On March 02 2024 01:52 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If difficulty of a win is what measures the greatness of a win, I would agree with you. Doesn't bother me that people find early eras of SC2 that interesting. I've been playing SC:BW since early 2000s, but even when WoL came out, I never felt as excited by professional SC2 gameplays as I have in the past few years. I don't remember any zerg army composed of 5-6 different unit types, not including spore crawlers, back in 2014. My only disappointment is that we lost so many great protoss, and PvT seems a bit lopsided, and Protoss overall could use more high-level tools. Otherwise, the current era of SC2 is rather amazing.
The myth that things were 'a lot' harder in the past have to die, first because of Miz's argument, second because these things are logarithmic. Yes we went from having to win a Ro16 to an Ro8. That's 3 matches instead of 4. For the top players we mention, who generally have a local winrate of 75% over matches (they become good if they can maintain it for a year, great if they can maintain it for 3 years, GOATesque if 5), this means just about 25% more chances of being eliminated. This is litterally quantifiable and hard to argue with.
So if you tell me 'I value 2014 wins 25-30% more than 2022 ones', that's a valid and reasonable position, but 'a lot more' just sounds like mathematically uninformed hyperbole.
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. [...] When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
I think you are proving the opposite of the point you are intending to make.
Of course the perceived level of difficulty is independent of the absolute level of skill involved. When I play a game of chess against a friend it may feel as hard for me as it feels for Carlsen to play against Caruana. But the level of play is vastly different in terms of objective metrics, like how many variations we are calculating. The same applies to SC2.
Using the experienced level of difficulty as a metric is a terrible approach not enough. It may feel more difficult for a Bronze player to win a game against a buddy than it feels for Serral to 4-0 Maru in the grand finals of Katowice but this does not make the Bronze leaguer the GoaT.
Obviously, then, what is the best level of play increases over time, so I agree that to some degree the relative strength at any given point in time must be taken into account.
But it is, in my view, mistaken to ignore the absolute level of skill when judging players in a skill game like SC2.
On March 02 2024 07:06 MyLovelyLurker wrote: The myth that things were 'a lot' harder in the past have to die, first because of Miz's argument, second because these things are logarithmic. Yes we went from having to win a Ro16 to an Ro8. That's 3 matches instead of 4. For the top players we mention, who generally have a local winrate of 75% over matches (they become good if they can maintain it for a year, great if they can maintain it for 3 years, GOATesque if 5), this means just about 25% more chances of being eliminated. This is litterally quantifiable and hard to argue with.
So if you tell me 'I value 2014 wins 25-30% more than 2022 ones', that's a valid and reasonable position, but 'a lot more' just sounds like mathematically uninformed hyperbole.
Nobody has a 75% win rate in the eras we’re talking about.
We’re not transplanting somebody who does into a deeper field, like that 75% player just didn’t exist back in the day.
Mathematically yeah field depth isn’t all that important if you inject a person with a 75% win rate against all comers, but such a creature just didn’t exist at the time we’re talking about the ‘most competitive’ era.
So you’re left with two possibilities, either folks hadn’t figured the game out enough to dominate, and if someone had they would have, or you had more top, top players to compete with and you just can’t hope to regularly dominate.
It would strike me that the latter is way more likely than the former
On March 02 2024 07:06 MyLovelyLurker wrote: The myth that things were 'a lot' harder in the past have to die, first because of Miz's argument, second because these things are logarithmic. Yes we went from having to win a Ro16 to an Ro8. That's 3 matches instead of 4. For the top players we mention, who generally have a local winrate of 75% over matches (they become good if they can maintain it for a year, great if they can maintain it for 3 years, GOATesque if 5), this means just about 25% more chances of being eliminated. This is litterally quantifiable and hard to argue with.
So if you tell me 'I value 2014 wins 25-30% more than 2022 ones', that's a valid and reasonable position, but 'a lot more' just sounds like mathematically uninformed hyperbole.
Nobody has a 75% win rate in the eras we’re talking about.
We’re not transplanting somebody who does into a deeper field, like that 75% player just didn’t exist back in the day.
Mathematically yeah field depth isn’t all that important if you inject a person with a 75% win rate against all comers, but such a creature just didn’t exist at the time we’re talking about the ‘most competitive’ era.
So you’re left with two possibilities, either folks hadn’t figured the game out enough to dominate, and if someone had they would have, or you had more top, top players to compete with and you just can’t hope to regularly dominate.
It would strike me that the latter is way more likely than the former
Actually, Rain, Soo, ByuN, Inno and Maru did (Maru if you consider offline), each for a year or more in between 2013-2016. So yes this is both surprising and also singlehandedly justifies their presence on the list (this is Korean only but online) due to the famous 'invicibility aura', except for Soo ofc.
My view is now that you can come up with a decent way of quantifying field depth, and that's basically the log_2 of the number of tournament contenders, that is, players with a winrate above 60% or so. Gonna need to start putting graphs.
Once again, it doesn't make sense to compare different eras based on players' abilities and gameplay quality, as if you could ever transport anyone back in time. WC3 has been out for 20-some years now, but it's competitive scene is nothing relative to 2008. I would imagine most top players today would beat a player back in 2008 though. But winning today in WC3 has almost no weight, because fewer people are trying, and fewer people are trying their hardest. This also applies to BW versus 2007-2010 BW too.
It gets messier when the game literally changes over time as it did over our expansions. Broodwar only changed in map design (though that was still very influential), there weren't literally units changing.
But dominance when the field is bigger, and more importantly, trying harder, should carry more weight than dominance when the game is on its way out. HotS was very obviously the most competitive era, with a few years on both sides being very competitive. Since 2020? It's sort of a joke in comparison. Look at GSL. A GSL win today is less impressive than a top 8 back in 2014, honestly (sry Maru). It's still impressive, and probably more impressive than one of those smaller IEMs or MLGs... But it's not what it was.
On March 02 2024 09:58 Blargh wrote: Once again, it doesn't make sense to compare different eras based on players' abilities and gameplay quality, as if you could ever transport anyone back in time. WC3 has been out for 20-some years now, but it's competitive scene is nothing relative to 2008. I would imagine most top players today would beat a player back in 2008 though. But winning today in WC3 has almost no weight, because fewer people are trying, and fewer people are trying their hardest. This also applies to BW versus 2007-2010 BW too.
It gets messier when the game literally changes over time as it did over our expansions. Broodwar only changed in map design (though that was still very influential), there weren't literally units changing.
But dominance when the field is bigger, and more importantly, trying harder, should carry more weight than dominance when the game is on its way out. HotS was very obviously the most competitive era, with a few years on both sides being very competitive. Since 2020? It's sort of a joke in comparison. Look at GSL. A GSL win today is less impressive than a top 8 back in 2014, honestly (sry Maru). It's still impressive, and probably more impressive than one of those smaller IEMs or MLGs... But it's not what it was.
And yet even people like Grubby bring Happy into the GOAT-discussion (not that there is much of it in WC3). A player said Grubby had on farm status between 2005-2010...not sure if Grubby lost even a single map against Happy, nevermind a series. While the scene is mostly online and it is usually the same eight players (mix of koreans and chinese plus Happy) that play out the few tournaments WC3 has, you can still acknowledge Happys dominance and filter it in somewhere. If someone would make this Top 10 list for WC3, I'm pretty sure Happy would not only be on it, but actually be quite high on it.
But the question for me is: If you really want to quantify "eras", you have your job cut out for you. Because it is a full-on nightmare. Lets take Maru for example: People often mention his "amazing results" in HotS, but if we pretend like anything after HotS doesn't count, Maru has no business to even be in the discussion for GOATness. Top 10 sure, but No. 1? Why? With 2 Premier wins and not much else to his name? Innovation, Zest, maybe even TaeJa and Mvp...so many other people come before that. Marus results in HotS are "amazing" only in hindsight, because they mix with his long-lasting career as a player. Okay, maybe too harsh. You yourself used 2020 as the cutoff. But then again...it is not like players since then on a global scale played for scraps, there is still very big money in the scene. Just GSL kinda slacked off. Serral just won 150K, which is a bit under the money you would have got if you won all three GSLs of 2014. How can anyone say "well, that doesn't count for anything because Symbol and Seed aren't around anymore"? If Serral won the 2nd most important tournament of the year and it was the "PiG Cup" for 250 Dollar then yes, sure, forget about it if you want to find the GOAT. But this is still a pretty big payout, so it is safe to assume no one "from the old days" thinks "lol, these scrubs today, I need one month of training and I'm back in business". Because then they would do exactly that.
In the end, the safest bet would be to take Mizenhauers approach: Even today, to win a World Championship, you have to beat the best players in the world. And there is still enough competition to acknowledge that. And to win GSL you still have to win some pretty heavy-hitters. Maybe you can downsize it a bit, count wins only have for the statistic or whatever, but saying they count for nothing just seems like an unfair outlook on the entire scene.
On March 02 2024 03:00 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If difficulty of a win is what measures the greatness of a win, I would agree with you. Doesn't bother me that people find early eras of SC2 that interesting. I've been playing SC:BW since early 2000s, but even when WoL came out, I never felt as excited by professional SC2 gameplays as I have in the past few years. I don't remember any zerg army composed of 5-6 different unit types, not including spore crawlers, back in 2014. My only disappointment is that we lost so many great protoss, and PvT seems a bit lopsided, and Protoss overall could use more high-level tools. Otherwise, the current era of SC2 is rather amazing.
Arguing with the usage of more different unit types is a very bad argument because that's largely (probably solely) due to the game changing. Just take TvZ for example. Ghosts were shit and Liberators didn't exist in HotS, therefore there was nothing to tech to past MMMM and thus Zerg didn't need to diversify their responses either.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If difficulty of a win is what measures the greatness of a win, I would agree with you. Doesn't bother me that people find early eras of SC2 that interesting. I've been playing SC:BW since early 2000s, but even when WoL came out, I never felt as excited by professional SC2 gameplays as I have in the past few years. I don't remember any zerg army composed of 5-6 different unit types, not including spore crawlers, back in 2014. My only disappointment is that we lost so many great protoss, and PvT seems a bit lopsided, and Protoss overall could use more high-level tools. Otherwise, the current era of SC2 is rather amazing.
Arguing with the usage of more different unit types is a very bad argument because that's largely (probably solely) due to the game changing. Just take TvZ for example. Ghosts were shit and Liberators didn't exist in HotS, therefore there was nothing to tech to past MMMM and thus Zerg didn't need to diversify their responses either.
And what do you think ushered the changes? I'm not just talking about a new game expansion being added. Look at early LotV days compared to today. If players could make fewer types of units work at the highest level, why would they incorporate more? That would do more harm than good, because it's better to manage a simpler army that you can manage, than to make an unnecessarily complex army, where your vipers are just flying into marines, and infestors are moving into their death/EMPs for no good reason. They incorporated more because the next level of effective play demanded it, which also required them to up their mechanical skills in order to be able to manage their more complex armies. It's a very good argument.
On March 01 2024 20:31 LeFaucheurishere wrote: Putting Maru in front of Rogue is an absolute shame. There is absolutely no way you can say Maru is higher in the GOAT ranking than Rogue. Outside of Korea, Maru's trophy case is literally empty, all he did was winning a wesg with 2 koreans in it in a vastly favored terran patch with ravens being absolutely op. In korea, he won easy GSLs when players started going to military and when the competition became weaker in korea and stronger in Europe.
All maru did in big international events is literally choking. Lost 3-4 against Life in Taipei 2015 ; Lost 3-4 against TY in wesg 2016 ; Lost 3-0 (!!!) when he was the overwhelming favorite at blizzcon 2018 against sos ; Reverse swept by Rogue at IEM katowice 2018 where he was, again, the overwhelming favorite ; Lost 3-2 AGAIN against Rogue in semis of kato 2020 ; Reverse swept by Reynor at kato 2021 ; Has literraly the EASIEST RUN in kato 2023 facing Ragnarok in semis and oliveira in finals and still manages to get destroyed 4-1; and got swept most recently 4-0 in finals by serral in 2024. The one and only finals he won at an international event is against Dark in 2017 and it wasn't flawless at all. "Yeah but he is still so dominant in korea !!" ? He won GSLs because the format allows preparation and is favored for terrans. If you take is GSL ST wins, in the span of 5-6 years of GSL ST he just won ONE.
At the same time Rogue is by far the most clutch and the most dominant player in premier tournaments in history. If we just take 2017, he already won more international tournaments than Maru, with IEM shangai and Blizzcon. He went undefeated in offline tournaments from september 2017 to april 2018 with a record of 12-0 ("but rogue isn't consistent") and managed to do what no one ever did in history, by winning Blizzcon and then Katowice. He has 2 iem Katowice, 1 blizzcon, 1 IEM shangai, undefeated in finals and never even went to game 7 in finals ; 13-1 in offline bo7s ; still has 4 GSLs and WON AGAINST MARU in GSL finals (completely dominated him).
Even if we take what many people view as one of Maru's greatest accomplishments, carrying Jin air in Proleague, it's not even that impressive. In 2015 Maru has a record of 27-15 (63%) where Rogue is at 26-14 (65%), and again, when it matters the most, Rogue is at 3-0 in ace matches and maru is at 3-2. Again, in finals against SKT, when it mattered the most, Rogue won his match against Dark while Maru lost against Dream. The only season where Maru is way above the others is 2016 and he didn't even play a single ace match.
Not to add that Maru, against the 2 real best players of all time, Rogue and serral, is at 25% (1-3) against serral in offline bo5+, and at 30% (3-7) against Rogue.
For me, esport and sport isn't about statistics, beauty or anything. It's about winning. And if we talk about winning, Maru is far, far, far below Rogue. He isn't even close. Maybe he plays well, he has an enjoyable playstyle, he is the only terran fans can support deep in tournaments, but this just doesn't change anything. Yes, he is a great player, and one of the greatest, but he is no way near Rogue's legacy.
While you brought up a lot of good points there, it's worth noting that Maru lost most of those matches you mentioned in semifinals and finals. When Rogue gets eliminated, it's often really early in the tournament, like group stages. It's the quieter way of exiting, doesn't make dramatic headlines like "Maru got reversed swept by Reynor and failed to reach finals", but it's hard to say a ro.16 exit is better than a semifinal appearance.
To copy from my previous comments:
Rogue: 11 premiere champions, 1 second place, 8 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. Maru: 15 premiere champions, 11 second place, 20 semifinal finish. 0 World champion
Rogue has insane final winrate but he has less than half of finals or ro.4 appearance than Maru. Maru is an absurdly consistent top 4 finisher for his long career. The only knock against him really is that either by luck or his own fault, he could never get it together for once in a WC tier tournament. While Rogue definitely made best use of his less consistent "good days" on the biggest stages.
Also, for comparison: Serral: 25 champions, 12 second place, 10 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. If you discount the region-lock EU tournaments entirely, Serral still has: 16 champions, 7 second place, 7 semifinal finish in 5 years span.
But then again, there are premier tournaments and "premier tournaments". In my opinion, you can't compare cheap premier tournaments that Maru won that are onlines such as king of battles or DH last chance and actual offline tournaments such as IEM shangai or GSL ST. Moreover, the ping issues are a real problem with online tournaments.
If we only take premier offline tournaments :
Maru has : 1 OSL ; 1 SSL; 7 GSL ; 1 GSL ST ; 1 WESG for a total of 11 premier offline tournaments with only one international (and the weakest).
Rogue has : 4 GSL (and not semi online GSLs) ; 2 GSL ST ; 1 IEM shangai ; 2 IEM katowice and 1 blizzcon for a total of 10 premier offline tournaments, 4 international titles and 3 world championships.
This is clearly not the same weight. Not even to talk about the fact that Maru ended up winning a lot of GSLs after Rogue's retirement and after most of the korean scene retired (Zest Trap Innovation Rogue TY etc.)
Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac.
Life was the best zerg of 2015 and one game away from winning back to back Blizzcons. He was hardly being eclipsed by other zergs.
On March 02 2024 03:32 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If difficulty of a win is what measures the greatness of a win, I would agree with you. Doesn't bother me that people find early eras of SC2 that interesting. I've been playing SC:BW since early 2000s, but even when WoL came out, I never felt as excited by professional SC2 gameplays as I have in the past few years. I don't remember any zerg army composed of 5-6 different unit types, not including spore crawlers, back in 2014. My only disappointment is that we lost so many great protoss, and PvT seems a bit lopsided, and Protoss overall could use more high-level tools. Otherwise, the current era of SC2 is rather amazing.
Arguing with the usage of more different unit types is a very bad argument because that's largely (probably solely) due to the game changing. Just take TvZ for example. Ghosts were shit and Liberators didn't exist in HotS, therefore there was nothing to tech to past MMMM and thus Zerg didn't need to diversify their responses either.
And what do you think ushered the changes? I'm not just talking about a new game expansion being added. Look at early LotV days compared to today. If players could make fewer types of units work at the highest level, why would they incorporate more? That would do more harm than good, because it's better to manage a simpler army that you can manage, than to make an unnecessarily complex army, where your vipers are just flying into marines, and infestors are moving into their death/EMPs for no good reason. They incorporated more because the next level of effective play demanded it, which also required them to up their mechanical skills in order to be able to manage their more complex armies. It's a very good argument.
Maps got bigger. Like way bigger, with easy to take 4th, 5th and further bases. Of course you aren't making 15 infestors, broodlords, vipers, corruptors, ultras and a spore forest on Lerilak Crest. And spellcasters got buffed (ghosts are the obvious ones, infestors got changed to be able to fungal while burrowed at some point...)
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If difficulty of a win is what measures the greatness of a win, I would agree with you. Doesn't bother me that people find early eras of SC2 that interesting. I've been playing SC:BW since early 2000s, but even when WoL came out, I never felt as excited by professional SC2 gameplays as I have in the past few years. I don't remember any zerg army composed of 5-6 different unit types, not including spore crawlers, back in 2014. My only disappointment is that we lost so many great protoss, and PvT seems a bit lopsided, and Protoss overall could use more high-level tools. Otherwise, the current era of SC2 is rather amazing.
Arguing with the usage of more different unit types is a very bad argument because that's largely (probably solely) due to the game changing. Just take TvZ for example. Ghosts were shit and Liberators didn't exist in HotS, therefore there was nothing to tech to past MMMM and thus Zerg didn't need to diversify their responses either.
And what do you think ushered the changes? I'm not just talking about a new game expansion being added. Look at early LotV days compared to today. If players could make fewer types of units work at the highest level, why would they incorporate more? That would do more harm than good, because it's better to manage a simpler army that you can manage, than to make an unnecessarily complex army, where your vipers are just flying into marines, and infestors are moving into their death/EMPs for no good reason. They incorporated more because the next level of effective play demanded it, which also required them to up their mechanical skills in order to be able to manage their more complex armies. It's a very good argument.
Maps got bigger. Like way bigger, with easy to take 4th, 5th and further bases. Of course you aren't making 15 infestors, broodlords, vipers, corruptors, ultras and a spore forest on Lerilak Crest. And spellcasters got buffed (ghosts are the obvious ones, infestors got changed to be able to fungal while burrowed at some point...)
Doesn't rebut my point, and only adds to it. It requires better mechanics to control more complex armies. Sneaking around those infestors underground, while you've also to control vipers, lings, banes, and hydras/corruptors is something basically only one player is currently making look easy. That's how hard it is.
On March 01 2024 20:31 LeFaucheurishere wrote: Putting Maru in front of Rogue is an absolute shame. There is absolutely no way you can say Maru is higher in the GOAT ranking than Rogue. Outside of Korea, Maru's trophy case is literally empty, all he did was winning a wesg with 2 koreans in it in a vastly favored terran patch with ravens being absolutely op. In korea, he won easy GSLs when players started going to military and when the competition became weaker in korea and stronger in Europe.
All maru did in big international events is literally choking. Lost 3-4 against Life in Taipei 2015 ; Lost 3-4 against TY in wesg 2016 ; Lost 3-0 (!!!) when he was the overwhelming favorite at blizzcon 2018 against sos ; Reverse swept by Rogue at IEM katowice 2018 where he was, again, the overwhelming favorite ; Lost 3-2 AGAIN against Rogue in semis of kato 2020 ; Reverse swept by Reynor at kato 2021 ; Has literraly the EASIEST RUN in kato 2023 facing Ragnarok in semis and oliveira in finals and still manages to get destroyed 4-1; and got swept most recently 4-0 in finals by serral in 2024. The one and only finals he won at an international event is against Dark in 2017 and it wasn't flawless at all. "Yeah but he is still so dominant in korea !!" ? He won GSLs because the format allows preparation and is favored for terrans. If you take is GSL ST wins, in the span of 5-6 years of GSL ST he just won ONE.
At the same time Rogue is by far the most clutch and the most dominant player in premier tournaments in history. If we just take 2017, he already won more international tournaments than Maru, with IEM shangai and Blizzcon. He went undefeated in offline tournaments from september 2017 to april 2018 with a record of 12-0 ("but rogue isn't consistent") and managed to do what no one ever did in history, by winning Blizzcon and then Katowice. He has 2 iem Katowice, 1 blizzcon, 1 IEM shangai, undefeated in finals and never even went to game 7 in finals ; 13-1 in offline bo7s ; still has 4 GSLs and WON AGAINST MARU in GSL finals (completely dominated him).
Even if we take what many people view as one of Maru's greatest accomplishments, carrying Jin air in Proleague, it's not even that impressive. In 2015 Maru has a record of 27-15 (63%) where Rogue is at 26-14 (65%), and again, when it matters the most, Rogue is at 3-0 in ace matches and maru is at 3-2. Again, in finals against SKT, when it mattered the most, Rogue won his match against Dark while Maru lost against Dream. The only season where Maru is way above the others is 2016 and he didn't even play a single ace match.
Not to add that Maru, against the 2 real best players of all time, Rogue and serral, is at 25% (1-3) against serral in offline bo5+, and at 30% (3-7) against Rogue.
For me, esport and sport isn't about statistics, beauty or anything. It's about winning. And if we talk about winning, Maru is far, far, far below Rogue. He isn't even close. Maybe he plays well, he has an enjoyable playstyle, he is the only terran fans can support deep in tournaments, but this just doesn't change anything. Yes, he is a great player, and one of the greatest, but he is no way near Rogue's legacy.
While you brought up a lot of good points there, it's worth noting that Maru lost most of those matches you mentioned in semifinals and finals. When Rogue gets eliminated, it's often really early in the tournament, like group stages. It's the quieter way of exiting, doesn't make dramatic headlines like "Maru got reversed swept by Reynor and failed to reach finals", but it's hard to say a ro.16 exit is better than a semifinal appearance.
To copy from my previous comments:
Rogue: 11 premiere champions, 1 second place, 8 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. Maru: 15 premiere champions, 11 second place, 20 semifinal finish. 0 World champion
Rogue has insane final winrate but he has less than half of finals or ro.4 appearance than Maru. Maru is an absurdly consistent top 4 finisher for his long career. The only knock against him really is that either by luck or his own fault, he could never get it together for once in a WC tier tournament. While Rogue definitely made best use of his less consistent "good days" on the biggest stages.
Also, for comparison: Serral: 25 champions, 12 second place, 10 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. If you discount the region-lock EU tournaments entirely, Serral still has: 16 champions, 7 second place, 7 semifinal finish in 5 years span.
But then again, there are premier tournaments and "premier tournaments". In my opinion, you can't compare cheap premier tournaments that Maru won that are onlines such as king of battles or DH last chance and actual offline tournaments such as IEM shangai or GSL ST. Moreover, the ping issues are a real problem with online tournaments.
If we only take premier offline tournaments :
Maru has : 1 OSL ; 1 SSL; 7 GSL ; 1 GSL ST ; 1 WESG for a total of 11 premier offline tournaments with only one international (and the weakest).
Rogue has : 4 GSL (and not semi online GSLs) ; 2 GSL ST ; 1 IEM shangai ; 2 IEM katowice and 1 blizzcon for a total of 10 premier offline tournaments, 4 international titles and 3 world championships.
This is clearly not the same weight. Not even to talk about the fact that Maru ended up winning a lot of GSLs after Rogue's retirement and after most of the korean scene retired (Zest Trap Innovation Rogue TY etc.)
Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac.
Life was the best zerg of 2015 and one game away from winning back to back Blizzcons. He was hardly being eclipsed by other zergs.
Well, I specified "beginning to be eclipsed." Meaning, he was still the apparent best, but it was by no means a wide margin. Hydra, soO, Solar, and Dark were making serious gains toward the end of 2015 and start of 2016.
Edit: Agh...Cross all of that out even. I already made it a point earlier that Life's wins were highly suspect because of his conduct. Meaning, they could've been match-fixed. How can anyone be certain that they weren't?
While you brought up a lot of good points there, it's worth noting that Maru lost most of those matches you mentioned in semifinals and finals. When Rogue gets eliminated, it's often really early in the tournament, like group stages. It's the quieter way of exiting, doesn't make dramatic headlines like "Maru got reversed swept by Reynor and failed to reach finals", but it's hard to say a ro.16 exit is better than a semifinal appearance.
To copy from my previous comments:
Rogue: 11 premiere champions, 1 second place, 8 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. Maru: 15 premiere champions, 11 second place, 20 semifinal finish. 0 World champion
Rogue has insane final winrate but he has less than half of finals or ro.4 appearance than Maru. Maru is an absurdly consistent top 4 finisher for his long career. The only knock against him really is that either by luck or his own fault, he could never get it together for once in a WC tier tournament. While Rogue definitely made best use of his less consistent "good days" on the biggest stages.
Also, for comparison: Serral: 25 champions, 12 second place, 10 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. If you discount the region-lock EU tournaments entirely, Serral still has: 16 champions, 7 second place, 7 semifinal finish in 5 years span.
But then again, there are premier tournaments and "premier tournaments". In my opinion, you can't compare cheap premier tournaments that Maru won that are onlines such as king of battles or DH last chance and actual offline tournaments such as IEM shangai or GSL ST. Moreover, the ping issues are a real problem with online tournaments.
If we only take premier offline tournaments :
Maru has : 1 OSL ; 1 SSL; 7 GSL ; 1 GSL ST ; 1 WESG for a total of 11 premier offline tournaments with only one international (and the weakest).
Rogue has : 4 GSL (and not semi online GSLs) ; 2 GSL ST ; 1 IEM shangai ; 2 IEM katowice and 1 blizzcon for a total of 10 premier offline tournaments, 4 international titles and 3 world championships.
This is clearly not the same weight. Not even to talk about the fact that Maru ended up winning a lot of GSLs after Rogue's retirement and after most of the korean scene retired (Zest Trap Innovation Rogue TY etc.)
Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac.
Life was the best zerg of 2015 and one game away from winning back to back Blizzcons. He was hardly being eclipsed by other zergs.
Well, I specified "beginning to be eclipsed." Meaning, he was still the apparent best, but it was by no means a wide margin. Hydra, soO, Solar, and Dark were making serious gains toward the end of 2015 and start of 2016.
Edit: Agh...Cross all of that out even. I already made it a point earlier that Life's wins were highly suspect because of his conduct. Meaning, they could've been match-fixed. How can anyone be certain that they weren't?
Unlike throwing a win being match fixed requires both parties to participate. You're accusing not only his final opponent(s) but also people he played throughout his brackets. That seems unlikely.
On March 02 2024 00:52 LeFaucheurishere wrote: [quote]
But then again, there are premier tournaments and "premier tournaments". In my opinion, you can't compare cheap premier tournaments that Maru won that are onlines such as king of battles or DH last chance and actual offline tournaments such as IEM shangai or GSL ST. Moreover, the ping issues are a real problem with online tournaments.
If we only take premier offline tournaments :
Maru has : 1 OSL ; 1 SSL; 7 GSL ; 1 GSL ST ; 1 WESG for a total of 11 premier offline tournaments with only one international (and the weakest).
Rogue has : 4 GSL (and not semi online GSLs) ; 2 GSL ST ; 1 IEM shangai ; 2 IEM katowice and 1 blizzcon for a total of 10 premier offline tournaments, 4 international titles and 3 world championships.
This is clearly not the same weight. Not even to talk about the fact that Maru ended up winning a lot of GSLs after Rogue's retirement and after most of the korean scene retired (Zest Trap Innovation Rogue TY etc.)
Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac.
Life was the best zerg of 2015 and one game away from winning back to back Blizzcons. He was hardly being eclipsed by other zergs.
Well, I specified "beginning to be eclipsed." Meaning, he was still the apparent best, but it was by no means a wide margin. Hydra, soO, Solar, and Dark were making serious gains toward the end of 2015 and start of 2016.
Edit: Agh...Cross all of that out even. I already made it a point earlier that Life's wins were highly suspect because of his conduct. Meaning, they could've been match-fixed. How can anyone be certain that they weren't?
Unlike throwing a win being match fixed requires both parties to participate. You're accusing not only his final opponent(s) but also people he played throughout his brackets. That seems unlikely.
You're misusing the word "accusing." Unlikely or not, he drew a curtain of uncertainty around his results due to his scandal. He played against, and "defeated" countless players; to say I'm accusing all of them is absurd.
While you brought up a lot of good points there, it's worth noting that Maru lost most of those matches you mentioned in semifinals and finals. When Rogue gets eliminated, it's often really early in the tournament, like group stages. It's the quieter way of exiting, doesn't make dramatic headlines like "Maru got reversed swept by Reynor and failed to reach finals", but it's hard to say a ro.16 exit is better than a semifinal appearance.
To copy from my previous comments:
Rogue: 11 premiere champions, 1 second place, 8 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. Maru: 15 premiere champions, 11 second place, 20 semifinal finish. 0 World champion
Rogue has insane final winrate but he has less than half of finals or ro.4 appearance than Maru. Maru is an absurdly consistent top 4 finisher for his long career. The only knock against him really is that either by luck or his own fault, he could never get it together for once in a WC tier tournament. While Rogue definitely made best use of his less consistent "good days" on the biggest stages.
Also, for comparison: Serral: 25 champions, 12 second place, 10 semifinal finish. 3 World champion. If you discount the region-lock EU tournaments entirely, Serral still has: 16 champions, 7 second place, 7 semifinal finish in 5 years span.
But then again, there are premier tournaments and "premier tournaments". In my opinion, you can't compare cheap premier tournaments that Maru won that are onlines such as king of battles or DH last chance and actual offline tournaments such as IEM shangai or GSL ST. Moreover, the ping issues are a real problem with online tournaments.
If we only take premier offline tournaments :
Maru has : 1 OSL ; 1 SSL; 7 GSL ; 1 GSL ST ; 1 WESG for a total of 11 premier offline tournaments with only one international (and the weakest).
Rogue has : 4 GSL (and not semi online GSLs) ; 2 GSL ST ; 1 IEM shangai ; 2 IEM katowice and 1 blizzcon for a total of 10 premier offline tournaments, 4 international titles and 3 world championships.
This is clearly not the same weight. Not even to talk about the fact that Maru ended up winning a lot of GSLs after Rogue's retirement and after most of the korean scene retired (Zest Trap Innovation Rogue TY etc.)
Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac.
Life was the best zerg of 2015 and one game away from winning back to back Blizzcons. He was hardly being eclipsed by other zergs.
Well, I specified "beginning to be eclipsed." Meaning, he was still the apparent best, but it was by no means a wide margin. Hydra, soO, Solar, and Dark were making serious gains toward the end of 2015 and start of 2016.
Edit: Agh...Cross all of that out even. I already made it a point earlier that Life's wins were highly suspect because of his conduct. Meaning, they could've been match-fixed. How can anyone be certain that they weren't?
Hydra?? How was Hydra even close to Life? Just admit you weren't watching during that time period.
On March 02 2024 00:52 LeFaucheurishere wrote: [quote]
But then again, there are premier tournaments and "premier tournaments". In my opinion, you can't compare cheap premier tournaments that Maru won that are onlines such as king of battles or DH last chance and actual offline tournaments such as IEM shangai or GSL ST. Moreover, the ping issues are a real problem with online tournaments.
If we only take premier offline tournaments :
Maru has : 1 OSL ; 1 SSL; 7 GSL ; 1 GSL ST ; 1 WESG for a total of 11 premier offline tournaments with only one international (and the weakest).
Rogue has : 4 GSL (and not semi online GSLs) ; 2 GSL ST ; 1 IEM shangai ; 2 IEM katowice and 1 blizzcon for a total of 10 premier offline tournaments, 4 international titles and 3 world championships.
This is clearly not the same weight. Not even to talk about the fact that Maru ended up winning a lot of GSLs after Rogue's retirement and after most of the korean scene retired (Zest Trap Innovation Rogue TY etc.)
Rogue has the WC cups over Maru, Maru has the Starleague wins during the Kespa era over Rogue which were more difficult to win than any tournament Rogue won. Discounting Maru's latest GSL wins seems weird considering Rogue won GSLs in 2021 and 2022 when they were also way easier to win than during 2018
If you compare Marus run through OSL and Rogues through Katowice 2020 - are you seriously saying Marus run was clearly so much harder that you put that OSL far above Katowice? Feels like Rogue had to atleast win against double the amount of S-class players compared to Maru, who actually had a pretty easy run until the semifinals (and then finished impressive against Inno and Rain ofc).
It's not only about the specific path of players you faced but also about the general field of players. The problem nowadays is that the gap between the top players and the rest is so large that someone like Dark can still on a bad day beat everyone except like Serral, Clem or Maru (At DH Atlanta he actually admitted he was in poor condition in the interview before the final). If the field of players is stronger it makes it much more unlikely that something like this happens because Dark might get knocked out by a slightly less accomplished player in better form. Thus, in the latter stages of the tournament you would be basically guaranteed to only face in-shape players.
Case in point: You surely agree that GSL nowadays is worth less than international events due to Serral, Clem and Reynor missing ... although there's no guarantee you'd face one of them in an international event like with herO during his DH Atlanta run. But saying that tournament was comparatively 'easy' to win and worth less would be of course dumb because he faced the most in-shape players at that event.
I generally agree with you that just going through the "road" of tournaments isn't particularly useful, not a fan of it. "Ohhh, but he had such an easy road"...yes, but in the end, that guy still survived while 15, 23 or even 31 other players didn't. My point however in this case is that the level of play in Katowice 2020 wasn't bad, it was in fact enormously high (as it is usually at Katowice and Blizzcon). So outright saying an OSL in 2013 was THAT much more difficult to win than a World Cup feels odd.
In fact, I still believe WCS and to a lesser extend Katowice are the two hardest tournaments to win, even at the prime of GSL. For one, and that is of course a very personal opinion, I rate weekenders higher and more difficult to win than preparation based tournaments, since coaches and the entire team structure doesn't factor in as much. But even more important: Lots of people have won a GSL. Players who you wouldn't even think about when threatened with a gun have won GSL trophies. But you are hard-pressed to find forgettable World Champions. YoDa maybe if you want to count that IEM Grand Final in Hannover (which I don't)? Genius if you count the very first BlizzCon Invitational? Polt if you are a GSL-only tryhard? Oliveira if you are a non-romantic?
Again, don't get me wrong: it is an incredible feat to win GSL (or atleast it was). But so many great GSL-heavyhitters never won a World Cup, while (depending if you only mean WCS or include Katowice aswell) alot of World Champions have won a GSL.
actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac.
Life was the best zerg of 2015 and one game away from winning back to back Blizzcons. He was hardly being eclipsed by other zergs.
Well, I specified "beginning to be eclipsed." Meaning, he was still the apparent best, but it was by no means a wide margin. Hydra, soO, Solar, and Dark were making serious gains toward the end of 2015 and start of 2016.
Edit: Agh...Cross all of that out even. I already made it a point earlier that Life's wins were highly suspect because of his conduct. Meaning, they could've been match-fixed. How can anyone be certain that they weren't?
Hydra?? How was Hydra even close to Life? Just admit you weren't watching during that time period.
You're so desperate to poke any hole you can find, you're not even willing to considerate the thrust of the argument. Whatever.
On March 02 2024 03:32 Charoisaur wrote: [quote] actually no, not a lot of world champions won a GSL. PartinG didn't win one. sOs didn't win one. Reynor didn't win one. Oliveira didn't win one. Serral of course didn't win one although he never played in it. In general though I agree that world championships are worth more than a GSL but comparing across era is difficult because I value all tournaments won between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players.
The skill level is a different discussion entirely but imo it doesn't make sense to compare skill across eras because the players today built on the knowledge that was created by past players.
"...between 2013-2016 a lot more due to the higher number of top level players."
I wouldn't say "a lot."
A lot more low-mid-tier code S players, maybe, but only a couple truly (3) top players: Hydra, Life, and Rain. Many protoss better than Rain stuck around. All of the top terrans stayed. Many zergs kept going who were at around Hydra and Life's level around the period where they stopped: Solar, Dark, soO, Rogue, and DRG, although some of these zergs later fell off top status eventually also. The vast, vast majority of top code S players stayed.
People have been judging Life's talent based on too little information. Toward the end of his career, there were signs of other zergs (soO, Dark, Hydra) beginning to eclipse him, based on Aligulac. I think he might have continued to make big waves like Dark and Rogue, but whether he'd be an outlier is an unknown. There's no evidence he would've pulled a Serral for 6 years in a row. His biggest success occurred while both he and the game were still very young, where many wild card factors were at play. He was more of a consistent performer, rather than a builds/strategy pop-offs wizard like Rogue, which suggests if he had kept around, he would've most likely enjoyed Dark's level of sucess, more or less. MVP is even harder to speculate, because he dropped off even much sooner after a long period of mid performances.
Again, I must add the caveat that we don't really know how many of his wins were legit. His match-fixing has called into question everything he's "achieved."
You underestimate the low-mid tier players, they may have not won so much but could still on a good day beat every player in the world which made winning tournaments considerably harder. Granted from 2016 to 2017 the difference isn't that large, hence the cutoff-point is a bit arbitrary, but with each subsequent year the talent pool got smaller and smaller
I'm not underestimating them. I specifically said early that even these players could pull a Scarlett/Oliveira. Anomalies don't determine an era. Justifying that Maru's early accomplishments during an era of relatively low skill, and less developed game, were better quality than WCs in a much more developed stage of the game, where players are all far more skilled, based on this flimsy reasoning of "there were a lot more low-mid-tier players" is kinda funny is all I'm saying.
I hope I don't blow your mind with this. But, how skilled people were in 2013 versus the present really has no bearing on anything if you're willing to be objective. You don't play against a machine in StarCraft II (unless it's Inno), you play against the other player. If those two players are of are equal skill, it doesn't matter if it's 2010, 2013,2015, 2020, 2023, they still have to play at their best to beat their opponent's best. You can argue that no one knew how to play the game when Mvp won his championships, but he was working with the same information, units and tools as everyone else and he was kicking the sh*t out of them.
Once you get into the subjective realm of making direct comparisons across dozens of balance patches, multiple expansions and as many as 14 years, you've already undermined your own position.
You're not blowing my mind, because this is the argument that had been brought up before.
Here's what that might blow yours. SC2 is a very recent invention. It isn't like physical sports, which had been established for many decades, and where it was largely peak-condition adults competing against other peak-condition adults. They were individuals who had fully realized their physical potential based on their contemporary knowledge of training and their sport. SC2, and esports in general, between 2010-2016 was rapidly evolving, and some of the competitors couldn't even legally drive. Their brains had another 10 years left to fully develop. The rapid evolution of the game also means that a lot of crazy builds and ideas could "work," when objectively they were bad strategies. But listen, if any of these players were clear outlier for multiple years, then that's another thing, but none of them had this kind of broken-level consistent domination to speculate that they'd continue to be outliers much later on post-2016.
If you think that level of competition in the early 2010s is so interesting and carries that much weight, then fine, whatever. Everybody is allowed their own arbitrary qualifiers of greatness. I just don't think this is a particularly interesting period of competition.
I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what I said. The game would feel just as hard for a 2010 player playing against a 2010 player as it would a 2024 player against a 2024. It doesn't matter if the game is faster, more figured out or whatever adjective you want to use. If we took a 2024 pro and put them against a 2024 rando, that game would feel very easy to the pro despite their opponent's having access to all the years of knowledge. Remember, it's a 1v1 sport. When you play a 1v1 sport (except for golf where you and others play against the course), the game is only as hard as your opponent is skilled relative to you.
If difficulty of a win is what measures the greatness of a win, I would agree with you. Doesn't bother me that people find early eras of SC2 that interesting. I've been playing SC:BW since early 2000s, but even when WoL came out, I never felt as excited by professional SC2 gameplays as I have in the past few years. I don't remember any zerg army composed of 5-6 different unit types, not including spore crawlers, back in 2014. My only disappointment is that we lost so many great protoss, and PvT seems a bit lopsided, and Protoss overall could use more high-level tools. Otherwise, the current era of SC2 is rather amazing.
Arguing with the usage of more different unit types is a very bad argument because that's largely (probably solely) due to the game changing. Just take TvZ for example. Ghosts were shit and Liberators didn't exist in HotS, therefore there was nothing to tech to past MMMM and thus Zerg didn't need to diversify their responses either.
And what do you think ushered the changes? I'm not just talking about a new game expansion being added. Look at early LotV days compared to today. If players could make fewer types of units work at the highest level, why would they incorporate more? That would do more harm than good, because it's better to manage a simpler army that you can manage, than to make an unnecessarily complex army, where your vipers are just flying into marines, and infestors are moving into their death/EMPs for no good reason. They incorporated more because the next level of effective play demanded it, which also required them to up their mechanical skills in order to be able to manage their more complex armies. It's a very good argument.
In early LotV players were already using just as complex army compositions as they do now though. Here for example within a 5 min search I found a game in which almost every unit type was used (from the Zerg side Ling Bane Infestor Viper Queen Corruptor Broodlord Ultra being out at the same time)
In HotS it just didn't make sense to play in such a way
EPT
