What REALLY constitutes tiers?

It seems some people have a different idea of what places a character in a certain tier. I notice this in almost every debate I get into, and it makes the subject more complicated than it has to be. So what do you believe justifies a character’s standing?

lol, drunk cause of enw year seve.

er… voeted on a random buton.

it’s not esase of use tho. it’sa what the top characetr has over all the oethr ones.

The first option is a bit weird. Do you mean status in a single tournament, ala if players that use character A were higher ranked than players with character B, or do you mean the overall outcome of every tournament?

The second option is just plain wrong. Heck; some people pick low-tiered characters beacause they’re low tier. Doesn’t make them any better. Selecting frequency has nothing to do with tiers, imo.

“inherent strenght”? What the hell does that mean? Do you mean wich one has the potential to do the most damage or something? Or do you mean stuff that only that character can use but is very good?

Ease of use shouldn’t determine what character is better, and sometimes it depends on what you mean by that. You could mean characters who can be used easily or characters that can win easily (I’m guessing the latter, though).

what makes tiers is a characters ability or inability to perform in various situations.

That’s not what I think either. But I thought that would make be a good option because some people prefer stupid-easy ways of landing BIG damage instead of mixup patterns that could negate all that.

The overall outcome.

I agree. But don’t get me wrong, every character’s playable to a degree. It just seems word of mouth is a significant factor when it comes to selection. And some believe that a low-tier’s in a sound place when it has yet to be proven through selection and adequate play alone.

I should’ve worded it better. Refer to m1x4h’s post.

That’s a good distinction you made there. But I see those intermingled a lot though.
Even then, sometimes a character can win easily and sometimes can’t regardless of tier. Depends on the circumstances.

Aye. Advantages/disadvantages each character has when compared to the rest of the game’s roster right?

Course, I list tiers according to how cool they look.

Well, I’m thinking more like “advantages/disadvantages each character has in each matchup + consistency.”

One of the biggest issues regarding tiers, ease of use vs ease of win.

Another issues I see with tiers is, where do you draw the line between a player’s skill and matchup analysis? Tiers can be misleading based on these two criteria. There’s something else that I’m thinking of but I can’t seem to put it into words right now. But I’m sure someone can go over this in more detail.

I don’t think player skill should count. Because if you’re skilled ENOUGH, you can play any character the way they’re supposed to be played, and that always makes a difference.

Why would you even include ease of use? You get these characters who are a bitch to play as, and a bigger bitch to learn, like Yun (3S), Eddie (#R) and all these other top tier characters and you put ease of use up there? For shame.

Your momma. She helps me with all the tiering.

That’s the whole point.

…I think you missed the point. There are many, many top tier characters who are quite difficult to play with effectively. In that way, I do not believe that “ease of use” is worthy of being placed in any consideration of tiering.

Tell that to the people who voted for it but didn’t explain why.

Anyway I can’t really distinguish between tournament status and inherent strengths. I figured that ultimately, the inherent strengths will cause the better characters to be more consistent and therefore perform better in tournaments (over a long period of time). Which as far as I know is the process that tiers are based on. When you said “advantages/disadvantages each character has in each matchup + consistency” that’s basically what I’m thinking.

So I didn’t vote.

And the popularity thing. How the hell would that effect the tiering? I mean, how many people pick Ryu/Akuma in 3S? Are they high-tier? Hell no. How many people pick Ky in #R? More than enough to make him non-crappy on the tier list. But nope. He’s, in fact, quite low tier.

More importantly, I think it needs to be pointed out that the only thing that’s actually IN the game is the strengths. Which is what really matters.

Yes, there are many that are difficult to play, but not all of them are. (CvS2/ST)
And some lower tiered characters are tougher to use than the hardest top-tiers. What I’m getting at is this: unless a character is recognized as top-tier, nobody will play him. But if nobody plays him, how would we know if he truly IS low/mid tier?

Think of it like this: Do you choose on the basis of what you know from your own analyses or do you go by what people tell you?

I would agree with you except we don’t get to see every conceivable matchup in tournament play, let alone at peak performance for each character.

That’s just not true.

Firstly, there are enough tough top-tier characters to offset the issue of whether it actually affects tiers.

Secondly, there are always people who play as every character.

Thirdly, people play as them BEFORE THE TIER LISTS EVEN COME OUT. There are plenty of beastly players for every character in Accent Core. They’re playing and God knows who the top tiers are in that.

Nakoruru’s a difficult character to play compared to CvS2’s top five, but I’ve played very competent Nako players who frequently get in your face and pressure you to death with jabs and bird mixups. Her frame advantage is the best, and I know this for a fact. From personal observation, that’s enough to beat at least 4 of the 5 top-tiers in the game and she’s virtually one of the few characters who can operate well in any groove (yes, that includes S-Groove, but I’m not turning this into another S-Groove debate; I want to keep this on topic).

How many people play her? Maybe 2 out of 20? I don’t know, but she’s not getting nearly as much attention as Yama/Hibiki/Eagle/Ken and so on. She’s still largely considered a low/mid-tier, but why? I haven’t heard one valid statement that didn’t concern her low vitality or lack of RCs (both of which are moot because some top-tiers have the same issues and Nako particularly doesn’t need RCs). If you put CvS1 into context, I think any good Nako player would agree she hasn’t been toned down that much.

The only question I have is, what’s the selection ratio?

But there’s no denying that when the tier lists do come out, it affects choice. I’m not going to argue if it’s a smart way to choose; it’s your right to choose however you bloody please. But it’s not like your chances at winning are greatly improved because you picked a top-tier anyway. I for one have been more successful without them.

I’m tired. I’m gonna hit the sack and drop in later.
Happy New Years

I think ease of use does affect a character’s tiering. I mean, let’s take 3S for example. Pretty much any character can make you whiff something and then do a half-life punish, but look how easy it is for SA2 Chun to just destroy you on a consistent basis.

^ I agree. And then there’s Sheik in SSBM. For the longest time, she was at the top of the tier list because she could dominate the majority of the cast with little effort. And she is REALLY easy to use when you compare her to the space animals. She has dropped to being 3rd now but that’s still pretty damn high for such a character that’s easy to use.