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On January 31 2025 12:05 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2025 14:31 Glorfindelio wrote:On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote:
Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory. While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters. I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday.
But theres a great difference from Boxing and SCII. SCII at 2013-2017 (which is the orgasmic era for some) had players who had played the game for 7 years, top.
And not just that, but a game that suffered 2 expansions in between that time. That matters.
I am absolutely sure that the level of play that Serral, Maru, Clem - and Rogue and Reynor at some points - has never been played until they did it. (Protoss is a bit hard to gauge that for me. sOs had some absurd peaks, herO and Trap a little less. But contrary to my main argument, Rain stands out as the most superb toss player ever for me)
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On February 01 2025 04:30 Locutos wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2025 12:05 Waxangel wrote:On January 29 2025 14:31 Glorfindelio wrote:On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote:
Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory. While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters. I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday. But theres a great difference from Boxing and SCII. SCII at 2013-2017 (which is the orgasmic era for some) had players who had played the game for 7 years, top. And not just that, but a game that suffered 2 expansions in between that time. That matters. I am absolutely sure that the level of play that Serral, Maru, Clem - and Rogue and Reynor at some points - has never been played until they did it. (Protoss is a bit hard to gauge that for me. sOs had some absurd peaks, herO and Trap a little less. But contrary to my main argument, Rain stands out as the most superb toss player ever for me)
Not sure why that matters, considering all the competitors have played the game for the same amount of time?
I don't think it's more impressive to beat someone that has played the game for 15 years while you have played for 15 years yourself, compared to beating someone who has played the game for 7 years while you have played 7 years yourself
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On February 01 2025 04:38 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2025 04:30 Locutos wrote:On January 31 2025 12:05 Waxangel wrote:On January 29 2025 14:31 Glorfindelio wrote:On January 29 2025 13:28 Drahkn wrote:
Serral peaked after the game was way less competitive sadly he will never be able to become the GOAT of sc2, only Maru spans that length of domination at absolute peak SC2 competitive level I'd agree with this statement, if that domination at peak sc2 competitive level included a single world championship, which you'd think he could have attained if the competition was that much weaker for so long. Greatness, by definition, shines in certain moments, which is why I hold his loss to Oli/Time against him to such a degree. Consider Maru, in his historically best MU (and an all-timer in it), against a player who had never won a Premier, facing someone who's never going to out-mechanics him. Yet he still wasn't able to pull out the win. More than that, he played out of character and made some baffling decisions at the doorstep of his crowning victory. While I personally have Serral as my GOAT by a slim margin over Rogue, I do have to respect the "nothing after 2017/18 matters" point of view. The uncomfortable truth is that we, the people who are left discussing this in 2025, are the worst people to look at the matter objectively. We're the group that's MOST bought in to competitive SC2, and the existential core of our fandom is that we believe that post-KeSPA and post-Blizzard history matters. I kind of wonder how boxing historians look at the competitors in the modern era (after the 2000's-ish) where the prestige and popularity of the sport has declined from its heyday. But theres a great difference from Boxing and SCII. SCII at 2013-2017 (which is the orgasmic era for some) had players who had played the game for 7 years, top. And not just that, but a game that suffered 2 expansions in between that time. That matters. I am absolutely sure that the level of play that Serral, Maru, Clem - and Rogue and Reynor at some points - has never been played until they did it. (Protoss is a bit hard to gauge that for me. sOs had some absurd peaks, herO and Trap a little less. But contrary to my main argument, Rain stands out as the most superb toss player ever for me) Not sure why that matters, considering all the competitors have played the game for the same amount of time? I don't think it's more impressive to beat someone that has played the game for 15 years while you have played for 15 years yourself, compared to beating someone who has played the game for 7 years while you have played 7 years yourself
Skill ceiling
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Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024.
This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment):
#1 MARU
#2 INNO
#3 SOS
#4 LIFE
#5 DARK
#6 ROGUE
#7 ZEST
#8 SERRAL
#9 TY
#10:STATS
#11:BYUN
#12:HERO
#13:CLASSIC
#14 ARTING
#15:SOO
I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru.
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On February 01 2025 00:36 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On January 31 2025 23:28 WombaT wrote:On January 31 2025 22:52 Charoisaur wrote:On January 31 2025 22:33 WombaT wrote:On January 31 2025 14:03 Balnazza wrote:On January 31 2025 08:07 Moonerz wrote:On January 31 2025 07:39 Locutos wrote:
2018 Stacraft II version had the true talents simply because it had the ones who had been playing since their childhood/early puberty, which is the minimun necessary to become really great at any sport.
the scene had less Team houses? It did. But we cant put aside the time funnel logic. Only the true talents remained. If by 2018, sOs, Zest, Taeja, MC, MMA, etc. If any of them had been getting the same results the Maru did, they would have kept playing. Simply like that.
Why didnt they keep playing? Cus they werent Serral, or Maru, or Clem.
Orrr the team houses were gone and so were the big salaries. Look at gsl prize distribution, if you didn't win outright you didn't make a ton of money. So would you put in the long hours for a chance at money? Especially coming from a salaried environment Not to mention those players had been playing for quite some time at that point and were older so moving on to military and then a normal life was probably tempting as well. Even the players like Maru and rogue that stuck are playing at a lesser level than they would if the team houses had been around still. I just don't believe anybody practices to the same extent anymore This is such an odd take tbh. So you are basically saying Koreans needed years of being in the best training enviroment on the planet and the highest salary in the world by a lot to be able to be above Serral? What people seem to conveniently forget: Proleague wasn't the UEFA Champions League or NBA (or any other high-end Sports League for that matter). If you are a really talented player in lets say Football (Soccer for the people across the pond), you can live in the freaking desert and still be scouted by one of the european football clubs. And if you are good enough, work hard enough and have that bit of luck, you will make it to that S-Tier of Football Clubs in Europe. If you are a really talented SC2 player in lets say 2014 and you live in Sweden, then...well, you are a very talented SC2 player that lives in Sweden and gets his ass handed by a guy who might be a good chunk worse than you, but happened to be born in Korea and got picked up by KT or T1, training with the very best every single day and getting a better salary than you. Proleague didn't have the best players, it produced the best players from an available player pool, that certainly was not global. The first requirement to get into Proleague was basically "be born in Korea". Which also means that for Koreans, being a progamer was actually a somewhat valid career choice, because there was an infrastructure to do so. And please, I'm not saying "lul, without Proleague Maru is a Gold Terran at best!!1". No, he clearly is one of the absolute S-Tier World Class Best Players who ever touched this game. But beyond that very S-Tier level, Proleague inflated the ability and skill of a lot of players, an option everyone outside of Korea simply didn't have. Which of course isn't their "fault" and doesn't invalid anything the Koreans did or achieve. It just is something to remember. Or to put it simple and in much fewer words: Saying "Serral is only dominant because of the loss of teamhouses" is the same as saying "as soon as the playing field was leveled, Serral was better than anyone else". Which essentially still makes him the GOAT. If the competition has dropped massively, and I’m a progamer it’s a super attractive time to just grind it out and make a bunch of cash. But nobody really did it to the degree Serral did. While that's true, it's just massively easier to improve when you're younger (not my words, but the ones of many pros) and many koreans also had to make up for lost time due to military, the circumstances just massively favor Serral here. I mean, we don't even need to make up hypotheticals, we can see in Serral's results over the years how the competitiveness of the scene affected his performance. From 2018-2021 he was still a phenomenal player but he still was far from the invincible player he is today as he could lose 3-0, 3-0 and 4-2 to Maru, lost in finals 4-0 and 4-1 to Rogue and Dark, lost to Cure 3-0 and 4-1 and lost many more series to the likes of Byun, Zest, soO, Inno, Stats, Trap, Bunny, TY, Zoun etc. On the other hand, as I previously said there was some overlap between his reign and the peak of some of the korean greats as from 2018-2021 he competed with the peak versions of Stats, Rogue, Dark and Maru who are generally considered amongst the greatest players of all time. So my guess would be if Serral had competed in the Kespa era his winrates against the top players would be similar as his winrates against Rogue/Dark/Stats/Maru from 2018-2021, with the only difference that there would probably be 10-12 players who could achieve those winrates against him. According to Aligulac his offline numbers from the start of 2018 thru the end of 2021: Under these filters, Serral is 383–126 (75.25%) in games and 141–18 (88.68%) in matches From the very end of 2021 to today: Under these filters, Serral is 234–81 (74.29%) in games and 88–16 (84.62%) in matches. Those numbers are insane, nobody is remotely putting in those numbers. Interestingly there’s a slight drop between the first period and the second, which I’d attribute slightly to Reynor and Clem rising up perhaps. Serral may have hoovered up more tournaments in the second era, but he was actually less dominant overall. Offline results from the 1st Jan of 2017: - Under these filters, Maru is 725–400 (64.44%) in games and 261–107 (70.92%) in matches. - Under these filters, Dark is 656–378 (63.44%) in games and 242–103 (70.14%) in matches. - Under these filters, Rogue is 448–264 (62.92%) in games and 170–75 (69.39%) in matches. - Under these filters, Reynor is 413–256 (61.73%) in games and 155–71 (68.58%) in matches. - Under these filters, TY is 403–250 (61.72%) in games and 151–72 (67.71%) in matches. - Under these filters, Stats is 482–325 (59.73%) in games and 186–94 (66.43%) in matches. - Under these filters, Clem is 406–252 (61.70%) in games and 161–82 (66.26%) in matches. - Under these filters, herO is 504–349 (59.09%) in games and 194–111 (63.61%) in matches. - Under these filters, Zest is 471–353 (57.16%) in games and 182–114 (61.49%) in matches. Nobody’s close. Maru of the next best in match win rate is closer to 7th, 8th and beyond than he is to Serral. That's interesting, but also a good example of why winrates aren't equal to results or dominance. From 2022 I have him as a considerable favorite in every tournament he enters and the best player at the world at pretty much all times (maybe Clem now has overtaken him). While from 2018-2021, there were significant periods were Maru, Dark, Rogue or Reynor were considered the best player or at least equal to Serral, and Serral had multiple bad losses as demonstrated in my previous post. edit: actually I noticed you only looked at offline results which is imo extremely misleading as there were hardly any offline events from 2019-2021 so you basically measured his winrate in 2018. If you look at both online and offline his winrate from 2018-2021 is: 1176–400 (74.62%) in games and 474–79 (85.71%) in matches. and from 2022-now: 725–213 (77.29%) in games and 292–43 (87.16%) in matches. This is more in line with what I was expecting. If you limit it to vs korean only the gap becomes even wider with 2018-2021 being: 359–173 (67.48%) in games and 134–37 (78,36%) and 2022-now: 253–89 (73.98%) in games and 96–19 (83.48%) in matches
Aligulac suffers from a lack of a ‘Premier’ filter IMO, it’s less of an issue with Serral to be fair, but it’s a pain with someone like Clem who plays a shitload of weeklies.
It should also filter out EU regionals that are played online on the flipside.
Anyway, over such a span it’s pretty remarkably consistent, nobody can really touch it. There have been periods where others were ‘the guy’ but Serral’s never really dropped off being top 4 in the world at worst, and frequently he’s been the guy.
Reynor to pick one example had a very strong spell and he took the fight to Serral, but that was such a relative novelty in the foreign scene that it colours perceptions. People think it’s a huge neck and neck rivalry
Serral is 116–79 (59.49%) in games and 33–16 (67.35%) in matches against Reynor in all matches.
Serral is 44–27 (61.97%) in games and 13–4 (76.47%) in matches against Reynor offline
Outside of the head to head, Reynor’s slumped pretty hardcore versus the field. Serral hasn’t, he’s kept it up for his entire career.
I’m not picking on Reynor, indeed I think his trajectory is largely typical of other great players that aren’t basically Serral or Maru who can keep on delivering very frequently over long periods.
As I frequently say, and I think people forget these days, there was a pretty long time where people thought SC2 was simply too volatile to be that consistent. People said you’d never see a Flash type because the skill floor was that little bit lower, you can always have a misread or two in a Bo3 etc.
To even dominate at a lower level was rare enough to be notable. Even when Stephano was at his pomp, and capable of winning big tournaments against stacked fields, he never dominated his fellow foreigners to this degree. Neeb was the first guy to really do that, and Serral took that ball and ran with it.
This doesn’t just go for Serral btw, I think people sleep on how good Maru was in the Covid era for one, or indeed since then!
We’ve all got our particular biases, I’m quite impressed by consistency so I do weight things in that direction. If you’ve got two very consistent players then peaking on the big occasions is an important tiebreaker of sorts and Serral’s done that. Almost any other player in the scene would take Maru’s WC record, but he’s competing with other GOAT candidates and that’s a gap in his resume.
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On February 03 2025 02:27 ejozl wrote:Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024. This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment): #1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14 ARTING #15:SOO I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru.
Can you actually explain your working here? What are the specifics of your methodology that ‘takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment)’?
I have quibbles with a lot of your ordering, but I suppose the obvious one is the player with the most money earned, most tournaments won, multiple World Champs, highest win rate overall and highest win rate versus Korean players being at 8th on this list.
It just reads like ‘I’ll order by prize money won, except for foreigners and Life’. Which is fine, it’s a free country and all that.
Just stick up a list and say it’s your subjective opinion, there’s no crime there. There’s incidentally also no crime in claiming it’s down to some dubious metrics of your own devising, but it sure as fuck isn’t objective.
Inno’s third on mine. Is it objectively couched? Nah not really. He’s got some trophies, less than he should have, but it’s because after a few years of religiously following this beautiful game this bloke showed up and within a short period was just annihilating fools and for a brief period was on another level. Mvp is fourth basically solely because of his last miracle GSL run against the odds, and his occasional statement series into the Kespa era. Without that he’s an MC or a Nestea, a great in the nascent phases of the game. But he beat players who would shape the game to come while half-crippled, Parting, Rain and push Life to the absolute limit.
Nout wrong with subjectivity in these things, or objectivity. The problem comes when one claims to be objective but indulges in seemingly entirely arbitrary rationales.
If only you were a TL writer at the time of the initial list, Miz would have got a lot less shit if you were lightning rod for nerd anger
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On February 03 2025 12:31 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2025 02:27 ejozl wrote:Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024. This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment): #1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14 ARTING #15:SOO I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru. Can you actually explain your working here? What are the specifics of your methodology that ‘takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment)’? I have quibbles with a lot of your ordering, but I suppose the obvious one is the player with the most money earned, most tournaments won, multiple World Champs, highest win rate overall and highest win rate versus Korean players being at 8th on this list. It just reads like ‘I’ll order by prize money won, except for Life or foreigners’ If only you were a TL writer at the time of the initial list, Miz would have got a lot less shit if you were lightning rod for nerd anger
I assume he is talking about this ranking of his. If I recall correctly, he later on adjusted the points given, but to summarize it: The "Kespa era" gets an inflated amount of points, the ranking is "adjusted" for balance (usually meaning Zerg gets a lot less, Terran a lot more points) and non-korean tournaments give a lot less points than korean tournaments.
Considering all that, it is almost terrifying that Serral is still rank #8. But I do wonder: Why is this ranking, that takes prizemony earned as the most important value and then tries to adjust towards certain criteria, not accounting for "career-length"? Particularly, if you talk prizemoney only, it should generally be considered to be a negative. What is more impressive? Winning 100K in three years or in ten?
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On February 03 2025 12:47 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 03 2025 12:31 WombaT wrote:On February 03 2025 02:27 ejozl wrote:Because it sounds a little crazy how Dark can jump 3 spots and perhaps Serral jumping the final spot over Maru, I wanted to update my own list and compare it with and without 2024. This is my updated list that uses esports earnings, takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment): #1 MARU #2 INNO #3 SOS #4 LIFE #5 DARK #6 ROGUE #7 ZEST #8 SERRAL #9 TY #10:STATS #11:BYUN #12:HERO #13:CLASSIC #14 ARTING #15:SOO I can tell you Serral would've been at the bottom of the list without 2024. Dark jumped ahead of Rogue and Zest. herO jumped ahead of Classic and PartinG. So even though I have 0.25 factor penalty for 2024, still this much adjustment happened in 2024 alone. So it's not so far fetched to have Dark jump up 3 spots, or Serral going ahead of Maru. Can you actually explain your working here? What are the specifics of your methodology that ‘takes into account balance, era and wellfare(the roughest adjustment)’? I have quibbles with a lot of your ordering, but I suppose the obvious one is the player with the most money earned, most tournaments won, multiple World Champs, highest win rate overall and highest win rate versus Korean players being at 8th on this list. It just reads like ‘I’ll order by prize money won, except for Life or foreigners’ If only you were a TL writer at the time of the initial list, Miz would have got a lot less shit if you were lightning rod for nerd anger I assume he is talking about this ranking of his. If I recall correctly, he later on adjusted the points given, but to summarize it: The "Kespa era" gets an inflated amount of points, the ranking is "adjusted" for balance (usually meaning Zerg gets a lot less, Terran a lot more points) and non-korean tournaments give a lot less points than korean tournaments. Considering all that, it is almost terrifying that Serral is still rank #8. But I do wonder: Why is this ranking, that takes prizemony earned as the most important value and then tries to adjust towards certain criteria, not accounting for "career-length"? Particularly, if you talk prizemoney only, it should generally be considered to be a negative. What is more impressive? Winning 100K in three years or in ten?
Good point.
The adjustments are strange and make no real sense anyway.
Maru and especially Rogue earned a blooming ton of their prize money in roughly the same era as Serral. So even if we’re going off an arbitrary ‘era’ qualifier, what? Dark evolved from a perennial contender to a consistent champion in the same rough span.
If we’re going off race balance, Rogue won a higher proportion of his titles when Zerg was very strong than Serral has.
Not dissing Rogue as a patchzerg or anything, someone already did that! No I kid, he’s a great player. But some of his strongest periods of result came when Zerg was very strong in performances. When you had the ‘Big 4’ all rolling high, and even guys like DRG and Armani having deep GSL runs.
It’s a complete nonsense list. Miz when he outlined his methodology I felt it was an imperfect, (and I don’t have a perfect method) but pretty damn robust attempt.
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Miz where is  Pet on the updated list ?
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My list is only objective in the sense that everyone gets the same treatment, the only caveat bring Serral which should be taken with a grain of salt. The welfare adjustment takes serral down from sitting together with life.
Rogue actually isn't the patch zerg in my list, soo followed by serral and solar have "benefited" meaning, gets punished in my list. Life is high because he won during the toughest period and zerg was only tied for best.
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The methodology is using earnings pr. Year, comparing the player's earning to the race's earning, so how big a slice of the pie did you get. And ranking years in terms of when it was the most competitive(subjective opinion), hots is highest followed by lotv blizzcon era, then wol and then post blizzcon. But it's done by individual year not era, for instance, I chose to do 2024 ever so slightly higher than 2023, because ewc was announced and thus we've seen the pros up their game.
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
But what is the methodology?
Rogue earned $1,078,288.60 in his career to date. 92.72% of his prize money coming between 2017 and 2022 inclusive. 51.18% coming in 2017 and 2018 alone.
Maru $1,356,151.22 total. 27.29% of his career total came in his 2018 miracle year. Only 23.91% of his overall career earnings came before then, of which 9.36% in 2017, 4.7% in 2015 and 5.08% in 2015 were the only real impactful years.
Dark is sitting at a current earnings of $1,194,115.22. He’s the only one on the list who has a big double digit years in earnings come before 2017, with 15.89% coming in 2016. His biggest year came in 2019 with a 24.75% of his overall, and his next biggest come in 2018 and 2024 with 12.60% and 12.83%
Serral earned $1,663,925.57 in total, of which the vast majority also came from 2017 and onwards. His biggest year also being shared with Maru with his 2018 with 28.76%. Next with 2024 at 20.89%, with a big 2019 and 2022 sitting at 12.95% and 13.41% respectively.
If the gap between Serral and Rogue was a player they’d have earned $585,637.97 and would be sitting just above Classic and MC in the all-time earnings list.
Rogue’s best years fall in the same timeframe as Serral’s strong years. He plays the same race as Serral. But he’s clawing back a 600 grand earning deficit to place ahead of him.
Players like Inno or Life jumping up make sense with a methodology that weights that era very heavily, even if I don’t necessarily agree with those weightings perhaps. But there’s players who are above Serral here based on results in the same timeframe that aren’t as good as his.
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I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even.
Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants...
But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote:
I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even.
Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants...
But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly...
I’m not even sure if you completely zero Serral’s WCS winnings it alas up for that gap. It may, but I haven’t checked to be fair.
It strikes me as incredibly flawed in all sorts of ways.
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United States1882 Posts
On February 05 2025 03:29 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote:
I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even.
Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants...
But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly... I’m not even sure if you completely zero Serral’s WCS winnings it alas up for that gap. It may, but I haven’t checked to be fair. It strikes me as incredibly flawed in all sorts of ways.
If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished." 
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On February 05 2025 06:12 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2025 03:29 WombaT wrote:On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote:
I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even.
Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants...
But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly... I’m not even sure if you completely zero Serral’s WCS winnings it alas up for that gap. It may, but I haven’t checked to be fair. It strikes me as incredibly flawed in all sorts of ways. If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished."
I feel like I’m one of those folks trying to reverse engineer source code that was lost trying to make sense of this! What are the algorithms dagnabbit!
I have minused out Serral’s WCS results. I also minused a 10k payday for the Euro qualifier for a WESG. Pff, weighting is for pussies, those European players suck so I’m going all out and saying zero, zilch, nada!
Rogue has clawed back $230,250 of his initial unmodified prize money deficit of $585,637 to Serral, which now sits at a mere $355,387
If the current gap in prize money was a player, it would now be sitting at 34th, just below Heromarine and pushing Gumigod into 35th place.
I now await finding out how Rogue makes up this new gap, while playing the same race and having almost all of his big results in the same era as Serral.
Facetiousness aside it was quite fun to dig around the prize money for a bit.
Obviously other players are in the same ballpark, but Serral has earned approximately 1/25th of all the prize money ever paid out in SC2, that’s a fun stat! Albeit a wrong one because I know for a fact our Northern Irish/Irish LANs with their giant prize pools aren’t listed on various prize money sites.
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On February 05 2025 09:24 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2025 06:12 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 05 2025 03:29 WombaT wrote:On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote:
I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even.
Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants...
But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly... I’m not even sure if you completely zero Serral’s WCS winnings it alas up for that gap. It may, but I haven’t checked to be fair. It strikes me as incredibly flawed in all sorts of ways. If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished." I feel like I’m one of those folks trying to reverse engineer source code that was lost trying to make sense of this! What are the algorithms dagnabbit! I have minused out Serral’s WCS results. I also minused a 10k payday for the Euro qualifier for a WESG. Pff, weighting is for pussies, those European players suck so I’m going all out and saying zero, zilch, nada! Rogue has clawed back $230,250 of his initial unmodified prize money deficit of $585,637 to Serral, which now sits at a mere $355,387 If the current gap in prize money was a player, it would now be sitting at 34th, just below Heromarine and pushing Gumigod into 35th place. I now await finding out how Rogue makes up this new gap, while playing the same race and having almost all of his big results in the same era as Serral. Facetiousness aside it was quite fun to dig around the prize money for a bit. Obviously other players are in the same ballpark, but Serral has earned approximately 1/25th of all the prize money ever paid out in SC2, that’s a fun stat! Albeit a wrong one because I know for a fact our Northern Irish/Irish LANs with their giant prize pools aren’t listed on various prize money sites.
You probably forgot to include the "era-weighting" he also has going. In short: 2013-2015 prizemoney gets doubled, 2010-12 and 2017-18 is normally counted and every beyond that is halved, meaning 2013-2015 gets quadruple the points a tournament win in 2019 would give you. It also means that basically every "Kespa-era"-GSL Winner has essentially gotten the "points" as he would have won a World Championship. Rogue reaching the Top 4 at Blizzcon in 2015 has to be counted as 30K, not 15K and so on.
So this basically means: You take something frickle like prizemoney, which already isn't the best indicator for greatness (though atleast it technically is a complete neutral, objective value) and then put in three big biases in "balance", "era" and "korean supremacy", while not subtracting longevity to get...this one :|
Btw, if you just go by Premier Event wins, this is how the Top 10 would look:
1. Serral
2. Maru
3. TaeJa
4. Rogue
5. Reynor
6. INnoVation
7. MMA
8. Mvp
9. Dark
10. herO
(with Polt and Neeb following right behind)
Doesn't feel like a fitting Top 10 for GOATness either, but atleast you don't have to apply a million biased factors?
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Northern Ireland25553 Posts
On February 05 2025 09:48 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On February 05 2025 09:24 WombaT wrote:On February 05 2025 06:12 Mizenhauer wrote:On February 05 2025 03:29 WombaT wrote:On February 05 2025 02:46 Balnazza wrote:
I would assume the "gap" is explained by the Welfare-Rule, meaning that the non-korean tournaments either get discarded or atleast not counted as much. Meaning while Serral technically earned more money than Rogue and Maru in the timeframe, their money gets counted 100%, while Serrals gets melted down, quite heavily even.
Together with the "Balance" this is what makes this list so absolutely useless, no offense to your effort. Just to take the most glaring problem: 2018 gets counted as "Zerg favored, Terran disfavored" in the list. A year in which the only Zerg who won something Korea (aka. the only region that even gets full-money) was...Serral. Maru won aall of his GSLs that year in TvP and TvZ finals. In fact, from the 12 Top 4 slots that year in GSL, only two are occupied by Zergs (Dark and soO, who got it in the same season). Maru also won WESG, which I somehow am sure is not counted as a welfare-tournament, even though it gave out way too much money considering the participants...
But because Serral and Rogue won the two big tournaments that year it gets somehow counted as Zerg-favored? And please, for the love of god, tell me that you adjusted the "balance" after the welfare-deduction, not before. Because counting all of Serrals winnings as 100% for Zerg and then deduct money from the regionals would just be tremendously silly... I’m not even sure if you completely zero Serral’s WCS winnings it alas up for that gap. It may, but I haven’t checked to be fair. It strikes me as incredibly flawed in all sorts of ways. If the goal was to max out on subjectivity (to the point that everything becomes nonsensical) then they can proudly say, "mission accomplished." I feel like I’m one of those folks trying to reverse engineer source code that was lost trying to make sense of this! What are the algorithms dagnabbit! I have minused out Serral’s WCS results. I also minused a 10k payday for the Euro qualifier for a WESG. Pff, weighting is for pussies, those European players suck so I’m going all out and saying zero, zilch, nada! Rogue has clawed back $230,250 of his initial unmodified prize money deficit of $585,637 to Serral, which now sits at a mere $355,387 If the current gap in prize money was a player, it would now be sitting at 34th, just below Heromarine and pushing Gumigod into 35th place. I now await finding out how Rogue makes up this new gap, while playing the same race and having almost all of his big results in the same era as Serral. Facetiousness aside it was quite fun to dig around the prize money for a bit. Obviously other players are in the same ballpark, but Serral has earned approximately 1/25th of all the prize money ever paid out in SC2, that’s a fun stat! Albeit a wrong one because I know for a fact our Northern Irish/Irish LANs with their giant prize pools aren’t listed on various prize money sites. You probably forgot to include the "era-weighting" he also has going. In short: 2013-2015 prizemoney gets doubled, 2010-12 and 2017-18 is normally counted and every beyond that is halved, meaning 2013-2015 gets quadruple the points a tournament win in 2019 would give you. It also means that basically every "Kespa-era"-GSL Winner has essentially gotten the "points" as he would have won a World Championship. Rogue reaching the Top 4 at Blizzcon in 2015 has to be counted as 30K, not 15K and so on. So this basically means: You take something frickle like prizemoney, which already isn't the best indicator for greatness (though atleast it technically is a complete neutral, objective value) and then put in three big biases in "balance", "era" and "korean supremacy", while not subtracting longevity to get...this one :| Btw, if you just go by Premier Event wins, this is how the Top 10 would look: 1. Serral 2. Maru 3. TaeJa 4. Rogue 5. Reynor 6. INnoVation 7. MMA 8. Mvp 9. Dark 10. herO (with Polt and Neeb following right behind) Doesn't feel like a fitting Top 10 for GOATness either, but atleast you don't have to apply a million biased factors?
I didn’t forget. From my previous post with Rogue 92.72% of his prize money coming between 2017 and 2022 inclusive. Or with Maru 27.29% of his career total came in his 2018 miracle year. Only 23.91% of his overall career earnings came before then, of which 9.36% in 2017, 4.7% in 2015 and 5.08% in 2015 were the only real impactful years
My issue with this ranking is thus:
sOs and Inno for example did most of their work in HoTS and early Legacy. I may somewhat disagree with how high you weight it, but if the weighting is heavy, it at least makes sense.
Inno is 3 incidentally on my list, which is subjective as fuck and makes no pretenses otherwise
I’d love to see the algorithm that has Rogue above Serral if you’re using prize money as a metric. And I’ve already shown there’s still a 300K+ gap even if you give foreign tournaments a zero.
Other stated factors (though the working isn’t shown) are race balance and era. Both Serral and Rogue made almost all of their bank in the same timespan, and played the same race.
So with that being vaguely equivalent, Rogue is ahead of Serral how? Like show your working there.
How is Life at number 4 and Mvp isn’t even top 15 incidentally?
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Rogue’s best years fall in the same timeframe as Serral’s strong years. He plays the same race as Serral. But he’s clawing back a 600 grand earning deficit to place ahead of him.
While I rather agree with the overall narrative of the analysis, this statement sounds ridiculous to me. The only correct way to compare Serral and Rogue earnings at the moment of mid 2022, whe Rogue started his 2 year military service basically ending his career as a tier-s progamer. Saying that both players got their money during the same timespan is straight up bullsh*t, since 2022 Serral earned about 1/4 - 1/3 of his earnings. I don't remember exact numbers, but in mid 2022 it was something about 100k in favour of Serral, which is not that much...
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EPT
