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I spent four years of my life dedicated to StarCraft. I made GM several seasons on NA ladder. I made GM on Korean ladder for one season. I played many top tier

by EC1 11y ago

I spent four years of my life dedicated to StarCraft. I made GM several seasons on NA ladder. I made GM on Korean ladder for one season. I played many top tier players, and I beat them. Repeatedly. Then I decided to invest in flying myself down to Dreamhack. All the people I played online and beat about 50% of the time and made connections with, I lost to every single time. There's many like me, top tier players but who can't win a cent. The disparity in skill from bottom of the Grandmaster ladder to top 100, from 100 to top 50, then top 10, and finally top 5, is massive. Stopped gaming altogether around that time.

spiritplumber 11y ago
That's really interesting, could you do an AMA?
- EC1 11y ago
  Where? Here? Reddit? Haha, probably pointless as nobody has ever really heard of me. There's dozens of players like me, dozens! Ask whatever you want.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    I'm curious how you saw the metagame evolve -- did top players invest in a character or team only to find that they were weaker to an evolved metagame?
    - EC1 11y ago
      Player by player basis. Each one plays differently. It was moreso seeing a bracket, who signed up, then pulling up replays of how they played and reading about them. I made a lot of notes on specific players styles, their timings, unit composition etc. Different strategy for each player + map. What surprised me was when I went to the tournament, a lot of players had different play styles than what I've studied, which ultimately ruined me. I'm the guy you're describing. Behind on the meta game. I went for the long game every single time, as safe as possible, so I lost to a lot of early cheese that I didn't even know was possible. Some Korean gave me a 3 stalker push at like the 5:30 or earlier(can't remember). I just sat there wondering to my self "fucking... how?" That moment really stuck with me. You play thousands of games in the top leagues and people still surprise you.
      - hellbanner 11y ago
        How much of top-level play do you think is a "guessing" game ala RPS? If you scout properly & manage properly, can you make it to the mid-game safely everytime, or is it luck of the RPS?
fredoliveira 11y ago
I did the same with Counter-Strike what seems like a lifetime ago. I feel the world was a lot different back then. My team was the first team to have a sponsorship by Steelseries (they were a tiny company back then), and the numbers were super small. If I told any of the current top players how much we made back then with our sponsorships (which included Samsung and Intel as well), they would laugh. These days, you have CS:GO players making 5 figures a month, supplementing that with another 5 figures by streaming, and genuinely living like rockstars. It gets better if you look at LoL, because their numbers are fairly larger too (about 2:1 still, even if CSGO is growing significantly). The amount of work that has to go into getting yourself into a top team is insane these days. Lan houses have for the most part gone away, and finding people with the mentality required to create such a team is hard. Those who do it are certainly well compensated, because there's a ton of money in streaming and brands want to be involved. But there's a chasm between being extremely good and being on the teams you hear about. For the first, life certainly isn't as glamorous.
snarfy 11y ago
I've had a similar experience, except it was with the Tekken series fighting games. At one point I was ranked in the top 20 in NA. I had a few chances over the years to play the top 5 in NA, and #3 from Korea. The difference in skill level as you go from #20 down to #1 can be huge. I would have 50% chance against one of the other top 20, but that would go to maybe 5% against someone in the top 5, 1% against #1, and 0% against the Korean #3. I think I beat him one round ever. I'm not sure I'd want to be #1. There is a point of diminishing returns when the game is no longer fun but work.
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  Neat. How does the skill gap change the higher you go? That is, #5 vs #1, is the chance close to equal, or is there that much of a power gap? (There's probably a mathematical description of what I'm asking; I just don't know the name, if someone cares to enlighten me.) Any speculation on the cause? Is playing at #20 just not so time-dominating, but top 5 is a real full-time career? What factors are at work?
  - snarfy 11y ago
    In the Tekken scene (this was 14 years ago), the main differences were competitive - the #1-5 all played each other regularly. They were in a league of their own, as were the Koreans. Time dedicated is also a big factor. You have ~1/4 second (10-15 frames depending on throw) to analyze and react to perform a throw escape, which is pushing the limits of human reaction time. If the buttons are 1,2,3,4, throw escapes were typically 1,2, or 1+2 (rarely 3&4). If you hit the correct button for the throw, you escaped it. At first, nobody ever escapes throws. It happens too fast. With practice, you can successfully attempt an escape, but it's only a guess at 1,2, or 1+2. You go from 0% success to 33% success. But you can tell what the escape is by the animation. A 1 escape shows the characters left arm more forward than the right, a 2 and the right arm is more forward, 1+2 and both arms move in unison. If you are really fast and analyze which escapes to do, you can escape throws 100% of the time. This requires more than practice - it requires continuous training, even conditioning to increase your metabolic rate (which changes your perception of time). This is the difference between the #1-5 guys and everybody else. They could always escape throws, without guessing.

by EC1 11y ago

spiritplumber 11y ago

That's really interesting, could you do an AMA?

EC1 11y ago
Where? Here? Reddit? Haha, probably pointless as nobody has ever really heard of me. There's dozens of players like me, dozens! Ask whatever you want.
- hellbanner 11y ago
  I'm curious how you saw the metagame evolve -- did top players invest in a character or team only to find that they were weaker to an evolved metagame?
  - EC1 11y ago
    Player by player basis. Each one plays differently. It was moreso seeing a bracket, who signed up, then pulling up replays of how they played and reading about them. I made a lot of notes on specific players styles, their timings, unit composition etc. Different strategy for each player + map. What surprised me was when I went to the tournament, a lot of players had different play styles than what I've studied, which ultimately ruined me. I'm the guy you're describing. Behind on the meta game. I went for the long game every single time, as safe as possible, so I lost to a lot of early cheese that I didn't even know was possible. Some Korean gave me a 3 stalker push at like the 5:30 or earlier(can't remember). I just sat there wondering to my self "fucking... how?" That moment really stuck with me. You play thousands of games in the top leagues and people still surprise you.
    - hellbanner 11y ago
      How much of top-level play do you think is a "guessing" game ala RPS? If you scout properly & manage properly, can you make it to the mid-game safely everytime, or is it luck of the RPS?

fredoliveira 11y ago

I did the same with Counter-Strike what seems like a lifetime ago. I feel the world was a lot different back then. My team was the first team to have a sponsorship by Steelseries (they were a tiny company back then), and the numbers were super small. If I told any of the current top players how much we made back then with our sponsorships (which included Samsung and Intel as well), they would laugh. These days, you have CS:GO players making 5 figures a month, supplementing that with another 5 figures by streaming, and genuinely living like rockstars. It gets better if you look at LoL, because their numbers are fairly larger too (about 2:1 still, even if CSGO is growing significantly). The amount of work that has to go into getting yourself into a top team is insane these days. Lan houses have for the most part gone away, and finding people with the mentality required to create such a team is hard. Those who do it are certainly well compensated, because there's a ton of money in streaming and brands want to be involved. But there's a chasm between being extremely good and being on the teams you hear about. For the first, life certainly isn't as glamorous.

snarfy 11y ago

I've had a similar experience, except it was with the Tekken series fighting games. At one point I was ranked in the top 20 in NA. I had a few chances over the years to play the top 5 in NA, and #3 from Korea. The difference in skill level as you go from #20 down to #1 can be huge. I would have 50% chance against one of the other top 20, but that would go to maybe 5% against someone in the top 5, 1% against #1, and 0% against the Korean #3. I think I beat him one round ever. I'm not sure I'd want to be #1. There is a point of diminishing returns when the game is no longer fun but work.

MichaelGG 11y ago
Neat. How does the skill gap change the higher you go? That is, #5 vs #1, is the chance close to equal, or is there that much of a power gap? (There's probably a mathematical description of what I'm asking; I just don't know the name, if someone cares to enlighten me.) Any speculation on the cause? Is playing at #20 just not so time-dominating, but top 5 is a real full-time career? What factors are at work?
- snarfy 11y ago
  In the Tekken scene (this was 14 years ago), the main differences were competitive - the #1-5 all played each other regularly. They were in a league of their own, as were the Koreans. Time dedicated is also a big factor. You have ~1/4 second (10-15 frames depending on throw) to analyze and react to perform a throw escape, which is pushing the limits of human reaction time. If the buttons are 1,2,3,4, throw escapes were typically 1,2, or 1+2 (rarely 3&4). If you hit the correct button for the throw, you escaped it. At first, nobody ever escapes throws. It happens too fast. With practice, you can successfully attempt an escape, but it's only a guess at 1,2, or 1+2. You go from 0% success to 33% success. But you can tell what the escape is by the animation. A 1 escape shows the characters left arm more forward than the right, a 2 and the right arm is more forward, 1+2 and both arms move in unison. If you are really fast and analyze which escapes to do, you can escape throws 100% of the time. This requires more than practice - it requires continuous training, even conditioning to increase your metabolic rate (which changes your perception of time). This is the difference between the #1-5 guys and everybody else. They could always escape throws, without guessing.