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Tier lists are really quite stupid


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So if you know fire emblem, you'll know that people like to argue about who's good, and who's not.

And then they put them on spots on a power ranking to directly compare how good they are with other units. 

And most of them suck for some reason. I noticed this because I was bored and wanted to see what people though of one of my favourite units in conquest, Beruka, so I looked up "fire emblem conquest tier list, and most of them have some REAL problems. No-one can agree whether or not Charlotte is A- or F tier, and Beruka has NO consensus whatsoever from what I've seen, even on her standalone viability, let alone her spot on a tier list. Personally I'd argue that she's pretty good, maybe A- tier, but its annoying seeing how disparate all the different takes are on units, and how so many of them fall into "quote-unquote" pitfalls. Hell, some people even think that bloody XANDER is bad, because he's too slow(which is a genuine flaw, but my issue is that that flaw is so easily accounted for with both of the speedwings having his name on them, alongside the fact that he has such amazing stats in general and a mount). 

But then if the tier list is fine, then the comments below it are usually atrocious messes of fallacious arguments and simple contrarians, with (outside of serenes anyways) a lack of scientific argumentation, such that opinions are set aside for the time, and being a bit of a robot, this REALLY ticks me off sometimes.

Even then, I think that tier lists are a flawed concept, since realistically, you don't get to "switch characters" like in a fighting game, you invest into a unit, and whether or not they turn out being useful is completely relative to how smart you are with mechanics, meaning that if you use X, you likely won't use Y, and if so, does Y become worse? or are they just as viable for investment as X? Its too subjective to directly compare units like saying "Beruka up, (X counterpoint)" "No because (Y countercounterpoint)" because it all depends on so many different factors, and of course I know about efficiency, but even then, there is a huge amount of disagreement within efficiency alone.

Like what would you rate Effie? She's such a weird unit, she starts out with high bulk, strength, but low move and speed, but if you early promote her (GK not Gen) She's immortal in ch10, but that master seal could be used later and for a different unit, and you'd have more cash for forges, or weapons, or SO many things, and of course, the result of effie is that she's really strong, early, and invaluable in that, but the way we got here is so grey and messy that it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say that "effie is naturally good and deserves a good tiering" because there are so many different factors that make her good, and flaws that she damn well has to account for.

I'm definitely rambling, but I'd like to say that people should still assign some kind of usefulness that can be attributed to that unit, but its annoying nonetheless to see such a subjective, arbitrary value, be compared directly as if it were even feasible with all the important and small factors that come in to create that unit.

 

God this is pretentious, have a nice day, and use Beruka next Run, she's strong.

Edited by (s)ad touch
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I really don't get the appeal of it either, because different from fighting games or Pokémon (although it's a stretch and a really far one at that, because GameFreak doesn't have single gosh-darn clue what balance even means), Fire Emblem is just NOT a competitive franchise. And, more than anything else, relies on chance. And if chance screws you over, even a normally good unit can fall off hard. It takes just a few unlucky hits for Ryoma - the guy that can reportedly solo Birthright (which I will adamantly call a straight-up lie until I've seen proof of the contrary) - to fall, for example.

That is why I believe that there is not a single objectively good or objectively bad unit throughout all of Fire Emblem (putting the words "objectively" and "good" / "bad" together in a single constituent is a contradiction by the very nature of the words, but hey) and that you'll never find an objective tier list, because personal experience ALWAYS plays a role in that kind of stuff. Average statistics can only get you so far when your Silas still has his base Defence by the time he hits level 20, whereupon he promotes into the world's squishiest Great Knight in Birthright, or your Camilla gets so shitty level-ups that you can pretty much bench her two or three chapters after she joins, because everyone else has long since caught up and even eclipsed her, for example.

But I get that it's fun for some people to argue about that stuff, even if I find it quite pointless and time wasting to argue about a non-competitive single-player game reliant on a system based entirely around a random number generator on a "professional" level (and yes, I meant for that to sound pretentious) - time I'd much rather spend playing the game and having a ton of fun with it. Especially seeing how heated some of these debates can get, which provides loads and loads of entertainment.
At the end of the day, I couldn't give a flying goat turd about whether or not a unit is good or bad. If I have fun using them, I'll use them. If not, then I won't, good or bad statistics, weapons and / or class have no bearing on that. When I call a unit bad, I'm always doing so from my own perspective, from practical knowledge about said unit, which is about as reliable as the theoretical knowledge, to be honest. The only difference is one is called "objective" and the other is called "subjective", and subjectivity is somehow a bad thing these days.

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They really don't have any purpose outside of superficial popularity contests in terms of strategy games like Fire Emblem.

Sure, some units are mechanically better than others on paper, but you're not gonna fail Birthright if you choose Hinata and Setsuna over Ryoma and Takumi, nor will your team suck if you implement the likes of Gwendolyn, Virion, or Wrys on your team.  And if you suck at strategy, you may very well fail while using the best of the best.

What I dislike so much about tier lists has nothing to do with the tier lists themselves, but rather what the tier lists make gullible people say and do.  And I hate "on-the-spot" tier lists - those that were made by people who did nothing more than just think about which units are good.  Actual, proper tier lists actually have time, effort, and research put into them, not idiotic biased conjecture based off of little more than "Camilla is hot and also a decent unit".  And they don't pretend that units outside of "god tier" suck unless they actually do suck.

 

Basically what I hate about tier lists are all the morons involved in the monkey circus of guesstimations and conjecture, not the people who make well-researched tier lists.  And I hate the bandwagoning that results from it either way.

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I may or may not be requoting myself here from somewhere else, but I see Tier lists like advertisements. Their goal is to get you to buy into what they're selling, like having Ryoma as the best character in the game, for example, so that way you're more inclined to use Ryoma over someone like Hinata. That's not to say Hinata is bad in any way, far from it, but like it's been mentioned before by others, Tier lists are often subjective.

I think perhaps people make Tier lists to get other people to play a game "properly," or to put it in a different way, get people to play a game in a way that they wouldn't otherwise play it as, and to keep up with "The Meta." I may check Tier lists from time to time to see where my favorite characters are placed, but that's about it. 

In the end, I just don't think it's worth arguing about. I agree with a lot of the things that have been said, but others may not. If someone wants to use Fox because he's "the best character in the game," that's fine. If someone wants to use Kirby because "I really like to play as him," that's fine, too. But yeah, Tier lists are kinda dumb.

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17 minutes ago, indigospace said:

I may or may not be requoting myself here from somewhere else, but I see Tier lists like advertisements. Their goal is to get you to buy into what they're selling, like having Ryoma as the best character in the game, for example, so that way you're more inclined to use Ryoma over someone like Hinata. That's not to say Hinata is bad in any way, far from it, but like it's been mentioned before by others, Tier lists are often subjective.

True when it's unresearched stuff that people just spout on the fly.

And it doesn't really apply well to Fire Emblem, but with some things like fighting games they have a valid place.  In a fighting game like Soulcalibur or Tekken, a lot of official tier lists are based off of meticulous testing and analysis, frame data, fight statistics, and other such things.  As such, they're actually more a measure of how they are mechanically; for instance Ivy in SC is high tier because she has great versatility with not too many drawbacks besides some of her attacks having drawn out "tells" - movements and attack setups that allow the opponent to telegraph which attack she'll make.  Yet a character like Seong Mi-Na is considered low tier because her attacks are slow and rely too much on being at range, all without having a significant payoff for the trouble (e.g. higher damage output).  It's not an advertisement so much as an analysis of how well-designed their movesets are, and it's by no means an indication of which characters will get you to win.  It's more like "this character is easy to use" and if a unit is of a particularly low tier that's an indication of poor roster balance.

In Fire Emblem though, you have stat averages and static enemy stats to measure up, but tier lists assume the subjects are competing against each other.  At most, the only "competition" in Fire Emblem is simply a matter of preference; you never get to have the units square off against each other outside of Heroes, which is also a flawed analytic basis because you're still only fighting a computer instead of another human (and also there's way too much variance).  In essence, you aren't having, say, Shiro fighting Oboro, or Xander fighting Silas, outside of PvE which will clearly be heavily slanted in favor of the player no matter what.  And like others have said, there's variance in their stat gains; sometimes a "good" unit will turn out terrible, so all you can really be sure of is that the units with high bases will perform well in their join chapters.

As such, Fire Emblem doesn't tend to attract the super analytical tier list compilers, but instead attracts the type of people who are more into coming up with fantastical nonsense tier lists that advertise their husbandos and waifus.  I'm sure I could go around saying that Oboro is S-tier in Fates with the simple argument that she has well balanced stats, and I could get some people to believe me.  Also, a lot of the people who try to analyze FE units seem to only look at certain stats rather than the overall capabilities of all the units and how they'd compare to the enemies they'll face.

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Fuck yo tierlist, I play who and how I damn well please.

Rinkah can and WILL burn y'all to ashes, Odin WILL give the eldritch smackdown, The Vaikening WILL teach y'all a lesson, Orochi WILL make you believe in the heart of the cards  etc etc y'all get my point

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22 minutes ago, ChefGuevara said:

I care about fe tierlists

I need to know for sure who's the worst so I can use them

Like how else would you get any fun out of fe8 

Who are your favorite trash tier units in Sacred Stones?

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27 minutes ago, Ertrick36 said:

Who are your favorite trash tier units in Sacred Stones?

There are really only enough bad units in the sacred stones that you can only form one team out of them

The only mooks that don't get to come along for the ride are like, Marisa, and a couple other characters who just don't exist for long enough 

Edited by ChefGuevara
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A list of tiers is fine, for a wedding cake.

 

I find the discussions of unit quality and metrics generated by tier lists to be interesting, even if the concept and use of tier lists is flawed. Although worst of the worst arguments are unnecessary and bitter.

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Eh, I don't really put much stock into tier lists. About the only time I'd look at one is to get an idea of which character is the most beginner-friendly in something like a fighting game, and even then I don't take them that seriously. For Fire Emblem, while I haven't really dove into one yet, I know I would look through a few to get a general idea of who's growth rates are generally good or bad in the GBA/Tellius/Judgral games, mostly because Awakening and Echoes have spoiled me in that area (the former because, despite RNG screwage still being a thing, every single character in the game has good growths and can become the MVP without anyone blinking an eye. Meanwhile, everyone can be fielded anyway in Echoes, so even if the RNG hasn't been the kindest to someone, you can still get a use out of them) and I can't tell if they're one or the other at first glance.

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2 hours ago, GuiltyLove said:

but y her

 

2 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I'd guess the Diviner/Onmyoji class uses talisman cards in their animations. I forget if they do or not.

I think it has something to do with her being a fortune-teller and using what I presume are Fateslandia's version of tarot cards for her fortunes. She also makes several mentions of "cards" in her victory quotes. I think one of them is "All in the cards."

3 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

A list of tiers is fine, for a wedding cake.

Dat pun. XD

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