User:Stillnotelf/Tiers (video games)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section contains information that has not been verified and thus might not be reliable. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please check for inaccuracies and modify as needed, citing sources.

If we can get sources, we can put it back in the article space. -- stillnotelf is invisible

A Tier is a term used commonly within fighting game circles and tournaments to describe a character's general success in tournaments and common battles of the fighting game from which they hail. In some cases the general structure of the tiers for a particular game are agreed upon by the player community, with only slight variation. With other games, the tiers may be the subject of fierce debate with strongly differing viewpoints. By their nature, tiers cannot be regarded as pure fact, but ideally come about from educated opinions and thoughtful observations supported by evidence as tournament results.

Tiers are not limited to characters in fighting games. The concept of tiers may be applied to all other games in which players are allowed to choose from characters, weapons, strategies, etc. Tiers may be used to describe how effectively these choices accomplish the general goal of the particular game. It can be argued that as it is very unlikely that a game is perfectly balanced, particularly complex modern video games, that all games have tiers to an extent. Those who abide by this thinking believe there are methods or choices that are inherently more efficient or more effective than others.

The concept and controversy around tiers is mostly limited to competitive fighting games, as their arcade and home console roots make them much less likely to be patched. That is, if the creator realizes that they made a mistake in designing a character who is too powerful, it is difficult to fix. This leads to characters and tactics which can seem very radical and overpowering to a third party, especially a gamer not familiar with the fighting game genre.

[edit] Examples

Although it differs, the usual formation of the tier listing in fighting games goes like this:

  • Broken Characters

Although not always used in tier listing, once in a while a character or characters in a fighting game are given such an overwhelming advantage, that they are considered broken. Such characters may be labeled as being "God Tier." The main priority in a fighting game is to keep all characters as balanced as possible, and a Broken character is a character who is very distinctively unbalanced and almost unfair. For example, Geese Howard in SNK vs Capcom chaos is considered broken because he has an easy to execute combo which can potentially become inescapable and more often than not destroy the opponent in one attack. Many SNK boss characters are notorious for regularly being guilty of belonging in this category as well. In Soul Calibur III (Japanese version), Sophitia is sometimes considered a broken character, so was toned down for the US and PAL versions. Such characters are often banned from tournament play.

  • Top Tier

Characters who have had the most success, and are often used to successful degrees. Once in a while, a character who may be considered to have a little too much of an advantage may be in this spot as well.

  • High Tier

Characters who have had a great deal of success, and are considered to have an equal chance against any opponent.

  • Middle Tier

Characters who have had moderate success, and are used sparingly. They can be used efficiently against most opponents.

  • Lower Tier

Characters who have been generally selected very rarely, so rarely that regardless of the said character's success or failure, it still doesn't change their place on the list.

  • Bottom Tier

Characters who have more in game disadvantages than advantages, to the point where it is unfair. Although it is certainly possible to win with characters in this section, said character and player will be very hard-pressed to win and will have more going against them than for them. For example, in Tekken 5, the character of Kuma is considered Bottom Tier. This is because while he may have a chance against lower to middle tier characters, no matter how competently he's played it is virtually impossible to find a distinct advantage against higher tier's when they are played with equal skill due to his very risky moves that offer little return.

[edit] Controversy

Arguments about the existence (or non-existence) of tiers are commonplace among gaming boards, where the general consensus among experienced players is that tiers do indeed exist.

Tier listings are often scrutinized by players who misunderstand its purpose. Many misinformed players mistake the Tier listings as a "Best Character" listing, and that the intent is to say X character can not win against Y because X is high tier and Y is low tier. This is not true.

Given that X is a high tier character and Y is a low tier character, it is very possible that a player using Y can beat a player using X. However, if both players are of equal skill, X will beat Y more often. Therefore, in order to win consistently, the player using a lower tier character will need to work harder and be more skilled than the player using a higher tier character.

The influence of Tiers in play is also often misunderstood: in a well balanced game, any effect of tiers will likely go unnoticed in low to mid level play, and low tier characters may actually be perceived as being better than characters who are actually much higher ranked. For example, if a low ranked character has an easy to use, fast, and damaging mid-low-low-mid combo, which less skilled players often have difficulty blocking, that character may be abused in low to mid level play. However, after becoming more skilled, a player may notice that when blocked, the combo leaves you open long enough for a damaging juggle or punishment move.