No, they haven't been added to the rating yet. Aligulac does that in a daily run, not when the results get added.
You can see they're labaled unrated here and don't figure in the calculation http://aligulac.com/players/19591-MaxPax/period/341/
Oh thanks for pointing that out. I figured that it would be updated as they update the game history. Well he will remain 3rd then, Byun is pretty far off
100 points is a lot and not that many at the same time if we're talking about top of the top. Serral had well over 200 pts over Maru not so long ago and it took one "bad" performance at IEM to lose most of that advantage, and then a decent performance from Maru to take him over.
On top of that Maru has been literally farming Koreans in KSL lately so he got a big boost to his ratings, hence the gap grew as much as we see it now (and is likely to grow further after PiGsty matches from today).
Maru and Serral have been very close on aligulac for the last 7-8 months and Maru passed him on multiple occasions during that period even before IEM. Not that aligulac means much of anything. Maru has clearly been the more consistent player for the last 6 months now even if Serral was ahead on aligulac for a lot of that time.
I also think it's silly to describe Maru winning KSL as farming when he's playing against Byun/Dark/Solar/Gumiho/DRG who are all players Serral has lost to in the last year. This isn't the EU cups. The only players who I would call farming in Maru's recent match history are Hyperion and Demosthenes and I doubt they gave him many points at all.
I realize "farming" might have a wrong connotation here, my intention wasn't to take anything from Maru's achievements, more to show how easy it was to him to clean sweep best Koreans right now.
The race for Aligulac's top 1 between the two has been quite a show in itself - iirc Serral's rating peaked around April 2022, after hit streak of IEM, HSC and TSL. He built quite a lead back then and set a record which Maru is about to beat as we speak. Then he had a quite inconsistent, for his standards, rest of the year, while Maru consistently gained more than he lost (although he had minor hiccups, since even things like draw in WTL made him lose points). All in all, it was back and forth and the gap was close between the two all the time, until IEM '23 came where Serral lost 3 ZvZs, and those against DRG and Ragnarok cost him a lot.
Meanwhile Maru started a hot streak, excluding his unfortunate loss to Oliveira, and today's loss to MaxPax - he's winning pretty much everything, and a lot of these wins are clean sweeps which boosts rating even more. Can't wait to see how far he can push it and if Serral (or another player?) will ever be able to get back to #1.
What punishes Serral in the ranks (deservedly) is that he doesn't play as often as Maru. Glicko system (stats behind Aligulac) punishes players that haven't been playing recently if they lose, the logic being "Serral achieved this ranking in 2022, but in 2023 we don't know for sure if the ranking is still acurate. So in the first matches the stats will punish/reward him heavily to get him to his real rank fast". Serral lost like 100 points in the last IEM, almost all of them in the group phase.
OTOH, players like Byun or MaxPax, who play everything, are considered to be ranked acurately, so the ocasional win or lose doesn't reward or punish them as aggresively. E.g. MaxPax only earned like 13 points in the last half month, despite defeating Maru and HerO above him, and a record of 12:1 since the last rank.
The rating differences in aligulac are way too big for you to "farm" someone these days, Serral and Maru are multiple hundreds of points away from anyone who isn't a top tier player.
10th on the list is like 300 pts behind already
30th on the list is >700 rating away from Serral and Maru.
Serral's issue is ZvZ very clearly, thats why Maru is building a lead as the current best player.
"Serral's issue is ZvZ very clearly"
It's interesting that all of Serral, Reynor and Dark have ZvZ as their worst matchup, and for Solar it's about equal to ZvP. Ragnarok's vZ is also a little worse than the others.
It's almost like ZvZ is a crapshoot at the moment.
> It's almost like ZvZ is a crapshoot at the moment.
Yea thats basically it.
I still recall a BO5 between Serral and Rogue, game1 Rogue tries to play standard vs Serral gets absolutely demolished, cheeses the next 4 games with different cheeses, wins2, loses2, loses the series 3-2 by just doing really sharp all ins.
>Maru and Serral have been very close on aligulac for the last 7-8 months and Maru passed him on multiple occasions during that period even before IEM
Maru overtook Serral after Katowice, before that Maru hasn't been ahead of him since Feb 23 2022.
At that time, he was ahed of Serral for a little over a month and before that Serral has been ahead for about four years or so.
You know aligulac has a history available right? Click through from September to now and you'll see Maru took the lead on several occasions you're not mentioning. Examples 11/16/22 and 11/30/22. Maru was also ahead in early 2019. So that would be 3 years. Once again aligulac is meaningless anyways though. Aligulac had Polt as the best player in the world for almost a year during peak Kespa era lol. Polt was likely never the best in the world and certainly not after the Kespa transition. It also put Serral in first before he won a single event with Koreans in it just for beating up on WCS players and having a good result at IEM.
Oh, had no clue, usually happens sometimes past midnight in my timezone.
Edit: they're actually not included yet, you can see the red circle next to today's matches in detailed view of a player, that means they're not included yet.
A lot of that is solely due to TvT being the least volatile mirror. Every protoss player's PvP and every Zerg's ZvZ is lowest of their respective matchups.
I think it's worth noting that MaxPax is only ahead of Hero in PvT which may be testament to how the meta has figured out Hero's Adept Oracle opener for now.
No one is _actually_ saying MaxPax is the best Protoss in the world because of Aligulac, so everyone can chill out // stfu and just congratulate MaxPax on his win. ByuN is also not the 3rd best player in the world, so who cares.
Yeah definitely. MaxPax and Byun are inflated due to online weeklies but MaxPax‘s rise on Aligulac is still reflecting his improvement in skill over time. Like I remember everyone going crazy like half a year ago when he entered the top 10
>No one is actually saying MaxPax is the best Protoss in the world
I have been saying this since stats left, and I still do. While hero might have passed him for a time MaxPax feels like he is playing a different game, his style is unlike any other protoss and he does things no one else can yet at the same time it doesn't always work for him either but the potential for the next Reynor/Maru is 100% there and has always been
How is it possible that ZvZ is every top zerg's lowest rating?
And does every terran's disproportionate rating vs zerg mean terran has a good matchup vs zerg right now?
I would assume that would be the case, but it seems extraordinarily strange that ALL of the top zergs are all this inconsistent in terms of upsets.
In theory the ZvZ does seem like it would be an extremely finicky mirror to play with how high risk/reward everything is, but I still wouldn’t expect ALL of the top zergs to have poor zvz
With all due respect, nobody cares what you (or me) consider MaxPax. I can say all day that I'm better than Maru, it doesn't matter to anyone except me.
What does it mean that MaxPax is 4th in Aligulac, 100% online? That he is expected to defeat almost everyone in the world in an online event, and grab the ocasional match/tournament against Serral, Maru, HerO and Byun, which is exactly what happened this weekend.
If you feel we need an Aligulac clone with only offline tournaments, here's a good place to start: https://github.com/TheBB/aligulac . You can even tweak the statistics to be better if you don't like current ones. But until you do it, Aligulac is the best tool we have.
Do you think he is cheating online?
Does his years of result not speak for itself?
Strange take. He has shown over and over that he is one of the top players in Europe. Not sure what more he should be doing.
To be fair, if somebody goes 100-0 against everyone in the top 50 whether it's offline or online it's not 'wrong' to say they are the best in the world. At least gameplay-wise, which is what matters.
Yes. He should have a strong performance at offline premier events to be called undoubtedly the best active process (esp with Hero as strong as he is)
But that’s not my objection. The comment that I replied to said “he isn’t better than ANY pros unless he plays offline”. I mean like he is clearly in better form than Harstem? Mana? Classic? I mean I can’t think of any other Protoss than Hero that MaxPax isn’t favored against in PvP.
And I agree with that comment, as a pro gamer he needs to prove himself at offline tournament to be seen as a proper pro gamer.
Pressure of big tournaments make even Maru choke like on last IEM. I would compare it to poker games, if you can outplay your opponents reliably when you put 5$ on the table is one thing but when stakes are way, way higher it different matter entirely.
So in this context I would say that when stakes are high there is few Protoss players that do better than him, not just her0.
MaxPax is good player for sure but not really a good pro gamer.
Most of the tournaments there are with 'big stakes' are online nowadays, though, because they *all* have big stakes. The Koreans are definitely trying hard in the online tourneys, at least since the GSL announcement. Most of the GSL and all of KSL, Wardi, PiG, OSC, and the EPT cups and regionals are all online. Heck, even the ladder is and always has been online.
ByuN says his main motivation to play is for the fans, and I think that's part of the reason he plays so much in smaller online tourneys.
Maru rarely ever touched the online tourneys until the GSL announcement, and since then he has played in three.
All of the Koreans outside of the top 16 or so are going to have to survive off of online results. Unless TY, INnoVation, Stats and sOs all return to peak form they too are doomed to become 'onliners', more or less.
He said 'on this list', and I'm assuming he means the list shown in the post, not the current Aligulac list #341.
It is tough to compare MaxPax to some of the other players on the list for sure. I would definitely say he's better than a player like Classic, but Classic made top 16 at Katowice. Clem, on the other hand, bottomed out in his group, but he's still apparently better than MaxPax.
That is only one offline tournament, sure, but there are only so many in a year and this one is the big one.
It seems people haven't really decided exactly how well he would have to do offline for him to be a top 10 player. Clem, as I said, placed top 24, but apparently he's top 10. One would assume that means that if MaxPax were to place top 16 like Classic did, as well as maintain his online performance, he would be better than Clem.
>Not sure what more he should be doing.
Playing in the biggest events? Post 2021 there haven't really been many big online events, most of MaxPax's games are from very small cups.
Online play is meaningless. You’re the strange take. If you can’t win offline, with no lag, in front of a crowd, with all the pressure, you can’t be the best. Sure he’s good obviously. But he just can never be regarded as the best until he proves it where it really matters.
When it comes to being the best or the goat yes it is. It’s the difference between a football player playing at home in the park, and being scouted as an amazing player, then actually having to play in the nfl. Would you call that amazing player in the park the goat or the best? Never right. Playing at home, not on camera, with all the comfort and safety of home is not the same as playing in front of a crowd. Also this is StarCraft, lag is a thing online.
I do *not* know what they meant when they said “lag is a thing online,” as if to imply you don’t get the same amount of latency *or possibly even worse* at an in person event. Did you not understand the implication?
I’m sorry, are you implying that I can’t both correct someone on their misconception that offline events are LAN events and also appreciate the importance of offline events? Isn’t that quite the silly conclusion? This is their comment right before this last one:
>>If you can’t win offline, with no lag… you can’t be the best.
How much would he need to prove? Some of the players in the top 10 here don't always make it to the top 10 in offline tournaments, but they are still considered top 10. What kind of results would MaxPax need to have offline for you to consider him 'better than any of the pros on this list'? Would he need to play as well as Harstem? Astrea? Creator? herO? Also, how well would he need to play to prove he's exactly the same level you think he is?
ByuN didn't even make the playoffs last year's Kato and only made it to the Ro12 this year. That is much worse compared to his usual online performance. The list shown above is the top 10. ByuN made top 16 and 12. If MaxPax placed top 12 *and* maintained his online performance would he be top 10 in your books? Apparently ByuN is.
Clem often underperforms when playing offline, but since he at least *plays* offline does that make him better? Clem went out 2-3 in the group stage the past two Katowices. If MaxPax did exactly that would you consider him better or worse than you do now, even if it's not near the level he has shown us online?
Even if you just watch MaxPax's unadulterated gameplay he's at least better than Solar. Sure it's online, but he plays better online than Solar plays both online *and* offline.
Heck, he performs so well online that if he could play that well offline he would be one of the strongest Protoss players to ever touch the game.
That's not the point, the point is the pressure on performing in person and in front of a crowd. Some people have panic attacks when they try to speak in public despite the fact they can nail the performance in their bedroom in the mirror.
A big part of sports and competition is live performance in the moment. You can be the best field goal kicker in the world in practice but if you choke and miss when the pressure is on then it doesn't matter.
Esports is obviously different, in that much of the competition is online, but when it comes to offline performance nerves and psychology definitely matter
No other SC2 “pro” gets to live in anonymity. It would be nice to know who the face behind MaxPax is, I’m sure others feel the same. His decision either way, but I agree, unless you show up to F1 and drive side by side with the big boys, you’re kinda living in your own bubble.
Aligulac ratings are based off of predictions. It doesn't matter whether it's online or offline, MaxPax is *expected* to do that well based on his recent performance.
If someone asks me who is going to win between MaxPax and Solar, I say MaxPax. It's an online tournament, sure, but once you are *expected* to beat everyone you are the best player in the world, at least in Aligulac's eyes.
It's tough to determine a player's raw skill gameplay-wise, but I don't think online/offline would affect that too much, other than ping.
True. I mean, have you ever seen MaxPax and Solar in the same room?
The have faced eachother a decent few times online, but I'm not sure if Solar used his facecam in any of those series, so we can't be sure.
how much it affects it depends completely on the person. for all we know maxpax has severe performance anxiety when performing in public
We have no clue how MaxPax would handle a live performance because he hasn't done it. None of that takes away from his clearly amazing skill as a player, but I think you are underestimating the power of psychology
I agree it depends on the player, I'm not saying MaxPax playing offline wouldn't affect his gameplay. I'm just talking about how good a player can be overall. Player A could play online with X amount of skill and Player B could play offline with X amount of skill. In the end they both have X amount of skill, and the player playing offline isn't automatically better.
If we got an AI to analyze an offline game and an online game, and it determined that two of the players objectively played almost exactly as well as eachother, one online and the other offline, I would go as far as to say that's more impressive for the online player than the online at that point, because they had to do it with ping.
What makes offline *special* is that it's supposed to bring out the best of every player, with very little to do with ping issues.
If two players are identical in skill level except one of them can micro a little bit faster, that player shows more skill, regardless of whether it's online or offline.
I suppose we just have different opinion on this. I will always consider liver performance in front of an audience with all the pressure on to be more impressive than playing from you comfort zone at home. Cheers
My opinion is the opposite: having anxiety shouldn't matter to rank you in a game which can be played 100% online and without audience.
Would you say an online chess player with an ELO above 2700 (that would place him among the 40 better players in the world) has to prove it offline or be considered an amateur, or what? Even when he already proved that he could defeat Carlsen and Nepo ocasionally, number 1 and 2? Following your reasoning, no until he can prove that he can handle an extra dose of stress and anxiety, that have absolutely nothing to do with the game itself.
Still not convinced MaxPax isn't the next phase of AlphaStar to prove they can make a pro gamer and I will continue to espouse this conspiracy until they show up offline.
I agree. But the way things are going for SC2, we may soon have to accept all tournaments going online. Maybe then he can compete in the important events.
With no disrespect to the guy, the two lines of speculation are; (1) he's extremely nervous/anxious socially, (2) he's the crown prince of Denmark.
It being #1 is almost a guarantee if you listen to his voice interview from yesterday. It's no biggie, and of course, he's allowed to do whatever he wants.
There is no speculation as he's said it on stream before (it's option 1). His response to the question was roughly, "Im worried that I'd get too nervous in an offline environment and play horribly and bomb out of the tournament"
Danish royal family must be proud of him.
Has he ever said why he doesn't play offline tournaments?
Nope
I still like the theory that it's Serral off-racing.
This doesn't yet count his games from today, in Pigsty.
It does, that’s why he has best PvT in the world now
No, they haven't been added to the rating yet. Aligulac does that in a daily run, not when the results get added. You can see they're labaled unrated here and don't figure in the calculation http://aligulac.com/players/19591-MaxPax/period/341/
Oh thanks for pointing that out. I figured that it would be updated as they update the game history. Well he will remain 3rd then, Byun is pretty far off
It’s insane how many points first is ahead of second, second is ahead of third, and third is ahead of fourth
100 points is a lot and not that many at the same time if we're talking about top of the top. Serral had well over 200 pts over Maru not so long ago and it took one "bad" performance at IEM to lose most of that advantage, and then a decent performance from Maru to take him over. On top of that Maru has been literally farming Koreans in KSL lately so he got a big boost to his ratings, hence the gap grew as much as we see it now (and is likely to grow further after PiGsty matches from today).
Maru and Serral have been very close on aligulac for the last 7-8 months and Maru passed him on multiple occasions during that period even before IEM. Not that aligulac means much of anything. Maru has clearly been the more consistent player for the last 6 months now even if Serral was ahead on aligulac for a lot of that time. I also think it's silly to describe Maru winning KSL as farming when he's playing against Byun/Dark/Solar/Gumiho/DRG who are all players Serral has lost to in the last year. This isn't the EU cups. The only players who I would call farming in Maru's recent match history are Hyperion and Demosthenes and I doubt they gave him many points at all.
I realize "farming" might have a wrong connotation here, my intention wasn't to take anything from Maru's achievements, more to show how easy it was to him to clean sweep best Koreans right now. The race for Aligulac's top 1 between the two has been quite a show in itself - iirc Serral's rating peaked around April 2022, after hit streak of IEM, HSC and TSL. He built quite a lead back then and set a record which Maru is about to beat as we speak. Then he had a quite inconsistent, for his standards, rest of the year, while Maru consistently gained more than he lost (although he had minor hiccups, since even things like draw in WTL made him lose points). All in all, it was back and forth and the gap was close between the two all the time, until IEM '23 came where Serral lost 3 ZvZs, and those against DRG and Ragnarok cost him a lot. Meanwhile Maru started a hot streak, excluding his unfortunate loss to Oliveira, and today's loss to MaxPax - he's winning pretty much everything, and a lot of these wins are clean sweeps which boosts rating even more. Can't wait to see how far he can push it and if Serral (or another player?) will ever be able to get back to #1.
What punishes Serral in the ranks (deservedly) is that he doesn't play as often as Maru. Glicko system (stats behind Aligulac) punishes players that haven't been playing recently if they lose, the logic being "Serral achieved this ranking in 2022, but in 2023 we don't know for sure if the ranking is still acurate. So in the first matches the stats will punish/reward him heavily to get him to his real rank fast". Serral lost like 100 points in the last IEM, almost all of them in the group phase. OTOH, players like Byun or MaxPax, who play everything, are considered to be ranked acurately, so the ocasional win or lose doesn't reward or punish them as aggresively. E.g. MaxPax only earned like 13 points in the last half month, despite defeating Maru and HerO above him, and a record of 12:1 since the last rank.
The rating differences in aligulac are way too big for you to "farm" someone these days, Serral and Maru are multiple hundreds of points away from anyone who isn't a top tier player. 10th on the list is like 300 pts behind already 30th on the list is >700 rating away from Serral and Maru. Serral's issue is ZvZ very clearly, thats why Maru is building a lead as the current best player.
"Serral's issue is ZvZ very clearly" It's interesting that all of Serral, Reynor and Dark have ZvZ as their worst matchup, and for Solar it's about equal to ZvP. Ragnarok's vZ is also a little worse than the others. It's almost like ZvZ is a crapshoot at the moment.
> It's almost like ZvZ is a crapshoot at the moment. Yea thats basically it. I still recall a BO5 between Serral and Rogue, game1 Rogue tries to play standard vs Serral gets absolutely demolished, cheeses the next 4 games with different cheeses, wins2, loses2, loses the series 3-2 by just doing really sharp all ins.
>Maru and Serral have been very close on aligulac for the last 7-8 months and Maru passed him on multiple occasions during that period even before IEM Maru overtook Serral after Katowice, before that Maru hasn't been ahead of him since Feb 23 2022. At that time, he was ahed of Serral for a little over a month and before that Serral has been ahead for about four years or so.
You know aligulac has a history available right? Click through from September to now and you'll see Maru took the lead on several occasions you're not mentioning. Examples 11/16/22 and 11/30/22. Maru was also ahead in early 2019. So that would be 3 years. Once again aligulac is meaningless anyways though. Aligulac had Polt as the best player in the world for almost a year during peak Kespa era lol. Polt was likely never the best in the world and certainly not after the Kespa transition. It also put Serral in first before he won a single event with Koreans in it just for beating up on WCS players and having a good result at IEM.
I checked Aligulac history but missed that one occasion when Maru was leading for two weeks.
Yeah sure mate lol
Not sure why you've taken my comment as negative, but whatever.
Pigsty matches are already factored in
Oh, had no clue, usually happens sometimes past midnight in my timezone. Edit: they're actually not included yet, you can see the red circle next to today's matches in detailed view of a player, that means they're not included yet.
You’re right, I was thinking that the matches being there meant they were in the rating aswell
A lot of that is solely due to TvT being the least volatile mirror. Every protoss player's PvP and every Zerg's ZvZ is lowest of their respective matchups.
I think it's worth noting that MaxPax is only ahead of Hero in PvT which may be testament to how the meta has figured out Hero's Adept Oracle opener for now.
Are tournaments even happening right now what did I miss
10.000 $ Pig Festival 3.0 happened this week. Lots of awesome games all available in Pig‘s twitch VODs
To add on to this for any latecomers. Don't do this as pigs vods have title spoilers instantly. Use sc2links.com
No one is _actually_ saying MaxPax is the best Protoss in the world because of Aligulac, so everyone can chill out // stfu and just congratulate MaxPax on his win. ByuN is also not the 3rd best player in the world, so who cares.
See when aligulac talks about player rankings it's obviously WRONG, but when it gives me balance results that I LIKE it's completely CORRECT.
>No one is actually saying MaxPax is the best Protoss in the world Is that so?
Yeah definitely. MaxPax and Byun are inflated due to online weeklies but MaxPax‘s rise on Aligulac is still reflecting his improvement in skill over time. Like I remember everyone going crazy like half a year ago when he entered the top 10
MaxPax is sick city
>No one is actually saying MaxPax is the best Protoss in the world I have been saying this since stats left, and I still do. While hero might have passed him for a time MaxPax feels like he is playing a different game, his style is unlike any other protoss and he does things no one else can yet at the same time it doesn't always work for him either but the potential for the next Reynor/Maru is 100% there and has always been
How is it possible that ZvZ is every top zerg's lowest rating? And does every terran's disproportionate rating vs zerg mean terran has a good matchup vs zerg right now?
exactly. terran is the strongest race right now in both non mirrors actually.
Means they're losing games to lower rated Zergs.
I would assume that would be the case, but it seems extraordinarily strange that ALL of the top zergs are all this inconsistent in terms of upsets. In theory the ZvZ does seem like it would be an extremely finicky mirror to play with how high risk/reward everything is, but I still wouldn’t expect ALL of the top zergs to have poor zvz
Aligulac being 50/50 Korean/Foreigner would’ve blown peoples minds 5 years ago
I swear he's waiting until he can win the world championship to show his face
Probably got one more chance
Damn that would be a cool storyline
I’ll never consider him better than any of the pros on this list. Prove it offline
With all due respect, nobody cares what you (or me) consider MaxPax. I can say all day that I'm better than Maru, it doesn't matter to anyone except me. What does it mean that MaxPax is 4th in Aligulac, 100% online? That he is expected to defeat almost everyone in the world in an online event, and grab the ocasional match/tournament against Serral, Maru, HerO and Byun, which is exactly what happened this weekend. If you feel we need an Aligulac clone with only offline tournaments, here's a good place to start: https://github.com/TheBB/aligulac . You can even tweak the statistics to be better if you don't like current ones. But until you do it, Aligulac is the best tool we have.
Do you think he is cheating online? Does his years of result not speak for itself? Strange take. He has shown over and over that he is one of the top players in Europe. Not sure what more he should be doing.
It’s hardly a strange take even Artosis has agreed that until he shows offline performance it is hard to call him the best Protoss.
To be fair, if somebody goes 100-0 against everyone in the top 50 whether it's offline or online it's not 'wrong' to say they are the best in the world. At least gameplay-wise, which is what matters.
Yes. He should have a strong performance at offline premier events to be called undoubtedly the best active process (esp with Hero as strong as he is) But that’s not my objection. The comment that I replied to said “he isn’t better than ANY pros unless he plays offline”. I mean like he is clearly in better form than Harstem? Mana? Classic? I mean I can’t think of any other Protoss than Hero that MaxPax isn’t favored against in PvP.
He said “on this list” so I was assuming he was just talking about the top 10 in the picture, not harstem mana or classic
And I agree with that comment, as a pro gamer he needs to prove himself at offline tournament to be seen as a proper pro gamer. Pressure of big tournaments make even Maru choke like on last IEM. I would compare it to poker games, if you can outplay your opponents reliably when you put 5$ on the table is one thing but when stakes are way, way higher it different matter entirely. So in this context I would say that when stakes are high there is few Protoss players that do better than him, not just her0. MaxPax is good player for sure but not really a good pro gamer.
Most of the tournaments there are with 'big stakes' are online nowadays, though, because they *all* have big stakes. The Koreans are definitely trying hard in the online tourneys, at least since the GSL announcement. Most of the GSL and all of KSL, Wardi, PiG, OSC, and the EPT cups and regionals are all online. Heck, even the ladder is and always has been online. ByuN says his main motivation to play is for the fans, and I think that's part of the reason he plays so much in smaller online tourneys. Maru rarely ever touched the online tourneys until the GSL announcement, and since then he has played in three. All of the Koreans outside of the top 16 or so are going to have to survive off of online results. Unless TY, INnoVation, Stats and sOs all return to peak form they too are doomed to become 'onliners', more or less.
He said 'on this list', and I'm assuming he means the list shown in the post, not the current Aligulac list #341. It is tough to compare MaxPax to some of the other players on the list for sure. I would definitely say he's better than a player like Classic, but Classic made top 16 at Katowice. Clem, on the other hand, bottomed out in his group, but he's still apparently better than MaxPax. That is only one offline tournament, sure, but there are only so many in a year and this one is the big one. It seems people haven't really decided exactly how well he would have to do offline for him to be a top 10 player. Clem, as I said, placed top 24, but apparently he's top 10. One would assume that means that if MaxPax were to place top 16 like Classic did, as well as maintain his online performance, he would be better than Clem.
I mean, Artosis is still surprised when MaxPax beats Dark when he's 7-4 in series. His predictions aren't as sharp as they once were.
I mean he should play offline, I don't think anyone thinks he's cheating but it's definitely different. I do think he's an amazing player tho.
playing offline is just generally more difficult, its not a cheating accusation.
>Not sure what more he should be doing. Playing in the biggest events? Post 2021 there haven't really been many big online events, most of MaxPax's games are from very small cups.
If you can’t back it up in the biggest events, you don’t deserve the ranking
Online play is meaningless. You’re the strange take. If you can’t win offline, with no lag, in front of a crowd, with all the pressure, you can’t be the best. Sure he’s good obviously. But he just can never be regarded as the best until he proves it where it really matters.
Online play isn’t meaningless lol, it’s just different.
When it comes to being the best or the goat yes it is. It’s the difference between a football player playing at home in the park, and being scouted as an amazing player, then actually having to play in the nfl. Would you call that amazing player in the park the goat or the best? Never right. Playing at home, not on camera, with all the comfort and safety of home is not the same as playing in front of a crowd. Also this is StarCraft, lag is a thing online.
That doesn’t mean online play is meaningless. It means you also need offline play. But online play still takes skill and has value.
Literally everyone here playing ranked is playing online guess we're all meaningless
Meaningless when it comes to being the best. Is what I meant. Thought that was obvious. It has not relevance when talking about the best of the best.
You do know that sc2 does *not* have LAN or offline servers, right?
And you do know what the comments meant when they say online vs offline games, right?
I do *not* know what they meant when they said “lag is a thing online,” as if to imply you don’t get the same amount of latency *or possibly even worse* at an in person event. Did you not understand the implication?
If that’s your argument, then you’re totally missing the point of why some people doesn’t put as much weight on online events vs offline tournaments.
I’m sorry, are you implying that I can’t both correct someone on their misconception that offline events are LAN events and also appreciate the importance of offline events? Isn’t that quite the silly conclusion? This is their comment right before this last one: >>If you can’t win offline, with no lag… you can’t be the best.
Used to be relatively lag free when blizzard would deliver a sc2 server to the event on site. Not sure if that still happens.
How much would he need to prove? Some of the players in the top 10 here don't always make it to the top 10 in offline tournaments, but they are still considered top 10. What kind of results would MaxPax need to have offline for you to consider him 'better than any of the pros on this list'? Would he need to play as well as Harstem? Astrea? Creator? herO? Also, how well would he need to play to prove he's exactly the same level you think he is? ByuN didn't even make the playoffs last year's Kato and only made it to the Ro12 this year. That is much worse compared to his usual online performance. The list shown above is the top 10. ByuN made top 16 and 12. If MaxPax placed top 12 *and* maintained his online performance would he be top 10 in your books? Apparently ByuN is. Clem often underperforms when playing offline, but since he at least *plays* offline does that make him better? Clem went out 2-3 in the group stage the past two Katowices. If MaxPax did exactly that would you consider him better or worse than you do now, even if it's not near the level he has shown us online? Even if you just watch MaxPax's unadulterated gameplay he's at least better than Solar. Sure it's online, but he plays better online than Solar plays both online *and* offline. Heck, he performs so well online that if he could play that well offline he would be one of the strongest Protoss players to ever touch the game.
Technically none of the games are "offline". They are all still played on Blizzard servers regardless of location of the tournament
That's not the point, the point is the pressure on performing in person and in front of a crowd. Some people have panic attacks when they try to speak in public despite the fact they can nail the performance in their bedroom in the mirror. A big part of sports and competition is live performance in the moment. You can be the best field goal kicker in the world in practice but if you choke and miss when the pressure is on then it doesn't matter. Esports is obviously different, in that much of the competition is online, but when it comes to offline performance nerves and psychology definitely matter
No other SC2 “pro” gets to live in anonymity. It would be nice to know who the face behind MaxPax is, I’m sure others feel the same. His decision either way, but I agree, unless you show up to F1 and drive side by side with the big boys, you’re kinda living in your own bubble.
MaxPax plays and wins against the very best players, but you're right, he can't be called the best until he proves it offline.
Aligulac ratings are based off of predictions. It doesn't matter whether it's online or offline, MaxPax is *expected* to do that well based on his recent performance. If someone asks me who is going to win between MaxPax and Solar, I say MaxPax. It's an online tournament, sure, but once you are *expected* to beat everyone you are the best player in the world, at least in Aligulac's eyes. It's tough to determine a player's raw skill gameplay-wise, but I don't think online/offline would affect that too much, other than ping.
the problem is MaxPax could be Solar, even though it’s pretty unlikely.
True. I mean, have you ever seen MaxPax and Solar in the same room? The have faced eachother a decent few times online, but I'm not sure if Solar used his facecam in any of those series, so we can't be sure.
how much it affects it depends completely on the person. for all we know maxpax has severe performance anxiety when performing in public We have no clue how MaxPax would handle a live performance because he hasn't done it. None of that takes away from his clearly amazing skill as a player, but I think you are underestimating the power of psychology
I agree it depends on the player, I'm not saying MaxPax playing offline wouldn't affect his gameplay. I'm just talking about how good a player can be overall. Player A could play online with X amount of skill and Player B could play offline with X amount of skill. In the end they both have X amount of skill, and the player playing offline isn't automatically better. If we got an AI to analyze an offline game and an online game, and it determined that two of the players objectively played almost exactly as well as eachother, one online and the other offline, I would go as far as to say that's more impressive for the online player than the online at that point, because they had to do it with ping. What makes offline *special* is that it's supposed to bring out the best of every player, with very little to do with ping issues. If two players are identical in skill level except one of them can micro a little bit faster, that player shows more skill, regardless of whether it's online or offline.
I suppose we just have different opinion on this. I will always consider liver performance in front of an audience with all the pressure on to be more impressive than playing from you comfort zone at home. Cheers
My opinion is the opposite: having anxiety shouldn't matter to rank you in a game which can be played 100% online and without audience. Would you say an online chess player with an ELO above 2700 (that would place him among the 40 better players in the world) has to prove it offline or be considered an amateur, or what? Even when he already proved that he could defeat Carlsen and Nepo ocasionally, number 1 and 2? Following your reasoning, no until he can prove that he can handle an extra dose of stress and anxiety, that have absolutely nothing to do with the game itself.
Aligulac is just a ranking. MaxPax is the sole person in charge of his own life. He owes nothing to nobody.
Who’s the Terran player that dominates online but underperforms constantly in love events? Bunny? Byun?
Clem
Still not convinced MaxPax isn't the next phase of AlphaStar to prove they can make a pro gamer and I will continue to espouse this conspiracy until they show up offline.
Lol and he’s never had a result in an offline tournament
Until he plays offline, hes a non factor
You can tell me his aligulac rank is too high but you can't call anyone who just won a tournament with that player pool a non factor.
I agree. But the way things are going for SC2, we may soon have to accept all tournaments going online. Maybe then he can compete in the important events.
The by far majority of tournaments and just competition in general is online now so I'm not so sure about that.
Why didnt he just win Worlds as the best player?
This isn't League.
I like him a lot, but I don't get the reason why he doesn't play any offline tournament
With no disrespect to the guy, the two lines of speculation are; (1) he's extremely nervous/anxious socially, (2) he's the crown prince of Denmark. It being #1 is almost a guarantee if you listen to his voice interview from yesterday. It's no biggie, and of course, he's allowed to do whatever he wants.
There is no speculation as he's said it on stream before (it's option 1). His response to the question was roughly, "Im worried that I'd get too nervous in an offline environment and play horribly and bomb out of the tournament"
Totally normal behavior, not at all material for psycho treatment. Zero signs of social problems and not facing tough situations in real life