Rant / Other Explained: What makes a character honest?

[XDaDePsak]

What makes a character honest?

In short: Perceived overall fairness. The general impression that YOU feel, whereby losses to a given character feel truly deserved. This impression is generally influenced by the following criteria:

1. Risk/Reward Balance. Characters that have moves that are low risk, but high reward are considered dishonest. For example, Witch Time in Smash 4 had almost no risk, but in many situations could guarantee a stock.
   
   
2. Cheese. Moves that can gimp or kill at very early percentages are seen as cheesy and therefore dishonest. For example, Melee Ice Climber's wobbling. Or Smash 4 Bayo's 0-to-death ladder combos. Or even Fox's drag down f-air. And basically all low to no-risk suicide moves such as Bowsercide. Cheese doesn't necessarily have to be easy to execute, but ease-of-use or difficulty-of-escape does act as a cheese-value multiplier.
   
   
3. Degeneracy. Tactics that force an opponent to adopt playstyles that are not fun to play or are non-standard. This is often (but not always) a subset of cheese. Tactics like camping at the edge and waiting for the opponent to approach so you can use a cheesy gimmick to finish them off in one move like Yoshi Egg Lay, Kirby/DDD inhale, DK offstage cargo throw, aetherspike and ganoncide. Or Wii Fit Trainer's entire ledgecamping shtick. Or King K. Rool's boring flowchart. Or the circle camping abilities of Melee Jigglypuff or Brawl Metaknight. It also includes campy playstyles in general, which means on a fundamental level, many projectile-based characters arguably have some automatic base level of degeneracy.
   
   
4. [Nearly] Unbeatable Options. Some moves or tools are so powerful that they are either unbeatable, or sure feel like it. For example, Smash 4 Bayonetta had a recovery that allowed her to return from deep off-stage, with a relatively small window of vulnerability, and the ability to counter-gimp attackers or escort them to the blast zone. Many characters had little or no answer at all to it.

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With all these factors in mind, I personally think that the most honest character in the game would probably be Captain Falcon. Though as I've already mentioned, fairness is ultimately based on perception and is therefore fairly subjective.

 

[VodkaHaze]

Another one to add is randomness. It's one thing to lose to your opponent because they outplayed you, it's another when they effectively just get lucky with a move. If you try an edgeguard a Luigi while he's going for his side-B, only for it to misfire, that can not only result in a failed edgeguard, but can cost you a stock. If Peach tries to pull out a turnip only to pull out a bomb, you can lose if you don't have any effective way of countering or dodging it. A G&W getting a 9 with Judge can kill ridiculously early, and you might kiss your stock goodbye at 10%.

 

[b2jammer]

Here's my first attempt at an "honesty" tier list:

Spoiler: Honesty Tier List (V1)

I tried to base it on the criteria in the OP, but there's no concrete scoring algorithm or anything going on here. That said, characters lower on the tier list generally follow these patterns:

• Are more capable or dependent on camping, or at encouraging the opponent to camp.
• Have access to early KO's/gimps, roughly in order of increasing safety, ease of use, and/or power.
• Force the opponent to adopt an increasingly character-specific strategy (e.g. separate the Ice Climbers, SDI out of Bayo's ladders, or throw Little Mac off the edge).

Thoughts?

 

[Kiligar]

Here's my first attempt at an "honesty" tier list:

Spoiler: Honesty Tier List (V1)

View attachment 230100

I tried to base it on the criteria in the OP, but there's no concrete scoring algorithm or anything going on here. That said, characters lower on the tier list generally follow these patterns:

• Are more capable or dependent on camping, or at encouraging the opponent to camp.
• Have access to early KO's/gimps, roughly in order of increasing safety, ease of use, and/or power.
• Force the opponent to adopt an increasingly character-specific strategy (e.g. separate the Ice Climbers, SDI out of Bayo's ladders, or throw Little Mac off the edge).

Thoughts?

Put Ness and Snake in D. Put Lucas, Simon, Olimar, All Links, Samus, Pac-Man, W.F.T., Mega Man, Jigglypuff and Palutena in C. Seriously, those characters are way off. Not to mention ZSS, Pikachu/Pichu, Inkling, Wolf, Ken, Ike, Mario and Roy. Those should all be in at least C, with the first 5 being in D most like.

 

[b2jammer]

Put Ness and Snake in D. Put Lucas, Simon, Olimar, All Links, Samus, Pac-Man, W.F.T., Mega Man, Jigglypuff and Palutena in C. Seriously, those characters are way off. Not to mention ZSS, Pikachu/Pichu, Inkling, Wolf, Ken, Ike, Mario and Roy. Those should all be in at least C, with the first 5 being in D most like.

Here's my second list, with these changes. I also dropped Ryu, Chrom, and Doc a fair amount, and shuffled the characters within tiers a bit where I felt it made sense.

Spoiler: Honesty Tier List (V2)

 

[Kiligar]

Here's my second list, with these changes. I also dropped Ryu, Chrom, and Doc a fair amount, and shuffled the characters within tiers a bit where I felt it made sense.

Spoiler: Honesty Tier List (V2)

View attachment 230111

Much better. I think Peach and Mii Swordfighter should drop to B, but other than that the list seems pretty solid. Why’s Kirby dishonest? Oh, because he’s such a bad character that fighting him is unfair to Kirby mains. Kirby is quite weak unfortunately, so he’s most likely honest. He has tiny hitboxes on his attacks, and is floaty, light and fairly slow.

 

[Nah]

y'all are gonna have to explain to me how the **** Captain Falcon is even remotely honest lol

 

[b2jammer]

Much better. I think Peach and Mii Swordfighter should drop to B, but other than that the list seems pretty solid. Why’s Kirby dishonest? Oh, because he’s such a bad character that fighting him is unfair to Kirby mains. Kirby is quite weak unfortunately, so he’s most likely honest. He has tiny hitboxes on his attacks, and is floaty, light and fairly slow.

I ranked Kirby low mostly because of Kirbycide, but in hindsight I might have gone overboard with that one. I could also see Peach drop to top of B tier, but I think Mii Swordfighter is fine in A tier (maybe bottom of A tier).

y'all are gonna have to explain to me how the **** Captain Falcon is even remotely honest lol

The only things I would really consider dishonest about Falcon are his nair/up-air strings, Up-B, and maybe his down air spike, and even the latter two are pretty well telegraphed most of the time. Otherwise, he doesn't have much range, his finishers are either slow, punishable, or difficult to land, and his recovery is pretty meh.