The StarCraft 2 GOAT - An in-depth analysis - Page 7

On July 24 2024 02:01 onPHYRE wrote:


Currently at 56. Serral is at nearly 80%… Dominating just like every other measurable metric.

On July 24 2024 00:04 ejozl wrote:
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 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.

1. World Championships and World Championship Level events. This category includes WCS Global Finals, BlizzCons and IEM World Championships after 2018, representing the most prestigious events of the world, where the best of the best compete. This category has a multiplier of 1,1.
2. GSL Code S, OSL, SSL until 2020 come in at a value of 1. The separation to later GSLs was made due to the restructuring of the tournament after 2020 Code S season 3 where player amount and difficulty of advancing was diminished a lot.
3. ESL Masters as well as DreamHack Season Finals from 2020 onwards, Master’s Coliseum. In contrast to Mizenhauer I devalued these events slightly in comparison to Code S, OSL and SSL. Although DH Last Chance 2022 (won by Maru), DH Last Chance 2021 (Serral 2nd place) as well as Master’s Coliseum 6 and 7 (both won by Serral) could have easily been upgraded to category 2 as the average player rank was simply absurd. MC6 had an Ro8 average of 4,75 and MC7 of 5,75 with 4,5 being the lowest possible score. These two tournaments were simply filled with the best the world had to offer until the very last moment. But out of respect to the old era (which again is a small added buff to this time) I devalued this category slightly at 0,95. This decision again disfaors Serral the most.
4. GSL Code S 2021 and following, GSL vs the World, WESG. The WESG should have been positioned in category 5 according to the involved players in Ro16 and Ro8 but was given an upward correction to category 4, as the prize pool was insane. GSL vs the world was corrected downward from category 3. Although the best of the world competed, the tournament structure was rather simple and it is widely regarded as a “show tournament” despite the best of the world attending. This category is a good example of my thought processes as for example 2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest was corrected upward as only one player lowered the average score immensely. Lastly: 2013 WCS Season 1 was corrected upwards for era-reasonings, as it would have been placed in category 6 following the average player count. Category 4 is valued 0,8.
5. Category 5 includes random events such as King of Battles, miscellaneous Afreeca TV tournaments or ESL Masters locked regionals. Value: 0,85.
6. Mostly region-locked ESLs and HomeStoryCups which see another sharp decrease in value: 0,7.
7. This category only includes the Gold Professional Championship 2019 Season 1, which has the worst Ro16 and Ro8 ratings (86,38 and 44,75) as well as low price money. Nothing to write home about… sorry INnoVation, I can only multiply this tournament at 0,5.

On July 24 2024 13:25 Starcloud wrote:


10000% this ! Numbers dont lie. There are of course some preferences that can be adjusted (stronger era etc..), but they cant overwrite the numbers. But like Tommy said, you cant argue with believers.



That sample is small, yes, but that wasnt the point of the discussion. Another metric ?? You realize that almost EVERY metric there can be points out Serral being the best player of all time. Why does it bother you ?



Where does this "Life"-wind suddenly come from? Surely, guy was talented and all but these kind of predictions are just insane. He never even played Maru/Rogue/Serral on their prime either and prolly didnt have the stamina to last long in the scene anyways. Still of course shame that he ruined his career. Would have been super-exciting to see him stay in the scene longer.

On July 24 2024 11:09 lokol4890 wrote:


Again, your sample is not big enough to even represent a population of 100 people. But sure, let's throw common sense out the door and use this as another metric for serral being the goat...

On July 24 2024 18:43 Charoisaur wrote:

Maybe because he won 10 premier tournaments at the age of 18? Maru won 2 tournaments at that age (I know, he barely played overseas and probably wasn't that far behind Life).
But still, nobody at that age was close to being as good as him, he's just the most talented player who has ever touched the game.

On July 24 2024 21:50 njleslu2024 wrote:

Lowko did a poll on X, including 27 thousands people and Serral still has 80%, more sample size more advantage for Serral

On July 24 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote:


So based on your observation that Protoss has no wins in high tier tournaments: Does that mean that neither a Terran nor Zerg can be GOAT?
But you realize that even under the assumption that Protoss could not win (assuming T and Z were more or less balanced), a T or Z would still have to beat the other race and mirrors?

I am gathering more data on balance and era, so give me some time. I'll definitely address this better next time.



In my opinion the poll is layed out wrongly. Because most people who are against Serral mostly argue about era. Meaning even if their GOAT was Mvp, they would much more likely settle with Maru.

From what I learned (having written a couple of pieces on reddit and one here): Life, Mvp and Maru are the names people drop.

I will prepare another article, where I will prepare Life's and Mvp's numbers in perfect alignment with my previous list and will also add some data to more accurately pin down era-variance.

But for the next poll: Put these 4 on... It is my intuition that Maru's votes will go down much more than Serral's (or people, as they now have read this will troll me and still vote Maru )

On July 24 2024 21:37 UnLarva wrote:
@Premobeast

Quote from the Analysis:



Is there an error (bolded) in either relative values of Category 4 and Category 5 relative weights? Is it just typo in the text, or is that error also included to the math?

Not that it would make one iota difference in the big picture, but asking for clarity, as one would expect Cat 4 being weighted higher than Cat 5.

On July 24 2024 21:50 njleslu2024 wrote:

Lowko did a poll on X, including 27 thousands people and Serral still has 80%, more sample size more advantage for Serral

On July 24 2024 23:40 ejozl wrote:

Yes, even if serral and maru dominated and zvz,tvt,tvz is perfectly balanced and that 2 out of the 3 matchups were balanced, it still puts a huge asterix on their reign. You yourself stated it as an impressive feat that mvp, taeja, byun, serral and innovation were the top in all of their 3 matchups. Well, if you can exclude mvp and serral out of this because of balance issues, then that means only 3 ppl achieved this: inno, byun and taeja.
And you can go deeper, the way that serral plays, could he have achieved what Life did in a meta where zergs couldn't rely on surperior late game and could wax-on, wax-off every attack like some Karate kid, to achieve a sure win? I think not, but i'this also goes both ways, were perhaps Life or sOs simply lucky when they garnered their big wins, due to their gambling-like playstyles? No zerg could've won as dominantly as serral in lotv, but he could've also not dominated the way he did, playing as another race, or in a different era, and this is why winning in different eras is so impressive as well.
Like I said, sOs, Life, inno, maru and serral are the best candidates for #1 goat spot, that doesn't mean that these players should all be in the top 5 though.

The guy has been on top for 6 straight years with different map pools, patches as well as playing veterans and new talent. He adapts his play style to match the opponent (and arguably has a race that is able to do that). I don't know tbh. Too many hypotheticals to pursue... he could also be another top 20 player, who knows.

On July 25 2024 00:49 lokol4890 wrote:


I keep seeing permutations of this statement with different ranges, some people saying 6 years, some 7, some a decade (somehow). In any event I don't know what data y'all are looking at because this is just not true. Serral's best years (by far) were 2018 and 2024, but in the years in between he definitely was not continuously on top. In that same period the other top zergs have either matched him or outperformed him. Wonder why serral's peak also coincided with rogue, dark, and reynor peaking. Surely it cannot be balance

On July 25 2024 00:49 lokol4890 wrote:


I keep seeing permutations of this statement with different ranges, some people saying 6 years, some 7, some a decade (somehow). In any event I don't know what data y'all are looking at because this is just not true. Serral's best years (by far) were 2018 and 2024, but in the years in between he definitely was not continuously on top. In that same period the other top zergs have either matched him or outperformed him. Wonder why serral's peak also coincided with rogue, dark, and reynor peaking. Surely it cannot be balance

On July 24 2024 23:13 Blitzball04 wrote:
Serral has already been the consensus among fans , casters and pros.

I usually just ignore the Maru goats talks since most of them have no idea what they are talking about. World championship and Dominancr over his/her peers is how we measure greatness. Not some silly overrated GSL the few fans are desperately holding onto for argument sakes

MVP is a top 20 players of all time. WOL was disgusting overpower for terrans.

Anyways big thanks for the in depth analyze, which pretty much sums up everything