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Northern Ireland22113 Posts
On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and that treating the numbers as absolute is ridiculous. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. Mvp was also dominant in periods where nobody really knew how to play the game properly.
This actually places him pretty highly for me, as in a strategy game, being ahead of the curve conceptually rather than merely a good executor of cumulative ideas weighs quite strongly for me.
The longer an activity goes on the more innovators tend to be underrated over those who took those ideas and executed better.
Mvp’s greatness for me was solidified best when he lost his mechanical advantage and still made, and almost won a GSL final. That kind of intangible, hard to define greatness.
But sometimes the numbers are the numbers. Serral’s held a 70% win rate for a span that’s years longer than Mvp’s entire career
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On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone.
You're lowering the value of Maru's first GSL win because NoRegret qualified? In MVP's first GSL win, Choya got Top 8... the skill level of most SC2 players in 2011 was not very high. Just look at all the GSL players who qualified and quickly faded away or failed to qualify again. I would say that's a sign that the players qualifying were at a low level, than to say that the field was very deep and competitive. There's a clear gap between the players who knew how to play a decent macro game, like MVP and Nestea, and players like Choya, InCa, and whoever the heck jookTo is.
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On July 22 2024 20:40 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. You're lowering the value of Maru's first GSL win because NoRegret qualified? In MVP's first GSL win, Choya got Top 8... the skill level of most SC2 players in 2011 was not very high. Just look at all the GSL players who qualified and quickly faded away or failed to qualify again. I would say that's a sign that the players qualifying were at a low level, than to say that the field was very deep and competitive. There's a clear gap between the players who knew how to play a decent macro game, like MVP and Nestea, and players like Choya, InCa, and whoever the heck jookTo is. You see...
I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective.
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On July 22 2024 16:27 Parser wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 01:05 Charoisaur wrote:But in my opinion, this whole reasoning is ludicrous to begin with. As stated above, Serral played many of the best the 2015-era had to offer. 3x World Champion sOs, 1x World Champion Zest, 3x World Champion Rogue, 1x World Champion PartinG, 1x World Champion TY, Classic, TaeJa, Trap, Creator, soO as well as INnoVation. Serral is still is battling World Champions ByuN, and Dark as well as herO, Cure, Stats, Solar and Maru on a regular basis who all were relevant in 2015 already. On top, Serral was able to fend of new talents such as World Champion Reynor or Clem and MaxPax.
And how many of those were in their peak when they faced Serral? The versions of sOs, PartinG, TaeJa, Zest, ByuN, INnoVation and soO that Serral faced were nowhere near their peak. That's like taking Serrals negative record against Dayshi and Jaedong as an argument. Yeah, Serral is the most dominant player ever and probably has the best case to be the Goat due to no player really sticking out during the most competitive period but you can't derive from him beating players way past their peak that he would beat them at their peak too, that argument makes 0 sense. That argument of the supposed peak in skill of someone does not make sense. In a game/sport based only on 1 vs 1 confrontation you can just compare players using their results as data. There is no correlation between numbers of competitors and skill. More than that, I would say that continuously training made the players raw skill great with the time passing (trying to clarify: if we had a time machine and we took a middle of the pack player of today and, for example, MVP from 2011, the latter would be destroyed because of the way better knowledge of the have of the former). So the only data we should take into account when comparing players should be their results (probably weighted on the importance of tourneys from which that results came) not the year in which that results were achieved. So you think Soulkey winning an ASL in 2024 is worth the same as someone winning an OSL/MSL in 2010? Or Happy winning the biggest WC3 tournament in 2024 compared to someone winning the biggest tournament in 2008.
Competitiveness of the scene has to matter, otherwise you punish those who peaked when it was harder to win tournaments, when there were way more full time players and professionalized scene
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France12738 Posts
On July 22 2024 20:35 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and that treating the numbers as absolute is ridiculous. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. Mvp was also dominant in periods where nobody really knew how to play the game properly. This actually places him pretty highly for me, as in a strategy game, being ahead of the curve conceptually rather than merely a good executor of cumulative ideas weighs quite strongly for me. The longer an activity goes on the more innovators tend to be underrated over those who took those ideas and executed better. Mvp’s greatness for me was solidified best when he lost his mechanical advantage and still made, and almost won a GSL final. That kind of intangible, hard to define greatness. But sometimes the numbers are the numbers. Serral’s held a 70% win rate for a span that’s years longer than Mvp’s entire career Stephano is underrated in the GOAT discussion then. He was mechanically incredible, and was wayyy ahead of the curve strategically / meta game wise at some points. I remember playing versus MiniRazer one or two years after playing Stephano, and felt like this guy was a worse copy of Stephano… far later The guy was doing runbyes versus terrans like Kas (in his prime AND when Terran was strong on shitty maps) and toying with his units to create stuff and find solutions, before they it was mainstream
Sure, nowadays he is nowhere near a top 15 GOAT
But imo during Stuchiu list of top 15 GOAT, he was worthy of being in it more than some KR players
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On July 22 2024 02:36 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 02:14 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 02:01 Charoisaur wrote:On July 22 2024 01:53 WombaT wrote:On July 22 2024 01:41 Charoisaur wrote:On July 22 2024 01:16 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 01:05 Charoisaur wrote:But in my opinion, this whole reasoning is ludicrous to begin with. As stated above, Serral played many of the best the 2015-era had to offer. 3x World Champion sOs, 1x World Champion Zest, 3x World Champion Rogue, 1x World Champion PartinG, 1x World Champion TY, Classic, TaeJa, Trap, Creator, soO as well as INnoVation. Serral is still is battling World Champions ByuN, and Dark as well as herO, Cure, Stats, Solar and Maru on a regular basis who all were relevant in 2015 already. On top, Serral was able to fend of new talents such as World Champion Reynor or Clem and MaxPax.
And how many of those were in their peak when they faced Serral? The versions of sOs, PartinG, TaeJa, Zest, ByuN, INnoVation and soO that Serral faced were nowhere near their peak. That's like taking Serrals negative record against Dayshi and Jaedong as an argument. Yeah, Serral is the most dominant player ever and probably has the best case to be the Goat due to no player really sticking out during the most competitive period but you can't derive from him beating players way past their peak that he would beat them at their peak too, that argument makes 0 sense. TY was still ranked 3 near the end of 2018. INno took ranks of Serral at times and was still ranked 2 mid 2020. His win rates still exceeded 60%. Zest had similar win rates to his prime when facing Serral, the same is true for PartinG. Why exactly do you think they got worse and not that the new talents simply were better which dropped these players win rates, tournament rates and overall glow like it was always the case? The bulk of the players you mentioned did not drop in skill because of old age. For most, their 2018-versions - from my estimation - would have easily kicked the asses of their 2015-versions, if I look at gameplay and strategy. Plus, I never made the claim that "Serral would beat these players at their peak". I simply stated that he beat players that were already around in the 2015-era. Well, I can prove "they got worse" just as little as you can prove "they didn't get worse, others just surpassed them." But I think it's rather unlikely that the number of serious championship contenders decreasing at the same time as the competitiveness of the scene decreasing is a mere coincidence. Also looking specifically at the players I mentioned Inno was rather vocal about losing motivation and practicing less, TaeJa and PartinG took a long break from sc2 and never really caught up after that, for sOs and soO I think LotV never resonated with their strengths (hard to directly compare skill when they are playing a completely different game now). For Zest and ByuN it's less clear but their gameplay just didn't convince me as much anymore as when they were in their peak. If your claim wasn't that Serral would beat these players at their peak I'm not sure what the point in mentioning that he's beating them now is. As I see it it has no relevance on the argument In a sense, minus players impacted notably by injury like Taeja, that is kind of on those players though. I mean I realise I just throw out the ‘other side of the coin’ arguments perpetually in this domain, but it Serral gets a few minus points for the era he’s in and the drop off, then surely you have to take points off all those players who couldn’t keep up their peak levels? Byun is a patch Terran :p Agreed on SoS for sure. Less so perhaps with soO although I can see it to be fair: partly given his biggest result was in Legacy, partly given how strong he is mechanically and how fast Legacy is and how demanding in that capacity. I think soO is a player who’s waxed and waned a bit with Legacy metas, whereas $o$ it’s the game itself that didn’t suit him. Yeah, it's on the players. The problem is that due to lack of new talent there's nobody who takes the spots as top championship contenders of declined soO/Inno, making tournaments objectively easier to win. Regarding soO I just think that his big weakness (lategame and spellcaster control) is something HotS Zerg could get away with but definitely not LotV Zerg. I know he won IEM Katowice but that was more of a flash in the pan result compared to his consistent excellence in HotS Well, there is Serral 2018, Dark 2019, Rogue 2020, Reynor 2021, Serral a 2nd time in 2022 and Oliveira 2023. That is 6 world champions for 7 years, a similar rate to WCSs 2017 and before with 5 champions in 6 years. Plus, you got MaxPax who only plays online, Clem who is getting better and better. Maru wins a lot, but herO, Shin, Solar, GuMiho, Cure, Bunny and Zest all pop up in Premier Tournaments as winner or runner up in the last two years. In my opinion we saw a lot new talent (MaxPax, Clem, Reynor, Serral) to replace them, as well as veterans still going strong or becoming even stronger (Oliveira, Maru, GuMiho, Shin, Cure, hero, Solar). As a matter of fact, one talent and one veteran that are extreme outliers. The thrones of Premier Tournaments would be much more fought for, if those two didn't exist. But in my opinion that isn't an issue of new talent (as Serral is the new talent post-2018) but simply a matter of dominance portrayed by Maru and Serral. In terms of serious championship contenders: Today: Serral, Reynor, Clem, Maru, Dark, herO Everyone else you would be extremely surprised to see win -I wouldn't include Oliveira, because he only ever won 1 premier tournament in 1 finals appearance (otherwise you could also include Flash etc in the 2015 list). 2015: PartinG, Rain, Classic, Zest, sOs, herO, Maru, Inno, soO, Life, ByuL None of them would've been a big surprise to win a big tournament. In terms of 2nd tier players who could cause an upset to the top contenders the gap would be even bigger
I think Rogue is getting there again hopefully (in terms of players you would not be surprised to see win)
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France12738 Posts
On July 22 2024 20:40 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. You're lowering the value of Maru's first GSL win because NoRegret qualified? In MVP's first GSL win, Choya got Top 8... the skill level of most SC2 players in 2011 was not very high. Just look at all the GSL players who qualified and quickly faded away or failed to qualify again. I would say that's a sign that the players qualifying were at a low level, than to say that the field was very deep and competitive. There's a clear gap between the players who knew how to play a decent macro game, like MVP and Nestea, and players like Choya, InCa, and whoever the heck jookTo is. "Macro game" is an outdated term / not precise enough lol. It's more about "playstyle" and how you like to play the game -> you can start with cheesy strats and it can evolve into a macro game. Is being good at playing "macro games" that start weird (ie. changing timings) better or worse than being good at the "macro games" that start with "macro builds" / passive strats (fast CC or whatever is "meta")? Similarly, when zerg had an utterly broken / OP composition (ie. broodlord infestor), the game in TvZ was often about the terran trying to find a way to kill the zerg before he got to that compo, while the zerg tried to survive / "get there" for his win condition. The that were players "good" at getting there, but worse in other compartiments of the game (for example being in the driver seat, or whatever), were they less skillfull than those who thrived in chaos/creating game?
All in all, different eras / patchs (extensions) rewarded different skill sets. If you think Choya / InCa / jookTo were bad players / not skilled, you are being naïve imho. Or you simply weren't around / following GSL + other tourneys during that era, because those guys were actually strong.
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On July 22 2024 21:10 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 16:27 Parser wrote:On July 22 2024 01:05 Charoisaur wrote:But in my opinion, this whole reasoning is ludicrous to begin with. As stated above, Serral played many of the best the 2015-era had to offer. 3x World Champion sOs, 1x World Champion Zest, 3x World Champion Rogue, 1x World Champion PartinG, 1x World Champion TY, Classic, TaeJa, Trap, Creator, soO as well as INnoVation. Serral is still is battling World Champions ByuN, and Dark as well as herO, Cure, Stats, Solar and Maru on a regular basis who all were relevant in 2015 already. On top, Serral was able to fend of new talents such as World Champion Reynor or Clem and MaxPax.
And how many of those were in their peak when they faced Serral? The versions of sOs, PartinG, TaeJa, Zest, ByuN, INnoVation and soO that Serral faced were nowhere near their peak. That's like taking Serrals negative record against Dayshi and Jaedong as an argument. Yeah, Serral is the most dominant player ever and probably has the best case to be the Goat due to no player really sticking out during the most competitive period but you can't derive from him beating players way past their peak that he would beat them at their peak too, that argument makes 0 sense. That argument of the supposed peak in skill of someone does not make sense. In a game/sport based only on 1 vs 1 confrontation you can just compare players using their results as data. There is no correlation between numbers of competitors and skill. More than that, I would say that continuously training made the players raw skill great with the time passing (trying to clarify: if we had a time machine and we took a middle of the pack player of today and, for example, MVP from 2011, the latter would be destroyed because of the way better knowledge of the have of the former). So the only data we should take into account when comparing players should be their results (probably weighted on the importance of tourneys from which that results came) not the year in which that results were achieved. So you think Soulkey winning an ASL in 2024 is worth the same as someone winning an OSL/MSL in 2010? Or Happy winning the biggest WC3 tournament in 2024 compared to someone winning the biggest tournament in 2008. Competitiveness of the scene has to matter, otherwise you punish those who peaked when it was harder to win tournaments, when there were way more full time players and professionalized scene
I don't follow BW nor WC3 to be able to answer your question. Defining the competitiveness of a scene could be the harder thing to do in the kind of analysis i have proposed. I would relate the competitiveness of an era to something like the prize pool per premier tourney. I have the feeling that prize pool per premier tourney nowaday is the highest it has ever been (because there are lesser tourneys but still some of them have very high prize pool) so I would rate today competitiveness of the scene to be at its higher because players have very few occasion to get the very important cheques. To be more clear I would say that in 2024 Katowice or Riyadh masters will be way more important in the legacy of a player than any number of GSL (won in this year).
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On July 22 2024 22:37 Parser wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 21:10 Charoisaur wrote:On July 22 2024 16:27 Parser wrote:On July 22 2024 01:05 Charoisaur wrote:But in my opinion, this whole reasoning is ludicrous to begin with. As stated above, Serral played many of the best the 2015-era had to offer. 3x World Champion sOs, 1x World Champion Zest, 3x World Champion Rogue, 1x World Champion PartinG, 1x World Champion TY, Classic, TaeJa, Trap, Creator, soO as well as INnoVation. Serral is still is battling World Champions ByuN, and Dark as well as herO, Cure, Stats, Solar and Maru on a regular basis who all were relevant in 2015 already. On top, Serral was able to fend of new talents such as World Champion Reynor or Clem and MaxPax.
And how many of those were in their peak when they faced Serral? The versions of sOs, PartinG, TaeJa, Zest, ByuN, INnoVation and soO that Serral faced were nowhere near their peak. That's like taking Serrals negative record against Dayshi and Jaedong as an argument. Yeah, Serral is the most dominant player ever and probably has the best case to be the Goat due to no player really sticking out during the most competitive period but you can't derive from him beating players way past their peak that he would beat them at their peak too, that argument makes 0 sense. That argument of the supposed peak in skill of someone does not make sense. In a game/sport based only on 1 vs 1 confrontation you can just compare players using their results as data. There is no correlation between numbers of competitors and skill. More than that, I would say that continuously training made the players raw skill great with the time passing (trying to clarify: if we had a time machine and we took a middle of the pack player of today and, for example, MVP from 2011, the latter would be destroyed because of the way better knowledge of the have of the former). So the only data we should take into account when comparing players should be their results (probably weighted on the importance of tourneys from which that results came) not the year in which that results were achieved. So you think Soulkey winning an ASL in 2024 is worth the same as someone winning an OSL/MSL in 2010? Or Happy winning the biggest WC3 tournament in 2024 compared to someone winning the biggest tournament in 2008. Competitiveness of the scene has to matter, otherwise you punish those who peaked when it was harder to win tournaments, when there were way more full time players and professionalized scene I don't follow BW nor WC3 to be able to answer your question. Defining the competitiveness of a scene could be the harder thing to do in the kind of analysis i have proposed. I would relate the competitiveness of an era to something like the prize pool per premier tourney. I have the feeling that prize pool per premier tourney nowaday is the highest it has ever been (because there are lesser tourneys but still some of them have very high prize pool) so I would rate today competitiveness of the scene to be at its higher because players have very few occasion to get the very important cheques. To be more clear I would say that in 2024 Katowice or Riyadh masters will be way more important in the legacy of a player than any number of GSL (won in this year). Saudi blood money being parachuted into the scene doesn't suddenly make the scene more competitive. That's a ridiculous take.
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I am a long time StarCraft 2 fan and have a background in critical thinking as I was part of many debate clubs Potent "I took a few undergraduate courses in philosophy" energy.
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France12738 Posts
On July 22 2024 23:12 Biedrik wrote:Show nested quote +I am a long time StarCraft 2 fan and have a background in critical thinking as I was part of many debate clubs Potent "I took a few undergraduate courses in philosophy" energy. I mean it's interesting work even though Maru is still the obvious GOAT
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On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote: You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish.
This is blatantly untrue and is addressed at length in Premo's post. How about you try reading it before starting arguments in the comments?
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On July 23 2024 00:36 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote: You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. This is blatantly untrue and is addressed at length in Premo's post. How about you try reading it before starting arguments in the comments? I did read it.
He hasn't done it.
Not what I'm talking about anyway.
Maybe you're the one who needs to read posts before starting arguments?
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In regards to winrate comparisons I'd be curious to see the comparisons done by # of series instead of calendar year. I have no doubt Serral still comes out on top but I'm pretty sure it would close the gaps considerably. In 2018 for example Serral had his crazy 86% series winrate against Koreans but he only played 28 series total. I would wonder what's Maru's peak 28 series winrate.
It'd be a pain to gather that though. I think it would be a more honest comparison because Serral's vs Korea series winrate is inflated for some of those years due to only having to play a small number of series that mostly happened in EU or at world championships which he is always peaking for. He never had to play any Koreans during his rare slumps because he usually skipped the closest global events during those times.
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On July 22 2024 21:49 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 20:40 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. You're lowering the value of Maru's first GSL win because NoRegret qualified? In MVP's first GSL win, Choya got Top 8... the skill level of most SC2 players in 2011 was not very high. Just look at all the GSL players who qualified and quickly faded away or failed to qualify again. I would say that's a sign that the players qualifying were at a low level, than to say that the field was very deep and competitive. There's a clear gap between the players who knew how to play a decent macro game, like MVP and Nestea, and players like Choya, InCa, and whoever the heck jookTo is. "Macro game" is an outdated term / not precise enough lol. It's more about "playstyle" and how you like to play the game -> you can start with cheesy strats and it can evolve into a macro game. Is being good at playing "macro games" that start weird (ie. changing timings) better or worse than being good at the "macro games" that start with "macro builds" / passive strats (fast CC or whatever is "meta")? Similarly, when zerg had an utterly broken / OP composition (ie. broodlord infestor), the game in TvZ was often about the terran trying to find a way to kill the zerg before he got to that compo, while the zerg tried to survive / "get there" for his win condition. The that were players "good" at getting there, but worse in other compartiments of the game (for example being in the driver seat, or whatever), were they less skillfull than those who thrived in chaos/creating game? All in all, different eras / patchs (extensions) rewarded different skill sets. If you think Choya / InCa / jookTo were bad players / not skilled, you are being naïve imho. Or you simply weren't around / following GSL + other tourneys during that era, because those guys were actually strong.
Macro game is a very reasonable term.
In WoL, there ended up not being many good aggressive openers, especially once the maps figured out how to be more standard and stable. Terrans would open with the same hellion banshee all the time and be pretty much completely safe in TvZ, they would open with a 1/1/1 or expo into 1/1/1 in TvT and as long as they got their tanks up and split and vikings up they'd be safe vs all harass. There was often not much happening til players started trying to get 3rd bases.
If you knew how to play macro and not lose to 1 base plays or early harass builds, then you were ahead.
Choya was not at all strong. He was maybe decent for a couple seasons but quickly fell off. Like most players.
It's really tiring hearing people say "you weren't around back then / didn't watch the scene closely" just cus you have a different opinion.
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On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. I didn't account for any of that? I assumed all things to be equal across all eras and expansions? I gave all tournaments pre-2015 in placements, average place and tournament win rate a 50% buff. Efficiency score also directly is affected by that decision. This buff is utterly over the top and it still didn't put anyone close to Serral. In not a single metric. On top of that, GSLs till 2020 are the best rated tournaments, directly behind World Championships, which is another thing I accounted for.
As I said before: We can put a lot of random questions to the GOAT debate and we can discuss each and every one (give buffs to foreigners as they didn't have multi million dollar industry behind them, give penalties to players who were only able to dominate a very short time, give creativity points to Mvp). We can add all kinds of irrelevant and random factors to this list. All of that does not alter the big picture. Why? Because all you do with it is shift percentage points from one side to the other. It does not matter, as two players stand out massively and even if you give unreasonable buffs to everyone else, their statistics cannot be touched.
If you say that I can't answer the GOAT debate through data alone: What is missing? Who is on the table and why? And just to be clear about one thing: There is an extensive section that talks about subjective influence. So it should be obvious, that I did not only consider data.
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On July 22 2024 23:12 Biedrik wrote:Show nested quote +I am a long time StarCraft 2 fan and have a background in critical thinking as I was part of many debate clubs Potent "I took a few undergraduate courses in philosophy" energy. Nah, I'm a dentist But I love dissecting topics and critical thinking.
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France12738 Posts
On July 23 2024 01:50 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 21:49 Poopi wrote:On July 22 2024 20:40 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:On July 22 2024 20:17 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 17:58 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 17:08 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 16:31 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:56 MJG wrote:On July 22 2024 15:29 PremoBeats wrote:On July 22 2024 15:23 MJG wrote: “If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything”. Not sure how serious your comment is, but in which of my 7 metrics that were analyzed did you see me "torture data"? Did you read the article? Did you understand that the data regarding the person which came out on top was penalized pr "tortured" the most? By far? That's exactly the point, you only analysed seven metrics! I'm sure I could find seven metrics that would give Has as the correct answer if I tried hard enough! I was being facetious and I thought it was pretty obvious...No amount of statistical analysis is likely to change my opinion that Legacy of the Void is a balance/design shitshow. It's the videogaming equivalent of getting 100m sprinters to wear clown shoes. Fun and entertaining? Sure. Provides useful data for measuring accomplishments? Definitely not. Why would you say that LotV is a balance shitshow? What exactly do you mean by it? There is extensive data about balancing out there.... but as you said: You seem to have pre-formed opinion that isn't likely to change. Luckily for me, I've already posted about Legacy of the Void's design problems elsewhere, so I'll quote it here: We had two versions of the game where a general overview of Starcraft 2 strategy would tell us that Zerg is the race that benefits most from being able to take faster expansions, from having larger maps, from having more open maps, and from the game being less "deathbally". Legacy of the Void was specifically designed so that we need to take faster expansions, so that the maps are generally larger, so that the maps are generally more open, and so that the game is significantly less "deathbally". Zerg has gone on to win more money than any other race in Legacy of the Void. This is going to read as balance whine, but I don't think it's a balance issue. No amount of tweaking unit stats is going to make a significant difference to core design flaws that result from Blizzard's decision to move to a 12 worker start and fewer minerals per base... EDIT: I'm definitely sceptical that statistics are capable of telling us who the GOAT is. They can definitely weed out people who shouldn't be in the conversation, but there are so many subjective factors that also deserve to be part of the conversation. Here are some examples: - How much harder are prep-tournament than weekend-tournaments? How do you factor this into the statistics?
- How much harder are team-leagues when snipers can be prepared?
- How important are team-league statistics compared to individual-league statistics?
- How much more pressure does a player feel when playing in the GSL studio than when playing at a LAN?
- How much more important than everything else was GSL in the early days?
- How quickly did the importance of GSL wane with time?
- How important is sustained dominance in a period where barely any new talent is coming through? Does the fact that the NesTea award has been achieved many more times in Legacy of the Void demonstrate that the lack of new talent coming through has made sustained success easier?
- How did losing Korean team-houses post-Proleague affect talent development in Korea?
- How much has balance impacted on win-rates at various points in time? Or game design choices? Or map-pools?
It's admirable - and I said this about Mizenhauer's attempt as well - that you're trying to only use statistics. But it's ultimately a losing effort when there are so so so so so many subjective factors that should also be considered. A statistical analysis can give Serral or Maru or whoever else as the answer all it wants, I couldn't care less. All things are influenced by contexts, but that does not mean, that they are less real or immeasurable. You haven't tried to account for any of that context though. You've simply assumed that all things are equal across all eras and expansions, and then treated the numbers as absolute. It should be obvious to everyone here that all eras and expansions are not equal, and so treating the numbers as absolute is somewhat foolish. Mvp is an obvious example where handwaving away all the subjective context is silly. Mvp was dominant in a time period were simply reaching GSL was a massive achievement, and new stars were frequently bursting onto the scene. In comparison, Maru's first GSL win was in a tournament that NoRegret qualified for. Not to dunk too hard on NoRegret, but those are not comparable data sets, and I'm sure there are lots of examples of other data sets that don't deserve to be taken into equal consideration. I'm also sure that every one of those examples is going to be incredibly subjective. So torture the data all you like, you can't answer the GOAT question through data alone. You're lowering the value of Maru's first GSL win because NoRegret qualified? In MVP's first GSL win, Choya got Top 8... the skill level of most SC2 players in 2011 was not very high. Just look at all the GSL players who qualified and quickly faded away or failed to qualify again. I would say that's a sign that the players qualifying were at a low level, than to say that the field was very deep and competitive. There's a clear gap between the players who knew how to play a decent macro game, like MVP and Nestea, and players like Choya, InCa, and whoever the heck jookTo is. "Macro game" is an outdated term / not precise enough lol. It's more about "playstyle" and how you like to play the game -> you can start with cheesy strats and it can evolve into a macro game. Is being good at playing "macro games" that start weird (ie. changing timings) better or worse than being good at the "macro games" that start with "macro builds" / passive strats (fast CC or whatever is "meta")? Similarly, when zerg had an utterly broken / OP composition (ie. broodlord infestor), the game in TvZ was often about the terran trying to find a way to kill the zerg before he got to that compo, while the zerg tried to survive / "get there" for his win condition. The that were players "good" at getting there, but worse in other compartiments of the game (for example being in the driver seat, or whatever), were they less skillfull than those who thrived in chaos/creating game? All in all, different eras / patchs (extensions) rewarded different skill sets. If you think Choya / InCa / jookTo were bad players / not skilled, you are being naïve imho. Or you simply weren't around / following GSL + other tourneys during that era, because those guys were actually strong. Macro game is a very reasonable term. In WoL, there ended up not being many good aggressive openers, especially once the maps figured out how to be more standard and stable. Terrans would open with the same hellion banshee all the time and be pretty much completely safe in TvZ, they would open with a 1/1/1 or expo into 1/1/1 in TvT and as long as they got their tanks up and split and vikings up they'd be safe vs all harass. There was often not much happening til players started trying to get 3rd bases. If you knew how to play macro and not lose to 1 base plays or early harass builds, then you were ahead. Choya was not at all strong. He was maybe decent for a couple seasons but quickly fell off. Like most players. It's really tiring hearing people say "you weren't around back then / didn't watch the scene closely" just cus you have a different opinion. Then define strong? Bomber STRUGGLED for a long time to have good results in GSL / tournaments but he was known to be a monster in practice / ladder etc. Does that mean he wasn’t strong when his results were good? I am not saying Choya was the strongest sc2 player back then but dismissing is skill is a bit disrespectful / naive. FireCake was pretty « bad » / unsuccessful at Super Smash Bros Melee prior to playing sc2/WoL, but he managed to get decent results in StarCraft 2. Sometimes it’s about form / motivation or whatever.
All in all my point is mainly that you can’t dismiss a tournament results because you think InCa reaching a finals + you think InCa is bad means the whole tournament is invalid
Context matters a lot ; and InCa was strong in that particular tournament You didn’t get to the finals of a GSL / ro8 by luck alone
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On July 23 2024 01:56 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 23:12 Biedrik wrote:I am a long time StarCraft 2 fan and have a background in critical thinking as I was part of many debate clubs Potent "I took a few undergraduate courses in philosophy" energy. Nah, I'm a dentist But I love dissecting topics and critical thinking.
Oh, that explains a lot! That's why you can "torture" statistics so effectively and carefully that some comments here seems to me like some people would be throwing statistical approach out altogether. Needless to say that without stats this whole topic is just an aetheric smell of anesthetics in a lobby of a dentist's practice, scent that cannot cover desperate screams behind the door of operating room: "No, noooooooo! Aaaaaaargh! Noooo!"
If the data of player achievements is a bread and statistics are the teeth for eating that bread, one cannot do that without the teeth. Hardly even speak on the topic, in any rational, logical, critical, or meaningful ways. That apply over whole data set, like a mold spreading over that bread. Solf, easier to digest, yeah.
1-0 for Serral.
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On July 23 2024 01:56 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 22 2024 23:12 Biedrik wrote:I am a long time StarCraft 2 fan and have a background in critical thinking as I was part of many debate clubs Potent "I took a few undergraduate courses in philosophy" energy. Nah, I'm a dentist But I love dissecting topics and critical thinking.
Since you seem to be fairly active in this thread, may I ask if you thought at any point that aligulac could be skewed? I'm looking at this part of your discussion:
1. Serral has occupied either Rank 1 or 2 since Dec 2017/List 2023 when he claimed rank 1 for the first time (he only lost it on list 369 and 370 due to the start of his military service where a break in playing signed him as inactive).
2. Maru lost rank 2 in that same time frame to several people including Dark, Reynor, Clem and MaxPax.
Serral won his first premier event in Jan 2018, then got top 8 at iem, and then won his second premier event (both european esls) in June 2018. You saw all this data. You don't see anything wrong with a player jumping to no1/2 without winning premier events?
The maru point follows a similar pattern, streaky reynor overtakes maru, so does clem, and so does maxpax, a player who has never won a premier event in his whole career.
Your statistical analysis highlights a giant hole in aligulac's rating system, yet I don't see this mentioned anywhere (if you already addressed this I apologize)
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