That’s a pretty relative assessment. Complexity doesn’t equate to higher skill. Look at any sport. The most popular are the ones that are the easiest and simple to pick up. Golf has far greater complexity than say baseball, but the top players of each are equally skill relative to their own discipline.
Sure, but that can said of lots of things. It’s just weird to me that you’re diminishing the best players in wow simply because there… aren’t as many. Players are players. The best players in wow would likely translate to a host of other games.
jimmy did you miss the turtle mass delusion thread?
i think he’s saying theres no reason for the average player to not be extremely good at the game, since all it requires is knowledge.
wow has a higher skill floor than dota 2. I am talking about skillcap tho. Dota 2s skillcap is so much higher than wow and its not even close.
This really is not up for debate.
And yet the hard to swallow truth is that if wow arena was a career 20 million active player game then the discussion of who the best players are would be completely different
The reason is lack of knowledge/knowledge processing power.
legend was really free last season though im not wrong
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But why? Honestly curious. You can say it’s not up for debate, but I don’t think there needs to be one. Skill is relative. WoW has a MASSIVE degree of variance in ability between the best to the worst and you’re basically suggesting there is a ceiling in wow. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Not really. Again, you can apply this to any sport. Just because one sport attracts more athletes than the other doesn’t diminish the skill of the sport with fewer participants.
I agree that League is more complex than WoW holistically, but in truth that’s neither here nor there. WoW is sufficiently complex that I doubt it would make much difference going from one to the other. The actual answer to why the best League players are nearly guaranteed to be better than the best WoW players comes down to the fact that there are such an absurdly higher number of players.
To take it to an extreme to make the point clear, if everyone in the world played a game the best players in that hypothetical ranked ladder would literally be the best players alive for certain. Absolutely guaranteed because everyone is being evaluated by the system. The same holds true just in general: the larger the pool of individuals being evaluated the higher the likelihood is that those achieving the top ranks are also playing at the actual peak of performance possible by humans at that moment. The smaller the pool of players, the less likely it is. It’s just like that classic story of a big fish in a small pond heading to the big city, or some competition, and they realize there’s an entire echelon of people above them.
Some big fish from small ponds certainly do end up being a big fish in the big pond as well, and for that reason I imagine some of the top WoW players would also end up achieving Challenger, but some of the top WoW players are going to only be in the top of the rankings here by virtue of there not being enough people from that upper echelon to push them down to their true, penultimate position. Or, I should say it’s much more likely that that is the case, because the playerbase is smaller.
Stagnancy is another, lesser issue. The WoW playerbase is more outdated, having drawn fewer new players over the past 5 years. It’s not just that there’s more total players playing League right now, but there’s been even more players evaluated by its ranked system overall, over time and especially in recent years. Most vet League players have been ousted by newer ones, while older WoW players are much more likely to still be around and kicking. It’s more of an exception to see League players that have stayed at the top this entire time, and even in those rare cases like Faker the difference between them and the rest of the playing field is much smaller than it once was.
I get that for sure. My argument would be is that the distribution of ability in WoW is no different than any other game. While some of the ‘top’ players might migrate to one game for financial reasons or even fame, there is incentive for there to be a healthy distribution of the ‘top’ players across all large games. It’s why multiple leagues get created and each can support top players.
Given the massive pool of games as well, I’d easily wager as well that each game can still target niche abilities in those players. In case of Jimmy’s post, calling R1 players average doesn’t make sense to me.
But the best at one very specific thing. There are plenty of different skill sets out there that all warrant equal praise. Different games highlight different strengths and different skills and a whole plethora of combinations of those.
i dont get it either. i think he was trying to insult us by saying theyre average, so the actual average wow player isn’t very smart. at least thats how i read it.
i honestly expected more out of jimmy.
nobody cares what you expect
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Oh, in full agreement on that. The top WoW players may not all be in the 99.999th percentile in League like they are in WoW, but I would be shocked if any fell out of the mid-high 99th percentile in the hypothetical scenario where they put in the time to actually learn the game.
In my personal experience I was at the 98th percentile in League and that has been about my performance in most games. 97th-99th percentile once I’ve put in the time. This has been true for me in two games before League and another two after. The skill distribution appears to be similar overall in all the games I’ve played.
The point of my other post was literally just trying to answer your question of why the best-of-the-best League players are likely better than the best-of-the-best WoW players when taken as a group. The confidence coefficient of the former is simply higher is the answer, but that doesn’t mean any members of the latter group are average. It just means that they’d be, like, high Diamond or Master players instead of Challenger.
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Maybe. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume they were trying to make a point. If the top players in wow are just… average gamers, I’m not really sure what to say. If we had to break it down, would be pretty easy to disprove anyways.
That’s pretty much where I land in about every game. In college, I was never one of the best counter strike players, but I was near the top. I played with a lot of guys who were pros, but I still was pretty far off from being at their level. That’s where I have landed in a lot of games. If you took the average arena player, they are probably in the top 4-5% of players relative to PvP. Then take the top 5% of arena players and now you’re talking the top .1-1% of players in WoW in PvP. If you look at Wow as a whole, it’s still a massive amount of players.
The skill required to be the very best requires a ton of dedication regardless. I don’t think the top players in wow lack that by any means.
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knowing why is key to everybodys comment here.
Average players expecting above average results is the problem
There are more potential aspects of the game that have their own micro skill ceilings in themselves. Just the laning stage in dota 2 is a game within a game that has its own unique skillsets that require getting good at.
are you saying you are an average wow player?
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100% this. I haven’t been impressed by the top players in this game compared to those in league, ow, and hots. I’m sure some of the top pros would still be able to be pros, but yeah a lot would just disappear.
How is golf more complex than baseball. No way!
I don’t golf, but from a variable standpoint, golf has far more non-static things to take into account.
Just from an environmental standpoint, you have to take into account wind speed, humidity, air density, air temperature, etc. Then turf type, grade, turf speed, etc. Then all the clubs, courses, bla bla bla. From a player stand point, way more to take into account from a complexity standpoint.
The point I was making though is that even though there is greater complexity, it doesn’t mean that the top golfer from an athletic vantage point is overall a better athlete then the top baseball players. So trying to compare one video to the next doesn’t quite make sense, but I’d easily wager that the best players in just about any athletic discipline would be at the top in a number of different sports.
Kinda like Bo Jackson or even Michael Jordan picking up baseball.
Sure. It’s a unique experience. No issue there. I just think the breadth of ability in wow from top to bottom is no different then most games. Sure, a larger pool would potentially bring in more talent, but I don’t think that the cap at the very top would change much.
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Golf is not more complex than baseball you just hit a ball from where you hit it last into the hole.
Baseball you get pitched a bunch of different pitches and hit the ball. If you hit it pass a certain place you get a run if not you have to run to the first base than second third and home plate to get a run etc…
Like I can’t even explain baseball there is so much. Seems like there is bias here with baseball and golf despite you saying you don’t play it. Kind of like WoW and league tbh. Top league pros are insanely good. A lot of top WoW players quit WoW and played league, I.e. nientonsoh and Aphromoo were both r1s
I played with nien in HoTS and that man was insane let me tell you and he phased out of league after a season or two in lcs. I do agree with you though just bc someone is pro in one doesn’t mean they will be in the other, but the difference between jordans switch is that they are both still using the same equipment skills. A keyboard and a mouse. A lot of pros switch games and make it in other games. For example Psalm from HoTS and Dota2 switched to fortnite and made like 3mil from a tournie.
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