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This is the problem. You're more interested in making excuses for Bisu, rather than trying to own up to his limitations, move on, and enjoy his great moments and appreciate him for the great player that he is, not this fabrication that some of his fans want him to be.
1) Bisu fans look at the few insanely peaks in his Bisu's career (his three MSL finals in a row from 2006~2007. his rejuvenation in 2008 during the era of the Six Dragons, and his two amazing ProLeague seasons in 2008/2009, and 2010/2011), and furiously ignore the instances of his noticeable failures (having a win rate of less than 50% in the ProLeague until he switched gears in the 2008/2009, failing to go past the round of 16 in individual leagues from 2009~2012). They tunnel so hard on the few high peaks, and because those peaks were comparable to some of the best performances of any player in history, try to embellish Bisu more than what he actually achieved in his career.
2) Whenever I point out Bisu's failures to point out why he wasn't as great as they make him out to be, they immediately go straight to his choice of race, and try to argue that he was limited by the limitations of his race, not as a player.
When I point out Stork as an example a protoss player who could perform to a high level, with respectable ProLeague performances from 2005~2012 (a top eight protoss player even at his worst in 2006), and reaching the round of eight or above every year from 2007~2011, they immediately spazz out and point out why Stork is such an inferior player, without realizing I'm just bringing up an example of a protoss player who was not held back by his race to the degree Bisu was in terms of keeping up a reasonable level of performance throughout his entire career, across all platforms of competition.
3) I agree Bisu had more potential to be a bonjwa than any other protoss player in history (however, I'd rather talk about the tangible achievements and results, rather than the midichlorian count of players). I'm not taking that away from anyone. Bisu had clear noticeable flaws in his career that cannot be explained by his choice of race alone, but you say he struggled to separate himself from the rest of the pack due to his choice of race.
Exactly why was he the 40th best player (14th best protoss player) in Shinhan 2007 ProLeague R2 (try naming 39 players in general off the top of your head, it's pretty hard, and that's the number Bisu allowed to outperform him despite being a member of the ProLeague champions of the 2006 season) when he was making deep runs into both OGN StarLeague and MSL? Stork was reaching the finals of both leagues, and both semi-finals simulataneously at some points during the same era, while maintaining a top two record in the ProLeague throughout the entire 2007 season. Was Bisu affected by the inconsistency of the protoss race purely in the ProLeague, while Stork was unaffected by it until he reached the finals?
There were five protoss players who managed to get top four ProLeague records between 2007~2008. Seven protoss players who reached the round of four or above in individual leagues between 2007~2008. Two protoss players were able to manage both, Stork and JangBi (for half a season in 2008). Bisu was so thoroughly mediocre in the ProLeague, in an era where the importance of the ProLeague was in direct correlation to the amount of inflation in the number of games (389 games in 2006 season, and 857 games in 2007 season). It's not just Stork that managed to get decent results across all platforms during this one and half year period, JangBi managed it too, yet Bisu was busy being worse than TheRock in the ProLeague for certain moments of this era.
I don't think I need to go over why having 11 tournament streak of failing to reach the round of eight even once is inexcusable in an era where even players like Pure was reaching the round of four. If someone as thoroughly forgettable as Grape could reach the round of eight, with Pure is reaching the round of four, and the likes of Movie is reaching the finals, maybe it's Bisu's own fault, not the fault of the huge imbalance of the race that he failed again and again over a three year period. At that point it cannot be attributed to bad luck, or how his race failed him like you seem to suggest.
4) When Bisu fans are ready to accept the failures Bisu had over the years, and stop blaming the race, the map, the OGN jinx, the cheese from Shine, the weather, anything but the possibility that Bisu may not be capable of performing up to the standards expected from him day in and day out under all conditions, I'll make peace and give him the thumbs up for the fantastic career, and exciting legacy he has built for himself. Until then, it doesn't really matter how sexy Bisu looked while he was making his fans feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm going to go in hard with facts and statistics.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On December 31 2016 17:40 Letmelose wrote: This is the problem. You're more interested in making excuses for Bisu, rather than trying to own up to his limitations, move on, and enjoy his great moments and appreciate him for the great player that he is, not this fabrication that some of his fans want him to be.
1) Bisu fans look at the few insanely peaks in his Bisu's career (his three MSL finals in a row from 2006~2007. his rejuvenation in 2008 during the era of the Six Dragons, and his two amazing ProLeague seasons in 2008/2009, and 2010/2011), and furiously ignore the instances of his noticeable failures (having a win rate of less than 50% in the ProLeague until he switched gears in the 2008/2009, failing to go past the round of 16 in individual leagues from 2009~2012). They tunnel so hard on the few high peaks, and because those peaks were comparable to some of the best performances of any player in history, try to embellish Bisu more than what he actually achieved in his career.
2) Whenever I point out Bisu's failures to point out why he wasn't as great as they make him out to be, they immediately go straight to his choice of race, and try to argue that he was limited by the limitations of his race, not as a player.
When I point out Stork as an example a protoss player who could perform to a high level, with respectable ProLeague performances from 2005~2012 (a top eight protoss player even at his worst in 2006), and reaching the round of eight or above every year from 2007~2011, they immediately spazz out and point out why Stork is such an inferior player, without realizing I'm just bringing up an example of a protoss player who was not held back by his race to the degree Bisu was in terms of keeping up a reasonable level of performance throughout his entire career, across all platforms of competition.
3) I agree Bisu had more potential to be a bonjwa than any other protoss player in history (however, I'd rather talk about the tangible achievements and results, rather than the midichlorian count of players). I'm not taking that away from anyone. Bisu had clear noticeable flaws in his career that cannot be explained by his choice of race alone, but you say he struggled to separate himself from the rest of the pack due to his choice of race.
Exactly why was he the 40th best player (14th best protoss player) in Shinhan 2007 ProLeague R2 (try naming 39 players in general off the top of your head, it's pretty hard, and that's the number Bisu allowed to outperform him despite being a member of the ProLeague champions of the 2006 season) when he was making deep runs into both OGN StarLeague and MSL? Stork was reaching the finals of both leagues, and both semi-finals simulataneously at some points during the same era, while maintaining a top two record in the ProLeague throughout the entire 2007 season. Was Bisu affected by the inconsistency of the protoss race purely in the ProLeague, while Stork was unaffected by it until he reached the finals?
There were five protoss players who managed to get top four ProLeague records between 2007~2008. Seven protoss players who reached the round of four or above in individual leagues between 2007~2008. Two protoss players were able to manage both, Stork and JangBi (for half a season in 2008). Bisu was so thoroughly mediocre in the ProLeague, in an era where the importance of the ProLeague was in direct correlation to the amount of inflation in the number of games (389 games in 2006 season, and 857 games in 2007 season). It's not just Stork that managed to get decent results across all platforms during this one and half year period, JangBi managed it too, yet Bisu was busy being worse than TheRock in the ProLeague for certain moments of this era.
I don't think I need to go over why having 11 tournament streak of failing to reach the round of eight even once is inexcusable in an era where even players like Pure was reaching the round of four. If the likes of Pure is reaching the round of four, and someone like Movie is reaching the finals, maybe it's Bisu's own fault, not the fault of the huge imbalance of the race that he failed again and again over a three year period. At that point it cannot be attributed to bad luck, or how his race failed him like you seem to suggest.
4) When Bisu fans are ready to accept the failures Bisu had over the years, and stop blaming the race, the map, the OGN jinx, the cheese from Shine, the weather, anything but the possibility that Bisu may not be capable of performing up to the standards expected from him day in and day out under all conditions, I'll make peace and give him the thumbs up for the fantastic career, and exciting legacy he has built for himself. Until then, it doesn't really matter how sexy Bisu looked while he was making his fans feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'm going to go in hard with facts and statistics.
I don't think you quite got the point I was trying to make. I'm not saying that Bisu's failings are because of his race. I'm saying that protoss fans have entirely different expectations and standards of greatness because of the problems inherent with top level protoss. Because if we applied the 'normal' standards that the more T/Z centric community at large applied, professional protosses, as a whole, are rather unimpressive.
Different expectations which are also applied equally to other top protoss. It so happens under these different expectations, Bisu outperforms Stork by a pretty big margin.
I think the people who blame literally all of Bisu's flaws on external factors are a tiny minority of his fandom. I think even among his most fanatical fans, it's pretty acknowledged that he has had slumps, and played outright bad games even when doing well. It's not that we make excuses for his shortfalls, it's that we don't particularly care about them in the long run, cos we are not expecting him (or any other protoss) to be really consistently dominant. We don't expect him to never lose in a disappointing manner, we just want him to play excellently a lot of the time.
I think your point 3) is telling of the difference in priorities. You say he has had more potential to be bonjwa. But lets be honest, he was still pretty bloody far away. The point is no protoss has come even REMOTELY close to the dominance of a Bonjwa, protoss fans have no expectation of that, it's so far away from our expectations it's not even a standard we try to apply. We simply don't expect, and don't credit that sort of dominance to our top players.
So it's not that that we think Bisu was perfect, and only held back from bonjwahood because he was protoss. It's that bonjwahood is so far from our expectations for any protoss, that it's simply not a measure we would think to use. Yeah, he had, and still has plenty of flaws, but we aren't going to blame his inability to achieve bonjwahood on his flaws, or hold it against him, because discrediting ANY protoss to not achieving bonjwahood would be akin to holding the inability to break the sound barrier against whomever is the fastest sprinter at the moment against them, it's simply not a reasonable standard to apply.
When you accept that we have different standards and demands of protoss players, then everything else makes sense. Stork is a great player in the more conventional sense, he consistently placed well in starleagues, was a workhorse (and much of the time ace) for Samsung. But his very consistency just reinforced the mediocrity of one of the best protoss players ever in the greater scheme of professional BW. 'If that's what the career of one of the best protoss players of all time, what is the point of protoss'.
Bisu (and IMO to a lesser extent also Jangbi) were the opposite of that. They were flashy, often just looking at their games, you couldn't help but be impressed. They offered the promise 'if they could just play like this all the time, maybe, just maybe...'. But they also had massive slumps, where they just simply weren't even producing passable games. I don't think too many people are deluded into thinking Bisu didn't have a slump (or two), and that he was only losing due to maps or cheese or whatever. It's just that we accept everyone has slumps, even Stork has had slumps.
Consider that protoss has never had a dominant player of the era like OOV or Nada, we arn't going to measure greatness on how brief your slumps are, or how much you still win while slumping. People slump, we get over it. We are going to value players that show us that there is the potential for greatness, on people who can consistently produce games that make us go WOW, if you drop some games in between in unimpressive ways, so be it.
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While I understand how I misrepresented your point of view, I think you are vastly under selling the longetivity Stork managed. While you may believe that sustained excellence, if you don't end up with all the glory is basically meaningless, I was always impressed by players who could adapt to the situation regardless of the status of the meta-game, the quality of opponents, the map balance, and the varying form of the player in question. Stork was one of the few gamers in history who managed to do that despite being a protoss player, in fact, he was the only protoss player who was capable of doing so in the entire history of the game.
Being able to win, even if you're not the absolute best in terms of skill, or having the form of your life, is a quality that is just as valuable as being able to seize the moment to be etched on my minds of the fans for years to come. The best players in history had both these qualities. While Bisu was more spectacular in terms of seizing the moment and looking like the best player ever, what Stork lacked severely in that department, he made up for being able to struggle on whatever challenges he faced, and not falling flat on his face the moment things went wrong.
By the way, I'm not necessarily saying Stork was better than Bisu because of these reasons, both Stork and Bisu had severe flaws to their careers to be considered the absolute greatest. However, while the insane highs that Bisu had still keeps him at three trophies, Stork's longetivity is some of the best in history regardless of race (which you keep mentioning as such a pivotal issue here). Bisu's lack of consistency over his career cannot be attributed his race alone when you consider the career Stork has managed with the very same race.
These are some of the records Stork has.
1) Second most number of round of 16 appearances or above in the individual leagues after NaDa. He is above players who were around forever like BoxeR, and YellOw, and above his more flashy, memorable rivals in Flash, and Jaedong.
2) Most successful OGN StarLeague player in history in terms of being able to qualify for the round of 16. He has amassed 17 OGN StarLeague round of 16 appearances, ranging all the way from 2005, to the final OGN StarLeague in 2012. That's eight years he spent as a top player. No other players come close, not even BoxeR, widely regarded as the most successful OGN StarLeague player of all time.
3) The only player alongside Jaedong (2008~2010) to represent Korea in WCG Finals for three consecutive years. Considering you need to be a top 24 KeSPA ranked player in order to participate in WCG Korea, probably the most important off-season tournament, it represents Stork's class for the entire duration of 2007~2009.
4) The only protoss player in history to be a top ten performer of his race in the ProLeague for the entire duration of 2005~2012. He has at times, been the best performing protoss player, and even at his absolute worst, was the 8th best protoss during the regular season.
5) Has four instances of being in the round of eight or above in both individual leagues simultaneously. No other protosses in history managed to do that. Flash has managed it six times in his career, and Jaedong has four instances during his entire career also. No other player has managed that number in the entire history of the game, although we must take into account that the 1st KPGA Tournament was created in 2002, so the older generation of players are somewhat affected. However, for players such as Nal_rA, July, sAviOr, and Bisu, Stork has them beaten without any excuses being made possible.
As you can see, Stork has the longetivity of not only being relevant since 2006 across all platforms of competition considered important today (OGN StarLeague, MSL, and the ProLeague), he has been able to create records that may not be amazing to you, but are amazing to me.
He may have not had the clutch ability of the greatest players of all time in terms of achievements in NaDa, Jaedong, or Flash, but managed to match, or even surpass some of them in terms of longetivity and sustained excellence. Bisu, on top of being mediocre in terms of sustained excellence, doesn't quite have the extreme highs reached by the bonjwas either.
At least in terms of consistency, Stork can claim to be amongst the absolute best in history. Bisu can't boast what is his trump card over Stork once we start to bring in players from the other races (which you blame his choice of race for), while Stork's strength over Bisu is something that doesn't falter that much when compared against the gods from other races. Stork's career was amazing in its own right, even if it wasn't as memorable as Bisu's.
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By the way, I always thought of Bisu as a better player than Stork. I thought the same for JangBi also. However, absolute skill doesn't mean shit if you cannot perform on stage. Bisu was probably already one of the best protoss players in 2006 when he was rocking PGTour with his ilovejs smurf. Long time number one players of PGTour always had good performances on stage as well, like GoodFriend in 2004, or Anytime in 2005. Bisu was already making waves, and his dedication to his craft over the years (it would have been so easy for him to just drown in pussy and fade away with his looks and popularity) made him one of the absolute gods of the scene in terms of pure gaming ability. I'm not taking that away from him.
I'm just saying once he didn't have the right circumstances to showcase his fantastic gaming ability, whether it was due to a mental block, inability to deal with the intense breaking down of his style by snipers, or unfavourable maps towards protoss, Bisu became incredibly susceptible to failure. That's not a fault of the protoss race. That's a personal issue the likes of Stork overcame with more success despite being not as good in terms of sheer gaming ability (although Stork had aspects of the game mastered much better than Bisu).
Further more, there were tons of players who were more talented than they were on stage. Jaedong was one of them. I'm not going to make special excuses for Bisu just because his fans think he should have achieved more.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
On December 31 2016 20:40 Letmelose wrote: By the way, I always thought of Bisu as a better player than Stork. I thought the same for JangBi also. However, absolute skill doesn't mean shit if you cannot perform on stage. Bisu was probably already one of the best protoss players in 2006 when he was rocking PGTour with his ilovejs smurf. Long time number one players of PGTour always had good performances on stage as well, like GoodFriend in 2004, or Anytime in 2005. Bisu was already making waves, and his dedication to game over the years (it would have been so easy for him to just drown in pussy and fade away with his looks and popularity) made him one of the absolute gods of the scene in terms of pure gaming ability. I'm not taking that away from him.
I'm just saying once he didn't have the right circumstances to showcase his fantastic gaming ability, whether it was due to a mental block, inability to deal with the intense breaking down of his style by snipers, or unfavourable maps towards protoss, Bisu became incredibly susceptible to failure. That's not a fault of the protoss race. That's a personal issue the likes of Stork overcame with more success despite being not as good in terms of sheer gaming ability (although Stork had aspects of the game mastered much better than Bisu).
Further more, there were tons of players who were more talented than they were on stage. Jaedong was one of them. I'm not going to make special excuses for Bisu just because his fans think he should have achieved more.
I think there is where we mostly differ. And in this, I might not speak for the wider Bisu fandom.
Achievements simply matter less for me, not nothing, but much less. It's great that Bisu has 3 MSLs, but honestly, they aren't that important to his greatness imo. If he had none or he had 5, I'd probably not feel differently.
For me, it is mostly about the actual level of play. Whether the game is a normal proleague match or a Starleague final, doesn't matter that much to me, even whether or not they win doesn't matter to some extent. Although it's hard to imagine that they would be playing well if they are constantly losing of course. While Starleague finals only matter to me in the context of the level of the competition, and the pressure they are under.
Yeah maybe Bisu had the talent achieve more, I don't really believe so tbh, 3 MSLs is alot, would it really help if he placed top 16, or top 8 more often? Would it make him a better or greater player? Ultimately what matters to me is the collection of excellent games he has left behind.
Jaedong might have deserved more achievements too, but the end of the day, I don't think he's underrated, I mean, does anyone think he wasn't actually all that good? Does anyone NOT think he's the greatest zerg of all time, where else are you going to go from there? At the end of the day, the only player I, and I think many other people would rate above Jaedong is Flash. And Flash, I think beats Jaedong both on achievements and on level of play, both sustained and peak. So unless you want to argue JD was better than flash, I actually find it hard to see how JD could be underrated.
But back to the topic at hand, yeah, Bisu might have had big slumps, and played many sloppy games besides, but at the end of the day, he has accrued 436 wins according to tlpd, pretty close to Stork's 478. And has been, at least in my opinion much more impressive on the whole, in the entirety of his games, than Stork has.
Yes, Stork has won them in more important occasions, and it can be argued that the competition may have been steeper, due to being deeper in starleagues, and had to perform under greater pressure, but even while Bisu wasn't being relevant in starleagues near the end, he was still producing incredible, I would argue superior, games (in my opinion just before the farce that was the hybrid BW/SC2 season, Bisu was actually in the best form of his life). And, for me at least, producing more excellently played games is simply more important, no matter where you are doing it.
Don't get me wrong, I think Stork is an excellent player, and his relevance over such a time period is not just impressive for a protoss, but just for any professional BW player period. But at the end of the day, I think, not just at their peaks, but on the whole, the entirety of Stork's gameplay in all his games, has been less impressive by a fair margin to Bisu's.
To use an analogy, as artists, Stork may have been nominated for more awards, but Bisu has left, in my opinion a much more impressive body of work.
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Bisu is an artist at the game, no doubt about it. However, this isn't some exhibition of who plays the most beautiful game of Starcraft. Your worth as a player should depend on your results, otherwise we are susceptible to the dangers I've already mentioned. What if you are biased? What if you didn't watch all the games? Even if you don't have the exact recollection of every single games played by these players, you can always compare the placements, win rates, and achievements. They don't tell the entire story (which people are quick to point out), but they are vital in keeping our recollections and judgements of these performances in check with reality. We need some basis on factual evidence, otherwise it becomes a popularity contest based on exposure and personal perspectives. How can Bisu lose under this position?
Nobody remembers the 3rd Game-Q StarLeague. Nobody who got used to the modern era of Brood War can stand the low quality games played in 2004. Nobody cares about who won 23 games in a row versus players they don't even recognize. The entire landscape of the the scene has changed and so many tournaments have died out, or changed from what it originally used to be. Bisu has almost his entire career preserved on Youtube VODs, has his entire legacy written beautifully into articles by fans both in Korean, and English, and is fresh on the minds of people by streaming daily on Afreeca. How do you compete with that level of exposure, fame, and recent performances?
Of course you're going to be more impressed if you don't go by the numbers. It's like saying none of the legends from football like Di Stefano, or Pele are relevant in the discussion of the greatest football players of all time because the quality of the games back then suck so much, and the records from the past are so hard to translate into a form that is suitable to the modern day realities of professional football. Every great player in football becomes whoever has the best Youtube highlight reel in recent years, and players who have defined an era, gained more success on a objective level, are rendered useless by casual observations like, "football was so bad back then", or "why didn't Pele play in Europe, he must have sucked".
I can't explain why your criteria of what is important is less relevant than mine, but I can explain how prone to bias it can be. Do you know how biased our recollections are already? It's so slanted towards the modern era. The criteria of whoeever impressed you more depends massively on your personal taste what defines a player's skill, which era you started to watch Brood War, and how extensive your viewing experience was.
What if there was someone living in Korea whose household only broadcasted Ongamenet, and watched it casually only for the big games, and thought Bisu was terrible? What if he told you it doesn't matter about the numbers, and the great success Bisu had elsewhere, but what's important is his own experiences of viewing him as a dude who got stomped a couple of times in the semi-finals, never to be seen again, while JangBi was awesome with his amazing finals. Personal experience, and judgement are terrible ways of defining a player unless you have unreal amounts of insight, and exact recollection of every single second of these players in question. I understand we all have more insight than the casual viewer I just described, but you surely can see the fallacy of this method of approach.
There are zero individuals who managed to not only see every single competitive game in history, but had the insider's knowledge of what went on at the time, the precise context of each of these games, and an accurate recollection that is free from bias. What you're essentially saying is that you like Bisu, and there's nothing I can say to that. Of course you like Bisu. He's the main star of the most successful franchise in Brood War history, the unlikely hero of one of the greatest upsets ever seen in the entire history of the game, high APM multi-tasking god with the face of an angel, the golden boy of the protoss race, the most popular player of the modern era, and one of the most popular Brood War streamers on Afreeca. I'm just saying, let's be honest in rating him as a professional player trying to win. Sometimes, the borders between personal admiration, and judgement on the careers of various players, get blurred, and it's so frustrating to see the personal admiration seep in and present itself as if it were a factual statement.
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When is the Elimination Bracket taking place? Doesn't seem obvious on Liquipedia...
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
While I agree there is a certain subjectivity, to judging purely via quality of gameplay, and would require someone to be fairly knowledgeable to be able to do it.
I don't think it's quite subjective as to the point you are trying to make it out to be. Nor achievements being quite as objective as you seem to indicate.
Firstly, good play isn't entirely an aesthetic thing. It's not just beautiful play, people knowledgeable about the game can tell you what sort of plays are objectively going to contribute to a likeliness of a player winning, like clean build order execution, excellent unit control etc. When you take this sort of metric to the entirety of games/careers it does get more subjective, but i don't think it boils down to who you like, or even who's playstyle you like more. There is still some, if not objective measure, at least fairly agreed upon convention to what is and what isn't good play.
It is like language, while there isn't a perfect agreement on what a word may mean, there is a generally agreed upon definition of a word. People who speak that language can tell you what a word means, and what it doesn't, while their definitions won't be in perfect agreement, you can also see a general clustering of meaning, and it isn't purely subjective either.
From when you said you think Bisu is actually the better player, I gather that we actually agree on this, that Bisu wins out over Stork in this department, even if the metric isn't perfectly objective. I would suspect if we managed to collect a group of people very knowledgeable about the professional BW scene, and the games of these two in particular. I think even those who are Stork fans, and aren't particularly fans of Bisu (yes this would be a very small subset) would generally agree with this, where we disagree is the importance of this particular criteria for 'greatness' compared to other criteria.
As for the subjectivity of achievements. Well on the most cursory glance: Bisu has a significantly (by pro BW standards) higher win rate with a similar number of wins, three times as many starleague wins, and been a part of proleague winning team multiple times. Stork has 1 Starleague win, and alot of silver. It actually looks very bad for Stork.
I would say, this is actually a fairly reasonable way to look at achievements, it's not me cherry picking their results to make it lopsided, these, I think are fairly reasonable stats to look at to see 'How can I sum up this progamer's entire career'. But we both know that it in fact tells a very biased story.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you were to divide it into year by year, with ranking between protoss, Bisu's slump becomes startlingly clear, but if you were to do it to say, NaDa (compared to other terrans), his stats become very ugly, as he played on long past his prime, and becomes incredibly unfair to NaDa.
I don't really think level of play comes down to how much you like someone, nor are achievements all that objective. I think both are valid ways to judge greatness and it comes down to preference of method, not necessarily the player you like.
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Everybody has different standards for what evidence they consider as valid when they try to sum up a player's overall worth.
To some people not going deep in OSLs is a huge problem that can never excused. To some people every OSL campaign is 2 well-timed losses away from an exit and 2 games aren't something you can boil a career down to. Even when it happens time and again.
To some people Proleague was "just Proleague" and games aren't trophies (and team trophies also aren't real trophies), even when you break the all time record for season wins at a ridiculous winrate.
Nobody is wrong.
For me, Flash is the greatest player of all time. Bisu is the only Protoss who ever showed flashes of that same greatness. The GOM S1 MSL final was unbelievably cool. It was an amazing moment in time, it was great, but it doesn't make Bisu great, at least outside that small slice of history. His 2010/2011 PL season was absolutely monstrous. It is not something that any other Protoss, or any other player outside Flash, could ever do. Not even Jaedong, somehow, despite me considering him greater than Bisu. To me, it is the most relevant period of BW history, when play was at its peak, and it is an enormous sample size and Bisu absolutely crushed it. And that's why I think he was the greatest Protoss of all time by a long way. Because nobody else could have. Ever.
And you will look at that and think you've already said his 10/11 PL was amazing but is not the totality of his career and it doesn't change your perspective. And that's good. I don't think my perspective is better and I don't even want to convince you. It's just how I feel.
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On January 01 2017 00:05 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: While I agree there is a certain subjectivity, to judging purely via quality of gameplay, and would require someone to be fairly knowledgeable to be able to do it.
I don't think it's quite subjective as to the point you are trying to make it out to be. Nor achievements being quite as objective as you seem to indicate.
Firstly, good play isn't entirely an aesthetic thing. It's not just beautiful play, people knowledgeable about the game can tell you what sort of plays are objectively going to contribute to a likeliness of a player winning, like clean build order execution, excellent unit control etc. When you take this sort of metric to the entirety of games/careers it does get more subjective, but i don't think it boils down to who you like, or even who's playstyle you like more. There is still some, if not objective measure, at least fairly agreed upon convention to what is and what isn't good play.
It is like language, while there isn't a perfect agreement on what a word may mean, there is a generally agreed upon definition of a word. People who speak that language can tell you what a word means, and what it doesn't, while their definitions won't be in perfect agreement, you can also see a general clustering of meaning, and it isn't purely subjective either.
From when you said you think Bisu is actually the better player, I gather that we actually agree on this, that Bisu wins out over Stork in this department, even if the metric isn't perfectly objective. I would suspect if we managed to collect a group of people very knowledgeable about the professional BW scene, and the games of these two in particular. I think even those who are Stork fans, and aren't particularly fans of Bisu (yes this would be a very small subset) would generally agree with this, where we disagree is the importance of this particular criteria for 'greatness' compared to other criteria.
As for the subjectivity of achievements. Well on the most cursory glance: Bisu has a significantly (by pro BW standards) higher win rate with a similar number of wins, three times as many starleague wins, and been a part of proleague winning team multiple times. Stork has 1 Starleague win, and alot of silver. It actually looks very bad for Stork.
I would say, this is actually a fairly reasonable way to look at achievements, it's not me cherry picking their results to make it lopsided, these, I think are fairly reasonable stats to look at to see 'How can I sum up this progamer's entire career'. But we both know that it in fact tells a very biased story.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you were to divide it into year by year, with ranking between protoss, Bisu's slump becomes startlingly clear, but if you were to do it to say, NaDa (compared to other terrans), his stats become very ugly, as he played on long past his prime, and becomes incredibly unfair to NaDa.
I don't really think level of play comes down to how much you like someone, nor are achievements all that objective. I think both are valid ways to judge greatness and it comes down to preference of method, not necessarily the player you like.
Quality of game play improves over time as players understand how the play more optimally, and Bogus from 2011 would win almost every single game on standard maps against BoxeR in 2001. It's not a good metric for judgement. It's an incredibly biased measurement for current day players benefiting from years of meta-game advancements and optimal methods of executing plays. BoxeR's use of cursor movement keys to help the precision of his micro-management was helpful towards his domination in 2001, but was a sub-optimal method of executing plays in the modern context.
You can't judge past peformances by how close it is to the modern day definiton of perfect play. You don't have to judge everything by pure results and statistics, but you have to aware of them, to see if they match with your perspective on what happened. You can't just ignore them.
For example, it's true that NaDa's career post-2007 is extremely mediocre if you go through by a year by year, and represents about a two year period of mediocre performances, followed by an entire year of being a bottom of the barrel professional player during his twilight years. It's an accurate portrayal of his career, the more you look at the success rate of NaDa's ability to reach the lower rounds of the individual leagues, it drops down significantly towards the end.
Judging by his appearances on shows like Old Boy starring Nal_rA, he really was one of the worst professional players around by the end of his career. It still doesn't change the fact that he reached more round of 16, round of 8, more finals than any other player in history, and won six tournaments, a record only matched by Flash. His first round of eight appearance was in 2002, and his last was in 2009. Bisu's first round of eight appearance was in 2006, his final appearance was in 2009. There's a reason why NaDa has accumulated more success over his entire career despite being such an abject failure during his final moments of professional Brood War.
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On January 01 2017 00:11 Lachrymose wrote: Everybody has different standards for what evidence they consider as valid when they try to sum up a player's overall worth.
To some people not going deep in OSLs is a huge problem that can never excused. To some people every OSL campaign is 2 well-timed losses away from an exit and 2 games aren't something you can boil a career down to. Even when it happens time and again.
To some people Proleague was "just Proleague" and games aren't trophies (and team trophies also aren't real trophies), even when you break the all time record for season wins at a ridiculous winrate.
Nobody is wrong.
For me, Flash is the greatest player of all time. Bisu is the only Protoss who ever showed flashes of that same greatness. The GOM S1 MSL final was unbelievably cool. It was an amazing moment in time, it was great, but it doesn't make Bisu great, at least outside that small slice of history. His 2010/2011 PL season was absolutely monstrous. It is not something that any other Protoss, or any other player outside Flash, could ever do. Not even Jaedong, somehow, despite me considering him greater than Bisu. To me, it is the most relevant period of BW history, when play was at its peak, and it is an enormous sample size and Bisu absolutely crushed it. And that's why I think he was the greatest Protoss of all time by a long way. Because nobody else could have. Ever.
And you will look at that and think you've already said his 10/11 PL was amazing but is not the totality of his career and it doesn't change your perspective. And that's good. I don't think my perspective is better and I don't even want to convince you. It's just how I feel.
If you are familiar with football history, do you also believe that current day football is more relevant than past eras of football due to how the game has developed over the decades, and that it doesn't matter if Di Stefano had records, and accolades that surpass some of the modern day greats, because of how much the game has changed?
It's true that any competent professional from the modern era would stomp the earlier era professionals without even breaking a sweat, but to me, that's like thinking random idiots of today are more brilliant than Isaac Newton because we're familiar with his laws of physics, but also the information gained by hundreds of years of human advancement since then. Evolution of any craft is a given, it doesn't mean whoever comes last is the greatest at the craft.
As for the amazing season Bisu had, he was given the opportunity to play over 81 games, and had an astonishing 81.5% win rate over that large sample size. That's amazing in isolation, but if you consider that four individual leagues went on during that time, Bisu reached the round of 16 once as his best performance.
Perhaps it's unfair for older generation of players who could only play like 9 games in a ProLeague season. What about iloveoov who had a record of 8-1 (88.9%) in the ProLeague in 2003, the year he started to start his insane win streak in the MSL? Should Bisu's ProLeague record be considered more than eight times as worthy as iloveoov's ProLeague performance despite iloveoov never having the chance to prove himself in a 81 game long season?
I'm fine with praising Bisu for his fantastic performances, but we have to be real with the circumstances of the situation. How do you know nobody else but Flash could have done it? Flash himself couldn't match Bisu's record despite having the best ProLeague record of his entire career. Why do we suddenly take this one ProLeague season, then proceed to rate Bisu by the players you deem to be capable of repeating this incredible record? Does this mean Bisu is greater than Flash even during his peak? Why does is this one incredible performance by Bisu become the standard by which all other protoss players are judged by, not Flash? Is the 16-4 (80%) record by Stork during his 2007 R1 campaign worth nothing? He still got the regular season MVP, and the play-offs MVP while going to the semi-finals, or above, in both leagues simultaneously. Sure the sample size is way smaller, which is why Bisu is rewarded with much higher career win rate due to his excellent performances in ProLeagues with massive scheduling. But putting that much meaning into this particular performance without thinking about his entire career is flawed, in my opinion.
I don't have a strong opinion either way, but it's so strange to me how people who argue for Bisu present their argument.
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1187 Posts
At the end of the day, all arguments put foward are going to be subjective, either by how you compare performances, or which statistics to compare. Perfect objectivity just isn't realistic, because there is no objective definition of greatness.
I mean, i could instead put forward statistical arguments, at the end of the day, Bisu has a significantly higher win percentage, so despite Stork winning more prestigious matches, Bisu has just flat out won at a better rate, even with the stats of his slump included. Or that he is simply the Protoss with the most number of Starleague gold medals, as well as a ton of proleague medals just from being skt1. Or the highest protoss ELO peak.
But those are just flat out not the reasons why I think him the greatest Protoss and i don't think them particularly relevant. At the end of the day, my reasons are his level of play and not cold hard statistics.
For Lachrymose, the standard just is that that PL season when he believed play was at it's peak.
As for quality of games comparing quality of gameplay from different time periods, yes, you need to compare the players to the level of play of their competition at the time, and it is much more difficult for older games/players. But in this case, this isn't an issue, as they are two contemporaries playing during the same time period where their play can be directly compared, with more or less their entire career in vod form.
In the end it comes down to what you value to be greatness, we could easily ask why it's important to progress into starleagues outside the obvious effect of winning games. Why does consistent placing well in starleagues over a long time matter more than just winning at a greater frequency over your career?
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On December 30 2016 06:19 wassbix wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2016 09:35 Miragee wrote:On December 29 2016 08:57 FlaShFTW wrote:On December 29 2016 04:23 wassbix wrote: Do people not remember late 2011-2012 when Flash was getting his teeth kicked in by Fantasy and Jangbi in individual leagues.
Didn't he get 2-0'd by Jangbi and then 3-0'd by Fantasy in a super convincing manner too? How is this relevant Jangbi must be a bonjwa, that's how it's relevant. Exactly this Seconded :D
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On January 01 2017 02:52 doubleupgradeobbies! wrote: At the end of the day, all arguments put foward are going to be subjective, either by how you compare performances, or which statistics to compare. Perfect objectivity just isn't realistic, because there is no objective definition of greatness.
I mean, i could instead put forward statistical arguments, at the end of the day, Bisu has a significantly higher win percentage, so despite Stork winning more prestigious matches, Bisu has just flat out won at a better rate, even with the stats of his slump included. Or that he is simply the Protoss with the most number of Starleague gold medals, as well as a ton of proleague medals just from being skt1. Or the highest protoss ELO peak.
But those are just flat out not the reasons why I think him the greatest Protoss and i don't think them particularly relevant. At the end of the day, my reasons are his level of play and not cold hard statistics.
For Lachrymose, the standard just is that that PL season when he believed play was at it's peak.
As for quality of games comparing quality of gameplay from different time periods, yes, you need to compare the players to the level of play of their competition at the time, and it is much more difficult for older games/players. But in this case, this isn't an issue, as they are two contemporaries playing during the same time period where their play can be directly compared, with more or less their entire career in vod form.
In the end it comes down to what you value to be greatness, we could easily ask why it's important to progress into starleagues outside the obvious effect of winning games. Why does consistent placing well in starleagues over a long time matter more than just winning at a greater frequency over your career?
I think we're starting to repeat ourselves. I'd love to just agree to disagree, but I'll post one more before I go to sleep.
We've established the statistics that are in favour of Bisu. I was pointing out the statistics that are in favour of Stork. I originally brought up the topic of Stork versus Bisu, on the claim that Bisu was more ahead of other members of his race than it was the case for Jaedong, or Flash. I chose sAviOr as a point of comparison for Jaedong, and showed how Jaedong didn't only have more championships, but had sAviOr beaten comprehensively in all bracket stage performances, as well as every single ProLeague round that took place after Jaedong's debut round. Stork was my protoss of choice to be compared with Bisu.
I think there's a slight argument to be made that Stork had the more extensive career (notice that I established my opinion that I think of Bisu as the superior player), based on his superior longetivity, which has led to an extra 2nd place, an extra semi-finals, two more round of 8 appearances, and eight more round of 16 appearances. He also had a more steady performance in the ProLeague going season by season, although Bisu more than made up for it in terms of overall records by having two year's worth of god-tier performances when the ProLeague scheduling was absolutely insane with 81 games (with a 81.5% win rate) in his best year (2010/2011), compared the 42 games (with a 73.8% win rate) Stork played during his best year of ProLeague. It's with the help of this inflation of these ProLeague games that Bisu achieves his highest ELO ever, rather than getting it during his MSL winnings streak.
Bisu versus Stork analysis aside, which was a topic I brought up to silence the myth that any limitation that Bisu had was due to his choice of race, I'll answer your question on why it's important to consider success at which players had at qualifying for the lower bracket stages of the individual leagues, and why it's important to consider other placements during a player's career rather than just judging them by their 1st place finishes.
GARIMTO. Although he played in a vastly different era, when the triumvirate of OGN StarLeague/MSL/ProLeague didn't exist, he had a very incomplete career, compared to someone like Stork. Although it's unfair to judge GARIMTO simply by the tournaments that survived to this date, due to how the landscape of his era was not necessarily the same, here is his entire career in OGN StarLeagues/KPGA Tournaments.
1st place finishes: 2 Finals or above: 2 Semi-finals or above: 2 Quarter-finals or above: 2 Round of 16 or above: 6
2 OGN StarLeague championships, four other times where he finished in the top 16. I don't care how much you think championships are worth, I don't think it's right to say GARIMTO achieved more than Stork in their entire careers.
As for why longetivity matters, it's the only way to compensate for the fact that the professional Brood War scenes had huge changes in which tournaments had the most prize pool, had the most number of players attending, and the way in which the formatting worked. It changed so many times that winning two MSL titles in a row 2005 was completely different from winning two MSL titles in a row in 2009 for example.
If you dropped straight out of the round of 16 in UZOO MSL, you weren't able to return for the following MSL no matter what. So in just in terms of the format difficulty, being in two consecutive MSL was objectively harder than it was in 2009, for example, where you could drop out of the round 32, and still return.
Therefore, just comparing records, and placements without considering all the plethora of changes that happened in the scene makes the comparisons a little flawed to start with. The only option is to compare within that specific era. Winning two back to back OGN StarLeague may be not the same achievements in 2001, and 2009, but what doesn't change is the fact that dominating all the tournaments in 2001, makes you the best for a year, and the time frame is what makes the comparison easier. So if there is a player who is the best player in the scene for a year, and another who is the best player for two years, you obviously keep that in mind (without making any brash judgments), even if the other statistics don't follow.
For example, by this criteria, Stork is the superior player to Bisu in the ProLeague because he was better for longer periods of time, whereas Bisu is the superior ProLeague player if you don't take eras into account, and just add up their overall records. Stork was there for the ride as well, so it's less of an issue here, but this method is more useful in preventing players who are mediocre otherwise like Really, from padding their statistics way up with performances during the inflated era of the ProLeague.
For a holistic review of their careers season by season, Stork was better in 2005, Bisu was better in 2006 due to his win versus sAviOr, in 2007 it depends on your criteria, Stork was better in the ProLeague, while Bisu was better in the individual leagues, for the first half of 2008 Stork was better in the ProLeague, while Bisu was better in the individual leagues, in 2008/2009 Bisu was clearly better, in 2009/2010 Stork was clearly better, in 2010/2011 Bisu was better in the ProLeague, while Stork was better in the individual leagues, 2011/2012 Stork was clearly better.
In summary, Stork was the better performing protoss player for three years (2005, 2009/2010, 2011/2012), Bisu was better for two years also (2006, 2008/2009), and the remaining two and a half years depends on how you weigh the importance of the ProLeague. If you think their discrepancies in the ProLeague results matter more, Bisu was better for three years versus the four and a half years for Stork. If you thought better individual placements matter more, Bisu was better for three and a half years, compared to the four years for Stork. Either way, Stork was more relevant as a player for a longer duration of his career. These are some of the merits Stork has. It's not indicative of their greatness, but it's a way of measuring their careers, by which, I believe, their greatness is measured by.
It's ultimately how I judge these players, not by how they won, or if they should have won, but by how much they won. The exact method of measuring how much they won is up for discussion, which is why I welcome various statistics, and different approaches to judging their actual result such as win percentages, gathering up all their various placements, and peak ELO. I'm not stating that these stastics are the truth and the light, but rather more data to have a more complete understanding of the nature, and scope of these player's careers and achievements, by which their greatness can be understood. Without a proper attempt at understanding their careers, feelings, and impressions of their memorable moments are worthless, in my eyes.
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Ultimately its a pretty subjective thing whether you consider Storks consistency or Bisu's accomplishments inspite of his instability, to be greater than the other. I think in terms of absolute quality Bisu and Jangbi were clearly the best protoss to have ever played, and were best able to show what a human might be capable of (after all professional bw is a small talent pool). But Stork was clearly consistent across many era's in ways neither were, and if you were to consider those achievements to merit being the greatest protoss ever, how could anyone even argue?
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Vatican City State78 Posts
Ultimately its a pretty subjective thing whether you consider Storks consistency or Bisu's accomplishments inspite of his instability, to be greater than the other. I think in terms of absolute quality Bisu and Jangbi were clearly the best protoss to have ever played, and were best able to show what a human might be capable of (after all professional bw is a small talent pool). But Stork was clearly consistent across many era's in ways neither were, and if you were to consider those achievements to merit being the greatest protoss ever, how could anyone even argue?
Jangbi's winning % was only like 55% in his pro career, sure he won two OSL titles but that is when everyone was training for SC2. Saying that Jangbi is in anyway near the likes of Bisu or Stork is like saying Fantasy is one of the best Terran players ever.....
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On January 01 2017 07:23 mauwee wrote:Show nested quote + Ultimately its a pretty subjective thing whether you consider Storks consistency or Bisu's accomplishments inspite of his instability, to be greater than the other. I think in terms of absolute quality Bisu and Jangbi were clearly the best protoss to have ever played, and were best able to show what a human might be capable of (after all professional bw is a small talent pool). But Stork was clearly consistent across many era's in ways neither were, and if you were to consider those achievements to merit being the greatest protoss ever, how could anyone even argue? Jangbi's winning % was only like 55% in his pro career, sure he won two OSL titles but that is when everyone was training for SC2. Saying that Jangbi is in anyway near the likes of Bisu or Stork is like saying Fantasy is one of the best Terran players ever.....
Fantasy did make 5 OSL finals, though. And at least 2 of 'em were before SC2 ever came out.
Not saying he's a 'Top 3 of All-Time' Terran, just that he has more to hang his hat on than JangBi's two OSL titles gotten when the SC2 transition was already well under way.
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Vatican City State78 Posts
Fantasy did make 5 OSL finals, though. And at least 2 of 'em were before SC2 ever came out. Not saying he's a 'Top 3 Ever' Terran, just that he has more to hang his hat on than JangBi's two OSL titles gotten when the SC2 transition was already well under way.
Yeah I agree Fantasy does have more to hang his hat on and his winning % is much higher.
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