|
...Would that help his GOAT candidacy more?
My brother argues that GSL is a more difficult tournament due to how much preparation time is allotted between a player's matches.
He continued by saying that in foreigner tournaments like Katowice the time between a player's next match is usually the following day where the whole tournament finishes within a week and the lack of preparation prevents players from getting the most out of themselves.
This combined with his opinion that facing the best Koreans who are incredibly prepared for their matches make it much harder than any international event.
Thoughts?
|
Is it really still a candidacy? Is there really a brother?
|
France12911 Posts
There can’t be a consensus GOAT in sc2. Every candidate has asterisks. French casters were saying GOAT Serral every game and it was the most annoying thing ever, because it’s far from being an obvious thing like Faker, Flash, Jordan, etc.
Like on LoL Faker is so far above anyone else that they have to do « specific roles » GOAT list
|
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year
|
There are only two things that make GSL special as of now: The fact that is in parts offline (I honestly forgot: Is the Group Stage back in the studio?) and the name. Nothing else.
The prizepool, atleast without help from the community, is a joke. I haven't done the exact math but I'm somewhat sure Wardi gave out more money in his last big tournament than GSL does.
If it wasn't for the studio, basically every big community figure could try to make a "world-wide" GSL and it would probably be more lucrative than the actual GSL. So we should really stop overrating GSL by now...it is a regional. Sure, maybe the hardest one to win, but still a regional, nothing more.
But if we, for a second, pretend GSL was still the biggest non-annual tournament: It definetly would have helped the discussion, since the korean elitists would have lost one of their biggest arguments. But in general, since Serral never did participate in GSL (and most likely never will, since it is ludicrous for foreigners to do so economically, not to mention he is about to enter his military service), we can't exactly make any clear guess on how he would perform. Maybe the preparation time would make him even more deadly, maybe it would hinder him. Though I personally would doubt it would hinder him much - feels more like another "koreans are soooooo much better at the game than Serral"-kind of delusion.
|
United States1917 Posts
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
|
Much nonsenses are being had with a 20-1 map score run after going through WC7 playoffs 14-1.
3-0 Solar
3-0 Maru
4-0 Reynor
5-1 herO
10-0 Kato group stages
3-0 Clem
3-1 Dark
4-0 Maru
So much nonsense.
|
On February 15 2024 09:51 LostUsername100 wrote:
Much nonsenses are being had with a 20-1 map score run after going through WC7 playoffs 14-1.
3-0 Solar
3-0 Maru
4-0 Reynor
5-1 herO
10-0 Kato group stages
3-0 Clem
3-1 Dark
4-0 Maru
So much nonsense.
He's the GOAT* for sure
*lost a game though
|
I wish other players would find the time to prepare against Serral.
In their defense, how could they possibly know they will meet on their way to the finals.
|
On February 15 2024 09:51 LostUsername100 wrote:
Much nonsenses are being had with a 20-1 map score run after going through WC7 playoffs 14-1.
3-0 Solar
3-0 Maru
4-0 Reynor
5-1 herO
10-0 Kato group stages
3-0 Clem
3-1 Dark
4-0 Maru
So much nonsense.
Don't forget that zerg is OP and we just have to ignore that 7-1 dominance over Reynor and Dark because it doesn't fit our narrative.
|
On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
Yeah your data and analysis better show that Serral gets all four remaining slots or the SC2 community is going to excommunicate you, and you'll have to start writing about Fortnite.
|
On February 15 2024 07:25 StuDToSs wrote:
...Would that help his GOAT candidacy more?
My brother argues that GSL is a more difficult tournament due to how much preparation time is allotted between a player's matches.
He continued by saying that in foreigner tournaments like Katowice the time between a player's next match is usually the following day where the whole tournament finishes within a week and the lack of preparation prevents players from getting the most out of themselves.
This combined with his opinion that facing the best Koreans who are incredibly prepared for their matches make it much harder than any international event.
Thoughts?
A GSL today? Absolutely not.
If Serral had won a GSL in 2017 it would probably contribute to his GOAT claim more in some peoples' eyes. I don't know what the conversion factor of GSL to world championships was while GSL was deep (2 to 1?), but a GSL today is IMO worth less than winning a season final.
|
If you say something like this in 2018, then yeah I kinda agree. Serral was incredible but he hasn't got tested enough by KR players. He won some series against the best of them but there's no guarantee he could keep doing it once KR players really started to specifically prepare against him.
But whoever still believe the same thing in 2024 are just in pure denial. Serral has been the best player in the world for 5 years. He's won 25 premiere tournaments, even if you discount the region-lock ones he still won more than anyone else. You are kidding yourself if you don't think all the Korean players haven't been trying to prepare against him for the past 5 years. Everyone, especially the top players like Maru, Dark and Rogue, knows the biggest obstacle to their international success will be Serral, if there's one player they have to put in the most effort to prepare against, it's Serral.
And he still went 20-1 to take Katowice 2024. And he has hold a winning record against every single KR players in the last 5 years, many of them are pretty one-sided, including Maru. That's the result of years of supposedly fearsome KR preparation, not mere days or weeks. At this point, it's GSL that has lost its prestigious status because the best player in the world doesn't play in it, not the other way around.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 15 2024 10:53 dysenterymd wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 07:25 StuDToSs wrote:
...Would that help his GOAT candidacy more?
My brother argues that GSL is a more difficult tournament due to how much preparation time is allotted between a player's matches.
He continued by saying that in foreigner tournaments like Katowice the time between a player's next match is usually the following day where the whole tournament finishes within a week and the lack of preparation prevents players from getting the most out of themselves.
This combined with his opinion that facing the best Koreans who are incredibly prepared for their matches make it much harder than any international event.
Thoughts? A GSL today? Absolutely not. If Serral had won a GSL in 2017 it would probably contribute to his GOAT claim more in some peoples' eyes. I don't know what the conversion factor of GSL to world championships was while GSL was deep (2 to 1?), but a GSL today is IMO worth less than winning a season final.
Agreed, it’s a different challenge, and a different format to conquer, but the depth just isn’t there anymore.
This goes for Koreans as well, winning a GSL isn’t as meaningful for their legacy either, in large part because Serral and a lesser but still impactful degree, a Reynor or a Clem aren’t there.
This was fine when you had 20/15/10 really top notch, evenly matched players who are just outright better than everyone else except that outlying guy.
Now I think it’s not outrageous to say that of the current world top 10, GSL is missing at least 3.
It’s a crying shame really that a scene that brought so much joy to many didn’t get much of a helping hand from elsewhere to at least partly address the decline.
|
On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
I mean, it seems like you're intentionally making a questionable list to drive more site traffic through heated discussions. I'd be more surprised if your top 4 made sense, than if they caused more controversy.
|
On February 15 2024 09:51 LostUsername100 wrote:
Much nonsenses are being had with a 20-1 map score run after going through WC7 playoffs 14-1.
3-0 Solar
3-0 Maru
4-0 Reynor
5-1 herO
10-0 Kato group stages
3-0 Clem
3-1 Dark
4-0 Maru
So much nonsense.
Koreans has been Serral’s punching for 5 years now
|
On February 15 2024 12:23 esReveR wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won. I mean, it seems like you're intentionally making a questionable list to drive more site traffic through heated discussions. I'd be more surprised if your top 4 made sense, than if they caused more controversy.
Smart marketing. Doing what’s best for business
Similar to what ESPN does. They make the dumbest statements everyday such as “Lebron is the goat” just for click baits
|
On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
There's pretty strong consensus he's reached the highest skill level peak ever and been the best player in the world for 6 of the 13.5 years the game has existed. It's probably more nonsensical to come up with specific criteria to not to put him on top of the list.
|
On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
Take it easy. You can always leave them unpublished. The site that cannot collectively produce an article on the Katowice winner and doesn't strongly demand such to exist can't be that frustrated if few papers doesn't appear. Particularly so, if winning and participation to the most recent Katowice isn't even part of the scope of time frame and criteria used to determine The Goat.
Your writings and efforts are very good overall. Thanks.
|
lol at counting this year's results towards anyone's legacy given that almost every korean is studying to go back to school or has a side job. nobody's gsl's should be counted since last year.
|
On February 15 2024 14:44 luxon wrote:
lol at counting this year's results towards anyone's legacy given that almost every korean is studying to go back to school or has a side job. nobody's gsl's should be counted since last year.
Valid argument (kind of). But, but, acronym GOAT comes from words, you know.
While nobody can objectively extent the meaning to a future from the present now, the very definition of GOAT must include today now, otherwise we don't talk about the GOAT.
|
On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
Considering you guys left up a thread literally titled: "The death of SC2 as a competitive e-sport," because Serral 4-0ed Maru in the biggest tournament of the year, and then abdicated any kind of editorial responsibility as the historical guardians of Starcraft for the second time because the result offended whomever initially agreed to write the recap--forgive me if my faith in the integrity of the forthcoming list is shaken.
(Happy to be wrong on this and apologize/retract my previous sentiment)
|
Since legacy of the legacy guys was somehow tarnished by Serral's manhandlings, it is of course proper, objective, methodology to interrupt the process as soon as undesirable effects appear. Considering the past practices in these matters in relation to Serral, it seems that kind of cut-and-cherry pick-method is used. Methodology doesn't have to limit itself to only the moment of END of ALL TIMES, you can freely cut-and-pick also middle of the time line if necessary for needs to secure legacy guys resumes untarnished.
In this kind of methodological application it is ultimately irrelevant are the evaluation criteria solid at all. In the GOAT discussion probably everyone is very aware of the fact that GOAT 2014 or GOAT 2015 are intrinsically asymmetric in their position compared to the GOAT of 2018, GOAT of 2023, or GOAT of 2076.
Besides, Cut-and-pick methodology impact directly also to those 'untarnished legacy guys', For example, if Serral's Katowice 2024 win doesn't count to his legacy, neither does BO4 or Finals appearance of the losers of that same tournament.
(Intent of this and several other recent comments of mine are mostly obsoleted due Publication of 'Serral wins IEM Katowice 2024'. Apology accepted.)
|
On February 15 2024 12:06 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 10:53 dysenterymd wrote:On February 15 2024 07:25 StuDToSs wrote:
...Would that help his GOAT candidacy more?
My brother argues that GSL is a more difficult tournament due to how much preparation time is allotted between a player's matches.
He continued by saying that in foreigner tournaments like Katowice the time between a player's next match is usually the following day where the whole tournament finishes within a week and the lack of preparation prevents players from getting the most out of themselves.
This combined with his opinion that facing the best Koreans who are incredibly prepared for their matches make it much harder than any international event.
Thoughts? A GSL today? Absolutely not. If Serral had won a GSL in 2017 it would probably contribute to his GOAT claim more in some peoples' eyes. I don't know what the conversion factor of GSL to world championships was while GSL was deep (2 to 1?), but a GSL today is IMO worth less than winning a season final. Agreed, it’s a different challenge, and a different format to conquer, but the depth just isn’t there anymore. This goes for Koreans as well, winning a GSL isn’t as meaningful for their legacy either, in large part because Serral and a lesser but still impactful degree, a Reynor or a Clem aren’t there. This was fine when you had 20/15/10 really top notch, evenly matched players who are just outright better than everyone else except that outlying guy. Now I think it’s not outrageous to say that of the current world top 10, GSL is missing at least 3. It’s a crying shame really that a scene that brought so much joy to many didn’t get much of a helping hand from elsewhere to at least partly address the decline.
Well, if Code S still had a big prize pool I'd consider it super prestigious even though 3 of the top 10 are missing. I don't doubt that the Korean players try hard to win Code S, but obviously a lower prize-pool event counts less towards your legacy even with fierce competition.
Also the degree to which Code S rewards preparation is greatly diminished with the finals and semifinals being played on the same day. Instead of having 3 playoff matches that a player has to prep deeply for, they have to prep for a 4 player bracket once.
|
Being able to constantly be the best without preparation is a skill in itself.
Having players prepare their games means measuring their preparation potential over their actual skill floor.
Skill floor wise, Serral is leagues above all, skill ceiling wise we'll never know since he never went to GSL but I think he would have done pretty well.
|
Any Korean pro knows it is almost certain they are going to face Serral in the playoffs if they want to win the tournament.
How long has it been? 5 years? Not enough time to prepare some snipe builds?
If Serral played in GSL it wouldn't help his candidancy as GOAT, it would actually help GSL candidancy as the most difficult tournament.
|
1) A wild part of this is that he 3-0ed Clem, the 2nd best Terran in the world ATM, and STILL had snipe builds ready for Maru
2) We will never see him play a Finals with true prep time in an environment like Peak GSL -- even GSL doesn't really have the "prep time" factor it used to -- and that's a bummer. It would have been fascinating to see Serral go up against one of Korea's best after an entire teamhouse of top guys had a week to come up with a game plan against him -- it used to be unthinkable for a guy living alone to be the best SC2 player in the world, let alone someone living outside of KR.
3) To be clear, Serral's my GOAT, but some of these hypotheticals are a little interesting. However, "some of these hypotheticals are a little interesting" isn't really a compelling argument vs. "he won't stop destroying everyone he faces."
|
On February 15 2024 23:34 Spirral wrote:
Any Korean pro knows it is almost certain they are going to face Serral in the playoffs if they want to win the tournament.
How long has it been? 5 years? Not enough time to prepare some snipe builds?
If Serral played in GSL it wouldn't help his candidancy as GOAT, it would actually help GSL candidancy as the most difficult tournament.
Well that’s the only excuse the Korean elitist has to cope.
To be honest, there is hardly any prepared build is ANY GSL games for the last 5-6 years. All games are pretty much standard games, with the exception of Classic and Rogue games. (They actually come up with some fun builds)
GSL has been weak since 2018, the hardest tournaments are the once’s Serral’s attends
Home story cup > GSL.
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 15 2024 12:23 esReveR wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won. I mean, it seems like you're intentionally making a questionable list to drive more site traffic through heated discussions. I'd be more surprised if your top 4 made sense, than if they caused more controversy.
This actually might be the dumbest thing I've ever read on this site. You do realize I have an editor right? Even if I was farming you for views (make sure to visit tl.net in public libraries, ideally on as many computers as possible) you really think that would get through my standards and Wax's? Also, The fact that you think I'd stir up shit on an article series with so much gravity is NONSENSE.
Keep making posts that add nothing of consequence to the discussion other than make noise for noise's sake 
|
There must be some way to circumvent this eternally locked regionalism of GSL. Maybe Serral and other prominent SC2 producer individuals could organize The Great Serral League, where prize money would be partially surrendered by Serral (from his IEM katowice 2022 and 2024 winnings for example), from other Dudes (like Wardi) and sponsors, from growd funding, and from other commercial sources. Finnish Defence Forces could provide some helping hand and facilities for apparent PR-benefits. The GSL would be at least first Invitational (during Serral's handicapping military service) but would in theory ease a lot the participation of Korean pros serving in their military, if FDF would push the issue a little bit. Two seasons would fit pretty nicely within time frame of Serral's military service in the sports school, and for convenience and coziness they could be easily labelled as 'Code S' too (S for Serral). All Korean GSL elite would be invited as well as Foreigner elite. Tournaments would be held in real field camp environment and guys could enjoy FDF's nice warm tents during their tournament visit. 3 tournament GSL would be possible if Serral is selected to go through longer NCO or Reserve Officer course. Saudi money could be siphoned in via variety of betting and other companies' sponsorships (For example, Finnish Tank fleet need always some oil, more in reserve then better) if economic basis of the GSL is still too weak...
We only need some enthusianism from Serral's part, some high ranking FDF Serral fanboi Major General, one hyperrich Saudi-prince, a little bit good will from the Korean Army, and hype-capable StarCraft 2 audience.
Tournaments would be off-line. 
|
People acting like korean leagues are worth the prestige now. Foreign tournaments are more prestigious and more competitive because no one plays sc2 in korea anymore. It's only the same korean pros who used to play sc2, milking the hell out of the dying scene in Korea. Wherever Serral participates is the most prestigious and most competitive tournament.
|
On February 16 2024 00:42 Shinokuki wrote:
People acting like korean leagues are worth the prestige now. Foreign tournaments are more prestigious and more competitive because no one plays sc2 in korea anymore. It's only the same korean pros who used to play sc2, milking the hell out of the dying scene in Korea. Wherever Serral participates is the most prestigious and most competitive tournament.
You act as if Europe isn't just as stale as Korea
|
On February 16 2024 00:15 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 12:23 esReveR wrote:On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won. I mean, it seems like you're intentionally making a questionable list to drive more site traffic through heated discussions. I'd be more surprised if your top 4 made sense, than if they caused more controversy. This actually might be the dumbest thing I've ever read on this site. You do realize I have an editor right? Even if I was farming you for views (make sure to visit tl.net in public libraries, ideally on as many computers as possible) you really think that would get through my standards and Wax's? Also, The fact that you think I'd stir up shit on an article series with so much gravity is NONSENSE. Keep making posts that add nothing of consequence to the discussion other than make noise for noise's sake
Bit offtopic, but just as good as a moment do to it then any other:
A huge thank you to you for the work you put into your Top 10 and anything surrounding it. Doesn't matter if I agree with the outcome or not, I definetly respect the work. Not agreeing with the outcome or certain positions is totally fine, but the constant thrashing from some people really gets on my nerve. When I did my Walk of Fame it atleast was just counting stuff, got that done in an hour or something like that. So I can't really fathom the work that would go into ten+ of these articles and the thoughts beforehand. But I do now the frustration when people get personal because "their" player isn't on a rank they think he should be - and how it immediately switches from "I disagree" to "you did everything wrong, your list is shit and you are terrible, xxx is the best ever and your list must be in a way to show that!"
Sorry for the rambling, just wanted to say thank you. And that you are a terrible person and did everything wrong in case Serral isn't on top!!!1
|
On February 16 2024 00:51 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 00:15 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 15 2024 12:23 esReveR wrote:On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won. I mean, it seems like you're intentionally making a questionable list to drive more site traffic through heated discussions. I'd be more surprised if your top 4 made sense, than if they caused more controversy. This actually might be the dumbest thing I've ever read on this site. You do realize I have an editor right? Even if I was farming you for views (make sure to visit tl.net in public libraries, ideally on as many computers as possible) you really think that would get through my standards and Wax's? Also, The fact that you think I'd stir up shit on an article series with so much gravity is NONSENSE. Keep making posts that add nothing of consequence to the discussion other than make noise for noise's sake Bit offtopic, but just as good as a moment do to it then any other: A huge thank you to you for the work you put into your Top 10 and anything surrounding it. Doesn't matter if I agree with the outcome or not, I definetly respect the work. Not agreeing with the outcome or certain positions is totally fine, but the constant thrashing from some people really gets on my nerve. When I did my Walk of Fame it atleast was just counting stuff, got that done in an hour or something like that. So I can't really fathom the work that would go into ten+ of these articles and the thoughts beforehand. But I do now the frustration when people get personal because "their" player isn't on a rank they think he should be - and how it immediately switches from "I disagree" to "you did everything wrong, your list is shit and you are terrible, xxx is the best ever and your list must be in a way to show that!" Sorry for the rambling, just wanted to say thank you. And that you are a terrible person and did everything wrong in case Serral isn't on top!!!1
I'm boycotting GSL if Serral isn't on top!!!
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 16 2024 00:51 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 00:15 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 15 2024 12:23 esReveR wrote:On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won. I mean, it seems like you're intentionally making a questionable list to drive more site traffic through heated discussions. I'd be more surprised if your top 4 made sense, than if they caused more controversy. This actually might be the dumbest thing I've ever read on this site. You do realize I have an editor right? Even if I was farming you for views (make sure to visit tl.net in public libraries, ideally on as many computers as possible) you really think that would get through my standards and Wax's? Also, The fact that you think I'd stir up shit on an article series with so much gravity is NONSENSE. Keep making posts that add nothing of consequence to the discussion other than make noise for noise's sake Bit offtopic, but just as good as a moment do to it then any other: A huge thank you to you for the work you put into your Top 10 and anything surrounding it. Doesn't matter if I agree with the outcome or not, I definetly respect the work. Not agreeing with the outcome or certain positions is totally fine, but the constant thrashing from some people really gets on my nerve. When I did my Walk of Fame it atleast was just counting stuff, got that done in an hour or something like that. So I can't really fathom the work that would go into ten+ of these articles and the thoughts beforehand. But I do now the frustration when people get personal because "their" player isn't on a rank they think he should be - and how it immediately switches from "I disagree" to "you did everything wrong, your list is shit and you are terrible, xxx is the best ever and your list must be in a way to show that!" Sorry for the rambling, just wanted to say thank you. And that you are a terrible person and did everything wrong in case Serral isn't on top!!!1
That's very kind of you. I've enjoyed reading the posts and the discussion surrounding the articles a great deal, but I'm limited to what I can say/want to say until the series is complete. Once it does, however, I'll be making some blog posts in which I'll be going into greater detail and fielding any questions people have. I'm hoping I'll see a lot of you there and I'm excited to get super nerdy about everything.
|
Serral is the Goat now, doesn't matter if he plays in GSL or not
|
On February 16 2024 00:50 Durnuu wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 00:42 Shinokuki wrote:
People acting like korean leagues are worth the prestige now. Foreign tournaments are more prestigious and more competitive because no one plays sc2 in korea anymore. It's only the same korean pros who used to play sc2, milking the hell out of the dying scene in Korea. Wherever Serral participates is the most prestigious and most competitive tournament. You act as if Europe isn't just as stale as Korea
There are barelyyyy any viewers in Korea. Heck koreans can't even name who is in top 8 for katowice. If they did a korean only tour in afreeca without "GSL" title, lowkey would get 40 viewers and I'm not even joking.
|
On February 16 2024 02:11 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 00:50 Durnuu wrote:On February 16 2024 00:42 Shinokuki wrote:
People acting like korean leagues are worth the prestige now. Foreign tournaments are more prestigious and more competitive because no one plays sc2 in korea anymore. It's only the same korean pros who used to play sc2, milking the hell out of the dying scene in Korea. Wherever Serral participates is the most prestigious and most competitive tournament. You act as if Europe isn't just as stale as Korea There are barelyyyy any viewers in Korea. Heck koreans can't even name who is in top 8 for katowice. If they did a korean only tour in afreeca without "GSL" title, lowkey would get 40 viewers and I'm not even joking.
It's really really sad how low it is. All that production value, even making condensed highlight versions of matches so that people don't need to watch the matches in full... and even those only get a couple hundred views (total, not concurrent). Even with KR being much smaller than all the English speakers in the world, it's still really small.
Like damn, KRs really really aren't into SC2 at all are they. It's pretty wild to me, even small and not that good games could get better viewership I believe... are they just turned off by SC2 because of all the drama in the past?
|
On February 16 2024 02:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 02:11 Shinokuki wrote:On February 16 2024 00:50 Durnuu wrote:On February 16 2024 00:42 Shinokuki wrote:
People acting like korean leagues are worth the prestige now. Foreign tournaments are more prestigious and more competitive because no one plays sc2 in korea anymore. It's only the same korean pros who used to play sc2, milking the hell out of the dying scene in Korea. Wherever Serral participates is the most prestigious and most competitive tournament. You act as if Europe isn't just as stale as Korea There are barelyyyy any viewers in Korea. Heck koreans can't even name who is in top 8 for katowice. If they did a korean only tour in afreeca without "GSL" title, lowkey would get 40 viewers and I'm not even joking. It's really really sad how low it is. All that production value, even making condensed highlight versions of matches so that people don't need to watch the matches in full... and even those only get a couple hundred views (total, not concurrent). Even with KR being much smaller than all the English speakers in the world, it's still really small. Like damn, KRs really really aren't into SC2 at all are they. It's pretty wild to me, even small and not that good games could get better viewership I believe... are they just turned off by SC2 because of all the drama in the past?
BW is like a cultural icon to Korea so it's no wonder SC2 can't fully replace it and SC2 kept drifting away from mainstream every year. SC2 looks very different from BW in terms of art and graphics so it never really took off. Good thing about SC2 is that it is WAYYYYY more popular world wide than BW ever was.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 16 2024 03:19 Shinokuki wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 02:54 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On February 16 2024 02:11 Shinokuki wrote:On February 16 2024 00:50 Durnuu wrote:On February 16 2024 00:42 Shinokuki wrote:
People acting like korean leagues are worth the prestige now. Foreign tournaments are more prestigious and more competitive because no one plays sc2 in korea anymore. It's only the same korean pros who used to play sc2, milking the hell out of the dying scene in Korea. Wherever Serral participates is the most prestigious and most competitive tournament. You act as if Europe isn't just as stale as Korea There are barelyyyy any viewers in Korea. Heck koreans can't even name who is in top 8 for katowice. If they did a korean only tour in afreeca without "GSL" title, lowkey would get 40 viewers and I'm not even joking. It's really really sad how low it is. All that production value, even making condensed highlight versions of matches so that people don't need to watch the matches in full... and even those only get a couple hundred views (total, not concurrent). Even with KR being much smaller than all the English speakers in the world, it's still really small. Like damn, KRs really really aren't into SC2 at all are they. It's pretty wild to me, even small and not that good games could get better viewership I believe... are they just turned off by SC2 because of all the drama in the past? BW is like a cultural icon to Korea so it's no wonder SC2 can't fully replace it and SC2 kept drifting away from mainstream every year. SC2 looks very different from BW in terms of art and graphics so it never really took off. Good thing about SC2 is that it is WAYYYYY more popular world wide than BW ever was.
Yeah it’s like trying to introduce ‘Jazz 2.0’ to New Orleans or something
|
On February 15 2024 11:52 Nasigil wrote:
If you say something like this in 2018, then yeah I kinda agree. Serral was incredible but he hasn't got tested enough by KR players. He won some series against the best of them but there's no guarantee he could keep doing it once KR players really started to specifically prepare against him.
But whoever still believe the same thing in 2024 are just in pure denial. Serral has been the best player in the world for 5 years. He's won 25 premiere tournaments, even if you discount the region-lock ones he still won more than anyone else. You are kidding yourself if you don't think all the Korean players haven't been trying to prepare against him for the past 5 years. Everyone, especially the top players like Maru, Dark and Rogue, knows the biggest obstacle to their international success will be Serral, if there's one player they have to put in the most effort to prepare against, it's Serral.
And he still went 20-1 to take Katowice 2024. And he has hold a winning record against every single KR players in the last 5 years, many of them are pretty one-sided, including Maru. That's the result of years of supposedly fearsome KR preparation, not mere days or weeks. At this point, it's GSL that has lost its prestigious status because the best player in the world doesn't play in it, not the other way around.
He doesn't hold a winning record against DRG
|
On February 15 2024 09:27 Mizenhauer wrote:
The last four GOAT articles are gonna be fire with all the nonsense going on since Serral won.
yeah man at this point I kinda wish you give the top spot to Rogue just to avoid the shit hit the fan. But no pressure you do you
|
On February 16 2024 04:21 MrIronGolem27 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 11:52 Nasigil wrote:
If you say something like this in 2018, then yeah I kinda agree. Serral was incredible but he hasn't got tested enough by KR players. He won some series against the best of them but there's no guarantee he could keep doing it once KR players really started to specifically prepare against him.
But whoever still believe the same thing in 2024 are just in pure denial. Serral has been the best player in the world for 5 years. He's won 25 premiere tournaments, even if you discount the region-lock ones he still won more than anyone else. You are kidding yourself if you don't think all the Korean players haven't been trying to prepare against him for the past 5 years. Everyone, especially the top players like Maru, Dark and Rogue, knows the biggest obstacle to their international success will be Serral, if there's one player they have to put in the most effort to prepare against, it's Serral.
And he still went 20-1 to take Katowice 2024. And he has hold a winning record against every single KR players in the last 5 years, many of them are pretty one-sided, including Maru. That's the result of years of supposedly fearsome KR preparation, not mere days or weeks. At this point, it's GSL that has lost its prestigious status because the best player in the world doesn't play in it, not the other way around. He doesn't hold a winning record against DRG
Fellas, I went into prison in 2012 and just got out, is DRG still the best Zerg in the world?
|
On February 16 2024 04:21 MrIronGolem27 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 11:52 Nasigil wrote:
If you say something like this in 2018, then yeah I kinda agree. Serral was incredible but he hasn't got tested enough by KR players. He won some series against the best of them but there's no guarantee he could keep doing it once KR players really started to specifically prepare against him.
But whoever still believe the same thing in 2024 are just in pure denial. Serral has been the best player in the world for 5 years. He's won 25 premiere tournaments, even if you discount the region-lock ones he still won more than anyone else. You are kidding yourself if you don't think all the Korean players haven't been trying to prepare against him for the past 5 years. Everyone, especially the top players like Maru, Dark and Rogue, knows the biggest obstacle to their international success will be Serral, if there's one player they have to put in the most effort to prepare against, it's Serral.
And he still went 20-1 to take Katowice 2024. And he has hold a winning record against every single KR players in the last 5 years, many of them are pretty one-sided, including Maru. That's the result of years of supposedly fearsome KR preparation, not mere days or weeks. At this point, it's GSL that has lost its prestigious status because the best player in the world doesn't play in it, not the other way around. He doesn't hold a winning record against DRG
Which so funny honestly. I'm pretty sure the only other players who have winning records over Serral are guys that were strong before 2017 when he wasn't great yet. Even players who have had notably beat him often like Clem, Reynor, Solar have pretty bad (30-35%) records against him in matches. And yet, DRG comes out on top with a negative map win rate. They're all from the last few years too, not some irrelevant dreamhack group stages back when Serral was a kid and DRG a top player
|
Winning a GSL around 2018-2020ish would have solidified Serral's GOAT claim years earlier, yeah. As for right now? Who cares. GSL's prestige is in the mud. The Korean player pool is so laughably thin. And the prize pools are approaching 2011 Code A level lmfao. I am not someone who focuses on prize pools to determine the prestige of a tournament at *all* but comparing it to previous seasons it's a good indication of where the scene is at.
|
its BS because even if Koreans have so much time to prepare..imagine if serral had all that time to prepare? he destroys them everywhere else under the same conditions when playing weekenders. there's no Korean special power they have when they have weeks to prepare. if serral can destroy them with no preparation imagine what he can do when he does prepare, but its all a dumb argument. if you play any tournament there are no excuses. get it done or you don't.
|
No, this is stupid. Maru would trade his Code S titles for World Championsship titles. Maru is the only other player in the GOAT debate and he didn't win a Blizzcon/Katowice and that is a bigger smear on his resumé than not having a GSL is on Serral's. This tournament alone should also not settle the debate, just because he beats Maru in the finals in a convincing fashion. But he was also clearly the GOAT before and I don't think it's that close, but of course I can see why people think Maru. The way you can justify Maru being the GOAT, is if you bring balance into it. But first you would have to convince me that Z>T, though historically at least Z has been shitting on P a lot more than T.
|
On February 15 2024 08:23 FFXthebest wrote:
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year
Trap and Gumiho used to be good planners too.
|
Just look at the current GSL qualifier and you know how prestigous that tournament still is.
In round 2:
Gumiho qualified with a single win over TY, the warst player of the WTL
Nightmare qualified by beating Rex twice
Stats qualified with one win over sOs
In the first round players also only needed like 2 wins to qualify
|
On February 16 2024 21:49 dbRic1203 wrote:
Just look at the current GSL qualifier and you know how prestigous that tournament still is.
In round 2:
Gumiho qualified with a single win over TY, the warst player of the WTL
Nightmare qualified by beating Rex twice
Stats qualified with one win over sOs
In the first round players also only needed like 2 wins to qualify
It's so sad that sOs once again barely didn't qualify cus he lost 1-2 to Stats (last time was Katowice)
|
Fun fact:
Without the regionals Serral would have 4350 EPT points.
Top Korean player (as of now Dark) has 3755.
In other words Serral would have been #1 in Korea rankings without participating in single GSL and weekly.
Just saying.
|
On February 16 2024 21:49 dbRic1203 wrote:
Just look at the current GSL qualifier and you know how prestigous that tournament still is.
In round 2:
Gumiho qualified with a single win over TY, the warst player of the WTL
Nightmare qualified by beating Rex twice
Stats qualified with one win over sOs
In the first round players also only needed like 2 wins to qualify
But we were told it was the hardest tournament to qualify!
|
On February 17 2024 07:25 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 16 2024 21:49 dbRic1203 wrote:
Just look at the current GSL qualifier and you know how prestigous that tournament still is.
In round 2:
Gumiho qualified with a single win over TY, the warst player of the WTL
Nightmare qualified by beating Rex twice
Stats qualified with one win over sOs
In the first round players also only needed like 2 wins to qualify But we were told it was the hardest tournament to qualify!
Why are there so many dogshit bad faith posts from new accounts lately?
It was the hardest tournament to qualify for. Keyword being was. The old Code A qualifiers was one of the most insanely difficult things in the world, so much so that world-class players were stuck in the qualifiers for over a year like Life, Seed and PartinG. Guys who went straight to Code S or GSL Champion.
Of course, that was over a decade ago. They have to keep lowering the GSL player count nowadays because there's not enough people even attempting to qualify anymore. If it was still 32 there'd be more people qualifying than not qualifying. The Korean scene has been in an absolutely dreadful state for years. It's been in a slow death ever since the matchfixing scandal.
The last time qualifying for GSL was this genuinely brutal, horrific thing was back when it was single elimination. Then they had a third place match, which gave it a bit more leeway, and turned it from downright unreasonable to very tough but still doable, and then at some point in LotV (2018?) made it double elimination. After they made it double elimination brackets, a bunch of foreigners started qualifying, even ones that weren't particularly good in the broader scene. Not a coincidence, shit became way easier.
EDIT: Oh yeah at some point they started giving people two chances too. You can play in both the qualifier days, which is insane. You used to get one shot and that was it.
|
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol.
|
On February 17 2024 11:43 phodacbiet wrote:
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol.
It’s the only coping method the KR elitist and Serral’s haters are grabbing onto.
GSL preparation is overrated for years. It was exaggerated cause preparation was done during the early years when the game were still not figure out yet.
|
On February 17 2024 11:46 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 11:43 phodacbiet wrote:
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol. It’s the only coping method the KR elitist and Serral’s haters are grabbing onto. GSL preparation is overrated for years. It was exaggerated cause preparation was done during the early years when the game were still not figure out yet.
If you want to ignore the long time historic precedent of weaker players sniping better players with specifically prepared builds across literal years of competition and different games then sure
|
|
|
France12911 Posts
On February 17 2024 11:46 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 11:43 phodacbiet wrote:
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol. It’s the only coping method the KR elitist and Serral’s haters are grabbing onto. GSL preparation is overrated for years. It was exaggerated cause preparation was done during the early years when the game were still not figure out yet.
I guess Reynor is just worse than Bunny then
|
On February 15 2024 08:23 FFXthebest wrote:
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year
Not just that, but it sure looked like Serral had some builds specifically prepared for Maru. He didn't bust out roach rushes against Clem. So what makes it so that Serral can prepare specific builds for Maru in a weekender, but Maru could only do so in the GSL?
|
On February 15 2024 08:23 FFXthebest wrote:
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year
Tell that to Reynor.
|
On February 17 2024 19:20 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2024 08:23 FFXthebest wrote:
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year Not just that, but it sure looked like Serral had some builds specifically prepared for Maru. He didn't bust out roach rushes against Clem. So what makes it so that Serral can prepare specific builds for Maru in a weekender, but Maru could only do so in the GSL?
Maybe because Maru had 20 minutes to prepare but Serral had like 2 hours
|
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed.
He was never really dominant in HotS, ‘merely’ one of the top dogs. If one is making that kind of cutoff it kind of necessitates Maru swapping to being a top 10 player rather than competing for the number 1 slot
I think ultimately Legacy made some design decisions that ultimately bolstered Zerg macro play, especially the more things got figured out. And on a more general level, I think 12 workers was on balance a mistake and not the way to go about trying to spread the action out and make it less deathbally. But I think I dislike that call more from a fundamental design level than just one of pure balance.
But it hasn’t been that extreme. Serral’s earlier big wins came at a time when Maru did his four-peat, and he was regularly facing and having to play excellently to beat the likes of Stats or a Classic in latter stages of these big tournies. TvZ and PvZ weren’t in that bad a shape. Inno beat him at WESG to win his last big tournament.
Katowice 2018
1st - Rogue
2nd - Classic
3rd/4th - Serral, Maru
5th thru 8th - TY, Solar, Trap, Dear
To just pick one example, in retrospect that’s a pretty damn healthy looking Ro8 compared to now. Zergs were still ultimately winning some of these big prizes,
Latterly, the past year or two it feels that Serral’s just a small notch above his fellow Zergs, and the rest are still eminently beatable. Plenty of TvZers can beat, if aren’t necessarily favoured bar maybe Clem and Maru the rest of the top Zergs. herO on a good day can beat the Zergs not named Serral, as he showed back-to-back at Masters Colisseum and Katowice.
Unfortunately I guess the talent is just too thin on the ground now, mostly for Protoss, for it to really matter all that much what the actual state of balance is.
I’d definitely concede that there are chunks in the middle where Zerg was just too potent overall. There were definitely periods where the betting was basically ‘which of the Big 4 Zergs’ being miles out in front of literally anyone else. But Serral’s span has just been too long for that to have been the case for its entirety.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 17 2024 16:43 RPR_Tempest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 11:46 FFXthebest wrote:On February 17 2024 11:43 phodacbiet wrote:
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol. It’s the only coping method the KR elitist and Serral’s haters are grabbing onto. GSL preparation is overrated for years. It was exaggerated cause preparation was done during the early years when the game were still not figure out yet. If you want to ignore the long time historic precedent of weaker players sniping better players with specifically prepared builds across literal years of competition and different games then sure
There’s less of it in recent years, or at least it feels it. Perhaps it’s just a perception/memory thing, but I recall much more of it in groups, where weaker players were sniping better players, than in playoffs where roughly equal players would use it to gain an edge.
Scarlett doing a spine rush to topple Rogue, sOs’ legendary proxy nexus. Bunny pulling out some funkiness on Reynor etc.
Whereas Rogue Roaching Maru to death to once again deny the man his G5L was the last one I really recall.
There’s obviously not zero prep, but it feels top clashes more resemble a weekender equivalent than they used to, where you rotate around openers and play very standard games, with maybe a few pocket builds. Maybe the game is just that much more figured out, there’s less funky maps that facilitate bespoke strats, or maybe there’s just less depth so the top guys can go deep by just playing standard, and consider it the percentage play versus potentially donating a set if something weird and wonderful doesn’t come off.
In retrospect I feel it kinda sucks that Reynor got sniped. Full props to the likes of Rabbit ofc, but it was the last time a potential contender went over there from foreign land, and Reynor certainly wasn’t doing it for the cash. But now there’s an even bigger economic hit, and Code S is further contracted. Feels there’s close to zero reason for a foreigner who might win it to go decamp to Korea
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 17 2024 23:06 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 16:43 RPR_Tempest wrote:On February 17 2024 11:46 FFXthebest wrote:On February 17 2024 11:43 phodacbiet wrote:
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol. It’s the only coping method the KR elitist and Serral’s haters are grabbing onto. GSL preparation is overrated for years. It was exaggerated cause preparation was done during the early years when the game were still not figure out yet. If you want to ignore the long time historic precedent of weaker players sniping better players with specifically prepared builds across literal years of competition and different games then sure There’s less of it in recent years, or at least it feels it. Perhaps it’s just a perception/memory thing, but I recall much more of it in groups, where weaker players were sniping better players, than in playoffs where roughly equal players would use it to gain an edge. Scarlett doing a spine rush to topple Rogue, sOs’ legendary proxy nexus. Bunny pulling out some funkiness on Reynor etc. Whereas Rogue Roaching Maru to death to once again deny the man his G5L was the last one I really recall. There’s obviously not zero prep, but it feels top clashes more resemble a weekender equivalent than they used to, where you rotate around openers and play very standard games, with maybe a few pocket builds. Maybe the game is just that much more figured out, there’s less funky maps that facilitate bespoke strats, or maybe there’s just less depth so the top guys can go deep by just playing standard, and consider it the percentage play versus potentially donating a set if something weird and wonderful doesn’t come off. In retrospect I feel it kinda sucks that Reynor got sniped. Full props to the likes of Rabbit ofc, but it was the last time a potential contender went over there from foreign land, and Reynor certainly wasn’t doing it for the cash. But now there’s an even bigger economic hit, and Code S is further contracted. Feels there’s close to zero reason for a foreigner who might win it to go decamp to Korea
The ability to prep for series is really muddled for much of SC2 history as KeSPA players were paid to participate in Proleague. If you had an Code S match coming up, but you were also slated to appear in Proleague that week, the focus is on Proleague. How much this detracted from players getting to prep to the fullest is impossible to predict, but it is a factor worth noting.
|
On February 17 2024 22:49 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. He was never really dominant in HotS, ‘merely’ one of the top dogs. If one is making that kind of cutoff it kind of necessitates Maru swapping to being a top 10 player rather than competing for the number 1 slot.
You're right, I'm misremembering how dominant Maru was in Heart of the Swarm.
But I still don't believe achievements in Legacy of the Void are worth nearly as much as those that came before.
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 17 2024 23:18 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 22:49 WombaT wrote:On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. He was never really dominant in HotS, ‘merely’ one of the top dogs. If one is making that kind of cutoff it kind of necessitates Maru swapping to being a top 10 player rather than competing for the number 1 slot. You're right, I'm misremembering how good Maru was in Heart of the Swarm. But I still don't believe achievements in Legacy of the Void are worth nearly as much as those that came before.
Maru was the best Terran in the world for the first 2/3rds of 2014 (and arguably the best Korean player overall) and the first half of 2015 (where he and life were the defacto best players). He won OSL (beating the best two players in the world in the semis/finals) and SSL and made a ton of Round of 4s while ranking among the winningest players in Proleague.
You really couldn't dominate in Hots the way Maru has from 2018 onwards. INnoVation, Rain, Maru and Classic won more KIL than anyone in Hots, but each of them only won twice across a roughly 4 year period. It's safe to say that Maru's achievements in Hots are on par or better than everyone who played the expansion.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 17 2024 23:16 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 23:06 WombaT wrote:On February 17 2024 16:43 RPR_Tempest wrote:On February 17 2024 11:46 FFXthebest wrote:On February 17 2024 11:43 phodacbiet wrote:
People acting like giving a week to prepare for Serral suddenly means there's a much higher chance of beating him or something. The odds are still the same as if you're running into him at a weekend tournament. Do you think Maru, Dark, Cure, or whichever top Koreans go into these weekend tournament blind? There's a ton of Serral vods, replays, and highlights out there. They are going into these tournaments prepping for who they will run into at the later stage of the tourneys and it's always the same people: Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, Serral, and usually one of those Protoss players that havent retired yet.
What is prepping a week in advance for only Serral is going to do that they can't do when they're at home preparing for a weekend tournament? If they are going to cheese him in GSL, they would bust it out at the weekend tournament. If they are going to macro into a specific build against him in GSL, they would do so as well in a weekend tournament. People forget that giving Maru a week to prep for Serral means Serral has a week to prep against Maru as well. It's not like Serral isn't farming the GSL koreans lol. It’s the only coping method the KR elitist and Serral’s haters are grabbing onto. GSL preparation is overrated for years. It was exaggerated cause preparation was done during the early years when the game were still not figure out yet. If you want to ignore the long time historic precedent of weaker players sniping better players with specifically prepared builds across literal years of competition and different games then sure There’s less of it in recent years, or at least it feels it. Perhaps it’s just a perception/memory thing, but I recall much more of it in groups, where weaker players were sniping better players, than in playoffs where roughly equal players would use it to gain an edge. Scarlett doing a spine rush to topple Rogue, sOs’ legendary proxy nexus. Bunny pulling out some funkiness on Reynor etc. Whereas Rogue Roaching Maru to death to once again deny the man his G5L was the last one I really recall. There’s obviously not zero prep, but it feels top clashes more resemble a weekender equivalent than they used to, where you rotate around openers and play very standard games, with maybe a few pocket builds. Maybe the game is just that much more figured out, there’s less funky maps that facilitate bespoke strats, or maybe there’s just less depth so the top guys can go deep by just playing standard, and consider it the percentage play versus potentially donating a set if something weird and wonderful doesn’t come off. In retrospect I feel it kinda sucks that Reynor got sniped. Full props to the likes of Rabbit ofc, but it was the last time a potential contender went over there from foreign land, and Reynor certainly wasn’t doing it for the cash. But now there’s an even bigger economic hit, and Code S is further contracted. Feels there’s close to zero reason for a foreigner who might win it to go decamp to Korea The ability to prep for series is really muddled for much of SC2 history as KeSPA players were paid to participate in Proleague. If you had a Code S match coming up, but you were also slated to appear in Proleague that week, the focus is on Proleague. How much this detracted from players getting to prep to the fullest is impossible to predict, but it is a factor worth noting.
That scheduling and priority issue did always irk me, so well-noted.
But if anything I think we’re seeing less GSL prep now, or at least the past couple of years, than previously, and that’s without that conflict and impediment.
Lacking an ‘in’ to what happens behind cold doors, one can only guess of course. A wonky, unique build will look obviously prepared, but a well-executed standard game less so. It doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t prepared. Maybe player x spent 10 games testing out that weird build, found it worked well in those practice games, and played 100 straight-up standard games against their practice partner, seeing playing like that as the optimal way that needed plenty of prep.
|
wow, its been that long since i posted the email i subcribed with in 2010 ish i no longer have!
OP, i categorically have to say yes. serral would have won the gsl many times over. its as simple as that. he has handed the asses of every player in the gsl. im just going to say it, insert any god player. serral would have beaten them all. Yes we are fond of the good old days, nestea, flash, jaedong, polt, life, maru, idra(the goat for me, just never felt the same way about sc when he retired) just name any one of them. Serrals play when he burst on the scene was like chess, the moves were always there, someone came along with a renewed vigour. He i would say improved the play of sc and everyone still playing 10 fold. Hes the best there ever was at the same hands down. weve had some pretty greast players but serral would win the gsl more times than not i believe. oh well. sg is round the corner, its not looking too good from my point of view so lets hope this glorious game keeps going.
|
On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed.
Nice try on revision on history. Maru was mid tier player in WOL and HOTS. If we are just talking about terrans, he sits comfortably behind innovation Taeja MMA and maybe Dream during HOTS period.
Cool, the kid had won a SSL, guess what many other players won something similar during that period as well. Dear, classic, stardust, MC etc. it was until 2018 that’s when he started to make a name out of himself
Skill wise, HOTS games were quite low level compare to now. The micro and macro was laughably bad compare to players now. GM players now could probably win everything
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 18 2024 00:27 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. Nice try on revision on history. Maru was mid tier player in WOL and HOTS. If we are just talking about terrans, he sits comfortably behind innovation Taeja MMA and maybe Dream during HOTS period. Cool, the kid had won a SSL, guess what many other players won something similar during that period as well. Dear, classic, stardust, MC etc. it was until 2018 that’s when he started to make a name out of himself Skill wise, HOTS games were quite low level compare to now. The micro and macro was laughably bad compare to players now. GM players now could probably win everything
Dream ahead Maru of is one of the funniest thing I've ever seen. Dream has a losing record in two of the three matchups when it comes to Code S (he does has very good TvP on a small sample size, but he has a losing record overall). He won zero Korean lans during his career and never won a Premier Event all while being worse in Proleague in Maru. Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort!
PS in case you're wondering, here are Dream's career Code S stats.
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/dream.jpg)
34-41 overall and 4-12 vs Terran.........................
|
On February 17 2024 20:25 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 19:20 Acrofales wrote:On February 15 2024 08:23 FFXthebest wrote:
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year Not just that, but it sure looked like Serral had some builds specifically prepared for Maru. He didn't bust out roach rushes against Clem. So what makes it so that Serral can prepare specific builds for Maru in a weekender, but Maru could only do so in the GSL? Maybe because Maru had 20 minutes to prepare but Serral had like 2 hours
I somehow don't think Several brainstormed a roach rush in the 2 hours leading up to the finals. I suspect he spent a good amount of time before Katowice studying VODs and replays of Maru to make sure he knew how he played, and decided that playing big macro games against him on specific maps was not a great idea. So he figured out alternatives. Just like it's obvious that he didn't craft a build order and placement for Equilibrium in the few hours before fighting Dark. That was clearly the brainchild of the European Zerg collective in preparation for Katowice.
|
On February 18 2024 02:46 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 20:25 Charoisaur wrote:On February 17 2024 19:20 Acrofales wrote:On February 15 2024 08:23 FFXthebest wrote:
GSL is overrated these days
Preparation is just a good excuse to use when Serral’s stomps the Koreans.
if you watch the GSL’s hardly any of the games are unique or has a specific prepared build. The only Koreans that really showed us “prepared” builds were Classic and Rogue
Every pro in the world will choose IEM Katowice over GSL.
GSL you can fail and try again next season, whereas you only have one chance at Katowice during the year Not just that, but it sure looked like Serral had some builds specifically prepared for Maru. He didn't bust out roach rushes against Clem. So what makes it so that Serral can prepare specific builds for Maru in a weekender, but Maru could only do so in the GSL? Maybe because Maru had 20 minutes to prepare but Serral had like 2 hours I somehow don't think Several brainstormed a roach rush in the 2 hours leading up to the finals. I suspect he spent a good amount of time before Katowice studying VODs and replays of Maru to make sure he knew how he played, and decided that playing big macro games against him on specific maps was not a great idea. So he figured out alternatives. Just like it's obvious that he didn't craft a build order and placement for Equilibrium in the few hours before fighting Dark. That was clearly the brainchild of the European Zerg collective in preparation for Katowice.
Oh I'm sure he didn't come up with the builds in the 2 hours on the fly without having practiced them before, but having 2 hours instead of 20 minutes to make specific plans on which map which builds exactly will be played is definitely an advantage
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
If you’ve prepped it’s a matter of taking out your notebook or phone app or whatever and refreshing yourself on what you already did. It shouldn’t make a difference if it’s 20 mins or two hours in terms of prep.
I could see it being impactful in terms of rhythm and mentality. Or if Maru had been playing a TvZ and had to show his hand so to speak.
That quick, and uneven turnaround before the Grand Finals I’d absolutely file in my ‘shouldn’t be the case for various reasons, but not really a factor for this specific thing’ folder
Also Maru did prep, he ultimately lost because it’s a garbage map for super late game TvZ, but he had a pretty tailored gameplan for Radushet. He played very greedily indeed, the map’s architecture for your initial setup is actually pretty good for almost guaranteeing that Maru gets to his lategame setup, and he exploited it well.
He just couldn’t close it out because Radhuset swings wildly from actually being good for ‘turtle Terran’ with the initial buildup, to absolutely awful by the time you’re trying to secure the north and southmost peripheral bases.
I’m also not so sure it’s all that great for all-inning Zergs anyway, and indeed if we’re talking mind games and set planning, if there’s one map that Serral would expect just that, it’s the map he picked and is known to be hard for Terran’s at this level. So it seems a pretty smart mindgame and gameplan for Maru to just go hyper-greed, and he almost did it. If Serral had planned to be more aggressive, and Maru soaked it up and picked him apart with a huge eco we would have been saying it was a set-planning masterpiece.
We also saw some of his cyclone shenanigans, which he doesn’t exactly bring out all that often. Serral just seemed to have the answers that a recent victim like Reynor did not
|
woops posted in wrong topic
|
On February 18 2024 00:27 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. Nice try on revision on history. Maru was mid tier player in WOL and HOTS. If we are just talking about terrans, he sits comfortably behind innovation Taeja MMA and maybe Dream during HOTS period. Cool, the kid had won a SSL, guess what many other players won something similar during that period as well. Dear, classic, stardust, MC etc. it was until 2018 that’s when he started to make a name out of himself
I already admitted above that I was wrong about Maru being dominant during Heart of the Swarm, but I believe Mizenhauer has shown that you might be over doing it in the other direction.
Skill wise, HOTS games were quite low level compare to now. The micro and macro was laughably bad compare to players now. GM players now could probably win everything
Skill wise, football was quite low level in the 1970s compared to now, but Pele is still considered to be one of the greatest players of all time. He wouldn't shine in a modern team, but damn did he shine back then.
|
There can’t be a consensus GOAT in sc2
Because people cant be objective, but he is the GOAT, period.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 18 2024 07:00 CerebrateHector wrote: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.
|
On February 18 2024 07:06 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +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.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 18 2024 08:02 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +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.
|
On February 18 2024 08:29 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +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?
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 18 2024 09:14 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +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.
|
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 of 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.
|
On February 18 2024 09:34 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +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)
|
@Mumei
Sumo... hmm... now when you said it, someway analogical to Serral is Mongolian foreigner 69th Yokozuna Hakuho, The Athlete to whom I find least difficulties to assign The GOAT - epithet.
I mean, that one who deserves the title most across and over all sports. Of the World. In an era where there must be someone to hold that title, it's Hakuho.
For a single Athletic feat, Alex Honnold's free solo of El Capitan of Yosemite... but uh oh now this goes off topic.
|
On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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)
I think it's pretty clear.
Back in 2012-2016 there were probably a hundred young, motivated korean progamers practicing 10 hours a day in teamhouses with coaches analyzing their play and helping them.
Now there are maybe 20 fulltime korean players practicing from home (foreign scene is more healthy but only very few S tier foreigners have emerged and most are cannon-fodder).
This means that back then if a top player had a bad day in the ro32 they got eliminated right then and there, whereas nowadays a top player even on a bad day probably still makes the ro8. This makes imo tournament wins back then just objectively more impressive because you had to compete with far more top players
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 18 2024 10:25 Mumei wrote:Show nested quote +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. Show nested quote +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
Most sports the level rises over time, as I think in SC2 it has as well. Football is way faster than it used to be, with many tactical developments. But the competition level is roughly the same, it was the world’s number 1 sport with a big global participation, same as now. Golf has came on a ton with development of technique and equipment, but it’s remained relatively static in terms of its relative popularity, the Majors are still the same majors. There’s other factors that have changed in those few (in football the bigger clubs are more monied and relatively stacked) but I shan’t overcomplicate it
While I still feel it’s kinda not possible to compare folks across half a century, you can at least weigh their achievements relatively similarly.
Pele versus Messi, you can’t really compare their club careers as that’s changed massively, but you can at least look at their World Cup legacy as that’s been the biggest, if not necessarily best prize forever. Or I can compare Tiger Woods to Nicklaus in the Majors.
But let’s say football fell off a cliff in popularity and dropped from the world’s number 1 slot, to the 10th. Then we approach apples and orange territory, where one GOAT is playing a sport where way fewer top talents choose it, and there’s that little bit less pressure from the scrutiny you would get as the biggest show in town. Even more variables get added.
Boxing, at least heavyweight boxing is about the only top level sport where the actual skill level has seemingly gone down that I can think of.
|
On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:
Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort!
I wouldn't say Maru is over Dream but i don't think it's ludicrous at all to say that Taeja and MMA are above Maru by end of HotS. MMA is only a maybe, but there are reasonable cases you could argue for.
Taeja most people would agree was above Maru, if you asked them in HotS (Taeja getting #3 on TL's last GOAT list vs Maru at #13, and higher than Maru was MKP #11, MMA #6, Polt #5. And if we're going by the GOAT HotS list at HotS's end, Maru rose to #6 but Taeja still got #2 right under Life).
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 18 2024 22:46 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:
Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort!
I wouldn't say Maru is over Dream but i don't think it's ludicrous at all to say that Taeja and MMA are above Maru by end of HotS. MMA is only a maybe, but there is a reasonable case for it. Taeja most people would agree was above Maru, if you asked them at the end of HotS (Taeja getting 3rd on TL's last GOAT list vs Maru at #13. Even MKP got above Maru at #11).
Aye it’s difficult, if not close to impossible to cast one’s mind back to the scene up to then, without letting everything that happened afterwards bleed in. There was a fractured scene, a lot of structural flux. And guys like Taeja and MMA were still pretty competitive if we draw the line here. At Blizzcons and the likes, plus elsewhere.
It’s only afterwards where the Kespa influx really fully dominated, and despite his origins I’d still sort of consider Maru a Kespa player really.
At this stage Taeja has a bunch of tournament wins, 2 Ro4s in Code S, a Ro4 in Blizzcon where he took Life to the limit in a classic series (and whoever won that series probably wins the final), as well as the miracle run at IPLTAC, IMO one of the greatest weekend feats we’ve seen to this day.
Maru has a Starleague, and a bunch of pretty consistently good results towards the end of HoTS, and an exceptional Proleague record. He doesn’t even really play in those international weekenders.
Some folks definitely under/overvalue Proleague IMO, it fluctuates pretty wildly but Maru’s still got an impressive body of work nonetheless.
I still feel it’s hard to put Maru above Taeja if we’re drawing this particular line in the sand. But I’d certainly put him above an MKP who’d already dropped off by this point. MKP had already sort of shown he was a pretty one-dimensional player by here, and what’s worse other people were doing that dimension better.
|
On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 00:27 FFXthebest wrote:On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. Nice try on revision on history. Maru was mid tier player in WOL and HOTS. If we are just talking about terrans, he sits comfortably behind innovation Taeja MMA and maybe Dream during HOTS period. Cool, the kid had won a SSL, guess what many other players won something similar during that period as well. Dear, classic, stardust, MC etc. it was until 2018 that’s when he started to make a name out of himself Skill wise, HOTS games were quite low level compare to now. The micro and macro was laughably bad compare to players now. GM players now could probably win everything Dream ahead Maru of is one of the funniest thing I've ever seen. Dream has a losing record in two of the three matchups when it comes to Code S (he does has very good TvP on a small sample size, but he has a losing record overall). He won zero Korean lans during his career and never won a Premier Event all while being worse in Proleague in Maru. Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort! PS in case you're wondering, here are Dream's career Code S stats. 34-41 overall and 4-12 vs Terran.........................
Ya.. nope but nice try
During HoTS there was no argument Maru was better than Taeja. Taeja had better code S results, better blizzcon and more championship. Mama had already a better career than Maru
At the same time some could even argue Polt captain America was better as well.
Also personally, i don’t value the pro league (a proven match fixing league) as much as others.
|
On February 19 2024 00:14 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 18 2024 00:27 FFXthebest wrote:On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. Nice try on revision on history. Maru was mid tier player in WOL and HOTS. If we are just talking about terrans, he sits comfortably behind innovation Taeja MMA and maybe Dream during HOTS period. Cool, the kid had won a SSL, guess what many other players won something similar during that period as well. Dear, classic, stardust, MC etc. it was until 2018 that’s when he started to make a name out of himself Skill wise, HOTS games were quite low level compare to now. The micro and macro was laughably bad compare to players now. GM players now could probably win everything Dream ahead Maru of is one of the funniest thing I've ever seen. Dream has a losing record in two of the three matchups when it comes to Code S (he does has very good TvP on a small sample size, but he has a losing record overall). He won zero Korean lans during his career and never won a Premier Event all while being worse in Proleague in Maru. Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort! PS in case you're wondering, here are Dream's career Code S stats. 34-41 overall and 4-12 vs Terran......................... Ya.. nope but nice try During HoTS there was no argument Maru was better than Taeja. Taeja had better code S results, better blizzcon and more championship. Mama had already a better career than Maru At the same time some could even argue Polt captain America was better as well.
In what world did you live where TaeJa had good code S results?
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 18 2024 23:05 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 22:46 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:
Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort!
I wouldn't say Maru is over Dream but i don't think it's ludicrous at all to say that Taeja and MMA are above Maru by end of HotS. MMA is only a maybe, but there is a reasonable case for it. Taeja most people would agree was above Maru, if you asked them at the end of HotS (Taeja getting 3rd on TL's last GOAT list vs Maru at #13. Even MKP got above Maru at #11). Aye it’s difficult, if not close to impossible to cast one’s mind back to the scene up to then, without letting everything that happened afterwards bleed in. There was a fractured scene, a lot of structural flux. And guys like Taeja and MMA were still pretty competitive if we draw the line here. At Blizzcons and the likes, plus elsewhere. It’s only afterwards where the Kespa influx really fully dominated, and despite his origins I’d still sort of consider Maru a Kespa player really. At this stage Taeja has a bunch of tournament wins, 2 Ro4s in Code S, a Ro4 in Blizzcon where he took Life to the limit in a classic series (and whoever won that series probably wins the final), as well as the miracle run at IPLTAC, IMO one of the greatest weekend feats we’ve seen to this day. Maru has a Starleague, and a bunch of pretty consistently good results towards the end of HoTS, and an exceptional Proleague record. He doesn’t even really play in those international weekenders. Some folks definitely under/overvalue Proleague IMO, it fluctuates pretty wildly but Maru’s still got an impressive body of work nonetheless. I still feel it’s hard to put Maru above Taeja if we’re drawing this particular line in the sand. But I’d certainly put him above an MKP who’d already dropped off by this point. MKP had already sort of shown he was a pretty one-dimensional player by here, and what’s worse other people were doing that dimension better.
You forgot either OSL or SSL. The fact that Maru won two of those despite Terran being absolute dogshit for the first 2/3rds of the year. Maru also made the semifinals of a KIL three times in Hots so he's ahead of TaeJa there.
In 2014, three Terrans qualified for Code S Season 1. Supernova went 0-2, Bbyong lost in the Round of 16, but Maru made the r8 and lost to life. Season 2 was equally bad for Terrans. Maru, Bbyong and supernova made it back, but this time Inno was in as well. Supernova won a game this time, but he and Bbyong went out in the r32. Innovation advanced after getting second in his r32 group, but lost in the r16. Maru, meanwhile, made it all the way to the semifinals and finished the event with the second best win% of anyone that season, ahead of both finalists (Classic and soO).
As for the Proleague stuff, Maru was paid to play in Proleague. That was his primary focus because that's how Korean sc2 was. If you undervalue it, you also underestimate the power of money as motivation. The max contract during the KeSPA years was a little under 40k usd per year. Players were extremely motivated to raise their stature so they could get the best possible salary because you can't sustain yourself on tournament cashes alone. You can be sure Maru gave it his all every time he played for Jin Air.
As for how Maru did representing Jin Air? He had the second best win percentage of any player on high volume (inno is ahead) while in the event (maru won 67% of his games, inno won 68%). These numbers include 2016 because I'm lazy and don't want to do math, but Maru was right up there with ace players like herO, INnoVation, Zest, Flash, Classic and sOs when you cut out 2016.
TaeJa was an incredible player, but his results don't scale as well as I'd like. He never won an event in 2015 or 16 so we're basically looking at a period where half of his wins came in homestory cups and the other half came in dreamhacks.
I think the two weren't all that different in skill at the time (TaeJa walloped soO at BlizzCon 2014(, but Maru's accumulated achievements from that stretch exceeds that of TaeJa by a decent amount.
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 19 2024 00:15 Durnuu wrote:
In what world did you live where TaeJa had good code S results?
The thing that was always held against TaeJa was that he didn't play in Code S enough and never won it. My mind gets blown reading this stuff sometimes.
On February 19 2024 00:14 FFXthebest wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 18 2024 00:27 FFXthebest wrote:On February 17 2024 20:43 MJG wrote:
My personal point of view is that Legacy of the Void has been a game design shitshow, and that heavily dilutes Serral's (otherwise very impressive) achievements. This means that I consider Maru to be the GOAT because he was dominant in versions of the game that I consider to be better designed. Nice try on revision on history. Maru was mid tier player in WOL and HOTS. If we are just talking about terrans, he sits comfortably behind innovation Taeja MMA and maybe Dream during HOTS period. Cool, the kid had won a SSL, guess what many other players won something similar during that period as well. Dear, classic, stardust, MC etc. it was until 2018 that’s when he started to make a name out of himself Skill wise, HOTS games were quite low level compare to now. The micro and macro was laughably bad compare to players now. GM players now could probably win everything Dream ahead Maru of is one of the funniest thing I've ever seen. Dream has a losing record in two of the three matchups when it comes to Code S (he does has very good TvP on a small sample size, but he has a losing record overall). He won zero Korean lans during his career and never won a Premier Event all while being worse in Proleague in Maru. Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort! PS in case you're wondering, here are Dream's career Code S stats. 34-41 overall and 4-12 vs Terran......................... Ya.. nope but nice try During HoTS there was no argument Maru was better than Taeja. Taeja had better blizzcon.
Regarding World Championships, TaeJa's best result came in 2014 when he made the r4. Maru's best finish? He made the round of 4 the prior year. Revisionist history is hilarious. The only metric in which TaeJa outperformed Maru was in weekenders. Everything else either goes Maru's way or it's a wash.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 19 2024 00:27 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2024 23:05 WombaT wrote:On February 18 2024 22:46 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On February 18 2024 00:53 Mizenhauer wrote:
Putting MMA and TaeJa above him is equally ludicrous, but good effort!
I wouldn't say Maru is over Dream but i don't think it's ludicrous at all to say that Taeja and MMA are above Maru by end of HotS. MMA is only a maybe, but there is a reasonable case for it. Taeja most people would agree was above Maru, if you asked them at the end of HotS (Taeja getting 3rd on TL's last GOAT list vs Maru at #13. Even MKP got above Maru at #11). Aye it’s difficult, if not close to impossible to cast one’s mind back to the scene up to then, without letting everything that happened afterwards bleed in. There was a fractured scene, a lot of structural flux. And guys like Taeja and MMA were still pretty competitive if we draw the line here. At Blizzcons and the likes, plus elsewhere. It’s only afterwards where the Kespa influx really fully dominated, and despite his origins I’d still sort of consider Maru a Kespa player really. At this stage Taeja has a bunch of tournament wins, 2 Ro4s in Code S, a Ro4 in Blizzcon where he took Life to the limit in a classic series (and whoever won that series probably wins the final), as well as the miracle run at IPLTAC, IMO one of the greatest weekend feats we’ve seen to this day. Maru has a Starleague, and a bunch of pretty consistently good results towards the end of HoTS, and an exceptional Proleague record. He doesn’t even really play in those international weekenders. Some folks definitely under/overvalue Proleague IMO, it fluctuates pretty wildly but Maru’s still got an impressive body of work nonetheless. I still feel it’s hard to put Maru above Taeja if we’re drawing this particular line in the sand. But I’d certainly put him above an MKP who’d already dropped off by this point. MKP had already sort of shown he was a pretty one-dimensional player by here, and what’s worse other people were doing that dimension better. You forgot either OSL or SSL. The fact that Maru won two of those despite Terran being absolute dogshit for the first 2/3rds of the year. Maru also made the semifinals of a KIL three times in Hots so he's ahead of TaeJa there. In 2014, three Terrans qualified for Code S Season 1. Supernova went 0-2, Bbyong lost in the Round of 16, but Maru made the r8 and lost to life. Season 2 was equally bad for Terrans. Maru, Bbyong and supernova made it back, but this time Inno was in as well. Supernova won a game this time, but he and Bbyong went out in the r32. Innovation advanced after getting second in his r32 group, but lost in the r16. Maru, meanwhile, made it all the way to the semifinals and finished the event with the second best win% of anyone that season, ahead of both finalists (Classic and soO). As for the Proleague stuff, Maru was paid to play in Proleague. That was his primary focus because that's how Korean sc2 was. If you undervalue it, you also underestimate the power of money as motivation. The max contract during the KeSPA years was a little under 40k usd per year. Players were extremely motivated to raise their stature so they could get the best possible salary because you can't sustain yourself on tournament cashes alone. You can be sure Maru gave it his all every time he played for Jin Air. As for how Maru did representing Jin Air? He had the second best win percentage of any player on high volume (inno is ahead) while in the event (maru won 67% of his games, inno won 68%). These numbers include 2016 because I'm lazy and don't want to do math, but Maru was right up there with ace players like herO, INnoVation, Zest, Flash, Classic and sOs when you cut out 2016. TaeJa was an incredible player, but his results don't scale as well as I'd like. He never won an event in 2015 or 16 so we're basically looking at a period where half of his wins came in homestory cups and the other half came in dreamhacks. I think the two weren't all that different in skill at the time (TaeJa walloped soO at BlizzCon 2014(, but Maru's accumulated achievements from that stretch exceeds that of TaeJa by a decent amount.
Aye I thought I’d mentioned he’d won a Starleague, albeit still undercounting by 1, pays to refresh one’s memory sometimes!
You are correct on much there IMO, equally weekenders have kind of long been the lifeblood of much of the scene, and something of a constant at least. But didn’t always have the most prestige fields either.
Guess that’s just the rub of it when you have quite a fragmented scene with different priorities.
|
Really useful utility of Aligulac would be a possibility to filter tournaments relative to their times' latest list (i.e. at worst max 2 weeks inaccuracy) in a way that 1) overall ELO level of tournament would be easy to see, 2) 'Difficulty' of tournament paths would be easy to see for each player displayed in both ELO of that time but also in relation to a placement of a player on the latest list, for example average placement of players of a tournament on the Aligulac list for group stage, RO16, RO8, etc.
Comparisons between players and tournaments would be much more easier to do, and much more objective because of that. Of course ELOs between different eras are not directly compatible, but player placements within lists are, regardless of a list, as well as relative ELO difference within each list. Also, Factoring economic incentive in as measurement of competition would be much easier to do.
What ever, it is impossible factor in, ennumerate, or model all things relevant to something like 'prestige'.
|
The only question that matters for GOAT status at this point is: If not Serral, then who else?
MVP? He may have been the King of Wings, but that was a short period of time at this point, and the level of play dramatically increased over the years. Out of the Hots kings, could you suggest Life? Taeja? MC? Polt? Innovation? Zest? None of them have claims nearly as strong as Serral at this point. In the LoV era you've got a handful of greats, but the strongest contender is widely considered to be Maru, and Serral just put a definitive stamp on that particular question.
I just can't see anyone else with a better claim to the title.
|
On February 19 2024 00:30 Mizenhauer wrote:
Regarding World Championships, TaeJa's best result came in 2014 when he made the r4. Maru's best finish? He made the round of 4 the prior year. Revisionist history is hilarious. The only metric in which TaeJa outperformed Maru was in weekenders. Everything else either goes Maru's way or it's a wash.
I feel the way you say that it's "the only metric" sounds a bit unfair, as if that one metric wasn't also the strongest part of Taeja's resume, one where he dominated compared to Maru. And in regards to saying "everything else" goes to Maru, there aren't that many metrics to begin with.
I still stand that it's not ludicrous to think that Taeja > Maru at the end of HotS, as that was the majority opinion at the time. I would say that it might be arguably "revisionist history" to try to claim that it's a ludicrous opinion to have, as it was the popular opinion at the time.
On February 18 2024 23:05 WombaT wrote:
At this stage Taeja has a bunch of tournament wins, 2 Ro4s in Code S, a Ro4 in Blizzcon where he took Life to the limit in a classic series (and whoever won that series probably wins the final), as well as the miracle run at IPLTAC, IMO one of the greatest weekend feats we’ve seen to this day.
Yeah i didn't remember Taeja dominating that IPLTAC and pulling that insane feat off, until you wrote about it in another recent post in one of these threads. I think you had a good point about how it's possible today we've kind of forgotten how important and serious team leagues were, and how it was a significant metric players considered back then. When people talk about Top 15 Goats and talk about Taeja for example, it's often "looking back, I don't think those weekend tournies were that important", and don't talk about team league performance. This goes for any player ofc, not just Taeja.
|
Yeah TaeJa was definitely considered above Maru in HotS. People were considering TaeJa to be the greatest international tournament player ever. People scoffed at how high he was on that initial TL list, but it's not like he was way off.
Maru was acknowledged as a tremendous player, but at the time TaeJa was definitely the more popular/one considered better. I don't think anyone would argue that Maru was a better player in Korea, but they had different specialties, and TaeJa happened to be much, much better at his particular specialty than Maru was at his.
On February 19 2024 07:55 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
Yeah i didn't remember Taeja dominating that IPLTAC and pulling that insane feat off, until you wrote about it in another recent post in one of these threads. I think you had a good point about how it's possible today we've kind of forgotten how important and serious team leagues were, and how it was a significant metric players considered back then.
GSTL and Proleague, yeah, definitely. Nobody genuinely gave a hot shit about IPLTAC though. It was just a bit of fun entertainment. For a lot of weaker NA teams it was probably something they committed 100% of themselves to, but for actual proper eSports teams it was just a side hustle. Online vs offline team league, there's no comparison.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
IPL Tac finals were offline iirc
|
On February 19 2024 10:03 RPR_Tempest wrote:
Yeah TaeJa was definitely considered above Maru in HotS. People were considering TaeJa to be the greatest international tournament player ever. People scoffed at how high he was on that initial TL list, but it's not like he was way off.
Maru was acknowledged as a tremendous player, but at the time TaeJa was definitely the more popular/one considered better. I don't think anyone would argue that Maru was a better player in Korea, but they had different specialties, and TaeJa happened to be much, much better at his particular specialty than Maru was at his.
Taeja was more popular because he played in international events. Maru almost never did, he would make like 1 international appearance a year. The bias was huge, if you ever went back and watched the Maru vs Life IEM finals, the casters genuinely speak about Maru as if he's some new kid just breaking out, despite him being the best terran in Korea for the last 2 years.
Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player.
Taeja was, in retrospect, overrated. At least if we're being HotS specific. Most of his wins were Dreamhacks and a couple Homestory Cups, nothing close to Starleagues. He never played in Proleague, didn't do much for the entire year of 2015 (and 2016), and he would bomb in the GSLs that he competed in. He was a tremendous player in international events, but everyone remembers his highlight games against INno or Zest, while ignoring that they performed several times better, for longer, in the more cutthroat region.
Taeja's speciality was smaller weekend events, but those really weren't the priority for anyone playing in Kespa. It was Proleague first, and then individual leagues. International fans never seemed to grasp that. It's not like Taeja was winning the World Championship events either like sOs did, he was mostly a menace in B tier tournaments.
|
On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:
Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player.
How is Maru "the best performing Starleague player" in HotS? He didn't reach the finals of GSL once in HotS (Innovation did it thrice, winning two) and "only" won SSL and OSL once each of course, but at best that puts him besides Innovation and definetly doesn't "outperform his race" with that.
He even missed out on two of the three WCS Finals that took place in HotS, showing that he didn't accumulate enough points - Innovation qualified for all three.
|
On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 10:03 RPR_Tempest wrote:
Yeah TaeJa was definitely considered above Maru in HotS. People were considering TaeJa to be the greatest international tournament player ever. People scoffed at how high he was on that initial TL list, but it's not like he was way off.
Maru was acknowledged as a tremendous player, but at the time TaeJa was definitely the more popular/one considered better. I don't think anyone would argue that Maru was a better player in Korea, but they had different specialties, and TaeJa happened to be much, much better at his particular specialty than Maru was at his. Taeja was more popular because he played in international events. Maru almost never did, he would make like 1 international appearance a year. The bias was huge, if you ever went back and watched the Maru vs Life IEM finals, the casters genuinely speak about Maru as if he's some new kid just breaking out, despite him being the best terran in Korea for the last 2 years. Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player. Taeja was, in retrospect, overrated. At least if we're being HotS specific. Most of his wins were Dreamhacks and a couple Homestory Cups, nothing close to Starleagues. He never played in Proleague, didn't do much for the entire year of 2015 (and 2016), and he would bomb in the GSLs that he competed in. He was a tremendous player in international events, but everyone remembers his highlight games against INno or Zest, while ignoring that they performed several times better, for longer, in the more cutthroat region. Taeja's speciality was smaller weekend events, but those really weren't the priority for anyone playing in Kespa. It was Proleague first, and then individual leagues. International fans never seemed to grasp that. It's not like Taeja was winning the World Championship events either like sOs did, he was mostly a menace in B tier tournaments.
Starleagues/Proleague definitely were the most famed traditionally (other than WC), but even if Taeja's weekender tournaments are smaller each, he still won so many of them that he made more money from those weekend tournaments than Innovation did his Starleague tournaments in HotS, and Taeja made more than 2x the amount as Maru made in Starleague tournaments in HotS. I think that has to be considered because prize money is a big metric. Who is the winner, the one who won more money or the one who won more fame according to traditional KR standards? It's definitely a preference thing, but I think it's probably roughly equivalent if we're asking what players care most about.
(Players like MC wanting to compete in EU, Life wanting to compete more internationally like Taeja, Polt wanting to compete in AM. The scene was all over the place, and while traditional SC fans value KR starleagues the most, there were definitely a lot of global fans who didn't care and didn't value their region's tournaments as less).
Also stuff like Slayers preparing a secret build (BFH drop TvZ) for MLG Anaheim, a T2 event with much less prize pool than GSL at the time, evidences that KRs still took international weekender events serious enough to prepare and reveal secret builds for, instead of saving them for KR tournaments.
|
On February 19 2024 13:10 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:
Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player.
How is Maru "the best performing Starleague player" in HotS? He didn't reach the finals of GSL once in HotS (Innovation did it thrice, winning two) and "only" won SSL and OSL once each of course, but at best that puts him besides Innovation and definetly doesn't "outperform his race" with that. He even missed out on two of the three WCS Finals that took place in HotS, showing that he didn't accumulate enough points - Innovation qualified for all three.
In terms of wins, Maru, INno, and Classic all won 2 Starleagues.
And if you go season by season, Maru was much more consistent, he did better than of both of them in more seasons than they did to him by like a 2:1 ratio. So yeah, it's completely reasonable to say he was the best Starleague player. At the very worst, he was on par with INno/soO/Rain/anyone else you want to throw in there.
As for outperforming his race, why do you think he got nicknamed "The Fourth Race" back in 2014? No one in SC2 history stood up to rough balance the way Maru did. Not only was he making back-to-back GSL playoffs as the only terran, but some of those seasons only 2 others would even make ro32. He almost won a GSL when terran was dead, if not for Classic's surprise phoenix shenanigans.
|
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do.
|
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:Show nested quote +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
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 19 2024 13:14 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 12:51 Fango wrote:On February 19 2024 10:03 RPR_Tempest wrote:
Yeah TaeJa was definitely considered above Maru in HotS. People were considering TaeJa to be the greatest international tournament player ever. People scoffed at how high he was on that initial TL list, but it's not like he was way off.
Maru was acknowledged as a tremendous player, but at the time TaeJa was definitely the more popular/one considered better. I don't think anyone would argue that Maru was a better player in Korea, but they had different specialties, and TaeJa happened to be much, much better at his particular specialty than Maru was at his. Taeja was more popular because he played in international events. Maru almost never did, he would make like 1 international appearance a year. The bias was huge, if you ever went back and watched the Maru vs Life IEM finals, the casters genuinely speak about Maru as if he's some new kid just breaking out, despite him being the best terran in Korea for the last 2 years. Maru's HotS results were astounding. He outperformed his own race more than any other player ever did. He was the best performing Starleague player and back then you'd have 100 full-time and sponsored pros enter each season. He also ended up being the best Proleague player. Taeja was, in retrospect, overrated. At least if we're being HotS specific. Most of his wins were Dreamhacks and a couple Homestory Cups, nothing close to Starleagues. He never played in Proleague, didn't do much for the entire year of 2015 (and 2016), and he would bomb in the GSLs that he competed in. He was a tremendous player in international events, but everyone remembers his highlight games against INno or Zest, while ignoring that they performed several times better, for longer, in the more cutthroat region. Taeja's speciality was smaller weekend events, but those really weren't the priority for anyone playing in Kespa. It was Proleague first, and then individual leagues. International fans never seemed to grasp that. It's not like Taeja was winning the World Championship events either like sOs did, he was mostly a menace in B tier tournaments. Starleagues/Proleague definitely were the most famed traditionally (other than WC), but even if Taeja's weekender tournaments are smaller each, he still won so many of them that he made more money from those weekend tournaments than Innovation did his Starleague tournaments in HotS, and Taeja made more than 2x the amount as Maru made in Starleague tournaments in HotS. I think that has to be considered because prize money is a big metric. Who is the winner, the one who won more money or the one who won more fame according to traditional KR standards? It's definitely a preference thing, but I think it's probably roughly equivalent if we're asking what players care most about. (Players like MC wanting to compete in EU, Life wanting to compete more internationally like Taeja, Polt wanting to compete in AM. The scene was all over the place, and while traditional SC fans value KR starleagues the most, there were definitely a lot of global fans who didn't care and didn't value their region's tournaments as less). Also stuff like Slayers preparing a secret build (BFH drop TvZ) for MLG Anaheim, a T2 event with much less prize pool than GSL at the time, evidences that KRs still took international weekender events serious enough to prepare and reveal secret builds for, instead of saving them for KR tournaments.
Some of those early weekenders were absolutely huge hype trains. When foreign fans got to see these Korean legends show up, and Korean players got to meet said fans and play in new locales.
I really think it was a mistake even then, and certainly in retrospect when Kespa came along especially that the scene didn’t have a better coordinated calendar. Transplanting Proleague over from a one nation scene where you’re the only gig in town pro gaming wise, without adjustments to it really, to a scene where it’s international and indeed this particular iteration of SC2 was bigger internationally than in Korea, which was an inversion.
When push comes to shove, Proleague was the prestige gig where players earned their salaries. If there’s a big match coming up, well you’re practicing for that rather than a GSL match, and forget travelling to an international tourney if there’s a clash.
Not being critical of Kespa in particular, but across the board. I mean SC2 I think thrived most because there was an openness to the whole thing, an intermingling of scenes. We had foreign participants and English casters from the off in GSL, eSF/GSL sending the crème de la creme of their talent to MLGs, the mighty Mvp, the notorious Nestea and a certain Toss who was most certainly Boss. You had new innovations like streaming and people getting to interact with their fans while showing their dazzling chops.
I think all the formats have their place. The preparation and genuine team play and planning of Proleague, and the chance to root for an actual team in direct competition with one another, versus merely being the jersey your favourite players where. The longer, drawn out unfurling of that season’s GSL narratives, and a weekender where 50 stories are born and die as we all argue on LR threads.
But come this time, that openness was less of a thing, the scene was getting more fragmented. I enjoyed Proleague but it was a very closed shop structurally. Nothing wrong with that inherently, but it started having a knock-on effect to the wider calendar by its existence and it being prioritised. Again, this is a wider failing of various orgs not coordinating, not Kespa in particularly.
You end up with Koreans splitting into native and ‘foreign’ Koreans, the fields at theoretically equivalent weekenders vary wildly, it starts to become a bit of a mess.
Partisanship and truly fanatic fanboys aside, I think all people really want is for all this to be in better sync, with a smattering of different, top-level tournaments, the big boys going it at it at international weekenders more often, and possibly some meaningful regional competition too. Did I enjoy seeing Maru play in Proleague and Starleagues, I mean sure most fans should, but would have been cool to see him rock up at a Dreamhack type event too.
While I obviously think SC2 would have seen some decline at some stage, the collective really did keep messing up the calendar for a year and it really didn’t help.
A Starleague, ideally 2 for Korea. Proleague, and the top dogs are free for internationals. Your classic weekenders and some form of a foreigner circuit for that scene to build (I think they nailed it recently in that regard). Plus your WC type events.
Hindsight is of course 20/20, but plenty of that was obviously an issue at the time
|
France12911 Posts
On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do.
I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV
Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already.
It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ
Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
|
On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
Yeah I think there's some truth to this, I especially remember Maru struggling vs Mech in mid-late 2015 as he refused to play it himself and often ran against a wall against the likes of Inno or Flash
|
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
The "handful" number of top tier players that could threaten him has also decreased though. We didn't only lose mid-tier players but also real championship contenders like Rogue, Inno, Stats, TY.
How many real championship contenders are left now, maybe 5?
5 years ago as well as in Flash's bw era the number of fellow championship contenders was much higher
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable.
The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5.
More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively.
So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc).
But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid.
So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history.
So that's my case, but now some meandering notions...
The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then.
|
On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too.
INno being untouchable when terran was good and Maru being transcendent when terran was bad is a weird thing to try and explain
Was Maru really just vulnerable in TvT? Similarly, Serral surprisingly didn't dominate 2019 when zerg was imba because he kept losing in the mirror (he lost Katowice, Blizzcon, and two WCS events to ZvZ). Maybe mirrors are just more figured out than the other matchups, such that the best players can't always distinguish themselves.
But I think in Maru's case it was also down to playstyle. INno played the absolute standard meta, whatever build had the highest % to win he could play it to perfection, and would hence win the highest % of games. But when terran sucked, that meant playing the meta build was probably not gonna work out.
On the other hand, Maru marched to the beat of his own drum, he played so different to everyone else that it didn't matter if the race was generally behind in the meta. He embodied "The Fourth Race".
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 20 2024 03:25 Charoisaur 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:
[quote]
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 The "handful" number of top tier players that could threaten him has also decreased though. We didn't only lose mid-tier players but also real championship contenders like Rogue, Inno, Stats, TY. How many real championship contenders are left now, maybe 5? 5 years ago as well as in Flash's bw era the number of fellow championship contenders was much higher
I can’t think of many better examples from other sports than Andy Murray. He still won Olympic medals, multiple Grand Slams, tons of regular tournaments and his raw numbers are up there. And he still managed to get to world number one.
In any other era he’s winning 10+ Grand Slams and is in GOAT conversations, but Federer/Nadal/Djokovic are there. Plus it’s not a 100% lock he’s beating everyone else, although he usually would at his peak.
Serral’s got the same issue, just in reverse. He clearly passes the eye test and skill test, and I think he’d be extremely competitive whenever he was to be playing, but he’s something of the beneficiary of a less cutthroat era, whereas Murray’s timing was a bit unfortunate for him.
But ultimately you can’t choose your era, you just gotta hope people are fair when appraising you.
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 20 2024 04:24 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. INno being untouchable when terran was good and Maru being transcendent when terran was bad is a weird thing to try and explain Was Maru really just vulnerable in TvT? Similarly, Serral surprisingly didn't dominate 2019 when zerg was imba because he kept losing in the mirror (he lost Katowice, Blizzcon, and two WCS events to ZvZ). Maybe mirrors are just more figured out than the other matchups, such that the best players can't always distinguish themselves. But I think in Maru's case it was also down to playstyle. INno played the absolute standard meta, whatever build had the highest % to win he could play it to perfection, and would hence win the highest % of games. But when terran sucked, that meant playing the meta build was probably not gonna work out. On the other hand, Maru marched to the beat of his own drum, he played so different to everyone else that it didn't matter if the race was generally behind in the meta. He embodied "The Fourth Race".
![[image loading]](/staff/Mizenhauer/maru_the_last_terran.jpg)
spotv always had the best promo material
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 20 2024 04:16 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable. The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5. More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively. So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc). But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid. So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history. So that's my case, but now some meandering notions... The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then.
Hey it’s a pretty compelling case! Indeed I shall concede that actually I am wrong, and why to follow…
For a real elite player, above average in a matchup is enough for it to be perceived as an Achilles Heel. It’s probably worth me being more clear there in future.
See - Serral’s weak ZvZ. Which objectively isn’t weak at all, but put next to a ZvP which may be the strongest individual matchup we’ve ever seen, and a ZvT good enough to sweep Clem/Maru in a bracket, two undisputed best ZvTers right now, it probably is relatively speaking. Hell he even dropped a set to Dark! One of the most even 3-1s I’ve seen in a while that one, such tiny margins.
Proleague is an interesting one for balance perceptions, useful data ofc. But a prepped Bo1 format too, in a scene where longer series and limited prep have been something of the norm. To the degree that Protoss is still pretty bad right now, but even now I think would thrive in that particular format. It’s an aside, I like Proleague as I always make sure to add! Precisely because it’s such a different format and doesn’t necessarily map to the wider tournament scene all that neatly.
Maru’s TvT did improve also, massively so relative to the field. But the field ain’t quite what it used to be. For me he’s just been a great all-round player for forever, and having good TvT naturally comes with that territory. If I was to think of real TvT titans I’d still give Mvp and TY that edge, even if Maru does eclipse their numbers eventually. In the same sense that most elite Toss have good PvP, but ask me for an elite PvPer and it’s Zest.
I think to be a great mirror player, you either have to have an extra gear in that matchup specifically, or be an all-rounder that’s so dominant in mirror you gap the field. It perhaps skirts too close to feels and intuitions (AKA the prism I’m usually trapped in), but that’s my kind of metric here. It’s crippled old man Mvp playing a set for the ages against an Innovation who’d long since outstripped him as the scene’s resdident terror.
Anyway as per your one some digging myself:- I set an arbitrary cutoff of Jan 2019, although I did look at some numbers post that date too. I felt military departures and players returning and taking a while to get in shape distorted things, or some of the names I had in mind really started to slump.
- Filtered for both Proleague and individual offline events
- Trust my rough summation of the numbers because it’s a pain in the arse to write this all up with just my phone ^_^
Here’s my vague findings:
- Maru is resolutely dancing around 50% in both sets and match-score with various TvT titans of the time, using various filters.
- That’s not a dissimilar theme to his non-mirrors against other top players, he’ll bounce further into the 40s versus some, 60s versus others so there’s a bit more fluctuation.
- I started Aligulacing like crazy with various combinations and outside of the rare time someone just has a bunny (hey some cricket slang for fellow fans), most head-to-heads between the top players of this era don’t deviate much from flipping a coin.
- Not only does this somewhat demolish my intuitive feelings, it’s also a real stark illustration of quite how ruthlessly competitive top level SC2 was in this period. From quite early in a bracket you’re likely going to be having to run a gauntlet where you’re going up against guys where best case you might have a 55-60% historical advantage over.
- I’d wager that if we relatively segmented the scene, and did a similar relative comparison from 2019 thru to the current day, you’re going to see that gap start to widen by a non-negligible amount. A few initial hits, not even Serral involved seem to initially bear that out. Perhaps one for the more mathematically inclined, or at least not one trying to do it all on a phone screen.
My central premise was effectively that TY (I had him most in mind stylistically, although not exclusively) was a bad matchup for Maru. Ergo a period where Maru could beat any Protoss at a time where TY couldn’t even if the fate of the planet depended on it, would probably be beneficial to Maru in terms of bracket. The numbers don’t really bear that out at all.
I wonder if there’s a certain unintentional bias at work, makes certain things stick in the mind, especially with Maru. You’re used to Maru bringing his considerable assets to bear to take out anyone, when he wins it’s just Maru doing Maru things. When he loses it’s usually because of his (relative) weaknesses compared to another’s strengths. I still remember, angrily him doing stupid builds against Reynor one WC, way more than I maybe remember him having some clever set plans in that same tournament.
So you end up with this perception that galaxy brain TY compensates for his lesser speed with tactical brilliance and has Maru’s number in TvT, that he has the edge in this clash of styles and skillsets. When in reality it’s essentially a coin flip matchup historically.
|
United States1917 Posts
On February 20 2024 06:19 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 04:16 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable. The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5. More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively. So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc). But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid. So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history. So that's my case, but now some meandering notions... The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then. Hey it’s a pretty compelling case! Indeed I shall concede that actually I am wrong, and why to follow… For a real elite player, above average in a matchup is enough for it to be perceived as an Achilles Heel. It’s probably worth me being more clear there in future. See - Serral’s weak ZvZ. Which objectively isn’t weak at all, but put next to a ZvP which may be the strongest individual matchup we’ve ever seen, and a ZvT good enough to sweep Clem/Maru in a bracket, two undisputed best ZvTers right now, it probably is relatively speaking. Hell he even dropped a set to Dark! One of the most even 3-1s I’ve seen in a while that one, such tiny margins. Proleague is an interesting one for balance perceptions, useful data ofc. But a prepped Bo1 format too, in a scene where longer series and limited prep have been something of the norm. To the degree that Protoss is still pretty bad right now, but even now I think would thrive in that particular format. It’s an aside, I like Proleague as I always make sure to add! Precisely because it’s such a different format and doesn’t necessarily map to the wider tournament scene all that neatly. Maru’s TvT did improve also, massively so relative to the field. But the field ain’t quite what it used to be. For me he’s just been a great all-round player for forever, and having good TvT naturally comes with that territory. If I was to think of real TvT titans I’d still give Mvp and TY that edge, even if Maru does eclipse their numbers eventually. In the same sense that most elite Toss have good PvP, but ask me for an elite PvPer and it’s Zest. I think to be a great mirror player, you either have to have an extra gear in that matchup specifically, or be an all-rounder that’s so dominant in mirror you gap the field. It perhaps skirts too close to feels and intuitions (AKA the prism I’m usually trapped in), but that’s my kind of metric here. It’s crippled old man Mvp playing a set for the ages against an Innovation who’d long since outstripped him as the scene’s resdident terror. Anyway as per your one some digging myself: - I set an arbitrary cutoff of Jan 2019, although I did look at some numbers post that date too. I felt military departures and players returning and taking a while to get in shape distorted things, or some of the names I had in mind really started to slump.
- Filtered for both Proleague and individual offline events
- Trust my rough summation of the numbers because it’s a pain in the arse to write this all up with just my phone ^_^
Here’s my vague findings: - Maru is resolutely dancing around 50% in both sets and match-score with various TvT titans of the time, using various filters.
- That’s not a dissimilar theme to his non-mirrors against other top players, he’ll bounce further into the 40s versus some, 60s versus others so there’s a bit more fluctuation.
- I started Aligulacing like crazy with various combinations and outside of the rare time someone just has a bunny (hey some cricket slang for fellow fans), most head-to-heads between the top players of this era don’t deviate much from flipping a coin.
- Not only does this somewhat demolish my intuitive feelings, it’s also a real stark illustration of quite how ruthlessly competitive top level SC2 was in this period. From quite early in a bracket you’re likely going to be having to run a gauntlet where you’re going up against guys where best case you might have a 55-60% historical advantage over.
- I’d wager that if we relatively segmented the scene, and did a similar relative comparison from 2019 thru to the current day, you’re going to see that gap start to widen by a non-negligible amount. A few initial hits, not even Serral involved seem to initially bear that out. Perhaps one for the more mathematically inclined, or at least not one trying to do it all on a phone screen.
My central premise was effectively that TY (I had him most in mind stylistically, although not exclusively) was a bad matchup for Maru. Ergo a period where Maru could beat any Protoss at a time where TY couldn’t even if the fate of the planet depended on it, would probably be beneficial to Maru in terms of bracket. The numbers don’t really bear that out at all. I wonder if there’s a certain unintentional bias at work, makes certain things stick in the mind, especially with Maru. You’re used to Maru bringing his considerable assets to bear to take out anyone, when he wins it’s just Maru doing Maru things. When he loses it’s usually because of his (relative) weaknesses compared to another’s strengths. I still remember, angrily him doing stupid builds against Reynor one WC, way more than I maybe remember him having some clever set plans in that same tournament. So you end up with this perception that galaxy brain TY compensates for his lesser speed with tactical brilliance and has Maru’s number in TvT, that he has the edge in this clash of styles and skillsets. When in reality it’s essentially a coin flip matchup historically.
That was a wonderful and thoughtful response. I agree that I would place TY and Mvp above Maru when it comes to TvT prowess As you said, Maru's numbers start to creep up a lot, but he's right around there regardless.
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.
|
On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do.
I don't know...feels like Maru was neither the most succesful nor the most consistent Starleague player, with each of these titles going to Innovation and soO respectively. But I will admit, he performed much better than I remembered - and I also have to correct myself, he managed to get to two WCS Finals, not just one. So it is definetly closer than I originally thought.
Also...why would anyone call Maru "the fourth race" (which is just a cheap copy of Moons nickname btw) in 2014 when Innovation won a GSL that year, while Maru didn't win anything?
|
On February 20 2024 07:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I don't know...feels like Maru was neither the most succesful nor the most consistent Starleague player, with each of these titles going to Innovation and soO respectively. But I will admit, he performed much better than I remembered - and I also have to correct myself, he managed to get to two WCS Finals, not just one. So it is definetly closer than I originally thought. Also...why would anyone call Maru "the fourth race" (which is just a cheap copy of Moons nickname btw) in 2014 when Innovation won a GSL that year, while Maru didn't win anything?
Inno won GSL in S3 after terran was buffed and was performing well again. In S1 and S2 Inno was non-existent as the rest of the terran race except Maru who made back-to-back playoffs
|
On February 20 2024 07:15 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I don't know...feels like Maru was neither the most succesful nor the most consistent Starleague player, with each of these titles going to Innovation and soO respectively. But I will admit, he performed much better than I remembered - and I also have to correct myself, he managed to get to two WCS Finals, not just one. So it is definetly closer than I originally thought. Also...why would anyone call Maru "the fourth race" (which is just a cheap copy of Moons nickname btw) in 2014 when Innovation won a GSL that year, while Maru didn't win anything?
Huh, do those numbers not show him to be more successful than INno?
They're equal in championships, but Maru has a higher win% (albeit slightly), made more playoffs, more ro4s, and over the 9 seasons of HoTS he outperformed INno in 6 of them.
I don't see any case for INno to be the best Starleague player of HotS. You could say the two are equally successful but then Maru is twice as consistent. It's either soO or Maru.
As for being the "Fourth Race". Maru's performance in late 2013 and the first half of 2014 didn't yield any championships, but making multiple ro4s and having a winning Proleague record when his race was barely competitive is probably a greater highlight of his career than many of his actual Championships.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 20 2024 07:01 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 20 2024 06:19 WombaT wrote:On February 20 2024 04:16 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 19 2024 18:45 WombaT wrote:On February 19 2024 18:20 Poopi wrote:On February 19 2024 14:29 Fango wrote:
Just to be sure, I went back to compare INno and Maru's Starleague results during HoTS, Maru was absolutely better than INno most of the time in terms of results.
Who did better each season:
2013 S1- INno
2013 S2- Maru
2013 S3- Maru
2014 S1- Maru
2014 S2- Maru
2014 S3- INno
2015 S1- Maru
2015 S2- Maru
2015 S3- INno
What's crazy is that their win% are very similar overall, although Maru was more consistent season by season and has more wins, INno would switch between dominating and losing right away.
I'm terms of games:
INno 104-68 (60%)
Maru 116-74 (61%)
In terms of matches:
INno 40-18 (69%)
Maru 44-20 (69%)
Made ro16:
INno- 6
Maru- 8
Made playoffs:
INno- 5
Maru- 7
Made ro4:
INno- 4
Maru- 5
It's very close but there's absolutely no way INno was a better Starleague player during HotS, Maru edges him out on every level (except INno did make 1 more final). That should settle it that Maru was the best Starleague player during HotS as well. You could make the case for soO, but having no trophies likely takes him out of it. Rain has some ridiculous stats but ultimately doesn't have the volume that Maru or INno do. I mean, INno would have been the absolute goat in a balanced game without Maru existing, that’s pretty clear, he was the absolute monster. Alas for him Maru existed and Terran was weak for most of LotV Inno would have been a close to unassailable GOAT if he didn’t wax on/wax off year to year. But hey despite being a machine he is also only human, I imagine it’s rather harder to climb Everest when you’ve just finished getting down after climbing it already. It sounds ridiculous now given he had a long period of god tier in the matchup, there is a theory out there that Maru did especially well in times Terran was weak because there were less Terrans to take him out in mirror. I mean obviously he didn’t suck but that version of Maru and what he did so well didn’t give him as much mileage in TvT, hell old man Ryung can roll back the years with solid tactical play in that matchup when he just can’t really keep up with the pace of TvZ Please Maru fans don’t @ me I’m just the messenger! I do feel it’s an under-mentioned aspect of balance fluctuation though. Players with great mirrors get a bit of a boost when their race is on top, the reverse would likely be the case too. Answering these is so much fun (though I end up spending like a half hour on it). The blogs should be wonderful if people are reasonable. The reason Maru was very good in 2014 was because he was the only Terran that could reliably beat Protoss. In fact, Maru was fielded 22 times in Proleague opposite a Protoss (he went 13-9). The next two players were Bbyong (who CJ's team's second best player, so he played a lot against every race) and Flash (all three had a 58 or 59 win %), but after that it falls off a cliff. TY was only fielded 13 times and MKP went 1-5. More Maru vs Protoss stuff...Across the first two seasons of Code S in 2014 (this is when Maru earned the nickname "The Fourth Race" as well as "The Last Terran". Maru went 23-15. INnoVation went 8-6. Bbyong went 8-14 and SuperNova brought up the rear with a 3-9 mark. The other Terrans were barely average, whereas as Maru had gotten to the quarter and semifinals in seasons 1 and 2 respectively. So, what to do about this Maru is weak vs Terran theory. In Season 1 of SSL (a 16 person tournament with a 7/5/4 ptz split of players) Maru lost his opening match to Dream, but after that Maru was 6-1 in games. How was he doing in Proleague at the time? He went 4-0 against Terran during the first two rounds. If you recall Maru was the best Terran during a stretch in which other Terrans did pretty well in various events (inno won a weekender, dream made two finals etc). But back to 2014... I measured from the start of Proleague to the end of Season 2. Maru was 9-4 against Korean Terrans during that stretch, so it seems like his TvT has always been pretty solid. So, I disagree with your premise. Maru has always had above average TvT. These days, his win rate in Code S TvT's is right up there with TY and Mvp for the best in history. So that's my case, but now some meandering notions... The way Maru's 2015 came to an end has always struck me as extremely strange. Maru was definitely bad at mech (if anyone remembers his game vs ByuL on KSS you know), but he made it to the semifinals of season 3 in 2015 (does anyone even remember this result?). Anyway, he lost to Inno 4-1. BUT, more importantly to this rant, he beat Rogue 3-1 in a very one sided quarterfinal. He played Rogue later that year at BlizzCon and got demolished. I think if there was a period where Maru's injuries were really bad, I think it might have been around then. Hey it’s a pretty compelling case! Indeed I shall concede that actually I am wrong, and why to follow… For a real elite player, above average in a matchup is enough for it to be perceived as an Achilles Heel. It’s probably worth me being more clear there in future. See - Serral’s weak ZvZ. Which objectively isn’t weak at all, but put next to a ZvP which may be the strongest individual matchup we’ve ever seen, and a ZvT good enough to sweep Clem/Maru in a bracket, two undisputed best ZvTers right now, it probably is relatively speaking. Hell he even dropped a set to Dark! One of the most even 3-1s I’ve seen in a while that one, such tiny margins. Proleague is an interesting one for balance perceptions, useful data ofc. But a prepped Bo1 format too, in a scene where longer series and limited prep have been something of the norm. To the degree that Protoss is still pretty bad right now, but even now I think would thrive in that particular format. It’s an aside, I like Proleague as I always make sure to add! Precisely because it’s such a different format and doesn’t necessarily map to the wider tournament scene all that neatly. Maru’s TvT did improve also, massively so relative to the field. But the field ain’t quite what it used to be. For me he’s just been a great all-round player for forever, and having good TvT naturally comes with that territory. If I was to think of real TvT titans I’d still give Mvp and TY that edge, even if Maru does eclipse their numbers eventually. In the same sense that most elite Toss have good PvP, but ask me for an elite PvPer and it’s Zest. I think to be a great mirror player, you either have to have an extra gear in that matchup specifically, or be an all-rounder that’s so dominant in mirror you gap the field. It perhaps skirts too close to feels and intuitions (AKA the prism I’m usually trapped in), but that’s my kind of metric here. It’s crippled old man Mvp playing a set for the ages against an Innovation who’d long since outstripped him as the scene’s resdident terror. Anyway as per your one some digging myself: - I set an arbitrary cutoff of Jan 2019, although I did look at some numbers post that date too. I felt military departures and players returning and taking a while to get in shape distorted things, or some of the names I had in mind really started to slump.
- Filtered for both Proleague and individual offline events
- Trust my rough summation of the numbers because it’s a pain in the arse to write this all up with just my phone ^_^
Here’s my vague findings: - Maru is resolutely dancing around 50% in both sets and match-score with various TvT titans of the time, using various filters.
- That’s not a dissimilar theme to his non-mirrors against other top players, he’ll bounce further into the 40s versus some, 60s versus others so there’s a bit more fluctuation.
- I started Aligulacing like crazy with various combinations and outside of the rare time someone just has a bunny (hey some cricket slang for fellow fans), most head-to-heads between the top players of this era don’t deviate much from flipping a coin.
- Not only does this somewhat demolish my intuitive feelings, it’s also a real stark illustration of quite how ruthlessly competitive top level SC2 was in this period. From quite early in a bracket you’re likely going to be having to run a gauntlet where you’re going up against guys where best case you might have a 55-60% historical advantage over.
- I’d wager that if we relatively segmented the scene, and did a similar relative comparison from 2019 thru to the current day, you’re going to see that gap start to widen by a non-negligible amount. A few initial hits, not even Serral involved seem to initially bear that out. Perhaps one for the more mathematically inclined, or at least not one trying to do it all on a phone screen.
My central premise was effectively that TY (I had him most in mind stylistically, although not exclusively) was a bad matchup for Maru. Ergo a period where Maru could beat any Protoss at a time where TY couldn’t even if the fate of the planet depended on it, would probably be beneficial to Maru in terms of bracket. The numbers don’t really bear that out at all. I wonder if there’s a certain unintentional bias at work, makes certain things stick in the mind, especially with Maru. You’re used to Maru bringing his considerable assets to bear to take out anyone, when he wins it’s just Maru doing Maru things. When he loses it’s usually because of his (relative) weaknesses compared to another’s strengths. I still remember, angrily him doing stupid builds against Reynor one WC, way more than I maybe remember him having some clever set plans in that same tournament. So you end up with this perception that galaxy brain TY compensates for his lesser speed with tactical brilliance and has Maru’s number in TvT, that he has the edge in this clash of styles and skillsets. When in reality it’s essentially a coin flip matchup historically. That was a wonderful and thoughtful response. I agree that I would place TY and Mvp above Maru when it comes to TvT prowess As you said, Maru's numbers start to creep up a lot, but he's right around there regardless. 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.
Yeah I’ve alluded to just this myself. It’s super difficult to put oneself back into an era and ringfence it without having what happened subsequently bleed through. And you maybe end up underrating players because they fell off after, rather than more accurately appreciating their actual level at the time relative to the scene.
It’s quite interesting looking back, it wasn’t just Blizzcon where the Kespa crew were pushed hard, but in those WCS finals too.
As an aside I think there’s a case to be made where those almost fall through the cracks a little. They’re not quite a Starleague, so people who focus very much on those kind of don’t mention them, they’re not those traditional open weekender gauntlets so folks who tend to focus on those also slip over them too.
Amazing the things you forget before a good old Liquipedia dive, such as this
Inno and Maru out in groups, Bomber winning?! Seems odd now, I felt he’d fallen off a bit earlier than he actually did, and he placed top 4 in OSL. Hell he made a WC top 4 too, which again is one of those little tidbits I’d totally forgotten.
It’s too hard man, I don’t envy your GOAT list task. I’ve been pondering solely the best Terran in HoTS from my shortlist of 3 and even that is quite bloody hard, never mind the best overall.
Maru’s record is very good generally and he has his Starleagues, but there’s not much in that weekender format and he’d started to make deep runs in WC tier events, a trend he continues to this day without taking a medal.
Taeja farmer a few weekenders, but we have to remember like nobody else was hoovering up tournaments so consistently. Also on the higher stages, or in weekenders where the field was that bit deeper he still had some excellent results against the top dogs of the day.
Inno has his Starleagues too and I still consider vibes wise some of his peak form at this time was amongst the scariest ever. Some decent weekender scalps here too so he was no slouch there, but he never made that deep run in a WC, a gap in his resumé he never filled subsequently either.
It’s a tricky one, and I’m pretty open about being a vibes guy who tries to be objective, rather than a purely objective fellow. Or perhaps, more charitably I have certain subjective criteria that I try to apply objectively.
1. Innovation
2. Taeja
3. Maru
Inno’s aura was just that little bit more, for me. Taeja is the only one that has medals from international weekenders, a Starleague and a WC tier event. Maru brought it pretty hard in multiple domains, but weekend gauntlets have just been such an important cornerstone of the SC2 scene and its following for forever that it just feels too big a thing to have missing.
I do rate Proleague in my consideration, but I find it very difficult to figure how to do that given it’s such a vastly different format to everything else. Bo1s when everything else is Bo3+, very team focused when most of the rest is more individual etc. In ways it is the pinnacle of the game too, clearly it’s a great competition but it sticks out a bit from the rest of the scene, whereas in BW it fit very neatly into a relatively static structure that lasted for years.
In golf I mean the world match play has a big prize pool, of course folks want to win it, or the Ryder Cup with its team element and a mix of formats. But they rarely come up when considering GOATs when every other event is individual strokeplay.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Northern Ireland26499 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.
|
Northern Ireland26499 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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Northern Ireland26499 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
|
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
|
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.
|
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.
|
@Nasigil and @UnLarva
Absolutely insane. Absolutely insane.
|
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:
[quote]
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.
|
|
|
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.
|
Northern Ireland26499 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
|
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
|
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
|
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.
|
Northern Ireland26499 Posts
On February 26 2024 17:02 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +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.
This (military aside, which as you say makes it a moot point).
As someone who’s had worse mental health problems than most, and indeed a position I’d hope those not personally afflicted would hold, that shit’s important man.
Would it be cool to see Serral in GSL? Fuck yeah! Would it be cool to see MaxPax play an offline tournament even if it involved him donning some kind of Daft Punk-esque disguise? Also fuck yeah!
Would it be cool to find out that either in doing so we’re having a really bad time and hating every minute of it? Fuck no!
If this is, as the rumours say to be the final two seasons of GSL and Reynor’s wanting to go, that alone is pretty cool. From what he’s saying he’s not alone in having this thought. Maybe Clem fancies giving it a crack, perhaps Harstem is feeling it’s finally his year, NoRegret fancies cheesing his way into Code S again and a mere foreign team house is insufficient and they have to occupy a tower block. Who knows?! We all love the game here, I mean the pros who’ve loved it enough to grind thousands and thousands of games over years obviously do as well.
But it’s a big ask on those guys, as a lifestyle change and it doesn’t make a huge amount of economic sense either.
As a fan it’s none of my bleedin’ business what folks think is right for them in the former, and on the latter well I can only get on that Patreon and make it slightly worth everyone’s while (Koreans included, I was boosting it anyway)
|
GSL should be moved to Finland in 2025
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
