My opinion on tiers.

[BrdWthACggr]

Now don't get me wrong tiers are a nice way to organize characters based on success and pure facts. But when you use the information to explain how good a character is, your missing the point. Characters like and are usually low tier, but that doesn't mean that they can't be good if put in the right hands. To me, one of the newer joke characters would be but lately I fell that just because of tiers, this character is never played.

To get to the point quicker, i'm going to use my main man as an example, mostly because this a low tier character that a know the most about. You could put a good Ness against say a same level and the Ness still has a perfectly good chance of wining because of how he is played as well as used to his full potential. Is a prime example, with no practice or strategy Robin is a pretty poor character. But with well thought out projectiles and mind games, you can make the best of players feel some of that salt. If you have your own opinion of tiers, I would like to hear it.

 

[steakhouse]

tiers are mostly about how good characters are at covering options and how hard they can punish while they cover that option. Pichu doesn't have a very good way of edgeguarding anyone, whereas Fox and Marth have a multitude of ways to cover many options at once and take your stock if they do so.

what i'm saying is tiers aren't as important as people give them to be if you're not going for evo, but at regional, sometimes national depending on where you live, tiers don't matter as much. It also depends on if you're more interested in global skill or see how good you can do with your favorite character. Look at SAUS, Taj, Green Ranger ...

 

[Spak]

To get to the point quicker, i'm going to use my main man as an example, mostly because this a low tier character that a know the most about. You could put a good Ness against say a same level and the Ness still has a perfectly good chance of wining because of how he is played as well as used to his full potential.

Not really. The Ness-Fox MU is kinda horrible and Ness has been proved to have less overall potential than Fox by a long shot. Also, by the character examples you're using, I think you meant to post it in the Sm4sh forums, not the Melee forums.

 

[BrdWthACggr]

Spak,
I'm new to this site and i tried to find a forum that would be fit for any topic, I didn't find one so i posted it in melee forums mostly because melee has the best established tier list in my opinion. To you main reply; I believe that a character may have less potential than others but I fell that if that bit of potential is used correctly, it could be beutif <- that was a Jontron quote. With the Ness Fox match-up example, yes its true that fox has the upper hand logically, but like no one said ever, "A bad fox would always win against a great Pichu."

 

[Spak]

Spak,
I'm new to this site and i tried to find a forum that would be fit for any topic, I didn't find one so i posted it in melee forums mostly because melee has the best established tier list in my opinion.

I agree that Melee has the best tier list, but I just assumed that you were on the wrong forum because you were using examples from characters that aren't in the game. My apologies for assuming incorrectly.

To you main reply; I believe that a character may have less potential than others but I fell that if that bit of potential is used correctly, it could be beutif <- that was a Jontron quote. With the Ness Fox match-up example, yes its true that fox has the upper hand logically, but like no one said ever, "A bad fox would always win against a great Pichu."

I would agree that a great Pichu would win against a bad Fox, but the reason I said Ness would have no chance in the prior post is because you specified in the OP that they are around the same skill-level:

You could put a good Ness against say a same level and the Ness still has a perfectly good chance of wining because of how he is played as well as used to his full potential.

A Ness or Pichu going against someone of the same skill level who playing a high-tier would naturally lose because the MU is so bad.

EDIT: Also, I forgot to mention that a tier list assumes the players are at the same level. Tier lists aren't set in stone and there can always be a really good Smash player who wrecks with a low-tier, but that's because their skill level is higher and not because their character is misrepresented on a tier list.

 

[Xyzz]

To get to the point quicker, i'm going to use my main man as an example, mostly because this a low tier character that a know the most about. You could put a good Ness against say a same level and the Ness still has a perfectly good chance of wining because of how he is played as well as used to his full potential.

What does the "same level" refer to? If we're talking about the players factoring in their respective char choice, saying that Ness has a perfectly good chance of winning is not really stating anything. Per definition the players are equally good, so of course they each have a 50% chance at victory (ignoring individual matchup advantages for the sake of keeping this simple).
If we're talking about players having an arbitrary level of "generic skill" and apply that to either Fox or Ness, I doubt the Ness player would be winning very many games.

Tiers definitely do exist. That doesn't have to stop people from playing them, there can always be players who just click with some lower tier character(s) (e.g. Axe / Amsah being really good with Pikachu and Yoshi respectively), and of course we don't know whether or not our perception of the game is going to change yet again (e.g. the rise of Jigglypuff), but that doesn't change that judging from our current knowledge that there are some characters that are just better than others.

 

[Spak]

aMSa has a good Yoshi; Amsah has a good Sheik.

 

[Stride]

You could put a good Ness against say a same level and the Ness still has a perfectly good chance of wining because of how he is played as well as used to his full potential.

Ness' full potential is much (emphasis on "much") lower than Fox's. At low levels character strength/potential isn't really relevant, because low-level players aren't capable of using the things that make the good characters good (so in a sense all characters are equally bad when played by bad players). At high levels, the Fox players can use Fox's strengths to gain advantages, while the Ness players cannot use Ness' strengths to the same extent, because Ness simply does not possess them. Ness' chances of winning against Fox in a game between two equally skilled players reduce as the level of play increases.

It might help to think of it like this:
• A character has a "level" between 0 and 100; Fox has a level of 100, and Ness has a level of 20 (because Fox is the best character while Ness is one of the worst).
• A player has a corresponding level, also between 0 and 100. Imagine 2 players, Player A with a level of 100, and Player B with a level of 20.
• The effective strength of a character/player cannot exceed the lowest level of the character/player

• Even if Ness is used to his full potential by Player A, Ness is only good enough to hit 20 even though the player has the potential to perform at level 100. Therefore the performance from Player A using Ness will be at level 20.
• Likewise, even when using a character with a level of 100 (Fox), Player B lacks the skill to play better than level 20 even if the character gives them the opportunity to go up to 100. Therefore the performance from Player B using Fox will be at level 20.

• Ness will never exceed level 20 even with the most skilled players, while Fox can reach level 100 with the most skilled players.
• A game between a level 20 Ness player and a level 20 Fox player will appear even, while a game between a level 50 Ness and a level 50 Fox will favour the Fox. A game between a level 100 Ness and a level 100 Fox is practically unwinnable for the Ness player. The Ness player is still stuck at level 20 while the Fox isn't limited to the same extent.

People aren't "missing the point" when using a tier list; they acknowledge that bad characters can do well in the right hands, it's just that good characters can do even better. At top levels, good characters do so much better than bad characters that there's practically no way that the bad characters can win. This is why you never see, say, Pichu winning tournaments; it's not that Pichu's meta is underdeveloped so much as that even if Pichu was as optimised as the top tier characters, they would still stand no chance of winning because an optimised Pichu is drastically weaker than an optimised Fox/Falco/Marth/good character. Tiers exist, and in a game as badly balanced as Melee, they matter a lot.

This article is relevant: http://www.ssbwiki.com/User:Semicolon/Treatise_on_the_Existence_of_Tiers

 

[Xyzz]

Bah, at least Eggm and Eggz have the decency to play the same character, so slip-ups like this one aren't so obvious... :D

 

[Y-L]

tires don exits

 

[Blackavar]

Tiers don't matter at all! That's why Ness, and every other low tier in fact, has the same amount of national and international wins as the characters arbitrarily placed higher on the tier list.

Also brd you say that "with the right projectiles and 'mind games' you can make the best players feel some of that salt", while using Robin. I'm excited to see your wins vs Zero or Mew2King then.

 

[Spak]

Tiers don't matter at all! That's why Ness, and every other low tier in fact, has the same amount of national and international wins as the characters arbitrarily placed higher on the tier list.

That's just not true.

Also brd you say that "with the right projectiles and 'mind games' you can make the best players feel some of that salt", while using Robin. I'm excited to see your wins vs Zero or Mew2King then.

We aren't talking about the Sm4sh tier list. The meta in Sm4sh hasn't evolved enough for new techniques to be found and the potential of low-tiers and high-tiers hasn't had an opportunity to grow. The skill gap between high-level and casual play so still extremely low (and probably will stay low in comparison to Melee).

 

[Xyzz]

I always wonder whether it's Americans or people on the internet in general being horrible at detecting irony ... :D

 

[Teran]

It's mostly the doc kids and Sm4sh players @ Xyzz , this argument is so beaten and dead it's an exhibit at the Smash Museum of Natural History

 

[Blackavar]

I always wonder whether it's Americans or people on the internet in general being horrible at detecting irony ... :D

The common rebuttal to this is "sarcasm can't be detected through text"; which always leads me to wonder whether these people have ever read a book.

Anyway Spak, when Brd says you can make the 'best players' (his words) "feel the salt" while using Robin, I don't think it's out of line to ask him to show off his own wins against these best players.

 

[Mwauthzyx]

Tiers are good. The game isn't balanced.

 

[Spak]

Anyway Spak, when Brd says you can make the 'best players' (his words) "feel the salt" while using Robin, I don't think it's out of line to ask him to show off his own wins against these best players.

I would love to see Brd test his skill against M2K in Melee. I can ensure you that he would lose with a low-tier.

 

[kingPiano]

Oh my goodness. This is the essence of this site lol.

Well I guess it's most board sites, the same topic gets beaten to death by new member threads every page.

Tiers are there for a reason if you could take a macro view of the gaps in the tier list it would be like looking at the solar system from a million light years away; they all look kind of close, but then you zoom in. The top tiers are sooo sooo SOOOOO far away from Ness that if you were to look from Ness's perspective you won't even be able to see Fox/Falco or Sheik and Marth. It's like a Girls Middle School Basketball Team vs. The San Antonio Spurs or something.

 

[Massive]

Spak,
I'm new to this site and i tried to find a forum that would be fit for any topic, I didn't find one so i posted it in melee forums mostly because melee has the best established tier list in my opinion. To you main reply; I believe that a character may have less potential than others but I fell that if that bit of potential is used correctly, it could be beutif <- that was a Jontron quote. With the Ness Fox match-up example, yes its true that fox has the upper hand logically, but like no one said ever, "A bad fox would always win against a great Pichu."

 

[Quillion]

Tiers are actually different in Melee than they are in the other Smash games. In all the rest, due to the lower skill cap, there isn't much room to improve, so in 64, Brawl, and Smash 4, tiers signify characters that are flat-out better than other characters. Top-tier pretty much means auto-win.

In Melee, though, it's a well known fact that the top-tier Fragile Speedsters require a massive amount of practice and dedication, so playing a top-tier in Melee isn't quite an auto-win as it is in other games. Therefore tiers in Melee is more a gauge of "room for skill" than it is for "flat-out better".

 

[Stride]

In all the rest, due to the lower skill cap, there isn't much room to improve

Are you sure about that?

 

[BrdWthACggr]

Oh my goodness. This is the essence of this site lol.

Well I guess it's most board sites, the same topic gets beaten to death by new member threads every page.

Tiers are there for a reason if you could take a macro view of the gaps in the tier list it would be like looking at the solar system from a million light years away; they all look kind of close, but then you zoom in. The top tiers are sooo sooo SOOOOO far away from Ness that if you were to look from Ness's perspective you won't even be able to see Fox/Falco or Sheik and Marth. It's like a Girls Middle School Basketball Team vs. The San Antionio Spurs or something.

Yeah I see what you are saying, but can we please not use a girls basketball team as an example.

 

[kingPiano]

Yeah I see what you are saying, but can we please not use a girls basketball team as an example.

I mean no offense to women but it was purely for an analogy.

While even the WNBA and NBA are still separate entities I see nothing wrong with it. We don't allow female MMA fighters to fight male MMA fighters because that would be homicide basically. Men and Women are in completely different categories (tiers) in terms of natural muscle and athleticism, no need to get all SJW about a fact.

 

[Blackavar]

Women largely aren't good at anything.

 

[M.C.Jeducation]

Women largely aren't good at anything.

Wow this guy speaks his mind and doesn't afraid of anything. What a hero.

 

[Spak]

Women largely aren't good at anything.

The 1800s just called. They want their ideals back.

 

[Superspright]

When it comes to video-games they objectively suck. You want to refute that then show me the evidence. Otherwise his opinion blows on most matters.

 

[Spak]

When it comes to video-games they objectively suck. You want to refute that then show me the evidence. Otherwise his opinion blows on most matters.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Hostyn

 

[Comet7]

i'd imagine that being a girl would be better because girls tend to have more slender fingers so it'd be (slightly) easier to make fast, coordinated movements.

 

[Blackavar]

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasha_Hostyn

Oh I see, one female pro gamer to compare with thousands of male pro gamers make women "just as good" right? Scarlett is also biologically a man, whether or not she identifies as a woman, and, pro tip, it's male biology which makes men better at literally every competitive sport, game or scene in the world.

 

[Blackavar]

i'd imagine that being a girl would be better because girls tend to have more slender fingers so it'd be (slightly) easier to make fast, coordinated movements.

It's bad because testosterone is overpowered (look it up) and men have a competitive drive built into our psychologies which women largely do not.

 

[Spak]

Oh I see, one female pro gamer to compare with thousands of male pro gamers make women "just as good" right? Scarlett is also biologically a man, whether or not she identifies as a woman, and, pro tip, it's male biology which makes men better at literally every competitive sport, game or scene in the world.

Here's a list of the top 10:

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/the-worlds-10-top-earning-pro-gamer-girls/

I didn't say they are better overall, I said they don't suck just because they're women. It's true that women are less competitive by nature, but they still have the capability to be competitive gamers and compete with the best (if they're good enough).

 

[Blackavar]

Oh they CAN compete with the best, and just choose not to? I mean if women could compete with the best they could win tournaments attended by the best right? That's why women have won exactly 0 nationals in Smash, exactly 0 world chess championships, exactly 0 world Starcraft championships and probably 0 world championships at every other competitive esport or non strength related traditional sport (darts, shooting, etc) at which they would be expected to suffer no handicap.

Also the link you posted stretches the definition of "pro", earning eight thousand dollars over your entire career in your local tournament scene doesn't constitute a career as a "professional" gamer. The majority of these women seem to earn about $2000 per year. Once again Scarlett is credited as being a women, which isn't exactly true.

I don't get this argument that women are "just as capable" when a single woman has never been world champion at a single competitive exports title.

 

[Superspright]

Here's a list of the top 10:

http://www.therichest.com/rich-list/world/the-worlds-10-top-earning-pro-gamer-girls/

I didn't say they are better overall, I said they don't suck just because they're women. It's true that women are less competitive by nature, but they still have the capability to be competitive gamers and compete with the best (if they're good enough).

You're obtuse. Men are better in every competitive arena on the planet compared to women. We're better runners, shooters, tacklers, whatever. We're the best at any game on the planet. Chess, Checkers, Go, Melee, Starcraft, Halo, etc. etc.

If women could compete with me there wouldn't be women's leagues. This is just an objective truth. We didn't design biology we're merely making the observation. Women are better than men at plenty of things. They just aren't good at competitive games at all, or any competitive sport compared to men. They will always fall short in reaction time, power, or speed, and even the ability to compute solutions.

 

[Spak]

You're obtuse. Men are better in every competitive arena on the planet compared to women. We're better runners, shooters, tacklers, whatever. We're the best at any game on the planet. Chess, Checkers, Go, Melee, Starcraft, Halo, etc. etc.

If women could compete with me there wouldn't be women's leagues. This is just an objective truth. We didn't design biology we're merely making the observation. Women are better than men at plenty of things. They just aren't good at competitive games at all, or any competitive sport compared to men. They will always fall short in reaction time, power, or speed, and even the ability to compute solutions.

http://techland.time.com/2010/10/08/and-the-winner-of-wcg-ultimate-gamer-2-is/

 

[Malkasaur]

Tiers don't matter at all! That's why Ness, and every other low tier in fact, has the same amount of national and international wins as the characters arbitrarily placed higher on the tier list.

Also brd you say that "with the right projectiles and 'mind games' you can make the best players feel some of that salt", while using Robin. I'm excited to see your wins vs Zero or Mew2King then.

Wrong. Low tiers won't win big tournaments because top players are too good to lose to them.

 

[Malkasaur]

And don't bring up aMSa. Yoshi is an incredibly good character that its also incredibly difficult to be good with.

 

[1MachGO]

You're obtuse. Men are better in every competitive arena on the planet compared to women. We're better runners, shooters, tacklers, whatever. We're the best at any game on the planet. Chess, Checkers, Go, Melee, Starcraft, Halo, etc. etc.

If women could compete with me there wouldn't be women's leagues. This is just an objective truth. We didn't design biology we're merely making the observation. Women are better than men at plenty of things. They just aren't good at competitive games at all, or any competitive sport compared to men. They will always fall short in reaction time, power, or speed, and even the ability to compute solutions.

Only competitions where testosterone would give you an advantage (ie physical strength, size, bone structure, etc) can men and women not compete as equals. Cognitively speaking, women generally test better in almost every regard but spacial reason and sometimes mathematics iirc (but studies have shown that is more cultural than anything else). There is no difference in terms of potential when it comes to competitions like chess, pool, vehicular or equine racing, games, etc. even in generally considered "male activities" such, as target shooting, men have been bodied by women at the Olympic level. The only disadvantage women have in games is cultural so get your head out of *** and adopt a less 1950s view on women, please.

 

[Blackavar]

LOL look up how testosterone impacts brain functions before making such stupid remarks. If women are as capable as men then why do they never win anything? Ever? At all? Shouldn't they be winning uh... HALF the tournaments in esports, chess, etc?

 

[kingPiano]

LOL look up how testosterone impacts brain functions before making such stupid remarks. If women are as capable as men then why do they never win anything? Ever? At all? Shouldn't they be winning uh... HALF the tournaments in esports, chess, etc?

Blackavar I hope you are 12 or something to be so misinformed and naive. Regardless of your age it's quite clear you don't have much experience with women (and I'm sure they'd want to have nothing to do with you)

Sample size is the only reason really. You don't see that much interest from females in the first place for videogames or eSports, so it's like 1:500. You can't really even compare the two genders in such a lopsided hobby. Just like in industries like Make-Up, Hairdressing, etc you don't see any straight men dominating the top spots, it's mostly all Women. It's just boils down to the gender's interests in the activity/sport/industry.

And women can be even more competitive than men but they show it in different ways, most commonly in trying to attract men by competing with other women CONSTANTLY. And professionally in sectors of the industry that involve Beauty, Fashion, Dancing, and so on. Sports have never been and will probably never be something that Women surpass Men in on a competitive level, but they don't aspire to either. Just like straight men don't care about make-up or aspire to be better at make-up artists than women.