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CicadaSC
United States1291 Posts
On April 16 2024 21:24 Harris1st wrote: And what might you be refering too exactly? The people who think he's the best? Maru showing once again how consistent he is in the hardest tournament. Reynor Neeb and all these other guys show time and time again how much harder code s is than these weekend tournaments. It's a whole other beast when your opponents can prep for you. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1054 Posts
On April 17 2024 05:36 CicadaSC wrote: The people who think he's the best? Maru showing once again how consistent he is in the hardest tournament. Reynor Neeb and all these other guys show time and time again how much harder code s is than these weekend tournaments. It's a whole other beast when your opponents can prep for you. "Hardest tournament"...StarWars has a stronger field of contestants than this GSL... And can we retire the "prep tournament"-blabla already? It's not like nobody preps for weekenders and everyone who wants to win the tournament preps against Serral. | ||
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AmFreak
16 Posts
On April 17 2024 05:36 CicadaSC wrote: The people who think he's the best? Maru showing once again how consistent he is in the hardest tournament. Reynor Neeb and all these other guys show time and time again how much harder code s is than these weekend tournaments. It's a whole other beast when your opponents can prep for you. Having time to prepare for an opponent means it's LESS skilled based, because you can bring in outside resources that you couldn't otherwise. If you have a team analyzing your opponents play-style/weaknesses and training partners playing that style you have a clear advantage against someone on his own. | ||
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lokol4890
101 Posts
On April 17 2024 06:29 Balnazza wrote: "Hardest tournament"...StarWars has a stronger field of contestants than this GSL... And can we retire the "prep tournament"-blabla already? It's not like nobody preps for weekenders and everyone who wants to win the tournament preps against Serral. You can't really believe that starwars has a stronger field. That's just not a good take. People also prep against reynor, given he's a world champion and all, and yet he still didn't do too well last time he played there | ||
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CicadaSC
United States1291 Posts
On April 17 2024 07:56 AmFreak wrote: Having time to prepare for an opponent means it's LESS skilled based, because you can bring in outside resources that you couldn't otherwise. If you have a team analyzing your opponents play-style/weaknesses and training partners playing that style you have a clear advantage against someone on his own. nah, preparing for opponents is a skill in and of itself. its an extra layer. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1054 Posts
On April 17 2024 09:54 CicadaSC wrote: nah, preparing for opponents is a skill in and of itself. its an extra layer. So is coming up with something with a limited amount of time - btw the exact metric most 1v1 (E)Sports use, including Chess (except for the World Championship, but that is an entirely different beast compared to GSL). On April 17 2024 08:53 lokol4890 wrote: You can't really believe that starwars has a stronger field. That's just not a good take. People also prep against reynor, given he's a world champion and all, and yet he still didn't do too well last time he played there Both tournaments miss Serral, Clem and Reynor (though he is less impactful right now). Both tournaments have Maru, herO and GuMiho (again, last of the three is less impactful) SW misses Cure, SHIN and ByuN. Every other GSL-Korean feels mostly "meh" right now (Solar is in a big slump, Dark feels already gone. Stats might be the exception here) SW however has ShowTime, Firefly and Oliveira, who are all in great shape right now. Also Skillous and Spirit, who I would put in the same category as Stats. So yes, I personally would say that StarWars has a more competitive field than GSL S1. If Serral or Clem would have (tried to) qualify aswell, I would easily put it above. And yes, that is a take you can disagree with, which I would understand. But the fact that you can even make this argument kind of proves that "GSL is the hardest tournament" is a take that doesn't hold up anymore - hasn't for years tbh. | ||
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Harris1st
Germany6691 Posts
On April 16 2024 23:38 Argonauta wrote: It just appears more regular because he has a longer career I don't think so. People expect Maru to win every tournament he enters only since ~2018. Before that he was ofc still very good but not above everyone else. And he crashed and burned a bunch since then and that is what people are refering to IMO On April 17 2024 05:36 CicadaSC wrote: The people who think he's the best? Maru showing once again how consistent he is in the hardest tournament. Reynor Neeb and all these other guys show time and time again how much harder code s is than these weekend tournaments. It's a whole other beast when your opponents can prep for you. Sorry it's just not the hardest tournament. It hasn't been for a long time. And prepping makes things not harder, just different. Both sides can prepare, you know | ||
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MJG
United Kingdom792 Posts
Sorry it's just not the hardest tournament. It hasn't been for a long time. And prepping makes things not harder, just different. Both sides can prepare, you know This isn't the most competitive SC2 environment. It hasn't been for a long time. Being the biggest fish in an ever contracting pond doesn't make someone (in this case Serral) the GOAT. EDIT: Article idea. "Elephant in the Room 2: The standard of competition since the collapse of Korean team-houses has been a farce."  | ||
Mizenhauer
United States1798 Posts
On April 17 2024 19:48 MJG wrote: This isn't the most competitive SC2 environment. It hasn't been for a long time. Being the biggest fish in an ever contracting pond doesn't make someone the GOAT. EDIT: Article idea. "Elephant in the Room 2: The standard of competition since the collapse of Korean team-houses has been a farce." I don't see how you can't apply that same argument for Serral. He's clearly the best player in his region (just like Maru is in Korea), but the majority of the top 10 players are still Korean. I don't think you can really put anyone but Reynor and Clem with Serral in the top 10 (I'm excluding Maxpax for obvious reasons) since you need to make room for Maru, herO, Cure, Dark, ByuN, Stats, Solar, GuMiho and Ragnarok for that 1-15 range | ||
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lokol4890
101 Posts
On April 17 2024 19:48 MJG wrote: This isn't the most competitive SC2 environment. It hasn't been for a long time. Being the biggest fish in an ever contracting pond doesn't make someone the GOAT. EDIT: Article idea. "Elephant in the Room 2: The standard of competition since the collapse of Korean team-houses has been a farce." Considering serral literally won nothing of value nor placed deep in any tournaments prior to the collapse of Korean team-houses, your framework would exclude serral from any goat lists altogether. At least maru has his deep runs, osl and ssl golds, and proleague records | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On April 17 2024 07:56 AmFreak wrote: Having time to prepare for an opponent means it's LESS skilled based, because you can bring in outside resources that you couldn't otherwise. If you have a team analyzing your opponents play-style/weaknesses and training partners playing that style you have a clear advantage against someone on his own. This is absolutely the correct take. The more time you have, the more you can prepare, the more you can compensate for a skill gap between you and your opponent, especially when it's possible that opponent is preparing less for you than you are for them. Weekender tournaments with a limited amount of time to prepare between matches naturally lead to a much higher skill ceiling, because the amount of time/preparation is constrained. Anything constrained becomes harder. GSL and preparation tournaments were hard not because it's the highest skill format, it's because people can prepare to snipe you, even people who are considered much less skilled than you. If you win a prep tournament, it is a good testament to your skill that you survived the potential of many people trying their best to overcome the skill gap and snipe you, but the tournament format itself does not lead to the highest skill ceiling possible. It's the age old meme question of "can Batman defeat X with years of preparation?" The preparation is making up for their lack of skill and strength. No one thinks Batman is stronger than Superman for example. This is also why Taeja is underrated these days (at least according to the active posters on TL these days). He was specifically very consistent at winning premiere weekender tournaments, the hardest kind of tournament to be consistent in, and while defeating top HotS players like Innovation, Life, MMA, MC, Zest, sOs, etc. (Some of which would sometimes drown in pools! You don't see them being knocked out Round 1 of GSL do you?) | ||
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Charoisaur
Germany15867 Posts
On April 18 2024 03:58 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: This is absolutely the correct take. The more time you have, the more you can prepare, the more you can compensate for a skill gap between you and your opponent, especially when it's possible that opponent is preparing less for you than you are for them. Weekender tournaments with a limited amount of time to prepare between matches naturally lead to a much higher skill ceiling, because the amount of time/preparation is constrained. Anything constrained becomes harder. GSL and preparation tournaments were hard not because it's the highest skill format, it's because people can prepare to snipe you, even people who are considered much less skilled than you. If you win a prep tournament, it is a good testament to your skill that you survived the potential of many people trying their best to overcome the skill gap and snipe you, but the tournament format itself does not lead to the highest skill ceiling possible. It's the age old meme question of "can Batman defeat X with years of preparation?" The preparation is making up for their lack of skill and strength. No one thinks Batman is stronger than Superman for example. This is also why Taeja is underrated these days (at least according to the active posters on TL these days). He was specifically very consistent at winning premiere weekender tournaments, the hardest kind of tournament to be consistent in, and while defeating top HotS players like Innovation, Life, MMA, MC, Zest, sOs, etc. (Some of which would sometimes drown in pools! You don't see them being knocked out Round 1 of GSL do you?) That's only true if you don't consider the ability to prepare well a skill. I do. | ||
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Mizenhauer
United States1798 Posts
On April 18 2024 03:58 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: This is absolutely the correct take. The more time you have, the more you can prepare, the more you can compensate for a skill gap between you and your opponent, especially when it's possible that opponent is preparing less for you than you are for them. Weekender tournaments with a limited amount of time to prepare between matches naturally lead to a much higher skill ceiling, because the amount of time/preparation is constrained. Anything constrained becomes harder. GSL and preparation tournaments were hard not because it's the highest skill format, it's because people can prepare to snipe you, even people who are considered much less skilled than you. If you win a prep tournament, it is a good testament to your skill that you survived the potential of many people trying their best to overcome the skill gap and snipe you, but the tournament format itself does not lead to the highest skill ceiling possible. It's the age old meme question of "can Batman defeat X with years of preparation?" The preparation is making up for their lack of skill and strength. No one thinks Batman is stronger than Superman for example. This is also why Taeja is underrated these days (at least according to the active posters on TL these days). He was specifically very consistent at winning premiere weekender tournaments, the hardest kind of tournament to be consistent in, and while defeating top HotS players like Innovation, Life, MMA, MC, Zest, sOs, etc. (Some of which would sometimes drown in pools! You don't see them being knocked out Round 1 of GSL do you?) One could also easily argue that since Code S takes place over a number of weeks/months that it is more difficult to be consistent because you need to maintain your form for such a long time. Or you can just make definitive statements without any evidence. That's fine as well. | ||
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JJH777
United States4376 Posts
On April 18 2024 03:58 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: This is absolutely the correct take. The more time you have, the more you can prepare, the more you can compensate for a skill gap between you and your opponent, especially when it's possible that opponent is preparing less for you than you are for them. Weekender tournaments with a limited amount of time to prepare between matches naturally lead to a much higher skill ceiling, because the amount of time/preparation is constrained. Anything constrained becomes harder. GSL and preparation tournaments were hard not because it's the highest skill format, it's because people can prepare to snipe you, even people who are considered much less skilled than you. If you win a prep tournament, it is a good testament to your skill that you survived the potential of many people trying their best to overcome the skill gap and snipe you, but the tournament format itself does not lead to the highest skill ceiling possible. It's the age old meme question of "can Batman defeat X with years of preparation?" The preparation is making up for their lack of skill and strength. No one thinks Batman is stronger than Superman for example. This is also why Taeja is underrated these days (at least according to the active posters on TL these days). He was specifically very consistent at winning premiere weekender tournaments, the hardest kind of tournament to be consistent in, and while defeating top HotS players like Innovation, Life, MMA, MC, Zest, sOs, etc. (Some of which would sometimes drown in pools! You don't see them being knocked out Round 1 of GSL do you?) And yet pretty much every competition worth anything is played with a prep format. Prep gives players the opportunity to play at their peak. Finding holes in the other person's play is part of it (but not a part Maru is particularly good at anyways) but the bigger thing is optimizing your own play. No weekend tournament bo5/bo7 is going to have a player who plays a completely different heavily optimized build on every map. It just doesn't happen in weekend events. Meanwhile it happens (or at least used to when GSL paid more) all the time in GSL. Prep provides the opportunity for peak condition/optimization. Weekend tournaments is the best you can do within poor circumstances. Peak vs peak is far more interesting. | ||
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Pentarp
206 Posts
Maru is showing a ton of his builds and playstyle habits while weekend warriors have their playbook relatively well-hidden. | ||
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Balnazza
Germany1054 Posts
And yet pretty much every competition worth anything is played with a prep format. Do you mean in SC2, Esports or in general sports? Because in all three cases you are mostly incorrect. SC2: GSL is basically the only "prep" tournament (or as I would call it "tournament that is stretched out for months for no real purpose anymore"). Katowice, World Championships, even the regionals that give out double+ the money of GSL as of now are not that stretched. Esports: LoL stretches later rounds in its competition, but mostly so that the important matches are on the weekend. Most other Esports however use a weekender or otherwise "compact" system. General sports: Teamsports are, depending on the sport, more stretched out than others, but that is less of a preparation-thing and again has more to do with hype and good slots and less with preparation. There is also the logistics part, teams need to travel and often play in multiple leagues at the same time. Or there is some kind of "Best-Of-X"-System in play (like in US-Sports). What are the biggest solo 1v1 sports? Anything Fighting related (which is, if we ignore the big "showy" sports, tournament-based), Chess and Tennis. Well, guess what, Chess and Tennis are also weekenders/week-long tournaments, except for the Chess World Championship. That is the only "prep-tournament" I would compare to GSL, but compared to that GSL looks kind of like a weekender again. Lastly, just as a funfact: The timespan between the 2nd GSL round and the Final 4 day is 14 days in GSL '24 S1. The timespan between the start of the playoffs in Europe '23 S3 and the Grand Finals are ten days. This year, GSL is only two weeks-ish longer than the European Regional in total. That's...nothing? So what, European Regional is a prep tournament now? | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On April 18 2024 04:57 Charoisaur wrote: That's only true if you don't consider the ability to prepare well a skill. I do. Preparing well is a skill yes, but preparing is still part of a weekender tournament format too. You just have to prepare in advance and have less time to prepare between matches during the tournament, making it much harder of a format. Having a lot of skill, knowledge, builds, etc. memorized is advantageous for weekender formats where you don't have ample time to comfortably prepare. If you gave everyone 1 year to prepare for every match, and the first round was a group stage of only Bo3, then wouldn't it increase the chances of lower level players to beat higher level players? I think that means that constraining the amount of prep time you have means there is a higher skill ceiling. On April 18 2024 06:23 JJH777 wrote: And yet pretty much every competition worth anything is played with a prep format. Prep gives players the opportunity to play at their peak. Finding holes in the other person's play is part of it (but not a part Maru is particularly good at anyways) but the bigger thing is optimizing your own play. No weekend tournament bo5/bo7 is going to have a player who plays a completely different heavily optimized build on every map. It just doesn't happen in weekend events. Meanwhile it happens (or at least used to when GSL paid more) all the time in GSL. Prep provides the opportunity for peak condition/optimization. Weekend tournaments is the best you can do within poor circumstances. Peak vs peak is far more interesting. Yep very fair points. I don't disagree at all that people enjoy watching people be able to play closer to their peaks to be clear. Coming up with optimized strategies and pulling out builds for a weekender format naturally results in a higher possible ceiling than when everyone has more time to play near their peak however. It doesn't mean it can't be done, it's just harder with less time. But a theoretical person could do that and stand above the rest. An example is if you played chess and each player had an infinite amount of time to make their move. It would suck watching a chess game like that where you have to watch the players think and prepare, and thankfully with a SC2 prep format like GSL you only have to watch them when they've prepped and are ready to play. But i think everyone would agree that chess played with a timer would lead to a higher skill ceiling because the amount of time you have to think and prepare is constrained. The more skilled and experienced players would win. (Btw though WCS, IEM Kato, etc. are all worth something for sure, and for a long time in SC2 smaller weekender tournies were also worth something as shown by the viewership, audience, hype, and glory those tournaments got. They had smaller prize pools sure but you also can win that money in much less time than a prep tourny, so it's pretty proportional). On April 18 2024 06:10 Mizenhauer wrote: One could also easily argue that since Code S takes place over a number of weeks/months that it is more difficult to be consistent because you need to maintain your form for such a long time. Or you can just make definitive statements without any evidence. That's fine as well. While that's a fair argument, how difficult it is to be consistent over a long period (and how that might make it harder to win a Code S), is different from the point I was trying to make specifically about what tournament format allows for the highest possible skill ceiling. I'd like to be careful to avoid conflating them. A superman fighting 100 batmans with 50 years of preparation over a span of 10 years may be hard, but no one is going to think that the batmans are better than the superman, even if one of them defeats the superman. It would be very impressive for the superman to come out on top sure, but that's a separate point. I think that's a pretty understandable concept and isn't really any kind of "definitive statement". Also, I didn't know we had to include evidence with each post or opinion we share on this forum, if so your post seems to be missing evidence as well  On your point though, I think one could also argue that maintaining your form to peak during a small period of 2-3 days that others are trying to also bring their best form to, could also be as difficult as it is to maintain your form consistently over a couple months that others are also trying to maintain their form consistently. Constraining it to a smaller period brings more volatility. | ||
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JJH777
United States4376 Posts
On April 18 2024 11:14 Balnazza wrote: Do you mean in SC2, Esports or in general sports? Because in all three cases you are mostly incorrect. SC2: GSL is basically the only "prep" tournament (or as I would call it "tournament that is stretched out for months for no real purpose anymore"). Katowice, World Championships, even the regionals that give out double+ the money of GSL as of now are not that stretched. Esports: LoL stretches later rounds in its competition, but mostly so that the important matches are on the weekend. Most other Esports however use a weekender or otherwise "compact" system. General sports: Teamsports are, depending on the sport, more stretched out than others, but that is less of a preparation-thing and again has more to do with hype and good slots and less with preparation. There is also the logistics part, teams need to travel and often play in multiple leagues at the same time. Or there is some kind of "Best-Of-X"-System in play (like in US-Sports). What are the biggest solo 1v1 sports? Anything Fighting related (which is, if we ignore the big "showy" sports, tournament-based), Chess and Tennis. Well, guess what, Chess and Tennis are also weekenders/week-long tournaments, except for the Chess World Championship. That is the only "prep-tournament" I would compare to GSL, but compared to that GSL looks kind of like a weekender again. Lastly, just as a funfact: The timespan between the 2nd GSL round and the Final 4 day is 14 days in GSL '24 S1. The timespan between the start of the playoffs in Europe '23 S3 and the Grand Finals are ten days. This year, GSL is only two weeks-ish longer than the European Regional in total. That's...nothing? So what, European Regional is a prep tournament now? I was talking in general in competition. Obviously not in SC2. At least since proleague ended. Team sports you already conceded though with caveats I don't fully agree with. They want strategy to be a big part of it and the only way that's possible is with prep. It's not just about time slots/hype/logistics. They definitely believe (correctly imo) prep leads to better play. Chess also has prep outside of the world championship. The tournament that chooses the challenger for the world champion is only 8 players and 3 weeks long. That's longer than the top 8 of GSL. Most major chess tournaments are at least 2 weeks long. The qualifiers may be the brutal SC2 structure but in the tournaments themselves they give prep time. While it's not as long as GSL that's far different than the typical 3 days for SC2 tournaments. Tennis is the same again multiple weeks long at least for all the major events. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23759 Posts
What about the games in actuality? Is this prep actually resulting in higher level StarCraft? I’d argue not really at all, and I don’t think it has in quite a while now. I mean I’d say Serral pulled more tailored plans out of the pocket in his Katowice done (that gold/roach build versus Dark was especially nice) than we saw in the GSL finals day. If we consider a combination of a lesser overall field of real contenders, much of the field being confirmed way, way out for the tournament, and the prize pool. I mean you’re probably seeing far more prep for that tournament than GSL these days. People have months to gain an edge | ||
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tigera6
3191 Posts
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