@JEFFRON27 What is with you and Fire Emblem characters man? They’re good but they don’t have any dumb bs like many other characters.
Staying on topic, people are just curious about tier lists so they know who to play to make things easier on themselves. Which eventually leads to a worse experience IMO.
Besides, tier lists are never consistent. Especially not with KI.
The reason why people are saying tiers are relevant to pros is because they’re in high-stakes competition against others to win fame and fortune. It’s not the same thing as playing online matches or with your friends, these guys are going out and busting their asses to gain any sort of advantage to win it all. It is also human nature to categorize things like this, it’s a part of who we are. It’s encoded into our DNA to be able to look at something and categorize it for reference later on in the future, it’s one of the tools that has helped us survive as a species for so long.
The thing people seem to overlook when it comes to tier lists is the match-up data that builds up the list. You have to look at relevant data that corresponds with how high or low characters are on the list. Let’s take Akuma from ST for example, the strongest character in ST. His Zanku’s made it just about impossible for other characters to navigate around as the game wasn’t designed with that move in mind. He had teleports and the Raging Demon along with his arsenal (I’m sure there’s more that someone could tell you guys about him) that made him so extremely anti-competitive that they simply banned him. If he was allowed, then that would literally be the only character played as no one else would be able to beat him regardless of skill.
A tier list also lets you know how hard a character needs to work in order to win. It helps to have tier lists and match-up data to learn what to look for when fighting against certain characters if you’re going to enter into things like tournaments and what-not. Let’s take Aganos for example. As an Aganos main, you know your character is considered low tier. It’s not that he’s bad or anything, but you know that he doesn’t have as many options as other characters and if he starts getting pressured, he doesn’t have as many ways out. You learn this stuff from tier lists so that way you can make crucial decisions in regards to moving forward. Do you decide to stick it out with Aganos, knowing he has less options than others in certain situations, or do you choose a character that can cover every single thing the opponent may have? This is where stuff like this comes in handy.
Just keep in mind that tier lists are here as a rule-of-thumb to help both observers and players. Tier lists are always up for debate though. It’s up to the community to help figure this stuff out.
Who the hell says Fulgore is a counter pick to Sadira? o_O That fight has always been pretty ok for her, even when Fulgore did have the extra AA options.
It’s not that tiers only matter for pros per se, it’s that the nuances that make certain fights good and bad oftentimes only exist at higher levels of play. If a Hisako doesn’t know how to shadow counter Riptor’s jump+HP, then that MU immediately become significantly worse for her than it should be, because in this scenario she is not maximizing the defensive options that she has and will suffer accordingly. But you can’t just say “Sako/Riptor is 8-2 because Hisako has no answer to Riptor jump-ins”, because she does have tools to deal with this, even if the (lower skill-level) player does not use them. That’s why tiers assume “high level play” - because at lower levels of skill you probably won’t see tool maximization.
As to the rest of the thread, I guess I’m pretty curious where all these high tier enthusiasts are supposed to be. While people tend to be aware (to some extent) of tiers, the vast, vast majority of players both casual and tournament-going wind up playing a character who they like and whose style speaks to them. Most people do in fact play who they like, and a goodly chunk of those who try to tier-■■■■■ are probably not good enough (at least in KI) for it to make much difference.
Because people want to have excuses to the reasons why they win or lose to other players.
@SonicDolphin117 I’ll explain through PM to keep this from going off to far.
On topic: To add to your point @SonicDolphin117 is because when dealing with individual players those tier lists don’t tell you how skilled your opponent might be. Thus it could create a false since of security. And that’s just one additional thing that makes the experience worse. So in short: I certainly agree with that opinion. 
To answer your other question @STORM179 while remaining on topic: I assume if there’s no tier huggers coming out of the wood work. I am going to assume now that maybe this misplaced disdain for tiers had bled out from Smash community into the KI community. Cause the first time I ever herd of such things was Smash related.
also @RFGCAtsumachi The only kind of orginizing I’m ever gonna be concerned with is wheter or not I get the oppurtunity to lay down the beat downs on my opponent. I’ll take note of what kind of leg up and leg down my opponent will have with their character. That’s always going to be in the back of my mind. However If my opponent isn’t using any of their tools against me in the right way.
If people want make their own tiers I’m all for it but if I kick your ■■■ with rash or jago I don’t want to hear I’m garbage for picking the “easy” characters or how i only won cuz their op and top tier.
Tiers are like the scouters in the dragon ball universe. They don’t tell you much and they are not reliable.
They, as @JEFFRON27 would say: [quote=“JEFFRON27, post:25, topic:11738”]
create a false since of security
[/quote]
Which is why you should never rely on them anyway.
Here is something I don’t think a lot of gamers understand.
1: everyone (even the winners of these tournaments) never started out as good in fights.
2: Everything comes with practice
3: realize your mistakes and learn from them.
4: Look at your opponents behavior and habits and make them change their strategy
(IF you are however on the one who uses repetitive movements, you should change your patterns and become unpredictable)
5: look for a character you want to try, your not going to always have the best luck with characters in that way. Even my nephew can understand this. (Not always) but it remembers when you remained him.
Which is why you should never rely on them anyway.
Here is something I don’t think a lot of gamers understand.
1: everyone (even the winners of these tournaments) never started out as good in fights.
2: Everything comes with practice
3: realize your mistakes and learn from them.
4: Look at your opponents behavior and habits and make them change their strategy
(IF you are however on the one that is doing the, you should change your patterns and become unpredictable)
5: look for a character you want to try, your not going to always have the best luck with characters in that way. Even my nephew can understand this. (Not always) but it remembers when you remained him.
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On the scouter bit: We now need a Meme related to this!
@JEFFRON27 Let me ask you this. Let’s say in a fighting game there is a character that can land an unblockable attack against half the cast 100% of the time. Let’s say this led to 50% damage each time. Let’s say that even if the opponent knew it was coming, there was absolutely no way they could avoid it. Finally, let’s say this character was also the only character that could avoid said unblockable the easiest, the other characters that can avoid it having a bit harder time avoiding it. Would you still disregard tiers knowing what the character could do if you were to enter into a competition? Would a tier list still be uneeded then? It’s essential to know how good a character is if you’re entering into something like a tourney when you can make an accurate guess as to what the average skill level is. People are going to take as many chances as possible to have a leg up against other characters. Sometimes there’s things characters can or can not do against other characters even if the player is more skilled than the other. There was hardly anything Q could do against Makoto in 3S and he had characters that got unblockables against him. Rightfully so, he was considered low tier. Not to say that some people couldn’t be good with him, but it was a lot more rare to see Q make it far in tourneys compared to Chun-li, Yun, or Ken.
@justathereptile You can ignore tier lists, that’s more than fine. To say that they don’t tell you much and are not reliable is not true at all. In an online setting there’s no way to know what the average skill level of an opponent is. In a tourney setting where people constantly fight each other at a high level is where tier lists become more important. I main Aganos. He has difficulties getting around certain characters. He also has a good set of tools in the form of long range normals and the chunk system. I would assume you play Riptor. Against an Aganos, would you not use your standing hard kick or sweep in Instinct to whiff punish his slow buttons so you can bypass his armor? Would you not use her running flame breath attack to punish him from full screen for trying to chunk up? These are the things that both Aganos and Riptor players need to be conscious of at the highest levels of play so that they can have a better chance at winning. This is why tier lists are important, they’re there to inform the players about what advantages/disadvantages there are in certain matchups.
True, but with practice and skill someone can tdo well despite the bad match ups.
I’m not arguing against that, people can overcome bad match-ups with enough patience and hard work. Despite Q being one of the worst characters in 3S, Kuroda instilled fear into the strongest players with his Q. He made that character look godlike. Even though he did great with him, even he still said Q wasn’t that good in that game. Tier lists are there as a community driven approximation. There’s always room to debate them, but especially with how many talented people there are on this forum, we can make generalized tier lists with our combined player knowledge that can help others in understanding what can and can’t be done in matches.
@RFGCAtsumachi If it means picking a character I don’t care for over a character I might actually have fun playing? Heck yes, because in theory some time in practice mdoe can help me deal with it.
And honestly anything that has that kind of unblockabale 50% damage clearly sounds like the character needs a nerf if it’s almost impossible for all but one member of the cast. That’s bad character balancing right there.
But if any anything you only prove my point: Tiers disregard variety in character tournaments. I honestly wouldn’t want to watch a tournament full of Chun-Lis, Yuns or Kens. Thus one reasn I disregard tiers. It’s only an excuse for not learning all the tools a character can do. and it discourages diversity of characters in play.
It’s important to understand how good the character is. But at the end of the day, if the person I’m fighting isn’t that good. Those tools of theirs are useless against me. I can acknowledge a character’s strength and weaknesses. But I also want to know: “How good are you with that character”
My main beef alongside the lack of diversity in tournaments is the attitude some people have with tier lists. Oh you use “insert low tier character?” HA noob. That character is trash try insert over-used high tier character " Just another reason to disregaurd it.
I can learn what the character is capable of, without the list. I’d much rather stick to the character I like then the character I don’t like, win or lose.
Now, if someone wants to pick a character that’s top tier, that’s fine. But! if they are not very skilled with that character, they will get stomped to the ground. For example, I chose Ike. I was the first to die because eI was not very skilled with him and it cost me severely
It’s important to understand to learn a character first. As far as competition goes, I stick with the character
I’m good with. Because I’m not very skilled with someone like Roy or Marth or even Falco. Guarantee I would kick the bucket more frequently.
@JEFFRON27 I have the most fun playing Aganos and that’s the only character I would ever take to tournament, but it’s not my job to win tourneys constantly so I’m afforded the ability to choose who I like.
Back in the day, games didn’t get patches to fix things like this. You were stuck with the game you got unless the developer could afford a rebalanced version. Sometimes things can’t be spotted in development. Like the Glacius Shatter bug or the Kan-Ra swarm bug. Luckily the @developers are hard working people and were able to fix the things hastily, but it wasn’t like this in the past.
You’re more than free to watch any tournament you want, that’s more than fine. Other people enjoy seeing the high level play that goes on with small character diversity. Take Melee for example. The tournament viable characters are Fox, Marth, Falco, and Sheik. You might get some other outliers, but that will be the majority of characters you see. Even with that, the level of skill put on display with those characters is enough to still have one of the biggest followings of any fighting game to date. Same with 3S. People love the ■■■■ out of that game even though Chun, Yun, and Ken are the only viable top tiers with an occasional outlier. KI is a great game in that the entire roster is completely tournament viable. Some characters might struggle against others, but KI usually has one of the most diverse top 16 or 32 in just about any fighting game to date.
Would you ignore those tools though? If your character has the advantage, would you not always use that against them? Sure tiers aren’t important when the skill levels are widely different, but when the average player in a setting is high level, then that’s where it’s more important and that’s what I’ve been trying to say this whole time. It’s not for casual-mid level players, it’s for people who are the very top of the player base.
Is this happening in the KI community? This community is actually pretty good in regards to getting excited for any and all characters. You could argue against that when Shago or Rash appear, but even then, the people that complain about them the most are the ones that are least likely to know how to beat them. I’m not trying to stir s*** or anything, but from my times in twitch chats, that’s what it looks like to me.
@justathereptile Oh that definitely happens, where someone tries the counterpick because it’s a better match and then gets destroyed for it. You even see it in places like EVO. After a player does fully understand their character and the others, then what? The people that make tier lists are either extremely experienced with said character or have had a chance to play on equal footing against other players using other members of the cast.
Apologies for the hack quote splice above - I just thought these were interesting ideas that I wanted to pull out.
I think the mentality you describe here is really only something that occurs for people who honestly don’t know what tiers are, and who, again, probably aren’t skilled enough for the tiers to matter anyway. Picking a high tier character isn’t about a sense of security or comfort - no one who’s winning tournaments thinks to themselves “if I pick the highest tier character then I’ll win this free.” It’s about playing a character who has the tools to respond to other characters, and who has options against the rest of the cast.
I’m a Hisako main, and I have to say, the Sako/Riptor MU absolutely sucked in S2. I’m a stubborn fool so I just sucked it up for the most part and tried not to get bodied, but yeah, at certain points it just became very frustrating because of how hard I had to work in that fight. I mean, I’d have to be a defensive fortress, blocking long strings of plus-frame pressure as the Riptor just mindlessly alternated between her various options until she finally did something negative enough that I could punish. I could go through all that effort (and probably still lose in the end), or I could just go back to my original main Sadira when I saw a Riptor player card. I played it out a lot of times, but heck yeah, on some others I just kinda went “eff it” and counterpicked. Not because Sadira/Riptor was a free win necessarily, but just because that character’s options in that MU worked a hell of a lot better than Hisako’s did. It wasn’t about a security blanket or feeling of easiness - it was a legitimate evaluation of how my main’s tools stacked up against a particular opponent.
I think at a certain level we may be talking around each other - I don’t play Smash, so I don’t really have an appreciation for running into a high-tier character all the time out of a massive cast. But those two thoughts were just something I wanted to talk about within the context of what I do know about FG’s.
Top tier characters tend to be characters who have options for almost all situations and has a the most (or many) positive match ups…The scale of the match up for a character on an specific individual basis with another does not matter for tier placements.
E.g. in SF4
Blanka beats T. Hawk 9-1 or 8-2
Guile beats M. Bison 8-2 or 7-3
Sagat beats Zangief 8-2 or 7-3
none of these characters are top tier or bottom despite having a match up which can either be really in favour or out of their favour
Overall a character goes 6-4 or 5-5 with the majority of the cast you would be a high tier character
if a character goes 5-5 and 1 up or down sometimes they are mid tier
if a character loses 4-6 a lot of the time they are low tier
(that’s how tiers would generally work) as well as individual character options and frames and such
I’ve come to fully understand Riptors advantages and disadvantages and I think you’ll be happy to know that I have gotton my butt kicked by a few Hisako’s in online matches. I’ve seen a face off between a Hisako player and a Riptor player (these guys were the most skilled in the lobby). I thought I’d sya this since it is possible for Hisako to beat Riptor in matches. So far Fulgore is my hardest opponent because of his zoning abilities. Not to mention one Fulgore main in particular also mains Riptor so they also know her weaknesses.
Also, keep in mind that Riptor now has an anti-air to compensate with Sadira’s Jumping (The fire catapults) If you also face a Riptor player that has adapted to fighting Sadira, they could give anybody a run for their money.
My anecdote wasn’t to say Riptor/Sako (and we’re talking specifically about the S2 MU - the fight is much better now for Hisako) was unwinnable - it was simply to point out that Riptor had considerable structural advantages in the fight. That’s what tiers seek to evaluate: how do characters’ inherent tools stack up across the rest of the cast.
I’ve beaten many, many, Riptors with Hisako, even in the god-awful S2 version of the fight. That doesn’t change the fact that Riptor had considerable advantages in the MU. Tiers and MU charts don’t mean “character x will never beat character y” - they’re more about evaluating how much work it takes to overcome a opposing character. If a fight is unfavorable, then yeah, you’re going to have to really work at getting over that hill (think S2 Thunder v Fulgore), and if your character has a ton of those kinds of fights, then that will tend to make him lower tier. Doesn’t mean people can’t or won’t win with the character - it just means they’re going to often be fighting an uphill battle just because the toolboxes available to them versus their opponent.
People are curious about tier lists. “Obsessed”, not really. Most of the community plays characters they like. Most pro/known fg players make like $1,000 a year from winnings, and hardly anything but a plane ticket(s) for sponsorship. I make more than that with overtime alone in a month. So, “obsessing” over tier lists isn’t really a factor.
I think it just depends on a player’s skill, patience and experience.