On July 23 2024 07:01 Charoisaur wrote: Do we really need to nitpick about how meaningful aligulac ratings are? Yeah, it's not a good metric to use, but Serral would be at the top regardless of the rating system we use, his winrates are just so far ahead of any other player.
Btw starcrafthistorian released a really good interview with uthermal that includes the topic, and he basically summarized what I also think
I agree with Uthermal that if LIFE wasn't banned and didn't gamble etc and continued to play, he would be the GOAT easy.
If only Life didn't mess up!
Life was better than Maru and Serral period.
Do you also agree with uThermal that as Life got banned and didn't continue, that Serral is the clear choice?
I always thought it to be strange to put Life in such high regards when TaeJa finished his career as the most decorated player of the entirety of 2010-2016, to be only put behind by Serral, Maru and Reynor in terms of accomplishments years later.
On July 23 2024 19:10 PremoBeats wrote: Why do you think Maru is greater?
He has done inhuman things repeateadly, that no other human could do at the time More than any other player His "flavor" / "touch" is something else compared to others
Maru evolved from this kid to a "godlike" / "mythical entity" / "mythical pokemon". He was there at the beginning of Starcraft 2, so young but still having exceptionally good results for his age (basically a "prodigy", like many others, Creator, Life, etc.). And there he is now in 2024, as one of the favorites for the World Championship. The guy is still at the top level. He has maintained elite level consistently, across all eras / patches of the game.
Alright, so your metrics are excellence at a young age and duration of career - implying the ability to adept - coupled with high end results?
@UnLarva: Thanks for the kind words and the recognition of me disfavoring Serral. I am currently working on the higher resolution of the transition you spoke of. My vacation ends soon.. perhaps I'll be able to finish it, as the wind for kiting seems to pass me somewhere else.
Once again if you want to prove a point using metrics and statistics you are wasting your time, but I guess you are the kind to enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing.
So I guess since you seem to want to have the last word with this, the GOAT will ultimately be the last player/bot to play starcraft 2 before the servers die / get terminated
I enjoy arguing for the sake of arguing with random strangers from the internet, bots or not, so keep going
Do you think it is worthless because some people are in denial of data? Because there are many who are not.
I don't like arguing for the same of arguing, but I won't leave untrue statements uncommented.
On July 23 2024 18:50 swarminfestor wrote: Lol Serral again. Nothing new from some obsessed fans trying to claim that he should be no.1 no matter what. Next month we get another new 'depth analysis' essay again written by someone else and I bet the verdict from his writing will be the same as usual.
OP analysis is worth to read, you know. From Serral fanboi's perspective it is great read as it doesn't leave much room for accusations on favoritism as it base everything on objectively available, common statistics, and uses such absurd nerfs, penalties, and handicaps for Serral (and lesser extend to Maru too) that it is actually amazing how there even can be so much debate on some matters related to the topic.
Best merit of the analysis is however the fact it force revisiting weighting and value of certain high held, beloved, stone carved nostalgo-maniac assumptions that were already over the top 2018 concerning classic Kespa-era. That is important in sense that if Serral cannot be the GOAT, neither can Maru, demonstrated by hard, cold, statistical facts.
I for one would be extremely happy if there would pop up a new fresh look on the topic every single month, preferably with fresh perspectives and higher resolution over the topic. Any work that makes era and player comparisons less hazy and subjective are very much welcomed by me.
The Author of the analysis really deserve respect for his, no doubt, very time consuming efforts to clarify some things. Do anyone here really think that quality and intensity of competition suddenly dropped from 2015/16 to 2018 that much it would really justify 50% nerf to later era tournaments?
I suspect NO.
Yeah I disagreed with that part of the analysis because the competitiveness didn't suddenly massively drop from one year to another, it was more of a gradual decrease. Personally I would've divided it into 3 or 4 parts with full score being given to the Kespa era, then a slightly lower score for 2017-2019 (Kespa disbanded but most players kept going), then a significantly lower score from 2020 on (that was when the military retirements really kicked in). Optionally also a lower score for WoL although that's arguable because tons of players were playing the game and that era required the most innovation/strategic prowess out of players.
You realize I only made a sudden drop to disadvantage Serral more? If there was another grade involved, INno, Maru and Rogue would have gotten less boost versus Serral in 2017.
On July 23 2024 07:01 Charoisaur wrote: Do we really need to nitpick about how meaningful aligulac ratings are? Yeah, it's not a good metric to use, but Serral would be at the top regardless of the rating system we use, his winrates are just so far ahead of any other player.
Btw starcrafthistorian released a really good interview with uthermal that includes the topic, and he basically summarized what I also think
I agree with Uthermal that if LIFE wasn't banned and didn't gamble etc and continued to play, he would be the GOAT easy.
If only Life didn't mess up!
Life was better than Maru and Serral period.
Life owns his entire legacy to "messing up". If he hadn't, he would have been relegated by now in the Top 10-15 range of players and that only because he is a World Champion, otherwise no one would really bring up his name.
I mean in a hypothetical world where Innovation had some crippling injury in like 2014/15 I imagine his reputation today would be as a lock for GOAT who was cruelly prevented from achieving his destiny. But the reality was rather different.
It's very interested for me to see some specific Maru fans being annoyed by the ariticles claiming Serral as the goat, they are always rushing to argue that their idol is the GOAT in terms of some nitpicking criteria where Serral's fans even don't care about, so funny! 🤡
On July 23 2024 23:38 lorestarcraft wrote: You can't be the GOAT if you never won GSL. That's just how I feel about it, and nothing anyone says will make me value GSL less.
Korean elitists are still lying to themselves and not facing the truth, sadly.
On July 23 2024 23:34 PremoBeats wrote: Do you think it is worthless because some people are in denial of data? Because there are many who are not.
I don't like arguing for the same of arguing, but I won't leave untrue statements uncommented.
Is this a genuine typo by a human typing it, or some noise introduced in the answer / data to make it look human?
Once again, analyzing data is cool and all but it won't give an absolute answer to the question: "who is the greatest starcraft 2 player of all time"? As was said beforehands, it will just eliminate players and a handful of people will remain in the conversation.
On July 23 2024 23:40 njleslu2024 wrote: It's very interested for me to see some specific Maru fans being annoyed by the ariticles claiming Serral as the goat, they are always rushing to argue that their idol is the GOAT in terms of some nitpicking criteria where Serral's fans even don't care about, so funny! 🤡
You're projecting. You don't care yet serral fans will argue about it rabidly.
You probably were one of those types that would say "I'm out, no more foreigners" in regards to watching a tournament because only Koreans were left.
On July 23 2024 23:40 njleslu2024 wrote: It's very interested for me to see some specific Maru fans being annoyed by the ariticles claiming Serral as the goat, they are always rushing to argue that their idol is the GOAT in terms of some nitpicking criteria where Serral's fans even don't care about, so funny! 🤡
You're projecting. You don't care yet serral fans will argue about it rabidly.
You probably were one of those types that would say "I'm out, no more foreigners" in regards to watching a tournament because only Koreans were left.
I don't wanna disappoint you but actually your statement is completely wrong. There are a decent amount of Korean players I like, Dark, Zest, herO, ByuN etc. I'm truly a fan of Serral but I don't think I NEED to brainstorm a lot and come up with some unusual criteria to nitpick Maru's achievements and boost Serral's, you know? Serral's trophy list and the data listed by the author show clearly how far ahead he is comparing with others. Who are the ones still coping? I don't know!
On July 23 2024 07:01 Charoisaur wrote: Do we really need to nitpick about how meaningful aligulac ratings are? Yeah, it's not a good metric to use, but Serral would be at the top regardless of the rating system we use, his winrates are just so far ahead of any other player.
Btw starcrafthistorian released a really good interview with uthermal that includes the topic, and he basically summarized what I also think
I agree with Uthermal that if LIFE wasn't banned and didn't gamble etc and continued to play, he would be the GOAT easy.
If only Life didn't mess up!
Life was better than Maru and Serral period.
Life owns his entire legacy to "messing up". If he hadn't, he would have been relegated by now in the Top 10-15 range of players and that only because he is a World Champion, otherwise no one would really bring up his name.
I think that’s slightly exaggerating it, but the ‘might have been’ is often stronger than the reality. The factors that saw Life drawn into match fixing in all likelihood would have seen him being unable to maintain the motivation to stay at the top of the game in perpetuity in a way Maru or Serral have managed, IMO anyway.
I mean in a hypothetical world where Innovation had some crippling injury in like 2014/15 I imagine his reputation today would be as a lock for GOAT who was cruelly prevented from achieving his destiny. But the reality was rather different.
While there is some truth to it I think the Life situation is somewhat different because: 1. He was much younger than Inno. Most sc2 players seem to peak somewhere between 20-25, Life didn't even reach that age yet when he got banned 2. Unlike Inno who was a practice machine during his peak Life actually didn't need to practice that much to be the best.
At the end of the day we can never tell, but imo if Life didn't get banned he'd with 95% certainty the Goat now. Even if the scenario that he declines exactly like Inno did he'd still be a top contender for Goat as Inno still won like GSL, SSL, IEM Gyeonggi, GSL the world and WESG after 2015. Add those to Life's resumee and he'd have a strong case to be the Goat.
On July 23 2024 23:38 lorestarcraft wrote: You can't be the GOAT if you never won GSL. That's just how I feel about it, and nothing anyone says will make me value GSL less.
You don't have to devalue GSL to make Serral GOAT as he won a more prestigous tournament twice. Just saying.
On July 23 2024 23:34 PremoBeats wrote: Do you think it is worthless because some people are in denial of data? Because there are many who are not.
I don't like arguing for the same of arguing, but I won't leave untrue statements uncommented.
Is this a genuine typo by a human typing it, or some noise introduced in the answer / data to make it look human?
Once again, analyzing data is cool and all but it won't give an absolute answer to the question: "who is the greatest starcraft 2 player of all time"? As was said beforehands, it will just eliminate players and a handful of people will remain in the conversation.
No idea if I should be flattered or insulted being compared to a computer
So far, you did not put up notions as to why you think that is. You are simply making a statement without backing it up.
I am saying: - We can define criteria for potential GOATs (even weighing them, if needed) - We can gather data to analyze the criteria - We are thus able to compare players and rank their placements - We can further collect data to make era-influence more palpable
Now the weighing parts are subjective and people habe to be logically coherent, when discussing them. But if one side is disadvantaged more than the other side's fans are even asking for and still winning by far... what is left out? What is missing? Every weighing is in vain as one player is on top in all metrics. What is my blind spot?
So the reason for me that Serral isn't necessarily the goat is this: For me tournament result is the only objective measure of balance, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much you crush the other guy, it is about taking home the trophy. The results should be how you leave your mark on the game. Rogue punching above his weight class is just as impressive, as were it the case that he always played at this level, even on ladder. This was the same for Stats, the best Toss of LotV, he was infamously low on the ladder. It was the opposite for sOs, everyone and their mother feared sOs, but when it came to the tournament, in LotV that is, he would falter.
You didn't counter the balance issue properly, not that you HAVE to address this issue, you could say that if you look at it objectively, this means that you should disregard balance. But honestly, you said that if you remove Maru and Serral the biggest outliers. that the game would be pretty damned balance. If you remove herO, Protoss as a race didn't win GSL, or a higher tier caliber tournament since, after 2017. The list of players who did, excluding herO, Maru and Serral are: Oliveira, Solar, Cure, Gumiho, SoO, Scarlett, INnoVation, Dark, Reynor, Rogue and TY. 11 players and no Protoss. I wouldn't fault a person for simply excluding 2018+ years out of the GOAT debate, simply because it holds little value to be the GOAT of a 2x race game.
The argument for Serral not playing the most competitive era is tough. If SC2 almost died, but the online competitive scene continued with Maxpax dominating it for 50 years. People would argue that maxpax would be the GOAT, but the time that he played would've been simply too different, so who's really to say.
Let me write the timeline for GOATage: MC/MVP -> Life -> sOs -> INnoVation -> Maru -> Serral
You can argue some names should be here or there, but the overarching picture is like this. So, if we say that the end of HotS is the peak of competitiveness then that removes MC/MVP. So now it is a spectrum of how much you value the time from after the Kespa abandonment. If you say life is meaningless after Kespa, Life is your GOAT, if you still value the era up and including to 2017, then INnoVation is your GOAT, then there is 2020+ where Blizzcon wasn't there anymore and so on and depending on how much you value the different scenes you could put either Life, sOs, INnoVation, Maru or Serral as your GOAT. If you do put Serral, Maru and Rogue in the top 3, as most people do, with possibly Dark, or INnoVation as the 4th spot, then I would consider Serral the GOAT, since the scene that includes Serral, Rogue and Maru is from 2017+. And wouldn't this in turn make 2017+ the most valuable era?, you could argue that Life couldn't be the GOAT because he didn't get to witness the Serral, Rogue and Maru peaks.
On July 23 2024 07:01 Charoisaur wrote: Do we really need to nitpick about how meaningful aligulac ratings are? Yeah, it's not a good metric to use, but Serral would be at the top regardless of the rating system we use, his winrates are just so far ahead of any other player.
Btw starcrafthistorian released a really good interview with uthermal that includes the topic, and he basically summarized what I also think
I agree with Uthermal that if LIFE wasn't banned and didn't gamble etc and continued to play, he would be the GOAT easy.
If only Life didn't mess up!
Life was better than Maru and Serral period.
Life owns his entire legacy to "messing up". If he hadn't, he would have been relegated by now in the Top 10-15 range of players and that only because he is a World Champion, otherwise no one would really bring up his name.
I think that’s slightly exaggerating it, but the ‘might have been’ is often stronger than the reality. The factors that saw Life drawn into match fixing in all likelihood would have seen him being unable to maintain the motivation to stay at the top of the game in perpetuity in a way Maru or Serral have managed, IMO anyway.
I mean in a hypothetical world where Innovation had some crippling injury in like 2014/15 I imagine his reputation today would be as a lock for GOAT who was cruelly prevented from achieving his destiny. But the reality was rather different.
While there is some truth to it I think the Life situation is somewhat different because: 1. He was much younger than Inno. Most sc2 players seem to peak somewhere between 20-25, Life didn't even reach that age yet when he got banned 2. Unlike Inno who was a practice machine during his peak Life actually didn't need to practice that much to be the best.
At the end of the day we can never tell, but imo if Life didn't get banned he'd with 95% certainty the Goat now. Even if the scenario that he declines exactly like Inno did he'd still be a top contender for Goat as Inno still won like GSL, SSL, IEM Gyeonggi, GSL the world and WESG after 2015. Add those to Life's resumee and he'd have a strong case to be the Goat.
I think he'd be in the conversation, I don't think he'd necessarily be a standout GOAT candidate.
He's an interesting transitional player, along with Taeja of a similar age profile. Both are quite well-renowned for being these 'natural talents', and honestly I think they were actually very close in that regard, Life certainly has the bigger prizes. But both were the two players of that era who were able to hang with the Kespa crew of the eSF holdouts, on basically that talent alone. Someone like Maru essentially became a Kespa player, or somebody like Byun who wasn't, grinded like an absolute lunatic.
But the overall bar was raised with that influx and that regime. So I think the question kinda shifts to whether Life coulda remained at the absolute cutting edge of the game while coasting on natural talent, or, if he couldn't, could he have put the requisite grind in? Which of course is a very unknowable thing.
My best guess is, given what he did, also given he was already showing somewhat inconsistent results in the likes of Proleague was that he could not have developed into some consistently dominant player. However that talent doesn't disappear, so he'd probably have been that kinda player who could bounce between bombing out of a GSL one season, into winning it another. And probably accumulated enough accomplishments to be super high up in GOAT considerations.
Eras aside though I don't think Life shows something similar to what say Serral is doing now, and is smacking everyone in 2016/17 etc
On July 23 2024 12:35 onPHYRE wrote: I think this discussion can be best summarized by “If you use numbers and qualitative data, it’s clear Serral is the GOAT.” If you want to discuss things that cannot be quantified then the only real competitor to Serral is Maru and depending on what you value in a GOAT and what metrics are used, you could chose either player. However if you look at all of the metrics, Serral wins most of them, which explains why the community and current pros from a pure numbers standpoint back Serral much more often.
The whole vocal minority argument comes in to play here.. I would honestly be so curious to see the answer to a true poll of people choosing who they think is the GOAT. I genuinely think it would be Serral at 65-70% of the community.
Well these poll results pretty accurately summarize what I strongly suspected. Not a HUGE sample size, but the overall numbers line up with what I’ve seen since the Miz list dropped.
On July 23 2024 23:38 lorestarcraft wrote: You can't be the GOAT if you never won GSL. That's just how I feel about it, and nothing anyone says will make me value GSL less.
You don't have to devalue GSL to make Serral GOAT as he won a more prestigous tournament twice. Just saying.
On July 23 2024 23:34 PremoBeats wrote: Do you think it is worthless because some people are in denial of data? Because there are many who are not.
I don't like arguing for the same of arguing, but I won't leave untrue statements uncommented.
Is this a genuine typo by a human typing it, or some noise introduced in the answer / data to make it look human?
Once again, analyzing data is cool and all but it won't give an absolute answer to the question: "who is the greatest starcraft 2 player of all time"? As was said beforehands, it will just eliminate players and a handful of people will remain in the conversation.
No idea if I should be flattered or insulted being compared to a computer
So far, you did not put up notions as to why you think that is. You are simply making a statement without backing it up.
I am saying: - We can define criteria for potential GOATs (even weighing them, if needed) - We can gather data to analyze the criteria - We are thus able to compare players and rank their placements - We can further collect data to make era-influence more palpable
Now the weighing parts are subjective and people habe to be logically coherent, when discussing them. But if one side is disadvantaged more than the other side's fans are even asking for and still winning by far... what is left out? What is missing? Every weighing is in vain as one player is on top in all metrics. What is my blind spot?
I will try to come back to you later on (I am in a bit of a sleep deficit atm + lots of irl stuff to handle) and dissect your piece more ; in order to address your points more qualitatively! Thanks again for the work you put in, as a guy who enjoy numbers (and letters), I am just a bit frustrated not to be sharp enough atm to properly answer / do the work to properly express myself.
On July 23 2024 07:01 Charoisaur wrote: Do we really need to nitpick about how meaningful aligulac ratings are? Yeah, it's not a good metric to use, but Serral would be at the top regardless of the rating system we use, his winrates are just so far ahead of any other player.
Btw starcrafthistorian released a really good interview with uthermal that includes the topic, and he basically summarized what I also think
I agree with Uthermal that if LIFE wasn't banned and didn't gamble etc and continued to play, he would be the GOAT easy.
If only Life didn't mess up!
Life was better than Maru and Serral period.
Do you also agree with uThermal that as Life got banned and didn't continue, that Serral is the clear choice?
I always thought it to be strange to put Life in such high regards when TaeJa finished his career as the most decorated player of the entirety of 2010-2016, to be only put behind by Serral, Maru and Reynor in terms of accomplishments years later.
Taeja was nowhere near the best player of 2010-2016. He only won a single event that actually had the majority top guys present. Everything else he won was missing a multitude of top players. It was also mostly lower prize stuff, he always lost with bigger money in the line. He never won a world championship or a KIL. Another player overrated by aligulac.
On July 23 2024 12:35 onPHYRE wrote: I think this discussion can be best summarized by “If you use numbers and qualitative data, it’s clear Serral is the GOAT.” If you want to discuss things that cannot be quantified then the only real competitor to Serral is Maru and depending on what you value in a GOAT and what metrics are used, you could chose either player. However if you look at all of the metrics, Serral wins most of them, which explains why the community and current pros from a pure numbers standpoint back Serral much more often.
The whole vocal minority argument comes in to play here.. I would honestly be so curious to see the answer to a true poll of people choosing who they think is the GOAT. I genuinely think it would be Serral at 65-70% of the community.
Well these poll results pretty accurately summarize what I strongly suspected. Not a HUGE sample size, but the overall numbers line up with what I’ve seen since the Miz list dropped.
What's the sample size?
E: just for kicks, went ahead and found a sample size calculator at 95% confidence level. Assuming a population of 100, the sample size would need to be 80; for 1000 it'd be 278; and for 10,000 it'd be 370
On July 23 2024 12:35 onPHYRE wrote: I think this discussion can be best summarized by “If you use numbers and qualitative data, it’s clear Serral is the GOAT.” If you want to discuss things that cannot be quantified then the only real competitor to Serral is Maru and depending on what you value in a GOAT and what metrics are used, you could chose either player. However if you look at all of the metrics, Serral wins most of them, which explains why the community and current pros from a pure numbers standpoint back Serral much more often.
The whole vocal minority argument comes in to play here.. I would honestly be so curious to see the answer to a true poll of people choosing who they think is the GOAT. I genuinely think it would be Serral at 65-70% of the community.
Well these poll results pretty accurately summarize what I strongly suspected. Not a HUGE sample size, but the overall numbers line up with what I’ve seen since the Miz list dropped.
On July 23 2024 12:35 onPHYRE wrote: I think this discussion can be best summarized by “If you use numbers and qualitative data, it’s clear Serral is the GOAT.” If you want to discuss things that cannot be quantified then the only real competitor to Serral is Maru and depending on what you value in a GOAT and what metrics are used, you could chose either player. However if you look at all of the metrics, Serral wins most of them, which explains why the community and current pros from a pure numbers standpoint back Serral much more often.
The whole vocal minority argument comes in to play here.. I would honestly be so curious to see the answer to a true poll of people choosing who they think is the GOAT. I genuinely think it would be Serral at 65-70% of the community.
Well these poll results pretty accurately summarize what I strongly suspected. Not a HUGE sample size, but the overall numbers line up with what I’ve seen since the Miz list dropped.
What's the sample size?
38. It’s over for Maru
So we're calculating for a population of 41 people (assuming 95% confidence interval). Lol I guess that's one way to use stats
On July 23 2024 12:35 onPHYRE wrote: I think this discussion can be best summarized by “If you use numbers and qualitative data, it’s clear Serral is the GOAT.” If you want to discuss things that cannot be quantified then the only real competitor to Serral is Maru and depending on what you value in a GOAT and what metrics are used, you could chose either player. However if you look at all of the metrics, Serral wins most of them, which explains why the community and current pros from a pure numbers standpoint back Serral much more often.
The whole vocal minority argument comes in to play here.. I would honestly be so curious to see the answer to a true poll of people choosing who they think is the GOAT. I genuinely think it would be Serral at 65-70% of the community.
Well these poll results pretty accurately summarize what I strongly suspected. Not a HUGE sample size, but the overall numbers line up with what I’ve seen since the Miz list dropped.
What's the sample size?
E: just for kicks, went ahead and found a sample size calculator at 95% confidence level. Assuming a population of 100, the sample size would need to be 80; for 1000 it'd be 278; and for 10,000 it'd be 370
Currently at 56. Serral is at nearly 80%… Dominating just like every other measurable metric.
Well, it's always the same... if people don't like the result of statistics / math, they usually say "your calculation is wrong". When you prove that the calculation is correct, they usually say "then the numbers are fake". When you prove that the numbers are correct, then they say "numbers are not all and everything". And when you admit to the argument and reduce the importance of numbers for the conclusion by some percentage, they tend to say "those numbers mean nothing at all".
In the end it's just a lenghty way to say "I don't care what numbers say, I have my opinion made by my personal preference, reality doesn't bother me"
@PremoBeats: don't waste your time arguing, you can't convince fanboys with numbers Thanks a lot for your hard work and detailed analysis!
EPT
