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Hiya!
I shall be using prize winnings as the measure of success for this, admittedly not the least lazy method, but it does hold many advantages over other methods. Primarily that of trying a more objective approach, while there will always be some level of subjectivity for evaluating things, I believe that prize money already sorted out many of the dilemmas. For instance, how much more is a first place worth than a second place, well the tournament through its prize distribution already determined this. I of course do find herO's 2nd place finish in a winner-takes-all tournament more impressive than the player who falls out in the first round, but the fact of the matter is that for this tournament it was chosen that this is not the case. herO was as it were what people call the biggest loser of this tournament, because he put in the 2nd most work, but got nothing out of it. Prize winnings also account for all of the smaller tournaments that would otherwise be impossible to go through. And prize winnings decide which tournament is the most important one, that is for the players. You cannot spend GSL trophies on medical bills or use them for bettering your life. Serral is the highest earner in sc2 and so he literally is the most successful player.
This however is a GOAT ranking, the GOAT ranking of GOAT rankings, so I shall give valuation to the prize winnings earned, by determining the most competitive years (the hardest earned money) and looking at the balance of the races.
Eras: Competitiveness is not solely determined by the number of players, but the quality of players, it's no coincidence that Kespa players were that much more successful than the rest of the field.
I therefore, because of the Kespa influxuation, value the years 2013-2015 doubly the amount than that of 2010-2011, which I value the same as that of the years, 2017-2018. 2017-2018 still had a lot of the spectacular quality, but, because of the Kespa abandonment, it had way less quantity. So in short, 2013-2015 had quality + quantity, 2010-2011 had quantity and 2017-2018 had quality. The modern era, today is valued half of that of 2017-2018 and 2010-2011. Meaning prize money earned in 2013-2015 is worth four times the amount than that of the money of today. It might sound elitist, but I do think when discussing things like this, we're being elitist. 2021 is worth less, due to the tournaments all being online, and there are in-between years that lie somewhere in between the before mentioned valuations.
Balance: Because I shall be using prize winnings as the measure for these players, It's very easy to be completely objective with balance, simply dividing the money awarded for a given race, by the total money awarded in that year, and using this factor for the given player for that year.
Periods:
2010-2011: Terran favoured, Protoss disfavoured.
2012: Zerg favoured, Terran disfavoured.
2013-2015: Protoss favoured, Terran disfavoured.
2016: Zerg favoured, Terran disfavoured.
2017: Zerg favoured, Protoss disfavoured.
2018-2020: Zerg favoured, Terran disfavoured.
2021: Protoss favoured, Zerg disfavoured.
2022: Zerg favoured, Terran disfavoured.
2023-2024: Terran favoured, Protoss disfavoured.
Welfare tournaments:
Players such as MC, MVP, MMA, Polt, TaeJA have received percentage cuts in years that they've benefited from playing WCS EU/AM, I haven't been lenient on them, it's not perfect, but going through the earnings, it isn't far off of what it should be. Players such as Neeb, Serral and Reynor have had a similar treatment, but I admit that where this cut should be, is a more foggy area and so the ranking for Serral in particular is probably not perfect.
"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything" - Ronald H. Coase.
This was written to me in the comments of another thread, and my response was molesting some data some more, so with this in mind I present to you the awards:
The fifteen most impressive year:
+ Show Spoiler +#1 BYUN 2016
#2 MARU 2018
#3 TY 2017
#4 LIFE 2014
#5 SERRAL 2018
#6 SOS 2013
#7 ROGUE 2017
#8 INNO 2013
#9 PARTING 2012
#10 SOS 2014
#11 ZEST 2014
#12 INNO 2014
#13 DARK 2016
#14 SOS 2015
#15 LIFE 2015
And for the most impressive two years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +MARU 2017-2018
BYUN 2016-2017
LIFE 2014-2015
SOS 2013-2014
INNO 2013-2014
And for the most impressive three years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +SOS 2013-2015
MARU 2017-2019
LIFE 2013-2015
INNO 2013-2015
BYUN 2015-2017
And for the most impressive four years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +LIFE 2012-2015
MARU 2015-2018
SOS 2013-2016
INNO 2013-2016
STATS 2016-2019
And for the most impressive five years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +MARU 2015-2019
INNO 2013-2017
LIFE 2012-2016
SOS 2013-2017
STATS 2016-2020
And for the most impressive six years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +MARU 2013-2018
SOS 2013-2018
INNO 2013-2018
LIFE 2011-2016
TY 2015-2020
And for the most impressive seven years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +MARU 2013-2019
INNO 2013-2019
SOS 2013-2019
LIFE 2011-2016
TY 2014-2020
And for the most impressive eight years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +MARU 2013-2020
INNO 2013-2020
SOS 2013-2020
LIFE 2011-2016
ZEST 2014-2021
And for the most impressive nine-ten years in a row:
+ Show Spoiler +MARU 2012-2020
INNO 2012-2020
SOS 2013-2021
LIFE 2011-2016
ROGUE 2014-2022
Of all time:
+ Show Spoiler +
The twenty greatest players of all times:
+ Show Spoiler +#1 MARU
#2 INNO
#3 SOS
#4 LIFE
#5 DARK
#6 ROGUE
#7 ZEST
#8 TY
#9 STATS
#10 BYUN
#11 SERRAL
#12 CLASSIC
#13 HERO
#14 PARTING
#15 SOO
#16 MC
#17 SOLAR
#18 MMA
#19 POLT
#20 TAEJA
Due to imbalance:
Life places above Dark, Rogue and Serral, not because his race was so infavoured at the time that he played, but rather because of how favoured Zerg has been in the times where Dark, Rogue and Serral was winning.
Furthermore, it causes Zest to place above Serral and TY to place above both Serral and SoO.
Stats and ByuN massively jumps up, so much that they overtake Serral, SoO, Classic and PartinG. Serral, SoO and PartinG have all benefited from imbalance quite a bit and Stats and ByuN have been disfavoured.
Classic defeats SoO, but loses to Stats and ByuN.
herO then beats Solar, SoO and PartinG, whose periods favoured them.
MC only slays Solar even though he's the player that had the 2nd worst time with imbalance, Solar also benefited massively from imbalance.
MMA, Polt and TaeJA all defeat Rain, MVP and DRG. The prior players had disfavouring imbalance and the latter had favourable imbalance.
Who's rating was the most affected by infavourable imbalance in the rating:
+ Show Spoiler +NEEB
MC
TAEJA
MARU
INNO
BYUN
STATS
POLT/GUMIHO
MMA
TY
Who's rating was the most affected by favourable imbalance in the rating:
+ Show Spoiler +SERRAL
DARK
SOO
ROGUE
SOLAR
RAIN
PARTING
DRG
SOS
MVP
So there you have it, this is my GOAT ranking and the one I shall refer to when discussing the GOATs. I do think the least lazy approach would be the one where you go through all of the tournaments one by one, but it's also the method that will require much more weighing and thus be a lot more subjective, and if you take balance serious, you should pretty much discount the 2018+ years, because Protoss in this time is nonexistent and I don't find great joy in only determining which players have the greatest ZvZ, TvZ, or TvZ and TvT matchups. I've tried to be as objective as possible and coincidentally I end up with 7,7,6 in race disribution, even if we go by top ten we have 4,3,3 distribution, it's funny how that works out, almost like all the best players aren't just Zergs and Maru.
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i was expecting a ranking of rankings, am slightly disappointed that we haven't gone meta yet
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Not sure if this is a shitpost but I actually agree with a lot of the measurements and while prize money imo isn't the end-all-be-all at least it makes the ranking 100% objective by focusing only on this metric.
Serral at #11 feels very low though
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United Kingdom1372 Posts
This is getting out of hand, now there are two four of them.
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Fun ranking. Should the EWC Finals be a PvP, none of the players would get any points for it because Protoss would probably end up being the "favored race" of the year. So essentially, for "GOAT purposes", players punish themselves if they do great.
The weighting feels extremly off. So a guy winning a 100 bucks Online Cup in Dezember 2015 gets basically 400 points for it (compared to today), but the same player winning the same cup two weeks later in January 2016 only gets 200 points?
Or even worse: Serral winning the recent ESL Masters Spring event, y'know, where the best of the best came together, gives him half the points compared to MMA winning Homestory Cup XII at the end of 2015, right at the start of LotV, that had a whooping four koreans present (MMA, MC, TOP, HyuN).
Though right, you mentioned you subtracted points for "welfare tournaments"...so basically the entire ranking is "GSL + BlizzCon/Katowice", since the WCS Points are subtracted for the top players, blocking the chance for the weaker players to even get any.
If "Prizemoney" is your deciding factor, then all money should be equal. You can make adjustments, but awarding four times the points for a certain era is way over the top. That balancing happens by itself, considering for example the heavy prizepool discrepancies between todays GSL and the good ol' times. For example: GSL usually awarded around ~38K for the winner, the last one awarded 3.5K, so lets say today it is only worth 10%. You then apply your system and kill it even more, making a GSL win today effectively worth a 1/40 (2,5%) compared to back then. I'm not saying there isn't a difference between GSL then and now, but 2,5% of the worth? It is already balanced out by the prizepool, no need to beat it with a stick even further. Which btw ironically won't affect the "World Championship" at all, because even with your system winning EWC is still worth the same as winning BlizzCon 2015...
If you truely want to take Prizemoney as "face value" for GOATness, I feel like the only appliable subtraction should be to divide by years active or any kind of "diminishing returns" for long-lasting careers. It doesn't have to be a super-harsh punishment, but if you have three amazing years and then just cruise by for seven more, people shouldn't say "wow, that guy had a ten-year long career, so impressive!"
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Haha, I chuckled quite heavily. But are there seriously people thinking that this isn't a troll-/bait-post, lol?
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I read this early this morning, shortly after waking up, and felt like my tired brain was not able to process what OP is trying to get at. Is this humor ? Are we serious ?
I also expected some sort of ranking of rankings.
I am super confused.
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On August 09 2024 23:32 PremoBeats wrote:
Haha, I chuckled quite heavily. But are there seriously people thinking that this isn't a troll-/bait-post, lol?
I'm sure someone will be upset that Serral didn't even make it into the top ten.
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On August 10 2024 00:04 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2024 23:32 PremoBeats wrote:
Haha, I chuckled quite heavily. But are there seriously people thinking that this isn't a troll-/bait-post, lol? I'm sure someone will be upset that Serral didn't even make it into the top ten.
Seriously.. if there is someone out there taking this obvious bait then it is on them and they deserve all the Serral-Fanboy-Shitism that is thrown at them 
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Absolutely huge amount of effort for a shitpost.
Absolutely minimal entertainment derived from reading it.
I r8 0/8.
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Northern Ireland26219 Posts
Serral at 11? Good lord
How is the guy who’s earned the most money from the game not in the top 10 of a ranking list that’s based off prize money?
If you’re shitposting well, well shitposted sir but if this is a serious ranking effort?
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Northern Ireland26219 Posts
On August 09 2024 21:12 Charoisaur wrote:
Not sure if this is a shitpost but I actually agree with a lot of the measurements and while prize money imo isn't the end-all-be-all at least it makes the ranking 100% objective by focusing only on this metric.
Serral at #11 feels very low though
Not if you arbitrarily just decide to give a 4 times multiplier on a particular timeframe over another. And a 2x elsewhere
I think there are some differences between eras, but this is a very crude way to try to account for them indeed.
Region lock kind of fucks this admittedly, but for example you could break down a year by how much prize money is in the total pot, and how much of that pot an individual obtained. It’s not perfect, and complicated by things like region lock, but it does somewhat account for prize pools fluctuating and is still ‘objective’.
Also, Proleague fucks it too. Those players weren’t always available to participate in tournaments, so how does one factor that in? Proleague IMO fucks every attempt to rank GOATs because it was never a neat fit in how SC2 players were perceived and judges both before and after. As I always stress, I loved Proleague but it’s a huge outlier in format and prioritisation.
Byun places ahead of Serral purely on these multipliers, despite only ever winning a premier tournament(s) in one year, on one patch.
Byun himself would have a hearty laugh that any attempt at a GOAT rank had a methodology that somehow placed him above Serral.
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On August 10 2024 02:41 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2024 21:12 Charoisaur wrote:
Not sure if this is a shitpost but I actually agree with a lot of the measurements and while prize money imo isn't the end-all-be-all at least it makes the ranking 100% objective by focusing only on this metric.
Serral at #11 feels very low though Not if you arbitrarily just decide to give a 4 times multiplier on a particular timeframe over another. And a 2x elsewhere I think there are some differences between eras, but this is a very crude way to try to account for them indeed. Region lock kind of fucks this admittedly, but for example you could break down a year by how much prize money is in the total pot, and how much of that pot an individual obtained. It’s not perfect, and complicated by things like region lock, but it does somewhat account for prize pools fluctuating and is still ‘objective’. Also, Proleague fucks it too. Those players weren’t always available to participate in tournaments, so how does one factor that in? Proleague IMO fucks every attempt to rank GOATs because it was never a neat fit in how SC2 players were perceived and judges both before and after. As I always stress, I loved Proleague but it’s a huge outlier in format and prioritisation. Byun places ahead of Serral purely on these multipliers, despite only ever winning a premier tournament(s) in one year, on one patch. Byun himself would have a hearty laugh that any attempt at a GOAT rank had a methodology that somehow placed him above Serral.
Yeah I honestly kinda just skimmed over it and read some things I liked but the era multiplier in combination with focusing on prize money honestly makes no sense.
Pretty sure this isn't to be taken seriously though
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If you're dividing a players earnings by their race's total winnings in a year, does that downweigh years where one player is so dominant they single handedly skew the race's earnings? Like, if XXXX wins 4 / 7 titles in a year, and the other three are split between P/T, I feel like your methodology marks that as a "Z-favored year", whereas that may not be entirely fair to XXXX. The race weighting surely should at least be "compared to the other tournaments of the year", not "among all tournaments that year" right?
Otherwise poor Serral winning 80% of tournaments in a year gets called winning a Zerg-favored era when Maru's winning all the GSLs haha
But it's an interesting idea, and between Gamers 8 and EWC, it's pretty clear that the pros see prize money very heavily (naturally)
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OK miz you didn't need to make an alt to take the heat off yourself.
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United States1906 Posts
On August 10 2024 04:34 jimminy_kriket wrote:
OK miz you didn't need to make an alt to take the heat off yourself.
I'm still struggling to wrap my head around it.
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This is hilarious but in all seriousness it is more credible than the other actually serious (I think?) attempt that invented 7 criteria designed to crown Serral and had Mvp potentially as low as 16th.
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Northern Ireland26219 Posts
On August 10 2024 07:50 rwala wrote:
This is hilarious but in all seriousness it is more credible than the other actually serious (I think?) attempt that invented 7 criteria designed to crown Serral and had Mvp potentially as low as 16th.
Most of those criteria actively nerfed Serral though
Nonetheless to me and many others greatness is a feeling, what people value will differ too, so trying to make some kind of objective set of metrics is almost doomed to failure from the outset.
Still, always makes for some fun discussion!
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United States33500 Posts
I was debating making a joke GOAT ranking of actual goat species, but it would have required too much research to make it worth the effort 
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On August 10 2024 08:00 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2024 07:50 rwala wrote:
This is hilarious but in all seriousness it is more credible than the other actually serious (I think?) attempt that invented 7 criteria designed to crown Serral and had Mvp potentially as low as 16th. Most of those criteria actively nerfed Serral though Nonetheless to me and many others greatness is a feeling, what people value will differ too, so trying to make some kind of objective set of metrics is almost doomed to failure from the outset. Still, always makes for some fun discussion!
At this point rwala must be trolling. I was able to take him seriously until a certain point, but it is clear, that he isn't interested in discussing this issue further on a good faith level. To even suggest that this attempt is more credible or my list wasn't serious is utterly absurd.
Although I have to say that (iirc it was him) he at least was open about his subjective feelings trumping objectivity in another thread (Miz' or mine... can't remember).
This is similar to what you are suggesting here. But as I said in another thread, there are metrics for people that are present in GOAT discussions in other sports that can be measured. And these metrics include achievements, win rates, tournaments win rates, occupation of high ranks if the sport has a ranking system, trophies, awards and all kinds of more subjective qualities. But the hard metrics definitely include the ones that I looked at and there is a correlation with good results in these metrics and being in a GOAT discussion. I am further happy to add other metrics if people feel that I have been looking unfairly at this whole topic.
I am far from done with my re-work, as I definitely don't want to repeat the mistakes I made last time and be as objective as possible (small spoiler: so far, Serral has been - closely - kicked out of #1 in at least 1 metric by including team results in the tournament score - which was kind of expected as he isn't Korean and wasn't participating in that many team events).
The hardest thing at the moment is the era analysis... how to factor in retired/banned players, overall competitiveness and tournament structure is hard to wrap my head around. But the start looks promising... the data gathered so far indicates that I wasn't too far off with the era- plus tournamnet-multiplier combination from leveling the playing field between different eras.
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EPT
