I was considering maining Zafina, just because her look/style/animations and stances overall look great to me. But I’m concerned that, although tier lists aren’t de facto by nature, I find in general in fighting games, if I play as a “bottom tier” character (e.g. Vega/Dan in SF IV), its not as “fun” because it just seems they are lacking the tools necessary to compete a similar-skilled mid/mid-high character.
Does a “bottom tier” character like Zafina have the skills to compete, or is it like, 4x the effort and that just gets you even with a character like Law?
I know some posters here suggest the tier differences aren’t huge - but does it really feel like an uphill battle with Zaf?
From Tekken Zaibatsu Forums, compiled by Gou-Kazuya
Most lists online that I’ve seen have indicated roughly this arrangement… hence my earlier question about Zafina. I really want to main her (naturally nothing is stopping me) but like I’ve said, I find that in general, in fighting games, whenever I try to main a “bottom tier” character, its not as fun because I can feel that disadvantage in 95% of my matches and I get frustrated.
Anyway, I’ve never found tier stuff to be an issue unless it’s an obvious joke character (Gon, Doc Bosc).
I’ve looked down at certain characters in the past, only to have a good player beat me into the ground with said character.
IF you pick a low tier character, maybe you have the ‘underdog’ advantage
Because the difference between each tier isn’t great enough to warrant A-E, because, well, A+ through C+ is actually pretty accurate.
If people saw an A-E list, they’d just compare it to other A-E lists, in effect comparing the bottom characters of Tekken 6 to bottom characters of SFIV, Guilty Gear, Blazblue, etc.
Well you need to understand what you want to do with the character first. Just like you need to understand what you want to do with Vega/Dan. Do you want to place top 3 in local offline tournaments and place within the top 20 percent at majors regularly with Zafina? If so you have A LOT of work ahead of you but it could possibly be done if you train yourself to basically be one of the best Zafina players on the planet. If you just plan to win a few matches in a tournament with her or just do well enough with her online that you’ll have a lot of random other online players hugging your nuts about her? Then your work will be a bit easier to accomplish.
Whereas if you picked a character like Steve or Lars the character is inevitably already gonna do a lot of the work for you as they are already set up with the tools required to win consistently at high level. If you haven’t played Tekken seriously ever you still have a lot of work picking a high tier but the work and losses will be cut down if you choose to pick them instead. You have a much easier chance placing top 3 at a local tourney or within the top 20 percent of players at a major if you put a lot of effort into those characters. Putting a lot of effort into Zafina could inevitably still see you getting randomed out to charaters with better tools and damage output. Not only do you have to be better than your opponent to place highly at offline tournaments…you have to be better than your opponent who has access to better tools and that is rather difficult to do unless you’re in an area like Japan or Korea where you can play against a lot of people all the time. You have to study your matchups and work out trial and error that much more with a character like Zafina.
Great response, and thank you. My aspirations end with playing online and having fun at an intermediate level… so it sounds like you’re saying, its not so much that the bottom tier (or at least Zafina in this case) in the game is broken to the point where, due to certain shortcomings, winning with them beyond a certain skill level is near-impossible, its just a lot more work the higher you go (competition level wise).
So the bottom tier isn’t “broken” (in the opposite direction that Akuma would be in some SF games), they just have less readily available tools. That’s better than not having the tools at all (which is what I was afraid of, as that is not fun to me to deal with).
That is, if I understood correctly (and thank you so much for replying, very useful info)!
Yeah you got it…you’re just going to have to be a few steps more ahead of an opponent using a better character basically and that only becomes really difficult at really high level play.
This is a really good thread because it proves my point. Tekken is the most balanced game to me so far this year. Any character can get that ass beat no matter what. I tried to get my best friend into SF4 and he hated it. He said it seemed like the top tier characters are always the way to go. And in Street Fighter, no disrespect ,it kinda is that way. You can counter pick all day in that game. So, he and I stopped playing it. I have been a Tekken player for about 11 years now and you can always pick the character you want and just go to work. To me right now this is the game everyone should be playing.
idk, i just think 3d fighters are pretty lame like virtua fighter, dead or alive and especially soul calibur. it slightly reminds me of playin old wrestlling games. and especially with Tekken six the amount of characters there is available, the moves are very similar between alot of characters like a 1-2-3 jab combo, more creativity in character move set is needed imo. but thats totally my opinion, i do like that it is pretty balanced but its not something i would play torneys for sadly. SFIV is way more interesting and i’ve always had more fun playin sf games. does anyone else agree? or am i being to bias?
You’re being bias, plain and simple. Tekken has soooo many more options at any distance or situation in a fight than SF that’s it’s mind-boggling. As such, it’s more fun to watch AND to play at high level. The mind games alone are insane. Let me ask you this one question…
How many ways are there to play Ryu at high level?
I have literally seen DOZENS of completely DIFFERENT styles of play using asuka alone. There’s pit-bull asuka, crushing asuka, turtle asuka, poke ho asuka, counter queen asuka, CH hunter asuka(do NOT let this asuka succeed in her quest)… That’s just a few. All play COMPLETELY different, even though they are the same exact character.
I really don’t think you’ve given tekken a fair chance, especially if you someone think it reminds you of a wrestling game… It plays nothing like a wrestling game, at ALL.
p.s. how can you say tekken isn’t diverse enough in terms of moves when there’s 3 characters with ryu’s move set(although, akuma has a few others) with slightly different properties in SF4?
idk, i just think 2d fighters are pretty lame like Dark stalkers, Guilty Gear and especially King of fighters. it slightly reminds me of playin old wrestlling games. and especially with Street fighter the amount of characters there is available, the moves are very similar between alot of characters like a crouching jab to crouching short combo, more creativity in character move set is needed imo. but thats totally my opinion, i do like that it is pretty balanced but its not something i would play torneys for sadly. Tekken 6 is way more interesting and i’ve always had more fun playin Tekken games. does anyone else agree? or am i being to bias?
Doesn’t this sound just as stupid?
Do you really think characters like Yoshimitsu, Raven, Steve, Bruce, or hell anyone plays remotely the same? Simply becuase all characters share a few command notations? How many characters use charge moves, or QCF moves in SF? Are you going to tell me that guile plays the same as bison or vega, simply becuase they all have charge moves, and the same commands for their standard normals?
Any characters can be played different depending on the player, but some characters only have one truly effective style. Sure you can play a rush down Ryu like Poongko did , but you all saw how far that got him vs a more zone oriented Ryu player.
Did I ever say there was only 1? The thing is there’s a lot more ways to play every character in tekken, especially with the amount of attacks each possess.
