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On October 28 2025 22:44 TeamMamba wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2025 18:19 Charoisaur wrote:On October 28 2025 12:23 rwala wrote:On October 27 2025 23:12 Admiral Yang wrote:Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region What is this claim based on? Surely the subsequent eras were much more competitive, given that the players who had dominated previously weren't good enough to continue dominating. This is is a really fair question actually, and I think where a lot of the “modernists” slip. The first thing to say is that no one—including Serral, the most dominant player—has dominated SC2 on the level of a Magnus Carlsen in Chess (#1 player in all formats for a decade, consensus favorite to win every tournament, undisputed best player for over a decade, highest ELO ever, longest streak without a loss, 9 consecutive super tournament victories, 17 world championship titles, etc.). Carlsen’s dominance is actually a study in contrast to Serral’s. Unlike Serral, whose dominance came as the game and level of competition was declining due to retirements, injuries, and lack of new talent, Carlsen’s dominance maintains to this day as the level of competition at the super GM level grows at a faster rate than ever before in Chess’s history. Just in the last few years we have the youngest GM ever, the youngest player to reach 2800 ELO, and the youngest world champion. 4 of the top 10 players are under the age of 23. SC2 hasn’t had anything remotely like a young prodigy since Clem in broke out in 2019/2020. Chess has more and more Clems every year. The thing is that in the earlier years, SC2 was like this, and that’s fundamentally what I mean when I say the level of competition was higher. Making it to the top of a field of hundreds of active pros practicing non-stop to navigate an endlessly evolving and shifting ecosystem of metas and strategies is a different thing than maintaining your dominance over an increasingly dwindling pool of a couple of dozen pros, most of whom are diminished at least somewhat in their speed or skill execution due to age or injury (older chess players struggle with blitz and especially bullet formats as well). I think sometimes people forget (or maybe didn’t even know), that in prior eras of SC2 GSL, SSL and other KILs there were hundreds of players from all around the world competing in various qualification tournaments for a chance at a main tournament group stage for a chance at a second group stage for a chance to make the tournament bracket for a chance at the title. Other than like the World Series of Poker main event or like the Olympics, which are insane, I honestly cannot think of a level of competition in tournament play that’s more intense than this (I’m sure there are some other examples, just struggling to think of them off the top). So it’s not surprising that there weren’t any really dominant players during these earlier eras, other than maybe Mvp. If you follow other sports or games like chess that are growing rather than declining, it’s just bizarre to see these SC2 fans claim that the game got more competitive over time. The justification that’s sometimes offered is that absolute skill levels have improved (everyone now is better than before). But this has nothing to do with the level of competition. If anything, as the game gets figured out and metas settle, execution becomes much more important than strategy and tactics, which diminishes the rate at which less skilled pros can upset higher skilled pros. In earlier eras, rank 50 players upset top 10 players regularly. These days Serral and Clem are posting like 80-90% win rates in certain matchups and could probably beat rank 50 players easily with a Uthermal troll build. Anyways, the TLDR is that other than Serral, I don’t think SC2 has really ever had a truly dominant player compared to some other games and sports, and while Serral’s dominance is ridiculously impressive, it’s certainly in part a product of a diminished level of competition. This isn’t to take anything away from Serral, who I think is the “best” player to ever play the game. Yeah the skill level argument isn't a good one, mainly because the skill level rising is due to the combined effort of all players playing since then, and not Serral or Clem's sole credit. It's like in swimming where techniques are constantly evolving and thus michael phelps isn't holding a single world record anymore, but still what he did back then was more impressive than what swimmers are doing today. True to some degree However since 2018, Serral has been evolving and teaching other Zergs players how to raise their skills. A lot of current skills was started by Serral. For example more use of burrow roaches, burrow infestor, introducing lurker viper engagements to the Koreans, etc. I haven’t seen any other Zergs that had yet to have such an impact raising his peers level. Other zergs have yet to learn how to engage properly in late game zvp like Serral That’s literally half of Sc2 history period HM- to be fair no one can copy what dark does cause he just does whatever he feels like doing
If understanding strategy and tactics and raising others’ levels was the primary criteria, Lambo or Ryung would be the GOAT.
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That’s a fair, if simple, summary of my position sure. I don’t understand what you mean about Mvp tho? Greater than who because he was worse than who?
If the argument is that "competitiveness" means a greater pool of potential winners, then MVP's claims on that basis must be based on the fact that he failed to dominate his era, thereby giving that era a greater number of potential winners. Ie. MVP is greater because he was demonstrably less capable of domination than Serral, who dominated his era to a much greater extent, including by beating many of the same players who had essentially forced MVP, MC, MMA, Nestea etc. out of the top. That seems a deeply flawed reasoning.
Same with the endless analogies to other sports. You are free to do what you like, but after 30+ pages across multiple threads I still haven't seen that help anyone make their case.
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Northern Ireland25947 Posts
On October 29 2025 01:33 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 00:27 Balnazza wrote:On October 28 2025 10:19 rwala wrote:On October 28 2025 03:50 Balnazza wrote:On October 27 2025 22:33 rwala wrote:On October 26 2025 06:15 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 04:22 Charoisaur wrote:On October 26 2025 02:49 Balnazza wrote:On October 26 2025 01:55 Charoisaur wrote:On October 25 2025 22:19 Balnazza wrote:
[quote]
How can Proleague (as you proclaim later on) be the most competite thing in 2016 when Maru AND Inno didn't make it into Blizzcon that year? Clearly Blizzcon is more competitive to get in. Also, sorry, but people overexaggurate Marus Proleague '16 slightly...he had an incredibly high winrate, but in terms of actual points, he was equal or behind herO. Not to mention that most of his success came from Mirrormatches of all things. And if you look into Jin Airs playoffs runs, it is noteworthy that most of the heaviy-lifting did get done by Cure and especially sOs.
8-0 in tvt, 5-1 in TvZ, 9-3 in PvT. What kind of "points" are you talking about, there were no points. herO was 20-9 which is significantly worse. All playoff matches together Maru was 7-2 compared to Cures 4-3 and sOs 7-4. Stop lying out of your ass. His winrate is lower than Marus, but he earned more "Points" as in wins (27) and his Win-Loss-Difference, which for me is the most important stat, is equal to Marus. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), they eventually equal out and it comes down to what you value more. ByuN had lower winrates than Serral in every year since 2018, but he earned more "points" (wins) and had a higher win-loss difference in every year which for me is the most important stat. So if you take three statistics (Winrate, Wins and W/L-Diff), ByuN is ahead of Serral. So you complain about people making "bad arguments" to then come to this marvelous and hopefully sarcastic statement, which even then is just...not that smart? Proleague, buddy, Proleague. We are talking about stats in Proleague, one particular season, the easiest to compare two players. If you can't even do that...well *shrug* Anyway. I originally just joined this one for the question "when was Maru the best player pre-2018?" and the answer from you two is: Never, can't back it up at all, completly made up, *angry noises*. So I got my my answer and wish you much fun screaming into the void. See y'all back when Mizenhauers addendum drops! I answered you, but then you tried to dispute it with literal misinformation until Char called you out. Not sure that went the way you were hoping… I switched up a name, which I immediatly admitted as a mistake. Doesn't change that everything that I said holds true if you use the correct player - Stats. So no, you didn't answer me. You avoided the topic and instead shifted the discussion to the value of KILs or Proleague...neither of which helped your original point. So again: 2016 was clearly not a year you would consider Maru to be "the best player in the world", because while he did great in Proleague, he failed to qualify for Blizzcon (which means: He failed to do well in the most competitive giga-galaxy tournaments of all time in that year). If you compare his 2016 to someone like Stats: Stats also did great (equal, slightly better or slightly worse, depending what you value) than Maru, but he qualified for Blizzcon. So Stats alone would have a bigger claim to be "the best player" in 2016...and you could make that argument for numerous players, not saying Stats is necessarily the best. Which leaves, surprisingly, the question...when were those stints when Maru was "the best player in the world" pre-2018? No one is having the argument with you about the value of Proleague. No one is disputing the competitiveness of GSL back in the day (though I will always fight on the importance of Blizzcon as the most competitive and important tournament of the year - case in point 2016: People always remember ByuN as a World Champion, the fact that he also won GSL that year kind of gets added on most of the time). But neither the value of Proleague nor the competitiveness of GSL by themselves make Maru "the best player in the world" randomly...this isn't even "Maru vs. Serral", this is literally "Maru vs. other koreans". So can we make this easy? Do me the favor and do one of two things: 1)Point out these times Maru was "the best player in the world" pre-2018 and why. 2)Just admit you pulled that statement out of thin air and have literally no backup for it. As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others. If you try to make your argument so short you just skip over those little things called facts and statistics, you are not making an argument. You make up a baseless opinion. What would a lawyer call that? Hearsay? Nice one! Lawyers in America would call that getting Rule 11 sanctioned, and potentially disbarred  I said when he won his two KILs and at points during the tail end of the 2016 Proleague season when he was consistently smashing all the best players in the most prestigious and competitive SC2 competition. Others more knowledgeable/with a better memory than I could point to other periods and might debate my 2016 Proleague claim but at minimum it’s definitely fair to say that during the periods of time in which Maru held his KIL titles he was considered the best player in the world. I wouldn't agree that winning a KIL makes you the best player in the world at that moment, but that are atleast examples I can work with, thanks! I personally tend to agree with you, I’m more making a point about how the “community” saw it at the time. I just remember Soulkey or Rain or whoever would win a tournament and the commentators and analysts would say they were the best. Or Maru would crush Ps with MMM no Vikings while all the other terrans couldn’t even qualify for tournaments and in Proleague matches GTR or whoever would say this guy is the best in the world. It’s all extremely subjective and these periods of time of being the best for Maru pre-2018 were definitely short-lived compared to some other players. I do think it’s fair to say that pretty after he won his 2013 OSL he was a perennial title contender and consistently “one of the best” in the world.
When was he the best though?
herO managed to run qualification gauntlets and win multiple IEM events, had his runner up to sOs as well. Had a good Proleague record.
Had multiple wins in international LANs, 3, a win in an A tier, a Kespa Cup silver, a Kespa Cup win, a GSL Ro4, and an SSL in a 2 year span.
In a 2 year span that’s not bad either. By end of 2015 herO has a KIL himself, but one less than Maru. But also more golds and accolades in international tournaments, and a Kespa Cup to his name.
Inno has as many KILs by the end of 2015 as well, and better overall accolades.
Just to pick two. If we go after 2015 and before 2018, Inno is still doing his thing, Rogue goes monster mode.
If we go from 2018, Maru has his fourpeat, which is insane, but Serral also has a monster year and wins the WC.
But after 2018 Serral has generally roundly outperformed Maru. And at times where Serral wasn’t the man, it wasn’t Maru capitalising, it was Rogue, Dark or Reynor.
Maru does have a good claim to having spell as the absolute best player in the world. Winning 4 GSLs in a row. The problem with that is it’s in the ‘less competitive era’
Which then brings us into the problematic territory of why 2018 is still legit but other stuff isn’t.
Now, this wouldn’t necessarily be my argument, but it’s not a problem I have to deal with as it’s not my argument.
For me, Maru is pretty much a lock at #2. Rogue only became elite post-Kespa, and Serral beats him most metrics anyway. Innovation was better in the Kespa era, but he seemingly couldn’t summon the motivation to stomp the field latterly, which skill wise I think he could have done.
Nobody else for me really has a good claim. There’s nobody who both massively outperformed him in the Kespa era and subsequently. In terms of consistency of performance, Serral gaps everyone, and Maru gaps everyone who isn’t Serral.
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Maru never was the best in HotS, however I don't think that's the gotcha some people think it is considering how competitive the era back then was, and the only players who really had a period during that time where they were considered the best are Inno, Zest and Life, and even for them it only was a very short period.
Imo being top 5 in that era is probably a bigger feat than being #1 in the modern era (in terms of how many S tier players you have to be able to regularly beat, etc.).
After that he was definitely considered the best during 2018 and in late 2021 when he won all the online tournaments with his lategame-style
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On October 27 2025 22:28 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2025 02:07 PremoBeats wrote:On October 27 2025 01:03 rwala wrote:
especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification. Wasn't it you who said that it isn't a nerf/buff when things are done to be equaled out or to approximate a "perfect" modifier, which this exact rule was meant to do? So how can you call this a nerf? It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your metrics? See, this is my issue with you... it seems like you throw out unfounded accusations or proclaim arguments, but you rarely follow them through as an argument as well as coherently in applying logic. It happened again in this very thread. You misquote others, you put words in their mouth and you make claims without backing them up. So far, I am still waiting for you to write at least one thing about your notion that Maru had "many stints pre-2018" where he was supposedly the best. I am further waiting for you to prove the unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all".
But to assume that he would have
Who here does?? Stop having arguments in your head. The only thing that was being said is that it would statistically be reasonable to assume that he would have been the best player if all players gathered in their prime. Not that he would have been equally dominant.
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players.
Do you accuse anyone in particular when you talk about people justify crowning their preferred player? Are you even aware that there is no more transparent list out there than mine, as I demonstrated every little detail of how I arrived at each and every number, without obfuscating, for all of you guys to double check? I don’t apply metrics because I don’t invent math equations to crown my preferred candidate the GOAT. Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region. As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others.
Just change the word "metric" with the word "logic":
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral.
As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your LOGIC?
As you didn't answer these:
1. You said in another thread that it doesn't make sense to call it a buff for Koreans/nerf for Serral when one discounts region locks, as that is a means to simply level the playing field and thus more an "equalizer" than a buff/ nerf. I agreed.
But why do you now call region locks a nerf for Koreans?
Again, this shows how you change wording/framing depending on your acute need, not on a set of principles or based on consistent logic.
2. I am further waiting for you to prove your unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all".
3. As you wrote: "I am not saying Serral would not have been equally dominant in earlier, more competitive eras and tournaments and regions. But to assume that he would have... ".
Who assumed he would have? Which user here made this assumption that you are arguing against?
So according to you, Mvp won in the most competitive era? You think the most competitive era in SC2 was from its beginning up to 2012? Correct?
The chess comparison is off on so many accounts (a world champion being the defender, thus making it much easier to get back-to-back streaks) and Serral also fulfills achievements that were listed, hence I will not address all of them one by one.
To be honest, you kind of remind me of Don Quixote. In your replies you lament about things no one said or argue against issues no one raised. It seems to me that you are fighting wind mills in your head, rather than actually engaging with the other side.
No one said that Serral would be equally dominant had he played in 2012-2016.
No one said that Proleague doesn’t matter in GOAT-discussions.
In the meantime you wrote that it would be fair to say that Maru was the best in the world when he won a KIL. Then following that logic: Wasn’t Serral the best more than any other player - including Maru - for the most stints than any other player when he won tournaments, including all the best players of the world - not only Korans - with win rates that no one thought to be possible?
If no, are you able to explain why?
On October 28 2025 18:12 Argonauta wrote:
Biggest reason why Rotti and most of SC2 commentators call Serral the goat is because they want this esport to keep going so they need to spin this narrative to try to make the game appealing, they really don't care about being objective or recall past glories.
Or perhaps because he is the GOAT based on all statistics, including regression models that let us compare contenders even cross-era?
On October 28 2025 18:19 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2025 12:23 rwala wrote:On October 27 2025 23:12 Admiral Yang wrote:Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region What is this claim based on? Surely the subsequent eras were much more competitive, given that the players who had dominated previously weren't good enough to continue dominating. This is is a really fair question actually, and I think where a lot of the “modernists” slip. The first thing to say is that no one—including Serral, the most dominant player—has dominated SC2 on the level of a Magnus Carlsen in Chess (#1 player in all formats for a decade, consensus favorite to win every tournament, undisputed best player for over a decade, highest ELO ever, longest streak without a loss, 9 consecutive super tournament victories, 17 world championship titles, etc.). Carlsen’s dominance is actually a study in contrast to Serral’s. Unlike Serral, whose dominance came as the game and level of competition was declining due to retirements, injuries, and lack of new talent, Carlsen’s dominance maintains to this day as the level of competition at the super GM level grows at a faster rate than ever before in Chess’s history. Just in the last few years we have the youngest GM ever, the youngest player to reach 2800 ELO, and the youngest world champion. 4 of the top 10 players are under the age of 23. SC2 hasn’t had anything remotely like a young prodigy since Clem in broke out in 2019/2020. Chess has more and more Clems every year. The thing is that in the earlier years, SC2 was like this, and that’s fundamentally what I mean when I say the level of competition was higher. Making it to the top of a field of hundreds of active pros practicing non-stop to navigate an endlessly evolving and shifting ecosystem of metas and strategies is a different thing than maintaining your dominance over an increasingly dwindling pool of a couple of dozen pros, most of whom are diminished at least somewhat in their speed or skill execution due to age or injury (older chess players struggle with blitz and especially bullet formats as well). I think sometimes people forget (or maybe didn’t even know), that in prior eras of SC2 GSL, SSL and other KILs there were hundreds of players from all around the world competing in various qualification tournaments for a chance at a main tournament group stage for a chance at a second group stage for a chance to make the tournament bracket for a chance at the title. Other than like the World Series of Poker main event or like the Olympics, which are insane, I honestly cannot think of a level of competition in tournament play that’s more intense than this (I’m sure there are some other examples, just struggling to think of them off the top). So it’s not surprising that there weren’t any really dominant players during these earlier eras, other than maybe Mvp. If you follow other sports or games like chess that are growing rather than declining, it’s just bizarre to see these SC2 fans claim that the game got more competitive over time. The justification that’s sometimes offered is that absolute skill levels have improved (everyone now is better than before). But this has nothing to do with the level of competition. If anything, as the game gets figured out and metas settle, execution becomes much more important than strategy and tactics, which diminishes the rate at which less skilled pros can upset higher skilled pros. In earlier eras, rank 50 players upset top 10 players regularly. These days Serral and Clem are posting like 80-90% win rates in certain matchups and could probably beat rank 50 players easily with a Uthermal troll build. Anyways, the TLDR is that other than Serral, I don’t think SC2 has really ever had a truly dominant player compared to some other games and sports, and while Serral’s dominance is ridiculously impressive, it’s certainly in part a product of a diminished level of competition. This isn’t to take anything away from Serral, who I think is the “best” player to ever play the game. Yeah the skill level argument isn't a good one, mainly because the skill level rising is due to the combined effort of all players playing since then, and not Serral or Clem's sole credit. It's like in swimming where techniques are constantly evolving and thus michael phelps isn't holding a single world record anymore, but still what he did back then was more impressive than what swimmers are doing today.
But it still is... higher, no?
And some players were not able to keep up with the new influence. Do we seriously believe that all the prime players simply lost their combined skill in 2018, so that Serral can defeat them with win rates of over 85%? While they still delivered against other foreigners or other Koreans? Why is it so hard to accept that one player simply is above the others? And these others were the best of the prime era.
And can you elaborate why you think (honest question) what Phelps did is more impressive than what swimmers do today?
Is it because he dominated his competition much more than any other swimmer?
On October 29 2025 05:18 Charoisaur wrote:
Maru never was the best in HotS, however I don't think that's the gotcha some people think it is considering how competitive the era back then was, and the only players who really had a period during that time where they were considered the best are Inno, Zest and Life, and even for them it only was a very short period.
Imo being top 5 in that era is probably a bigger feat than being #1 in the modern era (in terms of how many S tier players you have to be able to regularly beat, etc.).
After that he was definitely considered the best during 2018 and in late 2021 when he won all the online tournaments with his lategame-style
In my opinion (and as far as I remember for many others as well), Serral's 2018 made him at least equal if not better than Maru, especially because of the WC.
We have years in which there is a more or less similar distribution of different names as winners of tournaments post-2018, despite the fact that there were a lot less tournaments, which from my perspective means, that 1st place was sufficiently fought for.
I argued based on Monte Carlo simulations in the other thread, that it would be harder for player X, who is ahead of the curve, to win a tournament in the modern era, as there, you would have to beat prime Serral and prime Maru who have higher win rates than anything what came before. Meaning you have a skill level you didn't have to fight before.
It seems to me, that people always argue from Serral's perspective, which is - at least in my opinion - not the correct approach.
It can be helpful to see when looking at certain player achievements to determine - for example - that Serral never won in the most competitive time but I fail to see why it wouldn't account for anything that he played these exact players and other players in better versions than their selfs from 2012-2016 and still beat them with unprecedented results.
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On October 29 2025 00:24 Admiral Yang wrote:Show nested quote +Who is the better football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's Marcus Rashford and it's not even close.
Who is the greater football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's George Best and it's not even close.
Being better doesn't mean being greater... These arguments by comparison just keep getting worse.
If you can find a single Manchester United fan who thinks that Marcus Rashford means more to the history of the football club than George Best then I'd be very surprised lmao. But Marcus Rashford has 50 years of technical and tactical development to draw from, so he's definitely the more skilful player.
Greatness isn't the same as skill level.
Never has been, never will be.
EDIT:
I wasn't making an argument by comparison because I'm not getting involved in naming a GOAT, and I don't care who you think the GOAT is either. I think that the community's obsession with this topic is ridiculous.
I even purposefully picked two footballers who aren't in football's GOAT conversation to make my point.
I just wanted to point out that greatness and skill level are very much separate entities, and there are plenty of examples from other sports that would demonstrate the same point.
Starcraft isn't exceptional in this aspect.
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Do you think MVP means more to the history of SC2 than Serral?
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On October 29 2025 17:16 Admiral Yang wrote:
Do you think MVP means more to the history of SC2 than Serral?
Like I said, I'm not getting involved in the GOAT debate.
All I wanted to point out was this simple premise:
Skill does not equal greatness.
That's it.
That's the whole point I was making.
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On October 29 2025 16:30 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 00:24 Admiral Yang wrote:Who is the better football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's Marcus Rashford and it's not even close.
Who is the greater football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's George Best and it's not even close.
Being better doesn't mean being greater... These arguments by comparison just keep getting worse. If you can find a single Manchester United fan who thinks that Marcus Rashford means more to the history of the football club than George Best then I'd be very surprised lmao. But Marcus Rashford has 50 years of technical and tactical development to draw from, so he's definitely the more skilful player. Greatness isn't the same as skill level. Never has been, never will be. EDIT: I wasn't making an argument by comparison because I'm not getting involved in naming a GOAT, and I don't care who you think the GOAT is either. I think that the community's obsession with this topic is ridiculous. I even purposefully picked two footballers who aren't in football's GOAT conversation to make my point. I just wanted to point out that greatness and skill level are very much separate entities, and there are plenty of examples from other sports that would demonstrate the same point. Starcraft isn't exceptional in this aspect.
Yes, they are somewhat separate and shouldn't be used as synonyms. But skill and being very good at something seems to at least be a prerequisite for greatness.
I mean you can also be a "great" person of a community if you have a very great way of casting and commentating.
So in that sense Tastosis as an entity, but also both for themselves are great personalities in the SC2 community.
But if you talk about the actual greatest of any sport, the discussion naturally involves skill and being the best or very good.
Of course, you have accessory factors like legacy, inventing new ways to look at a given sport/branch, having a nice personality, not doing illegal things, achievements that no one else has, etc. All these play a role, but I think the minimum threshold is being fucking good at the thing you are doing. At least to my knowledge, there aren't many examples where the GOAT of a sport was/is not extremely good at it.
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On October 29 2025 18:37 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 16:30 MJG wrote:On October 29 2025 00:24 Admiral Yang wrote:Who is the better football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's Marcus Rashford and it's not even close.
Who is the greater football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's George Best and it's not even close.
Being better doesn't mean being greater... These arguments by comparison just keep getting worse. If you can find a single Manchester United fan who thinks that Marcus Rashford means more to the history of the football club than George Best then I'd be very surprised lmao. But Marcus Rashford has 50 years of technical and tactical development to draw from, so he's definitely the more skilful player. Greatness isn't the same as skill level. Never has been, never will be. EDIT: I wasn't making an argument by comparison because I'm not getting involved in naming a GOAT, and I don't care who you think the GOAT is either. I think that the community's obsession with this topic is ridiculous. I even purposefully picked two footballers who aren't in football's GOAT conversation to make my point. I just wanted to point out that greatness and skill level are very much separate entities, and there are plenty of examples from other sports that would demonstrate the same point. Starcraft isn't exceptional in this aspect. Yes, they are somewhat separate and shouldn't be used as synonyms. But skill and being very good at something seems to at least be a prerequisite for greatness. I mean you can also be a "great" person of a community if you have a very great way of casting and commentating. So in that sense Tastosis as an entity, but also both for themselves are great personalities in the SC2 community. But if you talk about the actual greatest of any sport, the discussion naturally involves skill and being the best or very good. Of course, you have accessory factors like legacy, inventing new ways to look at a given sport/branch, having a nice personality, not doing illegal things, achievements that no one else has, etc. All these play a role, but I think the minimum threshold is being fucking good at the thing you are doing. At least to my knowledge, there aren't many examples where the GOAT of a sport was/is not extremely good at it.
When did I say that someone didn't need to be good at the game to be great?
All I'm saying is that being better doesn't mean being greater.
This is an incredibly simple concept.
EDIT:
You might want to go back and look at the original post that I responded to.
I'm only interested in removing from the discussion the nonsensical idea that being better means being greater, or that being worse means that you can't be greater.
Do you know who I'm probably better than given 15 years of additional technical and strategic development in SC2? Pretty much anyone who entered the first three GSLs and then retired shortly after. Am I greater or more relevant to SC2 history than those players? Absolutely fucking not.
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On October 29 2025 02:11 Admiral Yang wrote:Show nested quote +That’s a fair, if simple, summary of my position sure. I don’t understand what you mean about Mvp tho? Greater than who because he was worse than who? If the argument is that "competitiveness" means a greater pool of potential winners, then MVP's claims on that basis must be based on the fact that he failed to dominate his era, thereby giving that era a greater number of potential winners. Ie. MVP is greater because he was demonstrably less capable of domination than Serral, who dominated his era to a much greater extent, including by beating many of the same players who had essentially forced MVP, MC, MMA, Nestea etc. out of the top. That seems a deeply flawed reasoning. Same with the endless analogies to other sports. You are free to do what you like, but after 30+ pages across multiple threads I still haven't seen that help anyone make their case.
I think you're having some logic problems bud. Mvp "dominated" in his era to the extent that domination was possible in his era because his domination involved competing in and defeating an active pro player base of a 1000+ pros, tournaments with hundreds of competitors and dozens of title contenders, and tournament gauntlets with ridiculous qualification, group stage, and bracket barriers. Mvp's results in this context were honestly kind of insane. Serral dominated in an era with ~1/10th the active pro player base, tournaments with a couple dozen competitors, against a handful of title contenders, in tournaments with much easier paths to qualification and victory, against an aging, retiring, and increasingly injured player base that didn't include most previous title contenders, with almost no new talent to challenge him (other than Clem, who has been dominating him recently). I'm not sure why you think Mvp was "forced" out of the top because he couldn't hang. It's well-known that his injuries forced his early retirement. I'm also not sure why you think beating "many of the same players" who were dominant in an earlier era is a substitute for actually dominating in an earlier era. Clem 5-0'ed Serral and has been dominating him ever since. This is not a substitute for Clem showing tournament results and achievements, and it also doesn't take away from Serral's results and achievements.
You may not understand the analogies to other sports and games, but you should try. It'll help you gain some perspective. Go back and read my analogy to chess--the OG "most competitive" 1v1 strategy game--because Magnus Carlsen's domination across eras and formats in a growing game against an increasingly competitive pro player base gives you a sense for what actual domination looks like. Again, in chess there are like 5 new Clems every year. Think about that.
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On October 29 2025 19:24 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 18:37 PremoBeats wrote:On October 29 2025 16:30 MJG wrote:On October 29 2025 00:24 Admiral Yang wrote:Who is the better football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's Marcus Rashford and it's not even close.
Who is the greater football player out of George Best and Marcus Rashford?
It's George Best and it's not even close.
Being better doesn't mean being greater... These arguments by comparison just keep getting worse. If you can find a single Manchester United fan who thinks that Marcus Rashford means more to the history of the football club than George Best then I'd be very surprised lmao. But Marcus Rashford has 50 years of technical and tactical development to draw from, so he's definitely the more skilful player. Greatness isn't the same as skill level. Never has been, never will be. EDIT: I wasn't making an argument by comparison because I'm not getting involved in naming a GOAT, and I don't care who you think the GOAT is either. I think that the community's obsession with this topic is ridiculous. I even purposefully picked two footballers who aren't in football's GOAT conversation to make my point. I just wanted to point out that greatness and skill level are very much separate entities, and there are plenty of examples from other sports that would demonstrate the same point. Starcraft isn't exceptional in this aspect. Yes, they are somewhat separate and shouldn't be used as synonyms. But skill and being very good at something seems to at least be a prerequisite for greatness. I mean you can also be a "great" person of a community if you have a very great way of casting and commentating. So in that sense Tastosis as an entity, but also both for themselves are great personalities in the SC2 community. But if you talk about the actual greatest of any sport, the discussion naturally involves skill and being the best or very good. Of course, you have accessory factors like legacy, inventing new ways to look at a given sport/branch, having a nice personality, not doing illegal things, achievements that no one else has, etc. All these play a role, but I think the minimum threshold is being fucking good at the thing you are doing. At least to my knowledge, there aren't many examples where the GOAT of a sport was/is not extremely good at it. When did I say that someone didn't need to be good at the game to be great? All I'm saying is that being better doesn't mean being greater. This is an incredibly simple concept. EDIT: You might want to go back and look at the original post that I responded to. I'm only interested in removing from the discussion the nonsensical idea that being better means being greater, or that being worse means that you can't be greater. Do you know who I'm probably better than given 15 years of additional technical and strategic development in SC2? Pretty much anyone who entered the first three GSLs and then retired shortly after. Am I greater or more relevant to SC2 history than those players? Absolutely fucking not.
Never said that you did. Simply talking concepts... And I agree: That someone is better statistically does not automatically mean that the person is greater.
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Serral dominated in an era with ~1/10th the active pro player base, tournaments with a couple dozen competitors, against a handful of title contenders, in tournaments with much easier paths to qualification and victory, against an aging, retiring, and increasingly injured player base that didn't include most previous title contenders, with almost no new talent to challenge him (other than Clem, who has been dominating him recently). I'm not sure why you think Mvp was "forced" out of the top because he couldn't hang. It's well-known that his injuries forced his early retirement. I'm also not sure why you think beating "many of the same players" who were dominant in an earlier era is a substitute for actually dominating in an earlier era. Clem 5-0'ed Serral and has been dominating him ever since. This is not a substitute for Clem showing tournament results and achievements, and it also doesn't take away from Serral's results and achievements.
Serral dominated the field of new talent that had supplanted and replaced the old guard, though. And while his subsequent longevity has certainly been helped by the lack of influx of new blood, when he broke out in 2018, and was already the best player in the world, there was plenty of competition, at a much higher level than what MVP had to play. I am not going to give MVP handicap points for leaving for injury, unlike, say, DRG and Classic, his exact contemporaries, who stuck around to see where their skill ceiling was. If anything, Classic has the more impressive career there.
TLDR: The first movers did not have the most competitive environment. If anything, they had it easier. You can see this in how few of them stuck around into HotS.
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On October 29 2025 15:40 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On October 27 2025 22:28 rwala wrote:On October 27 2025 02:07 PremoBeats wrote:On October 27 2025 01:03 rwala wrote:
especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification. Wasn't it you who said that it isn't a nerf/buff when things are done to be equaled out or to approximate a "perfect" modifier, which this exact rule was meant to do? So how can you call this a nerf? It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your metrics? See, this is my issue with you... it seems like you throw out unfounded accusations or proclaim arguments, but you rarely follow them through as an argument as well as coherently in applying logic. It happened again in this very thread. You misquote others, you put words in their mouth and you make claims without backing them up. So far, I am still waiting for you to write at least one thing about your notion that Maru had "many stints pre-2018" where he was supposedly the best. I am further waiting for you to prove the unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all".
But to assume that he would have
Who here does?? Stop having arguments in your head. The only thing that was being said is that it would statistically be reasonable to assume that he would have been the best player if all players gathered in their prime. Not that he would have been equally dominant.
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players.
Do you accuse anyone in particular when you talk about people justify crowning their preferred player? Are you even aware that there is no more transparent list out there than mine, as I demonstrated every little detail of how I arrived at each and every number, without obfuscating, for all of you guys to double check? I don’t apply metrics because I don’t invent math equations to crown my preferred candidate the GOAT. Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region. As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others. Just change the word "metric" with the word "logic": Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your LOGIC? As you didn't answer these: 1. You said in another thread that it doesn't make sense to call it a buff for Koreans/nerf for Serral when one discounts region locks, as that is a means to simply level the playing field and thus more an "equalizer" than a buff/ nerf. I agreed. But why do you now call region locks a nerf for Koreans? Again, this shows how you change wording/framing depending on your acute need, not on a set of principles or based on consistent logic. 2. I am further waiting for you to prove your unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all". 3. As you wrote: "I am not saying Serral would not have been equally dominant in earlier, more competitive eras and tournaments and regions. But to assume that he would have... ". Who assumed he would have? Which user here made this assumption that you are arguing against? So according to you, Mvp won in the most competitive era? You think the most competitive era in SC2 was from its beginning up to 2012? Correct? The chess comparison is off on so many accounts (a world champion being the defender, thus making it much easier to get back-to-back streaks) and Serral also fulfills achievements that were listed, hence I will not address all of them one by one. To be honest, you kind of remind me of Don Quixote. In your replies you lament about things no one said or argue against issues no one raised. It seems to me that you are fighting wind mills in your head, rather than actually engaging with the other side. No one said that Serral would be equally dominant had he played in 2012-2016. No one said that Proleague doesn’t matter in GOAT-discussions. In the meantime you wrote that it would be fair to say that Maru was the best in the world when he won a KIL. Then following that logic: Wasn’t Serral the best more than any other player - including Maru - for the most stints than any other player when he won tournaments, including all the best players of the world - not only Korans - with win rates that no one thought to be possible? If no, are you able to explain why? Show nested quote +On October 28 2025 18:12 Argonauta wrote:
Biggest reason why Rotti and most of SC2 commentators call Serral the goat is because they want this esport to keep going so they need to spin this narrative to try to make the game appealing, they really don't care about being objective or recall past glories. Or perhaps because he is the GOAT based on all statistics, including regression models that let us compare contenders even cross-era? Show nested quote +On October 28 2025 18:19 Charoisaur wrote:On October 28 2025 12:23 rwala wrote:On October 27 2025 23:12 Admiral Yang wrote:Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region What is this claim based on? Surely the subsequent eras were much more competitive, given that the players who had dominated previously weren't good enough to continue dominating. This is is a really fair question actually, and I think where a lot of the “modernists” slip. The first thing to say is that no one—including Serral, the most dominant player—has dominated SC2 on the level of a Magnus Carlsen in Chess (#1 player in all formats for a decade, consensus favorite to win every tournament, undisputed best player for over a decade, highest ELO ever, longest streak without a loss, 9 consecutive super tournament victories, 17 world championship titles, etc.). Carlsen’s dominance is actually a study in contrast to Serral’s. Unlike Serral, whose dominance came as the game and level of competition was declining due to retirements, injuries, and lack of new talent, Carlsen’s dominance maintains to this day as the level of competition at the super GM level grows at a faster rate than ever before in Chess’s history. Just in the last few years we have the youngest GM ever, the youngest player to reach 2800 ELO, and the youngest world champion. 4 of the top 10 players are under the age of 23. SC2 hasn’t had anything remotely like a young prodigy since Clem in broke out in 2019/2020. Chess has more and more Clems every year. The thing is that in the earlier years, SC2 was like this, and that’s fundamentally what I mean when I say the level of competition was higher. Making it to the top of a field of hundreds of active pros practicing non-stop to navigate an endlessly evolving and shifting ecosystem of metas and strategies is a different thing than maintaining your dominance over an increasingly dwindling pool of a couple of dozen pros, most of whom are diminished at least somewhat in their speed or skill execution due to age or injury (older chess players struggle with blitz and especially bullet formats as well). I think sometimes people forget (or maybe didn’t even know), that in prior eras of SC2 GSL, SSL and other KILs there were hundreds of players from all around the world competing in various qualification tournaments for a chance at a main tournament group stage for a chance at a second group stage for a chance to make the tournament bracket for a chance at the title. Other than like the World Series of Poker main event or like the Olympics, which are insane, I honestly cannot think of a level of competition in tournament play that’s more intense than this (I’m sure there are some other examples, just struggling to think of them off the top). So it’s not surprising that there weren’t any really dominant players during these earlier eras, other than maybe Mvp. If you follow other sports or games like chess that are growing rather than declining, it’s just bizarre to see these SC2 fans claim that the game got more competitive over time. The justification that’s sometimes offered is that absolute skill levels have improved (everyone now is better than before). But this has nothing to do with the level of competition. If anything, as the game gets figured out and metas settle, execution becomes much more important than strategy and tactics, which diminishes the rate at which less skilled pros can upset higher skilled pros. In earlier eras, rank 50 players upset top 10 players regularly. These days Serral and Clem are posting like 80-90% win rates in certain matchups and could probably beat rank 50 players easily with a Uthermal troll build. Anyways, the TLDR is that other than Serral, I don’t think SC2 has really ever had a truly dominant player compared to some other games and sports, and while Serral’s dominance is ridiculously impressive, it’s certainly in part a product of a diminished level of competition. This isn’t to take anything away from Serral, who I think is the “best” player to ever play the game. Yeah the skill level argument isn't a good one, mainly because the skill level rising is due to the combined effort of all players playing since then, and not Serral or Clem's sole credit. It's like in swimming where techniques are constantly evolving and thus michael phelps isn't holding a single world record anymore, but still what he did back then was more impressive than what swimmers are doing today. But it still is... higher, no? And some players were not able to keep up with the new influence. Do we seriously believe that all the prime players simply lost their combined skill in 2018, so that Serral can defeat them with win rates of over 85%? While they still delivered against other foreigners or other Koreans? Why is it so hard to accept that one player simply is above the others? And these others were the best of the prime era. And can you elaborate why you think (honest question) what Phelps did is more impressive than what swimmers do today? Is it because he dominated his competition much more than any other swimmer? Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 05:18 Charoisaur wrote:
Maru never was the best in HotS, however I don't think that's the gotcha some people think it is considering how competitive the era back then was, and the only players who really had a period during that time where they were considered the best are Inno, Zest and Life, and even for them it only was a very short period.
Imo being top 5 in that era is probably a bigger feat than being #1 in the modern era (in terms of how many S tier players you have to be able to regularly beat, etc.).
After that he was definitely considered the best during 2018 and in late 2021 when he won all the online tournaments with his lategame-style In my opinion (and as far as I remember for many others as well), Serral's 2018 made him at least equal if not better than Maru, especially because of the WC. We have years in which there is a more or less similar distribution of different names as winners of tournaments post-2018, despite the fact that there were a lot less tournaments, which from my perspective means, that 1st place was sufficiently fought for. I argued based on Monte Carlo simulations in the other thread, that it would be harder for player X, who is ahead of the curve, to win a tournament in the modern era, as there, you would have to beat prime Serral and prime Maru who have higher win rates than anything what came before. Meaning you have a skill level you didn't have to fight before. It seems to me, that people always argue from Serral's perspective, which is - at least in my opinion - not the correct approach. It can be helpful to see when looking at certain player achievements to determine - for example - that Serral never won in the most competitive time but I fail to see why it wouldn't account for anything that he played these exact players and other players in better versions than their selfs from 2012-2016 and still beat them with unprecedented results.
Brother, you need to spend more than 1 second trying to understand the chess analogy. Notice how Magnus's 5 classical WCs are only part his case for dominance and GOATyness, and Magnus himself doesn't think it's the most competitive competition (which is why he's basically inventing a new world championship circuit). You could learn from Magnus in this regard! I included his 5 classical word championships among his 17 world championships, sure, but this is not why he is so dominant or the GOAT. It's also ironic how you make excuses for Serral's region-lock qualification buffs to get into premier and world championship tournaments, but all of a sudden have major issues with FIDE's classic world championship tournament format. In any event, I (and Magnus) agree with you about the FIDE WC tournament format for sure, and I've also explained why I have issues with the SC2 region-lock qualification process for WC and premier tourneys. This is what it means to be consistent. Try it out
I really encourage you to engage deeply with the chess analogy because it will help you understand what a GOAT looks like, which really should be the first step. And by engaging deeply I don't mean crashing out and writing 10K words with every random argument against it. I mean putting your biases to the side and just sitting down and thinking. Try not to let yourself get triggered or become defensive of your model. Ask yourself simple questions like what can I learn about GOATs knowing that a player can maintain dominance in a growing and increasingly competitive 1v1 strategy game, across all game and tournament formats, when there are like 5 new Clems that emerge every year?
If you reversed the chess timeline--meaning if time went backwards in the history of the game of chess--Serral is in many ways like Bobby Fisher (many people's chess GOAT). See if you can understand why! If you've done the deep thinking I'm recommending, you should be able to
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On October 29 2025 21:44 Admiral Yang wrote:Show nested quote +Serral dominated in an era with ~1/10th the active pro player base, tournaments with a couple dozen competitors, against a handful of title contenders, in tournaments with much easier paths to qualification and victory, against an aging, retiring, and increasingly injured player base that didn't include most previous title contenders, with almost no new talent to challenge him (other than Clem, who has been dominating him recently). I'm not sure why you think Mvp was "forced" out of the top because he couldn't hang. It's well-known that his injuries forced his early retirement. I'm also not sure why you think beating "many of the same players" who were dominant in an earlier era is a substitute for actually dominating in an earlier era. Clem 5-0'ed Serral and has been dominating him ever since. This is not a substitute for Clem showing tournament results and achievements, and it also doesn't take away from Serral's results and achievements. Serral dominated the field of new talent that had supplanted and replaced the old guard, though. And while his subsequent longevity has certainly been helped by the lack of influx of new blood, when he broke out in 2018, and was already the best player in the world, there was plenty of competition, at a much higher level than what MVP had to play. I am not going to give MVP handicap points for leaving for injury, unlike, say, DRG and Classic, his exact contemporaries, who stuck around to see where their skill ceiling was. If anything, Classic has the more impressive career there. TLDR: The first movers did not have the most competitive environment. If anything, they had it easier. You can see this in how few of them stuck around into HotS.
No one is asking you to give Mvp handicap points for his injuries, but I think it's fair to ask you to be accurate. He was not forced out by stiffer competition, but rather because of his injuries. Are you disputing this? No one is evaluating Mvp on hypothetical results that he might have achieved had he not retired early.
This convo tends to have a "pre- versus post-2018" vibe to it, but I probably wouldn't lump all those earlier pre-2018 eras into one in terms of level of competition. I think you're making the same conceptual mistake re: absolute versus relative skill that others are making here when you say Serral was facing "much higher" levels of competition in 2018 than in earlier eras. Again, this logic is not used in evaluating levels of competition in literally any other game or sport (if you can name one, I'll be quite surprised).
There's a really easy way to understand this via a stylized hypo. Say in 2029 Serral and Classic are the only two remaining full-time SC2 pros and say they are playing at a "higher level" than any pro players before them due to continued skill improvements over time. And say we arrange 25 world championship matches with huge prize pools. Classic wins them all. Is Classic your GOAT? I assume not. But once you concede that he is not, the rest of your argument unravels.
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On October 29 2025 17:18 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 17:16 Admiral Yang wrote:
Do you think MVP means more to the history of SC2 than Serral? Like I said, I'm not getting involved in the GOAT debate. All I wanted to point out was this simple premise: Skill does not equal greatness. That's it. That's the whole point I was making.
You are much wiser and smarter than I for avoiding the GOAT debate. But also for the actual point you are making here.
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On October 29 2025 02:11 Admiral Yang wrote:Show nested quote +That’s a fair, if simple, summary of my position sure. I don’t understand what you mean about Mvp tho? Greater than who because he was worse than who? If the argument is that "competitiveness" means a greater pool of potential winners, then MVP's claims on that basis must be based on the fact that he failed to dominate his era, thereby giving that era a greater number of potential winners. Ie. MVP is greater because he was demonstrably less capable of domination than Serral, who dominated his era to a much greater extent, including by beating many of the same players who had essentially forced MVP, MC, MMA, Nestea etc. out of the top. That seems a deeply flawed reasoning. Same with the endless analogies to other sports. You are free to do what you like, but after 30+ pages across multiple threads I still haven't seen that help anyone make their case.
You're disingenious if you truly think the only reason we now have a smaller pool of potential winners is because of Serral. Removing him out of the equation won't suddenly give us a much greater pool of potential winners
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Northern Ireland25947 Posts
On October 29 2025 21:11 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 02:11 Admiral Yang wrote:That’s a fair, if simple, summary of my position sure. I don’t understand what you mean about Mvp tho? Greater than who because he was worse than who? If the argument is that "competitiveness" means a greater pool of potential winners, then MVP's claims on that basis must be based on the fact that he failed to dominate his era, thereby giving that era a greater number of potential winners. Ie. MVP is greater because he was demonstrably less capable of domination than Serral, who dominated his era to a much greater extent, including by beating many of the same players who had essentially forced MVP, MC, MMA, Nestea etc. out of the top. That seems a deeply flawed reasoning. Same with the endless analogies to other sports. You are free to do what you like, but after 30+ pages across multiple threads I still haven't seen that help anyone make their case. I think you're having some logic problems bud. Mvp "dominated" in his era to the extent that domination was possible in his era because his domination involved competing in and defeating an active pro player base of a 1000+ pros, tournaments with hundreds of competitors and dozens of title contenders, and tournament gauntlets with ridiculous qualification, group stage, and bracket barriers. Mvp's results in this context were honestly kind of insane. Serral dominated in an era with ~1/10th the active pro player base, tournaments with a couple dozen competitors, against a handful of title contenders, in tournaments with much easier paths to qualification and victory, against an aging, retiring, and increasingly injured player base that didn't include most previous title contenders, with almost no new talent to challenge him (other than Clem, who has been dominating him recently). I'm not sure why you think Mvp was "forced" out of the top because he couldn't hang. It's well-known that his injuries forced his early retirement. I'm also not sure why you think beating "many of the same players" who were dominant in an earlier era is a substitute for actually dominating in an earlier era. Clem 5-0'ed Serral and has been dominating him ever since. This is not a substitute for Clem showing tournament results and achievements, and it also doesn't take away from Serral's results and achievements. You may not understand the analogies to other sports and games, but you should try. It'll help you gain some perspective. Go back and read my analogy to chess--the OG "most competitive" 1v1 strategy game--because Magnus Carlsen's domination across eras and formats in a growing game against an increasingly competitive pro player base gives you a sense for what actual domination looks like. Again, in chess there are like 5 new Clems every year. Think about that.
I think 1000 pros is rather stretching this!
To go with your chess analogy a second, it doesn’t 100% map. It would be more like if chess had just been invented, or probably more accurately ‘Chess 2.0’, because while different, skills and general concepts from BW, WC3 and other RTS games did transfer over.
For me, I think RTS greatness in the early years tends to come with innovation, and the longer it runs it’s execution.
It’s worth remembering as well, it took multiple expansions to really see truly consistently dominant players. Part of that is just not having the knowledge to optimally counter everything. Part of it is the game not being as figured out, and there’s always the chance someone shows up with some new killer build (Slayers blue flame), and I think part of it is just Legacy’s eco changes driving a more mechanical, but less unpredictable game.
There’s almost nothing you can throw at Serral early that he can’t either scout, or make a read on. So you’re kinda locked in to playing a straight macro game against him, and in a war of straight-up macro execution he’ll just beat you unless you’re Clem.
That ramble aside, in combination Mvp is absolutely one of the greats.
1. He kinda developed the blueprint of how Terran is played. You can watch even relatively early Mvp games and they’re quite recognisably modern.
2. Not only was he ahead of the curve in figuring out how to play Terran, he was generally ahead of the curve in mechanics and execution as well. Maybe Bomber was more of a macro monster, Mkp was better at micro, maybe MMA had the edge in aggressive multitasking and maybe Polt had the sharper tactical brain. But Mvp as a whole package was basically top 1-3 at basically everything.
3. Despite basically being the best of his era in latent skill, he was also great at set planning and clutch moments.
4. We have the old man Mvp stage, and he could still hang with the next generation even with his injuries. Playing completely different styles to compensate and still being very competitive through sharp plans.
If there’s a StarCraft fan who doesn’t love Gumiho, I’ve yet to meet them. And he has been a competitive player to this day. I don’t think many would argue that Mvp wasn’t a more complete player. Realistically a healthy Mvp would probably have been good enough to win a whole bunch more.
Maru and Inno raised the skill bar, and Clem nowadays is insane. But even if Mvp got surpassed mechanically, I think Mvp is the better planner and stronger mentally. Maybe it’s not a huge trophy haul but I think a healthy Mvp would have picked up more premiers if injury hadn’t gutted him.
Same with Taeja of other players injury ravaged, although I don’t think he’s got Mvp’s range. He won a lot by virtue of just being outright better skill wise than opponents.
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On October 29 2025 21:57 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On October 29 2025 15:40 PremoBeats wrote:On October 27 2025 22:28 rwala wrote:On October 27 2025 02:07 PremoBeats wrote:On October 27 2025 01:03 rwala wrote:
especially if he was fighting through the brutal KIL tournament formats and KR region nerf for world championship qualification. Wasn't it you who said that it isn't a nerf/buff when things are done to be equaled out or to approximate a "perfect" modifier, which this exact rule was meant to do? So how can you call this a nerf? It is not so hard to imagine that players like Soulkey or Rain or Mvp or Byun or SOS or Zest or Soo or Taeja or Life or Dream or Flash or Jaedong or whoever in their prime posing major problems for Serral if he was battling for results
Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your metrics? See, this is my issue with you... it seems like you throw out unfounded accusations or proclaim arguments, but you rarely follow them through as an argument as well as coherently in applying logic. It happened again in this very thread. You misquote others, you put words in their mouth and you make claims without backing them up. So far, I am still waiting for you to write at least one thing about your notion that Maru had "many stints pre-2018" where he was supposedly the best. I am further waiting for you to prove the unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all".
But to assume that he would have
Who here does?? Stop having arguments in your head. The only thing that was being said is that it would statistically be reasonable to assume that he would have been the best player if all players gathered in their prime. Not that he would have been equally dominant.
I don’t agree with Miz on everything he writes but the central theory of his GOAT analysis avoids the pitfalls of a lot of these heuristics and biases by not trying to diminish the more competitive earlier eras of the game just to justify crowning his preferred players.
Do you accuse anyone in particular when you talk about people justify crowning their preferred player? Are you even aware that there is no more transparent list out there than mine, as I demonstrated every little detail of how I arrived at each and every number, without obfuscating, for all of you guys to double check? I don’t apply metrics because I don’t invent math equations to crown my preferred candidate the GOAT. Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region. As Artosis said, you should be able to make your argument clearly, simply, and succinctly. When you can’t, you’re probably confused and likely seeking to confuse others. Just change the word "metric" with the word "logic": Well, if Mvp is your GOAT, he faces an even harder "challenge" than the one you are pointing out for Serral. As I wrote before, Mvp is most likely the GOAT contender who played the least against other GOAT contenders. So, do the same arguments that you throw at Serral also apply to Mvp? If so, how can he be your GOAT? If not, why? Can you make some arguments why you are inconsistent in applying your LOGIC? As you didn't answer these: 1. You said in another thread that it doesn't make sense to call it a buff for Koreans/nerf for Serral when one discounts region locks, as that is a means to simply level the playing field and thus more an "equalizer" than a buff/ nerf. I agreed. But why do you now call region locks a nerf for Koreans? Again, this shows how you change wording/framing depending on your acute need, not on a set of principles or based on consistent logic. 2. I am further waiting for you to prove your unfounded accusation that I said that "proleague doesn’t matter at all". 3. As you wrote: "I am not saying Serral would not have been equally dominant in earlier, more competitive eras and tournaments and regions. But to assume that he would have... ". Who assumed he would have? Which user here made this assumption that you are arguing against? So according to you, Mvp won in the most competitive era? You think the most competitive era in SC2 was from its beginning up to 2012? Correct? The chess comparison is off on so many accounts (a world champion being the defender, thus making it much easier to get back-to-back streaks) and Serral also fulfills achievements that were listed, hence I will not address all of them one by one. To be honest, you kind of remind me of Don Quixote. In your replies you lament about things no one said or argue against issues no one raised. It seems to me that you are fighting wind mills in your head, rather than actually engaging with the other side. No one said that Serral would be equally dominant had he played in 2012-2016. No one said that Proleague doesn’t matter in GOAT-discussions. In the meantime you wrote that it would be fair to say that Maru was the best in the world when he won a KIL. Then following that logic: Wasn’t Serral the best more than any other player - including Maru - for the most stints than any other player when he won tournaments, including all the best players of the world - not only Korans - with win rates that no one thought to be possible? If no, are you able to explain why? On October 28 2025 18:12 Argonauta wrote:
Biggest reason why Rotti and most of SC2 commentators call Serral the goat is because they want this esport to keep going so they need to spin this narrative to try to make the game appealing, they really don't care about being objective or recall past glories. Or perhaps because he is the GOAT based on all statistics, including regression models that let us compare contenders even cross-era? On October 28 2025 18:19 Charoisaur wrote:On October 28 2025 12:23 rwala wrote:On October 27 2025 23:12 Admiral Yang wrote:Mvp won the most competitive tournaments against the most competitive pools during the most competitive eras in the most competitive region What is this claim based on? Surely the subsequent eras were much more competitive, given that the players who had dominated previously weren't good enough to continue dominating. This is is a really fair question actually, and I think where a lot of the “modernists” slip. The first thing to say is that no one—including Serral, the most dominant player—has dominated SC2 on the level of a Magnus Carlsen in Chess (#1 player in all formats for a decade, consensus favorite to win every tournament, undisputed best player for over a decade, highest ELO ever, longest streak without a loss, 9 consecutive super tournament victories, 17 world championship titles, etc.). Carlsen’s dominance is actually a study in contrast to Serral’s. Unlike Serral, whose dominance came as the game and level of competition was declining due to retirements, injuries, and lack of new talent, Carlsen’s dominance maintains to this day as the level of competition at the super GM level grows at a faster rate than ever before in Chess’s history. Just in the last few years we have the youngest GM ever, the youngest player to reach 2800 ELO, and the youngest world champion. 4 of the top 10 players are under the age of 23. SC2 hasn’t had anything remotely like a young prodigy since Clem in broke out in 2019/2020. Chess has more and more Clems every year. The thing is that in the earlier years, SC2 was like this, and that’s fundamentally what I mean when I say the level of competition was higher. Making it to the top of a field of hundreds of active pros practicing non-stop to navigate an endlessly evolving and shifting ecosystem of metas and strategies is a different thing than maintaining your dominance over an increasingly dwindling pool of a couple of dozen pros, most of whom are diminished at least somewhat in their speed or skill execution due to age or injury (older chess players struggle with blitz and especially bullet formats as well). I think sometimes people forget (or maybe didn’t even know), that in prior eras of SC2 GSL, SSL and other KILs there were hundreds of players from all around the world competing in various qualification tournaments for a chance at a main tournament group stage for a chance at a second group stage for a chance to make the tournament bracket for a chance at the title. Other than like the World Series of Poker main event or like the Olympics, which are insane, I honestly cannot think of a level of competition in tournament play that’s more intense than this (I’m sure there are some other examples, just struggling to think of them off the top). So it’s not surprising that there weren’t any really dominant players during these earlier eras, other than maybe Mvp. If you follow other sports or games like chess that are growing rather than declining, it’s just bizarre to see these SC2 fans claim that the game got more competitive over time. The justification that’s sometimes offered is that absolute skill levels have improved (everyone now is better than before). But this has nothing to do with the level of competition. If anything, as the game gets figured out and metas settle, execution becomes much more important than strategy and tactics, which diminishes the rate at which less skilled pros can upset higher skilled pros. In earlier eras, rank 50 players upset top 10 players regularly. These days Serral and Clem are posting like 80-90% win rates in certain matchups and could probably beat rank 50 players easily with a Uthermal troll build. Anyways, the TLDR is that other than Serral, I don’t think SC2 has really ever had a truly dominant player compared to some other games and sports, and while Serral’s dominance is ridiculously impressive, it’s certainly in part a product of a diminished level of competition. This isn’t to take anything away from Serral, who I think is the “best” player to ever play the game. Yeah the skill level argument isn't a good one, mainly because the skill level rising is due to the combined effort of all players playing since then, and not Serral or Clem's sole credit. It's like in swimming where techniques are constantly evolving and thus michael phelps isn't holding a single world record anymore, but still what he did back then was more impressive than what swimmers are doing today. But it still is... higher, no? And some players were not able to keep up with the new influence. Do we seriously believe that all the prime players simply lost their combined skill in 2018, so that Serral can defeat them with win rates of over 85%? While they still delivered against other foreigners or other Koreans? Why is it so hard to accept that one player simply is above the others? And these others were the best of the prime era. And can you elaborate why you think (honest question) what Phelps did is more impressive than what swimmers do today? Is it because he dominated his competition much more than any other swimmer? On October 29 2025 05:18 Charoisaur wrote:
Maru never was the best in HotS, however I don't think that's the gotcha some people think it is considering how competitive the era back then was, and the only players who really had a period during that time where they were considered the best are Inno, Zest and Life, and even for them it only was a very short period.
Imo being top 5 in that era is probably a bigger feat than being #1 in the modern era (in terms of how many S tier players you have to be able to regularly beat, etc.).
After that he was definitely considered the best during 2018 and in late 2021 when he won all the online tournaments with his lategame-style In my opinion (and as far as I remember for many others as well), Serral's 2018 made him at least equal if not better than Maru, especially because of the WC. We have years in which there is a more or less similar distribution of different names as winners of tournaments post-2018, despite the fact that there were a lot less tournaments, which from my perspective means, that 1st place was sufficiently fought for. I argued based on Monte Carlo simulations in the other thread, that it would be harder for player X, who is ahead of the curve, to win a tournament in the modern era, as there, you would have to beat prime Serral and prime Maru who have higher win rates than anything what came before. Meaning you have a skill level you didn't have to fight before. It seems to me, that people always argue from Serral's perspective, which is - at least in my opinion - not the correct approach. It can be helpful to see when looking at certain player achievements to determine - for example - that Serral never won in the most competitive time but I fail to see why it wouldn't account for anything that he played these exact players and other players in better versions than their selfs from 2012-2016 and still beat them with unprecedented results. Brother, you need to spend more than 1 second trying to understand the chess analogy. Notice how Magnus's 5 classical WCs are only part his case for dominance and GOATyness, and Magnus himself doesn't think it's the most competitive competition (which is why he's basically inventing a new world championship circuit). You could learn from Magnus in this regard! I included his 5 classical word championships among his 17 world championships, sure, but this is not why he is so dominant or the GOAT. It's also ironic how you make excuses for Serral's region-lock qualification buffs to get into premier and world championship tournaments, but all of a sudden have major issues with FIDE's classic world championship tournament format. In any event, I (and Magnus) agree with you about the FIDE WC tournament format for sure, and I've also explained why I have issues with the SC2 region-lock qualification process for WC and premier tourneys. This is what it means to be consistent. Try it out I really encourage you to engage deeply with the chess analogy because it will help you understand what a GOAT looks like, which really should be the first step. And by engaging deeply I don't mean crashing out and writing 10K words with every random argument against it. I mean putting your biases to the side and just sitting down and thinking. Try not to let yourself get triggered or become defensive of your model. Ask yourself simple questions like what can I learn about GOATs knowing that a player can maintain dominance in a growing and increasingly competitive 1v1 strategy game, across all game and tournament formats, when there are like 5 new Clems that emerge every year? If you reversed the chess timeline--meaning if time went backwards in the history of the game of chess--Serral is in many ways like Bobby Fisher (many people's chess GOAT). See if you can understand why! If you've done the deep thinking I'm recommending, you should be able to
I don't need to spend even one second for analogies that don't apply. Especially not on the GOAT as in that regard many sports differ by insane amounts.
Where did I make excuses for Serral's region lock qualification buffs?
So you think that Serral should get a penalty for getting into tournaments through supposed easier qualifiers? Is that correct?
Thinking about a penalty for a player, simply because they hail from a region with an easier qualifier in a GOAT discussion is... I don't know... do you seriously make the assumption that Serral of all players wouldn't have qualified for the tournaments he subsequently won, if he played the qualifier in a different region? Is that your argument?
Just to compare that to the Candidates: The top 8 of the world duke it out in a knockout style tournament and one of them is able to challenge the defender. These are utterly different mechanisms.
So to sum it up:
You think Maru winning 2 KILs and having a couple of good days in Proleague is a proof to the claim that he had many stints where he was the best pre 2018, right?
Why is that important to you?
And you don't have any proof of me thinking/saying that Proleague doesn't matter at all?
Any response to the question to whom you replied when talking about Serral's supposed dominance in the prime era?
You can stop the condescending attitude, as long as you aren't able to answer pretty straightforward easy to answer questions. It's not like you've got some deep, hidden understanding about chess that I am unable to grasp and which leads to being an epiphany why Serral can't be the GOAT. Until you apply the same logic of criticism to your contender, there is simply no consistency. And to even compare the Candidates to a European qualifier, where Serral still had to play in a group stage and the whole knockout brackets of the actual World Championship is simply delusional.
My position applies the same logic to every players - yours shifts depending on who you attack/cheer for.
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No one is asking you to give Mvp handicap points for his injuries, but I think it's fair to ask you to be accurate. He was not forced out by stiffer competition, but rather because of his injuries. Are you disputing this? No one is evaluating Mvp on hypothetical results that he might have achieved had he not retired early.
This convo tends to have a "pre- versus post-2018" vibe to it, but I probably wouldn't lump all those earlier pre-2018 eras into one in terms of level of competition. I think you're making the same conceptual mistake re: absolute versus relative skill that others are making here when you say Serral was facing "much higher" levels of competition in 2018 than in earlier eras. Again, this logic is not used in evaluating levels of competition in literally any other game or sport (if you can name one, I'll be quite surprised).
There's a really easy way to understand this via a stylized hypo. Say in 2029 Serral and Classic are the only two remaining full-time SC2 pros and say they are playing at a "higher level" than any pro players before them due to continued skill improvements over time. And say we arrange 25 world championship matches with huge prize pools. Classic wins them all. Is Classic your GOAT? I assume not. But once you concede that he is not, the rest of your argument unravels.
This logic only really applies if MVP or anyone else from his era had simply been too old to compete from 2018 onwards. They weren't. Plenty of them are still around. The fact that out of all the players from that era, the only one still in contention is Classic demonstrably proves that the skill level was much lower. Putting those players on the pedestal I'm seeing here reeks of nostalgia goggles. They weren't good enough to stick around.
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