Official MBR 2010 NTSC Tier List

[choknater]

what peepee is saying is that....



slight disadvantages in character matchups are exploited so much better at the top level that they can potentially become heavy disadvantages.

 

[The Star King]

*facepalm*

Well, john kind of has a point in that there is no established definition for the ratios. I've asked what they mean to see what people think, and have gotten a ton of different answers. And the most common answer (win ratio) is kind of dumb IMO - variance in results is not that high in this game. Saying that a significant advantage grants you only, say, a 65% win ratio makes Smash Bros sound like gambling. I really don't think results are that inconsistent.

Stock ratios would make more sense, but it's obvious that since we aren't getting these numbers from tournament data, it's more what people "feel" it is. So at that point, we might as well use +1, +2, etc to avoid the confusion ratios cause.

Ratios suck

 

[john!]

Well, john kind of has a point in that there is no established definition for the ratios. I've asked what they mean to see what people think, and have gotten a ton of different answers. And the most common answer (win ratio) is kind of dumb IMO - variance in results is not that high in this game. Saying that a significant advantage grants you only, say, a 65% win ratio makes Smash Bros sound like gambling. I really don't think results are that inconsistent.

Stock ratios would make more sense, but it's obvious that since we aren't getting these numbers from tournament data, it's more what people "feel" it is. So at that point, we might as well use +1, +2, etc to avoid the confusion ratios cause.

Ratios suck

it's okay, cactuar's lack of a meaningful response means that i'm probably right. nothing more to discuss really.

 

[kailo34ce]

john i didnt read the convo but from what i know about you, you're never right.

 

[Dr Peepee]

What players are you considering to be "top" level? As in, name a few players that mark the minimum of the class we're talking about here?

I'm asking because I don't really buy it at all that matchups play out the way you describe it at top level as I see it. You see it all the time that players overcome matchups. Hax routinely beats the hell out of every sheik he plays. Axe beats all the spacies despite pike losing the mu (except probably on FD). And so on.
Which is why its important for a character to be able to herp-a-derp and win as many matchups as possible in theory, because every little bit helps when it comes to practice.

"People often argue about player skill being more important than matchup at top level, but is this necessarily the case when the top players may simply be exploiting their character abilities and exposing their opponent characters' weaknesses harder than anyone else?"
Isn't that exactly what player skill is though?

I'm with niko about the ko'ing stuff too. I just didn't want to argue it further cuz we seemed to just have fundamentally different viewpoints lol

I'm of the opinion that there aren't that many top players these days(not that there were many before but there are less now imo). Hbox, Me, Mango, Armada, M2K are probably all of the players I'd consider "top." Really though, this isn't necessarily about what I consider "top" or not from the current metagame(because that is somewhat debatable I suppose) but rather a theoretical top level of play that has characters exploiting each other really well(giving very small leeway for human error so we don't devolve into that perfect play stuff and because no one can play perfectly without human error anyway).

And, I'm not really talking about matchups in bracket as one sees them. Hax and these Sheiks aren't top level, so those matches don't prove a lot to me(Hax is still really good at the matchup, maybe top level in his theory and execution of it though *shrug*). Axe, while also a very talented player, isn't top level either, nor are the Foxes he beats. There's enough high level wiggle-room in terms of human error and overall play for those matches not to mean terribly much to me(the Pikachu boards say Pikachu is roughly 65-35 with Fox last I checked, which certainly would be backing this idea[before you say they aren't top level, they are basing this on theory and number of options both Fox and Pikachu have, just like I am]).

Given top level play, these close ratios should widen at top level. If Marth barely beats Ganon(for the sake of discussion), then whatever allows Marth to barely beat Ganon will be exploited and make Ganon have to work much harder every decision point in order to beat Marth overall because the Marth won't have sloppy human errors that even high level players posses. These human errors are what constantly skew ratios. Hungrybox resting Colbol 400 times does not prove Puff beats Fox, it just proves Hbox beats Colbol. If Hbox beats Mango's Fox(which he did), then there's more room for discussion on the matchup in my opinion because Mango will understand and abuse Fox's options better than Colbol would against Hbox by nature of Mango understanding the game, and, thereby Fox better.


Player skill, to me, is the ability to read another player's intent and to mask their own intent and any natural abilities(such as reaction time) that aid with their punishments or evasions or other matchup/character-related things. Basically, it is the ability to play the opponent.

Matchup is the ability to play the game. Being able to exploit the opponent's options is more important than exploiting their habits. Every player has the same options with a given character, but not every player has the same habits. This starting point already proves that matchup is more important at top level.

actually, it stops his DJ starting from 0%. Try it in training mode.

Edit: pp, peach vs fox is not impossible at top level. Though that matchup is at least 6-4 in his favor.

Whoa @ DJ thing.

@your assertion: why?

Interesting point. How do explain players like Hax, Wobbles, or KirbyKaze winning matchups that are apparently really bad. Is it a) the matchups aren't as bad we thought, or b) the players they are against aren't playing the matchups properly? I speak of Hax beating Sheiks, Wobbles beating Peaches, and KK beating Hbox.

Well, I already addressed Hax in my response to JPOBS haha, so I'll skip that point here.

Essentially, with the exception of KK atm, most of these matches aren't necessarily top level ones, so as long as one player has a better understanding of the matchup than another(which Wobbles does because he's a great thinker, and Hax does on average from most Sheiks because he played with M2K a ton) then one can simply outplay another player.

As for KK, he seems out to fairly demonstrate Sheik's capabilities in the matchup. While I have not yet analyzed the set enough yet, I would say that being able to beat so much of Hbox's great tricks vs Sheik proves the matchup isn't a counter for Sheik like some may have previously thought. The set he played demonstrated lots of top level stuff imo. It is worth noting that he did not win in losers bracket though, which may lend one to believe it was player issues that caused this back and forth(meaning they both kind of teeter between high level and top level, which I only consider because KK is not regularly proven as a top level player at this time of writing) or the matchup is skewed for Puff still on a 60-40 level because of how the set went in losers(it was kinda bad iirc) and KK outplayed Hbox well in winners bracket.

what peepee is saying is that....



slight disadvantages in character matchups are exploited so much better at the top level that they can potentially become heavy disadvantages.

More or less, yeah.

Also, 60-40 means one player has 60% chance of winning a given matchup and one has 40% every match, rather than dividing 10 games into 6 and 4. It's more likely that the guy with 40% wouldn't win more than 3 games at top level I'd say, and that may be generous.

 

[kailo34ce]

Also, 60-40 means one player has 60% chance of winning a given matchup and one has 40% every match, rather than dividing 10 games into 6 and 4. It's more likely that the guy with 40% wouldn't win more than 3 games at top level I'd say, and that may be generous.

yaaaa like pp said, ratios are a balance in power in the matchup given the general knowledge of the matchup in optimal conditions between the characters alone (not the player/stage/etc)


and it should be taken lightly just like the tier list.

the main issue with our matchups/PRs/tier lists is they all derive from something not similar to smash and they have been translated (imperfectly) to fit our scene, which causes confusions and basically translates it into something our scene defines rather than something definitive we use in our scene.

uhh yeah!

 

[Cactuar]

Do I really have to explain what a ratio is?

There is no variance in the direct definition of a ratio. The issue is more that we use the ratios incorrectly and just push them around in increments of 5. There is no real basis for any of the ratios other than "feel". In actual usage, they don't really represent the numbers we use.

@PP: a 40% chance to win every game literally translates to winning 4 out of 10 matches. It would be... more correct... to just say that, at high level play, that player has a 30% chance to win if that player is consistently winning 30% of the games...

There was an idea years ago to have different matchup ratios dependent on skill level. It is easily seen in the Marth vs Spacies matchups. At low to mid level play, Marth has a greater advantage, and that advantage slowly declines as the level of play increases. The matchup ratio doesn't stay the same between different levels of play...

 

[The Star King]

That's basically what I said, except I think they're simply not great for use while you seem to think we're just using them incorrectly.

 

[JPOBS]

I have always thought that the ratios were all relative. 10-0 is impossibly unwinnable and 50-50 is completely even. Everything that deviates from those two numbers are just a measure of how much more even or unwinnable the matchup is.

Seems pretty self explanatory to me.

 

[john!]

I have always thought that the ratios were all relative. 10-0 is impossibly unwinnable and 50-50 is completely even. Everything that deviates from those two numbers are just a measure of how much more even or unwinnable the matchup is.

Seems pretty self explanatory to me.

well said. this is what i meant earlier, in case people didn't understand what i was saying for whatever reason.

 

[Cactuar]

Going to a +1, +2 makes more sense for that reason. Just because it looks like a ratio, doesn't make it one, causing people to be mistaken.

@John: There is a reason my first post on the topic was "I love how 60:40 is supposed to be "For every 10 matches, you will win 6 and lose 4." SUPPOSED IS THE KEY WORD

As in, I was commenting on how we don't use that number properly and it isn't really a ratio. My facepalm was directly at you not understanding the context of my statement.

 

[john!]

so i essentially agreed with you... and you facepalmed anyway... okay.

also i used my 6,000th post replying to you... without realizing it...

 

[Cactuar]

I facepalmed because you ruined my subtle statement with your obnoxiously obvious one.

You agreed with me accidentally while trying to correct me. Which is arguably funnier than what I had planned... soooooo....

All's well that ends well.

 

[Bing]

*facedesks*

 

[Kal]

There's no point in using something as precise as numbers if you're trying to convey something subjective. Cactuar has a point; our use of numbers sucks, because writing "Fox vs. Falco is 45-55" should indicate that Fox's probability of winning (assuming a specific ruleset, which takes stock count into consideration) is 0.45. Anything else seems pointless. We may as well just use a lettering system:

S - impossibly good for player 1
A - very good for player 1
B - good for player 1

and so on.

However, Star King has a point that claiming something is 60-40 does not a priori assume a ruleset. So he could very well mean "60-40 in a standard tournament," which would indicate that the character's probability of winning a set is 0.6, or he could mean "60-40 in a one-stock match," which would indicate a totally different probability.

Overall, there is nothing wrong with using ratios. The problem is that we pull these numbers out of nowhere.

Also, 60-40 means one player has 60% chance of winning a given matchup and one has 40% every match, rather than dividing 10 games into 6 and 4. It's more likely that the guy with 40% wouldn't win more than 3 games at top level I'd say, and that may be generous.

What you want to say is that the probability changes at high level play. What you're actually saying is false; when your probability of winning is 0.4, the probability of winning more than three games out of ten is 0.617719. It's this way by construction.

 

[The Star King]

Going to a +1, +2 makes more sense for that reason. Just because it looks like a ratio, doesn't make it one, causing people to be mistaken.

I said this too, and you only acknowledge it when others say it. Mad snubbing up in the thread.

I guess this is how Pengie felt when his thread got laughed at because he's not an established player

I forgot why I don't post seriously much in the Melee boards. People only listen to good players or established posters. Except Kal. Kal is cool.

 

[Kal]

I prefer a letter system. With some colors. Like, S A B C D E F

No, the colors don't make sense. I'm lazy.

I'm trying to decide if it would be terribly pathetic to sig the last two sentences of your post, Star King.

Yeah, I guess it would.

Also, you should know that I did pretty much the same thing to Pengie. =/

 

[Hax]

i've had the same theory for a while now about matchup ratios becoming even wider at higher levels; i'm glad to see PP agrees. imo, it is due to two things. PP already mentioned the first one, so i won't explain it: higher level players are better at exploiting what makes those matchups advantageous in the first place.

my other explanation is that training two characters for the same amount of time yields different amounts of improvement, depending on the characters' potentials. since the characters higher on the tier list generally have the most potential, this favors them. [i suppose this is to say that training yields exponential improvement rather than linear improvement.]

i'll use the most extreme examples to illustrate the concept: fox and pichu. if both characters are trained for 6 months, fox, the character with the most potential in the game, will have improved more simply because the character has more options to work with. whereas fox training may consist of developing new uses for shine (limitless), learning to use his obscene combo potential to its fullest, [insert aspect of fox with infinite potential here], pichu caps out pretty early. after 6 months, the fox may have improved fivefold whereas the pichu may have only improved threefold as a result of it being more difficult to develop new techniques with pichu (the ratios of improvement are meaningless/completely theoretical; they're meant to illustrate the concept). this widens matchup ratios by catapulting characters like fox even further ahead of the cast.

this is especially true nowadays, as i feel nearly all characters are being pushed to their limits whereas spacies still have massive amounts of potential beckoning. whether some of the potential i speak of is humanly possible is another story.

 

[Bing]

I love Hax posts.. so much insight.

 

[john!]

I facepalmed because you ruined my subtle statement with your obnoxiously obvious one.

You agreed with me accidentally while trying to correct me. Which is arguably funnier than what I had planned... soooooo....

All's well that ends well.

the ambiguity of internet communication strikes again...

in my defense though, i've seen people use those ratios as "win ratios" before and thought it would be better to clear everything up before there was a big debate about it.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

PP & Hax's respective points don't seem to make much sense unless they think Peach is a top 3 character.

I'd say Armada's gap from the field only grew with APEX...so does that mean Peach has a better improvement curve? And if top level play exacerbates matchups, then doesn't that bring to question everyone's thoughts on Peach-Fox? If so, other than the Puff matchup, I don't see much argument for Peach's current position on the tier list.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Or maybe armada is practicing more?

 

[knightpraetor]

can't believe i'm reading all this...but i wanted to say I agree with m2k about all the reasons that fox is overrated (especially against marth)...but it was interesting to note that that a lot of his reasons basically boiled down to fox's combos get destroyed with proper DI.....makes me wonder what i can do to fox if i start implementing more of that.

this thread was pretty funny though...this is why i think tier lists are pointless unless you are just using them to reflect the current national rankings...too much bias to get anything like an accurate read...i don't even understand most of the top characters outside of marth jiggs and fox fully..so how am i supposed to judge...

it's even more hilarious how bad everyone in europe was vs jiggs when they came down to play in the US, and then they suddenly think jiggs is unbeatable and god tier.

of course everyone thinks their character is worse than the other top tiers but isn't willing to put in the months of practice necessary to actually transition characters...

I may not think my character is the best per se, but I at least think he's good enough to compete with any of the top tiers without having any significant disadvantages except vs sheik....certainly capable of winning nationals...

smashboards da best...so much johning...just a bunch of posers..

 

[Dr Peepee]

i've had the same theory for a while now about matchup ratios becoming even wider at higher levels; i'm glad to see PP agrees. imo, it is due to two things. PP already mentioned the first one, so i won't explain it: higher level players are better at exploiting what makes those matchups advantageous in the first place.

my other explanation is that training two characters for the same amount of time yields different amounts of improvement, depending on the characters' potentials. since the characters higher on the tier list generally have the most potential, this favors them. [i suppose this is to say that training yields exponential improvement rather than linear improvement.]

i'll use the most extreme examples to illustrate the concept: fox and pichu. if both characters are trained for 6 months, fox, the character with the most potential in the game, will have improved more simply because the character has more options to work with. whereas fox training may consist of developing new uses for shine (limitless), learning to use his obscene combo potential to its fullest, [insert aspect of fox with infinite potential here], pichu caps out pretty early. after 6 months, the fox may have improved fivefold whereas the pichu may have only improved threefold as a result of it being more difficult to develop new techniques with pichu (the ratios of improvement are meaningless/completely theoretical; they're meant to illustrate the concept). this widens matchup ratios by catapulting characters like fox even further ahead of the cast.

this is especially true nowadays, as i feel nearly all characters are being pushed to their limits whereas spacies still have massive amounts of potential beckoning. whether some of the potential i speak of is humanly possible is another story.

I've actually had vague thoughts about that other point haha. Perhaps it is necessary to play a high/top tier alongside a worse character in order to have more exposure to different game elements even if one wants to play a lower tiered character.

Good post. =)


Edit: Crimson, I do not think Peach is top 3 at all.

 

[-Darc-]

I remember Eggm used to go Yoshi vs Darc

Three stock falco

almost lose to yoshi(last hit)

ROUGH TIMES ;-;

 

[Bones0]

PP & Hax's respective points don't seem to make much sense unless they think Peach is a top 3 character.

I'd say Armada's gap from the field only grew with APEX...so does that mean Peach has a better improvement curve? And if top level play exacerbates matchups, then doesn't that bring to question everyone's thoughts on Peach-Fox? If so, other than the Puff matchup, I don't see much argument for Peach's current position on the tier list.

The problem is that even among the top players (Armada, Hbox, Mango, PP, Mew2King), there are still visible skill gaps. A top player's improvement isn't going to be limited much by whatever character they choose because the game becomes so much more abstract. Unless I'm mistaken, Hax was talking about the low to average to high level smashers, and how they improve. Marth pwns spacies when they're both noobs because spacies are really difficult to control and much harder to punish Marth with combos. This disparity is completely based on difficulty though. Once you reach a certain level, the disparity between ideal Fox and realistic Fox becomes smaller and smaller. A newb Marth and Fox may play at 80% and 50% to their characters' potential. Once you reach the TOP, you're looking at Marth at 99% and Fox at 98%.

I think this is a common theme a lot of people have noticed. Tiers matter very little for beginners, they matter a good deal for average players, and then their influence decreases again as you get to the top. This is for the simple reason that the top characters all have fairly reliable forms of movement for spacing, and they all have pretty nasty punishes (depending on the matchup at least). It's sort of like (excuse me if I'm completely wrong, but it should get the point across) how low tiers are more viable in 64 where all of the combos are brutal. Sure, low tiers may struggle to out-space their opponent, but with 0-deaths all over the place, the match tests spacing less than in Brawl where MK destroys because he has the best spacing game and the only way a low tier will beat him is to out-space him... over... and over again.

DISCLAIMER: The tiers mattering less as you approach the top level is only in reference to characters that reliably destroy each other.

smashboards da best...so much johning...just a bunch of posers..

Basically this. Idk why I continue to check this thread when I flat-out think the tier list (both the specific one we have now as well as the concept of a tier list itself) is stupid in the first place for multiple reasons. >_>

 

[Dr Peepee]

Tier lists are worth discussing imo. How else would people share their ideas on which characters are better?

Whatever allows people to do this I support anyway.

 

[Bones0]

I'd rather just discuss the actual matchup rather than try to label it by cramming literally thousands of elements of game play into a 2 paragraph essay about why the matchup is difinitively worse for one of the characters at a theoretical top level play that isn't even executed for characters outside of Fox, Falco, Marth, Sheik, Jiggs, and Peach.

I've found the best way to talk about matchups without inevitably making assumptions such as "This matchup is bad" is to instead describe matchups in terms of difficulty. If you say Falco vs. Peach is hard because "..." it doesn't necessarily imply that Peach is a better character. If I say "It is hard to space lasers vs. Peach," someone else can say "It's difficult to get off the ledge vs. Falco," and the two statements don't contradict one another. In fact, when you combine these assortment of statements about difficulty you will get a much more well-rounded view of how matchups work.

Instead, we use phrases like "Peach is a bad matchup for Falco because he can't laser her." "Falco is a bad matchup for Peach because she dies whenever she gets trapped at the ledge." You can't find a middle ground for statements like these because they attempt to cover the vastness of a matchup based on one, or even 10 elements that come into play. You end up having Peach mains with their list of things that make the matchup HARD, and Falco mains with their list of things that make the matchup HARD, and then they throw their lists at each other, and whoever has the most hard things is a worse characters. Just too 2-dimensional for Melee, imo. I feel like you could get away with that in other games that have more limited options. Melee is too crazy.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Sounds like the method of discussion is the problem. It's also not how I personally discuss matchups. For me, tier lists are mostly just about matchup spreads, so I understand why it's frustrating when people do that. I don't like it either, but that just means that people have to lead by example and show others how to argue in a holistic way. I haven't been the best about that in the past so I could do better at showing all sides of a discussion too, I'm not saying I'm exempt lol.

It just seems like you're mad at the wrong thing(tier lists) when you should be working to change the style of discussion.

 

[Fletch]

Edit: Crimson, I do not think Peach is top 3 at all.

Just out of curiosity then, do you think Armada is just that much better than the other players you have listed as top level? If you think the gaps widen that much at top level, Armada shouldn't have a chance.

 

[Bones0]

I dislike tier lists because:
1. It discourages development of characters that are considered low tier at the time (as well as development of "bad" matchups).
2. They are heavily influenced by the bias of what characters people main.
3. They take results into consideration despite the player pool being way too small for results to say anything truly meaningful.
4. Variance in character popularity completely skews matchup knowledge and creates bias in favor of the most popular and against the least popular.
5. It encourages character johning.

I think the way matchups are discussed is a reflection of how the tier list's inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and overall subjectiveness influences the community. Absolutist thinking and hardcore Theory Bros. in terms of matchups is very often a direct result of the state of the tier list, and I think the discussions most detached from tiers or matchup ratios end up being the most in depth, most helpful for improvement, and most reasonable. I realize this is the tier list thread though, so I'm trying to stay away from just arguing against the existence of the thread I'm posting in. I realize people are always going to try to rank characters, and those people should be allowed to have a thread without a nutcase like me coming in and herp-a-derping all over the place. lol I'm just gonna hang back and stick to the actual Melee discussion in the thread and ignore everything else. I was able to do it for like 10 posts. :|

 

[Hax]

Once you reach the TOP, you're looking at Marth at 99% and Fox at 98%.

that's where i disagree. every year, competitive play from 2 years ago looks like a joke. the tier list and player rankings are constantly changing. nobody's anywhere close to playing perfect (100%) melee nor will anyone ever be, which means there's always huge room for improvement.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Just out of curiosity then, do you think Armada is just that much better than the other players you have listed as top level? If you think the gaps widen that much at top level, Armada shouldn't have a chance.

The characters that(should) invalidate Peach at top level are most likely....

1. Fox

2. Falcon

3. Marth

4. Puff(apparently....I don't actually know but Peaches don't like it and I haven't theorized it so meh)

5. Sheik I guess?

Falco is debatable(meaning I haven't thought about it lol, but yeah we can count him too for fun)

Of those, we have 1 top Fox(who is a secondary, well 2 if you count M2K but I'll get back to this one), no top Falcons(and even so SS beat Armada and Hax almost did), a semi-top Marth(who nearly beat Armada a couple times), Amsah beat him in NTSC but honestly he hasn't played a solid Sheik(KIRBYKAZE) in bracket in so long who knows what'll happen there, he switches for Puff, and he lost to my Falco two sets in a row once.

Going back over some of this....


Fox- Mango.....sigh. I don't believe he plays up to his potential in the matchup(even with his aggressive style). Should Mango try to play a matchup correctly like Armada does, the matchup should fall to Mango.

As for M2K, his style seems to work better on bigger stages he can camp on. I do not believe he ever really learned to platform camp/work Bair well on small stages for some reason. Again, not total mastery of the matchup like Armada has.

Everything else seems pretty straightforward.


What I'm kind of getting at here is that this is not necessarily an issue with my theory but really an issue with the community, or rather the player pool. People seem to have had various reasons not to bring themselves to the rigor Armada has brought to matchups, and I'm hoping that will change soon. It's high time most better players(USA's especially) get into gear and start putting solid theory into practice. This doesn't mean they go think and then play, but rather they begin hardcore exploiting the other characters better like they know they could and quit being lazy(for some but not all this is the main problem).

I could go on about this but it's a tricky subject and I'm treading close enough to a flame war as it is.


ps: none of this is admittance that Armada is the best player. GOTTA DO IT THREE TIMES LIKE MANGO DID BABY!!!

^that's the flames btw

I dislike tier lists because:
1. It discourages development of characters that are considered low tier at the time (as well as development of "bad" matchups).
2. They are heavily influenced by the bias of what characters people main.
3. They take results into consideration despite the player pool being way too small for results to say anything truly meaningful.
4. Variance in character popularity completely skews matchup knowledge and creates bias in favor of the most popular and against the least popular.
5. It encourages character johning.

I think the way matchups are discussed is a reflection of how the tier list's inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and overall subjectiveness influences the community. Absolutist thinking and hardcore Theory Bros. in terms of matchups is very often a direct result of the state of the tier list, and I think the discussions most detached from tiers or matchup ratios end up being the most in depth, most helpful for improvement, and most reasonable. I realize this is the tier list thread though, so I'm trying to stay away from just arguing against the existence of the thread I'm posting in. I realize people are always going to try to rank characters, and those people should be allowed to have a thread without a nutcase like me coming in and herp-a-derping all over the place. lol I'm just gonna hang back and stick to the actual Melee discussion in the thread and ignore everything else. I was able to do it for like 10 posts. :|

Well I think there's a way to work all of it together, but maybe this is a topic that is better suited to PMs or another thread at least haha. At any rate I don't necessarily disagree with your points and hope maybe you can influence discussion in various ways outside of the norm here. =)

that's where i disagree. every year, competitive play from 2 years ago looks like a joke. the tier list and player rankings are constantly changing. nobody's anywhere close to playing perfect (100%) melee nor will anyone ever be, which means there's always huge room for improvement.

Agreed. Theorizing that certain characters can do certain things humans currently don't do/aren't capable of within human capabilities is perfectly cool with me though(such as constant powershielding or triple shines on shield or whatever lol).

 

[KirbyKaze]

PP don't be a scrub, Puff still beats Sheik.

 

[Dr Peepee]

You would know better than I would.

 

[Bones0]

I definitely agree Melee changes significantly every year or two. I was actually agreeing with you about the same amount of practice yielding different results for different characters. To clarify, I meant 100% as the current peak metagame. So it would be like:
100% - The best players when they are on their game.
0% - The worst players when they are playing their worst.
50% - Average players playing average.

Marth accelerates through the first ~75% much sooner than Fox primarily because of technical barriers and consistency issues. My point was, however, that when you have the top players like Mango vs. M2K, they've both come so close to the peak metagame that the difference in %s are bound to be smaller because the more skill you have, the less skill you gain relatively. It essentially works out like population growth graphs (x=time, y=skill). Marth's and Fox's skill can both be graphed like this, but Marth's improvement would just be phase shifted left (sooner) while Fox's would be shifted to the right (later).

You can't triple shine on shields PP? How are you even good at this game? Watch my vids, brah. ;D

 

[Kal]

I dislike tier lists because:
1. It discourages development of characters that are considered low tier at the time (as well as development of "bad" matchups).

This is a result of the metagame. People aren't discouraged from playing Zelda because she is a low-tier. People are discouraged because she is bad: in the current metagame, she does not perform well.

2. They are heavily influenced by the bias of what characters people main.

They're built under the expectation that, if a character is viable, strategies for his viability would have been discovered. To account for the fact that this isn't universally true, tier lists are updated (c.f. Ice Climbers). It is expected that, given enough time, we can account for this sort of "popular bias."

3. They take results into consideration despite the player pool being way too small for results to say anything truly meaningful.

This depends on how the tier list is made. Most fighting games make tier lists as basically an ordering by the sum of their matchups. However, it's a bit silly to claim that the player pool is too small for results to be meaningful. Quite the opposite: when creating a tier list, you do the best you can with the results you have. A well-crafted tier list will not weigh meaningless results.

4. Variance in character popularity completely skews matchup knowledge and creates bias in favor of the most popular and against the least popular.

What does this have to do with the tier list? This sounds like an issue with the metagame.

5. It encourages character johning.

As though a tier list not existing means people aren't going to say "Roy sucks" when they lose?

When it comes down to it, a tier list is nothing as sinister as you make it out to be. It's just an ordering of characters from best to worst. It exists in every fighting game for a reason: at any point in time, there is an agreement as to which characters are the best. This agreement will exist regardless of whether there is any sort of official tier list. People will still concede that Fox is better than the rest of the cast, and people will still concede that Ganondorf is better than Zelda, Roy, Link, Game & Watch, and Mewtwo.

Your complaints just seem totally absurd. Like Peepee said, you have more issue with the implications of a tier list (most of which arise regardless of the tier list's existence) than with the tier list itself. And this is expected, as it would be crazy, even for you, to have issues with something as simple as an ordering of the characters based on how good they are. Pokémon Stadium shouldn't even be legal.

Also, "phase shift" is not really the appropriate term. Just say "shift."

 

[Dark Hart]

What about Zelda?

 

[ShroudedOne]

So...Zelda vs Mewtwo...

 

[danieljosebatista]

So guys, I have a question about Marth's pivot forward smash. What exactly is all the hype concerning it? I mean, is pivot fsmash really that good? If so, why, I am clearly a noob and need to be educated lol