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The StarCraft 2 GOAT - An in-depth analysis - Page 7
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AlexGano
24 Posts
User was warned for this post | ||
lokol4890
96 Posts
On July 24 2024 02:01 onPHYRE wrote: Currently at 56. Serral is at nearly 80%… Dominating just like every other measurable metric. Again, your sample is not big enough to even represent a population of 100 people. But sure, let's throw common sense out the door and use this as another metric for serral being the goat... | ||
DarkPlasmaBall
United States42892 Posts
On July 21 2024 23:49 Waxangel wrote: I'm amused that the Mizenhauer series turned the GOAT argument from an occasional enthusiast topic into something people REALLY like to talk about Mizenhauer is definitely the GoaT. | ||
Starcloud
133 Posts
On July 24 2024 08:56 Tommy131313 wrote: Well, it's always the same... if people don't like the result of statistics / math, they usually say "your calculation is wrong". When you prove that the calculation is correct, they usually say "then the numbers are fake". When you prove that the numbers are correct, then they say "numbers are not all and everything". And when you admit to the argument and reduce the importance of numbers for the conclusion by some percentage, they tend to say "those numbers mean nothing at all". In the end it's just a lenghty way to say "I don't care what numbers say, I have my opinion made by my personal preference, reality doesn't bother me" @PremoBeats: don't waste your time arguing, you can't convince fanboys with numbers Thanks a lot for your hard work and detailed analysis! 10000% this ! Numbers dont lie. There are of course some preferences that can be adjusted (stronger era etc..), but they cant overwrite the numbers. But like Tommy said, you cant argue with believers. On July 24 2024 11:09 lokol4890 wrote: Again, your sample is not big enough to even represent a population of 100 people. But sure, let's throw common sense out the door and use this as another metric for serral being the goat... That sample is small, yes, but that wasnt the point of the discussion. Another metric ?? You realize that almost EVERY metric there can be points out Serral being the best player of all time. Why does it bother you ? On July 23 2024 23:58 Charoisaur wrote: At the end of the day we can never tell, but imo if Life didn't get banned he'd with 95% certainty the Goat now. Where does this "Life"-wind suddenly come from? Surely, guy was talented and all but these kind of predictions are just insane. He never even played Maru/Rogue/Serral on their prime either and prolly didnt have the stamina to last long in the scene anyways. Still of course shame that he ruined his career. Would have been super-exciting to see him stay in the scene longer. | ||
PremoBeats
181 Posts
On July 24 2024 00:04 ejozl wrote: So the reason for me that Serral isn't necessarily the goat is this: For me tournament result is the only objective measure of balance, at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how much you crush the other guy, it is about taking home the trophy. The results should be how you leave your mark on the game. Rogue punching above his weight class is just as impressive, as were it the case that he always played at this level, even on ladder. This was the same for Stats, the best Toss of LotV, he was infamously low on the ladder. It was the opposite for sOs, everyone and their mother feared sOs, but when it came to the tournament, in LotV that is, he would falter. You didn't counter the balance issue properly, not that you HAVE to address this issue, you could say that if you look at it objectively, this means that you should disregard balance. But honestly, you said that if you remove Maru and Serral the biggest outliers. that the game would be pretty damned balance. If you remove herO, Protoss as a race didn't win GSL, or a higher tier caliber tournament since, after 2017. The list of players who did, excluding herO, Maru and Serral are: Oliveira, Solar, Cure, Gumiho, SoO, Scarlett, INnoVation, Dark, Reynor, Rogue and TY. 11 players and no Protoss. I wouldn't fault a person for simply excluding 2018+ years out of the GOAT debate, simply because it holds little value to be the GOAT of a 2x race game. The argument for Serral not playing the most competitive era is tough. If SC2 almost died, but the online competitive scene continued with Maxpax dominating it for 50 years. People would argue that maxpax would be the GOAT, but the time that he played would've been simply too different, so who's really to say. Let me write the timeline for GOATage: MC/MVP -> Life -> sOs -> INnoVation -> Maru -> Serral You can argue some names should be here or there, but the overarching picture is like this. So, if we say that the end of HotS is the peak of competitiveness then that removes MC/MVP. So now it is a spectrum of how much you value the time from after the Kespa abandonment. If you say life is meaningless after Kespa, Life is your GOAT, if you still value the era up and including to 2017, then INnoVation is your GOAT, then there is 2020+ where Blizzcon wasn't there anymore and so on and depending on how much you value the different scenes you could put either Life, sOs, INnoVation, Maru or Serral as your GOAT. If you do put Serral, Maru and Rogue in the top 3, as most people do, with possibly Dark, or INnoVation as the 4th spot, then I would consider Serral the GOAT, since the scene that includes Serral, Rogue and Maru is from 2017+. And wouldn't this in turn make 2017+ the most valuable era?, you could argue that Life couldn't be the GOAT because he didn't get to witness the Serral, Rogue and Maru peaks. So based on your observation that Protoss has no wins in high tier tournaments: Does that mean that neither a Terran nor Zerg can be GOAT? But you realize that even under the assumption that Protoss could not win (assuming T and Z were more or less balanced), a T or Z would still have to beat the other race and mirrors? I am gathering more data on balance and era, so give me some time. I'll definitely address this better next time. On July 23 2024 12:35 onPHYRE wrote: I think this discussion can be best summarized by “If you use numbers and qualitative data, it’s clear Serral is the GOAT.” If you want to discuss things that cannot be quantified then the only real competitor to Serral is Maru and depending on what you value in a GOAT and what metrics are used, you could chose either player. However if you look at all of the metrics, Serral wins most of them, which explains why the community and current pros from a pure numbers standpoint back Serral much more often. The whole vocal minority argument comes in to play here.. I would honestly be so curious to see the answer to a true poll of people choosing who they think is the GOAT. I genuinely think it would be Serral at 65-70% of the community. In my opinion the poll is layed out wrongly. Because most people who are against Serral mostly argue about era. Meaning even if their GOAT was Mvp, they would much more likely settle with Maru. From what I learned (having written a couple of pieces on reddit and one here): Life, Mvp and Maru are the names people drop. I will prepare another article, where I will prepare Life's and Mvp's numbers in perfect alignment with my previous list and will also add some data to more accurately pin down era-variance. But for the next poll: Put these 4 on... It is my intuition that Maru's votes will go down much more than Serral's (or people, as they now have read this will troll me and still vote Maru ) | ||
Poopi
France12738 Posts
On July 24 2024 13:25 Starcloud wrote: That sample is small, yes, but that wasnt the point of the discussion. Another metric ?? You realize that almost EVERY metric there can be points out Serral being the best player of all time. Why does it bother you ? Best not necessarily == greatest And even then, I don't think he would have reached as much success with terran over the years Maru is still the GOAT in my head, but I must admit that I have a soft spot for INnoVation in my heart as well | ||
Charoisaur
Germany15805 Posts
On July 24 2024 13:25 Starcloud wrote: 10000% this ! Numbers dont lie. There are of course some preferences that can be adjusted (stronger era etc..), but they cant overwrite the numbers. But like Tommy said, you cant argue with believers. That sample is small, yes, but that wasnt the point of the discussion. Another metric ?? You realize that almost EVERY metric there can be points out Serral being the best player of all time. Why does it bother you ? Where does this "Life"-wind suddenly come from? Surely, guy was talented and all but these kind of predictions are just insane. He never even played Maru/Rogue/Serral on their prime either and prolly didnt have the stamina to last long in the scene anyways. Still of course shame that he ruined his career. Would have been super-exciting to see him stay in the scene longer. Maybe because he won 10 premier tournaments at the age of 18? Maru won 2 tournaments at that age (I know, he barely played overseas and probably wasn't that far behind Life). But still, nobody at that age was close to being as good as him, he's just the most talented player who has ever touched the game. | ||
Starcloud
133 Posts
On July 24 2024 16:52 Poopi wrote: Best not necessarily == greatest And even then, I don't think he would have reached as much success with terran over the years Maru is still the GOAT in my head, but I must admit that I have a soft spot for INnoVation in my heart as well Okay, so 2 parts in this. I have kinda hard time to understand how Best is not the Greatest ? Maru is a legendary player with many unique skills. He also has many, many, memorable games. He has had this "invincible" aura in Korea. BUT.....he hasnt won World Championship yet and he gets stomped by Serral time after time. Also almost every player in the field says that Serral is the goat. How is Maru greater than that ? Second point. There is no way of proving that one way or another. In addition, Serral hasnt got any clear weaknesses in his game. If he would have devoted himself to another race, would he be actually even stronger (or weaker) ? There is no way of telling that and imo this point doesnt even belong to the debate itself. Innovation was a wrecking ball that destoyed almost anybody in his prime. Was rooting for him any time he was in a tournament actually. Except when he later on collided with Serral of course. | ||
UnLarva
456 Posts
Quote from the Analysis: 1. World Championships and World Championship Level events. This category includes WCS Global Finals, BlizzCons and IEM World Championships after 2018, representing the most prestigious events of the world, where the best of the best compete. This category has a multiplier of 1,1. 2. GSL Code S, OSL, SSL until 2020 come in at a value of 1. The separation to later GSLs was made due to the restructuring of the tournament after 2020 Code S season 3 where player amount and difficulty of advancing was diminished a lot. 3. ESL Masters as well as DreamHack Season Finals from 2020 onwards, Master’s Coliseum. In contrast to Mizenhauer I devalued these events slightly in comparison to Code S, OSL and SSL. Although DH Last Chance 2022 (won by Maru), DH Last Chance 2021 (Serral 2nd place) as well as Master’s Coliseum 6 and 7 (both won by Serral) could have easily been upgraded to category 2 as the average player rank was simply absurd. MC6 had an Ro8 average of 4,75 and MC7 of 5,75 with 4,5 being the lowest possible score. These two tournaments were simply filled with the best the world had to offer until the very last moment. But out of respect to the old era (which again is a small added buff to this time) I devalued this category slightly at 0,95. This decision again disfaors Serral the most. 4. GSL Code S 2021 and following, GSL vs the World, WESG. The WESG should have been positioned in category 5 according to the involved players in Ro16 and Ro8 but was given an upward correction to category 4, as the prize pool was insane. GSL vs the world was corrected downward from category 3. Although the best of the world competed, the tournament structure was rather simple and it is widely regarded as a “show tournament” despite the best of the world attending. This category is a good example of my thought processes as for example 2013 DreamHack Open: Bucharest was corrected upward as only one player lowered the average score immensely. Lastly: 2013 WCS Season 1 was corrected upwards for era-reasonings, as it would have been placed in category 6 following the average player count. Category 4 is valued 0,8. 5. Category 5 includes random events such as King of Battles, miscellaneous Afreeca TV tournaments or ESL Masters locked regionals. Value: 0,85. 6. Mostly region-locked ESLs and HomeStoryCups which see another sharp decrease in value: 0,7. 7. This category only includes the Gold Professional Championship 2019 Season 1, which has the worst Ro16 and Ro8 ratings (86,38 and 44,75) as well as low price money. Nothing to write home about… sorry INnoVation, I can only multiply this tournament at 0,5. Is there an error (bolded) in either relative values of Category 4 and Category 5 relative weights? Is it just typo in the text, or is that error also included to the math? Not that it would make one iota difference in the big picture, but asking for clarity, as one would expect Cat 4 being weighted higher than Cat 5. | ||
allmotor1
148 Posts
On July 24 2024 13:25 Starcloud wrote: 10000% this ! Numbers dont lie. There are of course some preferences that can be adjusted (stronger era etc..), but they cant overwrite the numbers. But like Tommy said, you cant argue with believers. That sample is small, yes, but that wasnt the point of the discussion. Another metric ?? You realize that almost EVERY metric there can be points out Serral being the best player of all time. Why does it bother you ? Where does this "Life"-wind suddenly come from? Surely, guy was talented and all but these kind of predictions are just insane. He never even played Maru/Rogue/Serral on their prime either and prolly didnt have the stamina to last long in the scene anyways. Still of course shame that he ruined his career. Would have been super-exciting to see him stay in the scene longer. The Life wind didn't come out suddenly. He's seared into the minds of anybody who's watched him play. That dude was legit and a freak. Did you watch him play back in the day? He was absolutely insane. He was winning tourneys left and right and I believe his earnings were well on track to be the highest earner if not already at the time he was playing. His playstyle was absolutely suited for legacy of the void. Zero doubt if Life didn't do what he did and get himself banned and if he continued to play (I think that's a safe assumption considering most Korean sc2 pros who win do stay) he would have absolutely dominated in LOTV. | ||
njleslu2024
57 Posts
On July 24 2024 11:09 lokol4890 wrote: Again, your sample is not big enough to even represent a population of 100 people. But sure, let's throw common sense out the door and use this as another metric for serral being the goat... Lowko did a poll on X, including 27 thousands people and Serral still has 80%, more sample size more advantage for Serral | ||
allmotor1
148 Posts
On July 24 2024 18:43 Charoisaur wrote: Maybe because he won 10 premier tournaments at the age of 18? Maru won 2 tournaments at that age (I know, he barely played overseas and probably wasn't that far behind Life). But still, nobody at that age was close to being as good as him, he's just the most talented player who has ever touched the game. This is the tragedy of what Life did. Not only damage sc2 but we missed out on him playing and cementing his legacy. | ||
UnLarva
456 Posts
On July 24 2024 21:50 njleslu2024 wrote: Lowko did a poll on X, including 27 thousands people and Serral still has 80%, more sample size more advantage for Serral While I assume that result is highly indicative, it is also selection biased toward foreign scene: it can be expected that there are relatively more Serral fans participating to the poll than there are Maru fans (due the forum) compared to the true ratio between them (what ever it maybe be). | ||
Blitzball04
84 Posts
I usually just ignore the Maru goats talks since most of them have no idea what they are talking about. World championship and Dominancr over his/her peers is how we measure greatness. Not some silly overrated GSL the few fans are desperately holding onto for argument sakes MVP is a top 20 players of all time. WOL was disgusting overpower for terrans. Anyways big thanks for the in depth analyze, which pretty much sums up everything User was warned for this post. | ||
ejozl
Denmark3268 Posts
On July 24 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote: So based on your observation that Protoss has no wins in high tier tournaments: Does that mean that neither a Terran nor Zerg can be GOAT? But you realize that even under the assumption that Protoss could not win (assuming T and Z were more or less balanced), a T or Z would still have to beat the other race and mirrors? I am gathering more data on balance and era, so give me some time. I'll definitely address this better next time. In my opinion the poll is layed out wrongly. Because most people who are against Serral mostly argue about era. Meaning even if their GOAT was Mvp, they would much more likely settle with Maru. From what I learned (having written a couple of pieces on reddit and one here): Life, Mvp and Maru are the names people drop. I will prepare another article, where I will prepare Life's and Mvp's numbers in perfect alignment with my previous list and will also add some data to more accurately pin down era-variance. But for the next poll: Put these 4 on... It is my intuition that Maru's votes will go down much more than Serral's (or people, as they now have read this will troll me and still vote Maru ) Yes, even if serral and maru dominated and zvz,tvt,tvz is perfectly balanced and that 2 out of the 3 matchups were balanced, it still puts a huge asterix on their reign. You yourself stated it as an impressive feat that mvp, taeja, byun, serral and innovation were the top in all of their 3 matchups. Well, if you can exclude mvp and serral out of this because of balance issues, then that means only 3 ppl achieved this: inno, byun and taeja. And you can go deeper, the way that serral plays, could he have achieved what Life did in a meta where zergs couldn't rely on surperior late game and could wax-on, wax-off every attack like some Karate kid, to achieve a sure win? I think not, but i'this also goes both ways, were perhaps Life or sOs simply lucky when they garnered their big wins, due to their gambling-like playstyles? No zerg could've won as dominantly as serral in lotv, but he could've also not dominated the way he did, playing as another race, or in a different era, and this is why winning in different eras is so impressive as well. Like I said, sOs, Life, inno, maru and serral are the best candidates for #1 goat spot, that doesn't mean that these players should all be in the top 5 though. | ||
PremoBeats
181 Posts
On July 24 2024 21:37 UnLarva wrote: @Premobeast Quote from the Analysis: Is there an error (bolded) in either relative values of Category 4 and Category 5 relative weights? Is it just typo in the text, or is that error also included to the math? Not that it would make one iota difference in the big picture, but asking for clarity, as one would expect Cat 4 being weighted higher than Cat 5. Good catch! Yeah, I fucked up while writing it down... the "code" (my excel sheet) has it correctly as there, everything is standing neatly below each other. Will change it. On July 24 2024 21:50 njleslu2024 wrote: Lowko did a poll on X, including 27 thousands people and Serral still has 80%, more sample size more advantage for Serral To be fair... I don't think too many Koreans participated in that vote But then again... how many Koreans hear about viable pro-Serral arguments. Does anyone know what the overall Korean take on the GOAT-issue is? On July 24 2024 23:40 ejozl wrote: Yes, even if serral and maru dominated and zvz,tvt,tvz is perfectly balanced and that 2 out of the 3 matchups were balanced, it still puts a huge asterix on their reign. You yourself stated it as an impressive feat that mvp, taeja, byun, serral and innovation were the top in all of their 3 matchups. Well, if you can exclude mvp and serral out of this because of balance issues, then that means only 3 ppl achieved this: inno, byun and taeja. And you can go deeper, the way that serral plays, could he have achieved what Life did in a meta where zergs couldn't rely on surperior late game and could wax-on, wax-off every attack like some Karate kid, to achieve a sure win? I think not, but i'this also goes both ways, were perhaps Life or sOs simply lucky when they garnered their big wins, due to their gambling-like playstyles? No zerg could've won as dominantly as serral in lotv, but he could've also not dominated the way he did, playing as another race, or in a different era, and this is why winning in different eras is so impressive as well. Like I said, sOs, Life, inno, maru and serral are the best candidates for #1 goat spot, that doesn't mean that these players should all be in the top 5 though. Serral did it in several different time periods.. I don't think that Zerg was utterly overtuned in all of them, no? From another perspective 4 out 5 are Terran and if you discard Serral and Mvp 3 out of 3.. is that indicative of a balance issue? Many ifs in that argument. One could also say that Serral would have altered his play style. I mean everyone was saying he only plays defensive and bam, there go timing attacks. Bane ling nerf? He doesn't need them. The guy has been on top for 6 straight years with different map pools, patches as well as playing veterans and new talent. He adapts his play style to match the opponent (and arguably has a race that is able to do that). I don't know tbh. Too many hypotheticals to pursue... he could also be another top 20 player, who knows. | ||
lokol4890
96 Posts
The guy has been on top for 6 straight years with different map pools, patches as well as playing veterans and new talent. He adapts his play style to match the opponent (and arguably has a race that is able to do that). I don't know tbh. Too many hypotheticals to pursue... he could also be another top 20 player, who knows. I keep seeing permutations of this statement with different ranges, some people saying 6 years, some 7, some a decade (somehow). In any event I don't know what data y'all are looking at because this is just not true. Serral's best years (by far) were 2018 and 2024, but in the years in between he definitely was not continuously on top. In that same period the other top zergs have either matched him or outperformed him. Wonder why serral's peak also coincided with rogue, dark, and reynor peaking. Surely it cannot be balance | ||
njleslu2024
57 Posts
On July 25 2024 00:49 lokol4890 wrote: I keep seeing permutations of this statement with different ranges, some people saying 6 years, some 7, some a decade (somehow). In any event I don't know what data y'all are looking at because this is just not true. Serral's best years (by far) were 2018 and 2024, but in the years in between he definitely was not continuously on top. In that same period the other top zergs have either matched him or outperformed him. Wonder why serral's peak also coincided with rogue, dark, and reynor peaking. Surely it cannot be balance So how about your goat Maru's performance? Did he outperform Serral? Ohh yes, the last time he beat Serral in bo5+ series is in late 2021, and then: crushed by Serral in IEM 2022 crushed by Serral in KOB 8 crushed by Serral in TSL 9 smashed by Serral during 2 Master Colisems in 2023 and 2024 swept by Serral desperately in IEM 2024 ripped apart by Serral in a super duper crazy way in ESL spring. | ||
PremoBeats
181 Posts
On July 25 2024 00:49 lokol4890 wrote: I keep seeing permutations of this statement with different ranges, some people saying 6 years, some 7, some a decade (somehow). In any event I don't know what data y'all are looking at because this is just not true. Serral's best years (by far) were 2018 and 2024, but in the years in between he definitely was not continuously on top. In that same period the other top zergs have either matched him or outperformed him. Wonder why serral's peak also coincided with rogue, dark, and reynor peaking. Surely it cannot be balance I don't know about others, but I looked at match win rates versus Koreans in given years (Serral has by far the best statistics in 6 years 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024, Maru is the best in 2021), the Aligulac HoF (all years), percentage of being rank 1 (all years), tournament win percentages with top Korean participation (Serral wins 6 out of 7 years, 2021 was won by Rogue by 3% in comparison to Serral. Maru was down another roughly 4% that year), average placements in tournaments with top Korean participation (Serral wins 6 out of 7 years, some of which are by a large margin, Maru 2021 very closely). I didn't calculate the efficiency score for every year as that was more a life-time metric. He had the most Premier Tournaments wins in 2018, 2019, 2020 (tied with Maru and Rogue), 2021 (tied with Rogue), 2022, 2023 and (so far) 2024. So which statistics are you using to say that other Zerg toped him? | ||
allmotor1
148 Posts
On July 24 2024 23:13 Blitzball04 wrote: Serral has already been the consensus among fans , casters and pros. I usually just ignore the Maru goats talks since most of them have no idea what they are talking about. World championship and Dominancr over his/her peers is how we measure greatness. Not some silly overrated GSL the few fans are desperately holding onto for argument sakes MVP is a top 20 players of all time. WOL was disgusting overpower for terrans. Anyways big thanks for the in depth analyze, which pretty much sums up everything GSL is overrated, riiight. Yet no foreigner has won one yet in all of sc2 history. You can have the opinion Serral is the Goat, that's fine, but to denigrate GSL is ridiculous. Reynor who I consider the second best non Korean player lost in GSL I believe three times? The last two times he lost was a GSL in it's very diminished state. The foreign scene was not relevant in terms of being competitive until 2018. Look at the GSL's through the years and how stacked they were. Any tournament with Koreans and non Koreans, it's usually just Serral/Reynor who can really consistently beat them. GSL is still even in it's depleted state arguably still more competitive. Oh and you said T was busted in wings, dude nothing was more busted than broodlord/infestor and probably the old swarmhosts. | ||
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