In that case, the lower tier characters might have higher win %'s based on the fact that they are easier to pick up and play.
If a high level player, is amazing with a character that has a lower “match up” percentage than other characters, and dominates tourney after tourney, does that then make that character higher tier?
I guess going back to my original point, a “high tier” character does not make them a “good” character or even a “strong” character, since it’s handled by high level players (assuming that’s where the data is collected).
If you take an “average player” and put them against another “average player” odds are you’re not going to see high win %'s with characters that typically reside in the “high tier” since it has to do with potential and ability to master the game.
Example: Nightmare in the hands of high level players = beast; while average Nightmare players are shit, but average Mitsurugi/Astaroth players will win against other average players more often than they lose simply because those players require less “effort” to do more damage and have easier movesets.
An average Natsu or Viola player can’t even think about contending, while high level players have made people think they need to be “nerfed.”
Yes, see UMVC3 Wesker. Although he’s dropping off he’s still statistically the most deadly character, despite several characters being obviously better than him.
No, it means the tournies did not have a high enough level of competition to make the tiers relevant.
Correct, because again they’re not dealing in the level of play that tier lists concern themselves with.
No offence here dude, but you seem to be using a lot of words and not really saying a whole lot. Tiers are based on a character vs character basis, they’re not hard and fast rules as to who is going to win every round of every tournament because there is always the human element to consider.
a character being on the lowest part of the tier doesnt necessarily means that he is not viable for tournament play
tier lists are not the end of the spectrum, they also depend of the context of the game
and yes, a low level player or mid level player match wouldnt necessarily represent the odds of who is higher and who is lower, that is precisely the reason why tier lists are build on high level play, you want to weight the character on the optimal way possible
Tier lists are not science because science is based on fact and results that can be constantly repeated while tier lists are based on opinions, hypotheticals, and skewed tournament results.
If you want to make a tier list, then you can’t consider effort, especially in a game like SCV where the moves themselves aren’t difficult to execute and the movelists have been simplified from previous games. Plus effort can’t save you if you’re playing stupidly.
I also think tier lists are over-hyped. Just telling me who is S, A, B, or C does nothing for me unless I know why. Plus it’s difficult to get two people to agree on anything.
I also don’t know why so many people are so concerned with tier lists for a game that’s barely 6 months old. Give the game some time to mature, then worry about it. SC4 went 4 years and people still couldn’t agree on a list.
Why you shouldn’t worry about tier lists for a game this young is because people’s opinions are going to be very skewed or based on only the characters that they have exposure to as there aren’t many tournaments for this game, or they completely don’t know what they are talking about. With SC4, no one had any idea how good Ivy was until EVO 2009 because not many people played her at the time or had much exposure to her, and after that she dominated the scene. On the French matchup chart, Amy is listed as a mid-tier character which is ridiculous since most know that she was one of the best characters in the game, however there weren’t many Amy players in France except for one or two people.
Also, what’s the point of this discussion when Asta, Mitsu, Natsu, and Viola are some of the best characters in this game at this time? You have to take effort out of the equation.
maybe, but how many tier lists are actually based on gathered statistics, and aren’t just numbers top players pulled out of their ass?
I don’t think anyone is arguing that besides you. A forced random select tournament doesn’t really prove anything. It’s just a gimmicky format that injects excitement for spectators through added randomness, and most SF players like to mitigate randomness.
They’re statistics based on subjective numbers provided by the players. It’s more like a survey.
It has as much science as me asking people what their favorite ice cream flavors are. i.e. if they had to choose between Vanilla and Chocolate, out of ten choices, how many times would they pick Chocolate? or cookies’n’cream? or mint? or rainbow sherbert.
Then Mint Chocolate Chip would be the top tier of ice creams, because everybody fucking loves that shit.
“You’re talking about “popularity” which is completely different; as there is no data to back up an “advantage” a character has over another character…”
a common misunderstanding of tiers, tiers are based on all around tools of the character that elevates them pass the majority of the roster. due to a endless debate of who fits where in tier ranking, you will always get a different answer. a prime example of tier confusion is in mvc2, where you have cable as a godtier in which he doesnt have all of the tools necessary to be slated godtier. he is godtier due to one move, and that is his multiple vipers and yet other than this he doesnt matchup well with fellow godtiers at all and even “lower” tier characters scrape him free. this is the only godtier character that has a one-dimensional style, in which it creates a warped interpretation of tiers. so if he isnt better than lower tier characters, how is he godtier? cause there is a popularity dynamic with certain characters that somehow disregard tier ranking. may get a backlash for this, yet its th truth.
well said, yet thats not how it works. tiers are determined with the following:
mobility: without this, a character cannot take advantage of openings and also cannot evade attacks.
offense: if your character doesnt have the offensive output they cannot last in a match due to relying on assist, or other less effective moves (in other games)
defense: without stamina or decent stamina, your character doesnt have the ability to take hits and will eventually lose the match.
these primarily are the 3 main components of tier ranking, with exceptions of certain games. people come up with tiers in their personal perspective, yet this is not the logic of tiers. you get people ranking characters higher than others due to playability and uh oh…popularity! popularity is not a factor in tier ranking, its a preference which doesnt validate tier ranking. when a game comes out, the team goes through each characters attributes and determine where they fit. and those 3 previous mentioned components determine where those characters land. after time, there are exceptions where people find new tech and all of a sudden a character that was mid tier has jumped to top tier cause of something the team overlooked. so essentially, tiers change overtime yet the default logic of tier ranking is movement, offense and defense.
It’s our understanding of them that changes. It’s like, just because we keep fucking up on figuring out the laws of physics doesn’t mean that the laws change every time we realize we jumped the gun on our theories.
You’re going into the specific attributes of fighters, but that alone does not determine their standing. Ultimately it’s about how well they stack up to in comparison to the rest of the cast. Time and time again, the top tier characters are there because of their ability to fight advantageously, or evenly, with the majority of the cast. Factors like mobility, offense, and defense, contribute to this, but ultimately, it is still a subjective experience. High or low marks on your factors doesn’t determine placement. Ryu has generally been considered to have a very balanced character design across a variety of games, yet in light of this, he’s run the gambit from low tier to top tier. All of your individual factors may rate him as mediocre, but his overall moveset gives him a unique variety of tools to apply in any match. In other words, he has a lot of utility, which is something that is not easily measurable. Dhalsim has low mobility and defense, and yet he’s been very strong in a variety of games due to his ability to control space. Certain teams in MVC2 were considered quite powerful for their reliance on extremely powerful assists, yet as a stand-alone character, they were nearly useless.
Popularity is not a factor in tier ranking, however, the more popular characters are usually more heavily explored than other characters. So as you develop a tier list ranking from a game’s inception, obviously popular characters will be at the top, but as time goes on, other tactics, tricks, and strategies get developed, and so the tier list shifts. This is what happened with Zangief in SF4. Early on, he was considered to be a top-tier character, but as we delved deeper into the game, he began to drop. Part of the reason is that we learned a variety of techniques to combat Zangief, and another reason would be that we started to explore characters like C. Viper, Seth, etc etc, and discovered how truly powerful their mixup potential is.
tier list come from the creators of that particular game, when it is in development the characters are played and the team evaluate each character to determine tiers. then this information is leaked down to players who follow this data as it has proven the “bulk” of characters and where they stand in tier. tournaments do not determine tiers as those characters in tourneys have already been slated top tier previous in the game’s development. overtime this can change due to players exploring the game in depth as opposed to the creators who do a “rough draft” of the game. yet the majority of that tier ranking stays the same, with a few adjustments here and there. characters that are easy to use are not slated top tier, as that is not a valid reason for ranking the character. in addition to that, difficulty of playing a character doesnt determine tier neither, eddie is quite hard to use yet this has nothing to do with his tier ranking. ease or difficulty is simply an attribute of the character, completely irrelevant to tier ranking.
everything you stated was put into simplest form by me for the person who orginally asked the question. tiers are based on those 3 components, nothing else determines tier ranking more than this. ryu has all the tools yet from the majority he is not ranked high due to his lack of “flashy style” lol. ryu is not top tier yet he has all the tools of a top tier character, by the default system of tier ranking. this is the original question from the poster, as they wanted to know the difference between popularity and authentic skills of the character. characters that are popular are top tier for a reason, cause the community are familar with those characters. yet there are characters that are top tier and popular that do not deserve the nod over a lesser known character. that is the dynamic of tier ranking, it is unbalanced due to the lack of knowledge of players who chime in with their personal ops of where that character lands. in this sense,the majority doesnt rule.
You seriously think tier lists are planned? No game developer can ever fine-tune a game to the extent where they know EXACTLY what the meta-game will look like. A couple of guys in QA will never play test the game that will equal the amount of work that thousands of fans can do. Game developers can test and balance a game as best as they can, but ultimately, it’s up to the community to figure out which one is a strong character and which are weak ones. And good game developer’s provide absolutely no input as to specific tricks and techniques that they’ve developed, part of the allure of fighting games is the exploratory stage of it. I have no idea why you think that information gets leaked down to the community by developers.
Tournaments very much help to see which characters are being used, and why. Nobody gives a shit what happens in casuals. Tournaments are where serious and top-level players showcase each character’s strengths/weaknesses.
As for difficulty of use for each character, it never determines tier placing. It might determine how the tier would look like to a beginner, intermediate, or expert player, but not at high-levels. However, tiers are influenced by use of highly effective and/or cheap strategies that are difficult or impossible to counter.
Ryu is highly ranked, depending on which game you’re looking at. Flash does not equal strength, plenty of people can be flashy with a flashy character, and still perform horribly. You can simply these factors into a basic “Speed, offense, defense”, but it ignores other factors such as utility, mix-ups potential, how well they’re able to play footsies, single hit damage, combo-potential, resets, etc etc. In terms of coming up with a basic tier list, it’s best to not include these factors, but instead just focus on the age-old system of “out of 10 matches, who will win how many games?” system. It quantifies it in a simpler fashion as opposed to writing whole essays on why x is better than x, which is more suited for a variety of forum topic discussions.
Majority doesn’t rule, but you still have to consider why they believe their opinion is correct. The whole point of tier lists is that it is a subjective idea of the strengths of each character at that given point in time. Tiers change on a week-by-week basis, especially in the beginning of a game’s competitive lifespan.
