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I wanna go back to the 'GSL and others used to be Ro32 whereas now they're basically Ro8 and therefore worth much less' argument.
There's a really critical factor here. When your winrate is around 90% in series, 5 matches instead of 3 doesn't matter nearly as much. You'd move from 72% chance of winning a tournament to 59%. Worse, but not drastic. Still winning multiple premiers a year like clockwork.
But of course, for a 'normal' dominating player with a ~67% series winrate, the difference between a Ro32 and Ro8 is the difference between 30% and 13.5% - your chances of winning it all have more than been cut in half, and the most likely event is you being sniped early-ish (which is why people remember all these upsets).
So if you're heavily discounting Serral's wins due to tournament depth going down, you're probably ALSO saying that you don't believe he would've maintained his standard 85%-90% winrate had he played at that level in say 2013. Which is fine (if a bit aggressive, because Ro32 players are usually weaker), but it's a personal prior or bias, and one a bit difficult to justify at that.
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On February 19 2024 15:41 Mumei wrote:Charoisaur, thanks for going into detail; that is what I thought we were talking about but I just really wanted someone to be explicit about it. Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 21:40 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 09:34 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 09:14 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 08:02 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 07:06 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 07:00 CerebrateHector wrote:There can’t be a consensus GOAT in sc2 Because people cant be objective, but he is the GOAT, period. Objective how? The scene isn’t as strong as it was at its peak, hasn’t been for a long time.In BW it’s pretty easy, they had roughly the same structure for fucking forever and Flash outdid everyone, he’s a pretty clear GOAT SC2 doesn’t really have that. What do you mean when you say this? People say this often enough that it's essentially a truism but I don't know what anyone means when they say it beyond "some of the top players are the same people, they are older than they were, and their mechanics are worse to some degree due to aging and less practice," but that can't be the only thing we're talking about. Speaking of Flash, I recall reading or hearing (it may have been mentioned during ASL commentary, but I don't recall) that he'd claimed that if he knew then that he knows now he would have won everything. It's harder to make that kind of claim in SC2, of course, because SC2 changes so much more. But I know a similar discussion about a decline in mechanical ability has taken place in the post-KeSPA era of BW. It's just harder to take that long term perspective in SC2 because if you say "Flash in 2018 knew so much more about BW than he did in 2011" it's comparing his knowledge of the same thing at two different points in time, whereas if you said "Maru in 2023 was more knowledgeable about LotV than he was about HotS in 2015", that might be true but it's still not comparing like to like. I meant what I said. Flash was so fucking good at BW be made a Ro4 playing random The issue isn’t pure skill level, it’s competition. What do you mean by competition? That there were more real contenders for winning top tournaments? That the top tier of players had more players within that tier? Or something different? Flash is the (bar insanity) BW Goat because he hit levels nobody else did, in a game whose broad structure didn’t change appreciably You can compare say, Boxer to him quite easily. They played the same tournaments, literally no non-Korean was even top 50 in the world. Strareagues and Proleagues were where it’s at. How do you compare Serral’s achievements to peak HoTS? I mean I don’t think you can. I think Serral still might be the GOAT nonetheless, but the scene has shifted so much there’s no really some easy comparable baseline BW basically had the same structure and depth throughout, it’s a lot easier to compare. Were Boxer and Nada and oov GOAT candidate monsters? Sure. Did Flash outdo them in basically every metric point with a similar tourney structure? Yeah. I know all that; I'm actually much more familiar with BW circa 2003–2012 than I am with SC2, where I'm basically a total dilettante. But I get the point you are making: because the structure remained consistent throughout its lifetime it's easier to make comparisons of players throughout the history of the game's competitive life. Makes perfect sense, I agree, and I made a related point earlier (in addition to the same tournaments it was also the exact same game). So yeah I get why Flash being the consensus goat there makes sense and is a straightforward and easy question. And I agree that there isn't an easy comparable baseline for Serral's performance today. I still don't know what you mean specifically in the context of SC2 when you say "the scene isn't as strong." You said the question here was "competition" rather than "pure skill", but I still don't know how you are defining that. It feels like you think it is self-evident ("I meant what I said") but it's not to me, or else I wouldn't be asking about it. I'm not doing it be annoying. On February 18 2024 10:04 UnLarva wrote:
There are several things that truly make [insert lovehate word here] comparisons like comparing apples to oranges, even I can see through to the problem's nature. However, it also seems to me that when these apples-to-orange comparisons are made anyway, apple-side tend to go blind at the end of apple-era, not seeing or wanting to see that there was and still is an orange that dominated those apple-era lovehate apples of the Appleland. They are same apples of apple-era that are now routinely decimated by that orange, that one who also demonstrated to other oranges from a orange county that it is indeed possible to hang with the apples in a same basket and even lay on a top them most of the time.
The Ultimate, extreme Orange had almost nothing of those benefits most of Apples had in their baskets during the apple-era, and still that Orange managed to bounce in and dominate. Maybe it is so that the basketfull of apples have been slowly rotting and diminishing in their numbers, but it is still counter-intuitive why they cannot contain the process and resist more strongly the domination of The Ultimate Orange and his orange pals.
That must count for something too in these apples-to-oranges comparisons. That is also reason why many lovehate'd the Ultimate Orange. Superior to both the Ultimate Orange and Apple is the superior Sumo Citrus, the greatest citrus fruit of all time. (GCFOAT) Char summed it up pretty well. For me I don’t really count it against Serral as some might, it is just a case of genuinely struggling to make a comparison. I do think, unlike some that peak Serral and a few other folks have played even better Starcraft than we’d ever seen before. The peak is higher, the depth overall and especially at the ‘S/A’ tier has dropped from Korean retirements/slumps. The foreign scene is definitely stronger, would be my read on it This is how I think of it¹. And it definitely makes the argument more complicated. You could emphasize the fact that less depth does mean that a person might get a pass on their off days by facing someone who can't beat you anyway; you could also emphasize the fact that a higher peak means that actually beating, say, ranks 2–5 consistently is more of a feat than ever. I tend to emphasize the difficulty at the top in the way I think about it. At a certain level of dominance—say, Flash in BW in 2009–11— he's got like an 80-90+% win rate over a lot of people with just a smattering of people where he's at low-50 (maybe high-40s, I can't remember without checking. I thought maybe skyhigh but that was 3-3 at the end) to low-60s win-rate that drag the average down to low-70s). Even with all that competitive depth the only people who were actually relevant to his chances of winning in single leagues were a handful of players. Everyone else was essentially fodder; the depth didn't actually matter for him that way it absolutely mattered for someone trying to qualify for their first OSL. I don't think Serral is at that level of dominance, but it feels (and this is just a feeling, maybe it's baseless) that he's reaching a similar point where most of the field is similarly irrelevant to his chances and only a handful of people really matter. The real question is if you think that would still be true if he were facing as competitive field, and how you answer that question says a lot about what you think of his current run. ¹ Of course, if the people who insist that players are worse than they were before are correct, then the whole argument is moot. But I don't see it that way
Isn't Serral's level of dominance higher than even Flash's currently? He's lost like 1 game in his last ~25 games, his worst game loss is to herO. There's only a handful of players who can threaten him and win, such as Maru, Reynor, Clem, Maxpax, and to a lesser extent Dark, herO, Solar with some bracket luck / help from upsets. I think Serral is pretty comparable from Flash from what I know. From what you say, Flash had a few stray people he had only slightly favored match history against, similar to Serral.
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On February 20 2024 07:01 Mizenhauer wrote:
My honest theory for all of this is that a lot of us are in our thirties (or older) and 2014 was a long time ago. 2018 forever changed how we looked at Maru and his achievements since then have made the 2018-present "Maru" the primary persona we naturally think of off the top of our head. He was a really good player before then (inarguably top 5 in the world at certain points), but this is all seen through the lens where the players with the strongest cases for "best hots" player won no more than two OSL/SSL/GSL during the expansion.
I think this is the correct take. You look at your wife with rosy tinted glasses. Even if she's aged, she'll forever be GOAT of your heart.
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On February 20 2024 09:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Isn't Serral's level of dominance higher than even Flash's currently? He's lost like 1 game in his last ~25 games, his worst game loss is to herO. There's only a handful of players who can threaten him and win, such as Maru, Reynor, Clem, Maxpax, and to a lesser extent Dark, herO, Solar with some bracket luck / help from upsets. I think Serral is pretty comparable from Flash from what I know. From what you say, Flash had a few stray people he had only slightly favored match history against, similar to Serral.
I think winrate-wise they're pretty even, reaching around 85%-90% at their peak (for Serral, offline, and vs. Kor only). There was a year where Flash was 26-2 vs P, pretty similar numbers overall. They were/are both statistical anomalies, but having said that, I personally think Flash had that extra oomph, he'd get those numbers against people who prepared just to snipe him in Proleague, or he'd play random (!) and go far in tournaments.
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Northern Ireland26512 Posts
On February 20 2024 09:30 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
I wanna go back to the 'GSL and others used to be Ro32 whereas now they're basically Ro8 and therefore worth much less' argument.
There's a really critical factor here. When your winrate is around 90% in series, 5 matches instead of 3 doesn't matter nearly as much. You'd move from 72% chance of winning a tournament to 59%. Worse, but not drastic. Still winning multiple premiers a year like clockwork.
But of course, for a 'normal' dominating player with a ~67% series winrate, the difference between a Ro32 and Ro8 is the difference between 30% and 13.5% - your chances of winning it all have more than been cut in half, and the most likely event is you being sniped early-ish (which is why people remember all these upsets).
So if you're heavily discounting Serral's wins due to tournament depth going down, you're probably ALSO saying that you don't believe he would've maintained his standard 85%-90% winrate had he played at that level in say 2013. Which is fine (if a bit aggressive, because Ro32 players are usually weaker), but it's a personal prior or bias, and one a bit difficult to justify at that.
If we take Maru as something of a constant, and let’s say look at Starleagues between 2013-2018, and 2019 thru to today, we could probably imperfectly model the relative decline of depth. Or just graph it out linearly. Or make the cutoff a bit earlier, when GSL still had the Ro32 into Ro16 groups format, just for consistency’s sake.
I think most concede that Maru would be a good candidate. He’s been a top player that whole time, he rarely has prolonged slumps etc. I don’t think many feel he’s way better than he used to be either.
I am of course both mathematically incompetent and lazy! It’s also flawed in it assumes Maru is some kind of constant, but hey.
What I imagine you’ll find is if we look at it, and compare Maru’s H2H or an Aligulac prediction with every tier of that tournament, I think you’ll see a gradual gap opening over time.
I’d be staggered if they don’t show that Maru’s percentages go up versus the respective Ro32/16/8/4 etc over this span. Maybe it’s less than I expect, but I do think we’ll see a pretty consistent trend.
But yes ultimately the depth issue is compounding. Players don’t have to push as hard to keep placing high, and maybe hit the heights they used to need to hit to keep in contention. It doesn’t mean you can’t have some outlier who would stomp anyone regardless of era, but my money would be on the outlier’s percentages dropping at least a bit if things were more competitive overall.
This isn’t to downplay Serral’s numbers, which are crazy but I’m not sure he would quite hit them going back. On the flipside, as I always point out, even ‘just’ dominating the foreign scene to his degree was something considered impossible at one point. Even someone as ahead of the curve as Stephano was never winning basically every game versus other foreigners.
SC2 was long considered too volatile, you’re only 2 big mistakes, or 2 fiendish cheeses from losing, or merely have a bad series you’re out, even if you’re the better player. Well people have had plenty of chances and it’s still exceedingly rare to see that happen to Serral. Hell Life lost to Sjow once!
So even with caveats Serral’s record is still outrageous and deserves the respect it elicits. My instinct says if he developed to the same degree and emerged earlier in anything like his current form, he’s still winning tournaments and he’s probably resolutely consistently making it to Ro8s etc.
It just wouldn’t quite be what it is now, where he’s relentlessly winning and a Ro8 is almost an Earth-shatteringly bad result by his standards.
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Northern Ireland26512 Posts
On February 20 2024 10:03 MyLovelyLurker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 09:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Isn't Serral's level of dominance higher than even Flash's currently? He's lost like 1 game in his last ~25 games, his worst game loss is to herO. There's only a handful of players who can threaten him and win, such as Maru, Reynor, Clem, Maxpax, and to a lesser extent Dark, herO, Solar with some bracket luck / help from upsets. I think Serral is pretty comparable from Flash from what I know. From what you say, Flash had a few stray people he had only slightly favored match history against, similar to Serral. I think winrate-wise they're pretty even, reaching around 85%-90% at their peak (for Serral, offline, and vs. Kor only). There was a year where Flash was 26-2 vs P, pretty similar numbers overall. They were/are both statistical anomalies, but having said that, I personally think Flash had that extra oomph, he'd get those numbers against people who prepared just to snipe him in Proleague, or he'd play random (!) and go far in tournaments.
It’s just generally pretty ridiculous.
I think there is an element of ‘which game more reliably sees the better player win?’ to it. For differing reasons WC3 and BW probably do that more than SC2
In BW it’s harder to be a decent player, it’s probably easier to be a dominant one though.
I mean in SC2 it took until 2018 for winning consecutive Starleagues to even be a thing, honourable mention to soO for even making consecutive finals prior to that.
Not making an argument either way, but something I’ve long observed.
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On February 20 2024 10:25 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 09:30 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
I wanna go back to the 'GSL and others used to be Ro32 whereas now they're basically Ro8 and therefore worth much less' argument.
There's a really critical factor here. When your winrate is around 90% in series, 5 matches instead of 3 doesn't matter nearly as much. You'd move from 72% chance of winning a tournament to 59%. Worse, but not drastic. Still winning multiple premiers a year like clockwork.
But of course, for a 'normal' dominating player with a ~67% series winrate, the difference between a Ro32 and Ro8 is the difference between 30% and 13.5% - your chances of winning it all have more than been cut in half, and the most likely event is you being sniped early-ish (which is why people remember all these upsets).
So if you're heavily discounting Serral's wins due to tournament depth going down, you're probably ALSO saying that you don't believe he would've maintained his standard 85%-90% winrate had he played at that level in say 2013. Which is fine (if a bit aggressive, because Ro32 players are usually weaker), but it's a personal prior or bias, and one a bit difficult to justify at that. If we take Maru as something of a constant, and let’s say look at Starleagues between 2013-2018, and 2019 thru to today, we could probably imperfectly model the relative decline of depth. Or just graph it out linearly. Or make the cutoff a bit earlier, when GSL still had the Ro32 into Ro16 groups format, just for consistency’s sake. I think most concede that Maru would be a good candidate. He’s been a top player that whole time, he rarely has prolonged slumps etc. I don’t think many feel he’s way better than he used to be either. I am of course both mathematically incompetent and lazy! It’s also flawed in it assumes Maru is some kind of constant, but hey. What I imagine you’ll find is if we look at it, and compare Maru’s H2H or an Aligulac prediction with every tier of that tournament, I think you’ll see a gradual gap opening over time. I’d be staggered if they don’t show that Maru’s percentages go up versus the respective Ro32/16/8/4 etc over this span. Maybe it’s less than I expect, but I do think we’ll see a pretty consistent trend. But yes ultimately the depth issue is compounding. Players don’t have to push as hard to keep placing high, and maybe hit the heights they used to need to hit to keep in contention. It doesn’t mean you can’t have some outlier who would stomp anyone regardless of era, but my money would be on the outlier’s percentages dropping at least a bit if things were more competitive overall. This isn’t to downplay Serral’s numbers, which are crazy but I’m not sure he would quite hit them going back. On the flipside, as I always point out, even ‘just’ dominating the foreign scene to his degree was something considered impossible at one point. Even someone as ahead of the curve as Stephano was never winning basically every game versus other foreigners. SC2 was long considered too volatile, you’re only 2 big mistakes, or 2 fiendish cheeses from losing, or merely have a bad series you’re out, even if you’re the better player. Well people have had plenty of chances and it’s still exceedingly rare to see that happen to Serral. Hell Life lost to Sjow once! So even with caveats Serral’s record is still outrageous and deserves the respect it elicits. My instinct says if he developed to the same degree and emerged earlier in anything like his current form, he’s still winning tournaments and he’s probably resolutely consistently making it to Ro8s etc. It just wouldn’t quite be what it is now, where he’s relentlessly winning and a Ro8 is almost an Earth-shatteringly bad result by his standards.
Yes, very reasonable post indeed, thanks. I am sitting on a bunch of numbers and should probably write something next week or so. Need time to do graphs and so, as well as some heuristics on depth. The idea to re-normalize to Maru (rather than 'just playing like Maru') makes a lot of sense, we can average things out temporally etc...
As for Serral's winrate decay had he played that well earlier ? It's an unknown number, we'll never live in the counterfactual universe. The best you can hope to do is to 1. bound it using Blizzcon 2018 and GSLvsTheWorld 2018 as examples of his domination in an effective depth 4/ Ro16 environment, and 2. using Maru as benchmark, argue that Maru is still playing great as ever, therefore by (stochastic, approximate) transitivity, if Serral is stronger than him now, he'd have been stronger than him then, hence pretty much at the top too. But we know how transitivity goes in Starcraft, although it's obviously much more statistically significant when rates are measured over long periods.
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On February 20 2024 10:33 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 10:03 MyLovelyLurker wrote:On February 20 2024 09:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Isn't Serral's level of dominance higher than even Flash's currently? He's lost like 1 game in his last ~25 games, his worst game loss is to herO. There's only a handful of players who can threaten him and win, such as Maru, Reynor, Clem, Maxpax, and to a lesser extent Dark, herO, Solar with some bracket luck / help from upsets. I think Serral is pretty comparable from Flash from what I know. From what you say, Flash had a few stray people he had only slightly favored match history against, similar to Serral. I think winrate-wise they're pretty even, reaching around 85%-90% at their peak (for Serral, offline, and vs. Kor only). There was a year where Flash was 26-2 vs P, pretty similar numbers overall. They were/are both statistical anomalies, but having said that, I personally think Flash had that extra oomph, he'd get those numbers against people who prepared just to snipe him in Proleague, or he'd play random (!) and go far in tournaments. It’s just generally pretty ridiculous. I think there is an element of ‘which game more reliably sees the better player win?’ to it. For differing reasons WC3 and BW probably do that more than SC2 In BW it’s harder to be a decent player, it’s probably easier to be a dominant one though. I mean in SC2 it took until 2018 for winning consecutive Starleagues to even be a thing, honourable mention to soO for even making consecutive finals prior to that. Not making an argument either way, but something I’ve long observed.
That's right, more variance in SC2. They're both monsters, just different kinds. Serral practicing by playing in his head, Flash with his little keyboard-to-mouse distance ruler.
And now, off to bed.
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Northern Ireland26512 Posts
On February 20 2024 10:49 MyLovelyLurker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 10:25 WombaT wrote:On February 20 2024 09:30 MyLovelyLurker wrote:
I wanna go back to the 'GSL and others used to be Ro32 whereas now they're basically Ro8 and therefore worth much less' argument.
There's a really critical factor here. When your winrate is around 90% in series, 5 matches instead of 3 doesn't matter nearly as much. You'd move from 72% chance of winning a tournament to 59%. Worse, but not drastic. Still winning multiple premiers a year like clockwork.
But of course, for a 'normal' dominating player with a ~67% series winrate, the difference between a Ro32 and Ro8 is the difference between 30% and 13.5% - your chances of winning it all have more than been cut in half, and the most likely event is you being sniped early-ish (which is why people remember all these upsets).
So if you're heavily discounting Serral's wins due to tournament depth going down, you're probably ALSO saying that you don't believe he would've maintained his standard 85%-90% winrate had he played at that level in say 2013. Which is fine (if a bit aggressive, because Ro32 players are usually weaker), but it's a personal prior or bias, and one a bit difficult to justify at that. If we take Maru as something of a constant, and let’s say look at Starleagues between 2013-2018, and 2019 thru to today, we could probably imperfectly model the relative decline of depth. Or just graph it out linearly. Or make the cutoff a bit earlier, when GSL still had the Ro32 into Ro16 groups format, just for consistency’s sake. I think most concede that Maru would be a good candidate. He’s been a top player that whole time, he rarely has prolonged slumps etc. I don’t think many feel he’s way better than he used to be either. I am of course both mathematically incompetent and lazy! It’s also flawed in it assumes Maru is some kind of constant, but hey. What I imagine you’ll find is if we look at it, and compare Maru’s H2H or an Aligulac prediction with every tier of that tournament, I think you’ll see a gradual gap opening over time. I’d be staggered if they don’t show that Maru’s percentages go up versus the respective Ro32/16/8/4 etc over this span. Maybe it’s less than I expect, but I do think we’ll see a pretty consistent trend. But yes ultimately the depth issue is compounding. Players don’t have to push as hard to keep placing high, and maybe hit the heights they used to need to hit to keep in contention. It doesn’t mean you can’t have some outlier who would stomp anyone regardless of era, but my money would be on the outlier’s percentages dropping at least a bit if things were more competitive overall. This isn’t to downplay Serral’s numbers, which are crazy but I’m not sure he would quite hit them going back. On the flipside, as I always point out, even ‘just’ dominating the foreign scene to his degree was something considered impossible at one point. Even someone as ahead of the curve as Stephano was never winning basically every game versus other foreigners. SC2 was long considered too volatile, you’re only 2 big mistakes, or 2 fiendish cheeses from losing, or merely have a bad series you’re out, even if you’re the better player. Well people have had plenty of chances and it’s still exceedingly rare to see that happen to Serral. Hell Life lost to Sjow once! So even with caveats Serral’s record is still outrageous and deserves the respect it elicits. My instinct says if he developed to the same degree and emerged earlier in anything like his current form, he’s still winning tournaments and he’s probably resolutely consistently making it to Ro8s etc. It just wouldn’t quite be what it is now, where he’s relentlessly winning and a Ro8 is almost an Earth-shatteringly bad result by his standards. Yes, very reasonable post indeed, thanks. I am sitting on a bunch of numbers and should probably write something next week or so. Need time to do graphs and so, as well as some heuristics on depth. The idea to re-normalize to Maru (rather than 'just playing like Maru') makes a lot of sense, we can average things out temporally etc... As for Serral's winrate decay had he played that well earlier ? It's an unknown number, we'll never live in the counterfactual universe. The best you can hope to do is to 1. bound it using Blizzcon 2018 and GSLvsTheWorld 2018 as examples of his domination in an effective depth 4/ Ro16 environment, and 2. using Maru as benchmark, argue that Maru is still playing great as ever, therefore by (stochastic, approximate) transitivity, if Serral is stronger than him now, he'd have been stronger than him then, hence pretty much at the top too. But we know how transitivity goes in Starcraft, although it's obviously much more statistically significant when rates are measured over long periods.
Interesting, sleep well yo. I hope to pick this one back up
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On February 20 2024 10:03 MyLovelyLurker wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 09:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Isn't Serral's level of dominance higher than even Flash's currently? He's lost like 1 game in his last ~25 games, his worst game loss is to herO. There's only a handful of players who can threaten him and win, such as Maru, Reynor, Clem, Maxpax, and to a lesser extent Dark, herO, Solar with some bracket luck / help from upsets. I think Serral is pretty comparable from Flash from what I know. From what you say, Flash had a few stray people he had only slightly favored match history against, similar to Serral. I think winrate-wise they're pretty even, reaching around 85%-90% at their peak (for Serral, offline, and vs. Kor only). There was a year where Flash was 26-2 vs P, pretty similar numbers overall. They were/are both statistical anomalies, but having said that, I personally think Flash had that extra oomph, he'd get those numbers against people who prepared just to snipe him in Proleague, or he'd play random (!) and go far in tournaments.
I see, thanks for the stats! Also true about going random, that is another level of dominance and dunking on people that I forgot about
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Serral's record against Koreans in the past 12 months:
11-1 (92%) in ZvP matches (one bo3 loss to Classic)
23-1 (96%) in ZvT matches (one bo3 loss to Maru)
12-3 (80%) in ZvZ matches (two bo5 and one bo3 loss to Solar, damn. He did also beat Solar in six other series tho)
This is absolutely Flash tier numbers, arguably better. But yeah, Flash always has the advantageous argument of playing in the peak competitive era of BW, so I would still give him the edge. But Serral's number is absolutely outrageous, basically as high as humanly possible at this time and age.
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On February 20 2024 12:27 Nasigil wrote:
Serral's record against Koreans in the past 12 months:
11-1 (92%) in ZvP matches (one bo3 loss to Classic)
23-1 (96%) in ZvT matches (one bo3 loss to Maru)
12-3 (80%) in ZvZ matches (two bo5 and one bo3 loss to Solar, damn. He did also beat Solar in six other series tho)
This is absolutely Flash tier numbers, arguably better. But yeah, Flash always has the advantageous argument of playing in the peak competitive era of BW, so I would still give him the edge. But Serral's number is absolutely outrageous, basically as high as humanly possible at this time and age.
..and same records vs Non-Koreans during same time frame are:
44–1 (97.78%) in ZvP matches (one bo2 loss to MaxPax)
27–4 (87.10%) in ZvT matches (one bo2, two bo5 and one bo7 loss to Clem)
25–1 (96.15%) in ZvZ matches (one bo5 loss to Reynor)
Only Reynor, MaxPax, and Clem has wins against him.
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@Nasigil and @UnLarva
Absolutely insane. Absolutely insane.
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On February 20 2024 09:34 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 15:41 Mumei wrote:Charoisaur, thanks for going into detail; that is what I thought we were talking about but I just really wanted someone to be explicit about it. On February 18 2024 21:40 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 09:34 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 09:14 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 08:02 Mumei wrote:On February 18 2024 07:06 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 07:00 CerebrateHector wrote:
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Because people cant be objective, but he is the GOAT, period. Objective how? The scene isn’t as strong as it was at its peak, hasn’t been for a long time.In BW it’s pretty easy, they had roughly the same structure for fucking forever and Flash outdid everyone, he’s a pretty clear GOAT SC2 doesn’t really have that. What do you mean when you say this? People say this often enough that it's essentially a truism but I don't know what anyone means when they say it beyond "some of the top players are the same people, they are older than they were, and their mechanics are worse to some degree due to aging and less practice," but that can't be the only thing we're talking about. Speaking of Flash, I recall reading or hearing (it may have been mentioned during ASL commentary, but I don't recall) that he'd claimed that if he knew then that he knows now he would have won everything. It's harder to make that kind of claim in SC2, of course, because SC2 changes so much more. But I know a similar discussion about a decline in mechanical ability has taken place in the post-KeSPA era of BW. It's just harder to take that long term perspective in SC2 because if you say "Flash in 2018 knew so much more about BW than he did in 2011" it's comparing his knowledge of the same thing at two different points in time, whereas if you said "Maru in 2023 was more knowledgeable about LotV than he was about HotS in 2015", that might be true but it's still not comparing like to like. I meant what I said. Flash was so fucking good at BW be made a Ro4 playing random The issue isn’t pure skill level, it’s competition. What do you mean by competition? That there were more real contenders for winning top tournaments? That the top tier of players had more players within that tier? Or something different? Flash is the (bar insanity) BW Goat because he hit levels nobody else did, in a game whose broad structure didn’t change appreciably You can compare say, Boxer to him quite easily. They played the same tournaments, literally no non-Korean was even top 50 in the world. Strareagues and Proleagues were where it’s at. How do you compare Serral’s achievements to peak HoTS? I mean I don’t think you can. I think Serral still might be the GOAT nonetheless, but the scene has shifted so much there’s no really some easy comparable baseline BW basically had the same structure and depth throughout, it’s a lot easier to compare. Were Boxer and Nada and oov GOAT candidate monsters? Sure. Did Flash outdo them in basically every metric point with a similar tourney structure? Yeah. I know all that; I'm actually much more familiar with BW circa 2003–2012 than I am with SC2, where I'm basically a total dilettante. But I get the point you are making: because the structure remained consistent throughout its lifetime it's easier to make comparisons of players throughout the history of the game's competitive life. Makes perfect sense, I agree, and I made a related point earlier (in addition to the same tournaments it was also the exact same game). So yeah I get why Flash being the consensus goat there makes sense and is a straightforward and easy question. And I agree that there isn't an easy comparable baseline for Serral's performance today. I still don't know what you mean specifically in the context of SC2 when you say "the scene isn't as strong." You said the question here was "competition" rather than "pure skill", but I still don't know how you are defining that. It feels like you think it is self-evident ("I meant what I said") but it's not to me, or else I wouldn't be asking about it. I'm not doing it be annoying. On February 18 2024 10:04 UnLarva wrote:
There are several things that truly make [insert lovehate word here] comparisons like comparing apples to oranges, even I can see through to the problem's nature. However, it also seems to me that when these apples-to-orange comparisons are made anyway, apple-side tend to go blind at the end of apple-era, not seeing or wanting to see that there was and still is an orange that dominated those apple-era lovehate apples of the Appleland. They are same apples of apple-era that are now routinely decimated by that orange, that one who also demonstrated to other oranges from a orange county that it is indeed possible to hang with the apples in a same basket and even lay on a top them most of the time.
The Ultimate, extreme Orange had almost nothing of those benefits most of Apples had in their baskets during the apple-era, and still that Orange managed to bounce in and dominate. Maybe it is so that the basketfull of apples have been slowly rotting and diminishing in their numbers, but it is still counter-intuitive why they cannot contain the process and resist more strongly the domination of The Ultimate Orange and his orange pals.
That must count for something too in these apples-to-oranges comparisons. That is also reason why many lovehate'd the Ultimate Orange. Superior to both the Ultimate Orange and Apple is the superior Sumo Citrus, the greatest citrus fruit of all time. (GCFOAT) Char summed it up pretty well. For me I don’t really count it against Serral as some might, it is just a case of genuinely struggling to make a comparison. I do think, unlike some that peak Serral and a few other folks have played even better Starcraft than we’d ever seen before. The peak is higher, the depth overall and especially at the ‘S/A’ tier has dropped from Korean retirements/slumps. The foreign scene is definitely stronger, would be my read on it This is how I think of it¹. And it definitely makes the argument more complicated. You could emphasize the fact that less depth does mean that a person might get a pass on their off days by facing someone who can't beat you anyway; you could also emphasize the fact that a higher peak means that actually beating, say, ranks 2–5 consistently is more of a feat than ever. I tend to emphasize the difficulty at the top in the way I think about it. At a certain level of dominance—say, Flash in BW in 2009–11— he's got like an 80-90+% win rate over a lot of people with just a smattering of people where he's at low-50 (maybe high-40s, I can't remember without checking. I thought maybe skyhigh but that was 3-3 at the end) to low-60s win-rate that drag the average down to low-70s). Even with all that competitive depth the only people who were actually relevant to his chances of winning in single leagues were a handful of players. Everyone else was essentially fodder; the depth didn't actually matter for him that way it absolutely mattered for someone trying to qualify for their first OSL. I don't think Serral is at that level of dominance, but it feels (and this is just a feeling, maybe it's baseless) that he's reaching a similar point where most of the field is similarly irrelevant to his chances and only a handful of people really matter. The real question is if you think that would still be true if he were facing as competitive field, and how you answer that question says a lot about what you think of his current run. ¹ Of course, if the people who insist that players are worse than they were before are correct, then the whole argument is moot. But I don't see it that way Isn't Serral's level of dominance higher than even Flash's currently? He's lost like 1 game in his last ~25 games, his worst game loss is to herO. There's only a handful of players who can threaten him and win, such as Maru, Reynor, Clem, Maxpax, and to a lesser extent Dark, herO, Solar with some bracket luck / help from upsets. I think Serral is pretty comparable from Flash from what I know. From what you say, Flash had a few stray people he had only slightly favored match history against, similar to Serral.
I think the difference is that Flash's games were all either Proleague or in the OSL or MSL. His wins were almost exclusively against people who were either at least good enough to play on television for their teams or people who were good to make it through the very competitive processes. And if you look in TLPD, Flash's career 71.74% really underrates him. He had a seven month period in 09-10 where he went 95-18 (84.07%) in standard games; a non-calendar year winning 79%, and two consecutive non-calendar years winning 76%.
I'd still take those numbers over Serral winning 128–41 (75.74%) of all his games against Koreans since last Katowice, including 35–17 (67.31%) in offline games.
Now maybe if he maintains this current win the playoffs against top 10-level competition while dropping a single map form for awhile I'll start to change my tune, but I'd want to see it first.
On February 20 2024 12:27 Nasigil wrote:
Serral's record against Koreans in the past 12 months:
11-1 (92%) in ZvP matches (one bo3 loss to Classic)
23-1 (96%) in ZvT matches (one bo3 loss to Maru)
12-3 (80%) in ZvZ matches (two bo5 and one bo3 loss to Solar, damn. He did also beat Solar in six other series tho)
This is absolutely Flash tier numbers, arguably better. But yeah, Flash always has the advantageous argument of playing in the peak competitive era of BW, so I would still give him the edge. But Serral's number is absolutely outrageous, basically as high as humanly possible at this time and age.
This is very compelling; I was focusing much more on individual games than series but the series are more important.
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On February 20 2024 12:27 Nasigil wrote:
Serral's record against Koreans in the past 12 months:
11-1 (92%) in ZvP matches (one bo3 loss to Classic)
23-1 (96%) in ZvT matches (one bo3 loss to Maru)
12-3 (80%) in ZvZ matches (two bo5 and one bo3 loss to Solar, damn. He did also beat Solar in six other series tho)
Thanks for the statistics. I was aware that Serral is the best player in the world against Koreans, but I did not know that even when taking out his wins against foreigners his winning records are so insane.
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Northern Ireland26512 Posts
On February 20 2024 12:27 Nasigil wrote:
Serral's record against Koreans in the past 12 months:
11-1 (92%) in ZvP matches (one bo3 loss to Classic)
23-1 (96%) in ZvT matches (one bo3 loss to Maru)
12-3 (80%) in ZvZ matches (two bo5 and one bo3 loss to Solar, damn. He did also beat Solar in six other series tho)
This is absolutely Flash tier numbers, arguably better. But yeah, Flash always has the advantageous argument of playing in the peak competitive era of BW, so I would still give him the edge. But Serral's number is absolutely outrageous, basically as high as humanly possible at this time and age.
Truly absurd
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If I was Serral, I would start a $50k gofundme page “if you want me to play in GSL”. Ask all his haters and Korean elitist to donate if they want to see him to compete in Korea. See if all the haters put money where their mouth is.
Take the money if the 50k goal isn’t reached. Keep doing it each season until the goal is reached
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On February 26 2024 15:47 FFXthebest wrote:
If I was Serral, I would start a $50k gofundme page “if you want me to play in GSL”. Ask all his haters and Korean elitist to donate if they want to see him to compete in Korea. See if all the haters put money where their mouth is.
Take the money if the 50k goal isn’t reached. Keep doing it each season until the goal is reached
So basically, if you're poor, your opinion doesn't matter? Okay
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On February 26 2024 15:47 FFXthebest wrote:
If I was Serral, I would start a $50k gofundme page “if you want me to play in GSL”. Ask all his haters and Korean elitist to donate if they want to see him to compete in Korea. See if all the haters put money where their mouth is.
Take the money if the 50k goal isn’t reached. Keep doing it each season until the goal is reached
Well, Serral is going to the military, so that isn't an option.
Also, why would he do that if he doesn't want to uproot his familiar life in Finland for a few months? Money is no doubt part of the equation, but don't underestimate how big of an impact it can have to move to a new country with a different language, culture, food, etc.with none of your familiar friends or family nearby or even in a similar timezone. It doesn't seem like Serral is as affected by that on short-term trips for Weekender tournaments as some other players (Maru obviously springs to mind, but there have been plenty of interviews with players who complained about how hard it is to find food they like or a comfortable bed during such tournaments). But just because he seems less impacted on short trips doesn't mean he is willing to do it for a longer period. Even in its current reduced format, GSL takes about 2 months.
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EPT
