Tier List Discussion as Apex's interesting top 8 is over

[The Star King]

I'd like to make a point that one of the main things about isai's bracket was that he didn't face a single character that jiggs is really bad vs. Like, he had mostly Falcon and Kirby in top 8, which the former is his favorite Jiggs matchup, at least according to the commentator and the later is hardly a bad matchup. He would have had much bigger problems if he faced, let's say LD or if he faced Ruoka who I heard has a really, really good Luigi.

in terms of potential edgeguards, link/ness says hi, you also said in the other thread, which I partially agree with that Fox's recovery is quite deceptive. Jiggs might be a glass cannon but hey, at least (s)he is difficult to combo and edgeguard.

Isai played Dexter who is imo the best Pikachu player in NA besides Isai and Boom, and Pika is Puff's biggest problem on Dreamland.

also Luigi is not a bad matchup for Puff lol pls

Also, if your argument is that he got Kirbies and Falcons, maybe it says something that Puff is decent vs TWO of the THREE characters that dominate tournament play.

 

[Mr Bushido]

Isai played Dexter who is imo the best Pikachu player in NA besides Isai and Boom, and Pika is Puff's biggest problem on Dreamland.

facílguas

 

[Olikus]

whenever ppl ask boom he just says "lol" in irc

are we gonna get 100 votes? seems to be slowing down

be patient pls =)

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

Isai played Dexter who is imo the best Pikachu player in NA besides Isai and Boom, and Pika is Puff's biggest problem on Dreamland.

also Luigi is not a bad matchup for Puff lol pls

Also, if your argument is that he got Kirbies and Falcons, maybe it says something that Puff is decent vs TWO of the THREE characters that dominate tournament play.

Which is why I potentially think that Jiggs is better than Mario. It does say a lot about Jiggles.

 

[Technical_Knockout]

mario is slightly lacking in the power department... since he relies on combos, any technical mistakes can be very costly. that's the primary reason i'd vote for puff over mario besides jigg's beastly n-air & rest.

 

[firo]

Some of the discussion here about only looking at tournament results I find silly. If all we want to do is look at tournament results, why even bother asking people what they think the tier list is? Just tally up the wins and placements and there we go.

The whole argument about "perfect TAS play" I feel is a straw man against those arguing in favor for more technical skill to be reflected on the tier list. Sure, putting ness first I don't think makes sense (I don't think I can get much faster with ness unless I make big changes to how I control him - my right thumb can only press so many buttons), but I maintain that the level of tech skill we see in tournament play is not nearly as high as what can reasonably be achieved - and I'm looking at top melee players as the benchmark. At that level, I think we'd see characters that have very technical neutral games begin to rise (like fox, link, etc).

 

[Technical_Knockout]

amen brother that was the spirit in which i posted my first tier list.

edit: another match-up chart might be a good idea for the tier list... that's how the last one was made right?

 

[P D]

******* must of forgot about how broken DK is. Damn

 

[Kahnu]

*****es must of forgot about how broken DK is. Damn

yeah dude dk is awesome, hes got awesome combos and great grab range, really should be higher on these guys' lists

 

[Technical_Knockout]

also fat & slow with a linear & bad-vertical recovery.

 

[Kahnu]

also fat & slow with a linear and bad vertical recovery.

lmao it doesnt matter if hes slow he has amazing range, he is fat tho. and hies recovery is one of his best edgeguarding tool if used correctly

 

[Technical_Knockout]

yeah dk is probably my secondary but he's one of the most technical characters & he's gotta rely on reads to an extent so those are some big problems for him too...

 

[Kahnu]

yeah dk is probably my secondary but he's one of the most technical characters & he's gotta rely on reads to an extent so those are some big problems for him too...

I guess for me the only problem is that hes so fat. He's vulnerable to combos.

 

[Technical_Knockout]

"in the world of martial arts, speed is king".
-kung fu hustle.

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

"in the world of martial arts, speed is king".
-kung fu hustle.

Good thing smash isn't a fighter then

 

[P D]

I guess for me the only problem is that hes so fat. He's vulnerable to combos.

L2 DI EZ

 

[pidgezero_one]

"in the world of martial arts, speed is king".
-kung fu hustle.

sonic isnt in 64

 

[pidgezero_one]

ok guys this is getting out of hand

 

[Sedda]

yeah can the tier list be official now? boom and jaime are not going to vote on it. just get it done lol

 

[Shears]

Interesting how yoshis took out LD and cabelo but yoshi is far from fox on avg and yet jaime, banze, and dexter lost to fox but he's still 4th on the list also considering booms falcon wasn't winning and yoshi was 2 and 3 at apex. Oh and despite samus not really doing anything in tournaments and rob stones self deprecating masochism to use her, samus still went up the list.

 

[SheerMadness]

Cobr and Kabal have solid placings going all Samus in tourneys. That's more than we can say about DK, Link, and Luigi. IMO her placing above those 3 is pretty well justified.

Firo's Ness is the only thing casting a shadow of doubt about her being above Ness.

And Yoshi being below Fox goes back to the most fundamental fault in tier list discussions. Tourney results clearly show Yoshi > Fox. But a lot of people are basing their lists on theoretical potential. That's what happens when were not all on the same page.

Tourney results are all that matter IMO.

 

[Shears]

The fundamental fault in tier list discussions is the inherent discussion of tier lists.

 

[pidgezero_one]

look at puff and mario, they're off by like 0.006

 

[Technical_Knockout]

wouldn't a revised match-up chart be the best way to come to a consensus here?

 

[Sedda]

Interesting how yoshis took out LD and cabelo but yoshi is far from fox on avg and yet jaime, banze, and dexter lost to fox but he's still 4th on the list also considering booms falcon wasn't winning and yoshi was 2 and 3 at apex. Oh and despite samus not really doing anything in tournaments and rob stones self deprecating masochism to use her, samus still went up the list.

LD played terrible vs wizzrobe that set. that's all it was, and cabelo (plus banze) don't have any high level yoshi experience.

 

[sextc]

I don't know if anyone has suggested this, or if this has even been done before with sm64sh, but why not make a two axis tier list similar to the ones seen for melee ? http://imgur.com/lrMSZ3D

We can create a two-axis tier list that attempts to harmonize the idea of techskill/ease of use vs effectiveness and have a second list that is based only on tournament results. One list allows players to speculate on the skill ceilings of characters, while the other list simply reflects the hard evidence from tournaments. (obviously some speculation would be required for tourny data, as many lower characters are severely underrepresented in tournament.)

Also, a few people have mentioned a revised matchup table, which I think is an excellent idea as well.


Really quick edit: This was linked to me by nick the name. A table similar to this, but instead of a complexity axis we have something along the lines of "easy to win/beat" etc.. http://photo2.ask.fm/951/775/304/80003000-1s5902r-jrtjepm6gr4tjhf/original/chart.png

 

[Shears]

I don't know if anyone has suggested this, or if this has even been done before with sm64sh, but why not make a two axis tier list similar to the ones seen for melee ? http://imgur.com/lrMSZ3D

We can create a two-axis tier list that attempts to harmonize the idea of techskill/ease of use vs effectiveness and have a second list that is based only on tournament results. One list allows players to speculate on the skill ceilings of characters, while the other list simply reflects the hard evidence from tournaments. (obviously some speculation would be required for tourny data, as many lower characters are severely underrepresented in tournament.)

Also, a few people have mentioned a revised matchup table, which I think is an excellent idea as well.


Really quick edit: This was linked to me by nick the name. A table similar to this, but instead of a complexity axis we have something along the lines of "easy to win/beat" etc.. http://photo2.ask.fm/951/775/304/80003000-1s5902r-jrtjepm6gr4tjhf/original/chart.png

This was done in 64 before it was done in melee (at least I saw it in 64 way before I ever saw it in melee). Jouske did a difficult to operation chart. Also the hard to beat/easy to beat axis is very subjective and I don't agree with it being used. I think Jouske had a much better axis choice. Difficult to operation (or how hard a character is to use) and character complexity (how intricate and deep a character can be made and the options a character has).

If you read through this thread entirely you should see references to these charts. In fact, these charts are what I've been suggesting as a better alternative to tier lists but instead no one ever wants to listen to me and instead go back to doing things the way they were done in 2007 because, you know, melee does it. The tier lists are being made of conjecture, impulse, and opinion without people digging into the data to find anything empirical or to create concrete and sound cases for each characters position.

Welcome to the 64 boards, where people are too lazy to look at everything in its entirety and instead create cookie cutter tier opinion lists.

 

[nickthename]

This was done in 64 before it was done in melee (at least I saw it in 64 way before I ever saw it in melee). Jouske did a difficult to operation chart. Also the hard to beat/easy to beat axis is very subjective and I don't agree with it being used. I think Jouske had a much better axis choice. Difficult to operation (or how hard a character is to use) and character complexity (how intricate and deep a character can be made and the options a character has).

If you read through this thread entirely you should see references to these charts. In fact, these charts are what I've been suggesting as a better alternative to tier lists but instead no one ever wants to listen to me and instead go back to doing things the way they were done in 2007 because, you know, melee does it. The tier lists are being made of conjecture, impulse, and opinion without people digging into the data to find anything empirical or to create concrete and sound cases for each characters position.

Welcome to the 64 boards, where people are too lazy to look at everything in its entirety and instead create cookie cutter tier opinion lists.

Come on Sheers, don't be that way. I'd love to talk about this, what do you got?


Also, I think it's important to distinguish between how difficult it is to reach a character's skill ceiling and how good they are once you reach it. For example, Ness is really technical, but I don't think people see him as being good even with a very skillful player.

I almost feel like each character could be represented with a line chart, with technical skill on the X axis and win ability on the Y axis. For example, Kirby is very strong even with low technical skill, but doesn't benefit as much, so the slope of his line would be much lower than that of Yoshi, who kinda blows without tech skill.

The problems with that method are twofold: One, it's all pretty subjective, there's no way to make technical skill into a number. It also completely ignores player knowledge and spacing, which seems like it might be a problem.

 

[sextc]

Also the hard to beat/easy to beat axis is very subjective and I don't agree with it being used.

We've basically been voting on an "easy to beat/hard to beat " list. The tier list data from the other thread will basically serve as a single axis, half of the work is already done.

 

[Sedda]

it has been suggested before, sex, but i guess people didn't really want to do it.

 

[nickthename]

Oooh, Maybe you could make 3-4 tier lists, with low, mid, high, and TAS levels of skill, and make a line for each character. That'd still be quite subjective, but could be interesting. I think it's actually hardest to judge the high levels, at low and mid there's enough players that it's pretty clear, but at high levels certain top players (cough Isai and Jouske) can make any character look amazing.

 

[Sedda]

3-4 tier lists would be pretty redundant honestly.

the tier list is supposed to reflect character viability at the highest level of play. having those tier lists defeat the purpose

 

[nickthename]

3-4 tier lists would be pretty redundant honestly.

the tier list is supposed to reflect character viability at the highest level of play. having those tier lists defeat the purpose

Hm? Well, if the purpose is to only describe the highest level of play, then there's not point of making graphs for lower levels of play, but I think that's pretty obvious. I think a graph like I described might be helpfu or at least interesting, especially for new players.

Also, it seems like there's some dispute over what constitutes the highest level of play and what the tier list reflects, so maybe that could help. Of course people could just sort that out themselves.

 

[sextc]

A tier list should reflect tournament play, it shouldn't be speculative. That's why I suggested multiple lists.
Matchup charts can also be a useful tool for new-ish players.

 

[Shears]

3-4 tier lists would be pretty redundant honestly.

the tier list is supposed to reflect character viability at the highest level of play. having those tier lists defeat the purpose

A tier list should reflect tournament play, it shouldn't be speculative. That's why I suggested multiple lists.
Matchup charts can also be a useful tool for new-ish players.

And no one can agree on tier list criteria.

 

[Sedda]

i dont get how multiple tier lists would address the issue of speculative vs tournament results

 

[nickthename]

And no one can agree on tier list criteria.

Do you have any particular solution in mind?

i dont get how multiple tier lists would address the issue of speculative vs tournament results

Yes, this is a difficult problem. It'd be nice to make a tier list using only quantitative results, and I've seen such done for Sm4sh with data from Anther's Ladder. The problem is that there aren't that many top 64 players, so you're always going to be biased by who's playing what. I don't think you can really determine if a player is a top player because their character is strong, or if it's because they are just extremely skilled. Players like Jouske, Firo, and Isai, who play and win with characters generally considered to be bad exemplify why it's so difficult to make a tier list using only tournament results. If a character only has one top player, and that top player starts losing, does that mean that character is actually overrated, or just that that player is having a slump?

So, I guess it comes down to: Why do we want a tier list to exist? What's the purpose of having one? I think the answer to that question would lead to the answer to what selection mechanism to use.

 

[Sedda]

i dont think that the tier list should ONLY be based on quantitative results. if you want to lean towards tournament results more, that's fine, but there are virtually no tournament results for DK, for example, and he's not being placed last for obvious reasons. that's not really what the tier list is for imo.

There are so few tournaments for ssb64 anyway

 

[Shears]

Do you have any particular solution in mind?

Yeah read my posts in this thread, my solution is to not have a tier list and instead have matchup charts and character complexity/difficult to operation charts. I think minimizing everything to a tier list is cheap and incomplete.

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

Yeah read my posts in this thread, my solution is to not have a tier list and instead have matchup charts and character complexity/difficult to operation charts. I think minimizing everything to a tier list is cheap and incomplete.

There is a a difference between a matchup chart and a tier list. There are low/bottom tier characters in most fighting games that have OK matchup vs. mids/even highs. I also don't plan on making a new matchup chart regardless so if you really want to run another 30 page topic, so be it.

Tier lists aren't an end all discussion. They change for a reason. The reason why I made a new list is since the old one is well, old, especially for the current ruleset. It also makes it easier for people who don't want to read a giant matchup chart to determine who is best, which is most people who don't play this game.