OU RBY OU Discussion Thread

[Bohrier]

Taking away the ability to hide ladder matches would be amazing for the ladder scene. Ladder had more of a sense of community when everyone was hanging out in chat watching good matches together.

Dyt ppl actually watched ladder matches even back in the day idts--ppl watched Replays of ladder matches cuz there were more guys voluntarily playing good elo ladder

Obtaining a high elo seemed much harder back then. I remember watching Peasounay hit the 1700s live in 2017 and it seeming very impressive. Now getting 1700 doesn't seem like that big of a deal.

you'd think it's a big deal when the current number 1 is 80 points lower rated than 1700....




I remember Roudolf 13 had a 97.6 GXE
That will never happen now . Rn the highest GXE is 90.8 which is crazy low if you compare it with the days of old-- This leads to 2 conclusions that either the top end has gotten weaker or the bottom end has gotten strong
The first is obviously not true which you will realise if you go watch a 2016 SPL RBY replay and come back to a modern time to realise that even the best player of that time Tiba is not as good as a lot of even journeyman RBYers(I mean no offense by this term Just throwing it out there to emphasise skill diffs)
So it must be that the bottom end has gotten strong and this is very easy to identify
Back in the day there were 0 resources for RBY in smogon which was still the premier site--if you needed help you went to PP which many guys didn't even know about
Now you have VR Samples threat list speed tiers this that whatever
Lots of resources have come up even in the past year and a bit--the most significant of which being Marco's guide on youtube

So 95% will never happen?Yes that is indeed true
However we have this thing now called a ladder tournament which makes ladder mean so much more than it ever used to so if anyone says ladder is somehow worse than in the past idk man

 

[Leader of the Rockets]

Bottom has definitely gotten stronger. Top is the same in terms of relative skill to one another. The top players, on an experiential level, were tough to beat back then, they are just as tough to beat now, because everyone grew together, more or less. BUT, there is definitely less matching with top players than back then. When I'm high on the ladder, I would say I match with more people not on my skill level than I did back in the day. And sometimes when I do get someone on my skill level, I play them over and over, which signals that there just aren't enough good players playing. This changes from time to time. Sometimes I do get a good variety of skilled players. But, it does seem to me, just from my experience playing on ladder this year, there aren't as many great players playing as often as back in the day.

 

[Believer of GXE]

Finding the term "skill creep" to be adequate for what that this is.
"In different games, skill creep manifests as increased map knowledge and repetitive "meta" strategies, as seen in games like Warzone and Escape from Tarkov, or through the relentless optimization of high-level play in competitive multiplayer games like Apex Legends and Destiny 2."

The term "Skill inflation" is decently similar as well.

Skill creep and how it relates to poker:

• Improved Player Knowledge: Even at lower stakes, most players are now familiar with concepts like hand ranges, 3-betting, big blind defense, and pot odds, whereas a couple of decades ago, these were advanced tactics.

How this is similar to Rby:
Improved player knowledge: Even at lower ELO's most players are now familiar with concepts like using OU material, using more optimal movesets, using better theory when team building, and playing better mathematically, and knowing fundamentals, using the calculator for calculating damage, etc. these were advanced tactics a decade ago.

Although there is IMO a ton of availability for growth.

 

[Amaranth]

The first is obviously not true which you will realise if you go watch a 2016 SPL RBY replay and come back to a modern time to realise that even the best player of that time Tiba is not as good as a lot of even journeyman RBYers(I mean no offense by this term Just throwing it out there to emphasise skill diffs)
So it must be that the bottom end has gotten strong and this is very easy to identify

Something to mention here is that a lot of stuff that is common wisdom now, was not common wisdom back then. So you look at replays and think "oh yeah this is obviously unoptimal, these guys must've been so easy to beat and relatively low level" - and there's some truth to that, but I also think if you went back in time, you would have to figure out why that shit was unoptimal on your own first.

This is still largely the same way you beat the top players today: figure out what they're doing, then figure out how to beat it. But the stuff in 2017 was certainly beatable by a lot more angles of attack than the meta we have today. So it was "easier" because there were more angles where you could pull ahead of them, but I don't think they were especially further ahead or further behind relative to common wisdom compared to the top players of today. It's just that the common wisdom from back then was much, much less complete.

 

[Bohrier]

Something to mention here is that a lot of stuff that is common wisdom now, was not common wisdom back then. So you look at replays and think "oh yeah this is obviously unoptimal, these guys must've been so easy to beat and relatively low level" - and there's some truth to that, but I also think if you went back in time, you would have to figure out why that shit was unoptimal on your own first.

This is still largely the same way you beat the top players today: figure out what they're doing, then figure out how to beat it. But the stuff in 2017 was certainly beatable by a lot more angles of attack than the meta we have today. So it was "easier" because there were more angles where you could pull ahead of them, but I don't think they were especially further ahead or further behind relative to common wisdom compared to the top players of today. It's just that the common wisdom from back then was much, much less complete.

This comes back to the resources point and the community growth point--Common wisdom is more complete when top players begin talking to non top players and also the fact that the resources have grown exponentially in the past 4ish years I'd say
Scouting is also so much more complete--back in the day you only knew vaguely what players played like-- and much more in depth overall