M and OGL's list thread

As elected and approved list-posters, it's a deep honour for OGL and myself to present to the community the work of a secretive team of artisan list-makers.

First, a short foreword about the lists from me:

Sometimes it's not easy to read about the opinion others have of you. Nobody has applied to have their in-game contributions and achievements reduced to a bullet point in a tier list. The Player Listing process is completely non-consensual. If your rating seems lower than you expect or you're not listed at all, it might feel an unjust and unsolicited blow to the ego and an attack on however many years you've competed at warband.

However, you don't actually have to be offended by it or take it personally. Remember that this is a work of opinion, informed by lengthy personal experience playing with and against different players. Although the shadowy list-artisans have made great efforts to provide an objective ranking, it will also be coloured by their personal experience at least as much as match statistics. The collective opinion of list-masons who've been strong competitors through all the eras detailed below is far more interesting and useful to me, but there is some more information about their rating methods etc below.

I don't fully agree with the lists below. It would be silly to pit my warband memory against these list-makers, who seem to have some preternatural ability to pluck from memory decade-old results of no significance and performances good and bad by players I've long forgotten. However, if I did, some of the list would be different - for example, some IG players such as Lugh and Illuminati, who were instrumental in IG's success during The Age of Istiniar (see below), don't feature in any of the lists. I only know about them because I was there, in that team, and the unnamed list-wrights were not.

Not being listed by some unknown list-craftspeople, however expert, can't cheapen your past experience in competitive warband. Those you've played with know your true skill level and the input you have on a team better than anyone.

On to the lists. To understand this (and upcoming future works) you have to understand the now widely accepted Official categorization of eras, so that's where we'll begin:

Disclaimer
Competiting in online competitive Mount & Blade is easier said than done. Over the course of the games lifespan, thousands of players have tried it, but only a small portion of them has had that spark of competitive drive within them that made them stay and consistently compete with and against others. For that alone, every player that has played this game competitively is special and extraordinary in our minds. Every player we know in competitive play has his or her own story, something that makes them stand out in their own right but that probably only their closest circle of teammates and friends know more about.

Judging the competitive scene of a game with a lifespan of nearly ten years is, understandably, an incredibly difficult task, especially with the limited amount of resources the community has produced over its lifetime that would make a task such as this easier. Recordings of matches barely cover 10% of the total amount of matches that were played (rough estimate) whilst statistics were first properly conducted in 2015. Especially the lack of statistics for the earlier tournaments makes it extremely difficult for an all time list such as this one to fairly compare players from these earlier era with players from later ones.

Therefore, our secret group of listcrafters has had to use their own, most likely blurred, memories of these forgotten gods in order to rate them. That, however, does not mean there is no basis to back up our assessment of their talent. Some of the old tournaments still have a significant amount of match score screenshots up. Reviewing those alongside old footage from various channels and balancing that against our own memories gave us an adequate understanding of what the scene looked like back all those years.

What makes sense one of the greatest then? Attempts to answer this question have filled articles, books and videos in all fields where humans engage in competition, and even fields where humans don't engage with the primary aspect of competing it is brought up on a regular basis. When looking at examples of fully fleshed our (e-)sports, we noticed three things: Firstly, people try to define a set of criteria that is supposed to reflect the complexity of the given task in their fields. Secondly, the element of time plays a vital role because it adds context and meaning. And thirdly, unless a certain criteria is directly measured in statistics, the assessment of the greatness of someone is and always will be subjective. And even if a certain criteria is directly measured by statistics, the evaluation and importance of that criteria compared to the other ones is subjective.

Therefore, as it was already outlined when this list was first posted: This list tries its best to be just and fair when assessing the greatness of players in Warband, but it is almost certainly flawed due to the subjective nature of the evaluation process. Thus, should you find yourselves not agreeing with your rating, do not worry. You know best what you have achieved, what way you have come in the game, and nobody will ever be able to take that away from you. We certainly did not intend to harm your feelings or tried to belittle the success you have had playing the game.


What makes someone one of the best of all time?
This takes us back to the set of criteria that we just mentioned above. The criteria that are always established before rating greatness. In the case of Warband, we have mainly looked at the following criteria in order to assess the greatness of a player: Raw mechanical ability, gamesense and awearness, ability to teamplay and communicate, clutch and fear factor, dominance of the player compared to the other players of their class, importance of the era relative to other eras, longevity, success and last but not least the importance of the player within their team.

Based on our understanding of these terms, that will most likely be congruent with the understanding of most but certainly not all players, we tried to rate every player in all these categories. As you can see, the statistics that have been gathered since 2015 won't tell you the fully story, at least not in the system we just described above. Most of the categories are not reflected at all, whereas others, for example, the amount of kills someones has gotten might give you an idea of their raw mechanical ability, but certainly not a clear, objective assessment.

For all those interessted to conduct actual statistical work based on our concept: We are fully aware some of the categories have a high positive correlation. For example should a player be hugely dominant compared to the other players of their class in an era, their fear factor is most likely equally high. We adjusted for those cases by reducing the importance of one of the categories relative the others.


Resources
We used the following resources when putting together this all time list. These resources are not only aimed at those who enjoy the art of list craftsmanship, but everyone who loves and enjoys watching competitive Mount & Blade, so please make sure you check out what we have provided below.

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Welcome, scholars of the present and of the future. Read the history, enjoy it, but also respect it.

Wow, looks like a ton of work was put into that. Nice job guys!

Looks great, fantastic list overall!

A quick note from my side on the BeNe dream team. While I appreciate being put in the dream team commander spot, that spot should belong to tomy as he did the majority of (important) calling.

Loving the timeline and the name for the eras

If anything, THIS is the ultimate list, the standard is now set high for any of the future ones, it's also a pleasure to think of everything on that list. Every player you have once seen on a server or played a match against. You can't even say when is the last time some of them have been online or where they are now. That just shows how big and old of a community we really are. Great work nonetheless, hopefully you have enough time and energy to finish what you started. Would be also great to remember that it's not only M that has worked on this, even though he seems to be the representative here.

Wow, a very detailed and accurate list... Thanks for making this must of taken many hours of hard work. 
I have a question about the all time rating on players, are they based on a certain era or are they based on when that player was at his/her peak? (other factors too i guess)

If my timelines had been done like that at school, I would have spent less time there.

10/10 List. Would be so cool to see a NC with the "Dream Team" Players on it from every country.

I don't even know all of the players on this list, I feel so new 

Seing all those French names brings back memories from LCDH! Cool list

kid ur ****

I've been juked from my rightful tier 2 all-time spot, didn't realise playing in top teams since 2016 as a main infantry, having gold, silver and bronze medals and slaying men means being placed in tier 3, yeah Varadin could destroy anything I've ever done. It's very easy to say 'don't get offended', 'it's based on opinion' but when the list was made seriously, and posted by a respected member of the community then obviously people will feel their ratings are unjust, in that sense, the 'list artisans' you've mentioned, although didn't provide any names for completely no reason, haven't really justified the reasons for some of the ratings. You can quite easily be placed somewhere based solely on someone's personal quarrels. If you're saying these 'people' were hard at work, it's unfair to say that the list is accurate if the majority of that time was spent collecting players, figuring out teams from the past and where they stand and give solely an opinion based on something completely personal. Demeaning players by clearly giving no justification on some of the clear anomalies in the rankings is clearly unjust to players and unlawful with Taleworld's policy.

Being a 'powerful' and respected member of the community, by posting some of the most garbage ratings without your 'real' approval seems odd, you even stated yourself that you, don't agree with some of the ratings, but decided to let it go. A lot of people look at these sort of ratings from respected community members and take them as if that's their final skill, unjust or not, thus completely demeans some of the players who should rightfully be placed higher, based on anything from statistics to global community opinion. Of course, you don't see many 'complaints' on the thread for reasons which are clear, they don't want to flame someone with a lot of respect, they don't want list threads to go down the drain, but without any form of elucidation with the rankings, what's the point in even posting a list? Sure, the thread looks fantastic, but it's a complete waste of time without any form of justification, which is exactly what Taleworld's asked for, you decided to post a thread solely based on 'opinion' which most people take very seriously. There also seems to be no negotiation based on statistics because it's an 'opinion' list, which completely defeats the purpose of community opinion, it's basically a what you say goes dictatorship.

Demeaning players by completely pulling information and opinions out your arse, doesn't give enough justification on players. I think there's some very obvious player who shouldn't be where they are, people will clearly look at this list and assume that's their skill level and recruit them, I think the list is great when it comes to history and clan ratings, I'm not flaming the amount of work put into the thread, it's just there's a lot of grey areas in some of the list ratings. Trying to discuss this with OGL was like talking to a brick wall, completely providing no reasons as to why I'd be placed in tier 3, giving the reply of 'study more' and Mork clearly having no interest in discussion. Obviously I complain often, but rightfully so on a list solely based on opinion and from the people I've talked to they also see how there's some major anomalies and just general rubix-like scrambling. Even if I provided statistics and prove it, it doesn't matter because it's all based on opinion and all I'd have to do is be friends with you from the start, which is how the original lists came with major flame.

? M said:

I don't fully agree with the lists below.

Click to expand...

Then don't post it then, considering it's your list, having help from your 'artisans' sounds like Calamity. You even gave an example how you'd change your 'own' list but then proceed to not give any input and change it, as if these people actually checked statistics at all, that's outrageous. I could provide you a 10000 word essay on how players like Varadin who's played in low tier teams is not in tier 3, could also provide statistics on players like CristoTheVicious not being tier 1 or myself to be placed in tier 2, but you wouldn't want that would you? It's a list based solely off opinion after all. It's a bit silly really. You've also got to think of the fact you're basing all the players on the same skill level, through the years when clearly a 'tier 1' player in 2012 will most certainly he tier 5 now, which is where the list doesnt really make any sense because theres no context behind the placements. A 2019 tier 3 player in that all time list could completely dominate a tier 1 2012 player, so why do they deserve to be the top? The meaning of 'All-Time' is who's the best and whose the worse, taking into account the skill level at that period of time, I.E Tier 1 players in 2012 shouldn't be placed as tier 1 all-time but would be lower than the average tier 3 player. 'All-Time' should take into account the peak skill level and base it off that, not some wumbo jumbo from different years, it makes the list completely inaccurate. It would be fair to make a list by era, but an All-Time list doesnt really make sense, or atleast the way you've done it.