4 ms·

If I could comment to the author directly. Look into the Tier lists for Street Fighter, and Namely Street Fighter Turbo II. Which is also completely unpatched,

If I could comment to the author directly. Look into the Tier lists for Street Fighter, and Namely Street Fighter Turbo II. Which is also completely unpatched, but still has an actively changing tier list despite being over 20 years old.

CocaKoala 12y ago
Even regional tier lists for Turbo can be really interesting. In the states, everybody thought T Hawk was a trash character, completely low tier. In Japan, he was one of the top tier grapplers; eventually, somebody from Japan came out to the US for a tournament, picked T Hawk, and started doing stuff that folks in the US had just straight up never seen before.
Chevalier 12y ago
As a 1v1 fighting game with a comparable roster of character genres, Street Fighter seems like a better analogue to Smash Brothers than League of Legends is. And like you said, Street Fighter II remains unpatched... versus the regular patching of the Street Fighter IV series. The comparison seems perfect. Street Fighter IV started the series with a ridiculously overpowered Sagat, who was then arguably overnerfed in Super Street Fighter IV. New characters introduced in Super Street Fighter IV AE, Yun and Yang, were overpowered to the point of breaking the game. I'm pretty glad that Capcom has, however reluctantly and at whatever expense, continued to balance the characters with each release. The series would have been pretty damn bland if anyone could win by spamming Sagat's fireballs since 2008. It's given me the opportunity to experiment with relatively underpowered characters, which is WAY more fun -- and since they're not (completely) helpless against more powerful characters, I've been able to come up with game-winning tactics that baffle friends who rely on the usual shotos like Ryu/Ken/etc/etc. I've never gotten into Smash Brothers, but I'd love to hear about the Ice Climbers. I've tried playing them at parties and got absolutely destroyed. Why are they such a powerful character? - - - - - Edit - To answer my own question about the Ice Climbers: "The Ice Climbers aren't very good at using their standard arsenal of attacks for continuous hits, normally speaking. With weak throws, small hammers, and slow movement in general (slow falling, air, and dash speed), the Ice Climbers can usually only manage one or two good hits in close before they need to resort to Ice Shots or Blizzard again. With both Climbers present, KOing generally isn't too much of a problem, although their Smashes are generally better at racking up the damage than at KOing. With all this in mind, they wouldn't seem like the best character choice, if it weren't for the following... Chaingrabbing and Desynching Many would consider the Ice Climbers to be "the King and Queen of all Chain Grabs" due to the fact that their two-in-one property allows a variety of chain-grab options. For example, the lead Ice Climber can grab onto one opponent and use the forward throw. In the middle of the throw animation, the player can gain control of the CPU Climber, commanding him/her into performing a forward-air spike, or grabbing again with the CPU Climber while once again bringing the original, player-controlled Climber in for a new grab. Such strings create long and extremely damaging chain grabs capable of being performed at nearly any percent, on nearly any stage. A down side is that the ice climbers don't have a very good grab range and because of how much they slide it's almost impossible to grab an opponent when they hit your shield unless you powershield his or her attack. For further two-in-one hi jinks, it is even possible to "desync" the CPU partner by confusing it with erratic movement (such as dash-dancing), putting the player in control of both Climbers for as long as they are capable of maintaining it. Once the partner is desynced, the player can have it perform any move while the main Climber is in the middle of one, providing for all sorts of possible attack strategies that can be exceedingly difficult for opponents to escape from (alternating Blizzard, alternating Ice Shot). While desynced, the partner Climber has restrained movement within an invisible box around the main Climber; should he/she be separated or removed from this box, the CPU will take over again. This invisible box makes it so that if you desync yourself from the AI so that it charges a smash attack and you start walking or running away, the AI will slide in your direction while charging the smash. A unique thing that you can do when desynced is that if you desync the AI to charge a smash attack, your belay will cancel the AI's charging sequence and teleport it into the belaying sequence. It should be obvious that such techniques are almost impossible to perform in combat, regardless of the player's skill, due to the constant string of precise commands required for the Climbers to move/attack as intended. This level of obscene difficulty is what has prevented any seemingly-unfair IC techniques (outside of wobbling in Melee) from seeing competitive bans, especially given that very few professional players maintain or even use them at tournaments. This lack of appearance has made their tier ranking, and whether or not it should be higher, questionable for the time being. Nevertheless, these techniques are the backbone of playing a good pair of Ice Climber; without them, they aren't particularly great, so it's essential for players who plan on using the Ice Climbers to master them as they are not worthy of their tier placement without these." http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Ice_Climbers_(SSBB) http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Ice_Climbers_(SSBB)
- CocaKoala 12y ago
  The past couple EVO tournaments for Street Fighter (which is, for people who don't follow the FGC, the largest tournament in the US for fighting games) have been won by some pretty unexpected characters, which I like; nobody really considered Gen to be a powerhouse until Xian pulled it out, and I'm pretty sure Rose was thought to be solidly low tier until Louffy demonstrated that she could make really effective use of her normals (and also lucked into some people who didn't understand the Rose matchup and e.g. kept on spamming Sagat's fireballs when that's a pretty terrible thing to do against Rose). I feel like there are a lot of characters in SF who are pretty viable, and some of them just require a lot more work than others. It's pretty well understood how to play a shoto like Ryu or Ken, but the downside is that when you pick them, everybody knows what to expect from you. If you can put some solid work into a low tier character, you can often pull off some really unexpected stuff and occasionally shift the tier lists. Another good example of this was Canada Cup 2013, 5v5; NE Asia's Dakou picked Dee Jay (a decidedly low tier version of Guile) and ended up destroying a bunch of people who really expected to win. The commentary on this set is a lot of fun just because you can tell the announcers are so surprised: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcMwzw6EbMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcMwzw6EbMg
CocaKoala 12y ago
After a bit of thought, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (and 2, honestly) would also be interesting to look at. 2 is essentially a booked game, I don't think anybody feels like new stuff is going to be discovered there, but it was actively played for years and years, so examining changing tier lists would be pretty interesting. 3 is still played and the metagame has gone through some pretty significant shifts (from phoenix teams to morridoom to zero may cry), but I can basically guarantee that it's not going to be patched any time soon because of the way rights to the characters are tangled up, so any metagame shifts that happen are entirely due to the players discovering new tech. And there's definitely still a lot of new tech to be discovered in MvC3.
forrestthewoods 12y ago
Author here! Can you point me to a set of tier lists for Street Fighter? I actually looked very briefly but couldn't find anything. It's possible to find a single tier list but what makes the Smash Bros post work so well is that it's 12 lists from the same source over 10 years. I've found a few good tier lists for SF2 and SF4, but nothing consistent enough to really show their evolution over time.
- valarauca1 12y ago
  The evolution over time will require a little bit of data mining. I'm only slightly attached to the fighting community and haven't actively been playing for 20 years. I don't know a good resource where this information will be readily available from seeing at the early 90's were kinda ancient history for the web.
- agrona 12y ago
  Dave Sirlin had a recent(ish) post about balance in fighting games here: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/game-balance-and-yomi http://www.sirlin.net/articles/game-balance-and-yomi He mentions a few different Street Fighters.
- ZenoArrow 12y ago
  Here are some tier lists for SF3 (Second Impact and Third Strike)... http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_2nd_Impact#Tier_List http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_2nd_Impact#Tier_... http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_3rd_Strike#Tiers http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_3rd_Strike#Tiers Shoryuken doesn't seem to have a tier list for New Generation... http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_New_Generation http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_New_Generation ... but found these... http://cyberfanatix.com/forums/index.php?topic=100.0 http://cyberfanatix.com/forums/index.php?topic=100.0 http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-489918-the-fighting-games-tier-listing.html http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-48991...

CocaKoala 12y ago

Even regional tier lists for Turbo can be really interesting. In the states, everybody thought T Hawk was a trash character, completely low tier. In Japan, he was one of the top tier grapplers; eventually, somebody from Japan came out to the US for a tournament, picked T Hawk, and started doing stuff that folks in the US had just straight up never seen before.

Chevalier 12y ago

As a 1v1 fighting game with a comparable roster of character genres, Street Fighter seems like a better analogue to Smash Brothers than League of Legends is. And like you said, Street Fighter II remains unpatched... versus the regular patching of the Street Fighter IV series. The comparison seems perfect. Street Fighter IV started the series with a ridiculously overpowered Sagat, who was then arguably overnerfed in Super Street Fighter IV. New characters introduced in Super Street Fighter IV AE, Yun and Yang, were overpowered to the point of breaking the game. I'm pretty glad that Capcom has, however reluctantly and at whatever expense, continued to balance the characters with each release. The series would have been pretty damn bland if anyone could win by spamming Sagat's fireballs since 2008. It's given me the opportunity to experiment with relatively underpowered characters, which is WAY more fun -- and since they're not (completely) helpless against more powerful characters, I've been able to come up with game-winning tactics that baffle friends who rely on the usual shotos like Ryu/Ken/etc/etc. I've never gotten into Smash Brothers, but I'd love to hear about the Ice Climbers. I've tried playing them at parties and got absolutely destroyed. Why are they such a powerful character? - - - - - Edit - To answer my own question about the Ice Climbers: "The Ice Climbers aren't very good at using their standard arsenal of attacks for continuous hits, normally speaking. With weak throws, small hammers, and slow movement in general (slow falling, air, and dash speed), the Ice Climbers can usually only manage one or two good hits in close before they need to resort to Ice Shots or Blizzard again. With both Climbers present, KOing generally isn't too much of a problem, although their Smashes are generally better at racking up the damage than at KOing. With all this in mind, they wouldn't seem like the best character choice, if it weren't for the following... Chaingrabbing and Desynching Many would consider the Ice Climbers to be "the King and Queen of all Chain Grabs" due to the fact that their two-in-one property allows a variety of chain-grab options. For example, the lead Ice Climber can grab onto one opponent and use the forward throw. In the middle of the throw animation, the player can gain control of the CPU Climber, commanding him/her into performing a forward-air spike, or grabbing again with the CPU Climber while once again bringing the original, player-controlled Climber in for a new grab. Such strings create long and extremely damaging chain grabs capable of being performed at nearly any percent, on nearly any stage. A down side is that the ice climbers don't have a very good grab range and because of how much they slide it's almost impossible to grab an opponent when they hit your shield unless you powershield his or her attack. For further two-in-one hi jinks, it is even possible to "desync" the CPU partner by confusing it with erratic movement (such as dash-dancing), putting the player in control of both Climbers for as long as they are capable of maintaining it. Once the partner is desynced, the player can have it perform any move while the main Climber is in the middle of one, providing for all sorts of possible attack strategies that can be exceedingly difficult for opponents to escape from (alternating Blizzard, alternating Ice Shot). While desynced, the partner Climber has restrained movement within an invisible box around the main Climber; should he/she be separated or removed from this box, the CPU will take over again. This invisible box makes it so that if you desync yourself from the AI so that it charges a smash attack and you start walking or running away, the AI will slide in your direction while charging the smash. A unique thing that you can do when desynced is that if you desync the AI to charge a smash attack, your belay will cancel the AI's charging sequence and teleport it into the belaying sequence. It should be obvious that such techniques are almost impossible to perform in combat, regardless of the player's skill, due to the constant string of precise commands required for the Climbers to move/attack as intended. This level of obscene difficulty is what has prevented any seemingly-unfair IC techniques (outside of wobbling in Melee) from seeing competitive bans, especially given that very few professional players maintain or even use them at tournaments. This lack of appearance has made their tier ranking, and whether or not it should be higher, questionable for the time being. Nevertheless, these techniques are the backbone of playing a good pair of Ice Climber; without them, they aren't particularly great, so it's essential for players who plan on using the Ice Climbers to master them as they are not worthy of their tier placement without these." http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Ice_Climbers_(SSBB) http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Ice_Climbers_(SSBB)

CocaKoala 12y ago
The past couple EVO tournaments for Street Fighter (which is, for people who don't follow the FGC, the largest tournament in the US for fighting games) have been won by some pretty unexpected characters, which I like; nobody really considered Gen to be a powerhouse until Xian pulled it out, and I'm pretty sure Rose was thought to be solidly low tier until Louffy demonstrated that she could make really effective use of her normals (and also lucked into some people who didn't understand the Rose matchup and e.g. kept on spamming Sagat's fireballs when that's a pretty terrible thing to do against Rose). I feel like there are a lot of characters in SF who are pretty viable, and some of them just require a lot more work than others. It's pretty well understood how to play a shoto like Ryu or Ken, but the downside is that when you pick them, everybody knows what to expect from you. If you can put some solid work into a low tier character, you can often pull off some really unexpected stuff and occasionally shift the tier lists. Another good example of this was Canada Cup 2013, 5v5; NE Asia's Dakou picked Dee Jay (a decidedly low tier version of Guile) and ended up destroying a bunch of people who really expected to win. The commentary on this set is a lot of fun just because you can tell the announcers are so surprised: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcMwzw6EbMg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcMwzw6EbMg

CocaKoala 12y ago

After a bit of thought, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (and 2, honestly) would also be interesting to look at. 2 is essentially a booked game, I don't think anybody feels like new stuff is going to be discovered there, but it was actively played for years and years, so examining changing tier lists would be pretty interesting. 3 is still played and the metagame has gone through some pretty significant shifts (from phoenix teams to morridoom to zero may cry), but I can basically guarantee that it's not going to be patched any time soon because of the way rights to the characters are tangled up, so any metagame shifts that happen are entirely due to the players discovering new tech. And there's definitely still a lot of new tech to be discovered in MvC3.

forrestthewoods 12y ago

Author here! Can you point me to a set of tier lists for Street Fighter? I actually looked very briefly but couldn't find anything. It's possible to find a single tier list but what makes the Smash Bros post work so well is that it's 12 lists from the same source over 10 years. I've found a few good tier lists for SF2 and SF4, but nothing consistent enough to really show their evolution over time.

valarauca1 12y ago
The evolution over time will require a little bit of data mining. I'm only slightly attached to the fighting community and haven't actively been playing for 20 years. I don't know a good resource where this information will be readily available from seeing at the early 90's were kinda ancient history for the web.
agrona 12y ago
Dave Sirlin had a recent(ish) post about balance in fighting games here: http://www.sirlin.net/articles/game-balance-and-yomi http://www.sirlin.net/articles/game-balance-and-yomi He mentions a few different Street Fighters.
ZenoArrow 12y ago
Here are some tier lists for SF3 (Second Impact and Third Strike)... http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_2nd_Impact#Tier_List http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_2nd_Impact#Tier_... http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_3rd_Strike#Tiers http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_3rd_Strike#Tiers Shoryuken doesn't seem to have a tier list for New Generation... http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_New_Generation http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_New_Generation ... but found these... http://cyberfanatix.com/forums/index.php?topic=100.0 http://cyberfanatix.com/forums/index.php?topic=100.0 http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-489918-the-fighting-games-tier-listing.html http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-48991...