[Elder Statesman]

After posting my all time list and listening to discussions over it, it became apparent that a number of people who are currently active in the game didn't value or were not very interested in reading that kind of list. This is perfectly understandable, as many of you don't have any real connection to the players mentioned in it. As a result of this, I've decided to try and create something more relevant to the game today, as well as generally provide more stuff for the community to read, by creating a top list based on the current active player base.

However, I decided to try to produce this list a little differently to what we're used to. Over the last few days I have collected ten different lists from various players which detail who they feel are the current best twenty players within the active community. I have then taken those lists and averaged the rankings that players received to form the list you see below. The person with the lowest average ranking will be placed at number one and so on, until we have a list of twenty players. My hope is that by using this method it will go some ways to balancing out the different opinions that people have, so we end up with a list that will be an acceptable representation for most of us with regards to the current state of the game, with information that has been provided by the community.

There are a few things I want to explain before we get to the list.

- Only people who were ranked in 50% (5) or more of the lists were eligible for the final list. This was to try and make sure the average they had was as accurate as possible.
- It was left up to the list makers to decide for themselves what constituted active, so there is a little variance there. 21 people were ranked five or more times, 38 were ranked in total.
- Player exposure counts for a lot. There are a few people who are very much actively playing and who should likely feature in a top twenty list, but were left out of certain lists. Presumably either due to the list maker simply forgetting about the player or deeming them to not be active enough.
- This list would only get more accurate the more rankings I had to work with. With only ten list's worth of information it's far from perfect, but it's a start.
- Due to there only being ten lists, rankings that are very different from the norm have a big affect on a players final average. With that in mind, I took a couple of steps to help see what a players average could have been without those outlying rankings. The numbers in red are the numbers that were considered to be anomalies. "Average" is the average with every ranking taken in to account. "Adjusted Average" is the average without the red ranking.
- Rankings were considered to be an anomaly when they were +/- 4 from a players initial average. A difference in rank of 4 is equal to 20% of the list (20 total ranks) and represents a relatively big disparity in player opinion. So if somebody came out with an average of 7, and one of their rankings was a 12, that 12 is ignored in their adjusted average.

1. Sebek

Ranked 10 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 10
Average: 2.9
Adjusted Average: 2.1

2. Tobiashi

Ranked 9 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 7, 7
Average: 3.2
Adjusted Average: -

3. Parrotman

Ranked 10 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7
Average: 4.3
Adjusted Average: -

4. Drue

Ranked 10 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8
Average: 4.6
Adjusted Average: -

5. Yoshi

Ranked 9 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11
Average: 5
Adjusted Average: 4.3

6. Akma

Ranked 9 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12
Average: 6.4
Adjusted Average: 5.8

7. Astrok

Ranked 7 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 11
Average: 6.7
Adjusted Average: 7

8. Tengo

Ranked 10 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 11
Average: 7.5
Adjusted Average: 8

9. Unreal

Ranked 10 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 4, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Average: 8
Adjusted Average: 8

10. Dario

Ranked 7 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 3, 7, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12
Average: 8.9
Adjusted Average: 9.8

11. Genocide

Ranked 5 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 6, 9, 10, 12, 12
Average: 9.8
Adjusted Average: -

12. Riptide

Ranked 9 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 9, 9, 9, 10, 11, 11, 12, 13, 15
Average: 11
Adjusted Average: 10.5

13. Benevolence

Ranked 9 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14, 16, 19
Average: 13.1
Adjusted Average: 12.9

14. Ridden

Ranked 8 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 8, 11, 11, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17
Average: 13.5
Adjusted Average: 14.3

15. Clouds

Ranked 10 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 12, 12, 12, 13, 14, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19
Average: 14.6
Adjusted Average: 14.1

16. Bigdaddy

Ranked 7 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 13, 14, 15, 15, 16, 17, 17
Average: 15.3
Adjusted Average: -

17. Phot0n

Ranked 5 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 8, 16, 16, 18, 20
Average: 15.6
Adjusted Average: 16.7

18. Loki

Ranked 5 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 14, 16, 17, 17, 18
Average: 16.4
Adjusted Average: -

19. Ectogon

Ranked 5 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 15, 16, 18, 18, 18
Average: 17
Adjusted Average: -

20. Dip

Ranked 7 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 15, 17, 17, 18, 18, 19, 19
Average: 17.6
Adjusted Average: -

21. Insomniac

Ranked 5 out of 10 times.
Rankings: 13, 18, 19, 20, 20
Average: 18
Adjusted Average: 19.3

___________________________________________________

The rest of the players who were rated;

Bone - 4, 7, 13, 13
Assailant - 13, 13, 15, 19
ArcSlayer - 16, 16, 20, 20
Fudorm - 10, 15, 20
Masta - 17, 18, 20
Cyro - 17, 20, 20
Bertrada - 1, 3
Domey - 14, 19
Fight3r - 5
Sparkinator - 13
Faur - 14
Envy - 14
Seahaven - 15
Turbo - 19
Cartman - 19
Shootme - 19

A list based on the adjusted average only;

1. Sebek 2.1
2. Tobiashi 3.2
=3. Drue 4.3
=3. Yoshi 4.3
4. Parrotman 4.6
5. Akma 5.8
6. Astrok 7
=7. Tengo 8
=7. Unreal 8
=8. Dario 9.8
=8. Genocide 9.8
9. Riptide 10.5
10. Benevolence 12.9
11. Clouds 14.1
12. RoboTech 14.3
13. Bigdaddy 15.3
14. Loki 16.4
15. Photon 16.7
16. Ectogon 17
17. Niveus 17.6
18. Insomniac 19.3

[cyro]

Nice list, awesome to see another article on here.

[Unreal]

Glad this yielded some results and I'm a fan of the logic used for the outliers / adjusted averages

[tengo]

I feel like this is a pretty decent list, but some players on here must be delusional or not understand the attributes behind a solid player.

Who the hell puts Sebek at 10? Lol. Sebek belongs in the top 3. I wonder how terrible that list was...

I don't see any justification for putting Drue outside of top 5 either. Those who put him at 6, 7 and 8... Drue has been the most dominant player in CTA for the past few years. He landed 4th which is not too far of where he belongs - probably 2nd or 3rd.

Someone also put Yoshi at 11 on their list? Lols.

Who put Astrok #1... this ain't 1999 anymore

[RoboTech]

I love the idea of this. That it's not Sebek's rankings, but you took the time to poll the community and find us an average. To me, this is a pretty accurate order of picks in CTA. People can talk smack about stats and games where others may be trying or not, but the pick don't lie. If I had to talk shit I'd say Bene is too high. =D

[Turbo]

Hey, I just thought of something. Stop living in the present. Yes some people are good now, others at another time. But, you know what? Most of the good players played back then. Surprised to even see a response by some people that were even listed, if it is actually them. However, did they even log on the game back then?

Once you move backwards, the game will move forward. If they were part of the past, awesome. But, to old players, talking about the present on how awesome a player is, a player that wasn't part of the game back then, means nothing. To them they will automatically think this game is past it's prime when the worst or "thought worst" played now.

[Dario]

(04-23-2014, 05:02 PM)tengo Wrote:  I don't see any justification for putting Drue outside of top 5 either. Those who put him at 6, 7 and 8... Drue has been the most dominant player in CTA for the past few years. He landed 4th which is not too far of where he belongs - probably 2nd or 3rd.

I was told specifically this is not a top CTA performers list. My list was based on a hypothetical scenario of a 4v4 league situation in a good map (not the usual gimmicky CTA crap), and the only thing I took away from CTA was how I have personally seen players perform over the last 3-4 years (different aspects of their skillset). It was more a list of how good a player has been over this larger sample size rather than how good they might be playing at this very instant in time. We haven't seen much variation in who the top players are over this time period -- Yoshi being the most notable player who has broken through to the higher tiers (and has been for a year or two now). I am fully confident that a player that has shown high quality play over this time frame who may not be active would be able to replicate this high level of play given a couple of weeks to shake off the rust, but I limited the list to only players who might be considered somewhat active currently (otherwise it would just be a top players from the past 3-4 years list). I did include myself in the list, but in retrospect, that was a bad decision considering how little I have played in the past few months (some players like Genocide were left off due to inactivity but probably were just as active as I have been).

So that's my justification for putting Drue outside the top 5. I would take Puffball, Sebek, Yoshi, Parrotman, Astrok, and Bone over him any day of the week in a typical league setting regardless of the map (assuming it's of decent quality). I don't want Drue to take this as an insult; most of the players I listed are among the best that have ever played. I didn't expect my process to be so unique when I was asked to make a list, but the rankings seem to paint a different picture.

P.S. I have no idea what Turbo was trying to say in his post.

Edit: Nevermind, I see what you did there, Turbo, and it sucked.

[Bone]

(04-24-2014, 02:32 AM)Dario Wrote:  P.S. I have no idea what Turbo was trying to say in his post.

Then it wasn't just me. I read it and the first thing I did after that was say out loud, "what did he just say?"

Oh, and I was ranked #4 by someone. Been on armor critical for about a week or two now and barely play. That's what's up. Just kidding, it was prob inso.

[Turbo]

Dario, I dominated it.

[RoboTech]

Turbo is basically complaining about people posting of the current players instead of reminiscing when the better people played, and he was the thriving new mid tier. Live in the past and you'll continue to be inactive now, because this game isn't ARC. If you don't like that the list is based on our current community than become active and show us what you got. Frankly, idgaf about anyone's efforts 2-3 years ago. I care about what's happening now, because that is what affects our future. Everybody knows that if all those better people were to return then the lists would change, but if they aren't going to return then who really cares?

Today's Thinking:
Sparkbe's aren't so new anymore, Sierra newbs are vets, WON is ancient, there's a difference between TEN and TeN? and what is hoopy?

I've been playing this game since TeN and I understand what you're saying Turbo. But it's a new day, so all you relics on the forums, but not on the game, need to man up. Soon enough, your stories will stop being told...