my wall of text above on that very subject. Rigid army hotkeys are great proactively, when you’re comfortably moving around or pushing. Defensively, or reactively less so, sometimes you just gotta box, there’s not another good option. You may not want to pull all your bio and ghosts back for example, just the ones in a particular dangerous area. But if you accidentally box a ghost you can run into the issue where you miss stim where you assume you’d just chunked off your bio. Or if you accidentally panic box a raven and think you’ve caught ghosts, a potentially crucial EMP. Hell herO doesn’t hotkey his army in a standard manner with a bunch of hotkeys, and has this system where his 2 hotkey is the last thing he looked at and he relies on boxing a lot. Seems a nightmare to me but he makes it work! Quite interesting insight that Pig pointed out in casting and we got to see a little bit via the FPV cuts that Katowice used, props to the production there.
Right as you said often times as a terran it is literally terrible to grab your just bio hotkey (if you even have that) to move your units in combat since you lose so much DPS not to mention if you try to focus fire targets with groups of units. So you end up with players boxing and using the hotkey basically as just a camera hotkey for engagements.
Tourney fpv cuts help viewers see this type of stuff but really the best way by far is to watch players stream and how they control. Then people would understand why certain "obvious" solutions aren't that easy.
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France12761 Posts
On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this.
Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments
Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part.
It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context
MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments
So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark.
In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups
He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event
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On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this.
I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%)
As a comparison, Serral has 738 games played against the current top 10, giving an equivalent % of 18,3% of his games being against other top 10 players. (with total 2880 wins, 1143 losses, 4023 games registered). Reminder that Serral has a significantly longer career, in which he has played a lot of games against at-the-time top 10 players, who aren't in the top 10 now.
Koreans in the top 10 would naturally have a higher % of games against other top 10, due to participating in fewer tournaments other than GSL, but that is a natural consequence of being in a more dead scene.
Not to mention the fact that using somebody's total career amount of games, vs players ranking TODAY is an incredibly flawed measurement which heavily benefits players with shorter careers, such as Maxpax versus players like Serral or Maru, whos games against players who at the time were top 10, but aren't now, are not being represented at all in this analysis.
But the original poster didn't bother to set a limit back in time, so I didn't either. I guess that's the logic needed to pretend that Maxpax has gotten to #2 in the world by beating top players. And even then he has a noticeably lower % of games played against the current top 10 than Serral does.
TL;DR:
You can't cherrypick your way around the fact that Maxpax has more games played against non top 10 players than the others at similar Aligulac rank. He has played a larger % of his games, and more games, against weaker players. Straight up. And as others have brought up, Aligulac does not at all incorporate the value of games being played in different formats. This effect also inflates Maxpax's rank, due to not playing in the high-pressure environments of large regional events or on LAN.
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On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event
Right I do concede this point; it is reasonable to suggest that by only playing people in less important events he is probably facing less serious versions of those players, at least at the very top. So, yeah, probably inflated by that.
I don't think it's inflated by dodging people altogether, though, and I do think it indicates potential. It's not meaningless, it just has to be contextualized.
I don't actually think we disagree on any of this; we're just focusing on different parts of it.
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On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event
What inflates Maxpax's rating is just that he plays a shitton of games, same thing as Clem. Check out how much Maru has played since january 2023: 157 series. Maxpax played 867 series. After we removed the series that Maxpax played against people who are too low to increase his rating, and do the same for Maru cause I'm sure he played a few of those too, we're still going to end up with a ton more matches against important players for Maxpax than Maru.
If Maru played that many series, what do you think would happen to his rating? Well it would increase, obviously, as Maru beats most of his opponents. But when he doesn't play, his rating stays the same, because that's how these things work. And this is how you end up with Maxpax ahead of Maru.
Dark doesn't care is just cope I reckon?
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On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%)
As you know because you've read this thread, he's not getting a rating increase for beating people who are low in aligulac rating, so the relevant statistic isn't derived from 7902 games.
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On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%) As a comparison, Serral has 738 games played against the current top 10, giving an equivalent % of 18,3% of his games being against other top 10 players. (with total 2880 wins, 1143 losses, 4023 games registered). Reminder that Serral has a significantly longer career, in which he has played a lot of games against at-the-time top 10 players, who aren't in the top 10 now. Koreans in the top 10 would naturally have a higher % of games against other top 10, due to participating in fewer tournaments other than GSL, but that is a natural consequence of being in a more dead scene. Not to mention the fact that using somebody's total career amount of games, vs players ranking TODAY is an incredibly flawed measurement which heavily benefits players with shorter careers, such as Maxpax versus players like Serral or Maru, whos games against players who at the time were top 10, but aren't now, are not being represented at all in this analysis. But the original poster didn't bother to set a limit back in time, so I didn't either. I guess that's the logic needed to pretend that Maxpax has gotten to #2 in the world by beating top players. And even then he has a noticeably lower % of games played against the current top 10 than Serral does. TL;DR: You can't cherrypick your way around the fact that Maxpax has more games played against non top 10 players than the others at similar Aligulac rank. He has played a larger % of his games, and more games, against weaker players. Straight up. And as others have brought up, Aligulac does not at all incorporate the value of games being played in different formats. This effect also inflates Maxpax's rank, due to not playing in the high-pressure environments of large regional events or on LAN.
Earlier you were referring to "the actual top 10" so I thought you meant "the other people who are top 10 now." That's where this started. It would be quite the project to figure out what percentage of his games were played against people who were top 10 at the time of the match, since as you point out that has changed over time. I don't have the time or inclination for that kind of project so I went with the kind of thing I could check at work without falling too far behind.
And playing more games against weaker players just means he has to win a higher percentage of his games and do well enough against his ostensible peers to maintain or increase his score. You seem to be under the misapprehension that he's found a "hack" where he can play the midcard and gain unlimited points in what is essentially a scam, and that's not how Elo works. This update for Serral is an example of what I mean: http://aligulac.com/players/485-Serral/period/347/
He was at 3596, he goes 5–0 against much lower rated players, and he gains 1 point. MaxPax has to be doing well enough against players close enough to his ostensible level to maintain let alone increase his score.
Or here: http://aligulac.com/players/485-Serral/period/345/
He goes 12–1 and only goes up 7 points.
Like Nebuchad said, the real "hack" is just "he plays a lot of games that Aligulac counts, and he wins against the people he's supposed to often enough for that to make his score go up instead of down." But that's a double edged sword; if he were to lose any games against the wrong people, his rating would plummet.
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On February 15 2024 07:15 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%) As you know because you've read this thread, he's not getting a rating increase for beating people who are low in aligulac rating, so the relevant statistic isn't derived from 7902 games.
Pointing out that Maxpax has a lower % of games played against (the current) top 10 than other comparable players do (Koreans would have an even higher %, but as I said, aren't comparable due to their mostly dead scene) is very much relevant when the argument being presented is that his top 2 rank comes from supposedly all the other top players he's playing all day long.
Also can't but notice that you ignored the rest of the post. But sure, there's no way a ranking tool which equally weighs a RO64 ESL Open Cup game and a GSL or Katowice game could be flawed
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 15 2024 07:12 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event What inflates Maxpax's rating is just that he plays a shitton of games, same thing as Clem. Check out how much Maru has played since january 2023: 157 series. Maxpax played 867 series. After we removed the series that Maxpax played against people who are too low to increase his rating, and do the same for Maru cause I'm sure he played a few of those too, we're still going to end up with a ton more matches against important players for Maxpax than Maru. If Maru played that many series, what do you think would happen to his rating? Well it would increase, obviously, as Maru beats most of his opponents. But when he doesn't play, his rating stays the same, because that's how these things work. And this is how you end up with Maxpax ahead of Maru. Dark doesn't care is just cope I reckon?
He probably doesn’t. Weeklies have a useful function in giving some incentives for pros to keep shape, and especially in being an outlet for semi, or low-level pros to make that transition and make a bit of cash without having to immediately jump to being competitive in stacked offline tournaments.
For established top guys, it’s training/practice with a nice bonus if they can win, but I highly, highly doubt they’re going all-out
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On February 15 2024 07:41 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:15 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%) As you know because you've read this thread, he's not getting a rating increase for beating people who are low in aligulac rating, so the relevant statistic isn't derived from 7902 games. Pointing out that Maxpax has a lower % of games played against (the current) top 10 than other comparable players do (Koreans would have an even higher %, but as I said, aren't comparable due to their mostly dead scene) is very much relevant when the argument being presented is that his top 2 rank comes from supposedly all the other top players he's playing all day long. Also can't but notice that you ignored the rest of the post. But sure, there's no way a ranking tool which equally weighs a RO64 ESL Open Cup game and a GSL or Katowice game could be flawed
We've already acknowledged that the elo system is flawed as it puts Maxpax second when he clearly isn't that, you're having arguments with yourself. This is true of any game, if some players are playing a lot more than other players their elo rating isn't going to be a trustworthy way to judge how they matchup against each other.
As you've read the thread, you've seen my post just before this one in which I give an explanation for why Maxpax's rating is increased. It follows the data we have, is logical, and doesn't require making shit up about who Maxpax is and isn't playing against. Would you like to accept this explanation?
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On February 15 2024 07:50 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:41 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 07:15 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%) As you know because you've read this thread, he's not getting a rating increase for beating people who are low in aligulac rating, so the relevant statistic isn't derived from 7902 games. Pointing out that Maxpax has a lower % of games played against (the current) top 10 than other comparable players do (Koreans would have an even higher %, but as I said, aren't comparable due to their mostly dead scene) is very much relevant when the argument being presented is that his top 2 rank comes from supposedly all the other top players he's playing all day long. Also can't but notice that you ignored the rest of the post. But sure, there's no way a ranking tool which equally weighs a RO64 ESL Open Cup game and a GSL or Katowice game could be flawed We've already acknowledged that the elo system is flawed as it puts Maxpax second when he clearly isn't that, you're having arguments with yourself. This is true of any game, if some players are playing a lot more than other players their elo rating isn't going to be a trustworthy way to judge how they matchup against each other. As you've read the thread, you've seen my post just before this one in which I give an explanation for why Maxpax's rating is increased. It follows the data we have, is logical, and doesn't require making shit up about who Maxpax is and isn't playing against. Would you like to accept this explanation?
The only thing I see being made up in this argument is Maxpax being the top 2 SC2 player in the world.
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On February 15 2024 07:39 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%) As a comparison, Serral has 738 games played against the current top 10, giving an equivalent % of 18,3% of his games being against other top 10 players. (with total 2880 wins, 1143 losses, 4023 games registered). Reminder that Serral has a significantly longer career, in which he has played a lot of games against at-the-time top 10 players, who aren't in the top 10 now. Koreans in the top 10 would naturally have a higher % of games against other top 10, due to participating in fewer tournaments other than GSL, but that is a natural consequence of being in a more dead scene. Not to mention the fact that using somebody's total career amount of games, vs players ranking TODAY is an incredibly flawed measurement which heavily benefits players with shorter careers, such as Maxpax versus players like Serral or Maru, whos games against players who at the time were top 10, but aren't now, are not being represented at all in this analysis. But the original poster didn't bother to set a limit back in time, so I didn't either. I guess that's the logic needed to pretend that Maxpax has gotten to #2 in the world by beating top players. And even then he has a noticeably lower % of games played against the current top 10 than Serral does. TL;DR: You can't cherrypick your way around the fact that Maxpax has more games played against non top 10 players than the others at similar Aligulac rank. He has played a larger % of his games, and more games, against weaker players. Straight up. And as others have brought up, Aligulac does not at all incorporate the value of games being played in different formats. This effect also inflates Maxpax's rank, due to not playing in the high-pressure environments of large regional events or on LAN. Earlier you were referring to "the actual top 10" so I thought you meant "the other people who are top 10 now." That's where this started. It would be quite the project to figure out what percentage of his games were played against people who were top 10 at the time of the match, since as you point out that has changed over time. I don't have the time or inclination for that kind of project so I went with the kind of thing I could check at work without falling too far behind. And playing more games against weaker players just means he has to win a higher percentage of his games and do well enough against his ostensible peers to maintain or increase his score. You seem to be under the misapprehension that he's found a "hack" where he can play the midcard and gain unlimited points in what is essentially a scam, and that's not how Elo works. This update for Serral is an example of what I mean: http://aligulac.com/players/485-Serral/period/347/He was at 3596, he goes 5–0 against much lower rated players, and he gains 1 point. MaxPax has to be doing well enough against players close enough to his ostensible level to maintain let alone increase his score. Or here: http://aligulac.com/players/485-Serral/period/345/He goes 12–1 and only goes up 7 points. Like Nebuchad said, the real "hack" is just "he plays a lot of games that Aligulac counts, and he wins against the people he's supposed to often enough for that to make his score go up instead of down." But that's a double edged sword; if he were to lose any games against the wrong people, his rating would plummet.
Yes, the actual top 10 NOW, as in reasonably recently. You're the one who started counting games (by bringing up the total match counts) back in time multiple years, against the current top 10 - when the top 10 in 2020, 2021, 2022 was markedly different from today due to military services, retirements as well as legitimate changes in skill and form (including Maxpax becoming a much better player during that time, obviously).
That's where your whole initial argument falls flat. But even given that, I accepted your premise and checked if Maxpax has really been playing a higher % of his games against these top players than his peer players have (I used Serral for my example, as the #1 rated player and also as another EU scene player). Comparing them, Maxpax has a lower % of his games played against the current top 10 - again, continuing with your premise.
But yes, he has a higher # of games played vs those players, than Serral has vs the other top 10. Aligulac's handling of massgames is causing inflation there, just as it is causing inflation from the # of games played, and won, against lower ranked players in a scene which has vastly more low-mid level events ongoing.
My initial argument back in https://tl.net/forum/starcraft-2/620931-the-death-of-sc2-as-a-competitive-e-sport?page=3#41 was that Aligulac is an irrelevant ranking given the clear flaws which we've been arguing about during the last few pages. Despite all the deflecting, it seems you guys also agree with that. Maxpax's rank is simply the most egregious offender - I don't have any personal issues with the guy or with his play.
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On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event
By that logic everyone playing in GSL isn’t taking it seriously since it’s pocket change compare to IEM Katowice.
That makes Serral’s win ever more impressive since all the Koreans were playing at 120%
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On February 15 2024 08:13 iRkSupperman wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:50 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 07:41 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 07:15 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 07:05 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. I legitimately can't tell if you're trolling. Comparing the numbers listed by that other guy (I'm not going to sit down and check if the figures are accurate or just random numbers - but feel free to do so if you want to), with Maxpax's total amount of games registered (5530 wins, 2372 losses, total 7902 games), we end up with 1277 out of 7902 games against other top 10 players. (16,1%) As you know because you've read this thread, he's not getting a rating increase for beating people who are low in aligulac rating, so the relevant statistic isn't derived from 7902 games. Pointing out that Maxpax has a lower % of games played against (the current) top 10 than other comparable players do (Koreans would have an even higher %, but as I said, aren't comparable due to their mostly dead scene) is very much relevant when the argument being presented is that his top 2 rank comes from supposedly all the other top players he's playing all day long. Also can't but notice that you ignored the rest of the post. But sure, there's no way a ranking tool which equally weighs a RO64 ESL Open Cup game and a GSL or Katowice game could be flawed We've already acknowledged that the elo system is flawed as it puts Maxpax second when he clearly isn't that, you're having arguments with yourself. This is true of any game, if some players are playing a lot more than other players their elo rating isn't going to be a trustworthy way to judge how they matchup against each other. As you've read the thread, you've seen my post just before this one in which I give an explanation for why Maxpax's rating is increased. It follows the data we have, is logical, and doesn't require making shit up about who Maxpax is and isn't playing against. Would you like to accept this explanation? The only thing I see being made up in this argument is Maxpax being the top 2 SC2 player in the world.
If you ever want this conversation to continue explain why my explanation of Maxpax's inflated rating, based on data that we can clearly quantify and based on how elo works mechanically, is inferior to your explanation of Maxpax's inflated rating, based on made up data and what appears to be some sort of anger that Maxpax is pretty decent at this game.
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On February 15 2024 08:25 iRkSupperman wrote:
That's where your whole initial argument falls flat. But even given that, I accepted your premise and checked if Maxpax has really been playing a higher % of his games against these top players than his peer players have (I used Serral for my example, as the #1 rated player and also as another EU scene player). Comparing them, Maxpax has a lower % of his games played against the current top 10 - again, continuing with your premise.
I think maybe you're thinking of someone else; it wasn't my premise that he has played a greater percentage of his games against those people than his peers have. It was that he played more games against the current ranks 1 and 3–10 positions than he has against the current 11–20, but I wasn't making any comparison to anyone else. But again maybe someone else said he'd played a higher % relative to his peers. I haven't read every response to you in the thread.
But yes, he has a higher # of games played vs those players, than Serral has vs the other top 10. Aligulac's handling of massgames is causing inflation there, just as it is causing inflation from the # of games played, and won, against lower ranked players in a scene which has vastly more low-mid level events ongoing
I think is where we disagree. I think that "he plays in low stakes environments where his peer competitors probably aren't doing their best" is a fair enough argument to make for skepticism about his rating. I think you agree with this much, too. I don't think "he plays a lot of games and his score is artificially inflated by all his wins" or "he's farming low level players to increase his rating" are good arguments. Maybe you could argue instead that less active players' scores are underestimated by their relative lack of activity; I'd be amenable to that interpretation.
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France12761 Posts
On February 15 2024 08:26 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event By that logic everyone playing in GSL isn’t taking it seriously since it’s pocket change compare to IEM Katowice. That makes Serral’s win ever more impressive since all the Koreans were playing at 120%
How do you qualify for IEM Katowice as a KR player? 
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On February 15 2024 08:53 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 08:25 iRkSupperman wrote:
That's where your whole initial argument falls flat. But even given that, I accepted your premise and checked if Maxpax has really been playing a higher % of his games against these top players than his peer players have (I used Serral for my example, as the #1 rated player and also as another EU scene player). Comparing them, Maxpax has a lower % of his games played against the current top 10 - again, continuing with your premise. I think maybe you're thinking of someone else; it wasn't my premise that he has played a greater percentage of his games against those people than his peers have. It was that he played more games against the current ranks 1 and 3–10 positions than he has against the current 11–20, but I wasn't making any comparison to anyone else. But again maybe someone else said he'd played a higher % relative to his peers. I haven't read every response to you in the thread. Show nested quote +But yes, he has a higher # of games played vs those players, than Serral has vs the other top 10. Aligulac's handling of massgames is causing inflation there, just as it is causing inflation from the # of games played, and won, against lower ranked players in a scene which has vastly more low-mid level events ongoing I think is where we disagree. I think that "he plays in low stakes environments where his peer competitors probably aren't doing their best" is a fair enough argument to make for skepticism about his rating. I think you agree with this much, too. I don't think "he plays a lot of games and his score is artificially inflated by all his wins" or "he's farming low level players to increase his rating" are good arguments. Maybe you could argue instead that less active players' scores are underestimated by their relative lack of activity; I'd be amenable to that interpretation.
You were the one who brought it up as an argument that "Maxpax had X (1277) total games throughout his entire career, against the current top 10. That's more games than he has against the 11-20." I tried to put those numbers into context by comparing what that "games against top 10" vs "games against everybody else, not artificially capping the lower end at player #20" stat looks like for Serral.
If no other player with a similar rank has a similar amount of games being played nowadays (besides Clem perhaps, but he doesn't shy away from any format of tournament outside of GSL), is it really every other player's rank which is wrong? Or is it Maxpax's?
I suppose you can believe the former if the counterargument is that everybody else should have their ranking inflated too, if Aligulac is supposed to represent player's relative power levels accurately, instead of the current bias towards massgaming.
Or one could adjust it so that it doesn't disproportionately reward 1-2 players out of 10 for lower tier event massgaming? Both would achieve the same relative result, roughly. If you think the former would be better then that's fair, but I don't think that's good design at all.
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On February 15 2024 07:48 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:12 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event What inflates Maxpax's rating is just that he plays a shitton of games, same thing as Clem. Check out how much Maru has played since january 2023: 157 series. Maxpax played 867 series. After we removed the series that Maxpax played against people who are too low to increase his rating, and do the same for Maru cause I'm sure he played a few of those too, we're still going to end up with a ton more matches against important players for Maxpax than Maru. If Maru played that many series, what do you think would happen to his rating? Well it would increase, obviously, as Maru beats most of his opponents. But when he doesn't play, his rating stays the same, because that's how these things work. And this is how you end up with Maxpax ahead of Maru. Dark doesn't care is just cope I reckon? He probably doesn’t. Weeklies have a useful function in giving some incentives for pros to keep shape, and especially in being an outlet for semi, or low-level pros to make that transition and make a bit of cash without having to immediately jump to being competitive in stacked offline tournaments. For established top guys, it’s training/practice with a nice bonus if they can win, but I highly, highly doubt they’re going all-out
Yes and no. I'm pretty sure when in a semifinal/ final of even a smaller cup people wanna win.
The difference beeing, for a tournament like IEM the whole day/ week/ month is build around this tournament to be in the best shape possible while for small online cups you just sit down and play and try to win
Hell I remember practice matches in Tennis vs my best bud which were 10 times more intense than actual league play
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 15 2024 17:22 Harris1st wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:48 WombaT wrote:On February 15 2024 07:12 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event What inflates Maxpax's rating is just that he plays a shitton of games, same thing as Clem. Check out how much Maru has played since january 2023: 157 series. Maxpax played 867 series. After we removed the series that Maxpax played against people who are too low to increase his rating, and do the same for Maru cause I'm sure he played a few of those too, we're still going to end up with a ton more matches against important players for Maxpax than Maru. If Maru played that many series, what do you think would happen to his rating? Well it would increase, obviously, as Maru beats most of his opponents. But when he doesn't play, his rating stays the same, because that's how these things work. And this is how you end up with Maxpax ahead of Maru. Dark doesn't care is just cope I reckon? He probably doesn’t. Weeklies have a useful function in giving some incentives for pros to keep shape, and especially in being an outlet for semi, or low-level pros to make that transition and make a bit of cash without having to immediately jump to being competitive in stacked offline tournaments. For established top guys, it’s training/practice with a nice bonus if they can win, but I highly, highly doubt they’re going all-out Yes and no. I'm pretty sure when in a semifinal/ final of even a smaller cup people wanna win. The difference beeing, for a tournament like IEM the whole day/ week/ month is build around this tournament to be in the best shape possible while for small online cups you just sit down and play and try to win Hell I remember practice matches in Tennis vs my best bud which were 10 times more intense than actual league play
Hope you at least won some!
They’re not meaningless, and I don’t think players don’t want to win when they’re in, but I just don’t think they care or try THAT hard. Especially for a veteran like dark who’s scaled the heights:
They’re an important stepping stone from ladder and hitting GM to starting a pro career. And on the way up I’m sure every pro started to get giddy when they hit their first final or w/e. But once you’re there, outside of when small points values may be enough to get you to a Kato, I just don’t think it’s something folks bring close to their A game is they’re established.
I mean the first time I held hands with a girl was terrifying thrilling, but it doesn’t exactly get my juices going these days
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It is not new. It's already been many years that SC2 is in this situation.
Just who do you imagine could have a chance in an offline bo7 match ?
Against Serral: on par Reynor or Rogue in their top form, maybe Solar and Dark as underdog
Against Maru: all the players listed before, byun, ty, hero, zest, stats, sos (last 3 when they were on their prime)
Against any top protoss: any player listed before + more
It is a umaintained game but still fun to play and watch
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I think yall should just play sc1. We don't need a balance patch every 3 months to fix our game .
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On February 17 2024 04:03 Deathstar1 wrote:I think yall should just play sc1. We don't need a balance patch every 3 months to fix our game .
I think we need to create a fourth faction by taking the Terran faction and splitting into two separate warring sub factions. In one faction we have uncivilized terrans who bastardize the English language with words like whatever word(s) that underlined and bolded in the above comment is. And in the other sub-faction are the Terrans who speak the Queen's English.
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Zerg has already had his core stuff get nerfed every patch for last few years, some of you guys dont appreciate just how hard zerg has been nerfed in the last 3 years. Problem is Serral keeps getting better anyways, and hes too far ahead of others. I really think if Serral didnt exist, Zerg would not look stronger than the other races. Dark and Reynor can pick up wins, but so can Clem and Maru.
The Zerg population dropout has been huge, happened at the exact time of patches, which shows that patches DID weaken Zerg, but Serral is just too perfect of a player compared to the competition.
I already stopped playing after the last patch after 13 years of non stop gaming because i realized my race would keep being weaker and weaker every patch, to the point where i barely see it anymore on ladder.
Virtually everything Zerg has been nerfed in some ways, other than maybe zerglings, in the last few years. Core things such as transfuse, creepspread, queen range, banelings damage and hp, ravager build time, all got nerfed.
Late game has been nerfed countless times as well. Broodlord nerfs, lurker nerfs, viper/infestor nerfs. Swarmhosts nerfed as well. Theres almost no builds left with zerg. You mass queen ling bane, with maybe hydra lurker, and thats pretty much the extent of the viable unit compositions. Aggression was also nerfed with dropperlord nerfs, ravager nerf, queen transfuse nerf, nydus nerfs.
The creep spread nerfs actually hurt lower level zergs more than higher level zergs, because they have less screen per minute, less apm, so if the creep is 3 seconds away from ready to spread when they look, you can bet your ass they arent looking again for close to a minute later. If you dont fight on creep, you die to attrition very quickly.
Once again, if you nerf zergs and buff protoss until they can win around the same amount of tournaments as Serral, you will literally kill the race for everyone else. You will see virtually no Zergs on masters/GM ladder, and you will go back to PVP fest on EU, with more PvT on NA.
Would have been nice if during its lifespan, StarCraft 2 paid more attention to what it is supposed to be: a game. The pros should adjust to the game. Adjusting the game to the top 5 players gives us this result. This game. This game where almost noone is happy. The ladder players dont like the balance, the viewers dont like the balance, and 2/3 of pros dont like the balance.
The real solution should have been:
If you wanna balance the pro players, dont balance the unit stats where it ruins the game. Balance the tournament results via maps. I really would have prefered if every tournament would have unique maps, even if the pros couldnt practice on ladder for months on them, it would probabably make for better games with more cool moments and special builds prepared. Players maybe would know of the maps 1 month in advance or something. This way, if you wanna challenge Serral, you could choose worse Zerg maps, and the entire ladder zerg population wouldnt get shafted because Serral exists.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 17 2024 04:52 Snakestyle1 wrote:
Zerg has already had his core stuff get nerfed every patch for last few years, some of you guys dont appreciate just how hard zerg has been nerfed in the last 3 years. Problem is Serral keeps getting better anyways, and hes too far ahead of others. I really think if Serral didnt exist, Zerg would not look stronger than the other races. Dark and Reynor can pick up wins, but so can Clem and Maru.
The Zerg population dropout has been huge, happened at the exact time of patches, which shows that patches DID weaken Zerg, but Serral is just too perfect of a player compared to the competition.
I already stopped playing after the last patch after 13 years of non stop gaming because i realized my race would keep being weaker and weaker every patch, to the point where i barely see it anymore on ladder.
Virtually everything Zerg has been nerfed in some ways, other than maybe zerglings, in the last few years. Core things such as transfuse, creepspread, queen range, banelings damage and hp, ravager build time, all got nerfed.
Late game has been nerfed countless times as well. Broodlord nerfs, lurker nerfs, viper/infestor nerfs. Swarmhosts nerfed as well. Theres almost no builds left with zerg. You mass queen ling bane, with maybe hydra lurker, and thats pretty much the extent of the viable unit compositions. Aggression was also nerfed with dropperlord nerfs, ravager nerf, queen transfuse nerf, nydus nerfs.
The creep spread nerfs actually hurt lower level zergs more than higher level zergs, because they have less screen per minute, less apm, so if the creep is 3 seconds away from ready to spread when they look, you can bet your ass they arent looking again for close to a minute later. If you dont fight on creep, you die to attrition very quickly.
Once again, if you nerf zergs and buff protoss until they can win around the same amount of tournaments as Serral, you will literally kill the race for everyone else. You will see virtually no Zergs on masters/GM ladder, and you will go back to PVP fest on EU, with more PvT on NA.
Would have been nice if during its lifespan, StarCraft 2 paid more attention to what it is supposed to be: a game. The pros should adjust to the game. Adjusting the game to the top 5 players gives us this result. This game. This game where almost noone is happy. The ladder players dont like the balance, the viewers dont like the balance, and 2/3 of pros dont like the balance.
The real solution should have been:
If you wanna balance the pro players, dont balance the unit stats where it ruins the game. Balance the tournament results via maps. I really would have prefered if every tournament would have unique maps, even if the pros couldnt practice on ladder for months on them, it would probabably make for better games with more cool moments and special builds prepared. Players maybe would know of the maps 1 month in advance or something. This way, if you wanna challenge Serral, you could choose worse Zerg maps, and the entire ladder zerg population wouldnt get shafted because Serral exists.
Good post in general, especially the bolded. I wish the tournament scene had done more of this, versus very little of it if we look at SC2 in totality. Outside of almost nobody ever delivering FPVs via side streams it’s one of my biggest frustrations with SC2 on the tournament end.
And hey you can still do balance patches if you can’t make it work via maps, it’s not like that’s of the table.
If we branch off SC2’s community into various stakeholders, I think this satisfies more of them that the current approach.
Pros still have a game that’s being balanced, just via another route. Viewers get to see pros showing why they’re pros with a more dynamic and varied map pool. Map makers can actually get their maps played, as it basically has always been, if you don’t get a map in a ladder pool, it doesn’t get much play if any. And regular players can still have quite standard, steady maps on ladder versus having to learn complicated technical maps on top of a brutally difficult game.
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On February 15 2024 09:13 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 08:26 FFXthebest wrote:On February 15 2024 06:59 Poopi wrote:On February 15 2024 06:33 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:32 iRkSupperman wrote:On February 15 2024 06:30 Nebuchad wrote:On February 15 2024 06:28 iRkSupperman wrote:
We can easily expand the time period and my argument still stands.
Scroll down Maxpax's matches played and compare the average player level vs the matches played by Serral or Maru (comparing with them as the argument presented is that Maxpax deserves a #2 world ranking). Way more games (and wins), against lower level players in Maxpax's match list than for the other two. Yeah obviously he's not top two in the world lol but that's not the argument that you were making. My argument the whole time has been that his ranking is inflated from massgaming worse players. I understand, and the other guy showed you that this argument was wrong, as he plays more often against the top 10 than against the top 20. You're the only one who has trouble following this. Playing Dark for pocket money in ESL NA is not the same as playing Dark for 30k$ at Katowice. There is a world of difference in between them. Similarly, players might play « better » StarCraft in their practice games, but what matters is what they bring in the offline / stacked tournaments Top level esport / sc2 is not just about raw mechanical ability, the mental game / conditioning / mind games play a huge part. It’s like comparing poker games for 20$ with your friends vs big prizepool tournaments. Same « game », but actually very different game in this context MaxPax isn’t bad per se, but he hasn’t proved much and ShoWTimE has been better online in the important tournaments, let alone the offline tournaments So « mass gaming » worse players isn’t necessarily true, but playing vs Dark at his « I don’t care much » level is not the same as actually playing Katowice Dark or GSL Dark. In that sense, MaxPax has an inflated rating by playing in a lot of smaller cups He has demonstrated a raw ability that could make him a top world protoss, but it took Clem several YEARS of insane online ability even in stacked EU tournaments to win his first offline event By that logic everyone playing in GSL isn’t taking it seriously since it’s pocket change compare to IEM Katowice. That makes Serral’s win ever more impressive since all the Koreans were playing at 120% How do you qualify for IEM Katowice as a KR player?
Through their own KR qualify, oh wait they the KR lost their spots to Cyan and Firefly. Maybe the KR are not as good as you think they are
Imagine if Serral lost a series to meow and Cyan, the haters will have a field day with that. But when Maru loses it’s the coping excuses “Maru is just saving builds, or not taking it serious”
That’s definitely one of Maru’s achievement that Serral will never achieve or any other top foreigner
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This way, if you wanna challenge Serral, you could choose worse Zerg maps
The problem is that pretty much every map is a Zerg match, unless you do extreme stupid stuff like island maps.
Very short map ?, Zerg has cheese ...
Very long map like Radhuset ? Zerg can expand and throw units.
The only ones feasible would be very long maps with bases on the rear instead of forward like the 4v4 maps where Terran and Protoss would just turtle, get 5 base and then Golden Armada/Victory Fleet.
What map on the current map pool is like really really bad for Zerg ?, because even Equilibrium which is Terran favoured because of the shape of it, the Rich mineral gives strong mid game for zerg to end the game earlier.
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On February 17 2024 04:52 Snakestyle1 wrote:
Zerg has already had his core stuff get nerfed every patch for last few years, some of you guys dont appreciate just how hard zerg has been nerfed in the last 3 years. Problem is Serral keeps getting better anyways, and hes too far ahead of others. I really think if Serral didnt exist, Zerg would not look stronger than the other races. Dark and Reynor can pick up wins, but so can Clem and Maru.
The Zerg population dropout has been huge, happened at the exact time of patches, which shows that patches DID weaken Zerg, but Serral is just too perfect of a player compared to the competition.
I already stopped playing after the last patch after 13 years of non stop gaming because i realized my race would keep being weaker and weaker every patch, to the point where i barely see it anymore on ladder.
Virtually everything Zerg has been nerfed in some ways, other than maybe zerglings, in the last few years. Core things such as transfuse, creepspread, queen range, banelings damage and hp, ravager build time, all got nerfed.
Late game has been nerfed countless times as well. Broodlord nerfs, lurker nerfs, viper/infestor nerfs. Swarmhosts nerfed as well. Theres almost no builds left with zerg. You mass queen ling bane, with maybe hydra lurker, and thats pretty much the extent of the viable unit compositions. Aggression was also nerfed with dropperlord nerfs, ravager nerf, queen transfuse nerf, nydus nerfs.
The creep spread nerfs actually hurt lower level zergs more than higher level zergs, because they have less screen per minute, less apm, so if the creep is 3 seconds away from ready to spread when they look, you can bet your ass they arent looking again for close to a minute later. If you dont fight on creep, you die to attrition very quickly.
Once again, if you nerf zergs and buff protoss until they can win around the same amount of tournaments as Serral, you will literally kill the race for everyone else. You will see virtually no Zergs on masters/GM ladder, and you will go back to PVP fest on EU, with more PvT on NA.
Would have been nice if during its lifespan, StarCraft 2 paid more attention to what it is supposed to be: a game. The pros should adjust to the game. Adjusting the game to the top 5 players gives us this result. This game. This game where almost noone is happy. The ladder players dont like the balance, the viewers dont like the balance, and 2/3 of pros dont like the balance.
The real solution should have been:
If you wanna balance the pro players, dont balance the unit stats where it ruins the game. Balance the tournament results via maps. I really would have prefered if every tournament would have unique maps, even if the pros couldnt practice on ladder for months on them, it would probabably make for better games with more cool moments and special builds prepared. Players maybe would know of the maps 1 month in advance or something. This way, if you wanna challenge Serral, you could choose worse Zerg maps, and the entire ladder zerg population wouldnt get shafted because Serral exists.
Wow this post is so out of touch. Just listing every nerf Zerg has gotten while completely ignoring the buffs (Broodlord Speed, instant fungal, Lurker range, Hydra buff, Ultra buff) and the nerfs the other races has gotten (like 4 Ghost nerfs which is the unit the entire terran race hangs on, not to mention all the Protoss nerfs). Zerg hasn't been significantly nerfed in any way, the balance council is to afraid to nerf the race that is played by the best foreigners.
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
Zerg in fairness have had quite a few nerfs, even to absolute core units like banes in recent years. Whether they’re sufficient is another thing that people will have differing opinions on
And I’m basically an ex player now, I almost exclusively watch high level games, but as Snakestyle alluded to actually playing the race for us mere mortals must suck these days. They’re pretty compositionally limited and you basically have to go all-in if you want to be aggressive. It’s like gradually over time you’re left with playing straight up reactive macro, or borderline cheesing.
Toss may relatively suck at the top level but at least there’s a lot you can make work and play different styles with.
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On February 19 2024 05:41 WombaT wrote:
Zerg in fairness have had quite a few nerfs, even to absolute core units like banes in recent years. Whether they’re sufficient is another thing that people will have differing opinions on
And I’m basically an ex player now, I almost exclusively watch high level games, but as Snakestyle alluded to actually playing the race for us mere mortals must suck these days. They’re pretty compositionally limited and you basically have to go all-in if you want to be aggressive. It’s like gradually over time you’re left with playing straight up reactive macro, or borderline cheesing.
Toss may relatively suck at the top level but at least there’s a lot you can make work and play different styles with.
Serral just showed you can open with a Roach "pressure" build that has the potential to kill and still be on 71 drones 30 seconds later.
Sure Zerg got nerfs but so did the other races. Looking at the whole picture I don't think Zerg has been made weaker at all comparatively to the other races
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Northern Ireland24279 Posts
On February 19 2024 06:10 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 05:41 WombaT wrote:
Zerg in fairness have had quite a few nerfs, even to absolute core units like banes in recent years. Whether they’re sufficient is another thing that people will have differing opinions on
And I’m basically an ex player now, I almost exclusively watch high level games, but as Snakestyle alluded to actually playing the race for us mere mortals must suck these days. They’re pretty compositionally limited and you basically have to go all-in if you want to be aggressive. It’s like gradually over time you’re left with playing straight up reactive macro, or borderline cheesing.
Toss may relatively suck at the top level but at least there’s a lot you can make work and play different styles with. Serral just showed you can open with a Roach "pressure" build that has the potential to kill and still be on 71 drones 30 seconds later. Sure Zerg got nerfs but so did the other races. Looking at the whole picture I don't think Zerg has been made weaker at all comparatively to the other races
I mean Serral can, folks at that level can absolutely transition out.
My point is more that Zergs have been nerfed in a way that maybe still aren’t enough at pro play, but those nerfs continue to make Zergs at lower levels less and less fun to play. As something of a tangential point, maybe active Zerg players can correct me if they think I’m wrong!
You’ve creep nerfs for example. Given the sheer amount of tumours out and the speed of top lads, they’re still carpeting the map. It hasn’t really made all that big a difference. A Serral or a Reynor has enough spare APM going go basically compensate. Whereas I imagine at lower levels that actually does really impact in creep.
The problem with Zerg IMO isn’t really in particular units, it’s the struggle almost to nerf the (reachable) mechanical ceiling of the race. and really how LoTV’s eco changes absolutely just innately favour them.
Whereas balance tweaks for the other races may have knock-on impacts for sure, but they’re generally targeting a specific issue. With Zerg, at the very very top level, the whole race is effectively the issue. At (multiple) time where Protoss were just winning with a bunch of blink stalkers, I mean there’s some obvious stuff to fix there to redress that. With Zerg I mean the symptoms are somewhat obvious but how to identify and tweak the root causes?
I feel it’s overdue to try more balancing by maps. It’s been forever since there’s been a pool that’s even neutral, never mind bad for Zergs. And given that SC2 is in maintainence mode we’re unlikely to see the kind of wholesale changes require to balance by numbers.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/MKfbplB.png)
