A new perspective on the concept of TIERS.

[SinisterHanded]

Hello people,

I've spent some time thinking about tiers.
I am no pro-player like some out there, I'm kind of a philosopher.

But I've come up with some thoughts regarding the "dreaded tier placement" of your favorite character, and the current metagame.


If you think about it, the "tires don exits" HAS some truth in it, but is also false at the same time:

There ARE characteristics about a character that make him good or bad, but I think you, the playerbase has been emphasizing on the wrong character points.

We need to differentiate between "Makes a character easier to play" and "Makes a character good"!

Given Brawls new defensiveness, you need to think outside the box. I will show you an
example:
-Snake's tilts are often one of the points that are brought up to show he's a top-tier character.
But in our little world of theory, what if these tilts never hit in the first place?

Place yourself in a time with perfect and really high skilled players that can use the defensive techniques of brawl to their fullest, and you will see that the tilts make Snake easier to play but not good. True, when they hit, they can be devastating - but given enough player skill, they can be dodged.
Don't get me wrong, Snake is a really good character, but not because of his tilts or recovery.
An example from the other side of the spectrum: Link is regarded as a bottom tier character since the release of brawl and you always see one recurring arguement: "Link has horrible recovery".

Let's go to our world of ungodly skilled players again and you will see that this doesn't matter. A player that never gets hit does not need to recover. A player that rarely gets hit does rarely need to recover.
This makes Link a character that is essentially good, but hard to play.


You could kind of say that the current "tier lists" floating around are nothing but a list of "'Easiness of play' positions".


There are, like said, some characteristics though, that really make a character bad, no matter how skillful the player playing them is.
I will use Ganondorf as an example (sorry Ganondorf mainers):
Lag.

In our fantastic world of defensive players, attack lag is a deciding factor which makes a character good or bad. If an attack has startup lag, it's easier to dodge, and if it has ending lag it's easily punishable.
Low lag attacks make a character good, no matter what skill the player has.


I've though up some points which make a character truly good:
-Small size
-Disjointed hitboxes
-Comboability

of course, bad ones would be big, laggy and can't combo then.

These are just some points. But I think that given enough player skill, these are some of the only points that really matter when it comes to the goodness of a character - I'm sure you will think up others and post them here!
In melee things were just different, not so defensive, with just 1 air dodge and stuff...
so I really believe Brawl has the POTENTIAL to become more balanced, when the players really become skilled.


I am looking forward to your answers, please stay constructive!

 

[Brinzy]

I skimmed it. Good ideas and all... though if Brawl becomes "more" balanced, it still probably won't become good enough to be considered just flat out balanced. The problem is that no matter how far the skill level of our players rise, there will always be laggy attacks, bad recovery, etc. I don't think Brawl is going to become remotely balanced.

 

[SinisterHanded]

Of course it won't be balanced, it's almost impossible if not impossible to totally balance a game to the point that every character is equally good except if you make them exactly equal (which would be boring).
I'm just saying that the current tier-concept does not say how good a character is but rather how easy to pick up.

 

[Zankoku]

Given enough player skill, anything can be dodged. Snake's tilts are not only relatively difficult to dodge (they're fast and can be used immediately out of a shield or dodge to punish), but they also have devastating effect when they hit. Comparatively, Mario's dsmash, while just as fast, has less range and less knockback.

You have to keep in mind that those tilts are not just what make Snake easy, they're also part of what make Snake quite powerful at close range.

And that's just in regards to his tilts.

 

[SinisterHanded]

Yeah, I'm not saying his tilts aren't good. But their power isn't what makes Snake a good character, more like their speed -> which equals to what i said above-> Low Lag

Also another point that I've come up with that counts is priority, especially aerial priority because you can't retaliate as easily after an air dodge.

 

[Brinzy]

Then what about Sheik? I'm not saying Sheik is bad, but with the speed and general low lag time Sheik has, you'd think Sheik would be one of the best in the game, or at least Sheik would be initially... but that is not the case. Low lag is very important, but that alone can't be the backbone of why faster characters aren't doing as well.

 

[SinisterHanded]

I have not dealt with the character of sheik in detail, so I can not tell you why she isn't so good..

According to wiki entries my guess would be that she has low priority AND killing power AND range on most moves (Disjointed hitbox arguement).
That would make her a good character when played in an "ultra-pro" environment but definitely not one of the best.

 

[miCKi]

SinisterHanded has a good point The easiest to play characters are at the top of this unofficial tier list. MK is extremely easy to catch on too. Before I mained Sonic I played him alittle still do.

Snake isn't to hard to use either. IMO D3 is alittle difficult to play and olimar but for the most part hes right(I only played D3 like once so he might not be that hard. Also Olimar I play around with alot.) So going down u see the diffculty start to rise...Sonic really low on the tier list. Hes by far the hardest character I have ever play Smash Bros with. So there is some truth to what he says.

Also about Snake I too believe that his lauch power (like Ike) makes him easier to play than others. But Im not saying he like Ike because Ike has lagg on more moves cuz his tilts have lagg I believe. So making Snake Alot easier to ko with I mean his A combo has ko potential

 

[popsofctown]

she's excellent in an ultra-pro environment.
Her biggest weakness to me is swordlessness.

Differentiating between easy to play and good is something that could be determined by Pilgrim's stats analysis idea. Easy to play characters usually get higher populations.
Also, the Smash back room, much more so than us laymen, use the type of analysis you're talking about when they release final tier lists. Well i'm a forum vet, so i dont know. But i assume they do.

Edit: btw, your statement about Link is definitely very valid when we're talking about Olimar's bad recovery. He's still high tier if he doesn't get hit. Some vertical KO characters don't even get a bonus anyhow. Olimar is vastly underrated.

 

[LittleKey]

there are some interesting ideas here. i'm not sure if the current tier layout is the best way to go about it, and this is a good alternative.

 

[Seikend]

Just no. An incredibly good link player may rarely need to use his recovery but to make a fair comparison the other player needs to be good. Even if the link is rarely getting hit the case will be the same for the opponent. Let's just assume that the characters themselves are equally balanced in racking damage (although clearly MK can build up damage better than Link). They'll both get to the point where they can get knocked off the stage, just at a later point than two incredibly unskilled players. And then Link's recovery fails him.

TL;DR An incredibly good player will rarely get hit but they'll get hit just as often as the other player if the other player is equally good.

Edit: it's different with Olimar. If players are equally skilled then the Olimar can easily defend himself because he has pikmin flying everywhere making an approach difficult. Link isn't exactly hard to approach or hit.

 

[Binx]

Your just saying that Metaknight is better than snake, which is probably true, time will tell, imagine a world where we just people who do 1 damage and then camp the rest of the game, ahh what a great game we are going to have, the first 20 seconds are going to take an amazing ammount of skill.

Honestly though, with things like tripping and the way the game is played in general I don't think that these are things that we have to worry about.

 

[SketchHurricane]

Let's go to our world of ungodly skilled players again and you will see that this doesn't matter. A player that never gets hit does not need to recover. A player that rarely gets hit does rarely need to recover.
This makes Link a character that is essentially good, but hard to play.

So your saying that the community is championing easy use over actual character possibilities? And your backing this up by taking us into a world of "ungodly skilled players?" This may be true, and your example has some merit, but your missing one key point: Good characters are most times also easy to play. Even if we mistakenly assume the character is good because he is easy to play, the fact still remains that the character is good. The things that make a character easy to play are often the things that make them universally good in the first place.

Ankoku pretty much said this in his post:

You have to keep in mind that those tilts are not just what make Snake easy, they're also part of what make Snake quite powerful at close range.

And that's just in regards to his tilts.

For instance, MK can be considered both easy to play because he is good, and also good because he is easy to play. Link can be considered good because of the sheer amount of options he has offensively, but those options are difficult to utilize. But again, in a perfect world, the amout of options you have don't matter if they still get beat by the bread and butter of the other character every time. Even if link is using his abilities with perfection, MKs are still better, and it has nothing to do with ease of use.

Your perfect defense argument is flawed, because if we are in a "world of ungodly skilled players," then they are going to have an offensive just as impressive as their defense.

Now, combine this with what you said earlier about low lag being a deciding factor in tiers. There are plenty of characters faster than Link, and in a world of perfection the match boils down to character limitations instead of player limitations. Link is going to get hit, and there is no debating this. And when he does, we are faced with his horrible recovery. Recovery is a position of disadvantage, and in a "world of ungodly skilled players," the person in the disadvantage should technically die every time.

Now that we've established that a character is going to get hit even in a perfect world, we can make another key point. If you're going to get hit more often than the opponent, your recovery must be able to equalize this, or you are a worse character. Someone like DDD is high up because even though MK will hit him way more times, he makes up for it by not only having adequate recovery, but also a suicide that turns his recover into a dangerous offensive option. Link, on the other hand, not only gets hit way more, but has relatively terrible recovery as well. He just loses on paper, period.

In conclusion, this leads us to the other side of my main point. Some characters are mistakenly labeled as bad because they are hard to play, but most of the time they are hard to play because they are just bad.

 

[ph00tbag]

Your theory falls apart when you consider that pro players play to win. If you really don't want to get hit, then it's a simple matter just to avoid your opponent and get hit as little as possible. However, you aren't going to win. The fact is, Snake is trying to hit you with his tilts. He is setting up his traps and projectiles in an attempt to put you into a position where he can deal massive damage, and possibly KO you. The point of Snake is that he, in fact, feeds off of his opponent's desire not to get hit, by giving them only one or two options that he can easily predict. Snakes tilts alone don't make him good, it's the way he can manipulate his opponent like a puppet.

Basically, all I'm saying is, this idea is not new at all, and is regularly considered by people who play this game.

 

[Mr.Victory07]

Wasnt it Azen that gave us this advice before
"don't get hit"

 

[da K.I.D.]

i believe it was Isai who first in our community coined the term "dont get hit"

 

[Trapt497]

Hello people,

I've spent some time thinking about tiers.
I am no pro-player like some out there, I'm kind of a philosopher.

But I've come up with some thoughts regarding the "dreaded tier placement" of your favorite character, and the current metagame.


If you think about it, the "tires don exits" HAS some truth in it, but is also false at the same time:

There ARE characteristics about a character that make him good or bad, but I think you, the playerbase has been emphasizing on the wrong character points.

We need to differentiate between "Makes a character easier to play" and "Makes a character good"!

Given Brawls new defensiveness, you need to think outside the box. I will show you an
example:
-Snake's tilts are often one of the points that are brought up to show he's a top-tier character.
But in our little world of theory, what if these tilts never hit in the first place?

Place yourself in a time with perfect and really high skilled players that can use the defensive techniques of brawl to their fullest, and you will see that the tilts make Snake easier to play but not good. True, when they hit, they can be devastating - but given enough player skill, they can be dodged.
Don't get me wrong, Snake is a really good character, but not because of his tilts or recovery.
An example from the other side of the spectrum: Link is regarded as a bottom tier character since the release of brawl and you always see one recurring arguement: "Link has horrible recovery".

Let's go to our world of ungodly skilled players again and you will see that this doesn't matter. A player that never gets hit does not need to recover. A player that rarely gets hit does rarely need to recover.
This makes Link a character that is essentially good, but hard to play.


You could kind of say that the current "tier lists" floating around are nothing but a list of "'Easiness of play' positions".


There are, like said, some characteristics though, that really make a character bad, no matter how skillful the player playing them is.
I will use Ganondorf as an example (sorry Ganondorf mainers):
Lag.

In our fantastic world of defensive players, attack lag is a deciding factor which makes a character good or bad. If an attack has startup lag, it's easier to dodge, and if it has ending lag it's easily punishable.
Low lag attacks make a character good, no matter what skill the player has.


I've though up some points which make a character truly good:
-Small size
-Disjointed hitboxes
-Comboability

of course, bad ones would be big, laggy and can't combo then.

These are just some points. But I think that given enough player skill, these are some of the only points that really matter when it comes to the goodness of a character - I'm sure you will think up others and post them here!
In melee things were just different, not so defensive, with just 1 air dodge and stuff...
so I really believe Brawl has the POTENTIAL to become more balanced, when the players really become skilled.


I am looking forward to your answers, please stay constructive!

THANK YOU! This is one of the most intelligent posts I have read on the topics of tiers. Great job thinking outside the box and enlightening us. Does anyone else think this concept could make Brawl more balenced/competative?

Your just saying that Metaknight is better than snake, which is probably true, time will tell, imagine a world where we just people who do 1 damage and then camp the rest of the game, ahh what a great game we are going to have, the first 20 seconds are going to take an amazing ammount of skill.

Honestly though, with things like tripping and the way the game is played in general I don't think that these are things that we have to worry about.

Umm...well, this is partially true, but tripping never really does influence a match taht often except on rare occasions.

 

[J4pu]

Eventually tier lists will evolve to this point, or somewhere between where they are now and the point of impossibly pro players, but right now the game is still new.
For instance Melee tier lists didn't stop with Sheik on top because she was quick, strong, and easy to play (I didn't get in melee until late but I assume people saw sheik's potential very early) but rather they progressed to the point where (under pro ability) the character that was the most adept at winning battles, Fox i believe, came out on top.
And of course you can't forget that sheik ended up very high tier, which indicates there is some connections between easy to play and good.
And like other people have said you can't say "insert character name here" is good because a very advanced Smash player using him/her can beat a novice, both players have to be at the same skill level, and i think quarter or semi-finals and onwards in tournaments illustrate this concept, so therefore getting tier placements from tournament placements is good indication of tier lists within the current human potential of the players.

EDIT- oh and btw, tier lists are never going to be based off a perfect control video.

 

[leafgreen386]

Why are people still posting? SketchHurricane already ended the thread.

 

[Sosuke]

Wasnt it Azen that gave us this advice before
"don't get hit"

Aww beat me to it

 

[Zankoku]

That's Isai.

 

[DarkStraw]

you also have to take into account how easy it is to hit with snakes utilt, if it does a whole ton of damage but its hard to hit with then yea. But from what i understand its not that hard to hit with snakes Utilt, and it does alot of damage and knockback. I think technically, on paper... olimar is the best character in the game (on paper) assuming you have two gods using the characters, olimar would be best because he can shieldgrab most moves in the game, or smash in whatever direction your trying to approach. He has the advantage from the start. he's practically god on the stage. He wouldent get even get hit by most characters let alone knocked off the stage. Well you might say oh but you can spot doge this and that etc but really when your just looking at the character alone spot doging and airdoging dont matter because all spot doging and air doging are, is mindgames. you can spotdoge olimars fsmash, assuming he fsmashes when you approach... but he can also just wait till your done spot doging then attack, it goes on forever and you can really take that into account (except moves that cant be spotdoged period) Mindgames dont count when your just analising a character, which means olimar is THE best period(on paper). i consider brawl defensive oriented,as in the defender has the advantage, the approacher is at a disadvantage. But since defense and approaching are so important in this game i think its important to figure out whos the best approacher/defender if you want to figure out who is really the best character.
Obviously olimar would be the best defender, I would think GW or MK would be the best approacher.
Now if you put olimar against MK (on paper) i would think olimar would easily win because he would outrange MK on the ground and shieldgrab attacks etc. Assuming olimar and MK both perfect shield etc etc and do everything perfectly i would think olimar would come out on top, he has the advantage with the defensive position. Its less risky to defend, etc etc you have many more options in defense than you do in ofense i think its safe to say those defending have the advantage period.
Of course snake has good defense too. the things i think are most important when considering teirs are

defense offense range speed priority

 

[SinisterHanded]

So your saying that the community is championing easy use over actual character possibilities? And your backing this up by taking us into a world of "ungodly skilled players?" This may be true, and your example has some merit, but your missing one key point: Good characters are most times also easy to play. Even if we mistakenly assume the character is good because he is easy to play, the fact still remains that the character is good. The things that make a character easy to play are often the things that make them universally good in the first place.

That is true, but some are harder to play and because of that have a wrong standing on the "tier-list".
If we assumed a character is good because he's easy to play then that wouldn't be a true arguemenent though, because ease of use doesn't matter all that much when skill is equal, it would only matter with 2 players that have just begun with SSBB so the "Good character" player would get used to his character faster and because there are more researches available because he's played more often.

For instance, MK can be considered both easy to play because he is good, and also good because he is easy to play. Link can be considered good because of the sheer amount of options he has offensively, but those options are difficult to utilize. But again, in a perfect world, the amout of options you have don't matter if they still get beat by the bread and butter of the other character every time. Even if link is using his abilities with perfection, MKs are still better, and it has nothing to do with ease of use.

Your perfect defense argument is flawed, because if we are in a "world of ungodly skilled players," then they are going to have an offensive just as impressive as their defense.

Now, combine this with what you said earlier about low lag being a deciding factor in tiers. There are plenty of characters faster than Link, and in a world of perfection the match boils down to character limitations instead of player limitations. Link is going to get hit, and there is no debating this. And when he does, we are faced with his horrible recovery. Recovery is a position of disadvantage, and in a "world of ungodly skilled players," the person in the disadvantage should technically die every time.

If we assumed the players are perfect, it would take almost infinite time to reach a point that a character needs to recover. This is sped up by lagless attacks that ALSO have good launching power of course, which is why Snake is a good character, I never denied that.
You also have to factor in weight, when playing defensively, because it affects launching power. So Link would probably not get launched until high percentages, while MK who is light would probably be launched way earlier, being forced to recover more often.

Now that we've established that a character is going to get hit even in a perfect world, we can make another key point. If you're going to get hit more often than the opponent, your recovery must be able to equalize this, or you are a worse character. Someone like DDD is high up because even though MK will hit him way more times, he makes up for it by not only having adequate recovery, but also a suicide that turns his recover into a dangerous offensive option. Link, on the other hand, not only gets hit way more, but has relatively terrible recovery as well. He just loses on paper, period.

Why would Link get hit more often? This boils down to player skill in my opinion.
Of course the more skillful player will and should always win (luck aside).

In conclusion, this leads us to the other side of my main point. Some characters are mistakenly labeled as bad because they are hard to play

Right.


I think my main point still stands. The current tier list emphasizes too much on the "ease of use" factor and gives it way too much weighting.
We cannot form a tier list out of tournament usage because the easy to use characters will be overused and also develop a more advanced metagame than the harder to use ones.

I hope the tier list will be revised many times, luckily brawl is pretty new.

 

[SketchHurricane]

I think my main point still stands. The current tier list emphasizes too much on the "ease of use" factor and gives it way too much weighting.
We cannot form a tier list out of tournament usage because the easy to use characters will be overused and also develop a more advanced metagame than the harder to use ones.

As you probably realized, I wasn't disagreeing with your main point, just the support you gave for it. It's just an unfortunate fact that some hard to use characters will never see the light on a tier list. If you really have a problem with the tier list, there's two things you can do.

1) Main the characters you believe should be higher, until they either become higher, or you realize they were down there for a reason.

2) Make your own tier list based on your theory in an attempt to influence the community. Just be sure to back up your list intelligently, and be prepared to argue for it.

Just don't make the mistake of creating a tier list in a vacuum. Match ups should dictate a tier list - not technicality, not simplicity. Anything you can do, whether it be difficult or easy, doesn't matter if it doesn't work against the other character.

 

[Pero]

SinisterHanded has a good point I agree with him.

 

[Yuna]

I think my main point still stands. The current tier list emphasizes too much on the "ease of use" factor and gives it way too much weighting.
We cannot form a tier list out of tournament usage because the easy to use characters will be overused and also develop a more advanced metagame than the harder to use ones.

What tier list is this, anyway? The ones touted by total nobodies? Those who aren't total idiots could care less about "ease of use" as long as it's humanly possible to learn to do the "harder to do things" when it comes to talking about character potential, tier list, etc.

I hope the tier list will be revised many times, luckily brawl is pretty new.

Or we could stop assuming that the SBR and non-SBR-but-still-knowledgable SWF members aren't total idiots and that they can form a pretty accurate tier list even now.

 

[Dragonslayer9]

Tier list count both player skill and how the character is used to its fullest potential with that skill, tiers exist in all matches, no matter what anyone says, so someone saying something like "tiers don't matter" has never played a REALLY unbalanced fighting game in their life.

Characters strengths + Players skill with the character= a tier list.

 

[Trapt497]

Tier list count both player skill and how the character is used to its fullest potential with that skill, tiers exist in all matches, no matter what anyone says, so someone saying something like "tiers don't matter" has never played a REALLY unbalanced fighting game in their life.

Characters strengths + Players skill with the character= a tier list.

But what he's saying is that if new advantages or opurtunities are worked on and taken advantage of as much as possible, the tiers could change. He never said the tiers don't matter.

 

[Dragonslayer9]

But what he's saying is that if new advantages or opurtunities are worked on and taken advantage of as much as possible, the tiers could change. He never said the tiers don't matter.

Of course they would change, have you seen the perfect control video on youtube? Thats pretty much it right there, but tier lists are not based on perfect people, they are based on whats humanly possible for that character.

 

[Kino]

Falco in melee was the 2nd best character according to the recent tier list.

he is VERY difficult to play to the level of the tier list. his recovery is terrible. short range, easily edgegaurded and gimped. but a good player can pillar with him, a good player can shff laser and this makes him good.

Mewtwo in melee had a great recovery, so in a way, he is kinda easy to play, he doesnt have many advanced techniques to get down that he relies on to win, hes dead easy to play to his best potential, more so than other characters.

Tier lists are about potential. look at a tier list in melee. your arguing something you havnt looked at, tier lists are accurate, the SBR do a great job, there isnt a tier list yet for brawl. so no need to change how we think about them. wait for the tier list then argue about it.

 

[SinisterHanded]

Falco in melee was the 2nd best character according to the recent tier list.

he is VERY difficult to play to the level of the tier list. his recovery is terrible. short range, easily edgegaurded and gimped. but a good player can pillar with him, a good player can shff laser and this makes him good.

Mewtwo in melee had a great recovery, so in a way, he is kinda easy to play, he doesnt have many advanced techniques to get down that he relies on to win, hes dead easy to play to his best potential, more so than other characters.

Tier lists are about potential. look at a tier list in melee. your arguing something you havnt looked at, tier lists are accurate, the SBR do a great job, there isnt a tier list yet for brawl. so no need to change how we think about them. wait for the tier list then argue about it.

You are talking about the melee tier list which was formed after years and years...
I hardly believe that Link has "Bottom Tier Potential" as he stands in the current "tierlist" for Brawl.
Also Melee is a WHOLE other story, it wasn't nearly as defensive - and as you know, every character gets the same defenses (except for Yoshis strange eggshield maybe)

 

[zacharia zako]

why all this banter about tiers????? tier this tier that! tier, tier , tier, tier, tier! I'm getting a tier to my eye just listning about it. I believe tiers are just a way to show which character is good with everyone. somebody can have an expertise over a low tier character and beat a person using a top tier character who is adicuit. It really matters on how good or bad the PLAYER is not the character. about the easy to play concept, this supports my theory on tiers. If a top tier character is easy to play with that means there will be more people who would discover and choose that character to main even if people didn't know that the character was top tier. with that being said, with the majority of people picking this character, that character is bound to be top tier. Being easy to play doesn't mean that a character is better. A charatcer can be easy to play with myabe because of his move set or all aound capability.

 

[GoForkUrself]

Well, if all the "easy" characters are overused, wouldn't that mean that all the players are getting really used to playing against these overplayed characters? I am sure that tournament players have more experience fighting MKs and Snakes. Now, if that is the case, why are the MKs and Snakes still winning? If the metagame develops faster because they are used so much, then also the metagame for how to fight MKs and Snakes also develops faster. Because of this, there really isn't any difference in the metagame for a character who is overplayed or underplayed. We've discovered pretty much all the character AT's that are of decent value, so the metagame can't develop that way.
The only way the metagames develop now is through battle experience, and the battle experience Snake and MK get are equal to the battle experience others get at defeating them. Everyone here knows which character and strategy they would use against a Snake or MK player. Do we all know who we would use if we came across a Ness player? What about a Yoshi? Some would say it doesn't matter, the fact that their character is better will get them the win. Then I wouldn't say the character's advanced metagame makes them win, rather the character's natural qualities make them better than others and they win because of that.
The "over/underdeveloped" metagame argument is a weak one since the metagame grows equally fast at defeating the growth.

 

[zacharia zako]

Well, if all the "easy" characters are overused, wouldn't that mean that all the players are getting really used to playing against these overplayed characters? I am sure that tournament players have more experience fighting MKs and Snakes. Now, if that is the case, why are the MKs and Snakes still winning? If the metagame develops faster because they are used so much, then also the metagame for how to fight MKs and Snakes also develops faster. Because of this, there really isn't any difference in the metagame for a character who is overplayed or underplayed. We've discovered pretty much all the character AT's that are of decent value, so the metagame can't develop that way.
The only way the metagames develop now is through battle experience, and the battle experience Snake and MK get are equal to the battle experience others get at defeating them. Everyone here knows which character and strategy they would use against a Snake or MK player. Do we all know who we would use if we came across a Ness player? What about a Yoshi? Some would say it doesn't matter, the fact that their character is better will get them the win. Then I wouldn't say the character's advanced metagame makes them win, rather the character's natural qualities make them better than others and they win because of that.
The "over/underdeveloped" metagame argument is a weak one since the metagame grows equally fast at defeating the growth.

so are you saying tiers come down to matchups? that could be another thing to look at. maybe "top tier" characters simply mean they have less caharcters that would easily beat them than others.

 

[Yuna]

so are you saying tiers come down to matchups? that could be another thing to look at. maybe "top tier" characters simply mean they have less caharcters that would easily beat them than others.

He's not just saying it, that's how tier lists are formed.

 

[zacharia zako]

ohhh ok. but this goes back to my point on if a low tier person who had mastered that character beats a high tier character but that user is not that good with that character. so it could be matchups but it is also the skill level of the player.

 

[SummerObsession]

OP says

"Let's go to our world of ungodly skilled players again and you will see that this doesn't matter. A player that never gets hit does not need to recover. A player that rarely gets hit does rarely need to recover.
This makes Link a character that is essentially good, but hard to play."


Lets have two ungodly skilled players face each other. They are of equal skill and one uses Snake and the other uses Link. The link player who "rarely gets hit" would have to face a snake player "who rarely gets hit" for a fair assessment. In this match up the Link WILL need to recover and so will Snake but Snake will have to recover less and he has a better recovery. The Snake player will win hands down. And so will more than half the other cast againt link.

Snakes tilts ARE what make him good. 25% with his jab to Ftilt is pretty **** good.

Tier list is not a list of how easy it is to play a character. It's a compilation of tournament rankings, and backroom discussion on the characters metagame. http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Brawl_tiers

 

[Greenstreet]

Sounds alot like Azen.
I personally prefer looking at tournament results list as my tier lists. Although they are influenced greatly by players I know. Its just what i do.
But to be honest, it hasn't affected who I am. I prefer to be who I like and ignore any list these forums throw at me. Because it is a game, and in the end you are not going to make a living off playing SSB competitively so why not have fun with it?

SummerObsession has valid points, you can go on about skill all you want but what tier lists are trying to achieve is rankings assuming equal skill.

 

[Shack]

eh an endless argument. bum came in with dk and destroyed ppl and dk didn't jump up. u can take a mid or low tier guy and learn to use them unstopably but if avg ppl can't then the list won't change. there r never equal players, someone is always better. if they were equal it would be a draw or stalemate everytime. if u can find the right way to use ur character and ur opponent can't figure out how to beat it then u r better for the time being and will win regardless of any list.

 

[Crizthakidd]

attacking snake is just a explosion of 17% in your face.

mks nado outprioritize all ur moves as well as his lag free attacks.

king ddds backthrow does 16% as well as a chain on his down throw

falco has insane lazer projectiles as well as good ariels and chian grab


now what does say... jiggs have? rest? no... some chars suck and others dont

now the rest is up to the playrs. who can pwn the hardest with what they have chosen. its like a war. snipers only. then some guy goes in with a pistol. hes gonna get *****. but what if he was unbeleivebly good marksman. he can shoot with crazy accuracy. then he picks his pistol cuz hes so good with it instead of a sniper that would let him own even more but hes better with his pitol.

so while some guys will own so much more with snake or mk some guy can be just as good with his luigi.


stfu about tiers already. if u dont like the placement of ur char then go out to trounies and win so u can up their placement. and y do you even care where they are placed on a list if ur just comma bish about it