Can confirm, beat all of the AI levels reliably before moving to ladder, and placed in bronze and stayed there for a few months.
This is not true. Maybe when the game first came out, but average skill level has decreased greatly.
This is counter to the current perception of professional players, which is that world champions from ten years ago played the way that unexceptional ladder players play today. I think the average skill level has been increasing monotonically over time.
Fine, overall skill has increased. But given the vast amount of information and strategy guides, it is much easier to get to a diamond level now than it was before.
That idea doesn't seem coherent to me -- Diamond is just another way to say "top 60-90th percentile". The vast amount of information is available to everyone equally, so it doesn't explain why some people are above average players. Players in every league have improved.
There's no static "diamond level" way of playing that's been unchanged over ten years to compare against.
I’ve played since the release date thru now with gaps of time not playing... from my experience it’s unequivocally clear that the skill level is much much higher than when the game first came out. Like not even close.
That's true. Watching the first WCS championship is extremely cringy even for a normal-skilled player today. It's cool to see how the meta has improved in recent years !
You mean average skill has increased?
If true that would make it pretty much alone along long-running competitive games.
Bronze is now the bottom 4 percentile. I was around the level of Very Hard while 2600 NAMMR (High silver)