Why Tier Lists and Player Ranking Never Work

[GuamoKun]

This specific community is kinda obsessed with numbers and assigning them to players.

"X is one of the top 20 players"
"Y is definitely bottom 5"

This is wrong.

We are assigning interval levels of measurements to different categories.

We can only assign ordinal levels of categories to things.

Ordinal levels of measurements assumes there is rank order (X>Y>Z) but does not assume there is an equal interval of difference between variables. When you assign interval levels of measurements it assumes that there is a difference of a known size between each category in addition to a rank order (Y>X by 5, so Z>Y by 5)

Apply this to Injustice:
Superman is better than Shazam, and we can quantify why that is so, but the "skill gap" between those is not the same as how Killer Frost is better than Shazam, so you can't really say specifically why they are better.

You can include things such as damage, frame data, mobility, use of interactables, and even hit/hutbox sizes but the differences between every character is so varied you can't come up with number tiers very easily.

This is why letter tiers work a lot better and why the "Top 10 conversation" phrase is more easily used compared to "top 10". Top 10 conversation doesn't necessarily mean "top10" but assigns a somewhat understood tier. I think of top 10 conversation as A tier.

tl;dr

If you mess up the level of measurement in your statistics, then you're gonna have a bad time mkay

shoutouts to irl applications of what I learned in school

 

[Insuperable]

boo

 

[Rampage254]

;-;

 

[Skkra]

The MK community is obsessed with tier placements and matchup numbers far more than any other fighting game community. I have no idea why haha. It gives people something to argue about and passes the time I guess?

 

[SAREDODEVIL]

we love the NRS games to the death, and in my opinion have the best combo system.

 

[EGGXI]

The MK community is obsessed with tier placements and matchup numbers far more than any other fighting game community. I have no idea why haha. It gives people something to argue about and passes the time I guess?

I think Capcom Community has NRS Community beat on that one.

 

[SAREDODEVIL]

I think Capcom Community has NRS Community beat on that one.

agree

 

[Chuckychuck]

Another way to approach this is to simply do a great divide. First you look at every character and you qualify them as either upper or lower. This will give you two tiers. Then you cut each of those two tiers into upper lower again. Squish the lower of the upper and the upper of the lower tier into one middle-ground tier, or not... It doesn't really matter. You will end up with a high and bottom tier with the rest somewhere in the middle.

 

[MortySeinfeld]

I still think my idea is pretty good. Copying and pasting this here for relevance:

'A League/Ladder Ranking system should have sortable criteria.
It would be nice to have a comprehensive list/ranking of players based on the following information:
- Overall total (Including Evo, Majors, Regionals, Locals)
- Overall total (only including Evo, Majors)
- Regional Total (separated by West Coast/Midwest/East Coast) (Including Evo, Majors, Regionals, Locals)
- Regional Total (separated by West Coast/Midwest/East Coast) (Including only Evo, Majors)
Or even a filter that allows you to turn on/off specific 'tiers' of tournaments from being included in the totals.
Tier's being:
- Evo
- Majors
- Regionals
- Locals
If we are including tournaments all the way down to the scope of local tournaments, I can see a need for there to be a 'governing body/group' of people that determine which local tournaments are accepted, or even an area/format where legitimate results are posted (ie: Challonge brackets). Locals should have a flat rate/value system or be based on (X) number of entrants.
I am sure this would require a lot of work, and there would probably need to be new fields of information that would need to be captured in order for the information to be accurate. But I think if we had a ladder/league system that was sortable in several different ways, it would probably address a lot of the questions/complaints from people and would be objectively accurate.'

 

[Vulcan Hades]

Honestly it's only fun when 16-Bit does it (Stock market, scalps rankings). Because then it's just poking fun and nobody takes it seriously. It's just funny.

As far as I can tell nobody really cares about a real "legit" ranking system except for the few top players that would be in top 10. We all know who the best Injustice players are so there's very little point to compiling some numbers.

 

[HellblazerHawkman]

Tagging to read later

 

[Juggs]

They don't work because they're subjective. You'll never create a tier list, rankings list, or anything like that in which everyone agrees 100% with it.

The other problem is people take them too seriously. If there's a rankings list, people will take it to heart, when in reality it's just some shit a bunch of people made up. I personally hate almost every single list there has ever been in the FGC, they just cause problems. The only thing we need is a seeding list, but that in itself causes problems too.