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@Miz
It would be very nice if there would be public 'Library thread' where all kinds of works and papers and threads (on and off-site) about history and statistics of SC2 are listed on OP with easily accessible links...
I think You would make a great librarian! 
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On July 27 2024 01:56 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 23:41 rwala wrote:On July 26 2024 22:58 WombaT wrote:On July 26 2024 22:33 rwala wrote:On July 26 2024 21:20 PremoBeats wrote:On July 26 2024 08:57 rwala wrote:On July 26 2024 01:10 PremoBeats wrote:On July 25 2024 23:03 Mizenhauer wrote:On July 25 2024 00:06 PremoBeats wrote:
Oh my god.. did it again. Can a mod or admin delete these? I can't seem to find a delete button. Sorry. Something I noticed along the way was the fact that "doing something first" had to have some value, but it couldn't be expressed through numbers. Things like soO's four straight Code S finals (which wasn't surpassed until 2019) or Mvp's mark of three Korean Individual League titles (which stood for five years) was passed by INnOVation, who became the first player to win four Korean Individual Leagues, which is still tied for third all time (behind Maru and Rogue) have to have some sort of value. Achievements such as NeTea's undefeated season of Code S or sOs becoming the first player to win three WCS/IEM championships years are another two that really stood out to me. I was wondering if you felt similarly during your evaluation. Well, doing something first can be calculated in, if one places value on the phenomenon. Personally, I think it is highly subjective and favors earlier players, unless you rebrand the metric new, every time someone else tops it again. For example, if Serral wins Riyadh and next year's World Championship, it would surpass Rogue's three. Then he'd be the first to have 4. What to make of it now? Or Serral being the first and only to hit over 85% win rates versus Koreans, doing it three times. You can arrange all kinds of "being first" metrics, but to me, the value doesn't look too big. In my opinion there are "better" metrics to analyze, that aren't as subjective and can easier be compared. I would probably use them as a determining factor if my other statistics were somewhat close. Because did you observe that all names you mention are in my pre-contender list too? Meaning, being first is just another way to express what is already expressed in easier to measure metrics. Because to have 3 World titles in and of itself is worth something in my tournament score. So being first doesn't add too much value and is highly subjective on which events points should be awarded and at what weight... but that is just my opinion. By the way, I answered you about my inquiry in regards to the relation of Serral's and Maru's longevity from page 64. So again: Assuming their results stay more or less the same for the next years (Serral winning more prestigious tournaments, being massively ahead in win rates, placements, tournament win ratios etc.) and Maru doesn't have to go to military service: Given that you already said, that Maru's "advantage from your perspective" shrinks the longer these two go on: When is the turning point? Or can't there ever be one in your eyes? And as this came up in the thread: Can you share the weightings of your calculation? On July 25 2024 23:40 rwala wrote:On July 25 2024 14:39 PremoBeats wrote:On July 25 2024 10:18 rwala wrote:
[quote]
Thanks for backing off the false equivalence between Maru and Serral during the most competitive era. That was a bizarre take.
Big picture I’m not sure what you’re even trying to say tho. Are you accusing Miz of “disfiguring” the weightings of different eras to a surreal level to justify Maru as the GOAT? If so you should just say that. And if that is what you think we’ll have to agree to disagree because I read the methodology article and right away knew it would be very likely that Maru would end up as #1 (and in fact I predicted many of the placements correctly with the notable pleasant surprise of SOS). People in this forum are really just fighting with the methodology.
What I find ironic is that it seems to me that it is primarily extremely biased Serral fans that are engaged in fantastical thinking in these threads. FFS they are forcing Wax to uncharacteristically step out of his editorial role to explain why Proleague is not completely irrelevant to the conversation. Serral fans are unironically equating Serral’s performance in NationWars to Maru’s performance in Proleague (apparently not realizing how this looks to anyone who hasn’t already drunk the koolaid). You’re still seeing stuff like trying to make mountains out of the kernels of sand in which Serral once went toe-to-toe with Rain. Feardragon out of desperation or exasperation or some combo of the two started getting into prize winnings. The funniest one is the literal fantastical thinking in which we are presented with alternative histories in which Serral was Korean and for sure would have won X number of GSLs. Another interesting one that keeps popping up is the supposed extra credit that Serral deserves for not having the benefit of a team house in his formative days (of course they do not mention the direct and indirect benefits of region lock for non-Koreans). More than one Serral fan wanted to literally eliminate from consideration the entire period of time in which Serral did not play competitively because they thought this is the only fair way to make comparisons.
All these things are really silly and unnecessary. It’s totally enough just to point to Serral’s tournament results, win rates, head-to-head scores against top pros, and throw a bit of perspective from his peers in there as a cherry on top. Super easy case!
I don’t understand why all the desperation and defensiveness. I know people think this kind of thing helps their case but I promise it has the opposite effect.
I thought about Miz's weighting a lot to be honest. Because he mostly has the same categories as me, although I down-regulated Serral's tournaments in comparison further (category-wise). I also put the absurd 50% era-multiplier (which only help INno, Maru and Roge - INno the most) on top of that and didn't count team wins as they would heavily dilute the result because of team mates being able to lift you up or drag you down (as I wrote... player's scores for team events were attributed in the match win rates to not let their accomplishments like Maru's insane Proleague run be in vain). The thing is... I have absolutely no idea how he arrived at his ranking with the categorizations he applied, knowing how even on my list Mvp is way further down the line and I already gave him absurd boosts, which shouldn't have happened according to Miz's intro. Or how Life or Dark are not on it at all... I don't get it. I was trying to squeeze the data to match his ranking, according to the vague information he gave, but simply wasn't able to do it. Mind you guys, this is only concerning my tournament score, as no other data was mentioned by Miz in his post. On July 25 2024 11:08 lokol4890 wrote:
[quote]
It's the kitchen sink approach: the perception is if you make enough arguments one will stick. Funnily enough it happens most often when people are not all that confident in the strength of their position. For some perspective, appellate courts in the U.S routinely tell lawyers to not take a kitchen sink approach because it makes them less persuasive.
That was not the case for me. I simply wanted to cover all the information hard data can give us. I was accused time and again of being a Serral fanboy, which can only be true because of his greatness, as that is something I am most interested in, when I look at the sports I like (kiting, StarCraft, LoL and Calisthenics). Funny enough, Serral fanboys should be the most angry at me, as I penalized him way beyond common sense. You’d have to ask Miz but it’s very clear that he didn’t simply try to build an algorithm like you’re trying to do. There’s a lot more subjectivity, which I know you view as a bug, but I view as a feature. On Dark, Miz explained that he could have been as high as 7 on his list, but that he simply didn’t win enough over a 12 year career to justify it. On Life, I assume he was excluded from the analysis for obvious reasons. I haven’t really wanted to talk about Life but since you bring it up I actually think it’s a great example of the perils of trying to work these things out exclusively via math. In my view, any conception of the “greatest” cannot include Life because all his results and achievements are necessarily tainted even if he legitimately achieved them. If that’s not persuasive, then let’s talk Mvp. Can I ask: how far is he down your list? 10? 20? I have a suggestion that might be helpful (or not, but let’s try). Putting aside math and statistics for a second, where, roughly speaking, do you think Mvp should rank on a GOAT list from a common sense perspective? It would then be interesting to tinker with your model to ensure that the results are roughly in line with this more common sense understanding. I know maybe for you this defeats the purpose but just a thought on how to give your approach a bit more credibility. I don’t think your ranking will resonate with anyone if Mvp isn’t solidly in your top 10 at least. For me personally I value subjective qualities of greatness quite highly so for example Byun would probably be in my top 10 just because of the narrative of what he accomplished and how he defined greatness in e-sports globally at an important inflection point (e.g. I think he’s the only SC2 player to win e-sports player of the year, which is the practical equivalent of being the MVP tho there’s not really an equivalent imho). But I get that this is too subjective for most people so I’m good with data-based approaches as long as the results pass the smell test. The Life-case bugs me. Because your results/skill and the perceived stance of morality/wrongdoings should be utterly separated in my opinion (to give a dumb example: being vegetarian doesn't become bad, simply because Hitler was vegetarian/advocated for it). But yeah, if you value subjectiveness as a feature, that simply shows that there is no scientific approach to the way you look at this discussion. Which is fine, I just want to point it out. If you want to value Mvp high, because of one hyper successful year, then you have to include a marker which features ingenuity or creativity for being able to come up with ever new builds in an era where the game was still being established. And you'd have to consistently apply that marker on the other contenders too. The issue for most people is that it will become obvious how big their inherent subjective bias is. And many biases can occur, especially in nostalgic circumstances. I mean you said you are a lawyer... I don't know in which field, but my girlfriend is in employment law and mostly contracts are made bullet proof so that there is no wiggle room. The less wiggle room, the better. No subjective takes necessary. If you want to have Mvp as your GOAT (or super high up) fine... but then you have to admit that you throw era-adjusted tournament scores, average placements, tournament-win-ratios, match win rates and rank 1 occupation out of the window. Then I can fully embrace that Mvp is GOAT. In regards to your question: I didn't make a ranking for the pre-contenders (as I didn't make one for the top 4 either in the end). But he is in the 5-16th place and probably made it in the top 10 according to his insane effectiveness and godly 2011. Hadn't he played in 2012 and 2013 he'd easily make it, as these years drag him down enormously. But yeah.. it can be done. We can try to establish a metric through consensus, similar to the thing Miz suggested with "achieving something first". But even if we and the majority find consensus, some other guy might value it astronomically high and will still have Mvp as GOAT even when everyone else says that it is absolutely ludicrous. And it is interesting how you highlight that "common sense" and data driven analyses could be a separate thing. Because what that thinking discloses in my opinion is that common sense is highly subjective too and can be influenced by not looking closely or with enough knowledge at things. Two quick examples: It was common sense at one time, that the earth was flat and that electricity is bad for health. That doesn't make the common sense any more true. I just want to really nail down that Mvp is as low as 16th on your list and that it bothers you that Life cannot be a GOAT contender because in your view morality and greatness are completely unrelated concepts. I think you’re pretty smart and understand the perils of taking these positions, but I admire that you don’t seem to care! If GOAT assessments were like contracts, perhaps you’d be on to something, but alas they are not. But even with contracts, there is often what we lawyers like to call “strategic ambiguity” in which the contract does not itself definitively resolve all matters but instead prescribes the process by which resolution happens (e.g. arbitration or litigation in X court under Y law). But even when you try to button everything down, the standards by which alleged violations are adjudicated are not so clear and leave plenty of room for discretion. Ask your girlfriend about the “totality of circumstances” or “preponderance of the evidence” standards and I’m sure she’ll smile because we lawyers joke that these standards are so subjective and flexible that you can basically argue whatever you want! Of course if these assessments were so objective and deterministic you could simply have algorithms render them (as you’re trying to do with the SCII GOAT). There would be no need for lawyers, judges, or juries. Regarding your flat earth/electricity analogy, it’s a great point, though perhaps not for the reasons you think. These are scientific questions with pretty clear answers that can be determined with a high degree of certainty using the scientific method. I do not want anyone’s subjective conception of “common sense” involved in determining the answers to these questions. Especially given the consequences. The issue you’re having is in primarily viewing questions of greatness as a scientific or mathematical exercise. I again go back to Muhammad Ali, the undisputed boxing GOAT, for many the greatest athlete of all time. His stats alone cannot justify this, because “greatness” both in our hearts and our minds is about so much more than the numerical value of what one achieved. It’s about how they achieved it, what they overcame to achieve it, the moments they achieved it, and what impact their achievements had. These are over time ultimately questions of legacy and even legend that transcend any understanding our silicon overlords could ever have. There is good news for you as a Serral fan tho! I believe Serral over time will quite likely be regarded as SCII’s GOAT, at least to some degree of consensus. Not because of the math, but in spite of it. An algorithm that has Serral as #1 and Mvp as #16 will have no impact (and may even be counterproductive) in this regard. But his achievements and what they mean for the e-sport have the makings of legend for sure. New postI didn’t mean it as a jab, but an honest observation of what is happening here. From a purely “scientific” perspective you are buffing Serral’s stats while you claim to nerf them. If you really want to be objective, you need to discount the value of tournament wins by the average player rating of the competition (or some other method that captures competitiveness rather than nomenclature like “world championship”). When you start factoring in “prestige” and prize pool, you become victim to the very subjectivity you seem to loathe. It is not reasonable to think that players try less hard in GSL. For many players, their career goal is to win a GSL. I don’t disagree on your GSL “soft lock” point but my bigger point is that it is the only tournament that does not artificially limit the player pool. You say that world championships were the highest priority for players but you ignored my observation on how the pro tour/WCS circuit was specifically designed to systematically give players like Serral more chances at a world championship than Korean players of a similar championship caliber. It was designed to buff Serral, and it did. The problem is that it’s very hard to determine how much Serral was buffed because it’s possible that he may have qualified for all, some, or very few of the international tournaments he played in had he been subjected to the Korean regional allotment limits instead of the more generous European ones. uThermal off-the-top speculated that if this were the case maybe he would have won 10 tourneys by now instead of the 25 or whatever it is, but personally I think that’s too low and not really fair to Serral. I don’t believe in such alternative history nerfing and personally I think Serral deserves full credit for all his tournament wins despite the buff. But maybe you don’t need to double-buff by also over-valuing those wins over other tournament wins that had more competitive player pools? Again, I personally approach these things a bit more subjectively. But I’m just trying to hold you to your own standards here. p.s. I don’t agree with lots of other things about your criteria, especially the Aligulac analysis. But as I’ve said before I can’t take it seriously until you actually reveal the results of your list and show where guys like Mvp end up. Where did you read that Mvp is as low as 16th? I said that I didn't rank the pre-contenders. So I simply do not know if he places 5th , 8th, 11th or 16th, but he is likely in the top ten. Yes, I am aware of that, but my point, going into contracts, was that subjectivity can only take you so far. If an employment contract says you have to work 8 hours a day, you can argue about if the break is 20 or 40 minutes if it wasn't specified, but it surely won't net you a 4 hour break. The same is true for Mvp... you can put weighting on the metric that makes him GOAT in your opinion, but it becomes similarly obvious that the weighting becomes ever more unreasonable the more you have to emphasize the weighting. Why do you think greatness is not something that can be - at least to a certain extent - measured by the scientific method? You would need to... 1. define greatness ("Being the best at something.", "Doing things better than the rest.", "Achieving unheard of results", "Outstanding success") 2. define metrics that are able to give weight to your definition 3. define the ratio between metrics 4. measure the data that is relevant for the metrics 5. compare the gathered data Point 3 is irrelevant if one player is the best at every metric as a different weighting wouldn't change the overall result. It would only affect the distance place 1 and 2 have in relation to each other as well as determining lower placements. I've got no idea about boxing. No clue if there are statistically better boxers out there and if Ali would come out on top with era adjusted weightings. That is something I simply can say nothing about. I only collected data about StarCraft 2. And unless someone is making a consistent, rational case (which can include more immeasurable feats), I simply see no point as to revise my result. Seriously, I have no idea if you read the article, as I did exactly what you asked me to do. I made average player ratings (this was the most work of the whole thing) for tournaments to measure their worth. Prize money (which isn't subjective) and subjective prestige were used too, but the biggest factor were tournament structure and average player rank. All the subjectiveness in the article was negative to Serral. Are you even aware how little World Championship tournaments play a role in this scoring effort? Little to none as there haven't been a whole lot 1st or 2nd places by the final contenders and second that lessening the value from these doesn't change the end result by much. The impact, my decisions to lower Serral's tournaments even more than Miz did heavily outweigh a perceived favoring of Serral here. I even didn't do what Miz did: Devalue World Championships pre-2018 in relation to post-2018, which would have helped Serral. So even if one can count my categorization of WCs as favoring Serral (which can be argued about), the impact is slim to none. Plus, the insane era-multiplier favors all other contenders except Serral a lot more than any WC-weighting would even be able to do could favor Serral. If tournament structure is counted as artificial limitation, of course GSL is complicit in doing this, by simply stretching qualifiers to finals over several months, which artificially limits foreign participation (weekenders in contrast are much easier to take part in, although they can have other limitations). You will probably act as the defendant's attorney  I would disagree with the notion that it was designed to buff Serral. It was designed to buff every region outside of Korea, which Serral was part of. This of course was done to make other region grow and be able to develop. But the idea that any region would be able to compete in another region's qualifier for a world championship in and of itself is absurd. You wouldn't have Brasil play in the Asian qualifier in football, because it wasn't able to qualify through the American one. This was a phenomenon which helped Koreans beforehand immensely, although it made sense to have the best of the world compete, as these mostly hailed from Korea, but - as Miz pointed out - since 2018 has changed. As I said further up above (even if we count the weighting of WC post 2018 as buffs to Serral): The impact was minimal and outmatched by many other decisions I made - but I can give a full list if you want me to do so, although I mostly pointed them out in the article. And again: I never made a list of the pre-contenders nor did I analyze their careers in depth, because it already was months of work to go through all tournaments and placements of 4 players. The pre-screenings can be ranked but will utterly lack any relevant depth. My guess is that Mvp will be ranked in the top 10 as his tournament-, efficiency-, Aligulac rank 1- and HoF-score are among the best. But I cannot say for sure as I never went deeper into the pre-contenders when seeing, that 4 players massively stood out. And what do you disagree with exactly? Perhaps the things aren't as they perceive them to be? My friend, if you think determining the GOAT of anything is like reading a contract and determining if someone if someone took a 20 minute versus 4 hour break, we’re quite simply at conceptual odds that are so deep and profound that they cannot be reconciled. What I am trying to do though is to encourage you to hold yourself to your own standards. You claim your calculations are objective, but admit they include subjective assessments like “prestige.” You say prize pool is “objective” but fail to demonstrate any statistically significant correlation between competitiveness of the tournament and its prize pool. The result is that you value in many cases more “prestigious”, big money tournaments higher than tournaments with more competitive player pools. Which is totally fine, I do too! But please stop pretending this is an objective assessment. You say you have no idea about boxing and are only focused on SCII. But I really encourage you to broaden your horizon and take a look at other sports and games, think about the GOAT convos there, etc. Your football example is actually quite ironic, because Messi’s GOAT candidacy is possible almost exclusively because he is an Argentinian that was nonetheless permitted to play on a Spanish team and in European leagues. If he was required to stay and play in the Argentinian league, maybe he’d still be the GOAT, but it would be a harder case because he would not have results playing in the most competitive leagues and tournaments. Sound familiar? The World Cup, football’s “world championship,” is important to fans and players as a matter of national pride, but is not considered the pinnacle of competitive football because of regional allotments and because players spend all their time and energy playing for their club teams. World Cup results factor into GOAT convos, but much less so because most of the die hard fans and commentators understand that (European) club leagues and tournaments are where the best players and best teams duke it out. Come to think of it, you don’t need to run the “Messi stayed in Argentina” hypo, since Pele is a good example of a really compelling GOAT contender who played in the (less competitive) Brazilian league for most of his career and derived most of his accolades from international completion. The thing is tho both the Argentinian and Brazilian domestic leagues are still among the best domestic leagues in the world even if some European leagues are more competitive. So there are not perfect analogies. I could talk about chess and other sports and games, but again I strongly encourage you to dig in yourself because I think it’ll help give you some perspective. In the end it’ll help situate what you’re trying to do in a context that resonates more broadly. It’ll almost certainly challenge some of your assumptions, as new perspectives tend to do. p.s. regarding GSL’s “soft” lock, while it has been practically difficult for players outside of Korea to compete in it, that hasn’t actually stopped many of the world’s top players from doing so. Special, Neeb, Idra, Naniwa, TLO, Stephanie, Scarlett, Reynor, Astrea, etc. This broadly isn’t true any more, amongst the best perhaps but so far beyond the top Euro leagues they aren’t really even in the same ballpark. Whereas in Pele’s day that was far less the case, so one has to assess him through that lens. A modern GOAT candidate basically has to play in Europe, but one cant go backwards and apply it to Pele. One could perhaps apply that same lens to the GSL in say 2014 to 2024 Good points. Further reinforces the nuance needed and the perils of trying to math out GOAT contenders across eras, regions, leagues, tournaments, etc. My GOAT list was inspired by a number of existing GOAT lists, with Ben Taylor's rankings being a large influence ( https://thinkingbasketball.net/2017/12/11/the-backpicks-goat-the-40-best-careers-in-nba-history / This is a great read). I decided to only directly compare players with their peers- a good example being Inno, soO, Zest, herO, Maru and Classic, all of whom largely played in the same events as one another). (I am a firm believer that Serral shouldn't be punished for not playing in Proleague, just like Mvp shouldn't be punished for never participating in SSL). The goal was to use the data to establish how each player compared to their peers, after which I would finally be able to establish my final rankings. It's not a perfect method, but I think it's very fair.
Never saw this one, thanks for sharing. Nice to see Hakeem Olajuwon so high on the list. He was my favorite player.
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rwala wrote:
Yes you can continue to say the same things over and over again but it will not have any more impact. There is no amount of math you can do to convince me that someone who has never competed in the most competitive tournaments and leagues is the GOAT. Others maybe, but not me.
uThermal’s perspective that Serral is the GOAT is totally valid, as I’ve said many times. It’s a good conceptual framework for you to think about.
You were the one who brought up football. I simply pointed out the irony in using football to defend your perspective on region lock when it is almost certainly the lack of region lock in competitive club football that has made Messi’s GOAT bid so strong. When your one attempt to broaden your perspective and apply a coherent conceptual framework to your thinking on how to determine a GOAT backfires so spectacularly it’s time to pause and reconsider.
I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that you put into this, but there’s no amount of effort that can fix a flawed framework. To that end I do need to say that if what you are really going for is something scientific, there needs to be a lot more work because the number of potentially confounding variables you’ll need to control for is…staggering. Proper statistical modeling and regression analysis would 100% be needed. I think that’s overkill and unnecessary, but just want to note some methodological requirements that would need to be met if you want to credibly call what you’re doing “scientific.”
Honestly, truly, I would take a step back and think about who in any field (sports, games, or otherwise) you feel is really the “greatest” of all time. And then think about why you feel that way. Maybe look into debates or discussions and see what others think determine “greatness”. I really do think it’ll help, but only if you’re open to it…
I’ll post later some interviews with GOAT candidates talking about other GOAT candidates. It may be interesting to look at.
I mean that is a fair statement. Dismissing a more refined era in terms of game understanding, strategic refinement and mechanical proficiency for more competitiveness in regards to players is absolutely acceptable, although I'd be more leaning to weight them differently instead of dismissing one all together... but it is completely fine taking that approach.
I simply want to point out how little subjectiveness affected my work (but it still did, as you pointed out and I made clear in the methodology). So far, people who disagree with the result have not presented any other metric that is missing to pursue the goal. And they don't have to, but I will steer the wheel ever more into understanding the topic better.
To me, it is interesting to observe how the dialogue shifted from me favoring Serral, to Mvp needing to be in the top10 to elevating metaphors way beyond their comparison level. Couldn't you tell me exactly what you think is missing?
I said multiple times, that I am working on calculations to compare eras, that there are - at the moment - only two people that stand out massively. No one has ever doubted that by the way. Most criticism went at topics that didn't change the outcome one bit... which is telling by itself.
If I change the weighting of World Championships to match ESL Masters/DH Season Finals which is below GSL we go from 46,64:46,41 for Serral to 45,81:45,77 for Maru... as I said: I looked at the metrics... subjectivity won't change much in most metrics and it won't change the final standing of Serral being #1.
You are only able to argue about my conceptual framework backfiring because you conflate World Championship region locks with team region locks. I merely said that it never made sense for one region to take part in another region's World Championship qualifier.
In SC2 as well as in football World Championship locks for Worlds make perfect sense, while club teams are open to make contracts with whomever they want (of course it makes sense to hire people who have the same working hours and speak the same language).
And I will bet you that there are qualities like win-loss-ratios, overall contender quality or things like most gained points, throw speed, etc. that would allow me to define GOAT metrics which match the consensus of people. Weighting them or giving them context is another thing but all GOATs were hypersuccesful in their area of expertise. But I have enough on my hands with SC2 alone and it is not like Serral only has a case because of numbers either.
But as I said.. I am interested in people's opinion to make this list more waterproof and am working more on ranking tournaments atm. So far, Serral wins in 6 out of 7 metrics clearly, while he is tied with Maru in one, even if we assume the worst possible penalties.
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How people think about the (cybernetic) loop this discussion creates within the minds of players preparing the next tournament?
Does it impact anyway to their preparation?
How their performance changes if the GOAT(s) himself think these things?
How the narrative changes if a random fan of player x thinks these things?
How that change in the narrative change expectations?
What happens if the narrative doesn't meet the modulated expectations?
Does it even matter when/if there are people in the future to look these things, equally blind to the exact context of the conundrum now, as we are now relative to the past contexts?
Do they undervalue or overrate our input to the topic?
Assuming here that the game is played far longer than anybody participating this discussion now will live...
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I want contrast this to HLTV.org forums and it's discussion culture remotely relevant to the game it "debate". You will manage well there, if you know following terms:
+1
report
flair
flag
-[place a team player to be removed here] +[place a team player to be added here]
meds
goat (as preposition to practically anything imaginable)
...
We need to defend Sc2 and fight against that kind discussion culture with all hands available.
@Premobeat
Idea. Add heavy penalty for all players playing Zerg. Everything that happens to a Zerg needs to be nerfed with a racial multiplier something like x0.90-0.95. Should be easy to do. And only to be sure that there are no room for a balance whine. Hurts only Rogue and Serral.
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On July 26 2024 21:22 rwala wrote:
uThermal (who thinks Serral is the GOAT) estimates Serral has about 2.5x the tournament wins than he would have had he competed in Korea this whole time (i.e. subjected to the nerfs Korean championship contenders were subjected to).
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era.
"If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane"
He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing.
For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT.
Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era).
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On July 27 2024 05:50 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +rwala wrote:
Yes you can continue to say the same things over and over again but it will not have any more impact. There is no amount of math you can do to convince me that someone who has never competed in the most competitive tournaments and leagues is the GOAT. Others maybe, but not me.
uThermal’s perspective that Serral is the GOAT is totally valid, as I’ve said many times. It’s a good conceptual framework for you to think about.
You were the one who brought up football. I simply pointed out the irony in using football to defend your perspective on region lock when it is almost certainly the lack of region lock in competitive club football that has made Messi’s GOAT bid so strong. When your one attempt to broaden your perspective and apply a coherent conceptual framework to your thinking on how to determine a GOAT backfires so spectacularly it’s time to pause and reconsider.
I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that you put into this, but there’s no amount of effort that can fix a flawed framework. To that end I do need to say that if what you are really going for is something scientific, there needs to be a lot more work because the number of potentially confounding variables you’ll need to control for is…staggering. Proper statistical modeling and regression analysis would 100% be needed. I think that’s overkill and unnecessary, but just want to note some methodological requirements that would need to be met if you want to credibly call what you’re doing “scientific.”
Honestly, truly, I would take a step back and think about who in any field (sports, games, or otherwise) you feel is really the “greatest” of all time. And then think about why you feel that way. Maybe look into debates or discussions and see what others think determine “greatness”. I really do think it’ll help, but only if you’re open to it…
I’ll post later some interviews with GOAT candidates talking about other GOAT candidates. It may be interesting to look at. I mean that is a fair statement. Dismissing a more refined era in terms of game understanding, strategic refinement and mechanical proficiency for more competitiveness in regards to players is absolutely acceptable, although I'd be more leaning to weight them differently instead of dismissing one all together... but it is completely fine taking that approach. I simply want to point out how little subjectiveness affected my work (but it still did, as you pointed out and I made clear in the methodology). So far, people who disagree with the result have not presented any other metric that is missing to pursue the goal. And they don't have to, but I will steer the wheel ever more into understanding the topic better. To me, it is interesting to observe how the dialogue shifted from me favoring Serral, to Mvp needing to be in the top10 to elevating metaphors way beyond their comparison level. Couldn't you tell me exactly what you think is missing? I said multiple times, that I am working on calculations to compare eras, that there are - at the moment - only two people that stand out massively. No one has ever doubted that by the way. Most criticism went at topics that didn't change the outcome one bit... which is telling by itself. If I change the weighting of World Championships to match ESL Masters/DH Season Finals which is below GSL we go from 46,64:46,41 for Serral to 45,81:45,77 for Maru... as I said: I looked at the metrics... subjectivity won't change much in most metrics and it won't change the final standing of Serral being #1. You are only able to argue about my conceptual framework backfiring because you conflate World Championship region locks with team region locks. I merely said that it never made sense for one region to take part in another region's World Championship qualifier. In SC2 as well as in football World Championship locks for Worlds make perfect sense, while club teams are open to make contracts with whomever they want (of course it makes sense to hire people who have the same working hours and speak the same language). And I will bet you that there are qualities like win-loss-ratios, overall contender quality or things like most gained points, throw speed, etc. that would allow me to define GOAT metrics which match the consensus of people. Weighting them or giving them context is another thing but all GOATs were hypersuccesful in their area of expertise. But I have enough on my hands with SC2 alone and it is not like Serral only has a case because of numbers either. But as I said.. I am interested in people's opinion to make this list more waterproof and am working more on ranking tournaments atm. So far, Serral wins in 6 out of 7 metrics clearly, while he is tied with Maru in one, even if we assume the worst possible penalties.
You're confused about why your football point backfired, and honestly I'm surprised that you're continuing to argue about it. Again, the point is that European club football is the gold standard and is not region locked just as GSL is the gold standard and is not region locked. The introspection that is required here is to inquire why almost every other sport and game (chess, baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) gives most if not all of the GOAT value to performances and results in the most competitive leagues and tournaments, irrespective of where those leagues and tournaments are located even if it is not convenient for many to participate.
The NBA, MLB, and domestic football leagues are just as "soft locked" as GSL, more so even since GSL does not require one to literally put your entire life on pause for years to move to a foreign country where you may not know the language or have any friends or family. Many talented athletes are not able or willing to do this, but the ones who want to play with the best do it anyway if they are given the chance. And while it certainly is prestigious to play and show results in the Olympics and be crowned "world champion," no one tries to pretend that this means anything more than an important display of national pride and excellence.
Regarding your metrics and what's missing, I think you're confused about the point I'm making. The task is not so much to try to identify some elusive "consensus" and then modify your metrics to fit that consensus. What I was encouraging you to do is approach this less from a perspective of trying to find metrics that justify why Serral is the GOAT and Maru isn't, and more from the perspective of coming up with metrics that are clear and compelling and will therefore produce a ranking that's clear and compelling (even if as is expected not all will agree). Perhaps surveying other sports and games you're into to better understand what defines "greatness" and come up with some metrics and weightings that track this understanding. Some examples: 1. winning against all odds; 2. setting performance records; 3. doing what no one thought was possible; 4. being dominant/much better than the competition; 5. achieving results in the most competitive tournaments/leagues/eras; 6. being the first/only to reach certain important performance milestones; 7. sustaining a high-level of performance and results as the game/sport changes and evolves; 8. pioneering standards for how the game should be played; 9. bringing more people into the game through performance, results, mentoring, coaching, ambassadorship, etc.
There are other criteria that may matter more to you and many of these may not matter much or at all to you. Some are more easy to quantify than others. What I think you've missed in your quest to be "objective" is the critically important but inherently subjective exercise of defining what greatness means (and does not mean) to you.
I went back and read your article and while I appreciate the work it's really hard to understand why you chose the metrics you chose, and how they relate to the things you claim to value in GOATness (consistency, dominance, and efficiency). I can kind of draw those conclusions myself a little bit, but even then it's super unclear how you're valuing and weighing things. For example, you say Serral won 7 out of 7 of your metrics so therefore he's the undisputed GOAT, but why did you chose those 7 metrics and not others? And surely not all of your 7 metrics are equally valuable in GOAT'ing someone, right? Putting aside whether Aligulac is even a stable and accurate enough ELO system, surely your two Aligulac metrics are not of equal weight to your tournament results and efficiency metrics? I really couldn't tell (sorry if you explained this and I missed it).
The thing is, in reading your article again, it can basically be summarized as a version of Miz's methodology + Aligulac metrics + a significant "nerf" to GSL after 2017 + a significant "buff" to tournament results before 2018 + including Euro regionals to make it more "fair" for Serral (your words) + giving zero value to Proleague. For anyone who values highly GSL after 2017, understands the incredibly important role Proleague played, places little or no value on Aligulac rankings, or sees the European regionals for the weak feeder tourneys they are, this is going to make no sense.
But on some level it can all be justified to get to the Serral = GOAT conclusion you were going for. The one that I don't think can really be justified is excluding Proleague results (and no, factoring it into win rates doesn't count). While Proleague was a team league, it's of course still a 1v1 game and all the results were based on individual performances. Being a top Proleague player is worth a huge amount in any serious GOAT discussion, and any analysis that excludes it isn't worth taking seriously.
Here's what you can do to help clarify your analysis/establish some credibility:
1. explain why you chose these 7 metrics and how they relate to your idea of a "GOAT"
2. establish a weighting among the 7 metrics that roughly corresponds to what you value more and less in a GOAT
3. include Proleague in some way
4. remove the weak Euro regional tournaments (even if you feel this may not get you the result you're hoping for)
5. publish your top 10 list with this new criteria and weighting
6. remove the opinion section of your article and all the hyperbolic pro-Serral commentary (I know you think this helps make your case for Serral, but it actually just reveals your bias, which has the opposite effect)
I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir, which you may be okay with, but I assume given all the work you put in you'd like it to be taken more seriously.
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On July 27 2024 08:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 21:22 rwala wrote:
uThermal (who thinks Serral is the GOAT) estimates Serral has about 2.5x the tournament wins than he would have had he competed in Korea this whole time (i.e. subjected to the nerfs Korean championship contenders were subjected to).
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era. "If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane" He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing. For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT. Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era).
Every time I quoted uThermal, I'm pretty sure I mentioned that he thinks Serral is the GOAT. I think I've also said his perspective is valid, and celebrated comments that other posters have made arguing for Serral as GOAT. This is not really the approach one would take if they were trying to demonstrate that Serral is not the GOAT.
What I was trying to say is that uThermal has a healthy perspective as a Serral GOAT proponent, which is to acknowledge that for a very long time it was just insanely hard to even qualify for let alone win a Korean Individual League (to the point where there used to be an award simply for qualifying for GSL 10 times). If you read Premo's article, he can't really bring himself to even clearly acknowledge this, and instead says it's complicated and notes how the absolute skill level of players has increased over time (which is totally irrelevant, because relative skill level is all that matters in assessing this). To the extent he attempts to offer an opinion, it's this "interesting" take: "It needs to be pointed out that it is my opinion that the issues of scheduling events, burn out, injuries and the structure of tournaments like Code S are the main reasons why winning titles was so much harder." I just don't think you need to muddy the waters on this point to make your case for Serral.
I'm into different, often more subjective markers of greatness that honestly would further bolster the case for Serral, such as a seeming near-consensus among his peers (including those who played against the OG GOAT contenders) that Serral is the GOAT. But yeah I can't get behind the pretense of "objective", data-driven assessments when you're including weak Euro regionals and excluding Proleague.
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On July 27 2024 08:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2024 21:22 rwala wrote:
uThermal (who thinks Serral is the GOAT) estimates Serral has about 2.5x the tournament wins than he would have had he competed in Korea this whole time (i.e. subjected to the nerfs Korean championship contenders were subjected to).
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era. "If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane" He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing. For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT. Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era).
Yeah I agree with everything uthermal said except the "then it can't be Maru because he wasn't that good in the Kespa era".
He didn't win as many tournaments as a TaeJa or a Life but that's mainly because him barely participating in overseas tournaments due to focusing on Proleague. Holding against Maru that he doesn't have DH and IEM wins during that era is like holding against Serral that he hasn't won the GSL.
Out of the circuits he actually participated in (Starleagues and Proleague) he either was the best or tied for the best.
That were also the two most competitive tournament circuits during that era.
He wasn't "dominating" by any means but as uthermal stated it was far harder to dominate during that era.
All in all, I think by now those results probably aren't enough to still put him ahead of Serral, but I think it's much closer than uthermal suggests and if Maru would win a world championship he'd be my pick again.
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On July 27 2024 08:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era.
"If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane"
He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing.
For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT.
Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era).
I just want to explain something, although I agree with most of what you said:
I chose the 50% modifier because after the pre-screening it was obvious, that most of the contenders continued to play into the 2018 era with more or less the same win rates. It was mostly the Premier Tournaments that were suddenly won by different players. As most would agree (and uThermal said as well): players mostly only get better until age finally nags at them, which wasn't the case for the players involved. Thus I had to assume that the new contesters, as well as the young Koreans that were around for some time but finally hit that age where the career takes of for most players (end of teens/beginning of twenties), simply were better than the old guard.
Second: ooking at the transition period... the sudden drop in PT wins but not match win rates, indicates that new talent still was pouring out from the 2015 era. Some people retired until 2019, but most of the old guard was still active then. So a discount of 50% already seemed extremely heavy to me. I thought about analyzing several metrics to put them on display like age at a given time, number of top tier contenders, as well as the impact of larger tournaments and a greater player base. It will take some time, but I doubt that my 50% buff were completely undervaluing the peak era. Just to point something out: I would have to buff the era-multiplier from 50 to 300% to get INnoVation, the third on the list, close to Maru and Serral. That is simply how outstanding these two are.
And nearly all nerfs that I would need to apply to Serral target Maru and Rogue as well. Maru only has 2 wins in high tier tournaments and 2 2nd places in pretty low tier tournaments as well as 7 3rd/4th (which of course matter the least) places in that time frame.
To be fair to uThermal's thoughts: I would argue that he meant to put present-day-Serral in 2015. If we'd do the same with Maru he'd also had more wins than the two you mentioned.
On July 27 2024 09:41 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 05:50 PremoBeats wrote:rwala wrote:
Yes you can continue to say the same things over and over again but it will not have any more impact. There is no amount of math you can do to convince me that someone who has never competed in the most competitive tournaments and leagues is the GOAT. Others maybe, but not me.
uThermal’s perspective that Serral is the GOAT is totally valid, as I’ve said many times. It’s a good conceptual framework for you to think about.
You were the one who brought up football. I simply pointed out the irony in using football to defend your perspective on region lock when it is almost certainly the lack of region lock in competitive club football that has made Messi’s GOAT bid so strong. When your one attempt to broaden your perspective and apply a coherent conceptual framework to your thinking on how to determine a GOAT backfires so spectacularly it’s time to pause and reconsider.
I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that you put into this, but there’s no amount of effort that can fix a flawed framework. To that end I do need to say that if what you are really going for is something scientific, there needs to be a lot more work because the number of potentially confounding variables you’ll need to control for is…staggering. Proper statistical modeling and regression analysis would 100% be needed. I think that’s overkill and unnecessary, but just want to note some methodological requirements that would need to be met if you want to credibly call what you’re doing “scientific.”
Honestly, truly, I would take a step back and think about who in any field (sports, games, or otherwise) you feel is really the “greatest” of all time. And then think about why you feel that way. Maybe look into debates or discussions and see what others think determine “greatness”. I really do think it’ll help, but only if you’re open to it…
I’ll post later some interviews with GOAT candidates talking about other GOAT candidates. It may be interesting to look at. I mean that is a fair statement. Dismissing a more refined era in terms of game understanding, strategic refinement and mechanical proficiency for more competitiveness in regards to players is absolutely acceptable, although I'd be more leaning to weight them differently instead of dismissing one all together... but it is completely fine taking that approach. I simply want to point out how little subjectiveness affected my work (but it still did, as you pointed out and I made clear in the methodology). So far, people who disagree with the result have not presented any other metric that is missing to pursue the goal. And they don't have to, but I will steer the wheel ever more into understanding the topic better. To me, it is interesting to observe how the dialogue shifted from me favoring Serral, to Mvp needing to be in the top10 to elevating metaphors way beyond their comparison level. Couldn't you tell me exactly what you think is missing? I said multiple times, that I am working on calculations to compare eras, that there are - at the moment - only two people that stand out massively. No one has ever doubted that by the way. Most criticism went at topics that didn't change the outcome one bit... which is telling by itself. If I change the weighting of World Championships to match ESL Masters/DH Season Finals which is below GSL we go from 46,64:46,41 for Serral to 45,81:45,77 for Maru... as I said: I looked at the metrics... subjectivity won't change much in most metrics and it won't change the final standing of Serral being #1. You are only able to argue about my conceptual framework backfiring because you conflate World Championship region locks with team region locks. I merely said that it never made sense for one region to take part in another region's World Championship qualifier. In SC2 as well as in football World Championship locks for Worlds make perfect sense, while club teams are open to make contracts with whomever they want (of course it makes sense to hire people who have the same working hours and speak the same language). And I will bet you that there are qualities like win-loss-ratios, overall contender quality or things like most gained points, throw speed, etc. that would allow me to define GOAT metrics which match the consensus of people. Weighting them or giving them context is another thing but all GOATs were hypersuccesful in their area of expertise. But I have enough on my hands with SC2 alone and it is not like Serral only has a case because of numbers either. But as I said.. I am interested in people's opinion to make this list more waterproof and am working more on ranking tournaments atm. So far, Serral wins in 6 out of 7 metrics clearly, while he is tied with Maru in one, even if we assume the worst possible penalties. You're confused about why your football point backfired, and honestly I'm surprised that you're continuing to argue about it. Again, the point is that European club football is the gold standard and is not region locked just as GSL is the gold standard and is not region locked. The introspection that is required here is to inquire why almost every other sport and game (chess, baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) gives most if not all of the GOAT value to performances and results in the most competitive leagues and tournaments, irrespective of where those leagues and tournaments are located even if it is not convenient for many to participate. The NBA, MLB, and domestic football leagues are just as "soft locked" as GSL, more so even since GSL does not require one to literally put your entire life on pause for years to move to a foreign country where you may not know the language or have any friends or family. Many talented athletes are not able or willing to do this, but the ones who want to play with the best do it anyway if they are given the chance. And while it certainly is prestigious to play and show results in the Olympics and be crowned "world champion," no one tries to pretend that this means anything more than an important display of national pride and excellence. Regarding your metrics and what's missing, I think you're confused about the point I'm making. The task is not so much to try to identify some elusive "consensus" and then modify your metrics to fit that consensus. What I was encouraging you to do is approach this less from a perspective of trying to find metrics that justify why Serral is the GOAT and Maru isn't, and more from the perspective of coming up with metrics that are clear and compelling and will therefore produce a ranking that's clear and compelling (even if as is expected not all will agree). Perhaps surveying other sports and games you're into to better understand what defines "greatness" and come up with some metrics and weightings that track this understanding. Some examples: 1. winning against all odds; 2. setting performance records; 3. doing what no one thought was possible; 4. being dominant/much better than the competition; 5. achieving results in the most competitive tournaments/leagues/eras; 6. being the first/only to reach certain important performance milestones; 7. sustaining a high-level of performance and results as the game/sport changes and evolves; 8. pioneering standards for how the game should be played; 9. bringing more people into the game through performance, results, mentoring, coaching, ambassadorship, etc. There are other criteria that may matter more to you and many of these may not matter much or at all to you. Some are more easy to quantify than others. What I think you've missed in your quest to be "objective" is the critically important but inherently subjective exercise of defining what greatness means (and does not mean) to you. I went back and read your article and while I appreciate the work it's really hard to understand why you chose the metrics you chose, and how they relate to the things you claim to value in GOATness (consistency, dominance, and efficiency). I can kind of draw those conclusions myself a little bit, but even then it's super unclear how you're valuing and weighing things. For example, you say Serral won 7 out of 7 of your metrics so therefore he's the undisputed GOAT, but why did you chose those 7 metrics and not others? And surely not all of your 7 metrics are equally valuable in GOAT'ing someone, right? Putting aside whether Aligulac is even a stable and accurate enough ELO system, surely your two Aligulac metrics are not of equal weight to your tournament results and efficiency metrics? I really couldn't tell (sorry if you explained this and I missed it). The thing is, in reading your article again, it can basically be summarized as a version of Miz's methodology + Aligulac metrics + a significant "nerf" to GSL after 2017 + a significant "buff" to tournament results before 2018 + including Euro regionals to make it more "fair" for Serral (your words) + giving zero value to Proleague. For anyone who values highly GSL after 2017, understands the incredibly important role Proleague played, places little or no value on Aligulac rankings, or sees the European regionals for the weak feeder tourneys they are, this is going to make no sense. But on some level it can all be justified to get to the Serral = GOAT conclusion you were going for. The one that I don't think can really be justified is excluding Proleague results (and no, factoring it into win rates doesn't count). While Proleague was a team league, it's of course still a 1v1 game and all the results were based on individual performances. Being a top Proleague player is worth a huge amount in any serious GOAT discussion, and any analysis that excludes it isn't worth taking seriously. Here's what you can do to help clarify your analysis/establish some credibility: 1. explain why you chose these 7 metrics and how they relate to your idea of a "GOAT" 2. establish a weighting among the 7 metrics that roughly corresponds to what you value more and less in a GOAT 3. include Proleague in some way 4. remove the weak Euro regional tournaments (even if you feel this may not get you the result you're hoping for) 5. publish your top 10 list with this new criteria and weighting 6. remove the opinion section of your article and all the hyperbolic pro-Serral commentary (I know you think this helps make your case for Serral, but it actually just reveals your bias, which has the opposite effect) I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir, which you may be okay with, but I assume given all the work you put in you'd like it to be taken more seriously.
So we revert back from going soft-region-locked to not region-locked?
I even wrote how putting more weight on GSL pre 2020 than World Championships does not alter the results significantly. Do you recognize this?
I never made the article in justifying Serral. No idea where you got that from. In regards to your points:
1. Serral won against all odds in the GSL vs the World, which was a landmark event in SC2 history.
2. He did over and over, often beating his own old records
3. Super vague metric, but can be interpreted as an amalgamation of 1 and 2. If so, he did it.
4. He did it.
5. Tournaments yes, eras, leagues not (though still pretty competitive era)
6. Depending on the definition, he did that a lot, although super subjective and vague again
7. He did against many patches and nerfs
8. Not so much, I'd say
9. Hard to get data on that but I think it is safe to assume that him and Reynor, later Clem and MaxPax play a huge role in getting non-Koreans to watch.
Now that I have these points, I will address them in my follow-up.
Many of them are addressed in my article anyway either through the data itself or through penalties I gave and I simply find it hard to believe that the end result would change much as - I said it time and again - only two players stick out by a very large margin.
I defined greatness.
Well, the weighting of 7 metrics when they are all won by one guy is... superfluous in the end. It would only change how much the person that is in the top spot is away from the 2nd spot. I mean.. I can include that in more detail, but again: It will not change the end result, so why bother? The weighting would only make sense if the metrics were one by different players and ones that were buffed heavily. All that is not the case.
If you want to break it down like that (I explained in the article which metric measures which quality):
1. Aligulac rankings which are pretty on point nowadays (I concede that in 2010-2012 that was not the case) through cross-regional plays
2. Aligulac HoF
3. Match win rates
4. Participation-win-ratio for tournaments
5. Average place achieved in tournaments
These 5 were all not present in Miz's methodology
6. Tournament score (this is the thing Miz did. In comparison to him...
I did not nerf GSL after 2017.. I nerfed GSL after 2020, beginning at GSL 2021 season 1.
Miz did so in 2023 (this correction affected one of Maru's wins and one of Maru's 2nd places for total of a whooping 0,85 points). But I think looking at the tournament structure it is obvious, why I did it post-2020.
I used the same metric as Miz for the place 1 to place 2 ratio (looking only at Maru vs Serral, buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I nerfed DreamHack and ESL Masters finals post 2020 in comparison to Miz (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral) and I also buffed tournaments pre 2018 not only through categorization but also with another 50% (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral).
I explained that Proleague results were considered in the match win rate metric to give them credit and why it doesn't make sense to include team scores in individual analyses any further because of the influence of team mates. This is the only sensible approach to the topic. One could have only played a couple of games, lost the majority and gained a lot of points as the team won the tournament. In my opinion, my approach was the most sensible, because it won't let the successes and failures be disregarded, but keeps other player's influence which can't be fully controlled for out of the metric.
For the people who saw European tournaments as feeders: I devalued them significantly in the tournament-multiplier.
And again: Tournament score is the only thing we are arguing about the whole time, while looking at my article. 1 out of 7... you do realize this, right?
If I did take a more coherent approach, rank 1 and 2 ratio would have been 2:1 not 1,5:1. The era-multiplier is overtuned as well. Serral would come out with a landmark win here too.
7. Efficiency-score is the tournament score divided by the years a player was active. This one was also not present in Miz's evaluation.
I had no foregone conclusion. All my major nerfs - except the Proleague-one, which is still sensible to me; otherwise explain how we will measure different team strengths, etc. - hit Serral.
Yes, you said it correctly... the 1v1 games are still 1v1, thus were allocated to be reflected in the match win rates and I did not exclude ProLeague.
In my opinion you are taking some perceived or supposed weak links and over-hype them to ignore all other metrics by downplaying them or scrubbing them off, add some vague metrics that are hard to measure to come out and say: not worth looking at. I think the bias is becoming more and more obvious.
Because you know what? I concede to you team matches. I concede that Maru gets full points in 2012 where he only played 3 matches and lost 2. Now he is placed 1st in tournament score, with Serral being a close 2nd, both distancing everyone else.
Serral still wins the other 6 by a landmark. INno has more rank 1s than Maru, Maru is 4th in the participation-win-ratio of tournaments and placed 3rd in average rank in tournaments (by a lot behind Serral and INno). Now every possible nerf was used on Serral to put Maru on first place in one of the metrics but Serral still comes out on top in 6 of them as well as Maru not even being placed 2nd in all of the rest.
Fine by me... if that is the narrative that is fine for you, so be it.
To the last list:
1. I did.
2. I only need to do so after bizarrely nerfing Serral the way you suggested. The weighting needs to be at least tournamen-score 3x on top (!!) in relation to everything else to make Maru come out on top (even more, as we know that he wasn't even placed 2nd in many others and Serral is a close 2nd in tournament score)
3. ProLeague, including more vague metrics, could be used to top the tides to one side in my opinion. That isn't necessary as the outcome was clear as day.
4. This will still only push tournament-score... one of the metrics. And even Miz accounted for them. You know that you must be one of the hardest Maru-GOATies if you need to push each and every button to make him come out on top in one (!) metric... and how to make up for Serral with all that missed out time he spent in these tourneys? He simply loses all these tournaments with no kind of reparation, right? That is exactly why I nerfed these in the tournament-multiplier so much... but even that is not enough I guess, lol.
Funny that you think nerfing only Serral and including all buffs for Maru is objective, whereas I gave sensible thought to these issues and still found immense buffs for Maru's case. At this point it seems like you are trying to reverse-engineer the result by attacking supposed or perceived weak links without acknowledging the buffs Maru and everyone else in contrast to Serral received.
5. I never had an old top 10. I don't see the advantage as place 1 and 2 are fixed anyways (1 in my opinion is as well as you'd have to include absurd mental gymnastics to make it work any other way). If this goes to the before made notion about Mvp needing to be in the top 10 I have to decline. Too much work to rank all ten for the final result to be the same at the end of the day.
6. Could do that. Just thought it would prevent unnecessary discussions about things that were not addressed and are pretty clear to observe. If any bias is present, it comes from Serral's results.
PS: Previously I forgot to mention...
The actual ratio of 1st to 2nd place of course was also a heavy penalty to Serral, which I only did to buff Maru in comparison to him. A ratio of 2:1:0,5 is much more befiting of a GOAT (placing most value of actually being the best), plus it makes much more sense in how to evaluate semifinal and final wins.
I didn't even talk about how in direct comparisons from 2018 and onward for all scores Maru falls massively behind Serral (even tournament score). But in an "truly" objective comparison this should be included too, right?
PPS: "I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir"
Including ever more of these does not help the objectivity.
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I'd say the 50% buff feels appropriate compared to 2019 but low compared to 2024. The difference between 2019 and 2024 is so high that it doesn't make sense to rate them equally.
I would probably rate tournaments pre-2017 at 100%, 2017-2019 at 66% and post-2019 at 33%. That feels more appropriate with how competitive the scenes were at the respective times
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On July 27 2024 17:40 Charoisaur wrote:
I'd say the 50% buff feels appropriate compared to 2019 but low compared to 2024. The difference between 2019 and 2024 is so high that it doesn't make sense to rate them equally.
I would probably rate tournaments pre-2017 at 100%, 2017-2019 at 66% and post-2019 at 33%. That feels more appropriate with how competitive the scenes were at the respective times
Agreed for the most part... but it wouldn't change the result. INno's era would need a 300% buff to all of post 2017 to get him on par with Serral. Although skill level was still on the rise which would have to be weighed versus less players.
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On July 27 2024 07:15 UnLarva wrote:
I want contrast this to HLTV.org forums and it's discussion culture remotely relevant to the game it "debate". You will manage well there, if you know following terms:
+1
report
flair
flag
-[place a team player to be removed here] +[place a team player to be added here]
meds
goat (as preposition to practically anything imaginable)
...
We need to defend Sc2 and fight against that kind discussion culture with all hands available.
You forgot: W, L, washed, who? and "Getting offended with a news, but only read the headline and then rants about things adressed in the news itself that contradict the rant 100%"
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United States1759 Posts
On July 27 2024 17:47 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 17:40 Charoisaur wrote:
I'd say the 50% buff feels appropriate compared to 2019 but low compared to 2024. The difference between 2019 and 2024 is so high that it doesn't make sense to rate them equally.
I would probably rate tournaments pre-2017 at 100%, 2017-2019 at 66% and post-2019 at 33%. That feels more appropriate with how competitive the scenes were at the respective times Agreed for the most part... but it wouldn't change the result. INno's era would need a 300% buff to all of post 2017 to get him on par with Serral. Although skill level was still on the rise which would have to be weighed versus less players.
My biggest issue with the "dominant" arguments is that the definition of the word varies depending on the level of competition, the number of tournaments, the presence of team leagues etc (the word dominant is used to express where a player stands compared to his peers. as opposed to having a blanket list of requirements to establish dominance). Inno is a great illustration of this, as he won Code S twice in Heart of the Swarm and reached the finals of another season of Code S. Reaching three KIL finals in three years certainly wouldn't be dominating in today's environment, but back in 2015, Inno, alongside Rain, Maru and Classic were the only players to win two KIL during Hots. I think it's perfectly reasonable to call each of them dominant during this stretch of time given the standards back in 2013-2015.
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United States1759 Posts
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On July 27 2024 17:04 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 08:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era.
"If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane"
He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing.
For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT.
Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era). I just want to explain something, although I agree with most of what you said: I chose the 50% modifier because after the pre-screening it was obvious, that most of the contenders continued to play into the 2018 era with more or less the same win rates. It was mostly the Premier Tournaments that were suddenly won by different players. As most would agree (and uThermal said as well): players mostly only get better until age finally nags at them, which wasn't the case for the players involved. Thus I had to assume that the new contesters, as well as the young Koreans that were around for some time but finally hit that age where the career takes of for most players (end of teens/beginning of twenties), simply were better than the old guard. Second: ooking at the transition period... the sudden drop in PT wins but not match win rates, indicates that new talent still was pouring out from the 2015 era. Some people retired until 2019, but most of the old guard was still active then. So a discount of 50% already seemed extremely heavy to me. I thought about analyzing several metrics to put them on display like age at a given time, number of top tier contenders, as well as the impact of larger tournaments and a greater player base. It will take some time, but I doubt that my 50% buff were completely undervaluing the peak era. Just to point something out: I would have to buff the era-multiplier from 50 to 300% to get INnoVation, the third on the list, close to Maru and Serral. That is simply how outstanding these two are. And nearly all nerfs that I would need to apply to Serral target Maru and Rogue as well. Maru only has 2 wins in high tier tournaments and 2 2nd places in pretty low tier tournaments as well as 7 3rd/4th (which of course matter the least) places in that time frame. To be fair to uThermal's thoughts: I would argue that he meant to put present-day-Serral in 2015. If we'd do the same with Maru he'd also had more wins than the two you mentioned. Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 09:41 rwala wrote:On July 27 2024 05:50 PremoBeats wrote:rwala wrote:
Yes you can continue to say the same things over and over again but it will not have any more impact. There is no amount of math you can do to convince me that someone who has never competed in the most competitive tournaments and leagues is the GOAT. Others maybe, but not me.
uThermal’s perspective that Serral is the GOAT is totally valid, as I’ve said many times. It’s a good conceptual framework for you to think about.
You were the one who brought up football. I simply pointed out the irony in using football to defend your perspective on region lock when it is almost certainly the lack of region lock in competitive club football that has made Messi’s GOAT bid so strong. When your one attempt to broaden your perspective and apply a coherent conceptual framework to your thinking on how to determine a GOAT backfires so spectacularly it’s time to pause and reconsider.
I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that you put into this, but there’s no amount of effort that can fix a flawed framework. To that end I do need to say that if what you are really going for is something scientific, there needs to be a lot more work because the number of potentially confounding variables you’ll need to control for is…staggering. Proper statistical modeling and regression analysis would 100% be needed. I think that’s overkill and unnecessary, but just want to note some methodological requirements that would need to be met if you want to credibly call what you’re doing “scientific.”
Honestly, truly, I would take a step back and think about who in any field (sports, games, or otherwise) you feel is really the “greatest” of all time. And then think about why you feel that way. Maybe look into debates or discussions and see what others think determine “greatness”. I really do think it’ll help, but only if you’re open to it…
I’ll post later some interviews with GOAT candidates talking about other GOAT candidates. It may be interesting to look at. I mean that is a fair statement. Dismissing a more refined era in terms of game understanding, strategic refinement and mechanical proficiency for more competitiveness in regards to players is absolutely acceptable, although I'd be more leaning to weight them differently instead of dismissing one all together... but it is completely fine taking that approach. I simply want to point out how little subjectiveness affected my work (but it still did, as you pointed out and I made clear in the methodology). So far, people who disagree with the result have not presented any other metric that is missing to pursue the goal. And they don't have to, but I will steer the wheel ever more into understanding the topic better. To me, it is interesting to observe how the dialogue shifted from me favoring Serral, to Mvp needing to be in the top10 to elevating metaphors way beyond their comparison level. Couldn't you tell me exactly what you think is missing? I said multiple times, that I am working on calculations to compare eras, that there are - at the moment - only two people that stand out massively. No one has ever doubted that by the way. Most criticism went at topics that didn't change the outcome one bit... which is telling by itself. If I change the weighting of World Championships to match ESL Masters/DH Season Finals which is below GSL we go from 46,64:46,41 for Serral to 45,81:45,77 for Maru... as I said: I looked at the metrics... subjectivity won't change much in most metrics and it won't change the final standing of Serral being #1. You are only able to argue about my conceptual framework backfiring because you conflate World Championship region locks with team region locks. I merely said that it never made sense for one region to take part in another region's World Championship qualifier. In SC2 as well as in football World Championship locks for Worlds make perfect sense, while club teams are open to make contracts with whomever they want (of course it makes sense to hire people who have the same working hours and speak the same language). And I will bet you that there are qualities like win-loss-ratios, overall contender quality or things like most gained points, throw speed, etc. that would allow me to define GOAT metrics which match the consensus of people. Weighting them or giving them context is another thing but all GOATs were hypersuccesful in their area of expertise. But I have enough on my hands with SC2 alone and it is not like Serral only has a case because of numbers either. But as I said.. I am interested in people's opinion to make this list more waterproof and am working more on ranking tournaments atm. So far, Serral wins in 6 out of 7 metrics clearly, while he is tied with Maru in one, even if we assume the worst possible penalties. You're confused about why your football point backfired, and honestly I'm surprised that you're continuing to argue about it. Again, the point is that European club football is the gold standard and is not region locked just as GSL is the gold standard and is not region locked. The introspection that is required here is to inquire why almost every other sport and game (chess, baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) gives most if not all of the GOAT value to performances and results in the most competitive leagues and tournaments, irrespective of where those leagues and tournaments are located even if it is not convenient for many to participate. The NBA, MLB, and domestic football leagues are just as "soft locked" as GSL, more so even since GSL does not require one to literally put your entire life on pause for years to move to a foreign country where you may not know the language or have any friends or family. Many talented athletes are not able or willing to do this, but the ones who want to play with the best do it anyway if they are given the chance. And while it certainly is prestigious to play and show results in the Olympics and be crowned "world champion," no one tries to pretend that this means anything more than an important display of national pride and excellence. Regarding your metrics and what's missing, I think you're confused about the point I'm making. The task is not so much to try to identify some elusive "consensus" and then modify your metrics to fit that consensus. What I was encouraging you to do is approach this less from a perspective of trying to find metrics that justify why Serral is the GOAT and Maru isn't, and more from the perspective of coming up with metrics that are clear and compelling and will therefore produce a ranking that's clear and compelling (even if as is expected not all will agree). Perhaps surveying other sports and games you're into to better understand what defines "greatness" and come up with some metrics and weightings that track this understanding. Some examples: 1. winning against all odds; 2. setting performance records; 3. doing what no one thought was possible; 4. being dominant/much better than the competition; 5. achieving results in the most competitive tournaments/leagues/eras; 6. being the first/only to reach certain important performance milestones; 7. sustaining a high-level of performance and results as the game/sport changes and evolves; 8. pioneering standards for how the game should be played; 9. bringing more people into the game through performance, results, mentoring, coaching, ambassadorship, etc. There are other criteria that may matter more to you and many of these may not matter much or at all to you. Some are more easy to quantify than others. What I think you've missed in your quest to be "objective" is the critically important but inherently subjective exercise of defining what greatness means (and does not mean) to you. I went back and read your article and while I appreciate the work it's really hard to understand why you chose the metrics you chose, and how they relate to the things you claim to value in GOATness (consistency, dominance, and efficiency). I can kind of draw those conclusions myself a little bit, but even then it's super unclear how you're valuing and weighing things. For example, you say Serral won 7 out of 7 of your metrics so therefore he's the undisputed GOAT, but why did you chose those 7 metrics and not others? And surely not all of your 7 metrics are equally valuable in GOAT'ing someone, right? Putting aside whether Aligulac is even a stable and accurate enough ELO system, surely your two Aligulac metrics are not of equal weight to your tournament results and efficiency metrics? I really couldn't tell (sorry if you explained this and I missed it). The thing is, in reading your article again, it can basically be summarized as a version of Miz's methodology + Aligulac metrics + a significant "nerf" to GSL after 2017 + a significant "buff" to tournament results before 2018 + including Euro regionals to make it more "fair" for Serral (your words) + giving zero value to Proleague. For anyone who values highly GSL after 2017, understands the incredibly important role Proleague played, places little or no value on Aligulac rankings, or sees the European regionals for the weak feeder tourneys they are, this is going to make no sense. But on some level it can all be justified to get to the Serral = GOAT conclusion you were going for. The one that I don't think can really be justified is excluding Proleague results (and no, factoring it into win rates doesn't count). While Proleague was a team league, it's of course still a 1v1 game and all the results were based on individual performances. Being a top Proleague player is worth a huge amount in any serious GOAT discussion, and any analysis that excludes it isn't worth taking seriously. Here's what you can do to help clarify your analysis/establish some credibility: 1. explain why you chose these 7 metrics and how they relate to your idea of a "GOAT" 2. establish a weighting among the 7 metrics that roughly corresponds to what you value more and less in a GOAT 3. include Proleague in some way 4. remove the weak Euro regional tournaments (even if you feel this may not get you the result you're hoping for) 5. publish your top 10 list with this new criteria and weighting 6. remove the opinion section of your article and all the hyperbolic pro-Serral commentary (I know you think this helps make your case for Serral, but it actually just reveals your bias, which has the opposite effect) I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir, which you may be okay with, but I assume given all the work you put in you'd like it to be taken more seriously. So we revert back from going soft-region-locked to not region-locked? I even wrote how putting more weight on GSL pre 2020 than World Championships does not alter the results significantly. Do you recognize this? I never made the article in justifying Serral. No idea where you got that from. In regards to your points: 1. Serral won against all odds in the GSL vs the World, which was a landmark event in SC2 history. 2. He did over and over, often beating his own old records 3. Super vague metric, but can be interpreted as an amalgamation of 1 and 2. If so, he did it. 4. He did it. 5. Tournaments yes, eras, leagues not (though still pretty competitive era) 6. Depending on the definition, he did that a lot, although super subjective and vague again 7. He did against many patches and nerfs 8. Not so much, I'd say 9. Hard to get data on that but I think it is safe to assume that him and Reynor, later Clem and MaxPax play a huge role in getting non-Koreans to watch. Now that I have these points, I will address them in my follow-up. Many of them are addressed in my article anyway either through the data itself or through penalties I gave and I simply find it hard to believe that the end result would change much as - I said it time and again - only two players stick out by a very large margin. I defined greatness. Well, the weighting of 7 metrics when they are all won by one guy is... superfluous in the end. It would only change how much the person that is in the top spot is away from the 2nd spot. I mean.. I can include that in more detail, but again: It will not change the end result, so why bother? The weighting would only make sense if the metrics were one by different players and ones that were buffed heavily. All that is not the case. If you want to break it down like that (I explained in the article which metric measures which quality): 1. Aligulac rankings which are pretty on point nowadays (I concede that in 2010-2012 that was not the case) through cross-regional plays 2. Aligulac HoF 3. Match win rates 4. Participation-win-ratio for tournaments 5. Average place achieved in tournaments These 5 were all not present in Miz's methodology 6. Tournament score (this is the thing Miz did. In comparison to him... I did not nerf GSL after 2017.. I nerfed GSL after 2020, beginning at GSL 2021 season 1. Miz did so in 2023 (this correction affected one of Maru's wins and one of Maru's 2nd places for total of a whooping 0,85 points). But I think looking at the tournament structure it is obvious, why I did it post-2020. I used the same metric as Miz for the place 1 to place 2 ratio (looking only at Maru vs Serral, buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I nerfed DreamHack and ESL Masters finals post 2020 in comparison to Miz (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral) and I also buffed tournaments pre 2018 not only through categorization but also with another 50% (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I explained that Proleague results were considered in the match win rate metric to give them credit and why it doesn't make sense to include team scores in individual analyses any further because of the influence of team mates. This is the only sensible approach to the topic. One could have only played a couple of games, lost the majority and gained a lot of points as the team won the tournament. In my opinion, my approach was the most sensible, because it won't let the successes and failures be disregarded, but keeps other player's influence which can't be fully controlled for out of the metric. For the people who saw European tournaments as feeders: I devalued them significantly in the tournament-multiplier. And again: Tournament score is the only thing we are arguing about the whole time, while looking at my article. 1 out of 7... you do realize this, right? If I did take a more coherent approach, rank 1 and 2 ratio would have been 2:1 not 1,5:1. The era-multiplier is overtuned as well. Serral would come out with a landmark win here too. 7. Efficiency-score is the tournament score divided by the years a player was active. This one was also not present in Miz's evaluation. I had no foregone conclusion. All my major nerfs - except the Proleague-one, which is still sensible to me; otherwise explain how we will measure different team strengths, etc. - hit Serral. Yes, you said it correctly... the 1v1 games are still 1v1, thus were allocated to be reflected in the match win rates and I did not exclude ProLeague. In my opinion you are taking some perceived or supposed weak links and over-hype them to ignore all other metrics by downplaying them or scrubbing them off, add some vague metrics that are hard to measure to come out and say: not worth looking at. I think the bias is becoming more and more obvious. Because you know what? I concede to you team matches. I concede that Maru gets full points in 2012 where he only played 3 matches and lost 2. Now he is placed 1st in tournament score, with Serral being a close 2nd, both distancing everyone else. Serral still wins the other 6 by a landmark. INno has more rank 1s than Maru, Maru is 4th in the participation-win-ratio of tournaments and placed 3rd in average rank in tournaments (by a lot behind Serral and INno). Now every possible nerf was used on Serral to put Maru on first place in one of the metrics but Serral still comes out on top in 6 of them as well as Maru not even being placed 2nd in all of the rest. Fine by me... if that is the narrative that is fine for you, so be it. To the last list: 1. I did. 2. I only need to do so after bizarrely nerfing Serral the way you suggested. The weighting needs to be at least tournamen-score 3x on top (!!) in relation to everything else to make Maru come out on top (even more, as we know that he wasn't even placed 2nd in many others and Serral is a close 2nd in tournament score) 3. ProLeague, including more vague metrics, could be used to top the tides to one side in my opinion. That isn't necessary as the outcome was clear as day. 4. This will still only push tournament-score... one of the metrics. And even Miz accounted for them. You know that you must be one of the hardest Maru-GOATies if you need to push each and every button to make him come out on top in one (!) metric... and how to make up for Serral with all that missed out time he spent in these tourneys? He simply loses all these tournaments with no kind of reparation, right? That is exactly why I nerfed these in the tournament-multiplier so much... but even that is not enough I guess, lol. Funny that you think nerfing only Serral and including all buffs for Maru is objective, whereas I gave sensible thought to these issues and still found immense buffs for Maru's case. At this point it seems like you are trying to reverse-engineer the result by attacking supposed or perceived weak links without acknowledging the buffs Maru and everyone else in contrast to Serral received. 5. I never had an old top 10. I don't see the advantage as place 1 and 2 are fixed anyways (1 in my opinion is as well as you'd have to include absurd mental gymnastics to make it work any other way). If this goes to the before made notion about Mvp needing to be in the top 10 I have to decline. Too much work to rank all ten for the final result to be the same at the end of the day. 6. Could do that. Just thought it would prevent unnecessary discussions about things that were not addressed and are pretty clear to observe. If any bias is present, it comes from Serral's results. PS: Previously I forgot to mention... The actual ratio of 1st to 2nd place of course was also a heavy penalty to Serral, which I only did to buff Maru in comparison to him. A ratio of 2:1:0,5 is much more befiting of a GOAT (placing most value of actually being the best), plus it makes much more sense in how to evaluate semifinal and final wins. I didn't even talk about how in direct comparisons from 2018 and onward for all scores Maru falls massively behind Serral (even tournament score). But in an "truly" objective comparison this should be included too, right? PPS: "I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir" Including ever more of these does not help the objectivity.
That’s a lot of words merely to concede you have no conceptual justification for your metrics or weighting for them, and are doubling down on excluding Proleague while including the weak Euro regionals (to be “fair” to Serral, again your words).
At this point honestly you can say you’re being “objective” one thousand times but no one other than the most die hard Serral fans will believe you.
I provided one framework to help you think about a path to redeeming some credibility after the extremely biased and subjective original article, nonsensical football analogies to justify it, etc. It’s really then up to you whether you want to take that path. Good luck!
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On July 27 2024 17:47 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 17:40 Charoisaur wrote:
I'd say the 50% buff feels appropriate compared to 2019 but low compared to 2024. The difference between 2019 and 2024 is so high that it doesn't make sense to rate them equally.
I would probably rate tournaments pre-2017 at 100%, 2017-2019 at 66% and post-2019 at 33%. That feels more appropriate with how competitive the scenes were at the respective times Agreed for the most part... but it wouldn't change the result. INno's era would need a 300% buff to all of post 2017 to get him on par with Serral. Although skill level was still on the rise which would have to be weighed versus less players.
This is another major conceptual mistake you’ve made in your analysis (failing to understand the difference between absolute skill and relative skill, and how that relates to competitiveness).
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On July 27 2024 17:04 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 08:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era.
"If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane"
He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing.
For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT.
Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era). I just want to explain something, although I agree with most of what you said: I chose the 50% modifier because after the pre-screening it was obvious, that most of the contenders continued to play into the 2018 era with more or less the same win rates. It was mostly the Premier Tournaments that were suddenly won by different players. As most would agree (and uThermal said as well): players mostly only get better until age finally nags at them, which wasn't the case for the players involved. Thus I had to assume that the new contesters, as well as the young Koreans that were around for some time but finally hit that age where the career takes of for most players (end of teens/beginning of twenties), simply were better than the old guard. Second: ooking at the transition period... the sudden drop in PT wins but not match win rates, indicates that new talent still was pouring out from the 2015 era. Some people retired until 2019, but most of the old guard was still active then. So a discount of 50% already seemed extremely heavy to me. I thought about analyzing several metrics to put them on display like age at a given time, number of top tier contenders, as well as the impact of larger tournaments and a greater player base. It will take some time, but I doubt that my 50% buff were completely undervaluing the peak era. Just to point something out: I would have to buff the era-multiplier from 50 to 300% to get INnoVation, the third on the list, close to Maru and Serral. That is simply how outstanding these two are. And nearly all nerfs that I would need to apply to Serral target Maru and Rogue as well. Maru only has 2 wins in high tier tournaments and 2 2nd places in pretty low tier tournaments as well as 7 3rd/4th (which of course matter the least) places in that time frame. To be fair to uThermal's thoughts: I would argue that he meant to put present-day-Serral in 2015. If we'd do the same with Maru he'd also had more wins than the two you mentioned. Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 09:41 rwala wrote:On July 27 2024 05:50 PremoBeats wrote:rwala wrote:
Yes you can continue to say the same things over and over again but it will not have any more impact. There is no amount of math you can do to convince me that someone who has never competed in the most competitive tournaments and leagues is the GOAT. Others maybe, but not me.
uThermal’s perspective that Serral is the GOAT is totally valid, as I’ve said many times. It’s a good conceptual framework for you to think about.
You were the one who brought up football. I simply pointed out the irony in using football to defend your perspective on region lock when it is almost certainly the lack of region lock in competitive club football that has made Messi’s GOAT bid so strong. When your one attempt to broaden your perspective and apply a coherent conceptual framework to your thinking on how to determine a GOAT backfires so spectacularly it’s time to pause and reconsider.
I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that you put into this, but there’s no amount of effort that can fix a flawed framework. To that end I do need to say that if what you are really going for is something scientific, there needs to be a lot more work because the number of potentially confounding variables you’ll need to control for is…staggering. Proper statistical modeling and regression analysis would 100% be needed. I think that’s overkill and unnecessary, but just want to note some methodological requirements that would need to be met if you want to credibly call what you’re doing “scientific.”
Honestly, truly, I would take a step back and think about who in any field (sports, games, or otherwise) you feel is really the “greatest” of all time. And then think about why you feel that way. Maybe look into debates or discussions and see what others think determine “greatness”. I really do think it’ll help, but only if you’re open to it…
I’ll post later some interviews with GOAT candidates talking about other GOAT candidates. It may be interesting to look at. I mean that is a fair statement. Dismissing a more refined era in terms of game understanding, strategic refinement and mechanical proficiency for more competitiveness in regards to players is absolutely acceptable, although I'd be more leaning to weight them differently instead of dismissing one all together... but it is completely fine taking that approach. I simply want to point out how little subjectiveness affected my work (but it still did, as you pointed out and I made clear in the methodology). So far, people who disagree with the result have not presented any other metric that is missing to pursue the goal. And they don't have to, but I will steer the wheel ever more into understanding the topic better. To me, it is interesting to observe how the dialogue shifted from me favoring Serral, to Mvp needing to be in the top10 to elevating metaphors way beyond their comparison level. Couldn't you tell me exactly what you think is missing? I said multiple times, that I am working on calculations to compare eras, that there are - at the moment - only two people that stand out massively. No one has ever doubted that by the way. Most criticism went at topics that didn't change the outcome one bit... which is telling by itself. If I change the weighting of World Championships to match ESL Masters/DH Season Finals which is below GSL we go from 46,64:46,41 for Serral to 45,81:45,77 for Maru... as I said: I looked at the metrics... subjectivity won't change much in most metrics and it won't change the final standing of Serral being #1. You are only able to argue about my conceptual framework backfiring because you conflate World Championship region locks with team region locks. I merely said that it never made sense for one region to take part in another region's World Championship qualifier. In SC2 as well as in football World Championship locks for Worlds make perfect sense, while club teams are open to make contracts with whomever they want (of course it makes sense to hire people who have the same working hours and speak the same language). And I will bet you that there are qualities like win-loss-ratios, overall contender quality or things like most gained points, throw speed, etc. that would allow me to define GOAT metrics which match the consensus of people. Weighting them or giving them context is another thing but all GOATs were hypersuccesful in their area of expertise. But I have enough on my hands with SC2 alone and it is not like Serral only has a case because of numbers either. But as I said.. I am interested in people's opinion to make this list more waterproof and am working more on ranking tournaments atm. So far, Serral wins in 6 out of 7 metrics clearly, while he is tied with Maru in one, even if we assume the worst possible penalties. You're confused about why your football point backfired, and honestly I'm surprised that you're continuing to argue about it. Again, the point is that European club football is the gold standard and is not region locked just as GSL is the gold standard and is not region locked. The introspection that is required here is to inquire why almost every other sport and game (chess, baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) gives most if not all of the GOAT value to performances and results in the most competitive leagues and tournaments, irrespective of where those leagues and tournaments are located even if it is not convenient for many to participate. The NBA, MLB, and domestic football leagues are just as "soft locked" as GSL, more so even since GSL does not require one to literally put your entire life on pause for years to move to a foreign country where you may not know the language or have any friends or family. Many talented athletes are not able or willing to do this, but the ones who want to play with the best do it anyway if they are given the chance. And while it certainly is prestigious to play and show results in the Olympics and be crowned "world champion," no one tries to pretend that this means anything more than an important display of national pride and excellence. Regarding your metrics and what's missing, I think you're confused about the point I'm making. The task is not so much to try to identify some elusive "consensus" and then modify your metrics to fit that consensus. What I was encouraging you to do is approach this less from a perspective of trying to find metrics that justify why Serral is the GOAT and Maru isn't, and more from the perspective of coming up with metrics that are clear and compelling and will therefore produce a ranking that's clear and compelling (even if as is expected not all will agree). Perhaps surveying other sports and games you're into to better understand what defines "greatness" and come up with some metrics and weightings that track this understanding. Some examples: 1. winning against all odds; 2. setting performance records; 3. doing what no one thought was possible; 4. being dominant/much better than the competition; 5. achieving results in the most competitive tournaments/leagues/eras; 6. being the first/only to reach certain important performance milestones; 7. sustaining a high-level of performance and results as the game/sport changes and evolves; 8. pioneering standards for how the game should be played; 9. bringing more people into the game through performance, results, mentoring, coaching, ambassadorship, etc. There are other criteria that may matter more to you and many of these may not matter much or at all to you. Some are more easy to quantify than others. What I think you've missed in your quest to be "objective" is the critically important but inherently subjective exercise of defining what greatness means (and does not mean) to you. I went back and read your article and while I appreciate the work it's really hard to understand why you chose the metrics you chose, and how they relate to the things you claim to value in GOATness (consistency, dominance, and efficiency). I can kind of draw those conclusions myself a little bit, but even then it's super unclear how you're valuing and weighing things. For example, you say Serral won 7 out of 7 of your metrics so therefore he's the undisputed GOAT, but why did you chose those 7 metrics and not others? And surely not all of your 7 metrics are equally valuable in GOAT'ing someone, right? Putting aside whether Aligulac is even a stable and accurate enough ELO system, surely your two Aligulac metrics are not of equal weight to your tournament results and efficiency metrics? I really couldn't tell (sorry if you explained this and I missed it). The thing is, in reading your article again, it can basically be summarized as a version of Miz's methodology + Aligulac metrics + a significant "nerf" to GSL after 2017 + a significant "buff" to tournament results before 2018 + including Euro regionals to make it more "fair" for Serral (your words) + giving zero value to Proleague. For anyone who values highly GSL after 2017, understands the incredibly important role Proleague played, places little or no value on Aligulac rankings, or sees the European regionals for the weak feeder tourneys they are, this is going to make no sense. But on some level it can all be justified to get to the Serral = GOAT conclusion you were going for. The one that I don't think can really be justified is excluding Proleague results (and no, factoring it into win rates doesn't count). While Proleague was a team league, it's of course still a 1v1 game and all the results were based on individual performances. Being a top Proleague player is worth a huge amount in any serious GOAT discussion, and any analysis that excludes it isn't worth taking seriously. Here's what you can do to help clarify your analysis/establish some credibility: 1. explain why you chose these 7 metrics and how they relate to your idea of a "GOAT" 2. establish a weighting among the 7 metrics that roughly corresponds to what you value more and less in a GOAT 3. include Proleague in some way 4. remove the weak Euro regional tournaments (even if you feel this may not get you the result you're hoping for) 5. publish your top 10 list with this new criteria and weighting 6. remove the opinion section of your article and all the hyperbolic pro-Serral commentary (I know you think this helps make your case for Serral, but it actually just reveals your bias, which has the opposite effect) I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir, which you may be okay with, but I assume given all the work you put in you'd like it to be taken more seriously. So we revert back from going soft-region-locked to not region-locked? I even wrote how putting more weight on GSL pre 2020 than World Championships does not alter the results significantly. Do you recognize this? I never made the article in justifying Serral. No idea where you got that from. In regards to your points: 1. Serral won against all odds in the GSL vs the World, which was a landmark event in SC2 history. 2. He did over and over, often beating his own old records 3. Super vague metric, but can be interpreted as an amalgamation of 1 and 2. If so, he did it. 4. He did it. 5. Tournaments yes, eras, leagues not (though still pretty competitive era) 6. Depending on the definition, he did that a lot, although super subjective and vague again 7. He did against many patches and nerfs 8. Not so much, I'd say 9. Hard to get data on that but I think it is safe to assume that him and Reynor, later Clem and MaxPax play a huge role in getting non-Koreans to watch. Now that I have these points, I will address them in my follow-up. Many of them are addressed in my article anyway either through the data itself or through penalties I gave and I simply find it hard to believe that the end result would change much as - I said it time and again - only two players stick out by a very large margin. I defined greatness. Well, the weighting of 7 metrics when they are all won by one guy is... superfluous in the end. It would only change how much the person that is in the top spot is away from the 2nd spot. I mean.. I can include that in more detail, but again: It will not change the end result, so why bother? The weighting would only make sense if the metrics were one by different players and ones that were buffed heavily. All that is not the case. If you want to break it down like that (I explained in the article which metric measures which quality): 1. Aligulac rankings which are pretty on point nowadays (I concede that in 2010-2012 that was not the case) through cross-regional plays 2. Aligulac HoF 3. Match win rates 4. Participation-win-ratio for tournaments 5. Average place achieved in tournaments These 5 were all not present in Miz's methodology 6. Tournament score (this is the thing Miz did. In comparison to him... I did not nerf GSL after 2017.. I nerfed GSL after 2020, beginning at GSL 2021 season 1. Miz did so in 2023 (this correction affected one of Maru's wins and one of Maru's 2nd places for total of a whooping 0,85 points). But I think looking at the tournament structure it is obvious, why I did it post-2020. I used the same metric as Miz for the place 1 to place 2 ratio (looking only at Maru vs Serral, buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I nerfed DreamHack and ESL Masters finals post 2020 in comparison to Miz (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral) and I also buffed tournaments pre 2018 not only through categorization but also with another 50% (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I explained that Proleague results were considered in the match win rate metric to give them credit and why it doesn't make sense to include team scores in individual analyses any further because of the influence of team mates. This is the only sensible approach to the topic. One could have only played a couple of games, lost the majority and gained a lot of points as the team won the tournament. In my opinion, my approach was the most sensible, because it won't let the successes and failures be disregarded, but keeps other player's influence which can't be fully controlled for out of the metric. For the people who saw European tournaments as feeders: I devalued them significantly in the tournament-multiplier. And again: Tournament score is the only thing we are arguing about the whole time, while looking at my article. 1 out of 7... you do realize this, right? If I did take a more coherent approach, rank 1 and 2 ratio would have been 2:1 not 1,5:1. The era-multiplier is overtuned as well. Serral would come out with a landmark win here too. 7. Efficiency-score is the tournament score divided by the years a player was active. This one was also not present in Miz's evaluation. I had no foregone conclusion. All my major nerfs - except the Proleague-one, which is still sensible to me; otherwise explain how we will measure different team strengths, etc. - hit Serral. Yes, you said it correctly... the 1v1 games are still 1v1, thus were allocated to be reflected in the match win rates and I did not exclude ProLeague. In my opinion you are taking some perceived or supposed weak links and over-hype them to ignore all other metrics by downplaying them or scrubbing them off, add some vague metrics that are hard to measure to come out and say: not worth looking at. I think the bias is becoming more and more obvious. Because you know what? I concede to you team matches. I concede that Maru gets full points in 2012 where he only played 3 matches and lost 2. Now he is placed 1st in tournament score, with Serral being a close 2nd, both distancing everyone else. Serral still wins the other 6 by a landmark. INno has more rank 1s than Maru, Maru is 4th in the participation-win-ratio of tournaments and placed 3rd in average rank in tournaments (by a lot behind Serral and INno). Now every possible nerf was used on Serral to put Maru on first place in one of the metrics but Serral still comes out on top in 6 of them as well as Maru not even being placed 2nd in all of the rest. Fine by me... if that is the narrative that is fine for you, so be it. To the last list: 1. I did. 2. I only need to do so after bizarrely nerfing Serral the way you suggested. The weighting needs to be at least tournamen-score 3x on top (!!) in relation to everything else to make Maru come out on top (even more, as we know that he wasn't even placed 2nd in many others and Serral is a close 2nd in tournament score) 3. ProLeague, including more vague metrics, could be used to top the tides to one side in my opinion. That isn't necessary as the outcome was clear as day. 4. This will still only push tournament-score... one of the metrics. And even Miz accounted for them. You know that you must be one of the hardest Maru-GOATies if you need to push each and every button to make him come out on top in one (!) metric... and how to make up for Serral with all that missed out time he spent in these tourneys? He simply loses all these tournaments with no kind of reparation, right? That is exactly why I nerfed these in the tournament-multiplier so much... but even that is not enough I guess, lol. Funny that you think nerfing only Serral and including all buffs for Maru is objective, whereas I gave sensible thought to these issues and still found immense buffs for Maru's case. At this point it seems like you are trying to reverse-engineer the result by attacking supposed or perceived weak links without acknowledging the buffs Maru and everyone else in contrast to Serral received. 5. I never had an old top 10. I don't see the advantage as place 1 and 2 are fixed anyways (1 in my opinion is as well as you'd have to include absurd mental gymnastics to make it work any other way). If this goes to the before made notion about Mvp needing to be in the top 10 I have to decline. Too much work to rank all ten for the final result to be the same at the end of the day. 6. Could do that. Just thought it would prevent unnecessary discussions about things that were not addressed and are pretty clear to observe. If any bias is present, it comes from Serral's results. PS: Previously I forgot to mention... The actual ratio of 1st to 2nd place of course was also a heavy penalty to Serral, which I only did to buff Maru in comparison to him. A ratio of 2:1:0,5 is much more befiting of a GOAT (placing most value of actually being the best), plus it makes much more sense in how to evaluate semifinal and final wins. I didn't even talk about how in direct comparisons from 2018 and onward for all scores Maru falls massively behind Serral (even tournament score). But in an "truly" objective comparison this should be included too, right? PPS: "I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir" Including ever more of these does not help the objectivity.
Also FYI I don’t think Maru is the GOAT, I’m partial to more subjective assessments as you know and I simply don’t think he can be the GOAT until he wins something that everyone agrees is a world championship. I think Rogue is the GOAT (and realize I’m in the extreme minority on that and okay with it). I also think a compelling case can be made for Serral and Maru depending on how you define greatness.
The difference is that I don’t try to pretend my perspective is objective or “scientific”.
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Northern Ireland23064 Posts
On July 27 2024 20:50 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 17:04 PremoBeats wrote:On July 27 2024 08:29 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I just wanted to comment on this because it feels (?) you're using what uThermal said (I assume you're referring to his recent interview) that winning 10 tournies if he competed in KR, isn't enough to be GOAT. But his opinion is that Serral is the GOAT even if someone were to argue that he'd only win ~10 tournies if he competed in KR during the ~2015 era.
"If you put him in say, 2015 instead, and he's the same relative level, if he's the best player, maybe instead of winning 26 tournaments, maybe he only wins 10 instead, which is still absolutely insane"
He says if the argument is Serral's achievements aren't good enough cus he lacks results in 2015 era, you would have to find someone in that era to give the GOAT title to. Which can't be Maru because he was great but not this dominant force people are making him out to be these days, he was never the de facto best player in the world, Rogue became the best in 2017 and Maru's peak wasn't til 2018. And that if he had to pick someone that did well in 2013-2015, it would be Life if he were able to continue playing.
For Premo he put a modifier "nerf" of ~50%, whereas uThermal put a nerf of 150% and still thinks Serral would be the GOAT.
Ofc there isn't a 1 true way to prove things, these are just statistics/analysis and the method and conclusion are subjective. But a nerf/weighting where you adjust Serral's 26 wins to 10, still leads to an insane amount that Maru for example didn't achieve (only winning 2 KIL during 2013-2015, and pretty sure nowhere close to 10 premieres in that era). I just want to explain something, although I agree with most of what you said: I chose the 50% modifier because after the pre-screening it was obvious, that most of the contenders continued to play into the 2018 era with more or less the same win rates. It was mostly the Premier Tournaments that were suddenly won by different players. As most would agree (and uThermal said as well): players mostly only get better until age finally nags at them, which wasn't the case for the players involved. Thus I had to assume that the new contesters, as well as the young Koreans that were around for some time but finally hit that age where the career takes of for most players (end of teens/beginning of twenties), simply were better than the old guard. Second: ooking at the transition period... the sudden drop in PT wins but not match win rates, indicates that new talent still was pouring out from the 2015 era. Some people retired until 2019, but most of the old guard was still active then. So a discount of 50% already seemed extremely heavy to me. I thought about analyzing several metrics to put them on display like age at a given time, number of top tier contenders, as well as the impact of larger tournaments and a greater player base. It will take some time, but I doubt that my 50% buff were completely undervaluing the peak era. Just to point something out: I would have to buff the era-multiplier from 50 to 300% to get INnoVation, the third on the list, close to Maru and Serral. That is simply how outstanding these two are. And nearly all nerfs that I would need to apply to Serral target Maru and Rogue as well. Maru only has 2 wins in high tier tournaments and 2 2nd places in pretty low tier tournaments as well as 7 3rd/4th (which of course matter the least) places in that time frame. To be fair to uThermal's thoughts: I would argue that he meant to put present-day-Serral in 2015. If we'd do the same with Maru he'd also had more wins than the two you mentioned. On July 27 2024 09:41 rwala wrote:On July 27 2024 05:50 PremoBeats wrote:rwala wrote:
Yes you can continue to say the same things over and over again but it will not have any more impact. There is no amount of math you can do to convince me that someone who has never competed in the most competitive tournaments and leagues is the GOAT. Others maybe, but not me.
uThermal’s perspective that Serral is the GOAT is totally valid, as I’ve said many times. It’s a good conceptual framework for you to think about.
You were the one who brought up football. I simply pointed out the irony in using football to defend your perspective on region lock when it is almost certainly the lack of region lock in competitive club football that has made Messi’s GOAT bid so strong. When your one attempt to broaden your perspective and apply a coherent conceptual framework to your thinking on how to determine a GOAT backfires so spectacularly it’s time to pause and reconsider.
I do want to reiterate that I appreciate the work that you put into this, but there’s no amount of effort that can fix a flawed framework. To that end I do need to say that if what you are really going for is something scientific, there needs to be a lot more work because the number of potentially confounding variables you’ll need to control for is…staggering. Proper statistical modeling and regression analysis would 100% be needed. I think that’s overkill and unnecessary, but just want to note some methodological requirements that would need to be met if you want to credibly call what you’re doing “scientific.”
Honestly, truly, I would take a step back and think about who in any field (sports, games, or otherwise) you feel is really the “greatest” of all time. And then think about why you feel that way. Maybe look into debates or discussions and see what others think determine “greatness”. I really do think it’ll help, but only if you’re open to it…
I’ll post later some interviews with GOAT candidates talking about other GOAT candidates. It may be interesting to look at. I mean that is a fair statement. Dismissing a more refined era in terms of game understanding, strategic refinement and mechanical proficiency for more competitiveness in regards to players is absolutely acceptable, although I'd be more leaning to weight them differently instead of dismissing one all together... but it is completely fine taking that approach. I simply want to point out how little subjectiveness affected my work (but it still did, as you pointed out and I made clear in the methodology). So far, people who disagree with the result have not presented any other metric that is missing to pursue the goal. And they don't have to, but I will steer the wheel ever more into understanding the topic better. To me, it is interesting to observe how the dialogue shifted from me favoring Serral, to Mvp needing to be in the top10 to elevating metaphors way beyond their comparison level. Couldn't you tell me exactly what you think is missing? I said multiple times, that I am working on calculations to compare eras, that there are - at the moment - only two people that stand out massively. No one has ever doubted that by the way. Most criticism went at topics that didn't change the outcome one bit... which is telling by itself. If I change the weighting of World Championships to match ESL Masters/DH Season Finals which is below GSL we go from 46,64:46,41 for Serral to 45,81:45,77 for Maru... as I said: I looked at the metrics... subjectivity won't change much in most metrics and it won't change the final standing of Serral being #1. You are only able to argue about my conceptual framework backfiring because you conflate World Championship region locks with team region locks. I merely said that it never made sense for one region to take part in another region's World Championship qualifier. In SC2 as well as in football World Championship locks for Worlds make perfect sense, while club teams are open to make contracts with whomever they want (of course it makes sense to hire people who have the same working hours and speak the same language). And I will bet you that there are qualities like win-loss-ratios, overall contender quality or things like most gained points, throw speed, etc. that would allow me to define GOAT metrics which match the consensus of people. Weighting them or giving them context is another thing but all GOATs were hypersuccesful in their area of expertise. But I have enough on my hands with SC2 alone and it is not like Serral only has a case because of numbers either. But as I said.. I am interested in people's opinion to make this list more waterproof and am working more on ranking tournaments atm. So far, Serral wins in 6 out of 7 metrics clearly, while he is tied with Maru in one, even if we assume the worst possible penalties. You're confused about why your football point backfired, and honestly I'm surprised that you're continuing to argue about it. Again, the point is that European club football is the gold standard and is not region locked just as GSL is the gold standard and is not region locked. The introspection that is required here is to inquire why almost every other sport and game (chess, baseball, basketball, tennis, etc.) gives most if not all of the GOAT value to performances and results in the most competitive leagues and tournaments, irrespective of where those leagues and tournaments are located even if it is not convenient for many to participate. The NBA, MLB, and domestic football leagues are just as "soft locked" as GSL, more so even since GSL does not require one to literally put your entire life on pause for years to move to a foreign country where you may not know the language or have any friends or family. Many talented athletes are not able or willing to do this, but the ones who want to play with the best do it anyway if they are given the chance. And while it certainly is prestigious to play and show results in the Olympics and be crowned "world champion," no one tries to pretend that this means anything more than an important display of national pride and excellence. Regarding your metrics and what's missing, I think you're confused about the point I'm making. The task is not so much to try to identify some elusive "consensus" and then modify your metrics to fit that consensus. What I was encouraging you to do is approach this less from a perspective of trying to find metrics that justify why Serral is the GOAT and Maru isn't, and more from the perspective of coming up with metrics that are clear and compelling and will therefore produce a ranking that's clear and compelling (even if as is expected not all will agree). Perhaps surveying other sports and games you're into to better understand what defines "greatness" and come up with some metrics and weightings that track this understanding. Some examples: 1. winning against all odds; 2. setting performance records; 3. doing what no one thought was possible; 4. being dominant/much better than the competition; 5. achieving results in the most competitive tournaments/leagues/eras; 6. being the first/only to reach certain important performance milestones; 7. sustaining a high-level of performance and results as the game/sport changes and evolves; 8. pioneering standards for how the game should be played; 9. bringing more people into the game through performance, results, mentoring, coaching, ambassadorship, etc. There are other criteria that may matter more to you and many of these may not matter much or at all to you. Some are more easy to quantify than others. What I think you've missed in your quest to be "objective" is the critically important but inherently subjective exercise of defining what greatness means (and does not mean) to you. I went back and read your article and while I appreciate the work it's really hard to understand why you chose the metrics you chose, and how they relate to the things you claim to value in GOATness (consistency, dominance, and efficiency). I can kind of draw those conclusions myself a little bit, but even then it's super unclear how you're valuing and weighing things. For example, you say Serral won 7 out of 7 of your metrics so therefore he's the undisputed GOAT, but why did you chose those 7 metrics and not others? And surely not all of your 7 metrics are equally valuable in GOAT'ing someone, right? Putting aside whether Aligulac is even a stable and accurate enough ELO system, surely your two Aligulac metrics are not of equal weight to your tournament results and efficiency metrics? I really couldn't tell (sorry if you explained this and I missed it). The thing is, in reading your article again, it can basically be summarized as a version of Miz's methodology + Aligulac metrics + a significant "nerf" to GSL after 2017 + a significant "buff" to tournament results before 2018 + including Euro regionals to make it more "fair" for Serral (your words) + giving zero value to Proleague. For anyone who values highly GSL after 2017, understands the incredibly important role Proleague played, places little or no value on Aligulac rankings, or sees the European regionals for the weak feeder tourneys they are, this is going to make no sense. But on some level it can all be justified to get to the Serral = GOAT conclusion you were going for. The one that I don't think can really be justified is excluding Proleague results (and no, factoring it into win rates doesn't count). While Proleague was a team league, it's of course still a 1v1 game and all the results were based on individual performances. Being a top Proleague player is worth a huge amount in any serious GOAT discussion, and any analysis that excludes it isn't worth taking seriously. Here's what you can do to help clarify your analysis/establish some credibility: 1. explain why you chose these 7 metrics and how they relate to your idea of a "GOAT" 2. establish a weighting among the 7 metrics that roughly corresponds to what you value more and less in a GOAT 3. include Proleague in some way 4. remove the weak Euro regional tournaments (even if you feel this may not get you the result you're hoping for) 5. publish your top 10 list with this new criteria and weighting 6. remove the opinion section of your article and all the hyperbolic pro-Serral commentary (I know you think this helps make your case for Serral, but it actually just reveals your bias, which has the opposite effect) I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir, which you may be okay with, but I assume given all the work you put in you'd like it to be taken more seriously. So we revert back from going soft-region-locked to not region-locked? I even wrote how putting more weight on GSL pre 2020 than World Championships does not alter the results significantly. Do you recognize this? I never made the article in justifying Serral. No idea where you got that from. In regards to your points: 1. Serral won against all odds in the GSL vs the World, which was a landmark event in SC2 history. 2. He did over and over, often beating his own old records 3. Super vague metric, but can be interpreted as an amalgamation of 1 and 2. If so, he did it. 4. He did it. 5. Tournaments yes, eras, leagues not (though still pretty competitive era) 6. Depending on the definition, he did that a lot, although super subjective and vague again 7. He did against many patches and nerfs 8. Not so much, I'd say 9. Hard to get data on that but I think it is safe to assume that him and Reynor, later Clem and MaxPax play a huge role in getting non-Koreans to watch. Now that I have these points, I will address them in my follow-up. Many of them are addressed in my article anyway either through the data itself or through penalties I gave and I simply find it hard to believe that the end result would change much as - I said it time and again - only two players stick out by a very large margin. I defined greatness. Well, the weighting of 7 metrics when they are all won by one guy is... superfluous in the end. It would only change how much the person that is in the top spot is away from the 2nd spot. I mean.. I can include that in more detail, but again: It will not change the end result, so why bother? The weighting would only make sense if the metrics were one by different players and ones that were buffed heavily. All that is not the case. If you want to break it down like that (I explained in the article which metric measures which quality): 1. Aligulac rankings which are pretty on point nowadays (I concede that in 2010-2012 that was not the case) through cross-regional plays 2. Aligulac HoF 3. Match win rates 4. Participation-win-ratio for tournaments 5. Average place achieved in tournaments These 5 were all not present in Miz's methodology 6. Tournament score (this is the thing Miz did. In comparison to him... I did not nerf GSL after 2017.. I nerfed GSL after 2020, beginning at GSL 2021 season 1. Miz did so in 2023 (this correction affected one of Maru's wins and one of Maru's 2nd places for total of a whooping 0,85 points). But I think looking at the tournament structure it is obvious, why I did it post-2020. I used the same metric as Miz for the place 1 to place 2 ratio (looking only at Maru vs Serral, buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I nerfed DreamHack and ESL Masters finals post 2020 in comparison to Miz (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral) and I also buffed tournaments pre 2018 not only through categorization but also with another 50% (Buffing Maru, nerfing Serral). I explained that Proleague results were considered in the match win rate metric to give them credit and why it doesn't make sense to include team scores in individual analyses any further because of the influence of team mates. This is the only sensible approach to the topic. One could have only played a couple of games, lost the majority and gained a lot of points as the team won the tournament. In my opinion, my approach was the most sensible, because it won't let the successes and failures be disregarded, but keeps other player's influence which can't be fully controlled for out of the metric. For the people who saw European tournaments as feeders: I devalued them significantly in the tournament-multiplier. And again: Tournament score is the only thing we are arguing about the whole time, while looking at my article. 1 out of 7... you do realize this, right? If I did take a more coherent approach, rank 1 and 2 ratio would have been 2:1 not 1,5:1. The era-multiplier is overtuned as well. Serral would come out with a landmark win here too. 7. Efficiency-score is the tournament score divided by the years a player was active. This one was also not present in Miz's evaluation. I had no foregone conclusion. All my major nerfs - except the Proleague-one, which is still sensible to me; otherwise explain how we will measure different team strengths, etc. - hit Serral. Yes, you said it correctly... the 1v1 games are still 1v1, thus were allocated to be reflected in the match win rates and I did not exclude ProLeague. In my opinion you are taking some perceived or supposed weak links and over-hype them to ignore all other metrics by downplaying them or scrubbing them off, add some vague metrics that are hard to measure to come out and say: not worth looking at. I think the bias is becoming more and more obvious. Because you know what? I concede to you team matches. I concede that Maru gets full points in 2012 where he only played 3 matches and lost 2. Now he is placed 1st in tournament score, with Serral being a close 2nd, both distancing everyone else. Serral still wins the other 6 by a landmark. INno has more rank 1s than Maru, Maru is 4th in the participation-win-ratio of tournaments and placed 3rd in average rank in tournaments (by a lot behind Serral and INno). Now every possible nerf was used on Serral to put Maru on first place in one of the metrics but Serral still comes out on top in 6 of them as well as Maru not even being placed 2nd in all of the rest. Fine by me... if that is the narrative that is fine for you, so be it. To the last list: 1. I did. 2. I only need to do so after bizarrely nerfing Serral the way you suggested. The weighting needs to be at least tournamen-score 3x on top (!!) in relation to everything else to make Maru come out on top (even more, as we know that he wasn't even placed 2nd in many others and Serral is a close 2nd in tournament score) 3. ProLeague, including more vague metrics, could be used to top the tides to one side in my opinion. That isn't necessary as the outcome was clear as day. 4. This will still only push tournament-score... one of the metrics. And even Miz accounted for them. You know that you must be one of the hardest Maru-GOATies if you need to push each and every button to make him come out on top in one (!) metric... and how to make up for Serral with all that missed out time he spent in these tourneys? He simply loses all these tournaments with no kind of reparation, right? That is exactly why I nerfed these in the tournament-multiplier so much... but even that is not enough I guess, lol. Funny that you think nerfing only Serral and including all buffs for Maru is objective, whereas I gave sensible thought to these issues and still found immense buffs for Maru's case. At this point it seems like you are trying to reverse-engineer the result by attacking supposed or perceived weak links without acknowledging the buffs Maru and everyone else in contrast to Serral received. 5. I never had an old top 10. I don't see the advantage as place 1 and 2 are fixed anyways (1 in my opinion is as well as you'd have to include absurd mental gymnastics to make it work any other way). If this goes to the before made notion about Mvp needing to be in the top 10 I have to decline. Too much work to rank all ten for the final result to be the same at the end of the day. 6. Could do that. Just thought it would prevent unnecessary discussions about things that were not addressed and are pretty clear to observe. If any bias is present, it comes from Serral's results. PS: Previously I forgot to mention... The actual ratio of 1st to 2nd place of course was also a heavy penalty to Serral, which I only did to buff Maru in comparison to him. A ratio of 2:1:0,5 is much more befiting of a GOAT (placing most value of actually being the best), plus it makes much more sense in how to evaluate semifinal and final wins. I didn't even talk about how in direct comparisons from 2018 and onward for all scores Maru falls massively behind Serral (even tournament score). But in an "truly" objective comparison this should be included too, right? PPS: "I think until you do some version of this you're just preaching to the choir" Including ever more of these does not help the objectivity. Also FYI I don’t think Maru is the GOAT, I’m partial to more subjective assessments as you know and I simply don’t think he can be the GOAT until he wins something that everyone agrees is a world championship. I think Rogue is the GOAT (and realize I’m in the extreme minority on that and okay with it). I also think a compelling case can be made for Serral and Maru depending on how you define greatness. The difference is that I don’t try to pretend my perspective is objective or “scientific”.
They made a decent fist of it, perhaps it’s just too difficult to actually make an objective set of metrics for such a seemingly intractable problem.
People weigh things so differently in a scene that changed structure so much that it seems to me borderline impossible to achieve some kinda consensus set of metrics
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On July 27 2024 17:47 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 17:40 Charoisaur wrote:
I'd say the 50% buff feels appropriate compared to 2019 but low compared to 2024. The difference between 2019 and 2024 is so high that it doesn't make sense to rate them equally.
I would probably rate tournaments pre-2017 at 100%, 2017-2019 at 66% and post-2019 at 33%. That feels more appropriate with how competitive the scenes were at the respective times Agreed for the most part... but it wouldn't change the result. INno's era would need a 300% buff to all of post 2017 to get him on par with Serral. Although skill level was still on the rise which would have to be weighed versus less players.
Yes the result was preordained by the choice of metrics and not-so-subtle decisions like excluding achievements related to Proleague while including less impressive achievements like results in Euro regionals.
By the way I’d be careful not to concede too much with your “nerfing” and “buffing” of tournament results/era handicaps because if folks decide that they don’t care about things like Aligulac rating and only care about tournament results you will have inadvertently anointed someone other than Serral as the GOAT. This is also the peril of not justifying or weighting your metrics.
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On July 27 2024 21:59 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2024 17:47 PremoBeats wrote:On July 27 2024 17:40 Charoisaur wrote:
I'd say the 50% buff feels appropriate compared to 2019 but low compared to 2024. The difference between 2019 and 2024 is so high that it doesn't make sense to rate them equally.
I would probably rate tournaments pre-2017 at 100%, 2017-2019 at 66% and post-2019 at 33%. That feels more appropriate with how competitive the scenes were at the respective times Agreed for the most part... but it wouldn't change the result. INno's era would need a 300% buff to all of post 2017 to get him on par with Serral. Although skill level was still on the rise which would have to be weighed versus less players. Yes the result was preordained by the choice of metrics and not-so-subtle decisions like excluding achievements related to Proleague while including less impressive achievements like results in Euro regionals. By the way I’d be careful not to concede too much with your “nerfing” and “buffing” of tournament results/era handicaps because if folks decide that they don’t care about things like Aligulac rating and only care about tournament results you will have inadvertently anointed someone other than Serral as the GOAT. This is also the peril of not justifying or weighting your metrics.
Yeah the rhethoric he uses with doing mental gymnastics in every category to twist it like he's "nerfing" Serral is hilarious.
While at the same time nerfing Maru/Inno heavily by disregarding Proleague and barely talking about it hoping we wouldn't notice
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EPT
