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A proposal on using decimals/percents, not grades in tier lists

Crystanium

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From what I can recall, tier lists for Super Smash Bros. used top-bottom ranks, rather than grade ranks. It seems grade ranks began during the SSBB era. I suspect grade ranks have been used for a long time outside of SSB, and perhaps grade ranks appear better. Still, while characters in an S-tier might be considered better than those in an A-tier, what do these even mean? It's very unusual, too, that characters aren't compartmentalized. No doubt, there will never be an equal amount of characters per rank.

Imagine a tier list ranking between 0 and 1, with 0 being the worst and 1 being the best. Of course, no character could ever attain 1. It's just simply not possible, at least with the current roster. To illustrate this, take SSB64. There are 12 characters. Pikachu is 1st of 12. This means that Pikachu lands at 0.92 (rounded). He (or "it") is close to 1, but not 1. Even with a larger cast like that in Sm4sh, Bayonetta falls at 0.98. It appears that landing at 1 is never truly attainable, but it's possible to get very close. On the other hand, a character who is ranked last will always end up at 0.

The way this ranking between 0 and 1 works is by taking character C at the total number of characters T, and dividing so that C/T = x, where x is a value that 1 must be subtracted by. So if there was ever a roster that had 100 characters, and C was 1st of 100, it would be represented as 1/100, which would give 0.01, with which 1 could be subtracted from. Thus, 1 - 0.01 = 0.99. With this in mind, the ranking would be constructed like so.

  • Top: 1 to 0.8
  • High: 0.79 to 0.6
  • Mid: 0.59 to 0.4
  • Low: 0.39 to 0.2
  • Bottom: 0.19 to 0

As you can see, this kind of tier list would be close to 20%, and while a top-tier character would fall within 1 to 0.8, recall that 1 isn't going to happen with the current roster. I suspect future rosters won't be extremely large, so everyone at least can fall within a 19% rank. This provides everyone with a ranking system in five categories, rather than 11 categories like in SSBB, or 7 like in Sm4sh. If rosters become larger, I think there's going to need to be a limit on categories because it doesn't make it look elegant (not the Luigi pro).
 
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Baby_Sneak

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I like your idea, only because it keeps characters from appearing a certain way.

NINTENDO Galaxy NINTENDO Galaxy we should keep from labeling tiers like “Super broken God tier” and “piss poor trash garbage tier” because those labels will apply to all those in that tier, and perpetuate a certain message. Let’s try not to steer people away from characters with this “marketing” and allow them to choose message-free.
 
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NINTENDO Galaxy

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I thought normal tier lists and match-ups normally lead to that opinion by themselves.
 

Baby_Sneak

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I thought normal tier lists and match-ups normally lead to that opinion by themselves.
Depends on how it’s ordered too. MUs are way more subjective so they aren’t very damning of the character, but seeing your character at H tier looks really bad lol. Seeing your character at a tier with a more abstract label makes things less straightforward and more ambiguous.
 

Crystanium

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Thanks, Baby_Sneak Baby_Sneak . Since a roster can increase or decrease, the grade ranking suffers from shifting for each game, adding or subtracting grades as a result. At least with decimals or percents, there is a static method.
 
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