I was actually thinking more about Cable, but yeah.
That works too. I was just citing another example of how ease of use can influence tiering.
God, I don’t know how anyone can even think its anything but a characters performance in tournaments. What else could it really be? Its not like a council of Japanese players sits around once a year and decides on the current tiering of each fighting game. This kind of stuff is called theory fighter. I think a lot of people don’t understand that tiers are based off tournament performance, so when they hear what the tiers are in a game, they start to justify it to themselves arbitrarily, and end up having some made up idea of what makes a character good. Think about it, stuff like ease of use and inherent strengths are subjective. How many scrubs have you seen claim x bottom tier character is underrated and is actually solid mid tier. They have a higher opinion of that characters abilities, so, from their perspective, they have decent inherent strengths, but that character still does the worst in tournaments.
There are simply too many factors that go into making a character good for anyone to be able to tell if a character will be good before they see how they do in tournaments. The only reason you know that these characters have these inherent strengths is because you’ve seen people kicking ass with them in tournaments.
Tournament performance doesn’t always change the way people look at a character. You never have match videos without a few people saying the Chun player sucked or that the Hugo player was simply more skilled. In 3S, parrying has been made a scapegoat for outcomes nobody would anticipate because it’s something every character can do. It’s not the act of parrying that’s important to a character, it’s what they can do after each attack they parry, as well as what they can do to bait parry attempts.
Another thing,
Almost everyone believes inherent strengths determine results. But when you say there are too many factors, you’re enforcing the idea that those factors don’t count toward inherent strengths and that tiers are built on results only, not how the results are achieved.
Well, I enjoy playing Necro and Sean in 3s and Ky in #R. I’ve always known they sucked, that’s why I play Chun, Ken, and Makoto in 3s and Sol or Eddy in #R. I still play Necro more than Chun, though, because he’s so fun to play even when I lose. Some people pick characters regardless of their own opinion of the char’s strength, just becuase they can. lol
inherent strengths is the most important, because it determines tournament performance logically.
ease of use is also important, but not as important as inherent strengths either. Yun is harder to use than ken and chun, but he also has more inherent strengths than them. So while ken and chun may be played more, yun is still better.
Inherent strengths leads to ease of use. Chun having 2 bars for SA2 is an inherent strength. Having 2 bars for SA2 makes it easier to win, because 2 supers + 1 st.hp = death. Also, it’s an inherent strength that she has 4 years to hit confirm her super.
Inherent Strength and Ease of Use go hand in hand. If a character has domineering traits but only with certain leagues of dexterity and skill (like easy to start but hard to do Cyke infinite for example) then that potential exceeds the majority and thus doesn’t have any true worth in the metagame. So ease of use is also essential into tiering.
yes and no, there are different types of inherent strengths, c.mk into super is an easier one, effectively utilizing genei jin is a more difficult one. both are inherent strengths, just some are more difficult to use properly.
Do we really need a tier thread every other week?
But you can only realize those strengths after knowing how the character faired in a tournament. When you say a characters tier placement is based on their inherent strength as opposed to their tournament performance, this implies that you ranked that character high completely independent of their tournament performance. But how would you really ever know that geneijin is a powerful tool until you see it in action? It only seems obvious to you guys that geneijin is an inherent strength because you know this thing does well in tournaments. When you first started playing 3s, I doubt any of knew the tier placements just by playing the game by yourself. Only be seeing pro players use these characters in tournament situations is it proved that those characters are any good.
You really have to determine tier placement by tournament results because this speculation about a characters inherent strengths is all subjective. Certainly you guys can be correct about your tier placement, because everyone has seen the accepted tier lists, and has seen tournament results, but if you sat a bunch of people around who had not seen either, they would all have different ideas of what characters are top tier. If there was someone who thought Chun wasn’t that great and is just mid tier, could you ever prove them wrong just by trying to tell them how great sa2 is, or could you prove them wrong by showing that 3 Chun players made it to top8 at evo?
Then that brings up another question. Are tiers fixated more on characters or practicality?
There are traits that go well beyond the extreme. I just don’t think infinites are among them because some top-tiers are infamous for how they benefit from them, namely A3’s V-characters. The potency of an infinite is the same regardless of dexterity or skill that’s needed. While the majority can’t do infinites, they’ve still been proven to exist so it’s not impossible to learn them, however long that might take.
On the other hand, you have traits like Iori’s RC command grab. Everyone knows how nasty it could be. But no one has ever been able to find a precise input to perform it without entering commands for his other QC-moves that conflict with it. It’s purely accidental when someone does RC it.
Doesn’t this sentiment reflect one of the very questions about tiering?
Tiering is often described as based upon the disadvantages and advantages at the current top level of gameplay.
If 99.9% of people cannot perform a move/combo/strategy because it is too difficult, should it be a factor in tiering? If tiering is after all the top level of known gameplay, and 0.1% of people find it within their ability, shouldn’t it be a factor?
If so, what if those 0.1% are mostly people that for one reason or another just aren’t winning tournaments? (Perhaps most of the players with the ability are using other characters.)
If not, where is the baseline? What constitutes “adequate” ability to be a factor?
If a strategy is powerful enough that it could shake up the entire game of opposing players, but almost no one can implement it, and thus everyone else doesn’t bother to adapt, is it a factor?
Though I hate to use SFIII as an example, how small would the hit confirm window have to be for Chun Li’s SA2 before it dropped her rating? Should it drop if the time was cut in half? A quarter? Presumably it would drop if the ability to hit confirm was removed entirely, so what percentage of people at what skill level need to be able to execute it?
Questions like that lead to people questioning just what tiers really mean, in addition to how they are determined.
Tournaments are just one of many places that display various character strengths, but it doesn’t mean that someone who wins a tournament (or places well) absolutely must be using top tier characters, which is why you can’t use rankings in a tournament to dictate tiers. I’m sure you could find plenty of examples of mid-tier or even low-tier characters that won a tournament or placed high (like in 3S, where KSK placed 3rd with Alex and Evo one year, I think).
If you want to prove the strength of Chun Li, no, you don’t point to Evo. You pick her, you play her game, and show exactly why she’s so strong. The strengths are in her moves and tactics, they are right there in the game, and they don’t require a tournament to be used.
think of it like this, if someone consistantly wins tournaments with a low tier character, does it make that character better? no. theoretically, tiers do no factor in player skill, merely the characters inherent strengths. there may be more alexes or even q’s than elenas placing in many big tourneys, but does that make elena inferior to q? no. especially in america, where the level of skill with certain characters isnt as high as it is in japan, “worse” characters (re: chun, although not by much) may win more american tourneys than “better” characters (re: yun). and the same thing happens in japan, granted their tourneys’ formats favor lower tiers winning.
the point im trying to make is, there will always be people who win with lesser characters in tourneys, but that does not make the lesser characters any better.
its time the constitutes tiers
IMHO it goes like this
(games released)
(opinions form) (like initially blackheart and doom are top tier in mvc2)
(tournaments) (opinions change due to results and strategies getting B-B-ROKE)
(Bullshit) (console version released resulting in more experimentation)
(more tourneys)
(more bullshit)X N
tiers are formed
That doesn’t make any sense. If from day 1 elena was dominating every major tournament, and not even CKY could touch her, would you still be sitting around saying “those players are good, but elena sucks.” No one would be saying that, because if a character can dominate every major tourney, it is obvious that the character is good enough to do so, especially considering most winning players pick the character with the greatest chance to win. The point is, those low tiers never will start to dominate tourneys until someone discovers some hidden potential that causes them to win. The reason they are low tier is because they don’t win tournaments.
Also, I am speaking in general terms here. Everyone is aware that from time to time, a mid/low tier does well in a tournament, but compare 1 good tournament placement to a consistent good tournament placement, and its obvious which character is high tier, and what characters’ player just had a really good day.
well you dont seem to realize the fact that the characters inherent strengths can exist outside of tournament play, or competitive play at all. regardless of whats at steak, the characters are still the same, good or bad. tiers exist outside of tournaments.
I do realize that, but I also realize without hard data from tournament results, its all subjective speculation. If you didn’t have tournament results the tier listings would end up looking quite different. Its not as painfully obvious that any character is as good as they are until you see them in action.
I don’t know if you ever saw the “Most Underrated Characters” thread a while back, but everyone was just listing every low tier character they’ve seen featured in a combo video and saying they are at least mid tier. I don’t know how many fucking times I’ve heard Sean is really mid tier in 3s. This is what happens when you base tiers on inherent strengths. Everyone has a different idea of what makes a character good, and how important that is to a characters game. You can’t have any absolute tier listings unless you go by actual tournament results.
I voted #3 cause it’s true.