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On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:37 UnLarva wrote:
@rwala: Excellent post again!
From number side of the things, now we need only somewhat objective measurements to make sensible comparisons between eras. Personally It wouldn't be problem to me if in the end multipliers for the peak competitive era would appear something like x3.0 or x4.0 relative to post-2018 happenings, but such multipliers must come from rigorous studies.
The key issue is the striking and immediately apparent contradiction between statistics and what is written to the very title of this topic. If current top dogs all would be some kind newcomer usurpers I'd happily accept 'Korean Elitist stance', but, but, those Koreans who still remain there playing last half decade or so are practically all (and have been since heydays) the chrystallization and from the core of that same Korean Elite gamer group that once made Korean SC2 hegemony nearly inpenetrable for foreigners. And there is that one guy who have been slapping that cohort of absolutely best already six years. Why only look retrospectively backwards, when you can also look from the history onwards. In fact a hell lot of same guys are playing and watching how things fold out now. They are not those tier-5 Koreans flooding brackets for number 140 or 203 in a random qualifiers, they are the cream-of-the-cream Serral must meet every single tournament where he playes against Koreans. For the top dog It's irrelevant if there are 2000, 100, or 30, if 20 or so at the top 30 now are among the best players ever to play the game.
Trying to not sound too antagonistical here. :D Hahaha, so funny. I was bored at the airport and played around with my multiplier. I would a 300% bonus to put INno on par with Serral in the tournament score. On par. The third on this list... and then you still have the tournament multiplier that basically also mostly favors this area and has another 30% incorporated for most comparisons. And what you basically are saying at the end is exactly what I am trying to put numbers on at the moment.
I was thinking that if/when ever you process with those Golden era tournaments (again), you could increase also the depth to Ro8 or Ro16 for tournament success evaluation concerning those times when competition was it's fiercest. Rewarding deeper in the final tournament results would act as a proxy and account for higher level of competition. That would be also good thing to secure the author of that kind analysis from non-necessary accusations for favoritism and recency bias, by setting yet another handicap to Serral.
Yes. Just a suggestion. Lot of extra work, and honestly nobody can demand anything from you after what you already have done.
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On July 24 2024 20:26 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 04:40 PremoBeats wrote:
So in this example.. after which time would you accept that the tides have turned? Or will Maru's 4 years always trump Serral despite the relation getting smaller and smaller over time?
That depends on their results.
Then let's suppose Maru quits playing today, and Serral manages to win only 2 premier global events over the next 4 years.
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On July 24 2024 23:48 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 17:24 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 16:53 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 15:00 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 14:46 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 09:21 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 13:48 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 05:28 allmotor1 wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:
[quote]
The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Thing is Maru has been a top player since WOL and been through SC2's peak and all it's iterations. Serral is amazing, but his peak has been at a time when SC2 has been greatly diminished (the pro scene). Also since LOTV, zerg has been overtuned (maybe not currently) but for most of LOTV. Even if we assume that Maru was a top player since WoL (where I think many people suffer from nostalgia bias, if we look at his actual achievements in that period), my point is, that there must be a time, when the argument of him being at the top for longer falls short, assuming he ALWAYS trails behind Serral in comparison. Especially considering that Serral stomped onto the scene in 2018 with no support of a multi million dollar industry behind him or living in team houses since he was 13. My question is: When is that point? Will it never be reached as Korean elitists simply value 2015 so much more? Even if in a direct comparison Maru clearly is worse than Serral? I mean that is fine by me... I simply want people to show their true colors. rwala
You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is.
This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Did you read my GOAT article? I accounted for all of that with heavy penalties on Serral who still came out on top by far. Plus, Maru never DOMINATED 2015 either. He was a good player; a wild card at winning. All you said applies to Maru too, as his dominance (mostly behind Serral) started in 2018 as well. Disagree on Mvp: He only had one hyper successful year, when SC2 was still being figured out. He has win rates of less than 50% or 40% in 2012 and 2013. Someone who is so inconsistent can't be GOAT, even subjectively. His hyper successful year was 2011 where the pro scene wasn't even properly established yet. Peak SC2 according to numbers of players, pros and competitiveness is 2013-2015/2016. A lot of the players of that era transitioned into the period of Maru's and Serral's rise though. I am currently working on an era-comparison how these 2015-players fared versus other 2015-players in 2015 and 2018 and their results versus the new talent. This analysis will give us a better understanding what the penalty in comparing these era for post-2018 results should be. And I highly doubt that the 50% penalty I used in my analysis is even remotely fair towards post-2018. But we will see... I read your article and enjoyed it a lot. I appreciated the work you put into it. It's worth thinking of why your analyses discount Mvp so much. Some of these things are just common sense. My personal GOAT pick is Rogue but if you think no one can even subjectively pick Mvp I think you've lost the forest for the trees for sure. I encourage you to engage with my hypo on Clem. I think it'll help give you some perspective. Subjectively, Mvp can be picked... but he didn't play in the most competitive era either, which is an argument most people make when they try to deny Serral. Peak (total player and pro count) was 2013-2015/2016. That is why I dismiss Mvp... but if people want to pick him as their GOAT because of one hypersuccessful year in a pro scene that wasn't really established (which btw, didn't even make it among the best years ever played in the top 5 match win rate wise, and tournament win participation isn't #1 either), be my guest. But then these people shouldn't discount Serral for not playing in the era that wasn't prime either... all I demand is consistency  Well... Serral actually played for a couple of years and defeated many players of the old era. Clem did not. This reason was put into the article exactly because of such a hypothetical. But sure.. if that other guys dominates the same way Serral did but since he was 13 years old like Maru when he started, surpassing Serral's insane statistics, he definitely had to be checked against the others as GOAT. Good you note that Serral has been around very long too. I've that ridiculous mental image (induced by the site) on Maru as some sort of super sc2-toddler in a corner of a playroom of a crowded team house, while little Serral was continuously kicked ass by his brother Protosser on a back seat of their family sedan, when they both practice APM with unplugged keyboards... It is not like Serral would be some kind of newcomer to the scene as a whole. I mean Serral played Rain in 2015 where he won one and lost one match. Given the fact that he already was able to at least take maps of players who some people also throw in as GOATs, implies that Serral, was he born Korean, didn't attend school and also had the support of team houses with their strategy crafting and 12 hours practice regimes, probably wouldn't have fared much worse than Maru when looking at how he outclasses him so much in the same era statistical wis and how Serral kickstarted once school was over. But too many ifs and an abysmal sample size leave too much room to truly pursue this thought in any meaningful way. I have had the feeling that this "Lack of team house environment with 12h/d sweat grinders" - argument as something Serral is lacking and making him better (or worse!!!) for this reason doesn't simply work as I think the environment were Serral grew up (and is living) was (and is) many ways more healthy and balanced than his Korean peers experienced. I think that Serral's environment is buff/perk for his case: supportive family that also set healthy limits, highly competitive (at least first, nearly unsurmountable) setting with his big brother, SC2 as wholesome family experience (journeys to tournaments together as a family), muuuuuuuch muuuuuuuch more peaceful environmental setting (big city vs rural village), sauna, hikes with dog in a woods, less economic dependancies and requirements to perform well, etc. that cultivated Serral to what he became. Serral was luckily born to "the team house family". I mean, Serral looks to me benefitting from exactly those same things that are usually considered as a burden or extra uphill battle for his rise to prominence. Should I say more 'Zen' for him. Korean team house experience should be considered as handicapping factor relative to Sotala's family team house experience. Admittedly I am biased with this take as a fellow Finn, but I share a lot of mental landscape with Serral only because of that. That's why I also think that Serral couldn't care less about going Korea and playing in the GSL (that, no doubt, would increase a lot of its relative value.) Just for note how I see that topic. This could very well be the case... I also never tried to factor this idea in, but people always use team houses to hype the peak era in terms of competitiveness. Hence it wouldn't make much sense to assume that it would have been detrimental to Serral (by their logic). I simply point this out to show that many people assume one thing when they argue for one person and turn the argument on the head when arguing for another (not you right here - just making a broader point). It either is a good thing or a bad thing for players... it can't be hyped as a cornerstone of competitiveness in one argument and used as a disadvantage for a player in another. It is either or. It is the same when people downplay 2018 and following for Serral, but in another argument highlight how many trophies Maru claims (For example: 2018 when Maru had his 4 back to back GSL. Then the era was still competitive and the player base dwindled steadily. But when Serral's rise is pointed out, people make the argument that this post 2015 competitiveness and doesn't hold much value). They change the value of events based on their argumentation and don't treat them as stable. This is a typical case of special pleading fallacy as it is obviously a portrayal of inconsistent application (of the event/s), lack of justification (why it should be the case to make a differentiation) as well as bias and favoritism. Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 20:26 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 24 2024 04:40 PremoBeats wrote:
So in this example.. after which time would you accept that the tides have turned? Or will Maru's 4 years always trump Serral despite the relation getting smaller and smaller over time?
That depends on their results. "Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)?" Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 22:56 rwala wrote:On July 24 2024 14:46 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 09:21 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 13:48 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 05:28 allmotor1 wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 22 2024 15:35 MJG wrote:On July 20 2024 21:39 Furaijin wrote:
[quote]
We're having a "goat" conversation here; that's not about opinions? What you talking bout? If it was then this post would be called; who do you think is the greatest! And not "who is the goat" these are VERY different conversations.
If we're talking goat then Serral is hands down so much better than Maru overal this topic is nothing but a fan of Maru trolling the community with his silly wishes and has very little to do with a "goat" conversation. Of course it's an opinion - if the debate wasn't opinion driven then we'd already have an absolute answer... The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Thing is Maru has been a top player since WOL and been through SC2's peak and all it's iterations. Serral is amazing, but his peak has been at a time when SC2 has been greatly diminished (the pro scene). Also since LOTV, zerg has been overtuned (maybe not currently) but for most of LOTV. Even if we assume that Maru was a top player since WoL (where I think many people suffer from nostalgia bias, if we look at his actual achievements in that period), my point is, that there must be a time, when the argument of him being at the top for longer falls short, assuming he ALWAYS trails behind Serral in comparison. Especially considering that Serral stomped onto the scene in 2018 with no support of a multi million dollar industry behind him or living in team houses since he was 13. My question is: When is that point? Will it never be reached as Korean elitists simply value 2015 so much more? Even if in a direct comparison Maru clearly is worse than Serral? I mean that is fine by me... I simply want people to show their true colors. rwala
You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is.
This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Did you read my GOAT article? I accounted for all of that with heavy penalties on Serral who still came out on top by far. Plus, Maru never DOMINATED 2015 either. He was a good player; a wild card at winning. All you said applies to Maru too, as his dominance (mostly behind Serral) started in 2018 as well. Disagree on Mvp: He only had one hyper successful year, when SC2 was still being figured out. He has win rates of less than 50% or 40% in 2012 and 2013. Someone who is so inconsistent can't be GOAT, even subjectively. His hyper successful year was 2011 where the pro scene wasn't even properly established yet. Peak SC2 according to numbers of players, pros and competitiveness is 2013-2015/2016. A lot of the players of that era transitioned into the period of Maru's and Serral's rise though. I am currently working on an era-comparison how these 2015-players fared versus other 2015-players in 2015 and 2018 and their results versus the new talent. This analysis will give us a better understanding what the penalty in comparing these era for post-2018 results should be. And I highly doubt that the 50% penalty I used in my analysis is even remotely fair towards post-2018. But we will see... I read your article and enjoyed it a lot. I appreciated the work you put into it. It's worth thinking of why your analyses discount Mvp so much. Some of these things are just common sense. My personal GOAT pick is Rogue but if you think no one can even subjectively pick Mvp I think you've lost the forest for the trees for sure. I encourage you to engage with my hypo on Clem. I think it'll help give you some perspective. Subjectively, Mvp can be picked... but he didn't play in the most competitive era either, which is an argument most people make when they try to deny Serral. Peak (total player and pro count) was 2013-2015/2016. That is why I dismiss Mvp... but if people want to pick him as their GOAT because of one hypersuccessful year in a pro scene that wasn't really established (which btw, didn't even make it among the best years ever played in the top 5 match win rate wise, and tournament win participation isn't #1 either), be my guest. But then these people shouldn't discount Serral for not playing in the era that wasn't prime either... all I demand is consistency Well... Serral actually played for a couple of years and defeated many players of the old era. Clem did not. This reason was put into the article exactly because of such a hypothetical. But sure.. if that other guys dominates the same way Serral did but since he was 13 years old like Maru when he started, surpassing Serral's insane statistics, he definitely had to be checked against the others as GOAT. How are you calculating peak pro player count? Genuinely curious because I had assumed that after that first GSL where an insane 2000+ players competed in the LAN qualifiers (including over 100 non-Koreans) things normalized and in fact the pro player base steadily decreased as more and more pros and young talents switched over to LoL, etc. I like that you’re conceding the point on the Clem hypo because I think it really helps understand differences of perspective in how to think about GOATs. For me personally there comes a point where the pro scene has dwindled so much and the tournament player pools and formats become such a shadow of their former selves that essentially results in that era don’t matter much if at all in terms of a GOAT convo. I thought the conversation between uThermal and StarCraft Historian on this point was really illuminating because for a lot of contemporary fans it’s hard to really imagine how much more competitive the game was. Imagine competing in a qualifier of hundreds and hundreds of pros for a chance to make it to another qualifier of dozens and dozens of pros to make it to 2 or 3 group stages of top-level pros, all of whom are specifically preparing builds to counter your playstyle. There really aren’t tournaments these days that come anywhere near that level. These days you can have a losing record in your Katowice group and still win the whole thing on a good day. uThermal described getting destroyed by 5th tier Korean pros during the most competitive era, and described how demoralizing it was when like 40 random Korean pros (often not the best ones) would show up at an MLG and flood the playoff bracket. People describe this as “Korean elitism” but it’s actually just an honest observation of how competitive the scene was at a time in which the government of a country and its largest corporations had been investing in talent and infrastructure for over a decade. Korean Starcraft competitions for the first 20 years of SCI and II are like the equivalent of the NBA. Could a player who never competed in the NBA but is widely regarded as the best and most dominant player in the world by their peers, has the most impressive stats, and led their team to several gold medals and league championships be the basketball GOAT? Sure! In fact, uThermal believes Serral is the GOAT despite being more honest than anyone in this forum about how much more competitive the scene was in South Korea. I appreciate that Serral held his own against Rain one time, etc. but this is not the same as demonstrating that you can consistently defeat the world’s best players, win and place highly in the most competitive tournaments the game has ever seen, and dominate the most competitive, high stakes league in the game’s history. That said, I think Serral is a great GOAT pick for many people. The best analogy for Serral fans I think is Babe Ruth. He is probably the consensus GOAT pick in baseball despite the fact that he played in a less competitive era (fewer teams/players, athletes of color prohibited from playing, etc.). Ruth was so much more dominant than other players of his era and he had the rare talent of being a slugger who was also an excellent pitcher. Ruth also popularized the game almost single-handedly in a way that I think Serral popularized SCII with a “Western” audience. Ruth wouldn’t be my baseball GOAT pick for a lot of the same reasons Serral isn’t mine either, but it’s a good analogy for understanding how a competitor could be the GOAT despite playing in a less competitive era. Well, the first GSL was played in 2010 and LoL came out in 2013. It had to gain traction first, thus I mostly put the exodus on 2015. IIRC LoL had a couple of ten million player (60-80) in the beginning and got the 100million milestone around 2016. The pro count of SC2 peaked in 2015/2016 and then everyone knows what happened. But I don't only base competitiveness on player count alone. A game needs to be played some time to be understood. Cheese needs to be countered. I looked at the number of team houses and approximated the number with 10-15 players pro team house. This of course is not very detailed, but I think, if someone is willing to invest the time, you simply could look at the teams and which players were under contract at which time. Perhaps I am mistaken on that one, as I simply didn't put much time into a differentiation. I made the cut at the end of 2017 to disadvantage Serral the most versus all other players. You are right... that time was much more difficult. But what most people seem to forget at that point: Many players of that era who were pros, were not top tier players. Yes, snipes occurred and sometimes favorites didn't make it out qualifiers or dropped to Code A. But the favorites were still the favorites and more often than not advanced (I am trying to put numbers on this aspect at the moment, but I will definitely need more time to do this accurately). Further, the quantity of tournaments often made it seem like all players competed all the time, which simply was not the case. Another guy here pointed out that TaeJa mostly won unimportant tournaments. Thus a narrative of heroism is easier to create, when someone who has 9 titles plays against another guy that has 9 titles. This simply isn't possible anymore today. That is why I value the stream lining of today's events for clarity, although they are admittedly more boring, as outcomes are more predictable. But they are... more honest (although it would definitely good for the scene to have more talent rising up and not only mostly from European). Btw, Korean elitists isn't a pejorative in my book, but a simple description. (And damn, I should have kept my mouth shut with that Rain comment... I knew nothing good would come of it :D )
Thanks, that makes sense re: peak competitive player pools, I myself wouldn’t know how to assess this.
No worries re: the Rain comment! It does show your true bias in favor of Serral, but then again that’s obvious from many of your other posts as well
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On July 24 2024 14:26 UnLarva wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 09:39 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 10:38 UnLarva wrote:On July 23 2024 09:46 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 22 2024 15:35 MJG wrote:On July 20 2024 21:39 Furaijin wrote:On June 11 2024 15:06 MJG wrote:On June 11 2024 04:56 Furaijin wrote:
After Serral getting the official GOAT trophy and 4:0 -ing Maru once again; wasnt even close btw.. just like last time... shouldnt this post u know... not be here xDDDDDD It's almost as if different people can have different opinions on the same subjective topic. ESL going out of their way to push their opinion doesn't make it anymore fact than if I were to pick a name out of a hat. We're having a "goat" conversation here; that's not about opinions? What you talking bout? If it was then this post would be called; who do you think is the greatest! And not "who is the goat" these are VERY different conversations. If we're talking goat then Serral is hands down so much better than Maru overal this topic is nothing but a fan of Maru trolling the community with his silly wishes and has very little to do with a "goat" conversation. Of course it's an opinion - if the debate wasn't opinion driven then we'd already have an absolute answer... The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Listen to the interview Starcraft Historian did with uThermal to understand why all decades are not created equal. Winning an OSL in 2013 with literally hundreds of pros competing is not the same thing as winning a DH in 2024 with a rotating constellation of the same few dozen players competing, some of whom aren't even the best players in the world (due to regional allotments). You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is. This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Great post. Only problem here is that this all is pretty much applicable to Maru too, and if we really count his efforts and achievements during that now near-mythical era (that Serral lacks), then we can point more deserving guy(s) for the GOAT than Maru (again, applying same criteria). Thinking Maru as The Goat in these circumstances doesn't feel right. Mvp lacks too much to be really considered. Which is why I said if results in the most competitive era are the “only” thing you care about, you’re probably picking a guy like Mvp. I do not agree that results in the most competitive era is a wash between Maru and Serral. Maru is arguably the most dominant Proleague player ever and he won two premier tournaments that arguably were more difficult to win than anything Serral has ever won precisely because of the respective differences in the player pools. There were several times in SCII’s super competitive era in which Maru was the best Terran in the world and even the best player in the world. Not as much as some of his contemporaries, but the idea that Maru had no results to speak of during that era doesn’t make sense. I'm not in denial of competitive peak era of the game and Maru's successes during it. However, that is only minor part of Maru's career and in this GOAT discussion the most relevant part for his case comes after those times (measurable statistically). His 4 GSL 2018 in row skyrocketed him as real GOAT contender. However, that happened during the time when also Serral rose up to prominence/dominance, and PremoBeast's statistical analysis show clearly that you should overvalue Maru's achievements (and era, peers, tourneys) pre-2018 insanely to make him look even with Serral statistics (in some of metrics.) Also, Serral was most heavily handicapped with the fact that big part of his career and achievements was left out the scope of analysis (which, I agree was right thing to do for purposes of the analysis and as easiest simplification available). In other words, Serral's case would look better if all EU successes and career vs foreigners would be included even if using same level of nerfing and handicapping. Maru's regionals were included, but Serral's were not. Maru's pre-2018 achievements are simply not enough to cover the gap between him and heavily handicapped Half-Serral vs Koreans only. In such circumstances, if Serral is closed out as GOAT candidate, personally cannot see any justification for Maru to be considered GOAT either, as he was not best and most successful even in his most successful and relevant parts of his career. If favoring the golden era that high over later times that would make Maru appear over Serral statistically means also using those same criteria to every other player playing during that era. Maru cannot be the GOAT as there are more prominent and successful players there earning the title before him (measured by size of trophy cabinet, tournament wins etc.) who would get same absurd buffs as him. The Greatest of All Times criteria must include all eras, but if weightings between eras must be disfigured to a surreal levels to make one contender look better than he really is (in this context) we all can see the problem here. Go Innovation! Go Rogue!
Thanks for backing off the false equivalence between Maru and Serral during the most competitive era. That was a bizarre take.
Big picture I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say tho. Are you accusing Miz of “disfiguring” the weightings of different eras to a surreal level to justify Maru as the GOAT? If so you should just say that. And if that is what you think we’ll have to agree to disagree because I read the methodology article and right away knew it would be very likely that Maru would end up as #1 (and in fact I predicted many of the placements correctly with the notable pleasant surprise of SOS). People in this forum are really just fighting with the methodology.
What I find ironic is that it seems to me that it is primarily extremely biased Serral fans that are engaged in fantastical thinking in these threads. FFS they are forcing Wax to uncharacteristically step out of his editorial role to explain why Proleague is not completely irrelevant to the conversation. Serral fans are unironically equating Serral’s performance in NationWars to Maru’s performance in Proleague (apparently not realizing how this looks to anyone who hasn’t already drunk the koolaid). You’re still seeing stuff like trying to make mountains out of the kernels of sand in which Serral once went toe-to-toe with Rain. Feardragon out of desperation or exasperation or some combo of the two started getting into prize winnings. The funniest one is the literal fantastical thinking in which we are presented with alternative histories in which Serral was Korean and for sure would have won X number of GSLs. Another interesting one that keeps popping up is the supposed extra credit that Serral deserves for not having the benefit of a team house in his formative days (of course they do not mention the direct and indirect benefits of region lock for non-Koreans). More than one Serral fan wanted to literally eliminate from consideration the entire period of time in which Serral did not play competitively because they thought this is the only fair way to make comparisons.
All these things are really silly and unnecessary. It’s totally enough just to point to Serral’s tournament results, win rates, head-to-head scores against top pros, and throw a bit of perspective from his peers in there as a cherry on top. Super easy case!
I don’t understand why all the desperation and defensiveness. I know people think this kind of thing helps their case but I promise it has the opposite effect.
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On July 25 2024 10:18 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 14:26 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 09:39 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 10:38 UnLarva wrote:On July 23 2024 09:46 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 22 2024 15:35 MJG wrote:On July 20 2024 21:39 Furaijin wrote:On June 11 2024 15:06 MJG wrote:
[quote]
It's almost as if different people can have different opinions on the same subjective topic.
ESL going out of their way to push their opinion doesn't make it anymore fact than if I were to pick a name out of a hat. We're having a "goat" conversation here; that's not about opinions? What you talking bout? If it was then this post would be called; who do you think is the greatest! And not "who is the goat" these are VERY different conversations. If we're talking goat then Serral is hands down so much better than Maru overal this topic is nothing but a fan of Maru trolling the community with his silly wishes and has very little to do with a "goat" conversation. Of course it's an opinion - if the debate wasn't opinion driven then we'd already have an absolute answer... The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Listen to the interview Starcraft Historian did with uThermal to understand why all decades are not created equal. Winning an OSL in 2013 with literally hundreds of pros competing is not the same thing as winning a DH in 2024 with a rotating constellation of the same few dozen players competing, some of whom aren't even the best players in the world (due to regional allotments). You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is. This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Great post. Only problem here is that this all is pretty much applicable to Maru too, and if we really count his efforts and achievements during that now near-mythical era (that Serral lacks), then we can point more deserving guy(s) for the GOAT than Maru (again, applying same criteria). Thinking Maru as The Goat in these circumstances doesn't feel right. Mvp lacks too much to be really considered. Which is why I said if results in the most competitive era are the “only” thing you care about, you’re probably picking a guy like Mvp. I do not agree that results in the most competitive era is a wash between Maru and Serral. Maru is arguably the most dominant Proleague player ever and he won two premier tournaments that arguably were more difficult to win than anything Serral has ever won precisely because of the respective differences in the player pools. There were several times in SCII’s super competitive era in which Maru was the best Terran in the world and even the best player in the world. Not as much as some of his contemporaries, but the idea that Maru had no results to speak of during that era doesn’t make sense. I'm not in denial of competitive peak era of the game and Maru's successes during it. However, that is only minor part of Maru's career and in this GOAT discussion the most relevant part for his case comes after those times (measurable statistically). His 4 GSL 2018 in row skyrocketed him as real GOAT contender. However, that happened during the time when also Serral rose up to prominence/dominance, and PremoBeast's statistical analysis show clearly that you should overvalue Maru's achievements (and era, peers, tourneys) pre-2018 insanely to make him look even with Serral statistics (in some of metrics.) Also, Serral was most heavily handicapped with the fact that big part of his career and achievements was left out the scope of analysis (which, I agree was right thing to do for purposes of the analysis and as easiest simplification available). In other words, Serral's case would look better if all EU successes and career vs foreigners would be included even if using same level of nerfing and handicapping. Maru's regionals were included, but Serral's were not. Maru's pre-2018 achievements are simply not enough to cover the gap between him and heavily handicapped Half-Serral vs Koreans only. In such circumstances, if Serral is closed out as GOAT candidate, personally cannot see any justification for Maru to be considered GOAT either, as he was not best and most successful even in his most successful and relevant parts of his career. If favoring the golden era that high over later times that would make Maru appear over Serral statistically means also using those same criteria to every other player playing during that era. Maru cannot be the GOAT as there are more prominent and successful players there earning the title before him (measured by size of trophy cabinet, tournament wins etc.) who would get same absurd buffs as him. The Greatest of All Times criteria must include all eras, but if weightings between eras must be disfigured to a surreal levels to make one contender look better than he really is (in this context) we all can see the problem here. Go Innovation! Go Rogue! Thanks for backing off the false equivalence between Maru and Serral during the most competitive era. That was a bizarre take. Big picture I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say tho. Are you accusing Miz of “disfiguring” the weightings of different eras to a surreal level to justify Maru as the GOAT? If so you should just say that. And if that is what you think we’ll have to agree to disagree because I read the methodology article and right away knew it would be very likely that Maru would end up as #1 (and in fact I predicted many of the placements correctly with the notable pleasant surprise of SOS). People in this forum are really just fighting with the methodology. What I find ironic is that it seems to me that it is primarily extremely biased Serral fans that are engaged in fantastical thinking in these threads. FFS they are forcing Wax to uncharacteristically step out of his editorial role to explain why Proleague is not completely irrelevant to the conversation. Serral fans are unironically equating Serral’s performance in NationWars to Maru’s performance in Proleague (apparently not realizing how this looks to anyone who hasn’t already drunk the koolaid). You’re still seeing stuff like trying to make mountains out of the kernels of sand in which Serral once went toe-to-toe with Rain. Feardragon out of desperation or exasperation or some combo of the two started getting into prize winnings. The funniest one is the literal fantastical thinking in which we are presented with alternative histories in which Serral was Korean and for sure would have won X number of GSLs. Another interesting one that keeps popping up is the supposed extra credit that Serral deserves for not having the benefit of a team house in his formative days (of course they do not mention the direct and indirect benefits of region lock for non-Koreans). More than one Serral fan wanted to literally eliminate from consideration the entire period of time in which Serral did not play competitively because they thought this is the only fair way to make comparisons. All these things are really silly and unnecessary. It’s totally enough just to point to Serral’s tournament results, win rates, head-to-head scores against top pros, and throw a bit of perspective from his peers in there as a cherry on top. Super easy case! I don’t understand why all the desperation and defensiveness. I know people think this kind of thing helps their case but I promise it has the opposite effect.
It's the kitchen sink approach: the perception is if you make enough arguments one will stick. Funnily enough it happens most often when people are not all that confident in the strength of their position. For some perspective, appellate courts in the U.S routinely tell lawyers to not take a kitchen sink approach because it makes them less persuasive.
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On July 25 2024 11:08 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 10:18 rwala wrote:On July 24 2024 14:26 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 09:39 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 10:38 UnLarva wrote:On July 23 2024 09:46 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 22 2024 15:35 MJG wrote:On July 20 2024 21:39 Furaijin wrote:
[quote]
We're having a "goat" conversation here; that's not about opinions? What you talking bout? If it was then this post would be called; who do you think is the greatest! And not "who is the goat" these are VERY different conversations.
If we're talking goat then Serral is hands down so much better than Maru overal this topic is nothing but a fan of Maru trolling the community with his silly wishes and has very little to do with a "goat" conversation. Of course it's an opinion - if the debate wasn't opinion driven then we'd already have an absolute answer... The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Listen to the interview Starcraft Historian did with uThermal to understand why all decades are not created equal. Winning an OSL in 2013 with literally hundreds of pros competing is not the same thing as winning a DH in 2024 with a rotating constellation of the same few dozen players competing, some of whom aren't even the best players in the world (due to regional allotments). You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is. This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Great post. Only problem here is that this all is pretty much applicable to Maru too, and if we really count his efforts and achievements during that now near-mythical era (that Serral lacks), then we can point more deserving guy(s) for the GOAT than Maru (again, applying same criteria). Thinking Maru as The Goat in these circumstances doesn't feel right. Mvp lacks too much to be really considered. Which is why I said if results in the most competitive era are the “only” thing you care about, you’re probably picking a guy like Mvp. I do not agree that results in the most competitive era is a wash between Maru and Serral. Maru is arguably the most dominant Proleague player ever and he won two premier tournaments that arguably were more difficult to win than anything Serral has ever won precisely because of the respective differences in the player pools. There were several times in SCII’s super competitive era in which Maru was the best Terran in the world and even the best player in the world. Not as much as some of his contemporaries, but the idea that Maru had no results to speak of during that era doesn’t make sense. I'm not in denial of competitive peak era of the game and Maru's successes during it. However, that is only minor part of Maru's career and in this GOAT discussion the most relevant part for his case comes after those times (measurable statistically). His 4 GSL 2018 in row skyrocketed him as real GOAT contender. However, that happened during the time when also Serral rose up to prominence/dominance, and PremoBeast's statistical analysis show clearly that you should overvalue Maru's achievements (and era, peers, tourneys) pre-2018 insanely to make him look even with Serral statistics (in some of metrics.) Also, Serral was most heavily handicapped with the fact that big part of his career and achievements was left out the scope of analysis (which, I agree was right thing to do for purposes of the analysis and as easiest simplification available). In other words, Serral's case would look better if all EU successes and career vs foreigners would be included even if using same level of nerfing and handicapping. Maru's regionals were included, but Serral's were not. Maru's pre-2018 achievements are simply not enough to cover the gap between him and heavily handicapped Half-Serral vs Koreans only. In such circumstances, if Serral is closed out as GOAT candidate, personally cannot see any justification for Maru to be considered GOAT either, as he was not best and most successful even in his most successful and relevant parts of his career. If favoring the golden era that high over later times that would make Maru appear over Serral statistically means also using those same criteria to every other player playing during that era. Maru cannot be the GOAT as there are more prominent and successful players there earning the title before him (measured by size of trophy cabinet, tournament wins etc.) who would get same absurd buffs as him. The Greatest of All Times criteria must include all eras, but if weightings between eras must be disfigured to a surreal levels to make one contender look better than he really is (in this context) we all can see the problem here. Go Innovation! Go Rogue! Thanks for backing off the false equivalence between Maru and Serral during the most competitive era. That was a bizarre take. Big picture I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say tho. Are you accusing Miz of “disfiguring” the weightings of different eras to a surreal level to justify Maru as the GOAT? If so you should just say that. And if that is what you think we’ll have to agree to disagree because I read the methodology article and right away knew it would be very likely that Maru would end up as #1 (and in fact I predicted many of the placements correctly with the notable pleasant surprise of SOS). People in this forum are really just fighting with the methodology. What I find ironic is that it seems to me that it is primarily extremely biased Serral fans that are engaged in fantastical thinking in these threads. FFS they are forcing Wax to uncharacteristically step out of his editorial role to explain why Proleague is not completely irrelevant to the conversation. Serral fans are unironically equating Serral’s performance in NationWars to Maru’s performance in Proleague (apparently not realizing how this looks to anyone who hasn’t already drunk the koolaid). You’re still seeing stuff like trying to make mountains out of the kernels of sand in which Serral once went toe-to-toe with Rain. Feardragon out of desperation or exasperation or some combo of the two started getting into prize winnings. The funniest one is the literal fantastical thinking in which we are presented with alternative histories in which Serral was Korean and for sure would have won X number of GSLs. Another interesting one that keeps popping up is the supposed extra credit that Serral deserves for not having the benefit of a team house in his formative days (of course they do not mention the direct and indirect benefits of region lock for non-Koreans). More than one Serral fan wanted to literally eliminate from consideration the entire period of time in which Serral did not play competitively because they thought this is the only fair way to make comparisons. All these things are really silly and unnecessary. It’s totally enough just to point to Serral’s tournament results, win rates, head-to-head scores against top pros, and throw a bit of perspective from his peers in there as a cherry on top. Super easy case! I don’t understand why all the desperation and defensiveness. I know people think this kind of thing helps their case but I promise it has the opposite effect. It's the kitchen sink approach: the perception is if you make enough arguments one will stick. Funnily enough it happens most often when people are not all that confident in the strength of their position. For some perspective, appellate courts in the U.S routinely tell lawyers to not take a kitchen sink approach because it makes them less persuasive.
Maybe it's because I am a lawyer that I find it particularly annoying.
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On July 25 2024 03:11 UnLarva wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:37 UnLarva wrote:
@rwala: Excellent post again!
From number side of the things, now we need only somewhat objective measurements to make sensible comparisons between eras. Personally It wouldn't be problem to me if in the end multipliers for the peak competitive era would appear something like x3.0 or x4.0 relative to post-2018 happenings, but such multipliers must come from rigorous studies.
The key issue is the striking and immediately apparent contradiction between statistics and what is written to the very title of this topic. If current top dogs all would be some kind newcomer usurpers I'd happily accept 'Korean Elitist stance', but, but, those Koreans who still remain there playing last half decade or so are practically all (and have been since heydays) the chrystallization and from the core of that same Korean Elite gamer group that once made Korean SC2 hegemony nearly inpenetrable for foreigners. And there is that one guy who have been slapping that cohort of absolutely best already six years. Why only look retrospectively backwards, when you can also look from the history onwards. In fact a hell lot of same guys are playing and watching how things fold out now. They are not those tier-5 Koreans flooding brackets for number 140 or 203 in a random qualifiers, they are the cream-of-the-cream Serral must meet every single tournament where he playes against Koreans. For the top dog It's irrelevant if there are 2000, 100, or 30, if 20 or so at the top 30 now are among the best players ever to play the game.
Trying to not sound too antagonistical here. :D Hahaha, so funny. I was bored at the airport and played around with my multiplier. I would a 300% bonus to put INno on par with Serral in the tournament score. On par. The third on this list... and then you still have the tournament multiplier that basically also mostly favors this area and has another 30% incorporated for most comparisons. And what you basically are saying at the end is exactly what I am trying to put numbers on at the moment. I was thinking that if/when ever you process with those Golden era tournaments (again), you could increase also the depth to Ro8 or Ro16 for tournament success evaluation concerning those times when competition was it's fiercest. Rewarding deeper in the final tournament results would act as a proxy and account for higher level of competition. That would be also good thing to secure the author of that kind analysis from non-necessary accusations for favoritism and recency bias, by setting yet another handicap to Serral. Yes. Just a suggestion. Lot of extra work, and honestly nobody can demand anything from you after what you already have done.
The tournaments I already have in that regard are (2013-2015):
2015 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
IEM Season X - gamescom
2014 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S
2013 WCS Season 1
2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest
2013 WCS Season 1 Korea GSL: Code S
2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event
2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League
IEM Season IX - Taipei
HomeStory Cup XIV
2015 WCS Global Finals
MSI Beat IT 2014
These are the ones where my final contenders placed 1st or 2nd. I will definitely go into more detail as I want to expand to probably Ro32 or Ro64 (32 is probably enough).
That way I can analyze the following:
1. Average starter rank of given tournaments
2. Percentage of times that a favorite advanced/got sniped (influence of the lower tier pros on the scene and competitiveness)
3. How many top favorites there actually were
I also want to get a better understanding which players tried to qualify for which tournaments. This can give insights on who played where, which niches got established and how these players actually fared at events, that were most prestigious/deemed the most important.
I also plan to investigate more towards the transition period. Currently I am writing down match win rates from 2013-2015 and 2018-2019 from top players that came out of the peak era. Against each other, against other players... how that changed in relation to 2018-2019 and versus the new talents Reynor and Serral. To get a feeling how much, if any, skill was lost up to that point.
Because we all know that there are certain players who have been consistently at the top since the earlier days like herO, ByuN (with some breaks), INno, or even Zest, Dark and Maru who rose to prominence when SC2 peaked... I simply don't see why all these player's skill level should suddenly have dropped so massively, that we cannot appreciate the new generation going on par with them or even surpassing them.
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@rwala
I'd be genuinely happy to see what are real transition functions, factors, multipliers, and weightings that should be used when comparing players across long time spans and different levels of competition, metas, versions of the game, that are all now one big mess in the one highly intermingled enormous data set, for making sensible evaluations and giving higher resolution to what are relative values of.achievements over the time span of the entire history of the competitive Sc2. There is too much ad hoc subjectivity traditionally in these kind of evaluations (and not pointing to any particular direction now). A big black stone dropped from my heart when I read the statistical analysis (as a hopeless Serral Fanboi, and yeah, sometimes very insecure as such due severe mental health related handicaps) as it's approach is healthy: one must first kind of eliminate the impact of biggest outliers out of the scope to see 'the normal' to be able to properly set value and worth to their respective careers and value of those outliers in their proper contexts - the outliers that happen to be in the core of this discussion. Complexity in the efforts with handling whole data set as objectively as possible is enormous task, but work put to do it helps everyone too. There are no privileged data points in principle within the data set, but it's clear that everything cannot be taken as their face value either, without proper weightings relative to the historical context. I was surprised that someone even began to project with such kind of work. Premobeast's efforts are highly welcomed by me.
For the note as a Serral fan I try hard to think ways to handicap him even more for analytic purposes without breaking the internal logic of that handicapping. In the end its secondary of importance for me who gets the 'the GOAT' sticker attached to their forehead compared to the integrity and objectivity of the methods to arrive such conclusion.
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On July 25 2024 10:18 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 24 2024 14:26 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 09:39 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 10:38 UnLarva wrote:On July 23 2024 09:46 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 22 2024 15:35 MJG wrote:On July 20 2024 21:39 Furaijin wrote:On June 11 2024 15:06 MJG wrote:
[quote]
It's almost as if different people can have different opinions on the same subjective topic.
ESL going out of their way to push their opinion doesn't make it anymore fact than if I were to pick a name out of a hat. We're having a "goat" conversation here; that's not about opinions? What you talking bout? If it was then this post would be called; who do you think is the greatest! And not "who is the goat" these are VERY different conversations. If we're talking goat then Serral is hands down so much better than Maru overal this topic is nothing but a fan of Maru trolling the community with his silly wishes and has very little to do with a "goat" conversation. Of course it's an opinion - if the debate wasn't opinion driven then we'd already have an absolute answer... The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Listen to the interview Starcraft Historian did with uThermal to understand why all decades are not created equal. Winning an OSL in 2013 with literally hundreds of pros competing is not the same thing as winning a DH in 2024 with a rotating constellation of the same few dozen players competing, some of whom aren't even the best players in the world (due to regional allotments). You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is. This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Great post. Only problem here is that this all is pretty much applicable to Maru too, and if we really count his efforts and achievements during that now near-mythical era (that Serral lacks), then we can point more deserving guy(s) for the GOAT than Maru (again, applying same criteria). Thinking Maru as The Goat in these circumstances doesn't feel right. Mvp lacks too much to be really considered. Which is why I said if results in the most competitive era are the “only” thing you care about, you’re probably picking a guy like Mvp. I do not agree that results in the most competitive era is a wash between Maru and Serral. Maru is arguably the most dominant Proleague player ever and he won two premier tournaments that arguably were more difficult to win than anything Serral has ever won precisely because of the respective differences in the player pools. There were several times in SCII’s super competitive era in which Maru was the best Terran in the world and even the best player in the world. Not as much as some of his contemporaries, but the idea that Maru had no results to speak of during that era doesn’t make sense. I'm not in denial of competitive peak era of the game and Maru's successes during it. However, that is only minor part of Maru's career and in this GOAT discussion the most relevant part for his case comes after those times (measurable statistically). His 4 GSL 2018 in row skyrocketed him as real GOAT contender. However, that happened during the time when also Serral rose up to prominence/dominance, and PremoBeast's statistical analysis show clearly that you should overvalue Maru's achievements (and era, peers, tourneys) pre-2018 insanely to make him look even with Serral statistics (in some of metrics.) Also, Serral was most heavily handicapped with the fact that big part of his career and achievements was left out the scope of analysis (which, I agree was right thing to do for purposes of the analysis and as easiest simplification available). In other words, Serral's case would look better if all EU successes and career vs foreigners would be included even if using same level of nerfing and handicapping. Maru's regionals were included, but Serral's were not. Maru's pre-2018 achievements are simply not enough to cover the gap between him and heavily handicapped Half-Serral vs Koreans only. In such circumstances, if Serral is closed out as GOAT candidate, personally cannot see any justification for Maru to be considered GOAT either, as he was not best and most successful even in his most successful and relevant parts of his career. If favoring the golden era that high over later times that would make Maru appear over Serral statistically means also using those same criteria to every other player playing during that era. Maru cannot be the GOAT as there are more prominent and successful players there earning the title before him (measured by size of trophy cabinet, tournament wins etc.) who would get same absurd buffs as him. The Greatest of All Times criteria must include all eras, but if weightings between eras must be disfigured to a surreal levels to make one contender look better than he really is (in this context) we all can see the problem here. Go Innovation! Go Rogue! Thanks for backing off the false equivalence between Maru and Serral during the most competitive era. That was a bizarre take. Big picture I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say tho. Are you accusing Miz of “disfiguring” the weightings of different eras to a surreal level to justify Maru as the GOAT? If so you should just say that. And if that is what you think we’ll have to agree to disagree because I read the methodology article and right away knew it would be very likely that Maru would end up as #1 (and in fact I predicted many of the placements correctly with the notable pleasant surprise of SOS). People in this forum are really just fighting with the methodology. What I find ironic is that it seems to me that it is primarily extremely biased Serral fans that are engaged in fantastical thinking in these threads. FFS they are forcing Wax to uncharacteristically step out of his editorial role to explain why Proleague is not completely irrelevant to the conversation. Serral fans are unironically equating Serral’s performance in NationWars to Maru’s performance in Proleague (apparently not realizing how this looks to anyone who hasn’t already drunk the koolaid). You’re still seeing stuff like trying to make mountains out of the kernels of sand in which Serral once went toe-to-toe with Rain. Feardragon out of desperation or exasperation or some combo of the two started getting into prize winnings. The funniest one is the literal fantastical thinking in which we are presented with alternative histories in which Serral was Korean and for sure would have won X number of GSLs. Another interesting one that keeps popping up is the supposed extra credit that Serral deserves for not having the benefit of a team house in his formative days (of course they do not mention the direct and indirect benefits of region lock for non-Koreans). More than one Serral fan wanted to literally eliminate from consideration the entire period of time in which Serral did not play competitively because they thought this is the only fair way to make comparisons. All these things are really silly and unnecessary. It’s totally enough just to point to Serral’s tournament results, win rates, head-to-head scores against top pros, and throw a bit of perspective from his peers in there as a cherry on top. Super easy case! I don’t understand why all the desperation and defensiveness. I know people think this kind of thing helps their case but I promise it has the opposite effect.
I thought about Miz's weighting a lot to be honest.
Because he mostly has the same categories as me, although I down-regulated Serral's tournaments in comparison further (category-wise). I also put the absurd 50% era-multiplier (which only help INno, Maru and Roge - INno the most) on top of that and didn't count team wins as they would heavily dilute the result because of team mates being able to lift you up or drag you down (as I wrote... player's scores for team events were attributed in the match win rates to not let their accomplishments like Maru's insane Proleague run be in vain).
The thing is... I have absolutely no idea how he arrived at his ranking with the categorizations he applied, knowing how even on my list Mvp is way further down the line and I already gave him absurd boosts, which shouldn't have happened according to Miz's intro. Or how Life or Dark are not on it at all... I don't get it. I was trying to squeeze the data to match his ranking, according to the vague information he gave, but simply wasn't able to do it. Mind you guys, this is only concerning my tournament score, as no other data was mentioned by Miz in his post.
On July 25 2024 11:08 lokol4890 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 10:18 rwala wrote:On July 24 2024 14:26 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 09:39 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 10:38 UnLarva wrote:On July 23 2024 09:46 rwala wrote:On July 23 2024 04:34 PremoBeats wrote:On July 23 2024 00:35 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 22 2024 15:35 MJG wrote:On July 20 2024 21:39 Furaijin wrote:
[quote]
We're having a "goat" conversation here; that's not about opinions? What you talking bout? If it was then this post would be called; who do you think is the greatest! And not "who is the goat" these are VERY different conversations.
If we're talking goat then Serral is hands down so much better than Maru overal this topic is nothing but a fan of Maru trolling the community with his silly wishes and has very little to do with a "goat" conversation. Of course it's an opinion - if the debate wasn't opinion driven then we'd already have an absolute answer... The answer is that Serral is "better" than Maru, but there's a strong case to be made that Maru is "greater" because he's spent more than a decade as a top tier player in basically every metric (what you think of everything beyond the comma varies depending on your evaluation process). So if Serral is "better" than Maru and Maru is "greater" because of him playing for over a decade at top tier level... what about a time when Serral has a decade under his belt too and Maru would not have been hindered by military service at this point? Does Maru still trump him or does Maru's supposed "greater"-ness diminish as the longer these two play, the less it will be relevant in relation (assuming the rest of the statistics stay more or less the same)? Meaning 11vs7 is probably worth more than 14vs10 or 24vs20, right? Btw, I added Mvp's statistics in an answer to you in the GOAT thread. Listen to the interview Starcraft Historian did with uThermal to understand why all decades are not created equal. Winning an OSL in 2013 with literally hundreds of pros competing is not the same thing as winning a DH in 2024 with a rotating constellation of the same few dozen players competing, some of whom aren't even the best players in the world (due to regional allotments). You have the logic backwards. As more and more top-level pros retire and fewer and fewer young talents enter the game, the less relevant modern periods of domination are for becoming GOAT'ed and the more relevant results of the most competitive era become. The easiest way to understand this is to imagine a future of SCII where it's like a couple dozen players playing in TL StarLeague, Homestory Cup, StarsWar, etc. and Clem literally wins every tournament for a decade. If you think Clem being the GOAT in that circumstance doesn't feel right to you, think about why, and you'll be closer to having a more common sense understanding of what a GOAT is. This doesn't mean Serral could never be the GOAT, but it does mean that for him to be your GOAT you probably need to place more value on things like consistency, level of dominance, prize winnings, and head-to-head scores than on results in the most competitive era of SCII because quite simply Serral has no such results. By contrast, if results in the most competitive era of SCII is literally the only thing you care about, probably Mvp is your guy (or maybe the other guy who I don't care to mention). Great post. Only problem here is that this all is pretty much applicable to Maru too, and if we really count his efforts and achievements during that now near-mythical era (that Serral lacks), then we can point more deserving guy(s) for the GOAT than Maru (again, applying same criteria). Thinking Maru as The Goat in these circumstances doesn't feel right. Mvp lacks too much to be really considered. Which is why I said if results in the most competitive era are the “only” thing you care about, you’re probably picking a guy like Mvp. I do not agree that results in the most competitive era is a wash between Maru and Serral. Maru is arguably the most dominant Proleague player ever and he won two premier tournaments that arguably were more difficult to win than anything Serral has ever won precisely because of the respective differences in the player pools. There were several times in SCII’s super competitive era in which Maru was the best Terran in the world and even the best player in the world. Not as much as some of his contemporaries, but the idea that Maru had no results to speak of during that era doesn’t make sense. I'm not in denial of competitive peak era of the game and Maru's successes during it. However, that is only minor part of Maru's career and in this GOAT discussion the most relevant part for his case comes after those times (measurable statistically). His 4 GSL 2018 in row skyrocketed him as real GOAT contender. However, that happened during the time when also Serral rose up to prominence/dominance, and PremoBeast's statistical analysis show clearly that you should overvalue Maru's achievements (and era, peers, tourneys) pre-2018 insanely to make him look even with Serral statistics (in some of metrics.) Also, Serral was most heavily handicapped with the fact that big part of his career and achievements was left out the scope of analysis (which, I agree was right thing to do for purposes of the analysis and as easiest simplification available). In other words, Serral's case would look better if all EU successes and career vs foreigners would be included even if using same level of nerfing and handicapping. Maru's regionals were included, but Serral's were not. Maru's pre-2018 achievements are simply not enough to cover the gap between him and heavily handicapped Half-Serral vs Koreans only. In such circumstances, if Serral is closed out as GOAT candidate, personally cannot see any justification for Maru to be considered GOAT either, as he was not best and most successful even in his most successful and relevant parts of his career. If favoring the golden era that high over later times that would make Maru appear over Serral statistically means also using those same criteria to every other player playing during that era. Maru cannot be the GOAT as there are more prominent and successful players there earning the title before him (measured by size of trophy cabinet, tournament wins etc.) who would get same absurd buffs as him. The Greatest of All Times criteria must include all eras, but if weightings between eras must be disfigured to a surreal levels to make one contender look better than he really is (in this context) we all can see the problem here. Go Innovation! Go Rogue! Thanks for backing off the false equivalence between Maru and Serral during the most competitive era. That was a bizarre take. Big picture I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say tho. Are you accusing Miz of “disfiguring” the weightings of different eras to a surreal level to justify Maru as the GOAT? If so you should just say that. And if that is what you think we’ll have to agree to disagree because I read the methodology article and right away knew it would be very likely that Maru would end up as #1 (and in fact I predicted many of the placements correctly with the notable pleasant surprise of SOS). People in this forum are really just fighting with the methodology. What I find ironic is that it seems to me that it is primarily extremely biased Serral fans that are engaged in fantastical thinking in these threads. FFS they are forcing Wax to uncharacteristically step out of his editorial role to explain why Proleague is not completely irrelevant to the conversation. Serral fans are unironically equating Serral’s performance in NationWars to Maru’s performance in Proleague (apparently not realizing how this looks to anyone who hasn’t already drunk the koolaid). You’re still seeing stuff like trying to make mountains out of the kernels of sand in which Serral once went toe-to-toe with Rain. Feardragon out of desperation or exasperation or some combo of the two started getting into prize winnings. The funniest one is the literal fantastical thinking in which we are presented with alternative histories in which Serral was Korean and for sure would have won X number of GSLs. Another interesting one that keeps popping up is the supposed extra credit that Serral deserves for not having the benefit of a team house in his formative days (of course they do not mention the direct and indirect benefits of region lock for non-Koreans). More than one Serral fan wanted to literally eliminate from consideration the entire period of time in which Serral did not play competitively because they thought this is the only fair way to make comparisons. All these things are really silly and unnecessary. It’s totally enough just to point to Serral’s tournament results, win rates, head-to-head scores against top pros, and throw a bit of perspective from his peers in there as a cherry on top. Super easy case! I don’t understand why all the desperation and defensiveness. I know people think this kind of thing helps their case but I promise it has the opposite effect. It's the kitchen sink approach: the perception is if you make enough arguments one will stick. Funnily enough it happens most often when people are not all that confident in the strength of their position. For some perspective, appellate courts in the U.S routinely tell lawyers to not take a kitchen sink approach because it makes them less persuasive.
That was not the case for me. I simply wanted to cover all the information hard data can give us. I was accused time and again of being a Serral fanboy, which can only be true because of his greatness, as that is something I am most interested in, when I look at the sports I like (kiting, StarCraft, LoL and Calisthenics). Funny enough, Serral fanboys should be the most angry at me, as I penalized him way beyond common sense.
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France12758 Posts
The thing is... I have absolutely no idea how he arrived at his ranking with the categorizations he applied, knowing how even on my list Mvp is way further down the line and I already gave him absurd boosts, which shouldn't have happened according to Miz's intro.
Yeah when I retro engineered based on his introduction, mvp was wayyy down in terms of points. Other than him and Dark, most players were roughly where I expected them to be.
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On July 25 2024 14:16 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 03:11 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:37 UnLarva wrote:
@rwala: Excellent post again!
From number side of the things, now we need only somewhat objective measurements to make sensible comparisons between eras. Personally It wouldn't be problem to me if in the end multipliers for the peak competitive era would appear something like x3.0 or x4.0 relative to post-2018 happenings, but such multipliers must come from rigorous studies.
The key issue is the striking and immediately apparent contradiction between statistics and what is written to the very title of this topic. If current top dogs all would be some kind newcomer usurpers I'd happily accept 'Korean Elitist stance', but, but, those Koreans who still remain there playing last half decade or so are practically all (and have been since heydays) the chrystallization and from the core of that same Korean Elite gamer group that once made Korean SC2 hegemony nearly inpenetrable for foreigners. And there is that one guy who have been slapping that cohort of absolutely best already six years. Why only look retrospectively backwards, when you can also look from the history onwards. In fact a hell lot of same guys are playing and watching how things fold out now. They are not those tier-5 Koreans flooding brackets for number 140 or 203 in a random qualifiers, they are the cream-of-the-cream Serral must meet every single tournament where he playes against Koreans. For the top dog It's irrelevant if there are 2000, 100, or 30, if 20 or so at the top 30 now are among the best players ever to play the game.
Trying to not sound too antagonistical here. :D Hahaha, so funny. I was bored at the airport and played around with my multiplier. I would a 300% bonus to put INno on par with Serral in the tournament score. On par. The third on this list... and then you still have the tournament multiplier that basically also mostly favors this area and has another 30% incorporated for most comparisons. And what you basically are saying at the end is exactly what I am trying to put numbers on at the moment. I was thinking that if/when ever you process with those Golden era tournaments (again), you could increase also the depth to Ro8 or Ro16 for tournament success evaluation concerning those times when competition was it's fiercest. Rewarding deeper in the final tournament results would act as a proxy and account for higher level of competition. That would be also good thing to secure the author of that kind analysis from non-necessary accusations for favoritism and recency bias, by setting yet another handicap to Serral. Yes. Just a suggestion. Lot of extra work, and honestly nobody can demand anything from you after what you already have done. The tournaments I already have in that regard are (2013-2015): 2015 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S IEM Season X - gamescom 2014 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S 2013 WCS Season 1 2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest 2013 WCS Season 1 Korea GSL: Code S 2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event 2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League IEM Season IX - Taipei HomeStory Cup XIV 2015 WCS Global Finals MSI Beat IT 2014 These are the ones where my final contenders placed 1st or 2nd. I will definitely go into more detail as I want to expand to probably Ro32 or Ro64 (32 is probably enough). That way I can analyze the following: 1. Average starter rank of given tournaments 2. Percentage of times that a favorite advanced/got sniped (influence of the lower tier pros on the scene and competitiveness) 3. How many top favorites there actually were I also want to get a better understanding which players tried to qualify for which tournaments. This can give insights on who played where, which niches got established and how these players actually fared at events, that were most prestigious/deemed the most important. I also plan to investigate more towards the transition period. Currently I am writing down match win rates from 2013-2015 and 2018-2019 from top players that came out of the peak era. Against each other, against other players... how that changed in relation to 2018-2019 and versus the new talents Reynor and Serral. To get a feeling how much, if any, skill was lost up to that point. Because we all know that there are certain players who have been consistently at the top since the earlier days like herO, ByuN (with some breaks), INno, or even Zest, Dark and Maru who rose to prominence when SC2 peaked... I simply don't see why all these player's skill level should suddenly have dropped so massively, that we cannot appreciate the new generation going on par with them or even surpassing them.
Excellent.
There is that "Tournament path of player x was too easy to the victory, thus it doesn't count" -argument sometimes carelessly thrown around, you know (important in Serral's case because he often really get royal road in a tournament, because he is so damn good earning invitations, skipping bracket phases etc.) If '1. Average starter rank of given tournament' approach would also include calculations on an average strength of the tournament path for each tournament and players, that would help immensely in evaluation how justified those arguments really are. I have no immediate idea how to handicap Serral numerically in such scenarios, but apparently it should be that better more games are included to a player's tournament path relative to Serral's "easier" path in it, rewarding longer path. Sure, a lot more work, and in this phase of the process, probably too nitpicky too in it's resolution.
But come on, let's reduce that random dude out of balance sheets as much as we can! XD
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On July 25 2024 17:11 UnLarva wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 14:16 PremoBeats wrote:On July 25 2024 03:11 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:37 UnLarva wrote:
@rwala: Excellent post again!
From number side of the things, now we need only somewhat objective measurements to make sensible comparisons between eras. Personally It wouldn't be problem to me if in the end multipliers for the peak competitive era would appear something like x3.0 or x4.0 relative to post-2018 happenings, but such multipliers must come from rigorous studies.
The key issue is the striking and immediately apparent contradiction between statistics and what is written to the very title of this topic. If current top dogs all would be some kind newcomer usurpers I'd happily accept 'Korean Elitist stance', but, but, those Koreans who still remain there playing last half decade or so are practically all (and have been since heydays) the chrystallization and from the core of that same Korean Elite gamer group that once made Korean SC2 hegemony nearly inpenetrable for foreigners. And there is that one guy who have been slapping that cohort of absolutely best already six years. Why only look retrospectively backwards, when you can also look from the history onwards. In fact a hell lot of same guys are playing and watching how things fold out now. They are not those tier-5 Koreans flooding brackets for number 140 or 203 in a random qualifiers, they are the cream-of-the-cream Serral must meet every single tournament where he playes against Koreans. For the top dog It's irrelevant if there are 2000, 100, or 30, if 20 or so at the top 30 now are among the best players ever to play the game.
Trying to not sound too antagonistical here. :D Hahaha, so funny. I was bored at the airport and played around with my multiplier. I would a 300% bonus to put INno on par with Serral in the tournament score. On par. The third on this list... and then you still have the tournament multiplier that basically also mostly favors this area and has another 30% incorporated for most comparisons. And what you basically are saying at the end is exactly what I am trying to put numbers on at the moment. I was thinking that if/when ever you process with those Golden era tournaments (again), you could increase also the depth to Ro8 or Ro16 for tournament success evaluation concerning those times when competition was it's fiercest. Rewarding deeper in the final tournament results would act as a proxy and account for higher level of competition. That would be also good thing to secure the author of that kind analysis from non-necessary accusations for favoritism and recency bias, by setting yet another handicap to Serral. Yes. Just a suggestion. Lot of extra work, and honestly nobody can demand anything from you after what you already have done. The tournaments I already have in that regard are (2013-2015): 2015 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S IEM Season X - gamescom 2014 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S 2013 WCS Season 1 2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest 2013 WCS Season 1 Korea GSL: Code S 2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event 2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League IEM Season IX - Taipei HomeStory Cup XIV 2015 WCS Global Finals MSI Beat IT 2014 These are the ones where my final contenders placed 1st or 2nd. I will definitely go into more detail as I want to expand to probably Ro32 or Ro64 (32 is probably enough). That way I can analyze the following: 1. Average starter rank of given tournaments 2. Percentage of times that a favorite advanced/got sniped (influence of the lower tier pros on the scene and competitiveness) 3. How many top favorites there actually were I also want to get a better understanding which players tried to qualify for which tournaments. This can give insights on who played where, which niches got established and how these players actually fared at events, that were most prestigious/deemed the most important. I also plan to investigate more towards the transition period. Currently I am writing down match win rates from 2013-2015 and 2018-2019 from top players that came out of the peak era. Against each other, against other players... how that changed in relation to 2018-2019 and versus the new talents Reynor and Serral. To get a feeling how much, if any, skill was lost up to that point. Because we all know that there are certain players who have been consistently at the top since the earlier days like herO, ByuN (with some breaks), INno, or even Zest, Dark and Maru who rose to prominence when SC2 peaked... I simply don't see why all these player's skill level should suddenly have dropped so massively, that we cannot appreciate the new generation going on par with them or even surpassing them. Excellent. There is that "Tournament path of player x was too easy to the victory, thus it doesn't count" -argument sometimes carelessly thrown around, you know (important in Serral's case because he often really get royal road in a tournament, because he is so damn good earning invitations, skipping bracket phases etc.) If '1. Average starter rank of given tournament' approach would also include calculations on an average strength of the tournament path for each tournament and players, that would help immensely in evaluation how justified those arguments really are. I have no immediate idea how to handicap Serral numerically in such scenarios, but apparently it should be that better more games are included to a player's tournament path relative to Serral's "easier" path in it, rewarding longer path. Sure, a lot more work, and in this phase of the process, probably too nitpicky too in it's resolution. But come on, let's reduce that random dude out of balance sheets as much as we can! XD
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't a royal road a term used when people win a tournament in their first attempt?
Are there truly many instances of the thing you described happening in the past? Because a first - and much easier - approach could be to simply see how many tournaments Serral actually advanced deeply into, where he was placed further up ahead in contrast to others. Because I looked at all tournaments he placed first and second and from the back of my mind I don't seem to recall any where this occurred (although I didn't specifically have an eye out for that tbh).
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On July 25 2024 17:51 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 17:11 UnLarva wrote:On July 25 2024 14:16 PremoBeats wrote:On July 25 2024 03:11 UnLarva wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:54 PremoBeats wrote:On July 24 2024 23:37 UnLarva wrote:
@rwala: Excellent post again!
From number side of the things, now we need only somewhat objective measurements to make sensible comparisons between eras. Personally It wouldn't be problem to me if in the end multipliers for the peak competitive era would appear something like x3.0 or x4.0 relative to post-2018 happenings, but such multipliers must come from rigorous studies.
The key issue is the striking and immediately apparent contradiction between statistics and what is written to the very title of this topic. If current top dogs all would be some kind newcomer usurpers I'd happily accept 'Korean Elitist stance', but, but, those Koreans who still remain there playing last half decade or so are practically all (and have been since heydays) the chrystallization and from the core of that same Korean Elite gamer group that once made Korean SC2 hegemony nearly inpenetrable for foreigners. And there is that one guy who have been slapping that cohort of absolutely best already six years. Why only look retrospectively backwards, when you can also look from the history onwards. In fact a hell lot of same guys are playing and watching how things fold out now. They are not those tier-5 Koreans flooding brackets for number 140 or 203 in a random qualifiers, they are the cream-of-the-cream Serral must meet every single tournament where he playes against Koreans. For the top dog It's irrelevant if there are 2000, 100, or 30, if 20 or so at the top 30 now are among the best players ever to play the game.
Trying to not sound too antagonistical here. :D Hahaha, so funny. I was bored at the airport and played around with my multiplier. I would a 300% bonus to put INno on par with Serral in the tournament score. On par. The third on this list... and then you still have the tournament multiplier that basically also mostly favors this area and has another 30% incorporated for most comparisons. And what you basically are saying at the end is exactly what I am trying to put numbers on at the moment. I was thinking that if/when ever you process with those Golden era tournaments (again), you could increase also the depth to Ro8 or Ro16 for tournament success evaluation concerning those times when competition was it's fiercest. Rewarding deeper in the final tournament results would act as a proxy and account for higher level of competition. That would be also good thing to secure the author of that kind analysis from non-necessary accusations for favoritism and recency bias, by setting yet another handicap to Serral. Yes. Just a suggestion. Lot of extra work, and honestly nobody can demand anything from you after what you already have done. The tournaments I already have in that regard are (2013-2015): 2015 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S IEM Season X - gamescom 2014 Global StarCraft II League Season 3: Code S 2013 WCS Season 1 2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest 2013 WCS Season 1 Korea GSL: Code S 2015 StarCraft II StarLeague Season 1: Main Event 2013 WCS Season 2 Korea OSL: Premier League IEM Season IX - Taipei HomeStory Cup XIV 2015 WCS Global Finals MSI Beat IT 2014 These are the ones where my final contenders placed 1st or 2nd. I will definitely go into more detail as I want to expand to probably Ro32 or Ro64 (32 is probably enough). That way I can analyze the following: 1. Average starter rank of given tournaments 2. Percentage of times that a favorite advanced/got sniped (influence of the lower tier pros on the scene and competitiveness) 3. How many top favorites there actually were I also want to get a better understanding which players tried to qualify for which tournaments. This can give insights on who played where, which niches got established and how these players actually fared at events, that were most prestigious/deemed the most important. I also plan to investigate more towards the transition period. Currently I am writing down match win rates from 2013-2015 and 2018-2019 from top players that came out of the peak era. Against each other, against other players... how that changed in relation to 2018-2019 and versus the new talents Reynor and Serral. To get a feeling how much, if any, skill was lost up to that point. Because we all know that there are certain players who have been consistently at the top since the earlier days like herO, ByuN (with some breaks), INno, or even Zest, Dark and Maru who rose to prominence when SC2 peaked... I simply don't see why all these player's skill level should suddenly have dropped so massively, that we cannot appreciate the new generation going on par with them or even surpassing them. Excellent. There is that "Tournament path of player x was too easy to the victory, thus it doesn't count" -argument sometimes carelessly thrown around, you know (important in Serral's case because he often really get royal road in a tournament, because he is so damn good earning invitations, skipping bracket phases etc.) If '1. Average starter rank of given tournament' approach would also include calculations on an average strength of the tournament path for each tournament and players, that would help immensely in evaluation how justified those arguments really are. I have no immediate idea how to handicap Serral numerically in such scenarios, but apparently it should be that better more games are included to a player's tournament path relative to Serral's "easier" path in it, rewarding longer path. Sure, a lot more work, and in this phase of the process, probably too nitpicky too in it's resolution. But come on, let's reduce that random dude out of balance sheets as much as we can! XD Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't a royal road a term used when people win a tournament in their first attempt? Are there truly many instances of the thing you described happening in the past? Because a first - and much easier - approach could be to simply see how many tournaments Serral actually advanced deeply into, where he was placed further up ahead in contrast to others. Because I looked at all tournaments he placed first and second and from the back of my mind I don't seem to recall any where this occurred (although I didn't specifically have an eye out for that tbh).
Yep. You're right. I used the term carelessly. Too figuratively.
In certain sense, all tournaments that award Serral (or whomever else) a spot in some other tournament making him skip lower levels of qualification, can be seen like a qualifier itself. Success also causes "easier" bracket placements when rankings reward that success properly. Now, when there sometimes appear comments like I demonstrated (more at the reddit-side, must say) with mild parodic intentions, I thought how that could be used as handicap to Serral, as he is one of those who on average should enjoy the most shortest paths in his overall tournament participation due his success in previous qualifying top end tournaments (for example by qualifying three different ways to Riyadh 2024). Also, on average Serral tends to drop to loser brackets later than many other top guys when it happens he lose a playoffs match, meaning he needs to play on average less games during a tournament. In that kind arguments I painted out (quite impressionistically), it is used as an argument against Serral if he is that victorious he doesn't have to toil through a loser brackets...
I expect that Serral is the guy who would suffer the most if the length of the tournament path would be a factor of "difficulty" in a given tournament success. Yes, it's absurd approach, but that was my entire point. How to put handicaps that would be coherently applicable to all players, but would nerf Serral most hardest.
Generally speaking, I try to approach whole thing from reductio ad absurdum angle, and only for Serral.
(***/It is sometimes very hard to me to find correct words and terms to depict clearly what I am trying to say, so forgive me if comments appear sometimes meandering... Also, it really sucks that my active English vocabulary concerning these intriguing things is rather limited. Also, the tone with I'm trying to speak can be sometimes understood wrongly, sometimes diametrically opposite to what was my mood and intent. Sorry about that.)
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On July 24 2024 23:37 UnLarva wrote:
@rwala: Excellent post again!
From number side of the things, now we need only somewhat objective measurements to make sensible comparisons between eras. Personally It wouldn't be problem to me if in the end multipliers for the peak competitive era would appear something like x3.0 or x4.0 relative to post-2018 happenings, but such multipliers must come from rigorous studies.
The key issue is the striking and immediately apparent contradiction between statistics and what is written to the very title of this topic. If current top dogs all would be some kind newcomer usurpers I'd happily accept 'Korean Elitist stance', but, but, those Koreans who still remain there playing last half decade or so are practically all (and have been since heydays) the chrystallization and from the core of that same Korean Elite gamer group that once made Korean SC2 hegemony nearly inpenetrable for foreigners. And there is that one guy who have been slapping that cohort of absolutely best already six years. Why only look retrospectively backwards, when you can also look from the history onwards. In fact a hell lot of same guys are playing and watching how things fold out now. They are not those tier-5 Koreans flooding brackets for number 140 or 203 in a random qualifiers, they are the cream-of-the-cream Serral must meet every single tournament where he plays against Koreans. For the top dog It's irrelevant if there are 2000, 100, or 30, if 20 or so at the top 30 now are among the best players ever to play the game.
Trying to not sound too antagonistical here. :D
The same koreans that are here now are only in name the same ones that competed back then.
uthermal talked about that too, that the average age of competitors is a good indicator for the competitiveness of the scene and it's way harder to compete at an older age because of increasing responsibilities etc.
The same koreans that were practicing their ass off every day in 2013-15 are technically still here, but they are now in their late 20s or 30s, have families, military either already done or soon incoming. That makes a huge, huge difference
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On July 25 2024 14:32 UnLarva wrote:@rwala I'd be genuinely happy to see what are real transition functions, factors, multipliers, and weightings that should be used when comparing players across long time spans and different levels of competition, metas, versions of the game, that are all now one big mess in the one highly intermingled enormous data set, for making sensible evaluations and giving higher resolution to what are relative values of.achievements over the time span of the entire history of the competitive Sc2. There is too much ad hoc subjectivity traditionally in these kind of evaluations (and not pointing to any particular direction now). A big black stone dropped from my heart when I read the statistical analysis (as a hopeless Serral Fanboi, and yeah, sometimes very insecure as such due severe mental health related handicaps) as it's approach is healthy: one must first kind of eliminate the impact of biggest outliers out of the scope to see 'the normal' to be able to properly set value and worth to their respective careers and value of those outliers in their proper contexts - the outliers that happen to be in the core of this discussion. Complexity in the efforts with handling whole data set as objectively as possible is enormous task, but work put to do it helps everyone too. There are no privileged data points in principle within the data set, but it's clear that everything cannot be taken as their face value either, without proper weightings relative to the historical context. I was surprised that someone even began to project with such kind of work. Premobeast's efforts are highly welcomed by me. For the note as a Serral fan I try hard to think ways to handicap him even more for analytic purposes without breaking the internal logic of that handicapping. In the end its secondary of importance for me who gets the 'the GOAT' sticker attached to their forehead compared to the integrity and objectivity of the methods to arrive such conclusion.
I’m genuinely curious if you’ve ever thought about GOATs before. For example in other games like chess, or in sports. I’m not trying to be condescending it’s just that these things are simply not a math equation. When you approach it like a math equation you end up with very weird results, like Mvp not being on your list. Or like having to now figure out how to give Oliveira a trophy because based on your “statistics and criteria” Oliveira should have gotten the trophy that you gave Serral. (FWIW I support giving Serral a trophy, it just should have been a lifetime achievement award or something.)
Here is one example. If you just go based on math, Muhammad Ali cannot be your GOAT because there are too many other undefeated contenders and 5 losses is actually quite high for a GOAT contender. Why then is he considered “The Greatest”? It’s because he won matches against boxers that were considered unbeatable, and won when it mattered. And then he came out of retirement and did it again. He captured the hearts and minds of the entire world in a way that no other boxer could and no math equation will ever understand.
To come back to SCII, while Serral’s statistics and results are impressive and enough to justify him as the GOAT, I personally think the best case for him is that he accomplished what no one would ever have thought was possible for a non-Korean and almost single-handedly inspired an entire generation of players and fans to revitalize the greatest e-sport ever created. I don’t think you necessarily even need this narrative given the built-in narratives around “world championships” being more valuable than other, more competitive tournaments like GSL, but I do think it’s a good example of how to think of greatness.
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France12758 Posts
@rwala: and that thing about Serral accomplishing what everyone thought was impossible is also a big reason why I have Maru as GOAT. Would the other great terrans like Cure, Clem, INno, ByuN, TY, etc. have kept going as hard when virtually only Maru was having success with the race (at several points in time)?
I specifically remember uThermal being like "wow ByuN has returned, he is the true goat/terran goat, not Maru".
What that says is not really that ByuN was the goat. It just says: "we have lost hope as a race. We need someone to show us the way on how to approach our difficulties in TvZ and TvP". And I believe many great terrans did that at some point in their career. But Maru brought that to another level in my opinion. The "just play like Maru" memes didn't come out of nowhere.
Sure, Maru is just a flawed human like everyone else. But the "hilarious" defeats like Maru vs sOs at BlizzCon is also part of the legend. He didn't raise hope alone. He was helped by teammates etc. to figure out stuff. That's probably why his apparent "weakness" (on top of the health issues) was having to play versus teammates.
He managed to overcome that at several points in his career anyways.
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On July 25 2024 21:48 Poopi wrote:
@rwala: and that thing about Serral accomplishing what everyone thought was impossible is also a big reason why I have Maru as GOAT. Would the other great terrans like Cure, Clem, INno, ByuN, TY, etc. have kept going as hard when virtually only Maru was having success with the race (at several points in time)?
I specifically remember uThermal being like "wow ByuN has returned, he is the true goat/terran goat, not Maru".
What that says is not really that ByuN was the goat. It just says: "we have lost hope as a race. We need someone to show us the way on how to approach our difficulties in TvZ and TvP". And I believe many great terrans did that at some point in their career. But Maru brought that to another level in my opinion. The "just play like Maru" memes didn't come out of nowhere.
Sure, Maru is just a flawed human like everyone else. But the "hilarious" defeats like Maru vs sOs at BlizzCon is also part of the legend. He didn't raise hope alone. He was helped by teammates etc. to figure out stuff. That's probably why his apparent "weakness" (on top of the health issues) was having to play versus teammates.
He managed to overcome that at several points in his career anyways.
I agree with this, this is also why Maru earned the nickname as the "4th race" years ago.
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On July 25 2024 21:48 Poopi wrote:
@rwala: and that thing about Serral accomplishing what everyone thought was impossible is also a big reason why I have Maru as GOAT. Would the other great terrans like Cure, Clem, INno, ByuN, TY, etc. have kept going as hard when virtually only Maru was having success with the race (at several points in time)?
I specifically remember uThermal being like "wow ByuN has returned, he is the true goat/terran goat, not Maru".
What that says is not really that ByuN was the goat. It just says: "we have lost hope as a race. We need someone to show us the way on how to approach our difficulties in TvZ and TvP". And I believe many great terrans did that at some point in their career. But Maru brought that to another level in my opinion. The "just play like Maru" memes didn't come out of nowhere.
Sure, Maru is just a flawed human like everyone else. But the "hilarious" defeats like Maru vs sOs at BlizzCon is also part of the legend. He didn't raise hope alone. He was helped by teammates etc. to figure out stuff. That's probably why his apparent "weakness" (on top of the health issues) was having to play versus teammates.
He managed to overcome that at several points in his career anyways.
+1 
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United States1798 Posts
On July 25 2024 00:06 PremoBeats wrote:
Oh my god.. did it again. Can a mod or admin delete these? I can't seem to find a delete button. Sorry.
Something I noticed along the way was the fact that "doing something first" had to have some value, but it couldn't be expressed through numbers.
Things like soO's four straight Code S finals (which wasn't surpassed until 2019) or Mvp's mark of three Korean Individual League titles (which stood for five years) was passed by INnOVation, who became the first player to win four Korean Individual Leagues, which is still tied for third all time (behind Maru and Rogue) have to have some sort of value. Achievements such as NeTea's undefeated season of Code S or sOs becoming the first player to win three WCS/IEM championships years before anyone else that really stood out to me.
I was wondering if you felt similarly during your evaluation.
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United States1798 Posts
On July 25 2024 21:48 Poopi wrote:
@rwala: and that thing about Serral accomplishing what everyone thought was impossible is also a big reason why I have Maru as GOAT. Would the other great terrans like Cure, Clem, INno, ByuN, TY, etc. have kept going as hard when virtually only Maru was having success with the race (at several points in time)?
I specifically remember uThermal being like "wow ByuN has returned, he is the true goat/terran goat, not Maru".
What that says is not really that ByuN was the goat. It just says: "we have lost hope as a race. We need someone to show us the way on how to approach our difficulties in TvZ and TvP". And I believe many great terrans did that at some point in their career. But Maru brought that to another level in my opinion. The "just play like Maru" memes didn't come out of nowhere.
Sure, Maru is just a flawed human like everyone else. But the "hilarious" defeats like Maru vs sOs at BlizzCon is also part of the legend. He didn't raise hope alone. He was helped by teammates etc. to figure out stuff. That's probably why his apparent "weakness" (on top of the health issues) was having to play versus teammates.
He managed to overcome that at several points in his career anyways.
There's actually no proof as to how much Maru and his teammates worked with each other during the post KeSPA Jin Air years. We have a pretty good sense regarding the daily happenings in a team house environment, but Jin Air's StarCraft team was never about making/losing money. It was a pet project of the Jin Air princess, who basically made the team on a lark. Given that she was essentially running a charity, I would assume things got a lot more lax once Proleague wasn't around.
Regarding a physical team house, we don't know how much it was used or if it was even kept around after 2016 (feel free to correct me on this. You'd have to watch a million interviews to be totally sure). All of the other Korean pros moved back home or into apartments after 2016, it seems weird for her to force the players to stay there (I'm almost certain sOs moved out in 2016) when everyone else was free to set their own schedules and live on their own terms.
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EPT
