Have we made a tier list yet?

[Birdygamer]

I haven't heard any news if a tier list is being developed but I feel that Little Mac should be at least a top-low tier character since hes been getting results. So is an official tier list still being made?

 

[Arymle Roseanne]

Nope, still too early in the Meta to determine an official tier list, considering how there's so many characters and with dlc being included it's going to be a long time before there's an official one.

 

[Coolboy]

plz no official tier list..there are to many people and to many different opinions sooo a official tier list shouldn't be happening like ever..
i always said that everyone should have their own tier list..cause lets be honest characters you are good with are high tier to you but characters you suck with are low tier to you. and i think that is how it should be.

 

[Predatoria]

I like to look at these:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AJs-mj5TTdkmkl7nhj4twJymVPTLTUdT0MBToL1cxDs/edit#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...cz7Tza8MqyZU9gZVJIa25T2qo/edit#gid=1193204896

The first is a weighted character ranking spreadsheet that has cataloged major Smash events and the success of each character in each event. It gives a numerical indication of which characters are placing well in tournaments.

The second is a compiled list of all top player tier lists.

What I like about these lists is they present statistical data rather than a conglomerate opinion of the masses. The statistical data presents Little Mac as being second last in tourney rep.

 

[Technourgos]

I like to look at these:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AJs-mj5TTdkmkl7nhj4twJymVPTLTUdT0MBToL1cxDs/edit#gid=0

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...cz7Tza8MqyZU9gZVJIa25T2qo/edit#gid=1193204896

The first is a weighted character ranking spreadsheet that has cataloged major Smash events and the success of each character in each event. It gives a numerical indication of which characters are placing well in tournaments.

The second is a compiled list of all top player tier lists.

What I like about these lists is they present statistical data rather than a conglomerate opinion of the masses. The statistical data presents Little Mac as being second last in tourney rep.

The first spreadsheet places Samus/Dark Samus at 42nd, and the second places her at 47th. By my standard of rating tier placements between values 0 and 1, that places Samus/Dark Samus at 42.46%, which is mid-tier. The second places her at high low-tier. Many think she's mid-tier, and some even say high mid-tier. It's interesting how this data works because it considers players who are low- or mid-level players and groups them with top-level players.

 

[Birdygamer]

The first spreadsheet places Samus/Dark Samus at 42nd, and the second places her at 47th. By my standard of rating tier placements between values 0 and 1, that places Samus/Dark Samus at 42.46%, which is mid-tier. The second places her at high low-tier. Many think she's mid-tier, and some even say high mid-tier. It's interesting how this data works because it considers players who are low- or mid-level players and groups them with top-level players.

So what do you think of Little Mac's fate right now?

 

[Technourgos]

So what do you think of Little Mac's fate right now?

Bottom tier. In my version of a tier list with a value between 0 and 1, and based on both spreadsheets where Little Mac is placed 72nd out of 73rd, he is at 0.0137, or 1.37%.

 

[Predatoria]

The first spreadsheet places Samus/Dark Samus at 42nd, and the second places her at 47th. By my standard of rating tier placements between values 0 and 1, that places Samus/Dark Samus at 42.46%, which is mid-tier. The second places her at high low-tier. Many think she's mid-tier, and some even say high mid-tier. It's interesting how this data works because it considers players who are low- or mid-level players and groups them with top-level players.

I'm not quite following what you mean here.

Being ranked 42nd in tourney rep, and 47th by an average of high-caliber Smash players results in quite a good agreement between the two different metrics.

Also, the way the results sheet is set up, it places significant weight on larger tournaments where the highest caliber players are going to show up and win. That results in the characters played by the high caliber players at the biggest tournaments governing that ranking much moreso than the lesser tourneys.

 

[Technourgos]

Predatoria
Imagine player A and player B main the same character x. A performs better than B, but the data includes A and B's results, so while A got top 8, x is going to drop because B got 128th place. A is well-known and considered the best with x, but B isn't either. Or do A's results matter only?

 

[Predatoria]

Predatoria
Imagine player A and player B main the same character x. A performs better than B, but the data includes A and B's results, so while A got top 8, x is going to drop because B got 128th place. A is well-known and considered the best with x, but B isn't either. Or do A's results matter only?

That's not how it works.

The scoring is explained better in the sheet, but if player A gets 8th place with X and B gets 128, B would award 128 points towards character X whereas A would award 128 * (2 ^ 5 - 1) points. Character Y, with no representation, is awarded 0 points.

Ultimately, the bigger the tournament, the more points every character gets for placing (after pools are concluded). The further a character gets, the more points that character is allotted.

In a 128 player tourney, such as Evo (with over 3,000 applicants and a big round of pools whittling the entry pool down to a 128 player bracket):

Character X was played by player B in the 1st round. That's worth 128 points.

Character X was also played by player A in the 1st round, 128 more.
Character X was also played by player A in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th rounds of the tournament, thus scoring 128 * 1 + 128 * 2 + 128 * 4 + 128 * 8 + 128 * 16, or (128 * (2^5 - 1)) points.

I think, for Evo, actually, it'd come in and multiply it even higher by the 3000, rather than the 128.

A weekly, however, would be really tiny, worth very few points.

All representation helps a character out on that sheet, however, getting further and participating in bigger events provides significantly more points.

I personally find the scoring methodology to be fascinating, fair, and brilliant.

 

[Ez Quinn]

Well, may I remind you this site does have official tier lists for the last four games. So im really sure we are going to see an official one for ultimate eventually. When that will be is hard to determine. ultimate has so many chars, and new DLC are being added all the time. plus its been teased by Sakurai that DLC wave 2 is in the works. I'd like to see an official one by here or the ssbwiki done by the beginning to middle of next year though.

 

[Birdygamer]

Well, may I remind you this site does have official tier lists for the last four games. So im really sure we are going to see an official one for ultimate eventually. When that will be is hard to determine. ultimate has so many chars, and new DLC are being added all the time. plus its been teased by Sakurai that DLC wave 2 is in the works. I'd like to see an official one by here or the ssbwiki done by the beginning to middle of next year though.

I still think theres hope for Little Mac and for the community to quit being stubborn. I mean, Taratakori jusy placed 13th at Sumabato SP 8, a Japanese NATIONAL tournament. While I know they have a different META, its still a great result! It ticks me off how people dump on Mac and call him trash befaude he's more ground then air. THAT'S THR POINT! hes a boxer, it would make ZERO sense for him to have an air game. Yet people are still getting results with him so he's not trash. You want to know a Smash character who is trash!? Melee Pichu! At least Mac had notable results and notable players who MAIN him! Melee Pichu has none of those and this character HAS AN AIR GAME!!!! So quit missing on Mac people! Yeah he's not the best character but quit talking about him as if he will never be good becuade he can be. Ask Sol, Tarakatori, Wes, Reverse Sol, Mr. Newport, Kwaz, Kala and Salt King!

 

[Xelrog]

I wasn't around at the time but I was told that the first iteration of Smash 4's "official" list came about over a year after release, no?

 

[Predatoria]

I still think theres hope for Little Mac and for the community to quit being stubborn. I mean, Taratakori jusy placed 13th at Sumabato SP 8, a Japanese NATIONAL tournament. While I know they have a different META, its still a great result! It ticks me off how people dump on Mac and call him trash befaude he's more ground then air. THAT'S THR POINT! hes a boxer, it would make ZERO sense for him to have an air game. Yet people are still getting results with him so he's not trash. You want to know a Smash character who is trash!? Melee Pichu! At least Mac had notable results and notable players who MAIN him! Melee Pichu has none of those and this character HAS AN AIR GAME!!!! So quit missing on Mac people! Yeah he's not the best character but quit talking about him as if he will never be good becuade he can be. Ask Sol, Tarakatori, Wes, Reverse Sol, Mr. Newport, Kwaz, Kala and Salt King!

This thread and, in particular, your reply has caused me to wonder about something I had not wondered about before.

Tier lists influence player choice.
The very existence of a tier lists will influence which characters players do or do not decide to play. I have seen evidence of this many times.

Players will ask which character would make a good secondary to help counter certain matchups. It is common for tier lists to be consulted during this time. Characters near the top are often considered, whereas characters near the bottom are not considered very often. One reason for this is while players often have a reason for selecting their main of choice, they may not care who their secondary is so long as it pulls them through particularly bad matchups or helps them cover a player or character they're struggling to beat. I would guess very few people choose to secondary low-tier characters for the purposes of succeeding in a competitive environment.

Newer players are also often swayed by tier lists. If they are indecisive on their decision on who to main, tier lists can help settle that debate.

Tier lists provide positive feedback
A system may be considered to be unstable if it has positive feedback. Positive feedback means that any deviation from a state of balance causes an even stronger force pushing that state away from that state of balance. Tiers may reflect such a system, where a state of balance is such that all fighters are considered equal to one another. While there may be some underlying stat-based evidence to be found among tier lists in the form of poor frame data, lack of combos, lack of kill confirms, or other things that may be quantifiable, ultimately they are a collection of public opinion on the rankings of the characters against one another. If a tier list is composed primarily of votes based off public opinion, the ones that are more popular will continue to be ranked highly simply because they are popular. Since they are popular, they get played in tournaments more, thus further solidifying their place as higher tier fighters.

Another means by which tier lists can generate a positive feedback loop is in the form of meta development. Characters do develop over time. New combos, kill confirms, and techs are found out for particular fighters. The ones who are played more by higher caliber players often get researched more, and thus develop further. These developments are read and learned by the general populace, applied, and thus a fighter becomes stronger simply because it is considered to be a high tier fighter, further enforcing the tier list.

The conundrum presented by all of this is that one can make statements such as this:

"Little Mac is low tier because Little Mac is low tier."

It's a break-down in logic. After all, how much time do you think has been invested by high-caliber players into trying to push Little Mac's meta as far as they can, versus that of a fighter such as Peach, Wolf, or Palutena.

Essentially, due to the above reasonings, Little Mac is simply low tier because he's already low tier, and he will not escape from being low tier unless a particularly hype-able event (such as very large Little Mac buffs or a very popular player choosing him and doing well in big tournaments for an extended period of time) happens to overcome his low-tier'ness to the point where it undoes the solidification of his place as low tier.

I am curious to ask, how much do tier lists represent the empirical combat potency of particular fighters, rather than their relative popularities and states of meta development. If you were to present Smash Ultimate hundreds of times to different, isolated groups of people, what would the tier lists look like? How much would a character fluctuate in their placement across iterations of tier developments? Would they be totally random, the same every time, or somewhere in-between. The consistency of the tier list over iterations would yield an estimate of its actual value. Should it settle to the same general rankings every time, it is quite valuable in estimating combat potency. If the results of this hypothetical test were to be erratic and random, it would suggest a tier list is merely a popularity contest, with little value in estimating combat potency. It will be somewhere between these extremes.

For what it's worth, it makes me wonder if my main, Ridley, has been condemned to being low-tier due to this video last Summer where he gets obliterated by Bayonetta:

Spoiler: MkLeo vs Plup 2018 Youtube Video, Ridley vs Bayonetta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BECSA1CHyi0

In my personal, albeit relatively novice experience in Smash, tier lists have never reflected how I personally have felt about the characters. I am terrified of some low tier characters. I find some high tier characters to be easy to beat. Even when looking into Ridley-specific matchup charts, they often don't reflect how I personally experience the game. They'll always put Little Mac at like +2 in Ridley's favor, even though I have an uncanny trend of losing to Little Mac online almost every time I run into him. He's just supposed to be the low tier, easy to beat character in the public's mind, so that's where he's always put.

 

[Mogisthelioma]

It takes a long time for the meta to develop. It may be over a year before we see an official tier list made, and those numbers will depend on tournament results, player rankings, matchup charts, etc. While in reality there can never be an "OFFICIAL" tier list, something like the ones people refer to on the Smash Wiki won't show up for a while.

 

[Birdygamer]

This thread and, in particular, your reply has caused me to wonder about something I had not wondered about before.

Tier lists influence player choice.
The very existence of a tier lists will influence which characters players do or do not decide to play. I have seen evidence of this many times.

Players will ask which character would make a good secondary to help counter certain matchups. It is common for tier lists to be consulted during this time. Characters near the top are often considered, whereas characters near the bottom are not considered very often. One reason for this is while players often have a reason for selecting their main of choice, they may not care who their secondary is so long as it pulls them through particularly bad matchups or helps them cover a player or character they're struggling to beat. I would guess very few people choose to secondary low-tier characters for the purposes of succeeding in a competitive environment.

Newer players are also often swayed by tier lists. If they are indecisive on their decision on who to main, tier lists can help settle that debate.

Tier lists provide positive feedback
A system may be considered to be unstable if it has positive feedback. Positive feedback means that any deviation from a state of balance causes an even stronger force pushing that state away from that state of balance. Tiers may reflect such a system, where a state of balance is such that all fighters are considered equal to one another. While there may be some underlying stat-based evidence to be found among tier lists in the form of poor frame data, lack of combos, lack of kill confirms, or other things that may be quantifiable, ultimately they are a collection of public opinion on the rankings of the characters against one another. If a tier list is composed primarily of votes based off public opinion, the ones that are more popular will continue to be ranked highly simply because they are popular. Since they are popular, they get played in tournaments more, thus further solidifying their place as higher tier fighters.

Another means by which tier lists can generate a positive feedback loop is in the form of meta development. Characters do develop over time. New combos, kill confirms, and techs are found out for particular fighters. The ones who are played more by higher caliber players often get researched more, and thus develop further. These developments are read and learned by the general populace, applied, and thus a fighter becomes stronger simply because it is considered to be a high tier fighter, further enforcing the tier list.

The conundrum presented by all of this is that one can make statements such as this:

"Little Mac is low tier because Little Mac is low tier."

It's a break-down in logic. After all, how much time do you think has been invested by high-caliber players into trying to push Little Mac's meta as far as they can, versus that of a fighter such as Peach, Wolf, or Palutena.

Essentially, due to the above reasonings, Little Mac is simply low tier because he's already low tier, and he will not escape from being low tier unless a particularly hype-able event (such as very large Little Mac buffs or a very popular player choosing him and doing well in big tournaments for an extended period of time) happens to overcome his low-tier'ness to the point where it undoes the solidification of his place as low tier.

I am curious to ask, how much do tier lists represent the empirical combat potency of particular fighters, rather than their relative popularities and states of meta development. If you were to present Smash Ultimate hundreds of times to different, isolated groups of people, what would the tier lists look like? How much would a character fluctuate in their placement across iterations of tier developments? Would they be totally random, the same every time, or somewhere in-between. The consistency of the tier list over iterations would yield an estimate of its actual value. Should it settle to the same general rankings every time, it is quite valuable in estimating combat potency. If the results of this hypothetical test were to be erratic and random, it would suggest a tier list is merely a popularity contest, with little value in estimating combat potency. It will be somewhere between these extremes.

For what it's worth, it makes me wonder if my main, Ridley, has been condemned to being low-tier due to this video last Summer where he gets obliterated by Bayonetta:

Spoiler: MkLeo vs Plup 2018 Youtube Video, Ridley vs Bayonetta

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BECSA1CHyi0

In my personal, albeit relatively novice experience in Smash, tier lists have never reflected how I personally have felt about the characters. I am terrified of some low tier characters. I find some high tier characters to be easy to beat. Even when looking into Ridley-specific matchup charts, they often don't reflect how I personally experience the game. They'll always put Little Mac at like +2 in Ridley's favor, even though I have an uncanny trend of losing to Little Mac online almost every time I run into him. He's just supposed to be the low tier, easy to beat character in the public's mind, so that's where he's always put.

Often times its a lot less little Mac needs buffs and a lot more of the player needs to develop their meta and fundamentals. Fundamentals are the foundation of META. If your fudamentals are poor, your META with any tier character will mean very little. I actually talk to Little Mac's pioneer Sol on Twitter and he once told me that based on fundamentals ALONE, Zero, one of the most legendary players in Smash history could become the WORLDS BEST LITTLE MAC PLAYER OFF OF FUNDAMENTALS ALONE.

It makes me wonder and I use this logic a lot:

"Is a character low tier because they're underdeveloped or are they underdeveloped because they're low tier?"