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On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet.
Flash has worthy opponants. Many of MC's are crap imo. It's like one pro pub stomping and getting 100% win, while the other plays against the top players in the world and gets 50% win. Can't compare the two.
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I think this game hasn't been out long enough for someone to be "untouchable". It's not that the skill isn't there, it exists in abundance. What is preventing this from happening is that no one has figured out the game yet, not even blizzard, which is why we are still seeing big changes happening in patchs. New tactics and build orders emerge weekly, almost daily, and something like this can take even the most skilled player by surprise. Once the game has reached a stable point (i.e. no more big changes from patches) and people really get to grips with the game, we will see untouchable players emerge. Once it is stable, you will be able to go into a base look around and be so much more specific about what is going to come out of it or what someone is up to. The game is too new for anyone to clearly be superior yet.
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On December 19 2010 02:17 Quarz wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 02:14 TheNihilist wrote: Right now, the untouchable god of BW, Flash, is at a 71% win percentage across his career. oGsMC, one of the most dominant players in SC2 at the moment, is sitting at a 76% win percentage. Fruitdealer is at 73%, Nestea at 72%, and Foxer at 62%. So to me, it looks like the dominant players of SC2 are holding the same win percentages as their BW counterparts, even though we have not had a clear Bonjwa emerge yet. Flash has 500 games ogcMC 30 plz dont compare those 2.
Yeah, that was a really bad comparison. Not only do the stats in TLPD only count games against pro's in leagues, they only count the games against pros in Kespa sanctioned leagues (I.E. the games people care about, largely BOX play).
You wont be able to make winrate comparisons between Flash now and Nestea/FD/Foxer in a minimum of 4 years.
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On December 19 2010 02:11 pullarius1 wrote:Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought. One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance.
Flash winning record is 71.54%, and Jaedong's 68.70%! Kasparov and S class BW players fight the best players of the world. They have a good record, but nobody expects them to win every game (well, i, fact, we do, but we know they are bound to lose from time to time). But if Jaedong played a really good amateur player (A+ ICCup like Idra at his best), he would win against him 99% of times. Kasparov would beat any national master (ELO 2200 to 2400) easily. In SC2, the best players lose often to mid diamonds...
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On December 18 2010 23:19 TheLonelyCarrier wrote:Show nested quote +Albeit in BW, Flash isn't completely untouchable, but he sure damn well comes close to be. Show nested quote +SC2's mechanics works in a way that even someone who's head and shoulders above you can still lose games at a decent chance.
Pretty sure people like flash would rarely if ever lose to someone who isn't close to his ability. Both of these are good examples of where my question lies. I never saw Flash or Jaedong play, and I am sure the intracacies of their performances would be lost on me now since I never really looked at BW in a true competitive sense, the way I have come to learn and understand SC2. But when I hear people talk of them they sound untouchable, as if one would have to channel the very hand of god to defeat them. In all competitive fields, I gravitate towards that. Being in awe of a true master is something I really enjoy about any professional scene. Were/are they in fact, that dominant, or would they also fall in line with that 70-75% rule? Is that normal for this game? Is that what it was in BW? Does it seem low to people who have followed the scene? Show nested quote +The fact of the matter is Bitbybitprime, Marinekingprime... players like this who are often derided for their play... got there. So they deserve to be there. In all competitive fields, this is a common notion. "A win is a win". I tend to agree. But when professionals and respected members of the field seem to pretty clearly disagree I must give pause. But maybe I am giving them too much credit just because they are respected professionals? Think on that for a second. In say, American Football, are the players all wise sages who speak nothing but football truth? No way. They moan and complain and make excuses and deride one another's abilities and credentials even when it seems to make no sense. Sometimes its ego, sometimes its ignorance and every so often, it IS truth. I guess it's because I can readily identify with the sub-culture involved that I assume that the feelings of a pro must be based in some form of objective reality. Also, the nature of SC2 and all RTS is such that we tend to assume a certain ability of the players to be capable of objective analysis on a level beyond even a well versed forum goer. Maybe they aren't. Maybe even guys like Artosis or inControl talk out their ass sometimes when it's a topic they feel passionately about and it just needs to be taken with a grain of salt rather than used as an indication that the pros feel the game is not rewarding good play. Again, since I lack a basis for comparison coming from a Street Fighter background where this kind of thing is undeard of, it's difficult for me to say. JD/Flash win 70-80% of their games. Occasionally you'll see JD lose some ZvZs from a misclick or a BO disadvantage, and occasionally you'll see Flash's plays anticipated and totally exploited. But more or less, you see a very very consistent level of play from these guys. That's not saying that the aces of other teams can't take games off these guys (they can and often do, simply because Flash/JD are the clear-cut most obvious Ace choice available and are thus easily sniped), but you won't see these guys lose to A-level players on ICCup _EVER_.
I think this is mostly because (ZvZ, and 13core PvP aside) BW is a game where a more skilled player can get the scouting information he/she needs to not get crushed with an all-in.
Even the most devious cheeses have their indicators, and the best players are rarely ever forced to play blind.
On December 19 2010 02:23 legaton wrote:Show nested quote +On December 19 2010 02:11 pullarius1 wrote:Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought. One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance. Flash winning record is 71.54%, and Jaedong's 68.70%! Kasparov and S class BW players fight the best players of the world. They have a good record, but nobody expects them to win every game (well, i, fact, we do, but we know they are bound to lose from time to time). But if Jaedong played a really good amateur player (A+ ICCup like Idra at his best), he would win against him 99% of times. Kasparov would beat any national master (ELO 2200 to 2400) easily. In SC2, the best players lose often to mid diamonds...
This pretty much sums up my point. SC2 is a game, right now, with huge variance. Games with huge variance need a lot of games to be played in order for the best players to consistently show up at the top, since standard deviation is inversely proportional to the square root of the number of samples/games played.
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1. These feelings/concepts are consistent with the way the community generally felt during the SC1/BW era?
Not at all. There is a reason the MSL/OSL finals were Flash vs Jaedong so many times in a row. I don't even know the last final that didn't have atleast one of them in it.
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I find it's definitely easier to take games off of much better players in SCII, but that's probably because the game is still relatively young, times haven't been entirely figured out yet, etc.
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On December 19 2010 01:00 Skyze wrote: I think SC2 is superior in terms of rewarding the most "SKILLED" player..
People assume Skill = apm and speed.. when that is not the truth. That was rewarded in BW, where in SC2 you just need enough to be able to not be sloppy..
what SHOULD win games, in BW or SC2.. is GAME SMARTS! Decision making, Handling pressure, being able to out-think your opponent and win the mental battle..
That wasnt so much the case in BW, because you had to focus so much on building.. Thats why every single game was basically a 40 minute macro battle (SNORE!).. in SC2, it really comes down to the smartest player who wins the games, after you take away the apm/macro "necessity".. (except for SCV/marine all-ins.. yea, thats abit stupid right now)
This is why IdrA was winning so much in beta, but hasnt done much since, because in beta he was head and shoulders above the macro "necessity" that other people couldnt keep up.. but NOW that people are practiced and caught up macro-wise, they totally outsmart idra, and obviously that is Idra's major weakness, adapting and being a smart player rather than a mechanical player.
TSL_Rain, say what you want about his lategame macro skills, but hes a SMART player, therefor he deserved to be in the finals or at least top 8. MC, on the otherhand, is just insanely talented and smart, and the best example is in the game on Lost Temple, where MC was facing like 6 tanks + mass marines, with a very little army, which most people would of GG'd right there.. MC didnt let the pressure get to him and eventually broke free, and won that game in the end. THAT is rewarding the most "skilled" player, someone who can handle the pressure and not be phased, someone who can come back in a macro game solely do to great decision making (DT in the gold expo while defending main won him the game).. APM/macro should have very little relevance on who wins, like it does in BW where Flash and Jaedong, obviously the two most talented macro players, are completely wrecking everyone with no contest.
APM * DOESN'T MEAN THAT MUCH * IN BW.
There's B-level players with 90 apm, and hell, decision-making in BW is MORE useful in my eyes.
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The reason Flash and Jaedong are so clearly at the top now is not just because their mechanics are perfect but also because they know every single build inside out. SC2 players don't have that luxoury yet. I think as time passes we will get a clear SC2 top aswell, but that might even take as long as it did for Broodwar
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On December 19 2010 02:11 pullarius1 wrote:Too many good long posts for me to read all of them right now, but in skimming them I saw a couple references to chess and to winning percentages. I just wanted to point out real quick that Gary Kasparov has a winning percentage less than 70% http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=15940, and chess is the classic game of skill and thought. One question I have is how much inborn skill plays a part in different games. For instance, I tried SF4, and was just flat-out terrible. I put ~100 hours of work into it and still just didn't have the dexterity or twitch reflexes to pull off relatively basic seeming moves and combos. It seems to me that the player whose reflexes are few ms faster than another's, with equal time and practice, should beat him a significant percentage of the time. Whereas in chess and StarCraft, there isn't as much of a specific thing you can be good at that can ensure your dominance.
Interesting stuff. A game where everyone has complete information and the same exact set of tools and one of its grandmasters loses nearly a third of the time. Well that just blows all kinds of holes in what we have all been saying about complete knowledge vs incomplete knowledge. This may indicate that its theoretically possible that the best that a truly great player of SC2 could hope for may be as low 50 percent. If a grandmaster of a 95% balanced, complete information game can have as low a win rate as 70% then anything could be possible in a game like SC2.
As far as inborn skill, I wonder about that myself. I can watch an SF tournament and see some super high level player do some wacky combo, and then boot the game up and start landing it in practice mode after a few minutes of repetition. My friends will practice playing ranked on-line for weeks straight while I haven't played a single round in over a month. They come over, I pick a character I barely know how to play and crush them for 40 or 50 matches straight before dropping one. I don't know what that is, but some might say it's just inborn talent as you say.
On the other hand, I have been playing SC2 since beta phase 1 and I cannot get out of bronze to save my mother. I am embarrassed at the ammount of time I have spent practicing different builds, working on my mechanics, running unit tests, watching pro level play, studying my own replays and religously tuning in for Day 9, Husky and HD. I still can't put more than 2 wins together back to back in bronze 1v1. Its truly shameful. I have come to the conclusion that there must be some kind of aptitude or skill that I just completely lack, that cannot be learned (ie: is innate).
It seems clear to me that both require some sort of innate attribute or skill set. For my friends to put in all the work they have to improve at SSF4 and still not be able to make any quantifiable progress in gaining on me indicates this. Also indicative is how one of those friends qualified right into platinum with practically no knowledge of what a build order was or what units were effective against what. When we 2v2 together he will be like, "What Terran unit is good against Corruptors dude?" and I will facepalm because he rolls me without question when we 1v1 against eachother. He still doesn't really "get" build orders, he just builds stuff when he "has the money for it" and makes units until the cows come home.
He isn't smarter or faster and he certainly hasn't put more work into it, but something makes him better. I dont know what exactly that is, but whatever it is it must be innate.
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Bw was more mechanically and stregically taxing. Micro macro tactical choices and big picture build orders all more diverse and difficult to execute
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Hm lots of QQ, lots of good points.
One thing Blizz wont ever be able to patch is the players ATTITUDES... you could be in the most imba match of your life and come out on top because you were thinking about winning instead of T_T about how terran always lolmarines or how zerg mutalings.
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the way it is is great, you dont want the same people winning over and over, you want a game to be dynamic enough that even if you are better you COULD still lose.
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Very interesting about Kasparov, I had no idea. That does kind of shoot the poker comparison down, I do like Ruthless' point that BW was more mechanically taxing. That made pulling off the interesting and micro-intensive strategies that much more difficult. Even with all that, Flash is sitting right around a 70% win percentage in BW. He is certainly regarded as nearly untouchable but even the highest skilled players do not win every time.
It will be interesting after all the Code-S stuff next year to see what kind of percentages the top players can produce in SC2. If they are much lower than the top BW players, that could be cause for some discussion but I suppose it's all estimated guessing until we can get a statistically significant number of games played by the top SC2 players.
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Let me put it this way, strategy games like sc2 have something other games doesnt have, as everyboy know to win a game there are two integrals parts, economy, and the army/defense you are gonna use to win/defend, the balance between these two must be perfect cause if you have too much economy and nothing to defend youll die, if you have too many units too early and not much economy youll probably loose on the long term. but then another variable adds, the strategy, you have to think beforehand a gameplan youll use for the game, and considering there are thousand build orders , and counter build orders, its not gonna be constant your dominance, just by having a gameplan you can win a game without executting too hard ability or micro (example cheese) , but cheese is a part of the game so in order to beat this you must use the other part of the game, that is micro, movement of units and perfect executtion and choose of abilities to overcome your opponent. i think the best player in sc2 is the one wth the greatest accomplishment and wins, but i do agree its not like in SF, where one guy was the definetily god, and no one could touch it, even flash and jaedong in its dominace could loose a game or two versus some guys, but Flash is the best player atm and in 2010 he won all the important tournaments (in korea which are considered the most prestigious and skilled starcraft league of the world) with the exception of one who loss to Jaedong and other who loss to effort, so in bottom line he was in all finals, he won 2 OSL, 2 MSL and WCG grandfinal, and get second place in an MSL and in an OSL which means 5 golds and 2 silver, and its curious that 4 of all these finals were Flash vs Jaedong, the other three were flash vs effort, flash vs Goojila, and flash vs movie.
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Hey OP I'm a huge SF fan as well. I've played SSF2: Turbo, SF3: Third Strike, and both of the SF4's on a fairly competitive level. I also got really into CvS2 and Guilty Gear. Do you post on Shoryuken?
I'd say the main thing about StarCraft 2 compared to Street Fighter comes down to the 'control' of the game. You cite the excellent example of Daigo, and what a lot of people don't realize when you play Daigo is that he's making you do things you don't even realize. He knows how to bait you into jumping forward/backward, he knows how to bait you to guard for too long while you get thrown, and he knows exactly what every iota of floor space your character can cover actually means. Street Fighter pushes the pressure on, and it does it QUICKLY. This gives players with amazing execution, reflexes, and game sense a huge advantage.
Don't get me wrong, it takes the exact same kinds of skills to get good at StarCraft, but there's a load more wiggle room. Since you're not able to look at your opponent and all he's doing constantly, there's always the chance of you getting hit off guard just because he build a dark shrine in some random corner of the map you didn't see. In Street Fighter there's no 'wiggle room' out of the corner, and there's no magic trick that will ever take a really serious player completely by surprise. You might get a poke off against Daigo when he didn't expect you to punch, but he's still going to beat you with 95% of his life left.
This is both good and bad. I mean it's good if all you care about is the best of the best getting to win all the time, but it's bad if you care about variety. Anyone that watches Evo knows that Justin Wong is going to be the top American Street Fighter player more times than he's not, which is cool and all until you want to stop seeing his infamous turtle-style play. He wins games with it, but it's not the most exciting thing in the world.
It really just boils down to if you want to see Flash win every BW tournament or not. I'd suspect that would kill a majority of what makes StarCraft such a great spectator's sport.
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Its funny cause almost all protoss pros (Nony, Huk, Nex, and MC himself) have cited Protoss' weakness as its inability to play from behind. I suppose you know better though. Yet, the first 2 didn't even manage to qualify and the last one won the tournament. It's not about what you say, it's about what you do or achieve. IdrA is a pretty good player, but he is a whiner too, always complaining about something - that only shows something about his personality, not about the game he is playing. GSL 1 and 2 winners are proof of that.
But that was sheer luck, isn't it? FruitDealer and NesTea weren't ahead of the curve in GSL 1 and 2, it was all dumb luck that FD dealt with rushes amazingly and used Baneling drops when everyone else (even respected "pros" such as Artosis and Idra) were calling it an expensive, useless and all-in strategy. NesTea solid macro and decision making didn't win GSL 2 as well right? It was just dumb-luck.
Artosis may be respected, but he spent 3 GSL seasons stating how much 15 Hatch is suicide, that no smart Zerg does that, and Terrans always win against it, and even so during GSL 1 and 2 the players won doing exactly what he was criticizing, and guess what, they won the tournament, he didn't even qualify yet ¬¬ his cheering for anything that isn't Terran is also pretty dumb, shows how imparcial he is when talking about the game.
Regarding luck and skill, information about the game, the overall comparison with SF and chess, and dominating players in the SC2 scene, the other posters have said enough that I don't have anything to add.
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Starcraft even my beloved broodwar is a game that can involve a fair bit of luck as well as skill. Its not as bad as something like poker, but it does level the playing field. Think ZvZ on a 4-player map, if my overlord scouts in the right direction and yours does not, I have a huge advantage in the game. Is it enough for me to take down Jaedong?
No.
But it could be enough for ZergBong to take a game off of Jaedong
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a tourny is not to determine the skill level of a player but is rather a specticle, a league is a more appropriate way to measure skill. you may argue that manchester united is the most skillful football club in the world yet they dont win all the tournys every year however they do finish first or second in the league every year. i belive this is true in all sports. did tsl.rain deserve to be in the final?... yes, is he the most skillful player?.. who knows as the aim of the event is not to find the most skillful players.
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On December 19 2010 03:12 HeavyArmZ wrote: Artosis may be respected, but he spent 3 GSL seasons stating how much 15 Hatch is suicide, that no smart Zerg does that, and Terrans always win against it, and even so during GSL 1 and 2 the players won doing exactly what he was criticizing, and guess what, they won the tournament, he didn't even qualify yet ¬¬ his cheering for anything that isn't Terran is also pretty dumb, shows how imparcial he is when talking about the game.
Didn't he qualify for season 1?
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