4321

To be honest though, that argument can be made for almost every character. There’s not a hell of a lot of top level players (I mean the very best), less than a hundred I’d say. Split that by 39 and you’ve got about 2 representing at high level. Of course there are exceptions like Ryu you mentioned but really even the strong characters like Akuma, Fei, Cammy , Viper only have 2 maybe 3 tops representing.

3 high level players per character aint exactly evidence of a broken ass game. It just seems like there are a lot of top tier characters since they are the ones that are always left at the thin end.

4322

Now your point IS a fair and valid one though I do have a few qualms

Cammy/Fei/Sakura/Sagat/Ryu/Ken/Ibuki/Rufus/Seth there are a lot more than 2 or 3 top players repping them (not that all of them are top tier). Even Akuma/Viper there are about 3 to 4 that could be considered really really strong or top level (Infiltration/Tokido/-6/Eita for Akuma, though for some reason Eita is playing Ryu in topanga league and getting blown up. Latif/Wolfkrone/Kyabetsu for Viper.

In the greater scheme of things, having 3 or at best 4 “top” players repping a character like it is for Akuma/Viper/Zangief a big difference from 1 or maybe 2 like is the case for Makoto or Dudley or Evil Ryu or Dan.

I do agree however that it’s not a particularly good measuring tool though as even 3 or 4 is a fairly low number even if it IS significantly more (percentage wise and actual exposure wise) than 1 or 2. It’s certainly not ENOUGH. It’s not like 3rd Strike where any tournament you can generally bet on at least 3 Chuns in ANY top 8. Or even KOF13 with Mr Karate or EX Iori. Though that doesn’t make either of those two games bad, both are exceptional games in spite of this.

4323

I dunno, even the first batch of characters I’m struggling to pull out more than 3 names worthwhile mentioning and I’m not including Yogaflame online warriors either since they get exposure through the online game but really never make an impact (mostly).

I’m not doubting there are lots of good players, just that I think the split is fairly good. I’d still like to see more “traditional” characters since I personally can appreciate the naunces of Ryu vs Dhalsim a hundred times over Ibuki vs Viper. Both as a spectator and a player.

4324

Third Strike Japan Dan rankings for the upper levels aka “Big Boys”/Guys you see in videos

25 Chun
24 Yun
25 Ken
6 Makoto
18 Dudley
17 Yang
12 Gouki
18 Urien

a lot less for other characters after that. a result of having a pretty balanced top 8 but ugly matchups after that I think. anyway that’s not altogether different from what we’re seeing from SF4. like if you say “take out all the crappy SF3 and 4 characters, and show us a player distribution for the remaining characters” I bet you get kinda similar arcs across both games. though 3S is probably heavier on the top 8, and SF4 probably spreads a bit deeper. But I don’t think it’s that different.

I dunno, I just periodically see comparisons to 3S in these discussions and I’m really not convinced the balance is as far apart as people here would expect. Especially if AE 2012 had time to develop and wasn’t going to be patched again soon.

4325

Cammy:
Chi-Rithy, Banbaban, Alioune, Xiaohai, Acqua, KBrad, Dakou, Kindevu.

Fei Long:
Fuudo, Mago, Ryukichikun, Kindo, and well behind them but a strong player none the less - CJ Truth

Seth:
Online Tony, Poongko, Dashio, Kindevu, Kazunoko (not so much anymore for these last 2 I think Kindevu is mostly Cammy now and I KNOW Kaz is 90% Yun.)

Yun:
Hsien Chang, Kazunoko, Xiaohai(he plays a lot of characters lol.)

Sakura:
ChrisG, Uryo, Humanbomb, Juso

Akuma:
Infiltration, Eita, Tokido, -6, aaannnnd that’s really it for him. Mostly Infiltration and Tokido more than anyone else.

Sagat:
Bonchan, Ryan Hart, Mago, Super Santaroman, Sanford Kelly

As you can see, I can get 4-5 with a wopping 8 for Cammy lol (I could get more, but I don’t think LPN is quite on the same level as those listed.)

4326

For Seth players there is also Roxas-Seth who participates in Topanga B league. In America other than Online Tony we have BKNY Mike G who plays Seth at a high level. Both of these players are competitive players, also I don’t know if HIROPON still plays, he was kind of a lame Seth.

Sagat is quite popular, we have Ryan Hart, Sanford Kelly, Bonchan and Super Santarouman who are all extremely good players.

4327

Now who even plays Abel in tournaments? lol

4328

I’d rather list Popi?

#LivingInJapan

4329

I can only think of like… 2. Nekojita and… I guess Rico Suave if he counts lol.

“Rather” why not list him IN ADDITION? KBrad is strong enough to list IMO. Honestly I only didn’t list Popi because I totally forgot about him. He is really good but very poorly exposed to the general populace. He needs a better agent lol.

4330

Come on igloo, we’ve been over this shit before. “Dan rankings” means nothing. We are discussing strong players and tournament appearances. There is only 3 Ryus in the top 100 for the Japanese arcade BP list of SF4 but there is 4 Adon. Does that mean there are more strong Adon players showing up to japanese tournaments than strong Ryu players? Or does it just mean that there are more Adons who have ground out the hours in the arcade that happens to be part of the ranking system?

There is FIVE Dhalsims in top 100, does that mean that he is stronger than the ONE Makoto?

To even moreso enforce my point that there is a CLEAR dominance of Chun/Yun in 3S more than any point in SF4s history (Even the Vanilla days.)

Evo 2003
Top 8 - 3 chuns 2 yuns
Evo 2004
top 8 - 2 chuns 1 yun
Evo 2005
top 8 - 5Chuns 2 Yuns
Evo 2006
Top 8 - 3 Chuns 4Yuns
Evo 2007
Top 8 - 4 Chuns 0 Yuns Gasp
Evo 2008
Top 8 - 5Chuns 2 Yuns
Evo 2009
2v2 Teams Top 8 - 4 different teams had a Chun, 2 had a Yun (Both teams with a Yun were Chun/Yun including the team that ultimately won the whole thing)

25th anniversary tournament series
Austin
Top 8 - 3 Chuns
NYC
Top 8 - 4 Chuns 1 Yun 3 Yangs
Brazil
Top 4 - 1 Chun 1 Yun
LA
Top 8 - 3 Chun 3 Yun
Paris
Top 8 - 0 Chuns! :O! 1 Yun
England
Note: Only 5 of the top 8 had characters listed in the logs
1 Chun 2 Yuns
Grand Finals
Top 8 - 3 Chuns 2 Yuns

4331

Keoma- Abel from Brazil is really good, but Abel is losing ground.
Also ChuChu - Sakura shouldn´t be forgotten.

What is with Machabo(Fei)?

4332

I just don’t see the point in using American 3S tournaments and saying “you’ll see 3 Chuns in top 8” like it means anything. yes in America where we were always bad at the game and only a small handful of Japanese players came, the top 8s looked silly and you could use it as a balance comparison for SF4. but Japan is where the top level of play was so we should use that if we’re going to say anything at all. I assume no one wants to use single elim or team tournaments so Dan leagues (which require consistent play against top level competition) make the most sense when gauging character strength in that game.

you can’t “grind out the hours” in Dan rankings the same way. if you win against strong competition you move up the rankings. if you lose, you move back down. I didn’t post character stats for lower levels where that might be a thing. anyone in that upper echelon is really good at the game. if Japan was running American style tournaments for 3S with 2/3 double elim singles then we could make a direct comparison, but they don’t so you have to use the closest neighbor from a consistency standpoint.

edit: just saw your edit with tournament results. yeah if you’re going to use results from outside Japan it doesn’t mean much. you can make a strong argument that American tournaments matter with SF4 and we have really great players that compete with anyone from Japan. you could never at any point have made that argument for American 3S. it’s just silly to even bring it up.

btw 25th anniversary was played on laggy monitors on an inaccurate console port comprised of qualifiers from mostly outside Japan. again, doesn’t mean a whole lot.

4333

EVERY SINGLE winner of SBO had a Chun and all but ONE had a Yun as part of the team.

Shadoloo Showdown 2012
Top 8 - 3 Chuns 2 Yuns

Co-Op Cup 5v5 Same Character x5 pre-cup tournament
Top 16 - 3 Chun teams 2 Yun teams.
Won by: A chun team. 2nd place a yun team 3rd place a yun team.

The fact is that the majority of Japan tournaments of 3rd strike are team based so you can’t use that data to equate INDIVIDUAL strength because they are almost ALWAYS required to limit the character choice. The “closest neighbor” thing isn’t good either when the closest neighbor isn’t remotely the same.

4334

25th anniversary tournament had 6 characters in the 3S Top8. For a three-character-game, that looks pretty solid?

4335

No one said that you couldn’t play other characters, or even WIN with other characters. That doesn’t mean that Chun and Yun aren’t clearly head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of strength. The fact is that the system mechanics themselves especially allow for a very strong player to win even with a weaker character. There are some damn good character specialists or in the case of players like Nuki or MOV 3rd strike specialists who just fucking can play anyone they want and dominate.

My point is that the gap between Chun/Yun/Makoto/Ken - everyone else. Is SIGNIFICANTLY larger than ANY top tier and the mid tier has been in the history of SF4. That and you simply can’t use the arcade rankings to gauge how popular in the tournament scene a character is or how many strong players represent them regularly.

4336

Ryukichikun and Kindo are good but easily a tier down by a fair margin. For Sagat Bonchan pretty much owns him. There are actually a lot of good Sagat players but I’d put that down to him being one of the most popular characters in the game and Japan. Also Sagat isn’t top tier.

I dunno, even a lot of those names seem like scraping the barrel when you get towards the 4th name on the list. I guess what I’m trying to say is that of the very high level players the spread is fairly good.

4337

oops I just realized this is the tier list thread and not the rebalance request thread. I think rebalance request seems to be more the “general discussion” thread while the tier list thread I should probably try to keep clear of my off topic posts haha. apologies to all. I’ve copied my post into a notepad document, maybe we can continue the discussion in PM or something. it’s interesting to me but probably isn’t useful for the thread and I doubt most of you want to read it anyway!

4338

Top 8 at Sf 25th anniversary for 3S was:

  1. Chun
  2. Chun
  3. Yun
  4. Yun
  5. Chun
  6. Yang
  7. Urien
  8. Dudley

Anyway, we’ve been through this before. David Sirlin called 3S one of the most broken games ever. Agreed or not, he is a top player who also designed games and balanced hdr. Tournament results shows a hyperdominance of Chun Li and Yun. Tier lists shows Yun and chun having several 8-2 matchups (Arcadia magazine tier list put Yun with 6 - 8-2 matches).
And Japan has only team tournaments. Kuroda won Tougeki by playing Oro, but in his tema were Mov (Chun), and Boss (Yun).

4339

MOV played Chun AND Ken. That makes 6 characters. Chun, Ken, Yun, Yang, Urien, Dudley. His statement wasn’t incorrect at all.

4340

He only counterpicked with Ken in the grand final. And my point was that Sf25th anniversary top 8 would much rather reinforce the idea that 3S is a chun-yun affair, than an argument for how balanced the game is.

But, anyway, that’s completelly off topic.

Regarding the character popularity, I made several statistics at some point. The truth is, is very difficult to acuratelly decide which characters are popular, and which not. You take into consideration only the best of the best, or you consider lower level, too ? You you include Kurokiba/Ixion, even if they never made into a top 8 ? Or you only consider top 8 players ? And what kind of tournaments you consider - everything, or only majors ? and how do you define majors ? How about players like Ex Mamehara, that showed at SS in 2012, but then disapeared ? How about Japan ? Nekojita might be the best Abel, but he never played in solo tournaments.Etc, etc…

If we consider “high level of play” (however we would define this), I would say that the most popular characters are: Cammy, Ryu, Viper, Akuma, Sagat, Bison.

The least popular would be: Hakan, Dan, Juri, Dudley, Hawk, Dee Jay.