Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24114180-20140107193454/@comment-24485672-20140526221937

Okay, it took me a while to notice a certain abomination of an article, but here goes. Note that I'm not bashing opinions (and not discussing them yet), just the way the article is written because it makes my brain hurt, to be entirely honest.

First of all, there's a fair few invalid/insignificant arguments, or places where at least I feel information could be missing. Most of the arguments are FOR tier lists while the side AGAINST is mostly neglected and no arguments are stated there even when the article says there were refuted arguments. This suggests that whoever wrote this thing is biased. The point of informative articles is to be unbiased, and wiki's are usually supposed to be informative. That's a general strike against this article. Now let's go into some specifics.

Some biased writer wrote: It is a common misconception among these players that all characters in the series are relatively balanced in ability. There is some truth in this. However, the extent of this is overestimated. Some characters suffer from slowness, others from pretty poor range. Some characters are good in the air, others jump and recover like crap. Unless you're at the absolute top, which you aren't if you belong to like 90% of the gamers, this distinction doesn't matter as much as extreme tierists make it out to be. (This is my main point and I will get to this further down the reply) However, the dire thing about this sentence is that it starts a talking down to anti-tierists. You are supposed to inform people, not ridicule like the majority of them!

What is this I don't even: Furthermore, several prominent members of the community, such as Mew2King~ Ooooooh! I'll have to stop my argument right there. My life holds no significance in the face of great names like these!... As you could judge from the baselessness and thoughtlessness of my awe right there, I was highly sarcastic. This might be as close as I can get to insulting, but let's face an hard fact: The prominence of a name doesn't matter one single shitty bit. Mind that I'm not insulting the prominent people. All I do is stress that expecting it to make a difference on an objective topic will just cement you as an idiot. To put it more neutrally and professionally: People providing evidence are equal for the purposes of argumentation. The quoted sophism pretty much marks the writer as biased in my eyes.

Someone who uses the term "strong" wrong wrote: Some characters are objectively more favorably endowed with these qualities than others, providing strong evidence to base tier listings. How is a set of qualities instantly strong evidence? I may not be able to prove this wrong, but by general unwritten rule of discussions, I really don't have to. After all the writer made the claim, and he neglects the burden of proof here by not making a strong enough case. I could have ignored this but in the face of other sad arguments that accompany this one, I cannot.

Someone who misses his very own point wrote: Tournament results have shown that some characters are more viable than others Guys. I salute you if you stopped reading here. The writer has undermined his own point. Tier lists assume that the players are of equal skill so the characters start to matter. Tournament results are invalid evidence because the players aren't of equal skill. And before someone docks me for that, I can safely assume that. I mean, 32 people in the same tournament with the same skill? Even if I am less picky, that'd equal 5 matchups where the players were equally skilled. Come on, this isn't subjective on my part, that's plain logic.

That very same guy wrote: the winners of Melee tournaments most commonly use Fox, Falco, Sheik, and/or Marth, and the winners of Brawl tournaments- See above. Players not of equal skill. That prerequisite of tier lists in any game. Grr. Okay, continuing in normal language, this is yet another argument that is weak in the end, or at least not well enough reinforced.

One biased nutcase wrote: Additionally, the anti-tiers' arguments are constantly refuted, and they have failed to come up with new arguments that disprove the existence of tiers. Okay, stop trying already, I've won. At least bother to list the arguments against if you want to come across as unbiased and therefore as speaking the truth. Seriously, I doubt your right to speak of "valid proof" considering your bottom-tier performance in the writing scene.

Who wrote this? I'm asking. The tier list does not restrict the characters played, because the tier list ranks characters based on their potential in tournaments, not who is the "best" character to play. This is a subtle one. While it is true that tier lists are not intended to restrict characters played (there are noble tierists and I don't question that), it's not what actually happens in practice. The whole "potential" thing isn't brought up a lot, instead, "who is the "best" character to play" is the terminology most often used. And I've lurked around enough places to say that. The result is... well, I'll make the point in the more personal and subjective part of this reply wall.

Here we go again... Some also believe that it limits the ability to learn from mistakes caused by players as the failure would be pinpointed on their character that they use Again the writer is trying to refute something that actually happens. It is how tier lists are interpreted by some people.

Thank goodness, I'm almost done However, any competitive player who mained a character would know their character's weaknesses and strengths, and a player would be able to tell when a mistake was their own fault or due to a weakness of their character. First of all, stop distinguishing between competitive players and anything else. I'd almost say it shows favoritism (I wouldn't be surprised by now). More to the point, I'm not competitive and I know the strengths and weaknesses as well even if the tier lists might not agree with them. So that's one implication disproven or at least refuted. Also, again by the definition of tier lists, something becomes the fault of a character when the players are of equal skill. Until that point, it's always the player's fault.

So a recurring theme in the sophisms and errors and such is that the definition of tier lists is misunderstood, for it judges characters, not players, and yet widescale events with players are used as evidence. And if I'm not mistaken, tierists have used these arguments for years.

Anyways, now to stop with the discussion lessons. I want to stress that the existence of tier lists isn't even a question. I mean, people created them. Therefore they exist. However, what should be discussed and what I think people actually discuss (yeah let's mistake the other side, we haven't made enough mistakes yet) is how much significance tier lists hold. And I have said this before: Tier lists only start to matter at the point players hit the skill ceiling. Only a handful of players become as good as gamers can get. In other words, tier lists don't matter until the higher reaches of competitivity. And if there's something that has come to mind, it's that those that dislike tier lists usually don't make money like the top group does. They disagree with tier lists because it quite simply doesn't matter for them. They dislike tier lists because some of the more moronic tierers laugh at them (or whatever indignified behavior) for not adhering to the tiers when they don't even have to.

Long story short 2) tier lists matter when you are in world championships but 1) normal, more average people can by all means use them as toilet paper.

On a side note, I will freely admit that I have a burning hatred of metagames, being an aspiring designer. After all, would you like to have half of your hard work disregarded because characters are "weak" or stages are "unfair"? Nope, you wouldn't. It's simply disrespectful to the designers and developers to live by tier lists or enforce them. By the way, there's better ways to make money. Here's a hint: It's not what gamers tend to use for amusement.