Tier Lists for Beginners

Tier lists are a construct in fighting games that rank each character in their ability to win against other characters. They rank the strength of each character in comparison to every other character in the game. Tier lists have been around since basically the beginning of competitive fighting games but they can be misunderstood by beginners.

The most important thing to understand with Tier Lists is that in no way does playing a high tier character guarantee winning. What tier lists actually say is that if two high level players of the same skill are playing and one player is using a character of a higher tier than the other, that player is more likely to win. The "high level player" part is pretty important. In many fighting games, the high tier characters require a lot more work to be proficient with to use them at their high tier potential.

Tier lists are also not set in stone. New fighting game strategies and tech are developed all the time and tier lists change. You can see examples of this if you search tier lists from older games because people often post outdated tier lists along with the updated tier lists for reference. Many times these lists change dramatically.

This being said, in games that are 10 years old or more, the tier lists are much more solid. Players have played for years at these games at high level play and while it is possible that someone could come up with some crazy new broken tech, it is very unlikely. People have usually maxed out all of the options in these games so the tier lists are much more accurate.

Tier lists, especially in newer games, don't say all that much either. They are much more flexible because the creators of the games take balance into consideration when creating and updating the games and you have much more flexibility when it comes to choosing characters that can win tournaments and such. There are two games where tier lists play an incredibly important role and those games are Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Super Smash Bros. Melee (and Brawl but fuck Brawl.) In these two games, character selection is incredibly important for your chances are winning. I have much more experience in Melee so I will use it as an example:

In Melee, there are 30-some characters but only about 16 are tournament viable and the same 4-6 characters are pretty much always the winners of tournaments. This is mostly because the players of Melee use mechanics in the game that the creator didn't necessarily intend to exist. The creator also did not consider balance to be an important factor when making decisions about the game. It was intended to be a fun party game, not a competitive game. Low tier characters in Melee just were not built to handle high tiers. They simply never have the same options the high tiers have. Low tiers can beat high tiers, but it usually requires a big skill gap, a little luck, or a shit ton more work than the high tiers need.

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I also wonder if, in some games, Tier Lists form because more players play certain characters more often than others. In Super Street Fighter 4 AE, the top 10 characters (Top Tier) are generally considered to be Rufus, Akuma, Cammy, Seth, Yun, Sagat, Fei Long, Ibuki, Adon, and C Viper. Adon and Yun are usually interchangeable with some other characters but this is top 10 list is fairly universal. A bunch of these characters are popular because they are awesome. Akuma, Seth, Sagat, Cammy, and Fei Long would be awesome characters in any game really and the other characters have a strong following too (Ibuki is my main.)

These characters obviously have really good options and can utilize really tricky set-ups, but I wonder if they are "Top Tier" because tons of people play them. Also, generally, the best players decide these characters are better than the other characters fairly early on in the game. As more players are playing these characters, they can collectively discover more tech than the few that play the "Stupid" characters like Dan and Hakan. This is all just speculation, but I think that it should be discussed.