Why do you think it's so hard to reach the TW skillcap to call yourself a pro?
I'd never use the word pro for one, a pro gets paid to play. SC II has pros, TW does not.
But I've personally played with many people that thought they were at the skillcap, they thought they were the cream of the crop. I was then able to teach them all sorts of things, which made them realize how wrong they were.
First example that comes to mind is Abdo. Abso was rank 1 till around 11 million points on uk1. He thought he was as good as players got. He scoffed at myself and others when we said startup took more technical skill than lategame. He told us it was nothing but activity and that to prove it he'd play super actively on uk7 and show us that there was nothing special about the way we played.
He joined uk7, and was rank 3, but rank 3 on that particular world was miles behind rank 1 and 2, which was myself and Cory. We were the two people he claimed were nothing special. After uk7 his entire tune changed, he acknowledged he was as active, if not more active, than we were. He also acknowledged that he didn't know as much about the game as he thought he did and overall he turned into a much humbler player.
1 Tyranny TuToR 4.078 1 4078
2 Temporary TuToR 4.031 1 4031
3 Locutas of Borg RaGe 3.459 2 1730
4 Abdo TuToR 2.994 1 2994
5 Ruffus G~T 2.804 1 2804
6 xXSaintXx TuToR 2.640 1 2640
7 Just-me TuToR 2.583 1 2583
8 Ifarmyourhidingplace? TuToR 2.514 1 2514
9 GIXXER RaGe 2.375 1 2375
10 DubbyTheMule KnK 2.314 1 2314
Abdo was rank 3 for most of that worlds 1 village stage, he got passed by Locutas of Borg because Locutas noble rushed (a horrible, awful noble rush at that).
Rank 3 normally sounds great, but not when you're over 1,000 points behind rank 2.
I think it's fairly easy to become "good" at TW. I do not think it is nearly as easy to make the climb from "good" to "great" or, depending on your ideas of what "great" is, from "great" to "cream of the crop".
If I call someone great they're fantastic, they belong in a discussion of the best players to ever play, but that's probably not what most people mean by "great".
ie. Abdo on uk7 was to me a good player, he was not what I'd deem great.
To most people, sure, rank 3 is great.
GIXXER is a similar story, boasted and bragged nonstop about how great he was. When the top accounts in my tribe were reaching level 30 farm, he had a 24 farm.
For the mathematically challenged: A 24 farm has 38.5625% the population capacity of a 30 farm. No player worthy of being called great is ever going to have a 24 farm when someone else has a 30.
Our top players had level 30 farms in 3-4 villages by the time GIXXER built his 30 farm. Yet he consistently tried to talk and act like he was some kind of amazing player sent to tribalwars by god.
Example of GIXXER:
https://forum.tribalwars.co.uk/index.php?threads/hauls-and-plunders.20997/page-6
He claims he started co-ing an account 4 days ago, this is 12 days into the world. He wants to be given 8 days leeway as such to "catch us" despite the fact the accunt obviously wasn't 26 points when began co-ing it, and it wasn't troopless. But hell, I'll play along and let him "cheat", since he still loses. On November 25th on the next page I reference having 1085 lc. On December 5th he says he's now hit 1000 lc. That's 10 days later.
So, I hit 1085 lc in 13 days. GIXXER has 1,000 lc in 23 days. He claims the account wasn't co-played for the first 8 days, but even then we're comparing 8 days of soloing + 15 of co-playing vs. me at 13 days with still 10% more troops.
Please do note, I really am not claiming to be the best player - I'm not. There are people I recognize as being better than me. I am however very much arguing that there are lots of people that think they've reached the skillcap in this game when the reality is that they're not even close.
What I am, is close enough to judge who else is as close as I am.
It's the dunning-kruger effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
The
Dunning–Kruger effect is a
cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from
illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as much higher than it really is.
Research also suggests
corollaries: high-ability individuals may underestimate their relative competence and may erroneously assume that tasks which are easy for them are also easy for others.
Dunning and Kruger have postulated that the effect is the result of internal illusion in those of low ability and external misperception in those of high ability: "The miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."
This pattern of over-estimating competence was seen in studies of skills as diverse as
reading comprehension, practicing
medicine, operating a motor vehicle, and playing games such as
chess or
tennis. Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:
fail to recognize their own lack of skill
fail to recognize the extent of their inadequacy
fail to accurately gauge skill in others
recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill only after they are exposed to training for that skill