A typical response from a "new-school" player who judges a current players performance on how they play a game that they probably really stopped giving a fuck about in terms of acquiring M2SBR probably 5 years before the new-school player even got to the same level of play raziel (or insert lots of other old-schoolers name here) had achieved back in like 2003 or something.
Raziel was a top level player before 2k1 along with most the other people I refer to in these posts. Just because he probably hasnt given even half a fuck since say 2002 or so hardly makes him any less of a successful player.
He was a successful and top level player back when more than 100 people used to play the game.
Players who are suddenly considered good or something 9 years after myth2 had anything resembling a large active community are the least qualified to judge an old-school players level of success on this game.
Raziel probably has more myth2 tournament success in the head of his cock (when it's flaccid even) than you have managed to acquire in your entire myth2 "career".
and quite honestly because myth2 has maybe 50? decent active players and no more coming in that means he has more success at myth than you can ever achieve no matter what.
- Flatline in a response to some one liner by Chengis.
Ever so often the debate about which era had the best players pops up. It happens at least once year, usually during the MWC season. Sometimes it can occur more than once during a winter time tournament, but most of the times it's just MWC that is graced by this discussion. This year the debate happened in my M'fame thread, which was rather weird since it didn't really have anything to do with that topic and was meant to be a light hearted thread about myth fame. Last year it was deliberately started by Homer with the original thread title "Were people really better 10 years ago?" etc, you get my point. The argument always pops up every year.
The curious thing about it is that the same people have actually been arguing about the same thing for years on end now. The argument flow chart is pretty much always the same as well. The only variation comes from few individuals, who usually are the new up and coming stars or those that feel that their myth stardom happened at a fairly late stage of myth history.
Phase 1) Someone makes a claim in the forum that they are better than someone else at this game.
Phase 2) This person or someone else in his stead takes the bait and starts disputing what the first posters said.
Phase 3) A 3rd party individual jumps in to state his opinion on this matter, usually it's against what the first poster said.
Phase 4) A rebuttal from the first poster, in which he makes more claims and says that the previous two posters are wrong.
Phase 5) More people get sucked into the argument.
Phase 6) The "people used to better" statement pops in full force.
Phase 7) Someone jumps into point out how pathetic this argument supposedly is and people care too much.
Phase 8) Someone, usually a new up and comer says that people (by which they mostly mean themselves) are better now than what people used to be at this game.
Phase 9) This gets disputed by those that claim the opposite etc - . it goes on from here.
The phase 1 is just an example, it can be different like last year was the case with Homer's thread where he just posed the question and then someone jumped in to make a claim about something etc. The argument can jump from phase1 to 6, but most of the time this argument pops up semi-unintentionally and then the flow chart goes like described above.
GKG accused me of me only writing articles about "Myth cool", which is not really true. My first two articles from 2004 and 2005 could be described as rather similar in nature, but that's only two out of the 10 articles and one review I've written. I don't really see what nerd rage scales or writing about heroes and villains has got to do with myth cool. Anyway, the aim for this article is to show you through case examples and (and mostly speculative) reasoning that people were in fact not better 10 years ago. They were not better 9,8 or 7 years ago either. I am trying to show you here that people who makes claims like this have their own, selfish motives for doing so. On top of that there's also some heavy nostalgia going on in their minds, although Myth nostalgia is a very heavy and important influence for all of us, but that's a topic for another article.
I usually try to stay out of the argument when it pops up. I have sometimes made some Bombay flicks regarding it and I did write a review out of the Mwc 2000 finals with a similar goal in mind as this article has. That review appears to have been cited quite frequently when this argument happened in the previous winter time tournament. However, I feel I only scratched the surface with that review, so I'm making a more in depth analysis about it now.
Of course there is also the issue about the writer's bias. People who partake in this argument accuse each of other having heavy bias for arguing what they are arguing, and no doubt these accusations have their merits. I my self have played this game since 1999. My most active mything period was from 2001 to 2004. After 2004 I have mostly only showed up to play during Mwc time. If I was to have a bias in this matter, it would be to argue that 2004-2007 would be the pinnacle of myth gaming skill wise, since that was the time my team either won or was in the finals of every tournament held. I'm not going to argue that though, as I know that would be silly and not really true as I'm 100% sure that me and the people I teamed with then are better players now than they were 6 years ago.
The two sides
Whenever the skill argument comes up, there is a clear two way division between players who participate in. I am going to name these groups with a (hopefully) neutral names. I am going to call them "Loyalists" and "Revisionists". The "not so very neutral" names for these groups would be "regressionists" and "progressionists". Below are the explanations to what I mean with these groups:
Loyalists.
Examples: Myrkridon, Flatline, Tirri, Rabican, Cave, Zaramis, Nineball - (Tirri would like to add that he doesn't actually think that people were better 10 years ago. This is what he said a few days ago)
All of these people I have seen expressing opinions that people used to be better at this game than what they are now. Sometimes they even claim that people these days just suck. Many of those names you also see arguing for this point year after year. They do have individual stance changes however, like for example Tirri and Nineball usually only have in common that they think people used to be better, but the people who they mean by this are different. Nine for example was the last remaining Civil loyalist, while Tirri usually highlights how he himself used to be much better than what he is now.
Revisionist
Modern examples: Adrenaline, GKG, Cu.
Older examples: Anyone from team BME basically, since they were the new powerhouse team in the post bungie.net Myth world.
Revisionists are the people who argue the opposite to what the loyalists say. They tend to highlight that the current state of myth skill is the highest point achieved so far. Revisionists also have their individual differences to what they say, quite often they too tend to bring up their own greatness to the table (which ultimately of course is their motive for arguing in the first place usually). I guess the main problem with this group is that these people don't really get along with themselves in the same way the loyalists do. The loyalist side always seems to have a rather strong back2back thing going on when the argument pops up, while the revisionists tend to argue among themselves as well.
I myself belong to neither group, but I find myself agreeing mostly with the revisionists, as this article should show you. That doesn't mean I think that Adrenaline or Gkg are the best players of all time though.
There is some middle ground between these groups however, but most of the time people tend to agree with one or the other. Limp for example seems to place somewhere in the middle these days, after being a rather stern loyalist back in the days.
"Skill development"
Today, there are many things that are required from you in order for you to be considered as being "good" at Myth. You need solid unit control and fast clicking skills which form your "BC power". This Bc power is actually one of the biggest slow and gradual developments we've had over the years. The changes and improvements to BC power requirements have been so extremely subtle that you probably haven't even realised the changes that have occurred over the years unless you watch yourself from older films few years back. The improvements are subtle and small and almost unnoticeable, like how do you block pus from incoming ghols with mauls and a mortar dwarf while playing proving grounds, or how do you fight with soulless against warlocks etc. Numerous small things that don't happen at once. There is of course also the "gaming intelligence", which is a much rarer thing to have. It basically contains the understanding on how to react and adapt to situations that happen in the game, instead of just tunnel visioning on something. Here's an incomprehensive list of "inventions" that happened over the years.
1998-1999
Activity and care was sky high, but skilful players were not. Even the people were hailed as being leet would be considered as total newbies that got the game yesterday if they were playing today with the 1999 mindset. You were basically considered "good" if you realised that dwarfs and archers gain hill advantage. Hardly anyone had edited formations, hardly anyone used pus and those who did didn't do it very efficiently. Actually they just fucking sucked with pus just like they did with every other unit type. Strategies didn't really exist and even in the mwc99 finals people were basically just running around like headless chickens.
2000
Clear improvements to 1999, that's for sure. Still, the top players from this era would be sub par worse than Father Xmas level players today. I went this through in my review about the mwc2k finals. People hardly ever used pus, although these teams did. They gave one guy 8 pus and even if they didn't do that, they completely sucked ass with it. They also picked up wrong pus pieces, but that's not really relevant. Mistakes and accidents happen. Hardly anyone had edited formations or tried spreading much while rushing. Archer dodging was done by going back and forth with fairly tight formations instead of sideways with wide formations. The strategies and "adaptations to situations" used would be completely laughable these days, like having 25% of units defending the flag. The old ctf scoring just doesn't explain the stupidity of that. The all around BC'ing that went was just incredibly sloppy and looked like it was IX vs TFS today.
Clearly, boasting about victories during this time period when the skill requirements to be good were what they were is completely and utterly meaningless, just like this:
2001
In 2001 there the strategies were almost fully developed to what they have been ever since. At a glance when you look at the unit distributions and player placements in the games, you could first think that the films are from today. People spread around the map with reasonable set of units mostly etc. There was however, still oddities like having one guy have a 27 warrior rush in a DE4 game (and this was a 5 trow team), fetchwalls actually working and stuff like that. Hidden rushes still worked like a charm in desert and people (and by "people" I mean players that would be considered as 4+ balls that time) played maps like kg and pg like morons, like trading for many warriors, hardly making any use of herons and pus bombs having almost 100% success rate.
This actually brings up the first "major" difference in gaming from 2001 onwards. People didn't even use the heron guard heroes healing trick, aka make your herons heal themselves during the fight if they are fighting other herons and it's applications. This didn't really start happening until 2003. I specially remember this as not even Tirri or Chohan used it, so I managed to screw up both a few times doing it in Kg. I even remember Tirri's exact words, because I had the film from it when he first saw it "Ooh luulin etta&ü hero kuolee joke tapauksessa jos kolme heroa hakkaa sit&ü". "Ooh I thought a hgh dies anyway (if healing) when 3 hgh's attack it."
While when it comes to strategies, the Mwc2001 one's aren't that different, they still weren't on the same level as they are today when it comes to adapting to situations and whatnot. The bc skills of people were also very low compared today and all of the people from the 01 finals would get reamed by the 4+ ballers of today.
The case points
I have selected three individuals for closer study. These individuals are Flatline, Myrkridon and Tirri. Why did I choose these three? They are all still active (or appear during tournaments anyway), have been considered as being good at this game for a long long time and are all prominent loyalists. They all make the claim that they used to better. Flatline in particular has his infamous "Prime" thesis, which will have it's own closer inspection in another part of this article. I will be doing a mini review of how they used to play in the year 2000 and 2001. Observing how they play now is redundant, as you can witness it yourself, as can the individuals themselves. I selected the years 2000 (if I find films) and 2001 because these are the years that tend to pop up in the loyalist jargon most of the time as being their "best" myth time skillwise. Both are fallacious statements however, but the reasons why that is so and why these people keep claiming this I will be going through in another part of this article.
Flatline 2000
MWC 2K = Big participation and lots of players/teams that are actually quite good at the game. 2K also had lots of high quality ranked players making the jump from ranked games to Tournament Style games and you could tell. The ranked players making the jump individually had the skills to compete at the top level in tourney play but got beatdown by teams that actually had the concept of TEAMPLAY. Ginslingers were the ultimate example of what I'm talking about here. There was a reason they were in the final vs SF/Civil even if looking at their roster you may think they were a team of nobodies. None of their players were what you'd typically think of as a power player but they were perhaps the best team in the tourney at playing as a team (they beat MOR who at the time were regarded as excellent as a TEAM). I practiced a lot vs gin in practice games and as a singular player i was a better twitcher and powerplayer than any single person on that team but their teamplay was miles ahead and thats why they made the final). - Flatline
Mwc2k. Flatline is playing for an Australian team named 9coh. This game is from a QR match of 9coh vs some team abbreviated DA.
The game is Drowned empire Lmoth. Flatline is captaining 9coh and trades for a pusles gholpack.
The other team trades for one wightful of pus and also a gholpack. Muchos duffs as well, just like flat. This is not that unusual these days though, you could get away with this in a tournament game as well. You do need more pus usually however, but 10 years ago pus was not that commonly used. However, what you would not get away with these days is this:
One guy has all 16 soulles. The other team also had one guy using 16 soulles. Is that smart, Flatline? Flat himself has two stygians and two dwarfs, a nice compatct striking force in Drowned empire lmoth. Most people would recommend a couple of more stygians these days though, as blocking pus is gonna be difficult with just two stygs.
Both teams, Flatline included reaches the middle, 9coh gains the advantage on it. Flatline is soon facing the dilemma of being pussed, but before that Azazoth of 9coh walked his melee straight towards the enemy dwarfs and makes 9coh go down in percentages quite badly.
Anyway, the pus is going towards Flat's two stygs and two duffs, while Pagan god is showing us that professionals don't need edited formations.
Much to my Flatline's amazement, the pus was actually two satchels instead of pus, which was only to come later. Flatline did actually spread the two duffs when he saw the ghols coming in. The guy with the 16 soulles decided that he's too cool to shoot the incoming ghols though.
Flatline lost one duff to two satchels and a pus, they lost two ghols while doing it.
However, one ghol still remains, but since Flat's duff is surrounded by melee and the soulless are right next to him, he should be ok. Well, no.
That one ghol killed the full health duff through the soulless and melee. This ends Flatline's involvement in this game. However, the mighty Henry is still going strong and buggering the mount soulless with his two stygians, while 9coh is down rather bad.
DA decides to rush 9coh, while the remaining 9coh duffs keep shooting at them and their own duffs also keep shooting at the DA melee group, so DA blows their advantage completely. After the rush, Henry points out that he "killed all there souls".
After this point DA just runs with their remaining units and the camps out the remaining 6 minutes.
Well ok, sure. This was just one game. Everyone has bad games, but is giving 16 soulles to one guy and not trading for pus in Drowned empire smart, Flat? Is that what you would do now in a tournament game?
Well ok, maybe I'm being unfair here. It's just a QR game, no one tries in those, right? Well, lets a look at a bottom bracket double elimination game, where everything is at stake. 9coh vs Munki. Shuffle of this mortal coil dark.
Flatline is captaining again and trades for only two fetch (wut?). Although the other team only trades for two fetch as well.
This would make sense if you are rushing, but neither team is doing that. Flatline's confidence in in this "Death" person is strong again, as he has 30% of the units in the form of having all myrks, while as both teams have people with only 4-6%. Henry has two warlocks while one guy has all myrks. Is this smart, Flat? Would you do this in a tournament game now where elimination is imminent? In the other team, there's a guy who has nothing but 10 mauls. Can you imagine name changers doing splits like these when there's elimination incoming?
Stuff starts to happen when Death with his full Myrk pack crosses mid and meets up with poor fullmunki with this full maul pack. Fullmunki surprisingly gets killed.
No worries though, munkies. As Death, who doesn't use edited formations by the way, cos he has enough microing skills to get away with normal formations, starts running away and gets his myrks blown up by a warlock from the wall.
Omg indeed. Blocking lock shots with one melee is for sissies. But hey, this was supposed to be about Flatline, not Death. Flatline is south with his archers and 4 zerks, coupled with Henry's two locks. No fetch needed south, as neither team really traded for any. Munkies did send one south though.
That "Gj rm" came after Real munki sent his lone fetch to face Henry's lone warlock and he zapped the lock ball in a fetch vs warlock 1vs1 encounter. Flatline and Henry of course "rape" this south as Munkies make no effort to run, even though their south is muuuuch smaller and they go not chance in hell to win it.
Now 9coh has a fair lead and continues to swoop up the remaining munkie forces. Flatline gives his archers to Henry a moment later and Henry gets the north flag, which was defended by two mauls. Later in the game Henry also gets served by that pesky wall warlock.
9coh wins the game, but loses the match eventually and gets eliminated. Shame. Anyway, Flat. In these games you don't trade for pus, you give one guy 16 soulles or all myrks, make totally uneven unit splits and show that you hate fetch for some reason. Seriously, Flat? This is your prime? Is this the Flatline you'd want to have GKG built a time machine for so he could play against you? The body count skills displayed in these games would barely even qualify as borderline three ballers these days, as most people don't even seem to have edited formations or know how to block lock shots with melee. In general when you look at these games, they're just - Jesus Christ.
Drizzt 2000
Now lets move on to Tirri. Here is a match from DE1 Mwc2k, Poop vs Fhota. Poop lost this game was sent to bottom bracket. You could of course say that it's just DE1 and not about elimination yet, but lets see. Clash FR.
The young super star Tirri captains for Poop and wishes the other team good luck.
However, if this trade was used today the other team wouldn't really need luck because um - . Well see for yourself.
Mortar dwarves in Clash? Preposterous.
Drizzt leaves the other upper side flag open, while putting a massive 50% juggernaut at flag 3. Middle is an exciting battle with the combined amount of two morts on the hill. Tirri also feels like he should only keep 3% himself, while Fhota feels like having one guy have 47% in the form of trows and all zerks is the way to go. Seriously, is this what your Clash flag rally strat would be now, Tirri?
Tirri however notices the error of not having a second flag defence and sends Shaggy to go to that flag at the 8 minute mark. It's of course too late at that point. Doesn't really matter though, as Poop's middle gets heroic and fights the larder Fhota middle for no apparent reason.
So the rest of the game was a blow out with the guy who had 47% of the units getting 414 damage in the game. Great game.
But sure, in the interest of fairness lets look at another game. Bad games happen and Drizzt only had 3% and just displayed careless captaining in this game and the lack of knowledge about what a good unit trade for Clash fr would be.There was also a second Clash FR played right after the first one, which Poop won. Tirri used the exact same strat with one mortar dwarf. This time he himself took a trow though, and got it trapped by melee bunch near the end.
Anyway, the last deciding game was a Desert Lmoth with a 10 minute time limit. Usually this turns out to be a 3 prong, but not always not even today. Tirri's trade would seem fairly normal with max archers and mix of all units, but only 3 wights of pus. However, one guy has 14 archers. Yes, 14 archers. Is this smart, Tirri? Tirri also went for the handicap style captaining and took only 3% himself.
As you can see, Tirri went for a two way strat, which is not that uncommon though. He did however split the units so that one dude has all the archers and the other has only melee and dwarfs. Seriously? Nobody splits it like that anymore. As the minimap shows you, Fhota went for all mid strat with dedicated pussers (lol) and one guy having all warriors. Yes, that's our beloved Fire there with 27 warriors. Fhota also has shitload of thralls, so maybe it's a thrall wall? Nope.
As you can see, Fire just takes his 27 warriors along side with the dedicated pussers across the river and slutrushes middle in a nice wedge formation that should be fairly easy to blow up since he's not spreading his warriors much. Poopers mostly walk their duffs towards the pus however so that doesn't happen. The thralls just go swim in the river and only get up after Fire's warriors are already killing stuff, so basically they did absolutely nothing. Or well that's not true, Heineken did manage to lose his duffs to thralls when it already over.
Tirri had these things to say after the loss was evident.
Ah, Desert. That exotic map that requires a lot of practise, cos no one ever plays it. Although in the interest of fairness, Poop was an FFA clan so maybe the others in the team just did really need the practise. Not really Tirri's fault in that sense.
Yep. These are the types of wisdoms you could expect from a modern day 5 baller.
Recap: Tirri displayed in these games that captaining games this way surely would completely fail these days. Captain who does completely moronic unit splits coupled with equally moronic unit trades is something you would never see from a 5 baller in a serious situation anymore. There is seriously no way you, Tirri, can claim that you were a better player in this game in these films than what you are now.
At this point you could of course point out that Tirri was mostly known for his FFA prowess these days and team games weren't really his forte, but isn't that just basically admitting that Tirri wasn't as good then as he is now? Because nowadays he surely is a great team player as well. He's good at all aspects of this game now and has been for years. Just most certainly not 10 years ago compared to today's standards.
Myrkridon 2000
"Go look for them yourself. MWC2001 finals, lots of films from 2001 and 2000 and even 1999 on dark maps all have better playing than today. These days name changers is considered the #1 team, and they lost to the inactive tcox team in the top bracket finals of mwc09. If you guys were really as hot shit as you say, that wouldn't have happened." – Myrkridon
"oh jesus" - Cu
Myrk played for team Gtm, like he did a few times after Mwc2k. Now here's a classic match from Mwc2k, Gtm vs Civil. The examples for Flat and Tirri were from –not-so-very-powerhouse-tean'ish teams, but surely these two behemoths would show us some quality mything? We have Two powerhouse teams engaging in an excitingly epic battle of the titans. The game is Lichen territories with legendary difficulty, meaning there will be reinforcements.
Lichen is known as one of the most rushyest light maps out there, specially when the game is territories and you don't need to protect so many places. This memo seems to have not arrived to Street fighter's or Gtm's tables however, as both teams go for normal unit pack splits.
The mighty Myrkridon is clearly the heavy hitter there with his 21%, while the even mightier Kap, who is one of the best players EVER, DUDES, is holding 28% while captaining while poor Zep has 1%. Our orange hero here is heading south, where Myrkridon's feisty reputation must have preceded him, as those SF pussies seem to just run away from him when they see him.
Meanwhile in north, one of the most bestest players of all time is losing the general, a duff and all his archers to ghols. SF uses 4 pus to freeze one general. Although, granted, they were planning on a satchel pus attack, but the SF ghol users were too skilled to remember which ghols had pus and which had satchels, so the satchels always came after the pus. The ghols then charge in for the kill while Kap's duff idly watches by as the General is getting molested.
Anyway, back to Myrk. SF pussies are still running away from Myrk as he struts around the southern flags. Now he finally meets up with ZAK in a heated archer battle, that goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but never sideways.
The archer dancing is crudely interrupted by Chun li with his pus flank, which Myrk didn't notice.
BAM. That's one duff and one archer gone. After this there's some heated backing and going forward archer battle between ZAK and Myrk again, until Myrk is faced with the dilemma of a menacing thrall pack.
The thrall pack pushes onwards with the aid of some warriors and a pus ghol that dudded.
Myrk decides to try to hinder the unstoppable thrall packs movement with fire arrows. Those clumped archers down there surely would have been a pointless target for that.
In the end, however, after Myrk kept shooting at the thralls, ZAK's warriors eventually catch up with Myrk and Myrk goes down. Game over.
I must say though, even if this playing is completely terrible by today's standards, out of the three individuals I'm inspecting here, Myrk surely has been playing the best. So if there was a contest about who was the best in the year 2000, Myrk, Tirri or Flat, my vote would go to Myrk. Sill, Myrk is not playing anywhere near good enough as he does today. Not even in the same league.
Anyhoo, here's another game for Myrk as well. Caer dark flag rally from the same match. Unit splits are fairly normal, but Kap the almighty only trades for 12 souls. Is Gtm rushing? Hahah, no. So the unit trade is basically handicapping the team by taking units that will leave the team undermanned everywhere. These are the kind of trades you'd expect to see from Father Xmas today.
Myrk is once again trusted with the heavy hitting role.
Both teams go for a completely brainless even split on all flanks approach on this map, as evidenced in the mini-map. Even the massive south water flank has small melee groups coupled with two fetch and few souls. Seriously?
Myrk is once again facing his arch nemesis, ZAK. As you can see, Myrk is professional enough not to need edited formations either. Then, exciting shit starts to happen middle when SF starts pushing.
WATAH!!! What's going to happen?! Myrk wins! Hurray. Zak lost all his fetch at once while Myrk lost two and a bunch of melee.
After this, nothing all too exciting happens. SF got pooned on every flank, while Chun LI from SF kept bouncing between south and middle on their side, between Myrk and the south GTM guy. Chun Li is kind enough to make mini-rushes towards Myrk so he gets to zap Chun's herons many times, while Chun makes sure that he heals them so that Myrk's fetch are still in range to rezap them. This leads to Myrk having some handsome damage in the end.
This game further assured me that Myrk was the best out of the three dudes 10 years ago. Still, the hardest par to show from reviews like this are the body count skills. Watch the films yourself, people were just incredibly inept in the BC arts 10 years ago, when you compare it to today.
So recap, all three players played in teams that used strategies that would be labelled as completely newbish today if they were used in a serious tournament match. Flat and Tirri displayed that they made completely lunatic unit splits when they were captaining along side with undeveloped strategies as a whole. All three had ridiculously low body count skills 10 years ago.
But hey, I am barking the wrong tree here, aren't I? 2001 was the magical year myth skills peaked or something. People just tend to say "I was at my prime 10 years ago", when they really mean "I was at my best 9 years ago", right? Right. Well if this is the case, then what exactly is the point of bragging about tournament success before that year? If the myth skills hadn't developed before that year, then surely the people from 2000 would get smashed by people from the year 2001? That means that tournament winners from that year were automatically worse than the people from 2001.
But was 2001 really that magical compared to the year 2000? Or better yet, were people really somehow, against all logic, better at this game in the wonderful year of 2001 instead today or some other later time period? Is it really possible that people, who've played this game for only 2-3 years were somehow better than what the same people are after playing the game for 12 years? Well, lets see!
Flatline/Myrk 2001
MWC2K1 = A bit less participation than 2K but the overall skill level of all players + the level of participation/care for the tournament = the highpoint of myth tournaments. The uber rankers with real skills making the jump from ranked hooring to tourney play now actually had the teamplay skills to compete at the top level in a tourney and thats why you saw perhaps the best (arguably) specifically-made-for-a-tourney-rabble-team ever dominate their way to the finals for a 2nd showdown with the best (arguably) order-based-tourney-team and a finals match that was as close as any other.
On the surface you could say 2k1 was a two-horse race between TAF and NP and that most teams sucked (as you infer with regards to cacra). - Flatline
I'm doing Flatline and Myrk at the same time as they were on the same team that year. We shall go through a game or two from the Mwc2001 finals. Calm before the storm Ctf is the first one.
Both teams, 12inch and Np take rather standard trades what you might expect people to trade for today, except that basically always this map is totally rushy these days when it's played with top teams. That didn't happen in this game.
Myrkridon captains for Team Angry Face and decides to do a rather unique split with the units. Unit trades themselves are normal if you're not rushing. Both teams decide that using dedicated pussers is a good idea. However, in addition to dedicated pussers, Myrk decides that having a dedicated thraller is also a good idea. In Myrk's mind it's also a good idea for the captain to take the heavy hitting clutch units, aka the three herons and a ghol pack to himself, as opposed to poor Ramirez who is stuck with the thrallin' duty.
Although Ram did also have three ghols too, so I guess he was a dedicated thrallin' pusser. Another note, don't you just love the matching tags on everyone? Why don't we have that anymore?
Anyway, nothing happens for ages as there's mostly just mad staring contests going on. If one of the teams was capped by Ska these days the other team would probably be down by 30% after 4 minutes. Flatline is staring at Migraine from a 3 mile distance in the south with his unedited long line formation.
Then nothing happens for ages until Flat decides to push a little bit, which ends up with him getting pussed by Crème and then eventually rushed by Migraine, after Mig lost all his archers to Henry's pus.
While this happens, Rattle snake is staring into nothingness at middle with his 20% while south is being rushed.
And poor Ramirez is still on thrall duty.
After Flat was rushed, Angry face just retreated to flag and eventually got killed in a slow archer/duff fight. It came down to an epic flag contest race though which ended up with Rp's herons healing all Ram's dedicated thralls, after Myrk lost his herons without trying them heal himself.
Anyway, while it is fairly obvious that both teams would just get reamed by the finalist teams today in both game IQ and more so in body count skills, gaming surely took a big leap forward from the previous year. People are using edited formations and know how to use pus somewhat well and take normal unit trades. The body count skills are just somehow slow and sloppy compared to today, but that's kind of difficult to show from screenshots in a review. Watch the films yourself.
GAME TWO
Cracks in the cloudspine flag rally. I chose this game mainly because I could add a funny screenshot to it. It was a tough choise between the second Great divide game and the flag rally on fosgarach ruillick. Anyway, on to the match!
Np goes for a semi-standard strategy with the silly "take normal units but don't try to get the middle hill" strategy, which pretty much always leads to a loss. Seriously, I've never seen that work. Rab decides that getting pus in a light map is for sissies as well and decides to not take any. Luckily for Np, Myrk decides to trade for 0 archers and create a Duff fortress in the 12inch base.
Myrk himself takes a ghol pack, which leads to a disaster later.
Myrk does prove that he is clearly the super unit distributor compared to Rabican. This is certainly something he has actually gotten worse at. In Tws2 he was captaining us against Name changers and didn't manage to give Karma units until 3 minutes in the game. Even then it was something like 3% or something.
12inch takes the mid hill with their fairly light melee force middle, since Np never even tries to get it. They start to rush the small Np middle and the heavy Np sides are naturally unable to help.
Things look bad for Np at first as 12inch pusses two duffs, but Myrk's pus got shot and it flung to the 12inch melee force. After that Myrk suicides his entire 9 ghol pack against one duff, as Migraine's stygians kill the ghols.
Thor had this to say:
Anyway, this is why the duff fortress will pretty always fail as well:
In this case, neither 12inch upper side flag even put their duffs up on the hill. Even if they had done so, one duff/some melee defense has no chance in hell of ever actually holding the upper flag vs archer and pus backed attack force from both sides. This strat would require your team to capture 6 flags first, which is also unlikely when such high percentage of units are kept at home. The home fortress is also penetrable, since Myrk didn't put any archers on the fortress walls.
Eventually Np wins, even despite their strategy being pretty bad too! However, you could still see either one of these strategies today. They would just contain some archers for the 12inch side and pus for the Np side. Small variations, but they make a big difference.
Tirri 2001
As an excuse for Tirri I must point out that he still played with a 3 trow team then, so some of his actions are probably credited to that. Anyway, here's a game of Poop versus a 5 trow team Cirque do soulblighter.
Both teams do normal unit trades with fairly normal strategies, cept Cirque goes for a two prong and Tirri tries to make a hidden rush in desert. However, this is somewhat strange.
Tirri's 22 warriors and ghols versus Jeff's 27 warriors. Seriously? A 5 trow teams gives one guy 27 warriors, without trying to be ironic? Both Jeff and Tirri decided that leaving some of the warriors out of the fight is the thing to do, Now lets see how this pans out.
Pretty good for Tirri, since Jeff lags out and Mobitz took small pus. Poop wins! Giving people rush units like that certainly is something you wouldn't see today, certainly not from 5 trow teams unless they're out to make a point.
GAME TWO
Barb valley dark Lmoth. Both teams trade for normal units, but -
Yep, that's a fetch wall. 5 trow team, one guy with 8 fetch and 10 zerks.
Tirri himself took two trows as a captain, while the 5 trow team captain decided to take 0 units himself and leave his team handicapped in a bottom bracket match where they are down by 1 game. Tirri decides to split his two trows in two places, with the results that he first gets one of them to less than half health by doing this:
And then sending the trow further south and do this:
In the meantime the fetch wall somehow manages to rape everything in sight, since the Poop south sends nothing north to help it out. Cirque wins by a landslide.
Seriously, Fetch walls are absolutely terrible in acts of cruelty and are hilariously easy to beat.
Analysis from 2000/2001
First of all, I'd like to say that I did use many reviewer tricks while reviewing these games. I pointed out general mistakes, which can be done from any game from any time period. Everyone gets wighted sometimes or pusses himself. People also tend to play passive in the Mwc finals even today, simply because it is the smart thing to do usually. You can't really expect to overpower other good players so easily. I did this to make the reviews a bit more fun to read. However, there was also another reason why I included that stuff. It was to show you that you made a lot of general mistakes even back then. You hear loyalists blaming their mistakes today to a lack of care or whatever, but you made the same mistakes in the same volume back in the days as well. You weren't any better in that sense 10 years ago either.
The main theme I'd like everyone to focus on while reading the reviews though, is to focus on things that certainly have changed with time. The obvious changes are in the strategies. There is a giant leap from 2000 to 2001 when it comes to improved strategies. Same goes to body count skills. Based on that you can clearly say that the 2001 finalist teams would wipe the floor with the Mwc2k finalist teams. You can also say that the Mwc2003 finalist teams would wipe the floor with the 2k1 finalist teams.
As far as strats go, I'd say that they were about 85% done by the year 2001. The biggest differences are in the way units are distributed. While Rabican can argue that using dedicated pussers would be good even today and that it's peoples egos that just get in the way, or that it was smart because Np had players like Crème on board. There is a reason why using those isn't very smart though. If you use dedicated pussers, you no doubt end up with 2-3 people having shitloads of units, which are going to be a pain to control when you are being pressured from several directions with pus and other units at the same. It's much easier if those units are spread between two players.
A good case of using dedicated pussers backfiring is the Fosgarach game in the 2001 finals. Dante had a mixed group of warriors, archers and duffs. 27% when put together. He was trying to push middle, which failed and wasn't able to compete against a two player group pressuring him from two sides. He got killed and the pushing failed. This wasn't because Dante wasn't able to control that kind of a group versus several players, it's just that no one can really do that. It could have been Tirri but he would have ended up with the same problem.
In 2001, people split trow units like they do now, same with most other dark maps. Stuff like fetch walls on one guy or 27 warriors to one guy were fairly common those days though, and the basic strategies were still modified to be better later on.
The biggest difference when looking at old films and comparing them to modern films, or films from few years back is the way people control their units. 9 or 10 years ago it was just so slow. When people actually got into fights, the way they fought against pus or controlled their artillery was just slow. They reacted slowly to things and clicked in a way that would be seen as slow today. The good players today just click much faster than people used to. The 4-5 ballers from that time simply would not be a match to 4-5 ballers from today or any other later time period. This applies to Myrk, Flat and Tirri as well. All three of you are much better at body counting now than you were in the 9-10 years ago.
This is something that's kinda hard to show you via a review however. Watch the films yourself. I sincerely recommend this to Flat, Myrk and Tirri in particular. Watch your own play and compare it to later times, even today. Specially for Tirri, if you consider that you're just sucking now, watch the last game from the Mwc07 finals. You were playing incredible in that game. It was really impressive. Compare that to your performance in any game from 2001.
Why do people become loyalists?
I don't believe in any games since 2k1 or maybe even before that up until now that I can say I have really seen anything totally new or unique or some undiscovered special tactic that I hadn't already seen back in 2k1 or before 2k1.
Unless of course you are talking about something on a map that didn't exist before 2k1 and thats a whole different story altogether and not relevant to this discussion.
List me some special tactics or something NEW thats been discovered or never done before 2002 in myth2
- Flatline
2 words.
Activity and care.
The players that were at the top back then really dont have anything to prove now. They proved they were at the top when there was actually a decent playerbase. The top players back then had to be better than 500-1000+ other players playing the same game rather than be better than 50.
Fact is whoever is the best player of myth2 today is like being the president of cuba thinking they are some hot stuff until they look across the water and get jealous of the president of the usa.
Hey the best player on myth2 today *may* actually be BETTER than the best player in 2001 was at their peak. (when the 2001 player cared as much at the time as the best player today cares).
But the best players today will never be able to prove this and it gets to them.
All the best players today can actually prove is that they are the best players in a community of 50 players.
Well players like myrk rabican etc were the best players in a community of 500+ when they actually cared and were active and unless a miracle happens thats never going to be any different no matter how many times this comes up.
- Flatline
There's several reasons why people become loyalists. One of the most obvious one's is the E-fame. Myrk and Flat (And Rab too) were in the 2001 finals. They hadn't been in the Mwc finals before that year. Naturally it's good for them to say that people were better then, than to for example say that people were the best in the year 2000 because that's when they reached the top. Tirri however does not usually highlight that 2001 was some magically good year, since most of his FFA tournament victories actually happened in the year 2000, while all of his Team tournament victories happened after Mwc2001.
Same thing can be applied to revisionists. It's better for Johnny come late to highlight that people are better now than what people were before, because that's when they started to have success.
It's also better for loyalists to say that people used to better and they are just shadows of their former selves, because it's damn good post excuse as well as a pre excuse. The Johnny come lates could never possibly fairly beat them, because they just aren't in their primes anymore. They won't be as good as they were before in the future either, so naturally this explains their future losses to Johnny come lates as well. Funnily enough, this line of reasoning was invented when BME started dominating. Most of these loyalist excuses that I'm about to list were also invented during the BME reign of terror and then carried on later.
Nostalgia is also a powerful too. Naturally this game seemed to be better and more fun when you first got this game and back in the bungie days when we had more players. We have things saying in Finnish "Aika kultaa muistot", from which the literal translation would be "Time goldens memories" or "Time silver lines memories", which means that people tend to think of days past as being much better than what they actually were.
The excuses
"I'm not in my prime"
The reason for using this excuse is simple. If you lose, it's because your prime is gone. Similarly your future losses are explained by this as well. You're not gonna reach your prime in the future either, so we'll never know who's really better.
At this point I certainly hope that this excuse is shot down by the reviews. You guys weren't better strategists or better clickers back then. Even if the difference isn't gigantic, it's still a noticeable difference. You are better than now than you were 9-10 years ago. This applies to everyone.
So the next time you are trying to justify your loss to someone by explaining that used to better, just don't, ok? If you can't beat him now, you most certainly would not done so as yourself from 10 years ago either.
The "care" excuse
Of course I probably suck now.
Probably because I don't really care to NOT suck now or even to ever play a game of myth2.
- Flatline
The care excuse is probably the most known and most used excuse we see. We hear it in the tournament forums about tournament games and we hear it in Myth games in general. I didn't care, so that's why I sucked. This excuse saw it's heyday during the BME times, when players from Np and Bia were explaining why they are losing to BME based on their care levels. We didn't care as much so we lost. Same excuse has been used several times since then.
The care excuse naturally is actually the best excuse in the sense that it actually holds some merit. Nobody, except Adrenaline and GKG according to Dantski go on with 100% effort in every random game that they play, nor really care that much about the ending results of them. In this sense the care excuse is very valid.
It's not a very valid excuse for tournaments though. If you don't care, you're not playing or signing up. If you actually sign up to a tournament and show up to play, you care. You are playing and unless you are intoxicated or your house is on fire, you are just as good as you ever were. The low care in tournaments manifests as a low participation rate and those teams usually end up getting eliminated because they forfeit or suffer from low participation rate.
I myself sometimes say "I don't care". The difference however is that I don't use it as an excuse to claim that that's why I sucked in a tournament game or that's why my team lost. I can for example say that the last time I really cared was in 06 when we played BME. I really didn't want to lose and it would have bummed me out a lot if we would have. I can say I didn't care that much in 09 finals, but that doesn't mean it would have affected my play in a negative way. It just wouldn't have bummed me out as much to lose. If I show up to play a tourney game, I play to win. I like winning more than losing so I'll do what I can to win. Sometimes I care about winning more, but it doesn't affect my play.
The number of teams/tournament competitiveness excuse
If we go by the number of teams entered, the best and most meaningful (whatever that means) tournaments would simply go by the number teams entered. Nobody does that though, this excuse just popped up in 2006 when some people were trying to belittle BME and say they were in fact better players, because the tournaments they won had more teams in it. Excuse me? How does the number of teams affect your play? It doesn't make you play any better or worse. You make your play, not the other teams.
This of course brings us to the other related excuse, which is the tournament competitiveness. Ok, this depends on what you mean with that. Surely tournaments could be considered as being more competitive when they had more teams in them. However, lets again look at the magical year 2001, shall we?
1) Northern paladins – was still around as a whole till 2006. Some of them still play.
2) Angry face – Most were still around till 2004. Some of them still play.
3) MI – Some were still around until 2005, some are still here today.
4) Cirque: Was still around till 2003
5) GTM: was around till 2003.
6) CI: Ok, these guys went away after 01, except for Aginor, Hitlow and Wight slayer.
7) MoR: Still around till 2002.
8) Cacra: Most were still around till 2004, quite many still play.
9) Loa: Still around till 2006
10) Tcox: Still around.
So even after 2001 the majority of the top teams played. Quite many are still here today. When we jump to Mwc2003, almost all were still around, just in different formations. The tournament had 25 teams less than 01 (although prolly would have gotten over 40 teams if I would just kept the registration open), so hence it should be less competitive. Competitive in what sense, though? The teams that disappeared were in the bottom and middle section of the myth hierarchy. The top players were still there, just in a different order. BIA (a new team) jumped into the top from the 10-20 placings as a new team as did BME. The players on those teams just improved a lot during those years and became better players than the some of the other teams. The teams that previously placed above them didn't get worse, the others just became better than them.
The competitiveness excuse depends wholly on what you mean by it. Certainly 00 or 01 is more competitive than 2010, that's just a given. It doesn't mean that the teams that won those tournaments are better than the team that wins this tournament however. It certainly is not an excuse to be playing bad or good. If you lost, you lost. If someone is better than you, he is better than you. The number of teams or tournament competitiveness doesn't affect that.
I guess one could argue that they play better if there's a larger audience present, but I doubt anyone's gonna say that. That's just silly. I mean, audience of what? A group of 1-2 ballers?
"I'm rusty"
This is valid, but only for a little while. Rust wears off quicker than Paris Hilton wears off pets. Only takes a couple of days or weeks of gaming at best. It is possible to forget your mything skills if you quit playing in 2000 or 2001 and then made a total myth blockade. I mean you haven't played a single game of myth at all or even thought about it. If you did keep playing on and off however, like showing up for tournaments, you are as good as new after playing a bit. I myself have only been showing up for tournaments since 2004 and I'm certainly not worse now than I was then. Neither are you.
Think about that the next time you are writing a threat assessments and are about to type in the words "He is rusty".
Skill development. Do I believe there's a myth skill peak?
You know what, I don't know if there's a myth skill peak for the 4-5 ballers. I do know that it most certainly did not happen in 2001. 2001 was surely a year where myth strats and such were about 85% done and myth basic knowledge, like "get pus in light maps" or "spread your units while rushing" were much the same as now. They most certainly were still not fully developed and body count skills and clicking certainly are much better now. However, the jump from the year 2000 to 2001 is bigger than the jump from 2001 to 2005, or the jump from 2005 to 2010. That's for sure. However, these jumps do excist and therefore the people from 10 years can't be better players.
There's still some problems with the peak theory however. When I or anyone who isn't blinded by nostalgia goggles watches films from a top player from 2000, like Phod, the playing seems laughable compared to top players today. When you look at Chohan vs Erik from 2004 however, it's not much different at all. Both players would clearly still be excellent by today's standards. Would Chohan beat today's Tirri or GKG? I don't know, but he'd still be great. In his time Chohan sure was unstoppable when it came to duels and he certainly wouldn't be worse now. The time difference between 2004 and 2000 is shorter than the time difference between 2004 and 2010. Weird.
Here's a crude graph of what I mean by skill development.
Please ignore the numbers, they aren't relevant and I just had to type in some numbers to create the graph. What I'm trying to illustrate here is the pace which myth inventions were made and what it was required to be a top level player. While most of the stuff was done by 2001, it didn't stop there. Myth kept on developing, just not as fast as it did before with the larger community. These developments were just less radical, but still significant when considered as a whole. Certainly more than enough to ensure that a modern player would kick the ass of a 2001 player. The difference just wouldn't as big as a 2001 player kicking the ass of a 1999 top player, when the requirements for a top player back then was to realise that mortar dwarfs are better in Clash Lmoth than warlocks and that artillery gains hill advantage etc.
One thing that should also be noted about the graph is that it doesn't take into account people that simply just improved by a lot during some time compared to the rest of the community. Chohan for instance certainly was neck above others in 2003-2006. Some people just take fast giant leaps from 3 ballerness to 4-5 ballerdom, instead of slowly and gradually improving like the most of us. Tirri, Flat, Myrk have been considered 4-5 balls for a long time now and are good examples of gradual developments. They are players who've kept up with the requirements for that, while as people like Adrenaline or Ducky just suddenly jumped from oblivion to what they are now, after a long period of gradual improvement.
"My past self could have beaten your current self" is a typical vacuous, unprovable statement. It's just an attempt to shift the performance metric towards "best per unit care" or "best per unit time played" vs just "best", and a stupid one at that. But basic human psychology compels people to try and justify failure externally rather than taking responsibility, and that's especially true for people who derive a lot of their sense of self-importance from the matter at hand (i.e. Myth skills), so those are usually the ones that you'll see making those arguments 