Balance Tiers, good or bad?

[klimaxoxox]

I think there shouldn't be tiers, so that everyone is considered a 'threat'; not only top tiers. This gives an unfair advantage to certain characters and players will choose the top ones usually. From a tournament point of view, I think this will be more interesting to not have tiers because then anyone can win with any character. From a spectator point of view, people will be more engaged because the variety that people will choose pretty much any random character and not a predictable one just because that character is top tier.

 

[Darkton93]

Oh, boy, here we go...
*puts up flame shield*

 

[Brute]

You speak as if tiers are set and dictated intentionally during the game's development.

At any rate, you can't get rid of tiers unless the game were perfectly balanced between all characters, which it never will be. Ceasing to mention tiers and trying to identify them wouldn't make them go away (unless we're talking in an abstract, epistemic sense; but physically the components that make up the classifications won't cease to exist).

 

[grap3fruitman]

I don't believe you understand how tiers work. What you're essentially suggesting is a fighting game with one character.

Now suppose you're the developer of that game and you copy and paste the one character into another slot. If you change even a single byte of information on that second character, now one character has an advantage over the other. Now this game has a tier list and it will be discussed to death.

 

[FatalxInnocence]

Just do a me and pretend they don't exist. For me it all boils down to personal experiences. Like, Bass could be considered ( and I think he is considered. ) one of the worst in DOA- yet I have more trouble against him than I do Kasumi & Sarah who are considered two of the best in the game. Tiers don't really mean a whole lot- and people shouldn't put as much emphasis on them as they do.... buuuut they exist. So if they bother you just kinda ignore them and go about playing the game the way you want to, with who you want to.

 

[Tenryuga]

Let's not forget being a lower tier character doesn't mean you do not have advantages or even match-ups against another character. It just means you have a load of matches where you are fighting an uphill battle assuming the players are of even skill.

I'd go out on a limb and say Bass has an even MU with the character you are using and the player/players using Bass is/are better than you which is probably why you have trouble fighting him (or you could have little idea how to fight him properly as well). Whereas in the Kasumi/Sarah scenario they have an even or advantage MU with your character and the players behind them just aren't good enough to make it look that way.

The most important things to remember are that the tiers are determined by MU's and MU's compare characters tools while considering two opponents of the same skill level.

For example I could lie to myself and say that the Ein vs Christie MU is even and not lopsided based on the Christie players I face on PSN besides Awesmic when the fact of the matter is Ein doesn't have the tools to deal with her consistently; I just have better skills than 99.5% of the PSN Christie players (Let's be honest they just hit P or JAK for the sake of JAKing). This doesn't change the fact that Ein is supposed to be losing to Christie more often than not. However we must always remember that there is a such thing as outplaying your opponent and securing a win in a unfavorable match however difficult it may be.

 

[FatalxInnocence]

I'd go out on a limb and say Bass has an even MU with the character you are using and the player/players using Bass is/are better than you which is probably why you have trouble fighting him (or you could have little idea how to fight him properly as well). Whereas in the Kasumi/Sarah scenario they have an even or advantage MU with your character and the players behind them just aren't good enough to make it look that way..

Not so sound up myself or anything, but I am the better player. Bass isn't their main and I still win like 80% of the time. When they use their main, I win. It's just character dependent. Like Christie, and Rig being another two. Some characters I just can't fight for the life of me... but that doesn't mean they're top or bottom tier. It's just I personally struggle against them.

 

[Tenryuga]

Not so sound up myself or anything, but I am the better player. Bass isn't their main and I still win like 80% of the time. When they use their main, I win. It's just character dependent. Like Christie, and Rig being another two. Some characters I just can't fight for the life of me... but that doesn't mean they're top or bottom tier. It's just I personally struggle against them.

Right; I hear you.

 

[klimaxoxox]

I don't believe you understand how tiers work. What you're essentially suggesting is a fighting game with one character.

Now suppose you're the developer of that game and you copy and paste the one character into another slot. If you change even a single byte of information on that second character, now one character has an advantage over the other. Now this game has a tier list and it will be discussed to death.

I'm not saying it should be perfectly balanced, I understand that some will be high tier and others lower tier. I am suggesting to make the game as balanced as possible so that every character is a threat in a way. Because at tournaments only the top tier get chosen, now if every one was pretty much mid-high to high tier then that would be something else

 

[Brute]

I'm not saying it should be perfectly balanced, I understand that some will be high tier and others lower tier. I am suggesting to make the game as balanced as possible so that every character is a threat in a way. Because at tournaments only the top tier get chosen, now if every one was pretty much mid-high to high tier then that would be something else

Well yeah, that would be great. I think that's actually what TN is aiming for, too, believe it or not. I just think they have problems actually doing that.

 

[Jyakotu]

I get a lot of flack for this from my college's FGC, but I don't believe 3D fighters have tiers. It's just knowing your character(s) and the match ups of other characters. My main in DOA, Eliot, is considered "low tier" but I still can beat characters that are considered "top tier" in the game. I do, however, believe that 2D fighters rely on tiers heavily. However, that's due to the fact that characters in 2D games have differently life values, whereas, in a 3D fighter they all have the same value. Not to mention, 3D fighters allow for more freedom and 2D fighters are more constricting. Long story short, I don't believe in tiers in 3D fighters.

 

[deathofaninja]

Match ups are essentially what make tiers...

 

[Radiance]

I'm not saying it should be perfectly balanced, I understand that some will be high tier and others lower tier. I am suggesting to make the game as balanced as possible so that every character is a threat in a way. Because at tournaments only the top tier get chosen, now if every one was pretty much mid-high to high tier then that would be something else

The closest fighter there is as to what you're describing is Virtua Fighter; Final Showdown at least. I don't know about previous VF's. When I played that game awhile ago and took it seriously I never felt as if there was a match up where the character was just too powerful. I either lost because I didn't know the MU at all, or simply because my opponent was just better than me/experienced.

 

[grap3fruitman]

I'm not saying it should be perfectly balanced, I understand that some will be high tier and others lower tier. I am suggesting to make the game as balanced as possible so that every character is a threat in a way. Because at tournaments only the top tier get chosen, now if every one was pretty much mid-high to high tier then that would be something else

They did that:

 

[StrikerSashi]

Yeah, sounds like you're misunderstanding what tiers are. The vast majority of the time, the developers don't purposefully make some characters better than others. It just happens naturally because the characters aren't all identical, and so some end up better than others. Tiers are just simplifications of which characters happen to be good and happen to be bad.

And it's not like characters just beat those on lower tiers. It's very possible for a bottom tier character to have an advantage over the top tier character. It's just that the top tier is overall at an advantage against all matchups. An easy example is Honda in Super Turbo. He's absolutely garbage against anyone with a fireball, but if you don't have one you get wrecked. The majority of his matchups are 3/7 or 7/3. I want to say Honda vs Cammy is 11/-1 'cause it's pretty much impossible to lose unless the Honda is really messing up. Meanwhile, OKen is like 1/9 for Honda and makes him cry. Where does he place? Solidly mid tier. Meanwhile, Dhalsim has pretty much all great matchups, so he's top tier. That's how tiers normally work.

So really, picking high tiers isn't gonna secure wins and it's a really simplistic way of evaluating characters. What you want to really look at is the individual matchup evaluations. Ideally, even (or near even) matchups for everyone against everyone else would be amazing, assuming the characters aren't carbon copies of each other. But that's pretty much impossible. Still, DOA isn't unbalanced that low tier characters can't win. It's pretty much always possible 'cause of the way DOA works.

And as for 2D games being more tier dependent than 3D, that's not true. Especially for that reason. I mean, just think about it. Pretty much always, Aoi is gonna take more damage from a juggle than Taka. Not that different from hp values at all. And it's not like all 2D fighters have different amounts of health for different characters. As for movement... Well, c'mon. Unless you're thinking in terms of old school 2D games, that's far from the truth. Airdash, super jump, fastfall, fly, triangle dash, homing. I don't recall seeing any of those in a 3D fighter. And Devil Jin's fly stance doesn't count. It's true that 3D games have the option of going in the foreground and background, but it's a lot less intensive in terms of the vertical spacing. Majority of the time, it's range that's talked about when we're discussing hitboxes for 3D games. When we're talking 2D, far more important is the vector (or angle, rather). The amount of control some 2D games allow in the air lets characters space on two axises. Think of it as manually crushing. It's a pretty big blanket statement to just say one type of game is more restrictive than the other when, in reality, they both have unique aspects to them that allow freedom in different areas.

Also, nerf Gen Fu.