1.03 Tier List Discussion (aka Argument)

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I personally really disagree with tier lists and the concept behind them. To really determine which characters are truly the best, you couldn't have people controlling them... have two CPU players square off, set to edge master, play tons of rounds (everyone against everyone!) and then see who has advantage over who and go from there. That gives you a good picture of who actually has a mathematical edge. Otherwise, human fallibility plays into it too much to come up with anything concrete.

This isn't Melee, its Soulcalibur... give me a break. Too much opinion involved with these things.
 
Thats really all a tier list is anyway... just a list of characters that people win tourney's with and/or the character picked most. The character matters but not as much as knowledge of the fighting system does. All boils down to mechanics IMO.
 
I think the approach you have to take to a tier list is that it's all theory, not law. Although there are some obvious aspects of a character that you can use to gauge their relative usability, play style, anticipation, and good, old-fashioned human error are going to figure into every match. Nothing is set in stone, and no matter how much you try, you will never get everyone to agree that Amy is hands down better than Rock (regardless of how much evidence might be on your side). Tier lists, by nature, are huge amounts of subjectivity based on a small foundation of fact.
 
I may have jumped the gun a bit, but I still think he's low tier.

Sure, he has a disgusting wall game, good ws punishing, good whiff punishing, throw range, and a:G+A, among a few other things, but if a NM players plays for example, a bulldog Mitsu of equal skill that knows his stuff (and NM's stuff), NM has little he can do to get the Mitsu off. If he anticipates 6K, 2KB kills it. If you miss any NSS stuff, he has enough time to whiff punish (Mitsu has hella range). You try to 7_8_9K or 7_8_9B in anticipation of 2KB, he can start using his verts, which snuff those moves. Pretty much all his stuff snuffs out NM's stuff.

Mitsu's just one example. Many other characters can just as easily snuff out NM's options.

I love NM, but there are many times when I wish I was playing SC2 NM or SC3 console NM again. T_T
He's no Rock, but he's not far from his place.
 
Right now, in 360 version 1.01, Rock ISN'T low tier. (Neither is Nightmare but that's another story)

The only low tier in this version is Starkiller if you don't include Yoda in the equation.

Rock isn't lower mid either. He's 100% mid tier.

Reasons? Check the other forums soul arenas as I don't feel like posting and repeating all over again.

Rock isn't low tier.
 
lol Mitsu has always been one of NM's better matchups cause B+K stuff dodges a ridiculous number of mitsu's moves and mitsu lacks good long range TCs (though he's better in SC4 at this than last game) so nightmare can use a lot of agA, A mixups, and throws

nightmare can punish him really hard for stepping or blocking 2kB, and if for some reason only the B hits, NM gets a free WS B after being hit

mitsu is also rather sub-par at block punishing nightmare



if you wanna example of a bad matchup for nightmare you should say sophie, cass, algol, or even astaroth. mitsu? no
 
sakeido said:
I personally really disagree with tier lists and the concept behind them. To really determine which characters are truly the best, you couldn't have people controlling them... have two CPU players square off
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No
no no no
no no
no no no no no...no no.
 
Angrel-San said:
Right now, in 360 version 1.01, Rock ISN'T low tier. (Neither is Nightmare but that's another story)

The only low tier in this version is Starkiller if you don't include Yoda in the equation.

Rock isn't lower mid either. He's 100% mid tier.

Reasons? Check the other forums soul arenas as I don't feel like posting and repeating all over again.

Rock isn't low tier.
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Why do you think Starkiller/Apprentice is low tier?
 
Some of his combos whiff a lot, doesnt do much damage, and you have to admit that he doesn't have many High/low mixups.
 
What counts as low damage in SC? SK doesn't seem to be a low damaging character, he has plenty of combos that can do easily over 50 or more but again that depends on what counts as low damage in SC.
 
Compared to other SC characters, his combos, and NC, aren't as good as they could be. His moveset focuses on Mid-highs which is not good against experienced players.
 
I don't play starkiller or play against any, but I'll take a wild guess that a good starkiller will be throwing a lot to make up for his low attack deficiencies. From what I tried his throws seemed pretty good.
 
yeah, they are good but it doesn't help very much when playing against people on the aggressive side.
 
sakeido said:
I personally really disagree with tier lists and the concept behind them. To really determine which characters are truly the best, you couldn't have people controlling them... have two CPU players square off, set to edge master, play tons of rounds (everyone against everyone!) and then see who has advantage over who and go from there. That gives you a good picture of who actually has a mathematical edge. Otherwise, human fallibility plays into it too much to come up with anything concrete.

This isn't Melee, its Soulcalibur... give me a break. Too much opinion involved with these things.
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I rarely call someone out on noobish shit, but damn dude. I'll let you figure out why you're wrong lol.
 
Serge2HOT4U said:
I rarely call someone out on noobish shit, but damn dude. I'll let you figure out why you're wrong lol.
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If I thought I was wrong, I wouldn't have posted it. Generally, I find people who say things like this don't actually know how to relate and support their ideas anyway, so how about you cut the bullshit and say straight out what you mean?

If you want to rank which characters are the best, you need controlled conditions... if you have people playing, that is impossible. At the very best you get a correlational study, with haphazardly distributed results that are subject to extreme amounts of bias and inaccuracy. People seem to be good at defending tier lists and dismissing arguments against them as illogical, but not very good at coming up with a valid way to determine them in the first place.

Therefore, I disagree with the whole concept. If someone let a machine sit down, play every character to 100% of that character's ability, and then you used statistical formulation to come up with the concrete potential of each character I'd have to respect that. If you have a bunch of people on the internet bitching about who is actually better and work only from the latest tournament results, your methodology is flawed.

Is a tier list intended to reflect balance issues in a game, and show which characters have advantage over the largest portion of the cast? Yes. Do misbalances exist? Yes. Are people working them out in the right way? No. I'd accept a tier list, even using the shoddy method that exists... five months down the road. But within a month and a half of the game coming out? Not a chance.

Otherwise, the tier list just reflects who is entered most frequently in a tournament and who the most skilled people playing may be using. So then, just call it what it is - Most Successful Tournament Characters, instead of trying to establish some gospel about a character's chances and potential.

But if you aren't prepared to actually explain yourself, I'm not going to bother after this...
 
i'll try to keep it short. In reality its impossible for a computer to play 100% of a character's ability. Where would it start? the AI would have to be modeled after a top player, for one, and the computer lacks the top notch heuristic abilities of a player.

For now all that Edge Master mode gives you is increased blocking, GI and aggressive moves. How will that measure a characters potential?

That's the one trouble with AI dude, and its a problem that even top scientists have been trying to figure out for AI's history - how to tell it to make quick, human like decisions, without factoring a shitload of information. That's why a computer can beat a top player in Chess (finite, measurable field and finite moves), but in a game of GO - probably not.

The best AI's ive seen (and by best i mean "beastly unbeatable") were more than likely just input readers. Ever play against a computer Jade in Ultimate Mortal Kombat? she would go invincible the moment u throw a fireball, every single time. did that make her top tier? idk, but the fireball invincible fireball thing played no effect cause its not pheasable to be done by a human.
 
Serge2HOT4U said:
i'll try to keep it short. In reality its impossible for a computer to play 100% of a character's ability. Where would it start? the AI would have to be modeled after a top player, for one, and the computer lacks the top notch heuristic abilities of a player.

For now all that Edge Master mode gives you is increased blocking, GI and aggressive moves. How will that measure a characters potential?

That's the one trouble with AI dude, and its a problem that even top scientists have been trying to figure out for AI's history - how to tell it to make quick, human like decisions, without factoring a shitload of information. That's why a computer can beat a top player in Chess (finite, measurable field and finite moves), but in a game of GO - probably not.

The best AI's ive seen (and by best i mean "beastly unbeatable") were more than likely just input readers. Ever play against a computer Jade in Ultimate Mortal Kombat? she would go invincible the moment u throw a fireball, every single time. did that make her top tier? idk, but the fireball invincible fireball thing played no effect cause its not pheasable to be done by a human.
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hmmm i think you just destroyed everything the other dude has said in 1 post...bravo
 
Serge2HOT4U said:
i'll try to keep it short. In reality its impossible for a computer to play 100% of a character's ability. Where would it start? the AI would have to be modeled after a top player, for one, and the computer lacks the top notch heuristic abilities of a player.

For now all that Edge Master mode gives you is increased blocking, GI and aggressive moves. How will that measure a characters potential?

That's the one trouble with AI dude, and its a problem that even top scientists have been trying to figure out for AI's history - how to tell it to make quick, human like decisions, without factoring a shitload of information. That's why a computer can beat a top player in Chess (finite, measurable field and finite moves), but in a game of GO - probably not.

The best AI's ive seen (and by best i mean "beastly unbeatable") were more than likely just input readers. Ever play against a computer Jade in Ultimate Mortal Kombat? she would go invincible the moment u throw a fireball, every single time. did that make her top tier? idk, but the fireball invincible fireball thing played no effect cause its not pheasable to be done by a human.
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So what, the machine doesn't work? You still have no controlled conditions and are trying to come up with a ranking or grouping. You have nothing good to work with! Have you heard of "garbage in, garbage out" before? You are taking in extremely limited information - a small sampling of tournaments, most of which don't even report who was playing as what character - and then a large amount of extremely biased information, and then you are trying to establish a tier list that states supposedly how good various characters are.

A large portion of what comes in is hearsay, and there are no controls involved. So it becomes vulnerable to a lot of problems - selection bias, halo effect, confirmation bias, the bandwagon effect, observer-expectancy, neglect of probability - but I guess those aren't problems if you don't care.

Basically, a bunch of bullshit comes in - and then a condensed form of bullshit comes out.

As it stands, it is a waste of time. In five months, somewhat less futile. Have you heard of reliability and validity as it applies to surveys? Reliability - that you can administer the same test multiple times and the result will be same. Clearly does not apply to Soulcalibur.. validity - does your test have anything to do with your goal? In the case of looking at tournament matches yes. Otherwise, no, but people seem to accept it anyway.

You want something more valid, make a standard tournament report. Ensure you know 100% of the characters entered, and the results of every match. Determine a consistent weighting for results in each particular round. Crunch numbers, then identify patterns. You will probably only have enough data to represent less than half the characters. What you end up with will be less useless than any tier list I've seen so far.
 
RedDjinn said:
I wasnt talking about your online play or you as a player in general just saying you didnt show much even if it was online... anyways i'm tired of argueing about this... yea i'll run right down to texas and ask how good you are as soon as you run to japan and ask how good i am ;) lol yoshi is cake to play with you win i lose... now on with the discussion...

P.S. I got 5th with yoshi too bout 3 weeks ago at at a tourney here in TN still dont think hes easy to be good with... you def have to know him inside and out... just let opinions differ and go about your way Nori lol leave it alone ho!~! :)
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Man....sounds like I pissed you off. Sorry about that? That's my opinion, sticking to it. Can a Yoshi be fancy? Yes. Can you tell a basic yoshi apart from somebody who knows him in and out? Absolutely. All I'm saying is, a person who is solid in this game can pick him up and exploit his best moves. And shit, I'd love to go to Japan. Always wanted to go but now that I'm engaged, saving my money for that:( And good job on getting 5th w/him, that's tight

I think this is the first game where everybody is STILL arguing top 3 when it's been out a month already. It's just......beautiful to see. So far, it seems everybody can win. This makes me smile
 
Nori said:
I think this is the first game where everybody is STILL arguing top 3 when it's been out a month already. It's just......beautiful to see. So far, it seems everybody can win. This makes me smile
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I agree! Even the characters commonly thought to be low tier, NM, rock, zas, etc look better all the time too. ppl keep finding new things =]
 
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