Are they better? Maybe, but they are still inaccurate for the reasons I mentioned earlier.
In a sense, Smash tier lists are part popularity contest. I would much prefer to see that a tier list is made based solely on matchup data, like so:
http://www.eventhubs.com/guides/2008/oct/17/street-fighter-4-tiers-character-rankings/
At least this way, popularity is cast aside in favor of something more objective. Yet, popularity can help in making matchup strategies and therefore more accurate numbers. Someone like Ryu, because he's played so much, is easy to make matchup data for whereas someone like Hakan, because he's hardly played, is hard to make data for that's really accurate as some tricks may be left unsearched.
I guess you can say that I'm proposing for a new way tier lists are made here.
To be honest, I'm getting sick of the popularity contests the tier lists have turned into at times. Pit's dumb unwarranted rise ticked the community off even to a point multiple BBR members called out people who voted Pit too high for no reason.
Personally I prefer what people know as a fact on paper first, results second. I don't like how our community does value results too much for making a tier list, hwoever I don't think we should ignore them per say since they do reflect changes in the meta game, which I think is how the tier list is looked at for Brawl rather than objective best via match-ups.
I think it works in some respects because having a MU worse than 4-6 with MK is much worse than having it with most other characters, which does have merit if they view some match-ups like that.
I guess I has this discussion with someone about Peach vs Fox on which is better or worse, ignoring the results parts, which I called BS on some cases, I was looking at the match-ups.
Fox is hard countered by 3 characters, Ice Climbers, Pikachu, and Sheik, if he can avoid them he actually has nice match-ups with everyone else, he loses to some like MK 4-6 but it's not too bad.
Peach has harder time with MK than Fox does, she also loses to Snake, Falco and a few others, on the flip side though none of these are hard counters. Even better she has advantages against a couple of A tier characters, Ice Climbers & Wario, Diddy is debatable.
So the question was, does her making bad match-ups with more common character, while not hard counters, matter more than Fox who has 3 hard counters but none outside of Ice climbers are A tier or higher.
This is partly what I beleive is happening as people are who exactly they lose to rather than overall spread. I don't think this is a bad approach, however I do think we are valuing results far more than we should.
So I do like how SF does it, but at the same time I can see how in some aspects how the smash community does it has valid reasons.
This is of course talking about making a tier list, when it comes to diversity I think Results are a better indication because a tier doesn't necessarily say someone never shows up or someone does etc.
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I'm sad for Sakura, she still has a bad spread in SSF4, even if she loses only 4-6, but it's to almost everyone. :<, but that's a bit off topic and I'll leave that aside.
