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Skullgirls Encore Edition Tiers and Matchups Discussion Thread: The Revengeance

@ashxu

There is (and always has been) some bizarre attempt to categorize SG tiers without actually using tiers. The premise starts with "SG is perfectly balanced" and so any tier list has to be account for that. This ultimately means we end up with these bizarre fucking tier lists that try to express that. We can try "good, better, best" or "S, S+, S++" or "C, B, A *caveat C and B == A" and so on.

I think the statement "SG is balanced" would actually speak for itself... but I would think wrong.
 
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Tiers naturally exist in any game.

Skullgirls tiers are incredibly compressed, but acting like there's not a difference in potency is ridiculous, almost impossible to achieve.

Skullgirls is actually quite balanced, surprise.
 
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Well can anyone explain to me why Valentine is apparently on the lower end of the spectrum? She has flaws yes but I don't really think they bring her down much.
 
She doesn't offer great assists and has poor DHC options.

EDIT: and shitty reversals
 
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It could be a character MU thing (solo-Wheel vs Val), or it could be a personal weakness of mine... but Val gives me far more fits than most of the cast. I have never considered her weak (even before her damage buffs).

My own personal bias:

In a team, she exemplifies the worst of SG ie run away and rely on your assists. Having played against some very good solo Vals though, and she's super fun to fight against since both she and PW are fighting for the same space with entirely different approach vectors. Makes for a neat aerial spacing type game.
 
Spencer said:
In a team, she exemplifies the worst of SG ie run away and rely on your assists.
This is a tactic in team games.
There are characters that can do it better. PW for example, (Sj back, fly, call assist, fly in after it)

Valentine in general has really good tools against duos and solos (dps poison, very solid neutral by herself, can convert of many dp/horizontal assists, and can push for doublesnaps from alot farther than most of the cast)

She struggles more in same ratio, bc her damage output is resource intensive, and dps poison is weakest(?) here without dhc followups
 
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Do we even have a match-up chart established? Failing that do we have match-up write ups that establish who beats who and what assists even the odds? Wouldn't that help us better explain whatever tier list pops up and why so and so is A- (or whatever bottom 5 is)instead of S+ because "I've never thought they were weak "?

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But it'll be a real tier list based on match-up data and not speculation on how valuable vague qualities apply in general.

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This game has bad matchups, mainly para vs peacock/Big Band vs Robo.
Beyond that the matchups are very close imo.
Player matchups make a consistent matchup chart beyond these two very hard lol
 
Dhoppler said:
Do we even have a match-up chart established? Failing that do we have match-up write ups that establish who beats who and what assists even the odds? Wouldn't that help us better explain whatever tier list pops up and why so and so is A- (or whatever bottom 5 is)instead of S+ because "I've never thought they were weak "?

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tbh probably not. My experience with these kinds of threads is like, first there's a matchup chart. Then someone replies "Filia is ranked too high". Then you respond "okay, what would you change about the matchup chart to cause that result to happen?" Then you never get an answer, and someone else says like "Valentine is too low." Repeat forever.

We could try making one anyways just for funsies though.
 
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I think negus made a matchup chart over the course of a few streams.

It was a fun experiment and it would be cool to do it again now and see what has changed.
 
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We should be like Negus. If nothing else, to prevent the mcpeanuts scenario.

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I'd rather talk like Stephen Fry
 
Dhoppler said:
We should be like Negus. If nothing else, to prevent the mcpeanuts scenario.

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I'm not sure what you mean.
 
What you said would happen if we do a match-up chart is what happens with a tier list.

The difference is when somebody thinks fillia is too high on the tier list because she's no trouble to them we can just tell them to shut up until they prove her match ups are worse than what the chart says.

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And when they ask why val vs fillia is 6-4 in val's favor, we can discuss a specific match up.

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How do you factor in assists though?

Does it matter that Peacock is 4-6 against someone if with BB she flips that MU to 6-4? Which is the "true" value. For example, Val's solo MU chart is really only relevant to like 3 people. It could have the beneficial side-effect of generating conversation about which MU weaknesses she needs to shore up via an assist, but it still doesn't really reflect how she will perform in a game outside of as a solo... which is about the single least desirable way to play this game.
 
There are too many assists and different teams. There is also the factor of team dynamic(DHC, meter gain, tag...etc). Solo matchups are the simplest to map, yet we still have people that are going to disagree with the list.
 
Spencer said:
How do you factor in assists though?

It could have the beneficial side-effect of generating conversation about which MU weaknesses she needs to shore up via an assist

This is the type of conversation we could actually benefit from. This is the type of conversation that could drive team building and in game decision making. What's the point of a tier/match-up thread when it's just vague lists backed by general game plans, assists, and dhc options? How long are we going to keep speculating potential? Why are we listing individual characters and not teams? If teams are too variable, why aren't we exploring solo match-ups to use as a baseline for teams?


Is it really enough to look at peacock vs val and say it's bad for peacock? How bad? Why? What if she chooses not to zone? What if she plays mid range? Why does fortune vs parasoul suck for soul? What if fortune doesn't use s.hp? What can parasoul do after launching the head to keep herself safe from the body? What can big band do against robo's lasers? Can he effectively force her to the corner? What happens when squiggly keeps her distance from bella? Apply a number to your thoughts and add them up. Now we have a tier list that can be discussed and challenged.


What does S mean? What's the point range for S? How many people do you have to shit on and how hard does it have to be to get S rank? What about A? How many do you have to struggle against to get B? Is there a C tier? Is the difference between bottom of S and bottom of A 5 or 10 points? That's the point of doing a solo match-up chart.


Once that's figured out, we can talk assists. What assist forces your character into an unfavorable position. Does your other character's assist negate that and force the game back into the standard match-up?


These lists don't say any of that and then we talk in circles until this conversation pops up every 3 months.

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ashxu said:
Well can anyone explain to me why Valentine is apparently on the lower end of the spectrum? She has flaws yes but I don't really think they bring her down much.
Because the characters above her are better. It's not rocket surgery.


The "x character isn't bad!" argument against a character being low tier seems to ignore this concept 100% of the time. Val is good. Val is also worse than Beowulf, Fukua, Band, Double, Eliza, etc. And even if a character qualified as pretty bad (like, say, they lacked multiple basic options that the rest of the cast takes for granted, their damage was significantly lower than everybody else, their hitboxes were busted in a bad way, their moves randomly didn't function, they had no neutral, etc) people would still try to argue that they're not low tier for some reason.

Skarmand said:
It was a fun experiment and it would be cool to do it again now and see what has changed.
Easy way: Do each character's matchups twice. Once for with a contributing assist, once for without. That way, if a character NEEDS an assist to make their matchups not suck, we have that data and can rank that character accordingly.

There'd be 1 tier list in the end, with 32 characters on it.
 
I would like to see how Big Band places with assists.

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mcpeanuts said:
tbh probably not. My experience with these kinds of threads is like, first there's a matchup chart. Then someone replies "Filia is ranked too high". Then you respond "okay, what would you change about the matchup chart to cause that result to happen?" Then you never get an answer, and someone else says like "Valentine is too low." Repeat forever.

I think this is a problem that's related to another problem we have as a community on this (and it's not just SG, but most every FG and prob other competitive communities too), which is Elitism.

(keep in mind, I'm talking like this scenario would play out as Vulpes put in that post, where we start with making MU charts)

It's one thing if that scenario you described happens, but it's another if the random disagreement comes from Sonicfox, and ALSO it's a different scenario as well if it comes from someone who's perceived by the community as "bad" (for an easy example, I've been playing bella mostly regularly since last NEC, but I *still* have a terrible bella to where I probably couldn't contribute anything meaningful to her MU discussion). It also becomes relevant when you involve other countries; Brazil/Europe/Japan/**Australia** all have good players but as soon as someone from there says some point of contention, we are too quick to disregard them and fall upon "results". And while value judgements based on that does have some merit, it's also a surefire why to ensure that you won't get anything out of it since you just have to wait till Sage/whoever else has enough time to make a list...which can be never.

To deal with all of this, it should just be aggregated from multiple sources/players and be encouraged for anyone to make their own list. If Sonicfox disagree's with everyone and thinks Filia is S+++ tier? Let him make his own list so people who only care about his opinion can look at that, and just let it be one odd point to contribute that probably won't affect the total balance. If [any given player] who isn't as good does the same? Same thing. Some rules/systems probably need to be made, but I think the general idea should be fine.

In short, if you want to deal with "Hey, You're all wrong, Filia is ranked too high", no matter who it is, just respond with "Well, make your own list and we'll add it where we can", and let them choose to do something about it or not.

IsaVulpes said:
Hey I made a post about this forever ago but nobody ever cared: http://skullheart.com/index.php?thr...hread-the-revengeance.257/page-41#post-144880
Might be useful if you now plan to actually do this now, or maybe not, who knows

I think this basically covers everything and I pretty much agree with everything here. Would add that the MU charts should be things people can contribute too without it being some exclusive player collection. I can't really help with something like this for the foreseeable future, but I can at least contribute MU charts for the characters I play if anyone wanted to start.
 
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I'm increasingly of the opinion that tier lists and to a lesser extent MU charts are useless and ultimately detrimental. Obviously they aren't going anywhere, but what do they actually bring to the table that a character specific MU thread doesn't? More bitching? More elitism? More divisiveness?

Not only that, there is no real consensus as to what constitutes a good tier list? Is it a reflection of the game at a time? Is it a representation of some Platonic ideal of what the game is when played perfectly? Both have their uses, and both have their problems, but they aren't necessarily compatible since some characters don't get realized until years later.

These days, and god help me for saying this since I would have been annoyed reading it a year ago, I think people should play more and debate less about where their characters are relative to others.
 
A match-up chart brings a one stop reference point for match-ups. If we have universal match-up thread then we should aggregate all of the information from the character specific threads into one spot and come to a consensus on what applies and was/is speculation.

We wouldn't be debating if we just gathered up what we knew instead of making vague guesses based on streams only some of us saw.

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Be that as it may, what does a MU chart of PW going 4-6 to Eliza even show me... no matter how accurate it is? I'm better off jumping over to the PW MU thread and saying, "Ugh!!! Eliza makes me want to pull my hair out, what are you doing." (To be answered with, "just throw"... zing!).

My point is that the MU charts themselves don't really have much value even were they perfectly accurate... which they never will be. Maybe they'd find some use in picking a main if tier list was your only consideration, and they'd definitely give people with bad MUs more fuel to flame with... but what else?
 
Perspective. You already know how other people view the match-up so instead of whining about it you can just ask why you're struggling. Especially if it turns out that you suck at what should be an even or favorable match-up.

More importantly, why have a universal match-up thread if we aren't going to come to a standard for communicating what the match-ups and tiers are? Sure character specific ones can be more informative and detailed, but this is a broad stroke, jumping off point, general thread.

We're just throwing out lists without exploring why characters are where they are.

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IMO the only reason someone would think tier lists were useless is because they played a game (like skullgirls!) where tiers were less relevant. Tiers in skullgirls are very compressed (as MANY people before me have said so i'm not gonna get into that), but you'd better believe if I were to pick up a game like smash I'd want to look at like 3 tier lists before starting to learn a character. The fact of the matter is some characters are always going to be better than other characters, and if the gap between top tier and low tier is large enough to significantly impact your experience depending on your character choice then tier lists are very important.

I would say a matchup chart would be useful for players looking to pick up characters well suited to fighting characters that their current team has issues with, as well as the fact that matchup spread usually plays a large role in a character's position on a tier list (though in a team game like skullgirls this isn't ALWAYS the case; for example in older versions of the game from what i've heard Double was not a very strong character when she had to play but the overwhelming usefulness of hornet bomber basically necessitated picking her in top tier teams).
 
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I have a thought.

If people are worried about assists you can just make a match up chart where each character has access to their favorite powerful assists and go from there.
All match ups would be ranked X character at their best vs Y character at their best.

That has way more value than 1v1.

Parasoul gets a lot better when she can do assist + shot to convert off any L Shots.
Beowulf gets a lot better when he can do H Brass + High/Low after hard knock down to cover him.
Peacock gets a lot better when she has access to cross up teleport + insane damage / control from H LNL assist.
Robo-Fortune gets a LOT better when she can use assists to fill the gaps in her zoning, and when she can convert off of her ground throw meterless.

So if someone is going to make a match up chart it doesn't make sense to measure characters at their worst because not many people play like that.
Teams should be well constructed so that your characters are all buffed by the assists to do what they do better.
 
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I have a thought for doing both honestly. But hey, let's start by deciding the optimized build for each character.

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Pickles said:
IMO the only reason someone would think tier lists were useless is because they played a game (like skullgirls!) where tiers were less relevant. Tiers in skullgirls are very compressed (as MANY people before me have said so i'm not gonna get into that), but you'd better believe if I were to pick up a game like smash I'd want to look at like 3 tier lists before starting to learn a character. The fact of the matter is some characters are always going to be better than other characters, and if the gap between top tier and low tier is large enough to significantly impact your experience depending on your character choice then tier lists are very important.

I would say a matchup chart would be useful for players looking to pick up characters well suited to fighting characters that their current team has issues with, as well as the fact that matchup spread usually plays a large role in a character's position on a tier list (though in a team game like skullgirls this isn't ALWAYS the case; for example in older versions of the game from what i've heard Double was not a very strong character when she had to play but the overwhelming usefulness of hornet bomber basically necessitated picking her in top tier teams).

So a tier-list's only use-case is one in which you are using it to pick a character based on tier (or MU for a MU chart)... yes (like I said)? And that's fine, but you can quite literally get almost as good an answer as just asking elsewhere or even better... watch the pros! Because the pros show that with practice, fab's Pot can beat Okawa's Zato (low tier vs high tier)... and very, very few of us are playing at Fab or Okawa's level... so why do we think the tier list would apply to us?

@Skarmand

I'd agree, but how would one determine which assist/s to pick? When we rate PW, are we talking Elda's (with Bella/MF) or Noah's (with Para)... some hybrid in which PW has a DP like they both do but is missing out on Bella's copter which is pretty core to Elda's game... ? We can arguably get close, but I think the idea of what optimizes a character is controversial enough.

What about character's whose value lies almost exclusively as an assist. Point BB regardless of assist is going to be lower tier, but that doesn't even begin to tell the story as to why people pick him. And so in that sense, the tier list loses value since it only covers one position of a possibility of 3.
 
Ok. If you're so against the idea of having either thing, why post here? It's a match-up and tier thread. The point is to discuss both so they can influence both discussion and understanding of the current meta. We expect them to change, or at least we should. But that starts with discussing the "why" (match-ups) instead of the "what" (tier lists). If I see a 7 next to one of my characters and don't feel the MU is that easy, I'll start asking questions and maybe even get a lot better as a result of either thinking of the match-up properly or in terms of how others play or by learning something I didn't realize was important.

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Because I got tagged since I had posted here a long time ago. Because I'm stuck at work in the most boring online training for 9 hours every day for the next week. Because, whether or not you agree with me, I'm still contributing to the topic at hand. Tier lists not being valuable is as much a position as "we should/n't do solo tier lists" or "do we include assists".

Further, despite the underlying feeling that they aren't worthwhile, I've still contributed directly to the topic at hand. For instance, I'm definitely curious as to what you mean by "optimized build" (the whole "do we use Elda's build for PW or Noah's part of my last post). That is an entirely valuable question in the figuring out of tier lists, right?
 
Well "we shouldn't do tier lists" ends the topic while "we should(n't) include assists" directs the topic.

That aside, if we decide on common builds for each character as if they were on point we can get started on team based match-up charts.

Like peacock/brass is considered a separate entry from big band/George.

I still think a solo match-up chart would be valuable on top of that. This would include round start and incoming/anchor scenarios.

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I could blather about how Matchup Charts are rather useful in helping you build a team (you're playing Para/BB and just have to look at a few numbers to figure out which char would be a good 3rd to deal with your Fukua problem), or that they make you question yourself when they disagree with what you believe in (eg you think Val loses horribly to Peacock, you quickly check a chart, see that Val wins, now you can go ahead and figure out why everyone else believes that), or that they help you figure out the order of your team;
Or how Tierlists are useful to help you create competitive teams, because sure Anakaris CAN win VSav tournaments, but you'd be insane to believe it isn't significantly easier to do with Sasquatch. Especially for those "High Intermediate" players who would like to push into the "Expert" group, it's highly useful information to see whether their shortcomings are potentially just built around playing a bunch of shit characters that to push farther would require an unneccessarily high workload.
Or how in general, a centralized info source is a neat thing to quickly check anything or lead people to. Or 100 other reasons.

But really, the most straightforward answer to your question -what use MatchupCharts/Tierlists have- is: They create discussion.
Highlevel players get together and discuss what options which character has in what scenario against some other character, and that for every character - against every character.
On a forum, with all of the information getting preserved. And almost everyone who has a vague idea of the game can join in, because even if you're only Intermediate, you will likely be able to throw out some idea on at least one matchup of your main character.
They are an invaluable tool for keeping a community alive (as matchups are always in flux depending on new discoveries, and people tend to disagree on a few things) and in general teach the entire forum various things about parts of the game they usually don't come much into contact with, deepening everyone's understanding and giving them broader horizons. While reading a Matchup/Tierlist thread, you will casually glance over a few discussion posts regarding the Filia vs MsFortune matchup. You would never enter either of those characters subforums, since you don't play either of them. But here, you read the things; and maybe you even remember something of it, and can then either help some newer player with the matchup, or maybe it will be helpful to yourself in the future when you consider picking up a new character.

E: This of course implies that actual discussion (with arguments, and stuff) happens, and it's not just an endless rinse-repeat of
- X poops out a random tierlist
- 5 people say they roughly agree
- 3 people say it's shit and wrong
- Z posts an edit of X's tierlist, where X's main is toptier (up from bad) and Z's main is bad (down from toptier)
- 3 people say they roughly agree
- 5 people say it's shit and wrong
- A poops out a random tierlist
- ..etc
 
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Guys how bout you post a list and we discuss it, not discussing how to make a list.

I know creating a standard is useful, but I haven't seen anything useful in this thread besides everyone saying the word "discuss", which is the point of the thread.
Just post lists, then discuss/argue/whatever else relevant to the topic

Once we have someone's list, we can then ask how they think of certain matchups, to understand why they are placed where they are.
 
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I think in a team game all tier lists are very...approximate? I think is the word I'm looking for. Everyone who has said a solo tier list is pointless is right because the VAST majority of players don't play solo. Everyone who has said "how do you pick what assists to use?" has a point because your gameplan will vary greatly depending on assists you use. Making a million tier lists for each character in every role with every useful assist combination is MAD work and almost certainly excessive and unnecessary. IMO character placement on a tier list should just try to encompass a character's strengths and weaknesses as best as possible, under the assumption that assists can be used to mitigate some of a character's weaknesses and/or elevate their strengths.

(Regarding the "point" of tierlists and matchup charts I think Isa's post pretty much sums it up)
 
@IsaVulpes

Those are all very good points, and I don't disagree. That said, the assumption you make at the end of your post is a big one, and we have 71 pages here to prove it.

But for the sake of discussion (and cloudKing's sanity):

I think Eliza is pushing S tier with few weaknesses as a solo, and no real weaknesses in a team. Why am I wrong? Or am I just looking at the MU with a PW bias. Also, Beowulf is dumb.
 
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