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United States1939 Posts
On August 18 2024 06:00 Lorning wrote:
Maru is most def #1
Thanks again for the chicken tenders and fries.
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On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else.
For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones.
Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo.
Interestingly, India, being the most populated country in the world with more than 1.4 billion people, won 0 gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics this month.
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On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo.
In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received.
I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%.
I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate.
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On August 18 2024 10:48 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo. In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received. I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%. I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate.
That's my point though, you are taking 1.5 years of record to represent a career. (As far as I know, EWC hasn't concluded, so it shouldn't be included). Whereas Magnus' career as undisputed #1 is for 13 years.
I also don't think the pro scene is big enough, there are 757 rated players on Aligulac today, versus 150,000 in chess, 200x difference. (not an 100% apple-to-apple comparison, but good enough as a proxy indicator)
Further, I don't think winning SC2 tournament in 2023/2024 is comparable to winning SC2 tournament anywhere in 2012~16 for example.
Miz wrote an article about 5 story lines to follow. I think it was Serral/Maru/Dark/Reynor/Cure, and before EWC started, I thought "add Clem and herO" and we can be 99% sure one of them will win.
In fact, none of the 7 lost to any other participants in the entire tournament. The only time they lose is against each other. In fact, the only time they will lose in this entire tournament, will be against each other as well.
Additionally, even just looking at Aligulac's ranking, outside of the top 30, they are just not competitive, I doubt they play the game full-time, and they are just unable to show up to any top tournaments. Like, Krystianer, Strange, and Lancer, in the top 40 just shows (no disrespect, they must be great players, I just don't see them much at all, sure Krystianer showed up WTL W1 Ace win over Reynor, huge). This wouldn't have happened back in 2012. There are hundreds of players playing full time, have a team house, have a coach to support, and are competitive I see here and there.
Therefore, I honestly believe, there are only really around 10 progamers now that are competitive. Whereas in Chess, there are 2k grandmaster that are great, better than 599.998m people, just not as good as Magnus.
Also, you are saying Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 you were disappointed with Serral's result. I wasn't disappointed, I sort of expected it, I still believe he will likely win a third of these big international events. Or put in anyway, I still believe he will lose most of the international big tournaments he joins. To be disappointed or not, is a subjective opinion, doesn't say much at all.
Finally, you assume we are comparing GOATs of different (e)sports between Starcraft 2 and Chess. To you, Serral is a GOAT, but I don't think it's established that Serral is a GOAT. I personally don't think Serral is the GOAT, this entire article don't think so. Tbh, I want to wait until SC2 dies a peaceful death and then decide. Whereas, Magnus is almost definitely a GOAT in Chess. And that was my entire point in that we shouldn't be comparing Serral to Magnus, at least not yet, and I doubt we will in the future either.
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It's also hard to give GOAT to a player that's begun dominating as the game has been in decline. It reminds me a lot of Moon vs Happy in War 3.
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On August 18 2024 11:02 johnnyh123 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 10:48 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo. In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received. I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%. I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate. That's my point though, you are taking 1.5 years of record to represent a career. (As far as I know, EWC hasn't concluded, so it shouldn't be included). Whereas Magnus' career as undisputed #1 is for 13 years. I also don't think the pro scene is big enough, there are 757 rated players on Aligulac today, versus 150,000 in chess, 200x difference. (not an 100% apple-to-apple comparison, but good enough as a proxy indicator) Further, I don't think winning SC2 tournament in 2023/2024 is comparable to winning SC2 tournament anywhere in 2012~16 for example. Miz wrote an article about 5 story lines to follow. I think it was Serral/Maru/Dark/Reynor/Cure, and before EWC started, I thought "add Clem and herO" and we can be 99% sure one of them will win. In fact, none of the 7 lost to any other participants in the entire tournament. The only time they lose is against each other. In fact, the only time they will lose in this entire tournament, will be against each other as well. Additionally, even just looking at Aligulac's ranking, outside of the top 30, they are just not competitive, I doubt they play the game full-time, and they are just unable to show up to any top tournaments. Like, Krystianer, Strange, and Lancer, in the top 40 just shows (no disrespect, they must be great players, I just don't see them much at all, sure Krystianer showed up WTL W1 Ace win over Reynor, huge). This wouldn't have happened back in 2012. There are hundreds of players playing full time, have a team house, have a coach to support, and are competitive I see here and there. Therefore, I honestly believe, there are only really around 10 progamers now that are competitive. Whereas in Chess, there are 2k grandmaster that are great, better than 599.998m people, just not as good as Magnus. Also, you are saying Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 you were disappointed with Serral's result. I wasn't disappointed, I sort of expected it, I still believe he will likely win a third of these big international events. To be disappointed or not, is a subjective opinion, doesn't say much at all. Finally, you assume we are comparing GOATs of different (e)sports between Starcraft 2 and Chess. To you, Serral is a GOAT, but I don't think it's established that Serral is a GOAT, yet. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, this entire article don't think so. Tbh, I want to wait until SC2 dies a peaceful death and then decide. Whereas, Magnus is almost definitely a GOAT in Chess. And that was my entire point in that we shouldn't be comparing Serral to Magnus, at least not yet.
With Esports being relatively new and games only starting to last longer periods of times in recent years, of course SC2 does not have the same level of history than chess. That is an unfair comparison, that just doesn't work. Same btw the other way around: Carlsen might have a dominant career of 13 years, but he still only dominated a fraction of Chess's lifespan. Serral is around the best if not the best for almost 50% of the lifespan of SC2. Wow, Serral is such a better GOAT than Carlsen! :O
No, but seriously: You can only judge a player according to the parameters of his discipline. Carlsen, being as young as he is for example, could dominate the Chess world for decades (his biggest obsticale probably being his own motivation). But that is only possible because he plays Chess. Even the greatest football players struggle to dominate in their late 30s and their career almost always ends before they even hit 40. I hope you get my point here: If you want to compare GOATs with each other (which always is more of a fun thing to do than something that actually works), you have to do it with the limitations of their disciplines in mind.
To be honest, I'm not really following your part about the disappointement being subjective. It wasn't just me, it was a general consensus, especially considering how often writers and casters mentioned Serrals losses against Solar and Ragnarok. You can see this kind of reaction in many sports, when the current big-dog fails. For example, if Djokovic (in tennis) fails to win a Grand Slam, there isn't much "well, I expected that, you can't win them all"-sentiment. It is an upset, because he is so far ahead of the curve (or atleast he was), that he was expected to win every big tournament he enters.
Lastly: Why would you want to wait until SC2 "dies"? In that case you really can't say Carlsen is the GOAT...who knows, in 600 years someone else might show up and be better, then we would look pretty silly callling Carlsen the Greatest Of All Time...
Again, for real: I think we can all agree that "GOAT" only means "the best so far", maybe with a sprinkle of "it will be hard to surpass that player in the future". Otherwise no one would ever be the GOAT in anything.
And sure, you might not think of Serral as the GOAT, neither does Mizenhauer, but then I do wonder how Maru would compare to Carlsen...because I really can't imagine Carlsen being called the Chess-GOAT without ever winning the World Championships.
But even if we ignore the question if Serral is the GOAT or not: I would still compare him to Carlsen, as his dominance right now is as impressive and other-worldy than Carlsens is.
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On August 18 2024 11:45 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 11:02 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 10:48 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo. In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received. I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%. I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate. That's my point though, you are taking 1.5 years of record to represent a career. (As far as I know, EWC hasn't concluded, so it shouldn't be included). Whereas Magnus' career as undisputed #1 is for 13 years. I also don't think the pro scene is big enough, there are 757 rated players on Aligulac today, versus 150,000 in chess, 200x difference. (not an 100% apple-to-apple comparison, but good enough as a proxy indicator) Further, I don't think winning SC2 tournament in 2023/2024 is comparable to winning SC2 tournament anywhere in 2012~16 for example. Miz wrote an article about 5 story lines to follow. I think it was Serral/Maru/Dark/Reynor/Cure, and before EWC started, I thought "add Clem and herO" and we can be 99% sure one of them will win. In fact, none of the 7 lost to any other participants in the entire tournament. The only time they lose is against each other. In fact, the only time they will lose in this entire tournament, will be against each other as well. Additionally, even just looking at Aligulac's ranking, outside of the top 30, they are just not competitive, I doubt they play the game full-time, and they are just unable to show up to any top tournaments. Like, Krystianer, Strange, and Lancer, in the top 40 just shows (no disrespect, they must be great players, I just don't see them much at all, sure Krystianer showed up WTL W1 Ace win over Reynor, huge). This wouldn't have happened back in 2012. There are hundreds of players playing full time, have a team house, have a coach to support, and are competitive I see here and there. Therefore, I honestly believe, there are only really around 10 progamers now that are competitive. Whereas in Chess, there are 2k grandmaster that are great, better than 599.998m people, just not as good as Magnus. Also, you are saying Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 you were disappointed with Serral's result. I wasn't disappointed, I sort of expected it, I still believe he will likely win a third of these big international events. To be disappointed or not, is a subjective opinion, doesn't say much at all. Finally, you assume we are comparing GOATs of different (e)sports between Starcraft 2 and Chess. To you, Serral is a GOAT, but I don't think it's established that Serral is a GOAT, yet. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, this entire article don't think so. Tbh, I want to wait until SC2 dies a peaceful death and then decide. Whereas, Magnus is almost definitely a GOAT in Chess. And that was my entire point in that we shouldn't be comparing Serral to Magnus, at least not yet. With Esports being relatively new and games only starting to last longer periods of times in recent years, of course SC2 does not have the same level of history than chess. That is an unfair comparison, that just doesn't work. Same btw the other way around: Carlsen might have a dominant career of 13 years, but he still only dominated a fraction of Chess's lifespan. Serral is around the best if not the best for almost 50% of the lifespan of SC2. Wow, Serral is such a better GOAT than Carlsen! :O No, but seriously: You can only judge a player according to the parameters of his discipline. Carlsen, being as young as he is for example, could dominate the Chess world for decades (his biggest obsticale probably being his own motivation). But that is only possible because he plays Chess. Even the greatest football players struggle to dominate in their late 30s and their career almost always ends before they even hit 40. I hope you get my point here: If you want to compare GOATs with each other (which always is more of a fun thing to do than something that actually works), you have to do it with the limitations of their disciplines in mind. To be honest, I'm not really following your part about the disappointement being subjective. It wasn't just me, it was a general consensus, especially considering how often writers and casters mentioned Serrals losses against Solar and Ragnarok. You can see this kind of reaction in many sports, when the current big-dog fails. For example, if Djokovic (in tennis) fails to win a Grand Slam, there isn't much "well, I expected that, you can't win them all"-sentiment. It is an upset, because he is so far ahead of the curve (or atleast he was), that he was expected to win every big tournament he enters. Lastly: Why would you want to wait until SC2 "dies"? In that case you really can't say Carlsen is the GOAT...who knows, in 600 years someone else might show up and be better, then we would look pretty silly callling Carlsen the Greatest Of All Time... Again, for real: I think we can all agree that "GOAT" only means "the best so far", maybe with a sprinkle of "it will be hard to surpass that player in the future". Otherwise no one would ever be the GOAT in anything. And sure, you might not think of Serral as the GOAT, neither does Mizenhauer, but then I do wonder how Maru would compare to Carlsen...because I really can't imagine Carlsen being called the Chess-GOAT without ever winning the World Championships. But even if we ignore the question if Serral is the GOAT or not: I would still compare him to Carlsen, as his dominance right now is as impressive and other-worldy than Carlsens is.
The history piece was mostly about how "learned" and "mature" the game of Chess is. Meaning players have to be even better to be GOAT-ed compared to a relatively new game like SC2. I do think Magnus is the GOAT (or maybe one of the GOAT) for Chess given what I said before.
I was talking about you using Serral's 1.5 years' result vs the career of a normal professional at the respective sport/game. i.e. You taking just Serral's 2023 and 2024 (not over yet) results. We should look at longer horizons for any sort of GOAT discussion.
An SC2 professional player would probably have up to 10 years of professional career traditionally, but given SC2 is pretty uncompetitive, players can play past 30 no problem, in fact I think Ryung is 33 already. Whereas Artosis was talking about how Flash/Jaedong were basically half dinosaurs when they were like 23. I did not compare Magnus vs entire chess history, nor Serral vs entire SC2 history. A chess player would probably have up to 20 years of professional career. And Magnus has been the undisputed #1 for 13 years already and is ongoing. So it's safe to say Magnus is and will be the undisputed #1 in the world for the majority of his career.
And no, Serral was definitely not the undisputed #1 for half of SC2 history, i.e., in 2017 nobody would have said he was. And many years following, it's not clear to me.
When I mentioned "I will wait until SC2 dies peacefully", it really tells the downward trend now. I would not say the same thing for Chess, new players are participating in Chess every year. I think something like 10~20m new players plays Chess each year, versus something like 5k new players in SC2 this year. 2,000~4,000x difference. That's the difference between being #1 in the world (8b pop) vs #1 in Poland (40m or 2000x) or Romania (20m or 4000x). And for our Americans out there, the difference between #1 in the US (330m pop) vs #1 in Edinburg, Texas (100k pop, and yes, I know none of us have even heard of the town). Again, in GOAT competition for SC2, I would not value a 2023~24 win on par with a 2012~15 win.
So, my opinion for SC2 GOAT now is that I'm not sure. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, and I know I wish Maru can show us that he is the GOAT, he is that close. From an impact perspective, neither Serral nor Maru had as much impact as MVP/Nestea/MC had on me. And Serral and Maru, mostly Serral, only won in a super weak era of SC2. Reminds me of the Varsity Blues Scandal, where rich kids use super niche sports to get into Elite and Ivy League colleges. Do they deserve to be in Stanford? You tell me
But let's hope the game lasts for a few more years, and maybe time will tell.
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On August 18 2024 12:32 johnnyh123 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 11:45 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 11:02 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 10:48 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo. In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received. I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%. I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate. That's my point though, you are taking 1.5 years of record to represent a career. (As far as I know, EWC hasn't concluded, so it shouldn't be included). Whereas Magnus' career as undisputed #1 is for 13 years. I also don't think the pro scene is big enough, there are 757 rated players on Aligulac today, versus 150,000 in chess, 200x difference. (not an 100% apple-to-apple comparison, but good enough as a proxy indicator) Further, I don't think winning SC2 tournament in 2023/2024 is comparable to winning SC2 tournament anywhere in 2012~16 for example. Miz wrote an article about 5 story lines to follow. I think it was Serral/Maru/Dark/Reynor/Cure, and before EWC started, I thought "add Clem and herO" and we can be 99% sure one of them will win. In fact, none of the 7 lost to any other participants in the entire tournament. The only time they lose is against each other. In fact, the only time they will lose in this entire tournament, will be against each other as well. Additionally, even just looking at Aligulac's ranking, outside of the top 30, they are just not competitive, I doubt they play the game full-time, and they are just unable to show up to any top tournaments. Like, Krystianer, Strange, and Lancer, in the top 40 just shows (no disrespect, they must be great players, I just don't see them much at all, sure Krystianer showed up WTL W1 Ace win over Reynor, huge). This wouldn't have happened back in 2012. There are hundreds of players playing full time, have a team house, have a coach to support, and are competitive I see here and there. Therefore, I honestly believe, there are only really around 10 progamers now that are competitive. Whereas in Chess, there are 2k grandmaster that are great, better than 599.998m people, just not as good as Magnus. Also, you are saying Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 you were disappointed with Serral's result. I wasn't disappointed, I sort of expected it, I still believe he will likely win a third of these big international events. To be disappointed or not, is a subjective opinion, doesn't say much at all. Finally, you assume we are comparing GOATs of different (e)sports between Starcraft 2 and Chess. To you, Serral is a GOAT, but I don't think it's established that Serral is a GOAT, yet. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, this entire article don't think so. Tbh, I want to wait until SC2 dies a peaceful death and then decide. Whereas, Magnus is almost definitely a GOAT in Chess. And that was my entire point in that we shouldn't be comparing Serral to Magnus, at least not yet. With Esports being relatively new and games only starting to last longer periods of times in recent years, of course SC2 does not have the same level of history than chess. That is an unfair comparison, that just doesn't work. Same btw the other way around: Carlsen might have a dominant career of 13 years, but he still only dominated a fraction of Chess's lifespan. Serral is around the best if not the best for almost 50% of the lifespan of SC2. Wow, Serral is such a better GOAT than Carlsen! :O No, but seriously: You can only judge a player according to the parameters of his discipline. Carlsen, being as young as he is for example, could dominate the Chess world for decades (his biggest obsticale probably being his own motivation). But that is only possible because he plays Chess. Even the greatest football players struggle to dominate in their late 30s and their career almost always ends before they even hit 40. I hope you get my point here: If you want to compare GOATs with each other (which always is more of a fun thing to do than something that actually works), you have to do it with the limitations of their disciplines in mind. To be honest, I'm not really following your part about the disappointement being subjective. It wasn't just me, it was a general consensus, especially considering how often writers and casters mentioned Serrals losses against Solar and Ragnarok. You can see this kind of reaction in many sports, when the current big-dog fails. For example, if Djokovic (in tennis) fails to win a Grand Slam, there isn't much "well, I expected that, you can't win them all"-sentiment. It is an upset, because he is so far ahead of the curve (or atleast he was), that he was expected to win every big tournament he enters. Lastly: Why would you want to wait until SC2 "dies"? In that case you really can't say Carlsen is the GOAT...who knows, in 600 years someone else might show up and be better, then we would look pretty silly callling Carlsen the Greatest Of All Time... Again, for real: I think we can all agree that "GOAT" only means "the best so far", maybe with a sprinkle of "it will be hard to surpass that player in the future". Otherwise no one would ever be the GOAT in anything. And sure, you might not think of Serral as the GOAT, neither does Mizenhauer, but then I do wonder how Maru would compare to Carlsen...because I really can't imagine Carlsen being called the Chess-GOAT without ever winning the World Championships. But even if we ignore the question if Serral is the GOAT or not: I would still compare him to Carlsen, as his dominance right now is as impressive and other-worldy than Carlsens is. The history piece was mostly about how "learned" and "mature" the game of Chess is. Meaning players have to be even better to be GOAT-ed compared to a relatively new game like SC2. I do think Magnus is the GOAT (or maybe one of the GOAT) for Chess given what I said before. I was talking about you using Serral's 1.5 years' result vs the career of a normal professional at the respective sport/game. i.e. You taking just Serral's 2023 and 2024 (not over yet) results. We should look at longer horizons for any sort of GOAT discussion. An SC2 professional player would probably have up to 10 years of professional career traditionally, but given SC2 is pretty uncompetitive, players can play past 30 no problem, in fact I think Ryung is 33 already. Whereas Artosis was talking about how Flash/Jaedong were basically half dinosaurs when they were like 23. I did not compare Magnus vs entire chess history, nor Serral vs entire SC2 history. A chess player would probably have up to 20 years of professional career. And Magnus has been the undisputed #1 for 13 years already and is ongoing. So it's safe to say Magnus is and will be the undisputed #1 in the world for the majority of his career. And no, Serral was definitely not the undisputed #1 for half of SC2 history, i.e., in 2017 nobody would have said he was. And many years following, it's not clear to me. When I mentioned "I will wait until SC2 dies peacefully", it really tells the downward trend now. I would not say the same thing for Chess, new players are participating in Chess every year. I think something like 10~20m new players plays Chess each year, versus something like 5k new players in SC2 this year. 2,000~4,000x difference. That's the difference between being #1 in the world (8b pop) vs #1 in Poland (40m or 2000x) or Romania (20m or 4000x). And for our Americans out there, the difference between #1 in the US (330m pop) vs #1 in Edinburg, Texas (100k pop, and yes, I know none of us have even heard of the town). Again, in GOAT competition for SC2, I would not value a 2023~24 win on par with a 2012~15 win. So, my opinion for SC2 GOAT now is that I'm not sure. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, and I know I wish Maru can show us that he is the GOAT, he is that close. From an impact perspective, neither Serral nor Maru had as much impact as MVP/Nestea/MC had on me. And Serral and Maru, mostly Serral, only won in a super weak era of SC2. Reminds me of the Varsity Blues Scandal, where rich kids use super niche sports to get into Elite and Ivy League colleges. Do they deserve to be in Stanford? You tell me But let's hope the game lasts for a few more years, and maybe time will tell.
When you compare GOATs, you compare them respectively to their game/discipline, not the games themselves.So it really doesn't matter how much more people play Chess compared to SC2 - otherwise only the sports with the most amounts of players (which probably is either Football or some sort of gymnastics) would get a GOAT, since everything else is not as competitive.
Sure, there is a certain hurdle to overcome, if you create a boardgame and play it with two friends even the best of you three should probably not be mentioned in the same vein as Magnus Carlsen. But SC2 is historically big enough to justify to have a "real GOAT". Heck, WC3s prime was around much shorter and people have no quarrel discussing a GOAT there.
So whoever the SC2-GOAT is, I think it is fair to treat him as a "real GOAT". Everything else is just silly.
Good thing you already mentioned how subjective lots of things are, because Mvp, NesTea and MC really don't have any business being in a GOAT-discussion for SC2...sorry, but two of them had what, a two-year-career at best? Has nothing to do with "impact", they just happened to be around at the start. It is really easy to have an impact when you are literally the first...
Lastly, since you take some issue with me picking the last 1,5 years for Serral: I did that because that is the timeframe of the current EPT Circuit (though I included Kato'23, which ofc was the final of the last circuit). But sure, if we take Serrals entire full-time career, he is not as dominant as Carlsen, though I would argue it is generally harder to defend your World Championship Title in SC2 than it is in Chess - just by design, not by competitiveness. But still, since the start of 2018, Serral is a solid part of the Top 5 in the world...a radius he quickly reduced to Top 3 and this year so far, he basically made it a Top 1 - EWC might change that up again of course.
According to Liquipedia, Serral managed to accumulate 1,5 million dollar worth of prizemoney. That is a tremendous amount for a "super-weak", non-competitive game. You would almost think someone from the past who is so clearly better would have returned to farm some easy cash, no?
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On August 17 2024 18:28 kajtarp wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy. When Maru was more in the "ascendancy" he always failed to meet Serral in big international tournaments, because he was knocked down by someone else more often than not. Remember how much people wanted the Serral Maru clash to happen, and how much time needed for the first one to actually happen. And apart from that win on WESG i'm not sure how many times did Maru manage to actually beat him.
Everyone remembers Maru beating Serral at WESG, and not the utterly broken unit he used to do it that was subsequently nerfed into oblivion twice and is still a dominating unit in 2 matchups.
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On August 18 2024 13:23 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 12:32 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 11:45 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 11:02 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 10:48 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo. In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received. I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%. I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate. That's my point though, you are taking 1.5 years of record to represent a career. (As far as I know, EWC hasn't concluded, so it shouldn't be included). Whereas Magnus' career as undisputed #1 is for 13 years. I also don't think the pro scene is big enough, there are 757 rated players on Aligulac today, versus 150,000 in chess, 200x difference. (not an 100% apple-to-apple comparison, but good enough as a proxy indicator) Further, I don't think winning SC2 tournament in 2023/2024 is comparable to winning SC2 tournament anywhere in 2012~16 for example. Miz wrote an article about 5 story lines to follow. I think it was Serral/Maru/Dark/Reynor/Cure, and before EWC started, I thought "add Clem and herO" and we can be 99% sure one of them will win. In fact, none of the 7 lost to any other participants in the entire tournament. The only time they lose is against each other. In fact, the only time they will lose in this entire tournament, will be against each other as well. Additionally, even just looking at Aligulac's ranking, outside of the top 30, they are just not competitive, I doubt they play the game full-time, and they are just unable to show up to any top tournaments. Like, Krystianer, Strange, and Lancer, in the top 40 just shows (no disrespect, they must be great players, I just don't see them much at all, sure Krystianer showed up WTL W1 Ace win over Reynor, huge). This wouldn't have happened back in 2012. There are hundreds of players playing full time, have a team house, have a coach to support, and are competitive I see here and there. Therefore, I honestly believe, there are only really around 10 progamers now that are competitive. Whereas in Chess, there are 2k grandmaster that are great, better than 599.998m people, just not as good as Magnus. Also, you are saying Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 you were disappointed with Serral's result. I wasn't disappointed, I sort of expected it, I still believe he will likely win a third of these big international events. To be disappointed or not, is a subjective opinion, doesn't say much at all. Finally, you assume we are comparing GOATs of different (e)sports between Starcraft 2 and Chess. To you, Serral is a GOAT, but I don't think it's established that Serral is a GOAT, yet. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, this entire article don't think so. Tbh, I want to wait until SC2 dies a peaceful death and then decide. Whereas, Magnus is almost definitely a GOAT in Chess. And that was my entire point in that we shouldn't be comparing Serral to Magnus, at least not yet. With Esports being relatively new and games only starting to last longer periods of times in recent years, of course SC2 does not have the same level of history than chess. That is an unfair comparison, that just doesn't work. Same btw the other way around: Carlsen might have a dominant career of 13 years, but he still only dominated a fraction of Chess's lifespan. Serral is around the best if not the best for almost 50% of the lifespan of SC2. Wow, Serral is such a better GOAT than Carlsen! :O No, but seriously: You can only judge a player according to the parameters of his discipline. Carlsen, being as young as he is for example, could dominate the Chess world for decades (his biggest obsticale probably being his own motivation). But that is only possible because he plays Chess. Even the greatest football players struggle to dominate in their late 30s and their career almost always ends before they even hit 40. I hope you get my point here: If you want to compare GOATs with each other (which always is more of a fun thing to do than something that actually works), you have to do it with the limitations of their disciplines in mind. To be honest, I'm not really following your part about the disappointement being subjective. It wasn't just me, it was a general consensus, especially considering how often writers and casters mentioned Serrals losses against Solar and Ragnarok. You can see this kind of reaction in many sports, when the current big-dog fails. For example, if Djokovic (in tennis) fails to win a Grand Slam, there isn't much "well, I expected that, you can't win them all"-sentiment. It is an upset, because he is so far ahead of the curve (or atleast he was), that he was expected to win every big tournament he enters. Lastly: Why would you want to wait until SC2 "dies"? In that case you really can't say Carlsen is the GOAT...who knows, in 600 years someone else might show up and be better, then we would look pretty silly callling Carlsen the Greatest Of All Time... Again, for real: I think we can all agree that "GOAT" only means "the best so far", maybe with a sprinkle of "it will be hard to surpass that player in the future". Otherwise no one would ever be the GOAT in anything. And sure, you might not think of Serral as the GOAT, neither does Mizenhauer, but then I do wonder how Maru would compare to Carlsen...because I really can't imagine Carlsen being called the Chess-GOAT without ever winning the World Championships. But even if we ignore the question if Serral is the GOAT or not: I would still compare him to Carlsen, as his dominance right now is as impressive and other-worldy than Carlsens is. The history piece was mostly about how "learned" and "mature" the game of Chess is. Meaning players have to be even better to be GOAT-ed compared to a relatively new game like SC2. I do think Magnus is the GOAT (or maybe one of the GOAT) for Chess given what I said before. I was talking about you using Serral's 1.5 years' result vs the career of a normal professional at the respective sport/game. i.e. You taking just Serral's 2023 and 2024 (not over yet) results. We should look at longer horizons for any sort of GOAT discussion. An SC2 professional player would probably have up to 10 years of professional career traditionally, but given SC2 is pretty uncompetitive, players can play past 30 no problem, in fact I think Ryung is 33 already. Whereas Artosis was talking about how Flash/Jaedong were basically half dinosaurs when they were like 23. I did not compare Magnus vs entire chess history, nor Serral vs entire SC2 history. A chess player would probably have up to 20 years of professional career. And Magnus has been the undisputed #1 for 13 years already and is ongoing. So it's safe to say Magnus is and will be the undisputed #1 in the world for the majority of his career. And no, Serral was definitely not the undisputed #1 for half of SC2 history, i.e., in 2017 nobody would have said he was. And many years following, it's not clear to me. When I mentioned "I will wait until SC2 dies peacefully", it really tells the downward trend now. I would not say the same thing for Chess, new players are participating in Chess every year. I think something like 10~20m new players plays Chess each year, versus something like 5k new players in SC2 this year. 2,000~4,000x difference. That's the difference between being #1 in the world (8b pop) vs #1 in Poland (40m or 2000x) or Romania (20m or 4000x). And for our Americans out there, the difference between #1 in the US (330m pop) vs #1 in Edinburg, Texas (100k pop, and yes, I know none of us have even heard of the town). Again, in GOAT competition for SC2, I would not value a 2023~24 win on par with a 2012~15 win. So, my opinion for SC2 GOAT now is that I'm not sure. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, and I know I wish Maru can show us that he is the GOAT, he is that close. From an impact perspective, neither Serral nor Maru had as much impact as MVP/Nestea/MC had on me. And Serral and Maru, mostly Serral, only won in a super weak era of SC2. Reminds me of the Varsity Blues Scandal, where rich kids use super niche sports to get into Elite and Ivy League colleges. Do they deserve to be in Stanford? You tell me But let's hope the game lasts for a few more years, and maybe time will tell. When you compare GOATs, you compare them respectively to their game/discipline, not the games themselves.So it really doesn't matter how much more people play Chess compared to SC2 - otherwise only the sports with the most amounts of players (which probably is either Football or some sort of gymnastics) would get a GOAT, since everything else is not as competitive. Sure, there is a certain hurdle to overcome, if you create a boardgame and play it with two friends even the best of you three should probably not be mentioned in the same vein as Magnus Carlsen. But SC2 is historically big enough to justify to have a "real GOAT". Heck, WC3s prime was around much shorter and people have no quarrel discussing a GOAT there. So whoever the SC2-GOAT is, I think it is fair to treat him as a "real GOAT". Everything else is just silly. Good thing you already mentioned how subjective lots of things are, because Mvp, NesTea and MC really don't have any business being in a GOAT-discussion for SC2...sorry, but two of them had what, a two-year-career at best? Has nothing to do with "impact", they just happened to be around at the start. It is really easy to have an impact when you are literally the first... Lastly, since you take some issue with me picking the last 1,5 years for Serral: I did that because that is the timeframe of the current EPT Circuit (though I included Kato'23, which ofc was the final of the last circuit). But sure, if we take Serrals entire full-time career, he is not as dominant as Carlsen, though I would argue it is generally harder to defend your World Championship Title in SC2 than it is in Chess - just by design, not by competitiveness. But still, since the start of 2018, Serral is a solid part of the Top 5 in the world...a radius he quickly reduced to Top 3 and this year so far, he basically made it a Top 1 - EWC might change that up again of course. According to Liquipedia, Serral managed to accumulate 1,5 million dollar worth of prizemoney. That is a tremendous amount for a "super-weak", non-competitive game. You would almost think someone from the past who is so clearly better would have returned to farm some easy cash, no?
Great stuff. I guess we have to agree to disagree. I don't think Serral is the GOAT in SC2, at least not now. And I believe not in the future as well. And I think Magnus Carlsen (MC? BossToss) is the GOAT of Chess.
I also agree that we should compare GOAT to the game/discipline of their choice. But I just don't agree that winning from like 2018~2024 does much to justify the GOAT debate in SC2. The competitive scene is dying as I noted. Many organizations tried to keep it alive these past few years. $1.5m is quite a lot, but it's not inflation-adjusted either. More than 90% of the prize-winning is from 2018 onward. Especially in 2023~24, where you were saying Serral dominated. And again, I don't expect him to win any international major tournaments, since his win probability is not >50% overall.
Just like the reason why I think Magnus is the GOAT of Chess, is cause in the early days (not really early, but recorded I guess) of Chess like Paul Morphy, the entire system was just not competitive. Like today's SC2, winning doesn't mean much, unless you can absolutely destroy everyone else, and that's not the case with Serral today. And Paul Morphy absolutely destroyed everyone else at the time, just nothing compared to the players today. Yet, I don't think he is the GOAT. GOAT should be in a competitive era and destroy everyone else then, with great impact, consistency, and great longevity.
Further, I also agree NesTea/MC don't have much business being in a GOAT discussion, it was more of a nostalgic moment for me to talk about their impact on my viewership experience and my own SC2 player experience.
Though MVP is another story, he should be in the GOAT debate, the impact, the story, the injury and more.
Again, here's a wish that the game can somehow turn around (though not likely) where we actually get competitive, otherwise, there are literally only 5~10 players that can win or finish top in any tournament non-region locked nowadays. Also, there are probably only 30 or so full-time progamers. They are really the only ones competing for the top.
To finish, for a game, SC2 with like 30 or so full time gamers today (historically a lot more). Not comparable to something like Chess with 2000+ grandmasters who do it fulltime today. 100x. And yes, peak vs non-peak should be taken into account, by a lot.
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(meaning to edit previous post, not sure why this is here, but meant to be deleted)
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On August 18 2024 13:39 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2024 18:28 kajtarp wrote:On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy. When Maru was more in the "ascendancy" he always failed to meet Serral in big international tournaments, because he was knocked down by someone else more often than not. Remember how much people wanted the Serral Maru clash to happen, and how much time needed for the first one to actually happen. And apart from that win on WESG i'm not sure how many times did Maru manage to actually beat him. Everyone remembers Maru beating Serral at WESG, and not the utterly broken unit he used to do it that was subsequently nerfed into oblivion twice and is still a dominating unit in 2 matchups.
I think as a Serral fan you really shouldn't start with using balance as an argument, that will never end well for you
Btw look at the race representation for the tournaments played with "super broken ravens":
 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1
World Electronic Sports Games 2017
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Maru is a great player, and one of the greatest of all time. Mechanics/skill wise, you could argue that he's the GOAT. But in my eyes, he'll never be the true GOAT as the doesn't have the mentality. From what I could see from the games is that he really should've won if he just stuck to his normal game (e.g. especially games 3 & 5 vs Dark).
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On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy.
Probably, as Maru also is a year older than Serral. But as it stands, they were only equal after the first two matches they ever played. Other than that, Serral was always ahead in a direct confrontation (which again, I don't view as very important for a GOAT debate).
On August 18 2024 12:32 johnnyh123 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 11:45 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 11:02 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 10:48 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 09:27 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 18 2024 05:52 Balnazza wrote:On August 18 2024 05:29 johnnyh123 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:13 Ciaus237 wrote:On August 02 2024 03:01 WombaT wrote:
Is Mvp the Olga Korbut of SC2? I think he's more the F1 Senna sort, ya know? Serral is a bit of a Magnus Carlsen on the other hand. Not sure about Serral comparison to Magnus Carlsen though, not to take away anything from Serral. First, Chess is a game that is estimated to be played by 600m players worldwide, and among them around 350k are rated (plays in rated game/tournaments), and about half of that, or 175k are rated and active (plays rated games/tournaments within the last 12 months). Second, it is not dying at all. While most games are played offline, Chess.com alone has more than 100 million users and around 60 million monthly active users. And at least according to Chess.com, this number has been growing steadily (might have to do with offline players transitioning to online, but we don't know). Third, at any given point in time, there are about 300,000 users on Chess.com alone. Comparatively, Starcraft 2 is probably played by around 10m players (considering they sold 6m copies of WoL), and among them Aligulac.com has 757 players rated. Then, it is trending downwards though relatively stable nowadays. Active players in 2023 are likely around 85k, that's about half compared to the year before. There are also very few new players in the game. At any given point in time, there are likely around 10,000 players online. Now, in a game with way more player base and more history, Magnus is the undisputed #1 player for about 13 years from 2011. Which also makes him the youngest #1 player in the world ever. Furthermore, he has won a world championship in all 3 categories of chess, the only one to do so, and he has done it multiple times. You would expect him to win tournaments that he goes into. In fact, he went 2+ years undefeated from 2018 to 2020 in 125 games. Serral is a favorite going into many tournaments nowadays, but he is not the undisputed #1 player for years. Nor do you expect him to win most tournaments that he goes into, you probably expect him to win a tournament for every 3 tournaments or so (statistically he wins about a third). Honestly: Yes, Serral is expected to win every tournament. Much more than Magnus Carlsen tbh. Serral dropping out in the Ro4 usually is considered to be a disappointement. The differences between Chess and SC2 are of course tremendous in terms of playerbase, that is correct. But the point where Magnus and Serral connect is their level of dominance and their ability to seemingly play a completly different game than anyone else. For me "expected" means >50%. For example, when you go to the Casino to gamble on Roulette, do you expect to win or no? The winning chance is 47.4% (assume you do even/odd or red/black), I just don't see anyone saying "yeah, I expect myself to win". Maybe it's just me, but I would definitely not think that, in fact, with a 47.4% win chance, I "expect myself to lose". Similarly, I don't expect Serral to win tournaments that he gets into. This is statistically true as well. He wins around a third of all tournament he enters. The percentage would be much higher for region locked ones, and lower for non-region locked ones. Also, I don't agree with the comparison between Serral and Magnus cause of the 100x player base differences. It's sort of like comparing Football to the likes of Kabaddi or Tchoukball (India absolutely dominates Kabaddi, and Taiwan absolutely dominates Tchoukball), and saying that a Kabaddi/Tchoukball star is like Messi/Ronaldo. In 2023 and 2024 combined, Serral has played 11 big tournaments (not counting EWC yet). From these 11, he has won 8. And his Top 8 finishes at Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 are both considered to be disappointing results, even his Top 4 in Atlanta'23 wasn't particularly well-received. I would definetly say that Serrals record in recent times shows that he is far more likely to win a tournament than 50%. I mean, all GOATs get compared to each other, even though they play completly different sports. That comes with the territory I guess. Sure, for someone to be as dominant as Carlsen or Serral, you need atleast some form of competitiveness. But SC2 is definetly big enough to make that comparison. Especially when the comparison isn't even about pure dominance, but also about the way they dominate. That's my point though, you are taking 1.5 years of record to represent a career. (As far as I know, EWC hasn't concluded, so it shouldn't be included). Whereas Magnus' career as undisputed #1 is for 13 years. I also don't think the pro scene is big enough, there are 757 rated players on Aligulac today, versus 150,000 in chess, 200x difference. (not an 100% apple-to-apple comparison, but good enough as a proxy indicator) Further, I don't think winning SC2 tournament in 2023/2024 is comparable to winning SC2 tournament anywhere in 2012~16 for example. Miz wrote an article about 5 story lines to follow. I think it was Serral/Maru/Dark/Reynor/Cure, and before EWC started, I thought "add Clem and herO" and we can be 99% sure one of them will win. In fact, none of the 7 lost to any other participants in the entire tournament. The only time they lose is against each other. In fact, the only time they will lose in this entire tournament, will be against each other as well. Additionally, even just looking at Aligulac's ranking, outside of the top 30, they are just not competitive, I doubt they play the game full-time, and they are just unable to show up to any top tournaments. Like, Krystianer, Strange, and Lancer, in the top 40 just shows (no disrespect, they must be great players, I just don't see them much at all, sure Krystianer showed up WTL W1 Ace win over Reynor, huge). This wouldn't have happened back in 2012. There are hundreds of players playing full time, have a team house, have a coach to support, and are competitive I see here and there. Therefore, I honestly believe, there are only really around 10 progamers now that are competitive. Whereas in Chess, there are 2k grandmaster that are great, better than 599.998m people, just not as good as Magnus. Also, you are saying Kato'23 and Gamers8'23 you were disappointed with Serral's result. I wasn't disappointed, I sort of expected it, I still believe he will likely win a third of these big international events. To be disappointed or not, is a subjective opinion, doesn't say much at all. Finally, you assume we are comparing GOATs of different (e)sports between Starcraft 2 and Chess. To you, Serral is a GOAT, but I don't think it's established that Serral is a GOAT, yet. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, this entire article don't think so. Tbh, I want to wait until SC2 dies a peaceful death and then decide. Whereas, Magnus is almost definitely a GOAT in Chess. And that was my entire point in that we shouldn't be comparing Serral to Magnus, at least not yet. With Esports being relatively new and games only starting to last longer periods of times in recent years, of course SC2 does not have the same level of history than chess. That is an unfair comparison, that just doesn't work. Same btw the other way around: Carlsen might have a dominant career of 13 years, but he still only dominated a fraction of Chess's lifespan. Serral is around the best if not the best for almost 50% of the lifespan of SC2. Wow, Serral is such a better GOAT than Carlsen! :O No, but seriously: You can only judge a player according to the parameters of his discipline. Carlsen, being as young as he is for example, could dominate the Chess world for decades (his biggest obsticale probably being his own motivation). But that is only possible because he plays Chess. Even the greatest football players struggle to dominate in their late 30s and their career almost always ends before they even hit 40. I hope you get my point here: If you want to compare GOATs with each other (which always is more of a fun thing to do than something that actually works), you have to do it with the limitations of their disciplines in mind. To be honest, I'm not really following your part about the disappointement being subjective. It wasn't just me, it was a general consensus, especially considering how often writers and casters mentioned Serrals losses against Solar and Ragnarok. You can see this kind of reaction in many sports, when the current big-dog fails. For example, if Djokovic (in tennis) fails to win a Grand Slam, there isn't much "well, I expected that, you can't win them all"-sentiment. It is an upset, because he is so far ahead of the curve (or atleast he was), that he was expected to win every big tournament he enters. Lastly: Why would you want to wait until SC2 "dies"? In that case you really can't say Carlsen is the GOAT...who knows, in 600 years someone else might show up and be better, then we would look pretty silly callling Carlsen the Greatest Of All Time... Again, for real: I think we can all agree that "GOAT" only means "the best so far", maybe with a sprinkle of "it will be hard to surpass that player in the future". Otherwise no one would ever be the GOAT in anything. And sure, you might not think of Serral as the GOAT, neither does Mizenhauer, but then I do wonder how Maru would compare to Carlsen...because I really can't imagine Carlsen being called the Chess-GOAT without ever winning the World Championships. But even if we ignore the question if Serral is the GOAT or not: I would still compare him to Carlsen, as his dominance right now is as impressive and other-worldy than Carlsens is. The history piece was mostly about how "learned" and "mature" the game of Chess is. Meaning players have to be even better to be GOAT-ed compared to a relatively new game like SC2. I do think Magnus is the GOAT (or maybe one of the GOAT) for Chess given what I said before. I was talking about you using Serral's 1.5 years' result vs the career of a normal professional at the respective sport/game. i.e. You taking just Serral's 2023 and 2024 (not over yet) results. We should look at longer horizons for any sort of GOAT discussion. An SC2 professional player would probably have up to 10 years of professional career traditionally, but given SC2 is pretty uncompetitive, players can play past 30 no problem, in fact I think Ryung is 33 already. Whereas Artosis was talking about how Flash/Jaedong were basically half dinosaurs when they were like 23. I did not compare Magnus vs entire chess history, nor Serral vs entire SC2 history. A chess player would probably have up to 20 years of professional career. And Magnus has been the undisputed #1 for 13 years already and is ongoing. So it's safe to say Magnus is and will be the undisputed #1 in the world for the majority of his career. And no, Serral was definitely not the undisputed #1 for half of SC2 history, i.e., in 2017 nobody would have said he was. And many years following, it's not clear to me. When I mentioned "I will wait until SC2 dies peacefully", it really tells the downward trend now. I would not say the same thing for Chess, new players are participating in Chess every year. I think something like 10~20m new players plays Chess each year, versus something like 5k new players in SC2 this year. 2,000~4,000x difference. That's the difference between being #1 in the world (8b pop) vs #1 in Poland (40m or 2000x) or Romania (20m or 4000x). And for our Americans out there, the difference between #1 in the US (330m pop) vs #1 in Edinburg, Texas (100k pop, and yes, I know none of us have even heard of the town). Again, in GOAT competition for SC2, I would not value a 2023~24 win on par with a 2012~15 win. So, my opinion for SC2 GOAT now is that I'm not sure. I don't think Serral is the GOAT, and I know I wish Maru can show us that he is the GOAT, he is that close. From an impact perspective, neither Serral nor Maru had as much impact as MVP/Nestea/MC had on me. And Serral and Maru, mostly Serral, only won in a super weak era of SC2. Reminds me of the Varsity Blues Scandal, where rich kids use super niche sports to get into Elite and Ivy League colleges. Do they deserve to be in Stanford? You tell me But let's hope the game lasts for a few more years, and maybe time will tell.
No idea if you read my GOAT analysis, but Serral has a 34% chance of winning tournaments throughout his career (Maru has 19,79% with an era-adjustment boost for his early wins). Already in 2018 when a lot of the old guard was still around, Serral won 50% of the tournaments he attended. And I only looked at non-region locked tournaments.. including the region locks, his participation-win-ratio would be even higher.
Of course he dominates in a downward trend of the game, I think no one is denying that. But so is Maru. Maru was never #1 pre-2018 and post-2018 Serral is miles ahead. And arguably, Maru wouldn't have gotten 4 GSLs in 2018/2019 if Serral played in Korea too, simply according to the insane statistics Serral brings to the table in these years. Unfortunately he only ever went to Korea for the weekenders, so we will never know. But even with Maru having acquired so many trophies post-2018, Serral simply has the better statistics. He ends way deeper in tournaments, has a lot higher win percentages and has better match win rates.
I also think that super-weak era is stretching it a little. The game was much more understood and players like sOs, PartinG, TaeJa, Zest, ByuN, INnoVation, herO, Cure, GumiHo, Bunny and soO very much are/were still around.
It would have been much better to see Serral gain fame 2 years earlier, but cultural differences simply didn't allow for that. To me, Serral's dominance, consistency, adaptability and duration are second to none in SC2. No one thought a foreigner could ever hope to achieve what he did (and more).
Who is the GOAT in your opinion if you don't think it's Serral?
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Lorning
Belgica34432 Posts
On August 18 2024 07:07 Mizenhauer wrote:Thanks again for the chicken tenders and fries.
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Well. The true GOAT would never ever get swept after making it to the finals, at any point in his career. Getting to the finals of a huge tournament and then losing a series should completely take you out of the running for GOAT.
Right, guys?
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On August 18 2024 15:41 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 13:39 sc2turtlepants wrote:On August 17 2024 18:28 kajtarp wrote:On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy. When Maru was more in the "ascendancy" he always failed to meet Serral in big international tournaments, because he was knocked down by someone else more often than not. Remember how much people wanted the Serral Maru clash to happen, and how much time needed for the first one to actually happen. And apart from that win on WESG i'm not sure how many times did Maru manage to actually beat him. Everyone remembers Maru beating Serral at WESG, and not the utterly broken unit he used to do it that was subsequently nerfed into oblivion twice and is still a dominating unit in 2 matchups. I think as a Serral fan you really shouldn't start with using balance as an argument, that will never end well for you Btw look at the race representation for the tournaments played with "super broken ravens": 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/World_Electronic_Sports_Games_2017
It's totally nuts that Maru was the only Terran that made it to the round of 8 in both of those tournaments, and that he won both. Does anyone know whether there has ever been a premier won by a Zerg where no other zerg was in the quarterfinals?
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Northern Ireland27185 Posts
On August 19 2024 16:16 Telephone wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 15:41 Charoisaur wrote:On August 18 2024 13:39 sc2turtlepants wrote:On August 17 2024 18:28 kajtarp wrote:On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy. When Maru was more in the "ascendancy" he always failed to meet Serral in big international tournaments, because he was knocked down by someone else more often than not. Remember how much people wanted the Serral Maru clash to happen, and how much time needed for the first one to actually happen. And apart from that win on WESG i'm not sure how many times did Maru manage to actually beat him. Everyone remembers Maru beating Serral at WESG, and not the utterly broken unit he used to do it that was subsequently nerfed into oblivion twice and is still a dominating unit in 2 matchups. I think as a Serral fan you really shouldn't start with using balance as an argument, that will never end well for you Btw look at the race representation for the tournaments played with "super broken ravens": 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/World_Electronic_Sports_Games_2017 It's totally nuts that Maru was the only Terran that made it to the round of 8 in both of those tournaments, and that he won both. Does anyone know whether there has ever been a premier won by a Zerg where no other zerg was in the quarterfinals?
I mean he basically was the only good Terran at WESG so him being last man standing isn’t all that crazy.
Those old GSLs were pretty stacked, it’s not especially likely but even with a perfectly balanced game, with a pretty even field you can get big swings in representation. I mean Inno doesn’t lose a winner’s match to Scarlett every day back then.
I feel this particular aspect of Maru’s legend is a tad overrated. I’ll maybe have to actually double-check though, my impression is that he pulled it off in the odd tournament, rather than in periods where Terran was doing garbage for big long periods of time.
I’ll add the giant caveat that I may be wrong, or indeed likely am wrong when I go and check it haha
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Northern Ireland27185 Posts
On August 18 2024 15:41 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 13:39 sc2turtlepants wrote:On August 17 2024 18:28 kajtarp wrote:On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy. When Maru was more in the "ascendancy" he always failed to meet Serral in big international tournaments, because he was knocked down by someone else more often than not. Remember how much people wanted the Serral Maru clash to happen, and how much time needed for the first one to actually happen. And apart from that win on WESG i'm not sure how many times did Maru manage to actually beat him. Everyone remembers Maru beating Serral at WESG, and not the utterly broken unit he used to do it that was subsequently nerfed into oblivion twice and is still a dominating unit in 2 matchups. I think as a Serral fan you really shouldn't start with using balance as an argument, that will never end well for you Btw look at the race representation for the tournaments played with "super broken ravens": 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/World_Electronic_Sports_Games_2017
Well of course because Terrans exist in their own parallel world of martyrdom, so it does become something of a fool’s errand.
I approved of that Raven nerf, although they weren’t breaking the balance of the game hugely. For one it was well, kind of silly, and two well, perhaps it was going to be a big problem moving forwards.
Similarly Zergs weren’t dominating Terrans with completely invisible sharkfestor ambushes, but Serral showed it off to memorable effect and it was quickly nerfed. Which again I agreed with.
There’s a bit of inconsistency historically in balancing and they don’t always get it right. Sometimes blatantly stupid stuff is left untouched forever, sometimes things get almost insta-nerfed before the community can at least attempt to figure it out, and sometimes silly stuff gets nerfed quickly before it can really take hold.
I think they made the right call on both of those in isolation.
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On August 19 2024 16:16 Telephone wrote:Show nested quote +On August 18 2024 15:41 Charoisaur wrote:On August 18 2024 13:39 sc2turtlepants wrote:On August 17 2024 18:28 kajtarp wrote:On August 17 2024 17:37 WombaT wrote:
The head-to-head probably is much more even if Maru got to play Serral more when he was more in the ascendancy. When Maru was more in the "ascendancy" he always failed to meet Serral in big international tournaments, because he was knocked down by someone else more often than not. Remember how much people wanted the Serral Maru clash to happen, and how much time needed for the first one to actually happen. And apart from that win on WESG i'm not sure how many times did Maru manage to actually beat him. Everyone remembers Maru beating Serral at WESG, and not the utterly broken unit he used to do it that was subsequently nerfed into oblivion twice and is still a dominating unit in 2 matchups. I think as a Serral fan you really shouldn't start with using balance as an argument, that will never end well for you Btw look at the race representation for the tournaments played with "super broken ravens": 2018 Global StarCraft II League Season 1https://liquipedia.net/starcraft2/World_Electronic_Sports_Games_2017 It's totally nuts that Maru was the only Terran that made it to the round of 8 in both of those tournaments, and that he won both. Does anyone know whether there has ever been a premier won by a Zerg where no other zerg was in the quarterfinals?
The very first GSL with Fruitdealer winning, DRG's first GSL win in 2012, Rogue GSL 2021 S1, etc.
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EPT
