^^ great summary.
So basically, it a close match. Very little advantage either way.
Ryu: 5.5-4.5
Ken: 5-5
Guile: 6-4
Honda: 7.5-2.5
Dhalsim: 6-4
Chun-Li: 4.5-5.5
Zangief: 5-5
Blanka: 6.5-3.5
Boxer: 6-4
Sagat: 6.5-3.5
Claw: 7-3
Dictator: 4-6
Cammy: 7.5-3.5
DeeJay: 6.5-3.5
Fei Long: 6.5-3.5
Thought this seemed like Hawk’s most accurate match-up list Thelo.
Actually you got mine reversed. I gave it 6-4 in Boxer’s favor.
No way, that match is at least 7-3. Might even be 8-2, that’s how stupid that match up is.
Oops, you’re right! I must have made a mixup somewhere, the rating I put was specifically intended to be based on your earlier chart.
Deejay vs Balrog
Homer Pimpson: 5-5
Tschesae: 4-6
BruceLB: 4-6
Eventhubs guy: 5-5
#Original chart rating: 6-4 (typo)
##Proposed chart rating: 4-6
Edit: JigglyNorris, does this mean that you stand behind your earlier ratings and don’t agree with Gridman’s ratings?
Fei vs Cammy is about even in my opinion, but I can see a small advantage for Cammy.
She’s usually on the offensive with safe cannon drills and hooligan throws when I fight her. Rekkas can be stopped by one of her crouching kicks, and chicken wing whiffs often. But light kick and standing fierce works well against many of her attacks. A baited cannon spike or super from cammy = easy punish.
So 4.5-5.5 sounds about right in Cammy’s favor.
I do see it a little worse for Fei than 4-6 against Ryu and 5-5 Sagat. Just my opinion though.
Just wondering, did you mean 6.5-3.5 or 5.5-4.5?
I didn’t see his ratings, but those are the ratings I believe in.
@Fei-DJ: 7-3 or even 8-2 might be possible. I have no experience with top Fei players so just take Bruce’s and Afrolegends’ (if shares them) ratings.
One thing I think we need to establish before this continues.
I know that the numbers are supposed to represent, in 10 matches, how many each character would win with both being played at a very high level.
The problem is that it’s still open to interpretation because, at this point, those numbers have lost their true meaning and have become something of an “avatar” for quality rating. I’ve noticed this because I’ve seen many instances in the past where I state a match is 6-4, and the person responds, “No way is the match that much in the <6 character>'s advantage!”
To me, 6-4 is damn near even. But a TINY edge goes to the 6 character. 7-3 is a match where the 7 character has the advantage, but the fight is still winnable by the 3. And 8-2 is where the match starts becoming one of those “8 totally has an advantage against 2” matches. And 9-1 is the fights that feel nigh impossible, that the 1 character can win usually only if the 9 character makes a really bad mistake or the 1 makes a really good guess. And 10-0 is Honda Vs. Cammy.
But I’ve seen other people treat 8-2 as what I consider 10-0. I’ve seen people consider 6-4 what I consider 8-2. I agree with Damdai… I hate fractions. Because then people tend to rate, what I think is a 6-4, as 5.5-4.5.
So before we move on and continue with averaging out people’s rankings, we should really determine what the numbers mean. Either that, or just change it to a straight up numbers thing, where we just assign what 9, 8, 7, etc. should mean. At this point, the ACTUAL concept that “6-4” or “8-2” represents is lost. So we should really establish what the numbers “mean” in a representative way. Otherwise, BruceLB could be saying DeeJay vs. Feilong is 8-2 for DeeJay and someone else could argue that it’s 7-3, but they really mean almost the same thing.
- James
I personally think DJ-Boxer is 4.5-5.5 in Boxer’s favor. He has a lot of tools to get around or trade with FBs, most crossups can be counter-thrown, and Boxer and keep DK out.
6-4 to me means “Clearly winnable by both sides, but person A has an obvious advantage that can make things tricky sometimes”. 7-3 to me is “Okay, it might be hard, but all I need is that one opening and its over. The trouble is finding it…”. Any fight that’s 8-2 means you need to win mostly off of guessing right (although the fight is still totally winnable).
Edit: Btw it was good seeing you in “I Got Next”, James.
Well yeah, of course it’s open to interpretation. Different players have different skill levels and different playstyles. I’m not too sure what you’re trying to say, though. “Quality rating” and the number of matches that two theoretical high level players would win are basically the same thing here.
For instance, I put Honda vs Deejay as 3.5 - 6.5. That’s both a statement that “Honda is disadvantaged against Deejay” and a statement that “If I play against a really good Deejay player, I expect him to win about twice as many games as I do”. I don’t really see the contradiction here.
In defense of fraction numbers, I think they’re useful as comparison tools. For instance, I think that there is a clear difficulty ramp-up when Honda has to fight Guile, then Deejay, then Ryu - or Zangief, then Cammy, then Blanka. Without the .5 part, two of the three would appear to be of equal difficulty. I think the nuance they let us give to the ratings is more important than the fact that they’re slightly harder to read at first glance.
Incidentally, I definitely disagree that Honda vs Cammy (or any non-Akuma matchup, really) is 10-0 in this game. There are astonishingly few dedicated Cammy players in general, so it’s hard to rate, but I never feel that I have free wins against her, and am more afraid of her than I am of Zangief or T. Hawk, for instance. Her vertical MP, reaction thrust kick, safe cannon drills, and low forward -> hooligan throw are all perfectly legitimate tools she has in that matchup.
Honda can’t just block forever because if he does, he’ll just be chipped to death by drills, and the counters to drills are non-trivial. Drills frequently trade with, and sometimes beat, HHS. Then when Honda has life disadvantage, it’s also very non-trivial to beat Cammy doing vertical jumping MP -> reaction thrust kick (and more drills).
I know you haven’t played a lot of HD Remix Cammy so maybe your example wasn’t the best. If you want an unfair matchup, though, I think Honda vs T. Hawk is a good example - in my opinion, it’s the most lopsided non-Akuma matchup in the game. Here Honda really can hold down-back for most of the match with little consequences if he can jab headbutt Hawk’s dives on reaction.
But I do lose even this lopsided, unfair matchup maybe 20% of the time against T. Hawk player JigglyNorris, for instance, because even here Hawk can force a guess from Honda. He can walk forward, then either throw or DP. He can barely whiff a jumping jab, then do that mixup (whiffed jump jab -> DP is not headbuttable and Honda will get hit by the DP). He can do a real jump jab that hits, then do typhoon or super. Then when he has life advantage, he can retreat and do low jabs to force Honda to come to him (so he can dive or tick -> typhoon again).
I rate this matchup as Honda 8 - 2 Hawk, which is my strongest rating in this game, and I think it’s valid both as a “quality rating” (Honda has strong advantage) and as a prediction tool (Honda player will win 4x as much as Hawk player will).
Jiggly, just as a heads-up, your ratings have a bunch of numbers that don’t add up to 10 (like 7.5-3.5 or 6.5-4.5).
you can remove my vote for chun vs hawk, thelo – I don’t feel that I’ve played enough hawk players to really weigh in intelligently.
Oh crap lol. Sorry I’ll fix that.
I mean that two people may have the EXACT same opinion about a match up, yet one calls it 8-2 and the other calls it 6-4 because they’re interpretation of the NUMBERS, not the match up, are different.
The reason why I think we should “name” what the numbers mean is to alleviate that problem. As I said, in some of the SFIV boards, people list bad match ups as 6-4. That’s not a bad match up to me at all. That’s not even CLOSE to being a bad match up. So I’m just afraid a lot of people here are debating when they actually agree.
And there are some people who definitely jump to hyperbole more than others. Myself being one of them. Which is why I think match-ups actually CAN be 9-1, whereas some people don’t believe such a match exists ANYWHERE in HDR (not counting Akuma).
Actually, this kinda helps my argument against fractions. The reason I don’t like .5’s is because, at this point, you’re splitting hairs. Guile and Dee Jay may have a slight difference between them in terms of how hard it is for Honda to win, but at that point SO MANY factors come into play that there’s little reason to even worry about the fractions. Because, let’s face it, tier listing is for the GENERAL concept of SF. So at that point, the difference between a 6-4 and a 5.5-4.5 is going to largely be out of your control: it’ll be dependent on who you are playing, how good your opponent is, if he just happened to face a different Honda and is wired a different way, how you are feeling at the time, if you are in the zone or not, etc. etc. I know tier lists are generally based on the PEAK play of characters, assuming that everyone is perfect, but that’s what I hate about Economics. It’s all about “This is how markets work given that the 9 gazillion real world factors are taken out of the equation.” It’s just not gonna happen. So to me, if Guile is a tad bit harder than Dee Jay or vice-versa, I’ll call it even because at that point, the difference is virtually moot.
Yeah, I do too. I was making a bad joke that apparently didn’t come off properly. I’ll have to use the lame internet excuse of: “Guess I shoulda added a smiley to that.” Even I admit that the fight is better than it was in ST (though in VST, I honestly am close to believing the fight is 10-0… maybe 9.5-0.5 
). The fight is far more winnable for Cammy than it was before. Still not easy by any means, but nowhere near as bad as it was before.
Again, just for the record, Cammy is easily better in HDR than she was in ST. The reason I barely use her anymore is because 1) I play her too much in SFIV, so I’ll be trying to Dive Kick everywhere in HDR and think Drills combo from any ranged Low Forward. 2) A LOT of my strategy with Cammy revolved around her safe DP and her Jump Strong, the two ONLY nerfs that she received in the game (I’m not even joking… I think the entire crux of my gameplan vs. Guile and Chun Li revolved around exactly those two moves). So really, Cammy is just foreign to me now in HDR and trying to use her just… is painful. Yes, it’s more a mental thing than a technical one, but I have to use someone else in the game these days. Just imagine if Honda’s Jab Headbutt was no longer safe and you abused the hell out of it in VST. It’s be really hard to keep using Honda because you have to change everything you knew about him.
- James
5-5 = even
6-4 = slight advantage
7-3 = advantage
8-2 = big advantage
9-1 = unfair advantage
10-0 = impossible
Do you really need 5 more classifications using halves?
Excellent point intangiBLZ. It’s one of those things that people tend to forget. I know I did.
Totally agreed.
Love it. And, no.
As for ratings with decimals, the reason I’m against them is because when you say 6.5, that actually means “out of 10 matches, this character would win 6 and 1/2 matches”. It’s not possible to win half a match. If you mean the character winning 1 round and losing 2, that’s still a loss, not a win. So a .5 rating is not only confusing, it’s also unnecessary IMO.
Well, if you consider the numbers relative to each other, 5-5 means you’re even and 7-3 already means you’re winning over twice as many matches as your opponent. So you don’t think there’s more than 1 matchup categorization in-between that range?
niiiice post
I like it. Simple and easy to remember.
There is. It’s 6-4.