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On July 25 2024 14:39 PremoBeats 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:
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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. Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 11:08 lokol4890 wrote: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:
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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.
You’d have to ask Miz but it’s very clear that he didn’t simply try to build an algorithm like you’re trying to do. There’s a lot more subjectivity, which I know you view as a bug, but I view as a feature. On Dark, Miz explained that he could have been as high as 7 on his list, but that he simply didn’t win enough over a 12 year career to justify it. On Life, I assume he was excluded from the analysis for obvious reasons.
I haven’t really wanted to talk about Life but since you bring it up I actually think it’s a great example of the perils of trying to work these things out exclusively via math. In my view, any conception of the “greatest” cannot include Life because all his results and achievements are necessarily tainted even if he legitimately achieved them.
If that’s not persuasive, then let’s talk Mvp. Can I ask: how far is he down your list? 10? 20? I have a suggestion that might be helpful (or not, but let’s try). Putting aside math and statistics for a second, where, roughly speaking, do you think Mvp should rank on a GOAT list from a common sense perspective? It would then be interesting to tinker with your model to ensure that the results are roughly in line with this more common sense understanding. I know maybe for you this defeats the purpose but just a thought on how to give your approach a bit more credibility. I don’t think your ranking will resonate with anyone if Mvp isn’t solidly in your top 10 at least.
For me personally I value subjective qualities of greatness quite highly so for example Byun would probably be in my top 10 just because of the narrative of what he accomplished and how he defined greatness in e-sports globally at an important inflection point (e.g. I think he’s the only SC2 player to win e-sports player of the year, which is the practical equivalent of being the MVP tho there’s not really an equivalent imho). But I get that this is too subjective for most people so I’m good with data-based approaches as long as the results pass the smell test.
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On July 25 2024 18:30 UnLarva wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 17:51 PremoBeats wrote: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.)
There’s really no need to approach it from this angle of trying to nerf Serral. Just use common sense and you’ll understand how region lock provided natural buffs to him and other non-Korean players (as was the intention, as I’m sure you know). Here’s one very clear example. There was a solid chunk of time where the Dreamhack season finals awarded 6 spots to Korea and 4 spots to Europe. What this meant in practice is that a guy like Serral was almost guaranteed to qualify whereas Korean championship contenders like Rogue, Dark, Maru, etc. routinely failed to qualify given how much easier it is to top 4 Europe regionals than GSL (if you were top 8 in GSL you then needed to win a play-in match, often against another champion-tier player). Having a double-elimination playoff bracket in the Euro regionals only further solidifies the odds that the best players will top 4 and qualify, which is a good thing in my view (tho Serral did fail to qualify at least once despite these buffs, a fact that those peddling a consistency and dominance narrative seem to ignore). Bottom line: you can’t win a tournament you’re not even playing in, and guys like Serral benefited the most from this regional allotment buff.
The regional allotment issue is not limited to Dreamhack, it is actually pretty central to understanding the comparative value of the results in all the international tournaments that use it. In retrospect, it is kind of insane to think that Rogue very nearly did not qualify to play in the first world championship that he won. Except it’s not insane because the system by design was meant to exclude multiple Korean championship contenders, thereby denying them the chance at a world championship run. Once you really start thinking about how hard it is to make a deep run in GSL and then realize that this had been the main vector for qualifying for many international tournaments on the pro circuit, including the world championship, things become a lot clearer. Once you understand this, you can understand how guys like Special and Elazer are top 4’ing “world championships” when legit Korean championship contenders don’t even qualify.
What would be even more illuminating would be to see the average rating of the player pool of all these tournaments. My theory, which could be wrong, is that GSL (and other Korean individual leagues) has the highest average rating by a pretty decent margin. Followed by the international tournaments, and then non-Korean regionals (I assume Europe comes out on top). Or course each specific tournament would vary but that’s my general theory. Somewhat hard to calculate given the lack of a stable ELO system, but probably Aligulac is close enough.
If my theory is correct, then for the data nerds out there, GSL should be your “world championship” tournament since quite simply it is the most competitive tournament with the best players and no rules-based gatekeeping that artificially reduces the competitiveness of the player pool. Probe is great, Has is cool, love Kelazhur. Not sure if they’re the face of a world championship tournament tho.
Here’s the ironic thing. I’m more partial to a subjective, narrative-based approach to GOAT convos that is nonetheless grounded in some data. So I’m cool with giving some value to world championship international tourneys just because, even if they have lower quality player pools that sometimes don’t include championship contenders. But what’s weird to me is folks bending over backwards to torture the data to say that somehow they are “nerfing” Serral’s GOAT claim when they are quite literally doing the opposite.
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On July 25 2024 23:03 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +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 are another two that really stood out to me. I was wondering if you felt similarly during your evaluation.
Well, doing something first can be calculated in, if one places value on the phenomenon. Personally, I think it is highly subjective and favors earlier players, unless you rebrand the metric new, every time someone else tops it again.
For example, if Serral wins Riyadh and next year's World Championship, it would surpass Rogue's three. Then he'd be the first to have 4. What to make of it now?
Or Serral being the first and only to hit over 85% win rates versus Koreans, doing it three times. You can arrange all kinds of "being first" metrics, but to me, the value doesn't look too big. In my opinion there are "better" metrics to analyze, that aren't as subjective and can easier be compared. I would probably use them as a determining factor if my other statistics were somewhat close. Because did you observe that all names you mention are in my pre-contender list too? Meaning, being first is just another way to express what is already expressed in easier to measure metrics. Because to have 3 World titles in and of itself is worth something in my tournament score. So being first doesn't add too much value and is highly subjective on which events points should be awarded and at what weight... but that is just my opinion.
By the way, I answered you about my inquiry in regards to the relation of Serral's and Maru's longevity from page 64.
So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes?
And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation?
On July 25 2024 23:40 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote: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:
[quote]
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: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:
[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. 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. You’d have to ask Miz but it’s very clear that he didn’t simply try to build an algorithm like you’re trying to do. There’s a lot more subjectivity, which I know you view as a bug, but I view as a feature. On Dark, Miz explained that he could have been as high as 7 on his list, but that he simply didn’t win enough over a 12 year career to justify it. On Life, I assume he was excluded from the analysis for obvious reasons. I haven’t really wanted to talk about Life but since you bring it up I actually think it’s a great example of the perils of trying to work these things out exclusively via math. In my view, any conception of the “greatest” cannot include Life because all his results and achievements are necessarily tainted even if he legitimately achieved them. If that’s not persuasive, then let’s talk Mvp. Can I ask: how far is he down your list? 10? 20? I have a suggestion that might be helpful (or not, but let’s try). Putting aside math and statistics for a second, where, roughly speaking, do you think Mvp should rank on a GOAT list from a common sense perspective? It would then be interesting to tinker with your model to ensure that the results are roughly in line with this more common sense understanding. I know maybe for you this defeats the purpose but just a thought on how to give your approach a bit more credibility. I don’t think your ranking will resonate with anyone if Mvp isn’t solidly in your top 10 at least. For me personally I value subjective qualities of greatness quite highly so for example Byun would probably be in my top 10 just because of the narrative of what he accomplished and how he defined greatness in e-sports globally at an important inflection point (e.g. I think he’s the only SC2 player to win e-sports player of the year, which is the practical equivalent of being the MVP tho there’s not really an equivalent imho). But I get that this is too subjective for most people so I’m good with data-based approaches as long as the results pass the smell test.
The Life-case bugs me. Because your results/skill and the perceived stance of morality/wrongdoings should be utterly separated in my opinion (to give a dumb example: being vegetarian doesn't become bad, simply because Hitler was vegetarian/advocated for it).
But yeah, if you value subjectiveness as a feature, that simply shows that there is no scientific approach to the way you look at this discussion. Which is fine, I just want to point it out. If you want to value Mvp high, because of one hyper successful year, then you have to include a marker which features ingenuity or creativity for being able to come up with ever new builds in an era where the game was still being established. And you'd have to consistently apply that marker on the other contenders too. The issue for most people is that it will become obvious how big their inherent subjective bias is. And many biases can occur, especially in nostalgic circumstances.
I mean you said you are a lawyer... I don't know in which field, but my girlfriend is in employment law and mostly contracts are made bullet proof so that there is no wiggle room. The less wiggle room, the better. No subjective takes necessary. If you want to have Mvp as your GOAT (or super high up) fine... but then you have to admit that you throw era-adjusted tournament scores, average placements, tournament-win-ratios, match win rates and rank 1 occupation out of the window. Then I can fully embrace that Mvp is GOAT.
In regards to your question: I didn't make a ranking for the pre-contenders (as I didn't make one for the top 4 either in the end). But he is in the 5-16th place and probably made it in the top 10 according to his insane effectiveness and godly 2011. Hadn't he played in 2012 and 2013 he'd easily make it, as these years drag him down enormously.
But yeah.. it can be done. We can try to establish a metric through consensus, similar to the thing Miz suggested with "achieving something first". But even if we and the majority find consensus, some other guy might value it astronomically high and will still have Mvp as GOAT even when everyone else says that it is absolutely ludicrous.
And it is interesting how you highlight that "common sense" and data driven analyses could be a separate thing. Because what that thinking discloses in my opinion is that common sense is highly subjective too and can be influenced by not looking closely or with enough knowledge at things. Two quick examples: It was common sense at one time, that the earth was flat and that electricity is bad for health. That doesn't make the common sense any more true.
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On July 25 2024 23:11 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Nice bit of lore, thanks for sharing!
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On July 25 2024 23:40 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote: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:
[quote]
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: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:
[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. 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. You’d have to ask Miz but it’s very clear that he didn’t simply try to build an algorithm like you’re trying to do. There’s a lot more subjectivity, which I know you view as a bug, but I view as a feature. On Dark, Miz explained that he could have been as high as 7 on his list, but that he simply didn’t win enough over a 12 year career to justify it. On Life, I assume he was excluded from the analysis for obvious reasons. I haven’t really wanted to talk about Life but since you bring it up I actually think it’s a great example of the perils of trying to work these things out exclusively via math. In my view, any conception of the “greatest” cannot include Life because all his results and achievements are necessarily tainted even if he legitimately achieved them. If that’s not persuasive, then let’s talk Mvp. Can I ask: how far is he down your list? 10? 20? I have a suggestion that might be helpful (or not, but let’s try). Putting aside math and statistics for a second, where, roughly speaking, do you think Mvp should rank on a GOAT list from a common sense perspective? It would then be interesting to tinker with your model to ensure that the results are roughly in line with this more common sense understanding. I know maybe for you this defeats the purpose but just a thought on how to give your approach a bit more credibility. I don’t think your ranking will resonate with anyone if Mvp isn’t solidly in your top 10 at least. For me personally I value subjective qualities of greatness quite highly so for example Byun would probably be in my top 10 just because of the narrative of what he accomplished and how he defined greatness in e-sports globally at an important inflection point (e.g. I think he’s the only SC2 player to win e-sports player of the year, which is the practical equivalent of being the MVP tho there’s not really an equivalent imho). But I get that this is too subjective for most people so I’m good with data-based approaches as long as the results pass the smell test.
Im there with you. But in my top 10 list, are Taeja and Parting.
They marked my SCII perception in a way i cant explain.
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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.
Yeah Maru is sick for sure and also I’ve been thinking recently that Maru reminds me of Mvp in that I suspect in part due to his injuries he’s changed up his playstyle and still finds a way to make it work. For me it’s just that he hasn’t won a “world championship” (as many like to define it). I know some consider WESG a world championship and I have always been annoyed when commentators state definitively that Maru can’t win outside of Korea after he banked $300K placing 1st and 2nd at WESG two years in a row. But doesn’t work for me narratively for whatever reason.
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rwala wrote:
There’s really no need to approach it from this angle of trying to nerf Serral. Just use common sense and you’ll understand how region lock provided natural buffs to him and other non-Korean players (as was the intention, as I’m sure you know). Here’s one very clear example. There was a solid chunk of time where the Dreamhack season finals awarded 6 spots to Korea and 4 spots to Europe. What this meant in practice is that a guy like Serral was almost guaranteed to qualify whereas Korean championship contenders like Rogue, Dark, Maru, etc. routinely failed to qualify given how much easier it is to top 4 Europe regionals than GSL (if you were top 8 in GSL you then needed to win a play-in match, often against another champion-tier player). Having a double-elimination playoff bracket in the Euro regionals only further solidifies the odds that the best players will top 4 and qualify, which is a good thing in my view (tho Serral did fail to qualify at least once despite these buffs, a fact that those peddling a consistency and dominance narrative seem to ignore). Bottom line: you can’t win a tournament you’re not even playing in, and guys like Serral benefited the most from this regional allotment buff.
The regional allotment issue is not limited to Dreamhack, it is actually pretty central to understanding the comparative value of the results in all the international tournaments that use it. In retrospect, it is kind of insane to think that Rogue very nearly did not qualify to play in the first world championship that he won. Except it’s not insane because the system by design was meant to exclude multiple Korean championship contenders, thereby denying them the chance at a world championship run. Once you really start thinking about how hard it is to make a deep run in GSL and then realize that this had been the main vector for qualifying for many international tournaments on the pro circuit, including the world championship, things become a lot clearer. Once you understand this, you can understand how guys like Special and Elazer are top 4’ing “world championships” when legit Korean championship contenders don’t even qualify.
What would be even more illuminating would be to see the average rating of the player pool of all these tournaments. My theory, which could be wrong, is that GSL (and other Korean individual leagues) has the highest average rating by a pretty decent margin. Followed by the international tournaments, and then non-Korean regionals (I assume Europe comes out on top). Or course each specific tournament would vary but that’s my general theory. Somewhat hard to calculate given the lack of a stable ELO system, but probably Aligulac is close enough.
If my theory is correct, then for the data nerds out there, GSL should be your “world championship” tournament since quite simply it is the most competitive tournament with the best players and no rules-based gatekeeping that artificially reduces the competitiveness of the player pool. Probe is great, Has is cool, love Kelazhur. Not sure if they’re the face of a world championship tournament tho.
Here’s the ironic thing. I’m more partial to a subjective, narrative-based approach to GOAT convos that is nonetheless grounded in some data. So I’m cool with giving some value to world championship international tourneys just because, even if they have lower quality player pools that sometimes don’t include championship contenders. But what’s weird to me is folks bending over backwards to torture the data to say that somehow they are “nerfing” Serral’s GOAT claim when they are quite literally doing the opposite.
I agree with most of what you wrote.
As I have extensive data on Ro16 and Ro8 I am somewhat able to make comparisons, although I am currently working on gathering more data.
What you shouldn't forget though is that GSL is - although lock free in name - soft locked. I probably don't have to lay out why, as it is common sense how hard it is for foreigners to compete in it with all qualifiers until a potential final (not even mentioning all the stuff I explained in the article).
BUT: Since the international stage, especially Europe, gained a loft of traction after 2018, except for the few cases of Reynor playing (yeah, I know how he choked every time), many top tier players are simply missing from it due to GSL's structure. So I totally understand your POV pre 2017, as there were no true contenders outside of Korea, but the case against GSL post 2018 is that yeah... the best of the world are missing. Especially the one with the insane match win rates. So I would totally sign off your notion until the end of 2018.
But then again: Can we have 3 World Championships per year?
If you addressed me with the nerfing-jab at the end: The only metric that would be changed by an adjustment of pre-2018 GSL to be worth more than World Championships is tournament score (and mildly efficiency-score). And again: That would not alter the end result by much. The nerfs of Serral would still outweigh this adjustment by far.
World championships were the highest priority for players because of prize pool, less occurrence and prestige... these also have been incorporated in the tournament multiplier by me and that is why World Championships are worth slightly more than GSLs.
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On July 26 2024 01:19 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +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. Yeah Maru is sick for sure and also I’ve been thinking recently that Maru reminds me of Mvp in that I suspect in part due to his injuries he’s changed up his playstyle and still finds a way to make it work. For me it’s just that he hasn’t won a “world championship” (as many like to define it). I know some consider WESG a world championship and I have always been annoyed when commentators state definitively that Maru can’t win outside of Korea after he banked $300K placing 1st and 2nd at WESG two years in a row. But doesn’t work for me narratively for whatever reason.
Probably because WESGs are horrible in player rank. I put them in category 4, but they should have been 5 according to every data let alone for prize money. That was the only reason (and to give Maru a buff in contrast to Serral) they are in category 4.
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United States1798 Posts
On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:
So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes?
And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation?
It would be foolish of me to pin myself to a specific date as to when that occurs, but if things continue unchanged going forward, I'd put the number closer to one year than five.
As for the a deep dive into weightings, I have to decline for now, not because I'm keeping a big secret or anything, but simply because it would take a lot of time and words to answer to my standards and I've been enjoying this break from writing the past month or two. Would I consider writing something to that effect in the future? That's completely possible.
Something I'm actually interested in when it comes to ranking players is how the top 15-7 will be affected after EWC. I personally consider it a World Championship, which means that players like hero, Reynor and Dark specifically are in a really good spot to greatly improve their resume.
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On July 26 2024 01:53 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:
So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes?
And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation?
It would be foolish of me to pin myself to a specific date as to when that occurs, but if things continue unchanged going forward, I'd put the number closer to one year than five. As for the a deep dive into weightings, I have to decline for now, not because I'm keeping a big secret or anything, but simply because it would take a lot of time and words to answer to my standards and I've been enjoying this break from writing the past month or two. Would I consider writing something to that effect in the future? That's completely possible. Something I'm actually interested in when it comes to ranking players is how the top 15-7 will be affected after EWC. I personally consider it a World Championship, which means that players like hero, Reynor and Dark specifically are in a really good spot to greatly improve their resume.
Cool, thanks for the reply!
How would you rate IEM 2024 btw? As a world championship? As that was initially, what it was supposed to be? Or in a lower category?
That was one of the few times, when I actually decided in favor of Serral as by all standards it had the best of the world compete and also high end numbers in the Ro8, as well as prestige and prize money.
I agree on EWC... I think Reynor said something similar in an interview. That even last year's Gamers8 was ridiculous in competition and it felt like a World Championship win (I am paraphrasing). IIRC the lowest of the players that were in attendance was ranked around 20-25.
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United States1798 Posts
On July 26 2024 02:09 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 01:53 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:
So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes?
And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation?
It would be foolish of me to pin myself to a specific date as to when that occurs, but if things continue unchanged going forward, I'd put the number closer to one year than five. As for the a deep dive into weightings, I have to decline for now, not because I'm keeping a big secret or anything, but simply because it would take a lot of time and words to answer to my standards and I've been enjoying this break from writing the past month or two. Would I consider writing something to that effect in the future? That's completely possible. Something I'm actually interested in when it comes to ranking players is how the top 15-7 will be affected after EWC. I personally consider it a World Championship, which means that players like hero, Reynor and Dark specifically are in a really good spot to greatly improve their resume. Cool, thanks for the reply! How would you rate IEM 2024 btw? As a world championship? As that was initially, what it was supposed to be? Or in a lower category? That was one of the few times, when I actually decided in favor of Serral as by all standards it had the best of the world compete and also high end numbers in the Ro8, as well as prestige and prize money. I agree on EWC... I think Reynor said something similar in an interview. That even last year's Gamers8 was ridiculous in competition and it felt like a World Championship win (I am paraphrasing). IIRC the lowest of the players that were in attendance was ranked around 20-25.
I consider this years IEM Katowice a world championship, but the timing created difficulties when it came to publishing articles. I saw some people disagreeing with me when Serral/Maru articles dropped, but my rankings were finalized before the event and it would be unjust (?) to give Maru credit for getting second or Serral credit for winning. The other 10+ players I consider didn't get to attend before their article was released, I felt the best thing to do was mention the event in the remaining articles, but I did not take it into account when ranking.
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On July 26 2024 03:27 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 02:09 PremoBeats wrote:On July 26 2024 01:53 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:
So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes?
And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation?
It would be foolish of me to pin myself to a specific date as to when that occurs, but if things continue unchanged going forward, I'd put the number closer to one year than five. As for the a deep dive into weightings, I have to decline for now, not because I'm keeping a big secret or anything, but simply because it would take a lot of time and words to answer to my standards and I've been enjoying this break from writing the past month or two. Would I consider writing something to that effect in the future? That's completely possible. Something I'm actually interested in when it comes to ranking players is how the top 15-7 will be affected after EWC. I personally consider it a World Championship, which means that players like hero, Reynor and Dark specifically are in a really good spot to greatly improve their resume. Cool, thanks for the reply! How would you rate IEM 2024 btw? As a world championship? As that was initially, what it was supposed to be? Or in a lower category? That was one of the few times, when I actually decided in favor of Serral as by all standards it had the best of the world compete and also high end numbers in the Ro8, as well as prestige and prize money. I agree on EWC... I think Reynor said something similar in an interview. That even last year's Gamers8 was ridiculous in competition and it felt like a World Championship win (I am paraphrasing). IIRC the lowest of the players that were in attendance was ranked around 20-25. I consider this years IEM Katowice a world championship, but the timing created difficulties when it came to publishing articles. I saw some people disagreeing with me when Serral/Maru articles dropped, but my rankings were finalized before the event and it would be unjust (?) to give Maru credit for getting second or Serral credit for winning. The other 10+ players I consider didn't get to attend before their article was released,. I felt the best thing to do was mention the event in the remaining articles, but I did not take it into account when ranking.
Yeah, I remember criticising you for making a "false statement" in regards to something that happened in Poland, not knowing that you discounted Katowice beforehand.
But again: thanks for the amazing work and interesting reads... I am totally not build for such amazing story-telling (I still habe a different opinion on the everlasting question though )
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On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 23:03 Mizenhauer wrote: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 are another two that really stood out to me. I was wondering if you felt similarly during your evaluation. Well, doing something first can be calculated in, if one places value on the phenomenon. Personally, I think it is highly subjective and favors earlier players, unless you rebrand the metric new, every time someone else tops it again. For example, if Serral wins Riyadh and next year's World Championship, it would surpass Rogue's three. Then he'd be the first to have 4. What to make of it now? Or Serral being the first and only to hit over 85% win rates versus Koreans, doing it three times. You can arrange all kinds of "being first" metrics, but to me, the value doesn't look too big. In my opinion there are "better" metrics to analyze, that aren't as subjective and can easier be compared. I would probably use them as a determining factor if my other statistics were somewhat close. Because did you observe that all names you mention are in my pre-contender list too? Meaning, being first is just another way to express what is already expressed in easier to measure metrics. Because to have 3 World titles in and of itself is worth something in my tournament score. So being first doesn't add too much value and is highly subjective on which events points should be awarded and at what weight... but that is just my opinion. By the way, I answered you about my inquiry in regards to the relation of Serral's and Maru's longevity from page 64. So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes? And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation? Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 23:40 rwala wrote:On July 25 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote: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:
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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: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:
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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. You’d have to ask Miz but it’s very clear that he didn’t simply try to build an algorithm like you’re trying to do. There’s a lot more subjectivity, which I know you view as a bug, but I view as a feature. On Dark, Miz explained that he could have been as high as 7 on his list, but that he simply didn’t win enough over a 12 year career to justify it. On Life, I assume he was excluded from the analysis for obvious reasons. I haven’t really wanted to talk about Life but since you bring it up I actually think it’s a great example of the perils of trying to work these things out exclusively via math. In my view, any conception of the “greatest” cannot include Life because all his results and achievements are necessarily tainted even if he legitimately achieved them. If that’s not persuasive, then let’s talk Mvp. Can I ask: how far is he down your list? 10? 20? I have a suggestion that might be helpful (or not, but let’s try). Putting aside math and statistics for a second, where, roughly speaking, do you think Mvp should rank on a GOAT list from a common sense perspective? It would then be interesting to tinker with your model to ensure that the results are roughly in line with this more common sense understanding. I know maybe for you this defeats the purpose but just a thought on how to give your approach a bit more credibility. I don’t think your ranking will resonate with anyone if Mvp isn’t solidly in your top 10 at least. For me personally I value subjective qualities of greatness quite highly so for example Byun would probably be in my top 10 just because of the narrative of what he accomplished and how he defined greatness in e-sports globally at an important inflection point (e.g. I think he’s the only SC2 player to win e-sports player of the year, which is the practical equivalent of being the MVP tho there’s not really an equivalent imho). But I get that this is too subjective for most people so I’m good with data-based approaches as long as the results pass the smell test. The Life-case bugs me. Because your results/skill and the perceived stance of morality/wrongdoings should be utterly separated in my opinion (to give a dumb example: being vegetarian doesn't become bad, simply because Hitler was vegetarian/advocated for it). But yeah, if you value subjectiveness as a feature, that simply shows that there is no scientific approach to the way you look at this discussion. Which is fine, I just want to point it out. If you want to value Mvp high, because of one hyper successful year, then you have to include a marker which features ingenuity or creativity for being able to come up with ever new builds in an era where the game was still being established. And you'd have to consistently apply that marker on the other contenders too. The issue for most people is that it will become obvious how big their inherent subjective bias is. And many biases can occur, especially in nostalgic circumstances. I mean you said you are a lawyer... I don't know in which field, but my girlfriend is in employment law and mostly contracts are made bullet proof so that there is no wiggle room. The less wiggle room, the better. No subjective takes necessary. If you want to have Mvp as your GOAT (or super high up) fine... but then you have to admit that you throw era-adjusted tournament scores, average placements, tournament-win-ratios, match win rates and rank 1 occupation out of the window. Then I can fully embrace that Mvp is GOAT. In regards to your question: I didn't make a ranking for the pre-contenders (as I didn't make one for the top 4 either in the end). But he is in the 5-16th place and probably made it in the top 10 according to his insane effectiveness and godly 2011. Hadn't he played in 2012 and 2013 he'd easily make it, as these years drag him down enormously. But yeah.. it can be done. We can try to establish a metric through consensus, similar to the thing Miz suggested with "achieving something first". But even if we and the majority find consensus, some other guy might value it astronomically high and will still have Mvp as GOAT even when everyone else says that it is absolutely ludicrous. And it is interesting how you highlight that "common sense" and data driven analyses could be a separate thing. Because what that thinking discloses in my opinion is that common sense is highly subjective too and can be influenced by not looking closely or with enough knowledge at things. Two quick examples: It was common sense at one time, that the earth was flat and that electricity is bad for health. That doesn't make the common sense any more true.
I just want to really nail down that Mvp is as low as 16th on your list and that it bothers you that Life cannot be a GOAT contender because in your view morality and greatness are completely unrelated concepts. I think you’re pretty smart and understand the perils of taking these positions, but I admire that you don’t seem to care!
If GOAT assessments were like contracts, perhaps you’d be on to something, but alas they are not. But even with contracts, there is often what we lawyers like to call “strategic ambiguity” in which the contract does not itself definitively resolve all matters but instead prescribes the process by which resolution happens (e.g. arbitration or litigation in X court under Y law). But even when you try to button everything down, the standards by which alleged violations are adjudicated are not so clear and leave plenty of room for discretion. Ask your girlfriend about the “totality of circumstances” or “preponderance of the evidence” standards and I’m sure she’ll smile because we lawyers joke that these standards are so subjective and flexible that you can basically argue whatever you want! Of course if these assessments were so objective and deterministic you could simply have algorithms render them (as you’re trying to do with the SCII GOAT). There would be no need for lawyers, judges, or juries.
Regarding your flat earth/electricity analogy, it’s a great point, though perhaps not for the reasons you think. These are scientific questions with pretty clear answers that can be determined with a high degree of certainty using the scientific method. I do not want anyone’s subjective conception of “common sense” involved in determining the answers to these questions. Especially given the consequences.
The issue you’re having is in primarily viewing questions of greatness as a scientific or mathematical exercise. I again go back to Muhammad Ali, the undisputed boxing GOAT, for many the greatest athlete of all time. His stats alone cannot justify this, because “greatness” both in our hearts and our minds is about so much more than the numerical value of what one achieved. It’s about how they achieved it, what they overcame to achieve it, the moments they achieved it, and what impact their achievements had. These are over time ultimately questions of legacy and even legend that transcend any understanding our silicon overlords could ever have.
There is good news for you as a Serral fan tho! I believe Serral over time will quite likely be regarded as SCII’s GOAT, at least to some degree of consensus. Not because of the math, but in spite of it. An algorithm that has Serral as #1 and Mvp as #16 will have no impact (and may even be counterproductive) in this regard. But his achievements and what they mean for the e-sport have the makings of legend for sure.
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On July 26 2024 01:36 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +rwala wrote:
There’s really no need to approach it from this angle of trying to nerf Serral. Just use common sense and you’ll understand how region lock provided natural buffs to him and other non-Korean players (as was the intention, as I’m sure you know). Here’s one very clear example. There was a solid chunk of time where the Dreamhack season finals awarded 6 spots to Korea and 4 spots to Europe. What this meant in practice is that a guy like Serral was almost guaranteed to qualify whereas Korean championship contenders like Rogue, Dark, Maru, etc. routinely failed to qualify given how much easier it is to top 4 Europe regionals than GSL (if you were top 8 in GSL you then needed to win a play-in match, often against another champion-tier player). Having a double-elimination playoff bracket in the Euro regionals only further solidifies the odds that the best players will top 4 and qualify, which is a good thing in my view (tho Serral did fail to qualify at least once despite these buffs, a fact that those peddling a consistency and dominance narrative seem to ignore). Bottom line: you can’t win a tournament you’re not even playing in, and guys like Serral benefited the most from this regional allotment buff.
The regional allotment issue is not limited to Dreamhack, it is actually pretty central to understanding the comparative value of the results in all the international tournaments that use it. In retrospect, it is kind of insane to think that Rogue very nearly did not qualify to play in the first world championship that he won. Except it’s not insane because the system by design was meant to exclude multiple Korean championship contenders, thereby denying them the chance at a world championship run. Once you really start thinking about how hard it is to make a deep run in GSL and then realize that this had been the main vector for qualifying for many international tournaments on the pro circuit, including the world championship, things become a lot clearer. Once you understand this, you can understand how guys like Special and Elazer are top 4’ing “world championships” when legit Korean championship contenders don’t even qualify.
What would be even more illuminating would be to see the average rating of the player pool of all these tournaments. My theory, which could be wrong, is that GSL (and other Korean individual leagues) has the highest average rating by a pretty decent margin. Followed by the international tournaments, and then non-Korean regionals (I assume Europe comes out on top). Or course each specific tournament would vary but that’s my general theory. Somewhat hard to calculate given the lack of a stable ELO system, but probably Aligulac is close enough.
If my theory is correct, then for the data nerds out there, GSL should be your “world championship” tournament since quite simply it is the most competitive tournament with the best players and no rules-based gatekeeping that artificially reduces the competitiveness of the player pool. Probe is great, Has is cool, love Kelazhur. Not sure if they’re the face of a world championship tournament tho.
Here’s the ironic thing. I’m more partial to a subjective, narrative-based approach to GOAT convos that is nonetheless grounded in some data. So I’m cool with giving some value to world championship international tourneys just because, even if they have lower quality player pools that sometimes don’t include championship contenders. But what’s weird to me is folks bending over backwards to torture the data to say that somehow they are “nerfing” Serral’s GOAT claim when they are quite literally doing the opposite.
I agree with most of what you wrote. As I have extensive data on Ro16 and Ro8 I am somewhat able to make comparisons, although I am currently working on gathering more data. What you shouldn't forget though is that GSL is - although lock free in name - soft locked. I probably don't have to lay out why, as it is common sense how hard it is for foreigners to compete in it with all qualifiers until a potential final (not even mentioning all the stuff I explained in the article). BUT: Since the international stage, especially Europe, gained a loft of traction after 2018, except for the few cases of Reynor playing (yeah, I know how he choked every time), many top tier players are simply missing from it due to GSL's structure. So I totally understand your POV pre 2017, as there were no true contenders outside of Korea, but the case against GSL post 2018 is that yeah... the best of the world are missing. Especially the one with the insane match win rates. So I would totally sign off your notion until the end of 2018. But then again: Can we have 3 World Championships per year? If you addressed me with the nerfing-jab at the end: The only metric that would be changed by an adjustment of pre-2018 GSL to be worth more than World Championships is tournament score (and mildly efficiency-score). And again: That would not alter the end result by much. The nerfs of Serral would still outweigh this adjustment by far. World championships were the highest priority for players because of prize pool, less occurrence and prestige... these also have been incorporated in the tournament multiplier by me and that is why World Championships are worth slightly more than GSLs.
I didn’t mean it as a jab, but an honest observation of what is happening here. From a purely “scientific” perspective you are buffing Serral’s stats while you claim to nerf them. If you really want to be objective, you need to discount the value of tournament wins by the average player rating of the competition (or some other method that captures competitiveness rather than nomenclature like “world championship”).
When you start factoring in “prestige” and prize pool, you become victim to the very subjectivity you seem to loathe. It is not reasonable to think that players try less hard in GSL. For many players, their career goal is to win a GSL.
I don’t disagree on your GSL “soft lock” point but my bigger point is that it is the only tournament that does not artificially limit the player pool.
You say that world championships were the highest priority for players but you ignored my observation on how the pro tour/WCS circuit was specifically designed to systematically give players like Serral more chances at a world championship than Korean players of a similar championship caliber. It was designed to buff Serral, and it did.
The problem is that it’s very hard to determine how much Serral was buffed because it’s possible that he may have qualified for all, some, or very few of the international tournaments he played in had he been subjected to the Korean regional allotment limits instead of the more generous European ones. uThermal off-the-top speculated that if this were the case maybe he would have won 10 tourneys by now instead of the 25 or whatever it is, but personally I think that’s too low and not really fair to Serral.
I don’t believe in such alternative history nerfing and personally I think Serral deserves full credit for all his tournament wins despite the buff. But maybe you don’t need to double-buff by also over-valuing those wins over other tournament wins that had more competitive player pools?
Again, I personally approach these things a bit more subjectively. But I’m just trying to hold you to your own standards here.
p.s. I don’t agree with lots of other things about your criteria, especially the Aligulac analysis. But as I’ve said before I can’t take it seriously until you actually reveal the results of your list and show where guys like Mvp end up.
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On July 26 2024 01:15 Locutos wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2024 23:40 rwala wrote:On July 25 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote: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:
[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. 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: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:
[quote]
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. You’d have to ask Miz but it’s very clear that he didn’t simply try to build an algorithm like you’re trying to do. There’s a lot more subjectivity, which I know you view as a bug, but I view as a feature. On Dark, Miz explained that he could have been as high as 7 on his list, but that he simply didn’t win enough over a 12 year career to justify it. On Life, I assume he was excluded from the analysis for obvious reasons. I haven’t really wanted to talk about Life but since you bring it up I actually think it’s a great example of the perils of trying to work these things out exclusively via math. In my view, any conception of the “greatest” cannot include Life because all his results and achievements are necessarily tainted even if he legitimately achieved them. If that’s not persuasive, then let’s talk Mvp. Can I ask: how far is he down your list? 10? 20? I have a suggestion that might be helpful (or not, but let’s try). Putting aside math and statistics for a second, where, roughly speaking, do you think Mvp should rank on a GOAT list from a common sense perspective? It would then be interesting to tinker with your model to ensure that the results are roughly in line with this more common sense understanding. I know maybe for you this defeats the purpose but just a thought on how to give your approach a bit more credibility. I don’t think your ranking will resonate with anyone if Mvp isn’t solidly in your top 10 at least. For me personally I value subjective qualities of greatness quite highly so for example Byun would probably be in my top 10 just because of the narrative of what he accomplished and how he defined greatness in e-sports globally at an important inflection point (e.g. I think he’s the only SC2 player to win e-sports player of the year, which is the practical equivalent of being the MVP tho there’s not really an equivalent imho). But I get that this is too subjective for most people so I’m good with data-based approaches as long as the results pass the smell test. Im there with you. But in my top 10 list, are Taeja and Parting. They marked my SCII perception in a way i cant explain.
Both sick!
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United States33072 Posts
On July 26 2024 03:27 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 02:09 PremoBeats wrote:On July 26 2024 01:53 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:
So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes?
And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation?
It would be foolish of me to pin myself to a specific date as to when that occurs, but if things continue unchanged going forward, I'd put the number closer to one year than five. As for the a deep dive into weightings, I have to decline for now, not because I'm keeping a big secret or anything, but simply because it would take a lot of time and words to answer to my standards and I've been enjoying this break from writing the past month or two. Would I consider writing something to that effect in the future? That's completely possible. Something I'm actually interested in when it comes to ranking players is how the top 15-7 will be affected after EWC. I personally consider it a World Championship, which means that players like hero, Reynor and Dark specifically are in a really good spot to greatly improve their resume. Cool, thanks for the reply! How would you rate IEM 2024 btw? As a world championship? As that was initially, what it was supposed to be? Or in a lower category? That was one of the few times, when I actually decided in favor of Serral as by all standards it had the best of the world compete and also high end numbers in the Ro8, as well as prestige and prize money. I agree on EWC... I think Reynor said something similar in an interview. That even last year's Gamers8 was ridiculous in competition and it felt like a World Championship win (I am paraphrasing). IIRC the lowest of the players that were in attendance was ranked around 20-25. I consider this years IEM Katowice a world championship, but the timing created difficulties when it came to publishing articles. I saw some people disagreeing with me when Serral/Maru articles dropped, but my rankings were finalized before the event and it would be unjust (?) to give Maru credit for getting second or Serral credit for winning. The other 10+ players I consider didn't get to attend before their article was released, I felt the best thing to do was mention the event in the remaining articles, but I did not take it into account when ranking.
Things would be simpler if SC2 used conventions like "S-Tier tournament" (CSGO, Dota) or "super-major" instead of "world championship." As used in this GOAT series, and I think as GENERALLY understood by fans (at least the enthusiast kind that's likely to post on TL), "world championship" is more a general classification of very large tournament, rather than a singular annual event that decides the World Champion as designated by some organization with sufficient authority.
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Oh S@#t! Be one day offline from the topic and meet insanely long walls of very good discussion in it. I won't clutter the topic now with replies, just saying that:
- If all possible ways to nerf Serral (relative to his peers) in the statistics are used coherently over the data set, and he still appears above the rest, Serral as the GOAT stance holds against every statistical evidence to show or proof otherwise. Corollary to that: multipliers and factors needed to make someone else look better (or more deserving) than Serral becomes that outlandish they can be dismissed only by common sense. That's the reason behind my handicapping drive.
- About greatness (contra being best) in the GOAT discussion: the case of runner Paavo Nurmi would be something I'd point out to clear some things out in my thinking. For undisputed 'Goatness' that also include 'bestness', 'dominance', 'efficiency', 'win rates', 'legacy' etc. factors then I'd point to the 69th Yokozuna Hakuho... But that's for the other time.
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Just wanted to say, been loving how respectful, fair, and nuanced the discourse has been from the last couple pages i read. Really enjoyed reading all of your posts.
EWC is getting closer and closer, excited to see how it might change things up!
Edit: Damn UnLarva beat me to it haha
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Very good and respectful discussion on the last pages, thank you all
On July 26 2024 08:57 rwala wrote:
The issue you’re having is in primarily viewing questions of greatness as a scientific or mathematical exercise. I again go back to Muhammad Ali, the undisputed boxing GOAT, for many the greatest athlete of all time. His stats alone cannot justify this, because “greatness” both in our hearts and our minds is about so much more than the numerical value of what one achieved. It’s about how they achieved it, what they overcame to achieve it, the moments they achieved it, and what impact their achievements had. These are over time ultimately questions of legacy and even legend that transcend any understanding our silicon overlords could ever have.
I do not agree on all points you make, but you write very well and have many good points in your posts.
However this one I quoted is 100% what I think about greatness too. But if we take this into consideration, isnt Serrals career by already have legendary elements which rise to him that status too ?
- Before he started winning tournaments, he was mentioned by lot of other pros by a "ladder monster", who would become something great one day. Created some inside hype before he rose to the top
- First player outside Korea to win multiple international tournaments.
- First player outside Korea to become World Champion
- Until that, many people thought that Koreans are kinda invincible and the best of them simply cant lose to foreingers in a big tournament. (f.e. Dark, who "never" lost to foreingers)
- At different interviews, people at that Blizzcon were buzzing about this some dude that finally won against the long regime of Korean dynasty
- Came from Finland, from little village in middle of nowhere, without any team-houses, coaches or practicing with other pro-players(Koreans) to the number one spot
- Basically started to carry the hope of foreingers to actually fight back and even possibility to win against Koreans. Created movement in all Starcraft community to watch what he does next and will he ever meet Maru in Premier Lan tournament. This narrative sadly kinda fell flat since it didnt happen for too long time.
- Practically all the other pros say that he is the GOAT
- Still, at 2024 is the man to beat after 6 years of the initial success.
- Maru vs. Serral GOAT debate has been going on for almost that 6 years too. And it seems never to stop either.
Etc. etc. In the end few other questions that imo should be given thought when thinking about this issue, that I keep important:
- How can Maru be the GOAT, if he cant beat his rivalry partner ?
- How can he be the GOAT if he never won the World Championship ?
Cheers.
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@Starcloud
Agreed. I know this is very hard to quantify, but several facts you listed point directly to at least to the great impact Serral have had to rally foreigners to be more competitive vs. Koreans. Some kind of psychological barrier was brought down (Doh, Exploded!!!) by him. Also, his direct influence to rise of Reynor/Clem/MaxPax et all. as a training partner cannot be underestimated (similar to TIME/Oliveira case), in Reynor's case also as a co-op zerg meta think tank.
For me Serral is the Goat (as of now) even without these various intangibles only by measures of statistics.
Add: Funny enough he remained that 'Ladder monster' at least to around June 2020 when he broke the all time MMR record with 7464. [Dammit! He apparently achieved over 7.5K] Don't know how monstrous he is there nowadays, tho.
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EPT
