"How are they made?" "What do they mean?" A question on tiers that's been buggin' me for years!

[Green Zelda]

Buenas tardes, amigos! Hope you've been having a fine April!
Just a disclaimer, although I ask some questions in this post, this is also a discussion thread, so feel free to post below "how you'd run things if you were in charge".

Now, tiers have always existed in nearly every competitive game to date, and smash 4 obviously isn't an exception. You can google pictures of old, unofficial ones (created near the time of the game's official release), there's the official 4BR list, and heck, there's even a public one on this forum section!

However, tier lists almost never stay the same, especially in smash 4, a game with balance patches every few weeks/months. Occasionally, people's views of characters change, which makes certain ones move up or down throughout the 5 (I think..) biggest "divisions" of the lists; top, high, mid, low, and bottom.

This leaves me with quite a few questions. Do these lists (and if YOU were in charge of making the next official one, would you..) rank characters based on how good he/she is? Or how good they are in the current metagame? (ex: many people think highly of yoshi, but he doesn't have good representation. Does he belong/would you put him high up there? Or leave him in the "mid tier", which leads to my next question.)

What do the individual tiers mean, and if you made the next list, what would you make them mean? I may be wrong on this (correct me if I am, please), but the 4BR one makes them sorta seem like this: top = the best of the best, high = very good, mid = ok, low = pretty bad, bottom = trash
However, when ZeRo made his 1.1.4 tier list, this is basically what he made them represent (again, please correct me if I'm wrong about this): top = proven to be the meta's greatest threats, high = also threatening, but not as much as the top tier, and mid = "has the potential, but not the results". Which way is the correct way, and is there even a "correct way?"

Finally, which matters most, results, theory, or representation? A while back when Abadango dropped wario, you could see a lot of people say things like, "Oh man, poor Wario mains. He's definitely going to fall on the tier lists now!" But how does a character losing representation automatically make them bad?

Thank you for reading this; I'm sorry it was so long. Again, post how you feel about this below!

THE TIER LISTS DISCUSSED ABOVE:

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[Green Zelda]

uh ...hello?

 

[Synchronize]

Frame data: Most of the characters in "High" tiers have a low amounts of ending lag on their attacks making their attacks safer. Attacks like Sheik's F-Air is a great example of this with very little ending lag and she can throw out another attack very quickly compared to someone like Charizard's B-Air with a huge amount of ending lag making the attack more unsafe and the landing lag is quite long as well making you very vulnerable.
Lasting hitboxes: Some of the characters like Sheik, Fox, and Mario have lasting hitboxes on their attacks that can beat out some other attacks essentially making them better options for beating out attacks.
Fall speed: IMO, Faster fall speed = Better. It lets you get back on the ground easier and it makes it a bit harder to hit you if the enemy is unfamiliar with the fall speed.
Neutral Game: Basically how much you can deal to your opponent in the early stages of a fight. Sheik is notorious for this because of her amazing combo game that can rack up damage safely, quickly, and reliably.
Tournament Results: Alot of characters can have great stats on paper, but until they're actually put into the battlefield, we won't know how good they really are. Yoshi is an example of this with great stats but his lack of presence in Tournaments puts him lower on the tier list.

There are probably alot more that I'm missing but this was just a quick list of what people take into consideration when creating tier lists. There are more things like # of good and bad match ups, how well they perform in doubles, etc.

 

[Tizio Random]

It's really difficult to give a proper definiton of tier list but I'll try. Going for a definition I wpuld say:
"Tier lists represent how well a character can perform in a competitive setting given players of equal skill in the current metagame"
If you, for example, go in a tournament with, say, Zelda you will probably have less chance of end up in a good placing if your opponents have roughly the same skills as you. This is because Zelda has more negative match-ups, caused by the fact the she has many flaws, you could end up playing against and this will give you a harder time than a player that use, say, Cloud.
I know this post is quite bad, I just want to help.