Should a tier list exist in games?

[zaseo]

Should people make tier in games such as ssbb, pokemon, tekken etc? In many games it will bring up a fight that will never end. I think in any game that everyone is balance yet unbalance. There are strong points and flaws in anyone that you pick. Since everyone thinks, and plays different base on there own skills is tier lists really need. In SSB games most tourneys are won by high tiers. In Melee most touney winners pick Fox, Falco, Shiek, or Marth. They were over used in many rounds.
SSBB Tiers
1. Meta Knight 2. Snake 3. Wario 4. Falco 5. Diddy Kong 6. King Dedede 7. Marth 8. Mr. Game & Watch 9. Pikachu 10. Olimar 11. Ice Climbers 12. R.O.B. 13. Kirby 14. Lucario 15. Zero Suit Samus 16. Toon Link 17. Pit 18. Donkey Kong 19. Peach 20. Luigi 21. Fox 22. Wolf 23. Sonic 24. Sheik 25. Bowser 26. Zelda 27. Pokémon Trainer 28. Ike 29. Lucas 30. Mario 31. Ness 32. Yoshi 33. Samus 34. Jigglypuff 35. Captain Falcon 36. Link 37. Ganondorf
I don't think Meta Knight is that powerful. I think that skilled players can beat him.
In Pokemon is another example. In finals likely many will use legendaries, or overused pokemon like Dragonnite.
If a Dot Hack game where others can play each other in pvp is made you know there would be complains about the metagame of each class.
Tiers will ruin a game.
Well after these examples I want to see everyones opinions.

[TheSorrow]

My opinion: The word "tier" along with it's whole meaning is overrated.
People will play games, find out who they're better with, find weakness and flaws, find the flaws of others, and finally choose the character most balanced and powerful for them. The only problem is that like 60% of the people will come to the same conclusion about such characters, and so, such characters will be called "cheap" and "tiers" because they have the most effectiveness with the less flaws. But well, it's not like the creators wanted those characters to be the best...they made everyone with flaws and uses, it's just the people figuring out strategies and new people copying the strategies because they're powerful and easy to pull off that causes the "tiers" to be created.

And it happens everywhere, such like in MGS4 with everyone using M4 because it's the cheapest weapon with the highest power and accuracy, and i'll never forget when 8 out of 10 Yugioh TCG players used the very same Dark Armed Dragon deck for months, but that's just how it is, and you should expect people to try to win the most powerful/cheap/top tier strategy because all they want to do is win. It can be bothersome a lot of times, but that's just how it is, and if you want to blame someone, don't blame the characters, blame the players who are so "original" just to win. As of myself, i just get used to it and play with whatever i feel like, and focus more on actual skill rather than "who gets the cheapest one"

[Avatar_Crim]

tiers should not exist. Especially in the Super Smash Bros. Brawl world.

I mean some of the better characters are in the lowest tiers, yet, meta knight manages to get top? i mean i can see someone using olimar or yoshi to beat a meta knight no problem. It all just depends on the person using them. I have a friend who believes marth is the best character because he can use spikes and such others. of course i dont believe that, because i beat him using lucas all the time. its just strategy.

i believe and have seen every character being used equally. I dont believe there are characters that are much better than others. The only difference i can see between characters is how well a person knows a character and plays, and of course if there are items to help that person.

Im pretty sure the developers didnt create certain characters to be better than others. Each character has its pros and cons.

eh.. that was prolly all nonsense i bet, but its how my opinions are including that i dont believe in tiers but in the strategy and the ability to adapt to your opponents playing styles.


which reminds me, if anyone wants to play some brawl, send a pm with brawl code or something and ill send ya mine

[nobodyknows]

I only have one thing to say on this matter:

"Silly Zaseo. Tiers R 4 Queers!"

[zaseo]

I only have one thing to say on this matter:

"Silly Zaseo. Tiers R 4 Queers!"

So true that why I say tiers ruin the game. LOL I remember that from Brawl Taunts. Any can own anyone in games such as Tekken SSB Pokemon Soul Calibur etc. I hate how the best limit there options to the top in battle like when I watch some Pokemon Battle Revolution battles I see to many online battles on Youtube with legendaries.

[Avatar_Crim]

I only have one thing to say on this matter:

"Silly Zaseo. Tiers R 4 Queers!"

of course, it all makes sense now brawl taunts has enlightened the world that we must stop that non sense.

[Erranty]

Tiers are just personal opinions from players who consider themselves experts because they can kick all their friends' a**es with the 4 characters they know how to use.

SSBB was a nice game, and some of the characters were overbalanced. But each character has a unique strategy that the player has to learn to make use of.

Metaknight is a great character, his attacks are amazingly fast, he juggles people with ease, and can send someone flying quite easily. But he isn't very good against ranged attacks, or attacks from below. Marth & Ike's counter does wonders on him. And he has some serious trouble with characters that move around a lot because he's mostly close range.

Sonic is good in his own way too, though most would say he's weak, and his only ally is the smash orb. His speed is godly, any players that love aerial combat instantly love him because his UP+B can get them off the ground in an instant, and in perfect position to drop down on them with any number of attacks. His Down+B charge isn't bad either for people who like aerial too! It allows them to scare the other players by making it seem as if he's about to unleash a powerful attack that has low control, but its actually only a medium attack with no delay before you can exit it! You can go 2 pixels and jump out of it to fake someone out then give them a mid air punch to the face!

And Ganondorf... Do I even need to mention the Gannondorf PWNAGE videos?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Vx9JQPGNA
He's an amazing character, its all just a matter of timing his moves and only using the quick ones. He's honestly the kind of character you don't use the 2nd jump with unless you have to get back on the stage.

[Kuukai]

Tiers aren't intentional, nor are they significant to anyone who isn't a total character expert. No game can be perfectly balanced unless the characters all have exactly the same moves. This is because when two characters behave differently, one is pretty much bound to have a slight advantage in a match between perfect players/AI. It would be very difficult to balance characters perfectly: you'd have to simulate millions of matches, change a speed slightly, and then simulate a million more to see exactly how it changes things, and that would simply take too long. That said, most games are still really well balanced, and unless you know every single move, combo, and animation frame for a given character, their "tier" probably has absolutely nothing to do with you. Tiers are something that represent very slight discrepancies that exist when characters are played near-perfectly. For 99% of players there is nothing "unfair" about them because they simply don't apply.

At least that's the general idea behind them. Some people might apply the term to unbalanced games. But even characters that seem broken at a lower skill level might actually be pretty low tier in the end...

[Zilabus]

Tiers should not exist in a fighting game. I've played tournament level SC3 and SC4. There are people who have so much time as to supposedly ascertain the best character by what happens in that 1/16 of a frame, and how quickly the game registers that paticular combo. But at the end of the day. It's almost always far more about the player then the character. But tiers DO exist. I'm not sayin I like it. But there has yet to be a game that balences every character for every stratagy equally. I don't thin there's such a thin as Top, and then all the way down to bottom. If anything, it's ussually more like top, slightly below top. But that doesn't matter. There's a whole lot of mental, and a whole lot of playstyle. I can't tell you how many times I've seen "bottom tier" characters win, simply because they used a new stratagy, and the blindly loyal tier believer couldn't adapt.

[Erranty]

Top 3's for the Soul Caliburs I've played.
SC2:
1. Talim
2. Nightmare
3. Kilik

SC3:
1. Abyss
2. Seigfried
3. Greatsword (yes the edit character)

[Zilabus]

Top 3's for the Soul Caliburs I've played.
SC2:
1. Talim
2. Nightmare
3. Kilik

SC3:
1. Abyss
2. Seigfried
3. Greatsword (yes the edit character)

That just further prooves the near non-existance of tiers. The highest character you listed is Kilik, you comes out in general as Mid-tier. Personally I've won three tournaments using Raph, who's most often considered low mid tier at best. Except in certain cases of OBVIOUSLY unbalenced characters, tiers are the exception, not the rule.

[Kuukai]

No one read what I wrote... At all.

[Helbaworshipper]

Tiers aren't intentional, nor are they significant to anyone who isn't a total character expert. No game can be perfectly balanced unless the characters all have exactly the same moves. This is because when two characters behave differently, one is pretty much bound to have a slight advantage in a match between perfect players/AI. It would be very difficult to balance characters perfectly: you'd have to simulate millions of matches, change a speed slightly, and then simulate a million more to see exactly how it changes things, and that would simply take too long. That said, most games are still really well balanced, and unless you know every single move, combo, and animation frame for a given character, their "tier" probably has absolutely nothing to do with you. Tiers are something that represent very slight discrepancies that exist when characters are played near-perfectly. For 99% of players there is nothing "unfair" about them because they simply don't apply.

At least that's the general idea behind them. Some people might apply the term to unbalanced games. But even characters that seem broken at a lower skill level might actually be pretty low tier in the end...

I don't know many people who would decide to memorize all of that. I tend not to care and just smash buttons. That's how I won some Mortal Kombat matches.

[Erranty]

I don't know many people who would decide to memorize all of that. I tend not to care and just smash buttons. That's how I won some Mortal Kombat matches.

Do you often find that your friends beat you with orange filled socks in your sleep?

[Zilabus]

I don't know many people who would decide to memorize all of that. I tend not to care and just smash buttons. That's how I won some Mortal Kombat matches.

Do you often find that your friends beat you with orange filled socks in your sleep?

Hey man. If you try to actually stratagize and you know moves and combos and a button masher beats you... you either need more practice, or the masher lucked out. Either way. It IS a legit stratagy.

[Erranty]

I don't know many people who would decide to memorize all of that. I tend not to care and just smash buttons. That's how I won some Mortal Kombat matches.

Do you often find that your friends beat you with orange filled socks in your sleep?

Hey man. If you try to actually stratagize and you know moves and combos and a button masher beats you... you either need more practice, or the masher lucked out. Either way. It IS a legit stratagy.

People hate button mashers in general, but most often the masher will lose anyway. I can't speak for Mortal Kombat players (because I honestly can't stand fighting games that don't use swords or some sort of weapon. Ex: Streetfighter, Tekken, Suikoden, KOF, and the like.) but the best way to deal with those people is by using an attack that moves directly forward covering a decent distance quickly. (Talim's forward lunge, Nightmare/Seigfried's forward stab. In Smash Bro's Marth's Up+B is like an instant 3 foot thick wall of pain!)

But the whole reason I hate them is because fighting them wastes my time. You don't get better from fighting them, you don't see skill to compare against your own, and they aren't better than you so you can't make beating them a goal since they don't fight with a strategy in mind.

Fighting has always been about the clash if ideas, and in fighting games its even more evident, especially with tiers. Because one person's tier list will differ from another person's and then they'll fight to see who is right. And the reason that makes the new tier right is because the person who is more skilled with a character will know his move set better with that character than the other person, and therefore has better knowledge of what the character is actually capable of.

That being said, tiers will always change. Someone will always get better at one character or another, and then the list will change so that people will know that it's possible to find new ways to do things that other people thought weren't possible.

[TheSorrow]

I can be a button masher that uses a strategy D: That's how i won some Brawl matches....every character's movset is unknown to me, and i still don't know how to do one of those special attacks or even shield/dodge, but i just kept my distance and, whenever i saw i was close to someone and they weren't going to be quick enough to attack me first, i attacked them by pressing the buttons in whatever directions i felt like, and ended up pulling lots of awesome combos. And sometimes i would even do "expert" strategies like not letting them to grab the scenario's edge by standing there or waiting them for a charge attack, or "landing" on them for a moment to perform another attack in mid-air XD I just went through logical strategies...might not know crap about the game, but i do when it comes to gaming.

Personally, i think games way too fun and enjoyable when they're like that, and even more if nobody has really played the game, at least to the point of considering tiers and all like it's been mentioned. People simply enjoy the game and have so much fun attempting out some strategies or simply doing it for the lulz, and leads to lots of funny moments like someone killing himself, or doing an awesome attack that killed everyone, or an even more awesome attack but that failed to hit anything. Usually, when people start considering "tiers", they look at the game way more seriously and don't really have much fun when all they do is use the "strongest" characters and pulling out the "best" strategies, then either just feeling normal after winning since they expected to win, or feel pissed that they lost against someone who was too ignorant of the game that didn't even notice the other was pulling a combo, and just attacked to block it all. Like Zilabus said (and probably someone else but i remember Zilabus' post the most), it all depends on the player, not the character being used, and a very good player should be able to figure out strategies at the moment in order to block the enemies' strategy, whether it's new to you or something you've faced more. And so, a character who only keeps using a very strong character and a well-defined strategy because it's the "top tier", and gets mad when his strategies fail against people who don't know nor care about tiers, should perhaps start considering to play another game before he starts to follow another tier :/

[Zilabus]

So at the end of the day. It's more about playing how you want, and playing in a way that suits you. Some players are all mental, some are all mental, some just look up what a so called "expert" calls the best character with the best stratagy.

(The strange thing. With SC4 the community dropped tiers almost entirely. And then the Brawl community picked it up)

[zaseo]

I would love to see someone use a low tier in any fighting game, and kick everyones ass in a tourney at Brawl, Tekken, Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat, and so on. It all about the way a play thinks, and perform in the game as tiers can't determine who would win. Its a guess on who would win base on pros, and cons, and if players of equal skill fought each other.

[zerokoolpsx]

Yes, everyone wants variety. Some people can spam fireballs all day, and others like to get close and personal. Only reason a character is high tier is because they excel at multiple areas usually at projectiles, mobility, range, recovery time after super/special moves, overall damage compared to another character, combos, air combos/juggling and then their moveset. If there literally was no tier list in a fighting game, then that would mean, every character damage and moveset would be the same. Ryu vs Ryu, and Ken vs Ken. I lost to button mashers, damn tekken players. High tier characters doesn't equal a win, and using low tier characters doesn't equal a lose, it boils down to a player's skill.