No response on birdr so retweeting here:

I wouldn't really care, the dotabuff rankings are wonky at best and very exploitable.

MMR or Tournament winnings are the most reliable gauge for skill, even if they're not perfect either.

I was on /r/TF2 when a similar topic came up the other day ("The best rocket jumper in the world is probably someone we don't even know about.") And I think that's totally plausible. In the arts, or in gaming, there are always three types of talented people: those who aren't famous yet, but want to be, those who are famous and relish it, and those who either have something standing in the way of becoming famous, or just simply don't care.

With that last group, I figure they're either oblivious to competitive gaming, don't have any interest in it, or don't have any way of flying/driving out to a professional LAN tournament. Or they may not speak English/Russian/any other language where there's enough of a fanbase of that game to even justify a YouTube gaming channel.

I gotcha. Mainly I just don't know how big a pool the top percentiles in a character would be. Knowing 3% minus 2% would help me, maybe, but also no clue how characters compare.

He's definitely on the hardcore side (doesn't play other games, been playing for 10 years, attends the International), but because it's not a bandwagon thing I figure he's not into the fame, and wouldn't quit his day job for it. I used to take pride as being in the top 100 wiki editors here, but had to let it go. :) And all points systems can be gamed.

@medacris: I disagree with that whole premise. It sounds romantic and mysterious, but I think it's extraordinarily unlikely. It's very rare that somebody just develops incredible skill at a competitive activity off on their own, unless it's darts or bowling or something and they just practice the proper form or whatever.

The people who make top 8 at EVO end up being pretty well known in the fighting game crowd, because they have to be involved in some part of that fighting game crowd, so that they have people of a similarly high skill level to spar with. Whatever country they're in, they have to find a group of high level players if they want to keep improving. If they just play people of a middling skill level, they're not going to push themselves to keep improving.

So going over to your world's best rocket jumper in TF2 scenario, there's no way he's just some random guy who plays on pub servers but is inarguably better at rocket jumping than any tournament-level player. Even if he didn't play in tournaments or anything, he'd have to regularly play with some very skilled TF2 players to have bothered to hone his rocket jumping ability that much. People would know about him if his abilities were so remarkable. I don't buy the art comparison, because extraordinary art can happen in the middle of nowhere because there isn't a "right" way to make art. There is a more "right", more "effective", more "efficient" way to rocket jump or play Luna, that you can get closer and closer to, and you don't learn it by randomly playing whatever nobodies that random matchmaking gives you.

To be fair, there are some cases where there were pros who were once purely online players that trained and developed their own methods of studying and playing against various types of opponents that eventually became really, reeeeeally good tournament players when they decided to go in a tournament at some point (e.g. in SF4, Gamerbee playing on JP XBL is probably the best example of this) but I admit it takes a special kind of player to be able to hang in a legit tournament setting when you are playing in front of an audience and the tension/excitement is ratcheted up to exponentially high levels.

I'd have to agree that in regards to DOTA, you can't take the way it ranks players seriously since there are methods to game the system. Its not really an indictment against the guy's skill but its better to actually take a look at that and just say that he's definitely a skilled Luna player but without seeing him play against high level competition in a legit tournament setting its hard to say how good he really is.

We should probably ask @crispy about this as well so he could chime in.

@gaspower: True, Gamerbee is a good example. I just mean, especially when medacris was talking about being the best in the world, your skill level can get pretty far practicing with online matchmaking and playing opponents of increasing higher MMR, but I just don't think there's any way you accidentally become the best in the world at rocket jumping without you or anyone else realizing it.

Yeah, the DOTA ranking thing is a different matter and it's probably entirely possible to make top 3% of Luna players just by reading up on theory and strategy and practicing a lot in random matchmaking. But again, I don't think somebody could happen to be the most skilled Luna on the planet without exposing themselves to some sort of "scene" of players that are also very, very advanced. It sounds romantic and mysterious that they're out there, waiting to be discovered, the true heir to the throne all these years, but I don't think that's realistic.

Playing the Hardline Beta they have Divisions as part of a leaderboard and your notified when you enter or drop them in game as you play for many things. E.G most cash per minute Division 1, or knife kills Division 4.

So I was Division 1 as a professional (sniper) in accuracy. I looked at the leader board the top 10 was 115% (hax!) 110% (hax!) 100% 99% 99% 98% and so on. Guess what accuracy was to let me share this 1% division 1? 24.5% was my accuracy....cos I used a semi auto rifle medium range.

I was number 7th player in SD Gundam Capsule Fighters the first two weeks of launch!! then I stopped playing for a day and shot down to 130 and the more I did not play the lower I got. PS I wasn't even trying I was just playing the game.

These stats mean NOTHING to me as the mean of tracking nonsensical magic.

1v1 me mid bro

(Honestly, the only way to know someone's true skill in a game like Dota is by gauging their execution, decision-making, overall knowledge, and creativity. Can't really be done by anyone other than really good players; MMR doesn't serve as much more than a very general ranking.)

@gaspower: You also have to consider that if he just showed up in one tournament and was the most amazing player ever and then never showed up again that doesn't necessarily mean he actually was as good as advertised, conversely if he performed poorly it doesn't mean he's terrible either.

@bisonhero It's definitely possible and even likely to be the best player at something without knowing about it; that's just simple numbers. If you take millions of people and then you take a few dozen people then chances are the best possible player is in the millions and not in the few dozen. In the case of DoTA it's a lot less likely of course but if you take basically any random fighting game chances are there's someone out there who is that good that no one knows about aside from a handful of acquaintances that have no voice. So yes Daigo is probably the best Street Fighter player anyone's ever going to see and I'm not really disputing that, but there's probably like 5 or 6 other Daigos out there that have never been to a tournament and while they might not be able to beat Daigo immediately they probably could if they played enough (unless they played Dhalsim of course). Said other Daigos aren't necessarily going to be rated highly by PP or BP either. In fact it's entirely possible there's someone who straight up doesn't play online and also doesn't play in tournaments but still has the base skill level and ingenuity required to be the Capcom Cup champion this year; yes that's 99% not going to happen but it's far from impossible.

If we go to something more debatable like Hearthstone Arena I doubt anyone knows who the best Hearthstone Arena player is or even has a remote idea, because it's certainly not Trump, Kripp, or Hafu. I have a handful of guesses based on experience but who the hell actually knows, how could you possibly know? How could the person who was the best know? Yes Kolento is probably the best in constructed due to the volume of games played and the incentive to keep playing; but in Arena...?

The best healer in Warhammer Online (out of ~100,000 players at the time) was basically a total unknown DoK in a mediocre guild, he was never in the elitist guilds, never mentioned in the "who's the best player" threads, never even trolled the forums, but rest assured he was a ridiculous monster. That shit just happens.

@bisonhero: I dunno... I'm really, really good at Don't Shit Your Pants, and I have basically no recognition in the e-sports scene. In fact, I'm completely unheard of, and likely aggressively unwelcome by anybody who has heard of me (as is true in general). All this despite the fact that I've not only beaten Don't Shit Your Pants, but I can do it in less than five tries on demand.

The weird part is, I openly discuss my ability to not shit my pants to anybody who will listen. I had "I'm not shitting my pants at this very moment" t-shirts printed (my go-to pickup line), and since then, I've become arguably MORE unknown.

As such, I can totally see there being a lot of pro-level players who have yet to be discovered.

@fredchuckdave: Oh yeah, I agree that consistency is another huge factor that comes with a sizeable sample size by going to more than one tournament, etc.