Apologies for the weird audio for the first 30ish seconds, the "happy happy happy" song playing over the daigo clip for literally 7 seconds apparently is enough to trigger the mother of all copyright violations because this website sucks, so I had to let youtube's AI thing artificially remove it.
The thing that annoys me about that video is that Sajam claims that weaknesses exist because the characters with lopsided archetypes have overt strengths, but really, SF6 doesn't reflect that at all. Characters absolutely suck at what they are supposed to do. Marisa armor might as well not exist beyond gold rank when people stop throwing out DI against a fully charged gladius because it's so slow. Dhalsim pokes are unsafe due to lack of cancels. Gief got nerfed on damage, of all things. I don't even know what Honda's supposed to do, because he sucks at everything. Edit: Also, you can give JP back his anti air, but Gief can't even get a buff to his OD lariat that loses to jump ins? It's that hard to extend the air immunity? I refuse to acknowledge metered anti air losing to air attacks a valid balance decision.
Matchup charts provide a lot of context that tier lists don't. Like, Spinach is an S-tier vegetable because it has high concentrations of almost every micronutrient we need, but if you ignored Carrots for just being A-tier and didn't directly compare the two, you'd be missing out on the fact that eating only Spinach means you're probably down on vitamin A...I'm hungry.
Another important thing to note is that the characters Gief loses to are also generally specialist characters that require you to main them to have a deep enough understanding to use them to counter pick. So even if Gief does lose 7-3 to sim nobody will ever bust out a pocket sim to counter pick, you same with the other characters he might struggle with like JP or Guile.
As a lily main lily is the easiest character in the game and I run my face across the controller to beat gief Im also diamond 1 so take it w a grain of salt lol
@@trunks4671 Lily is one the easiest, but she's also not really a pocket character that's worth investing that much into because another thing that goes into learning a character for matchups is does this character cover most or all of my bad match ups. Lily has the Honda problem where her gameplan is too simple and one dimensional at a high level. Overall learning a bottom 5 character to cover one bad match up might not be worth it
@@Mr-Domino getting good at a high level on a character with modern compared to classic isn't that much faster since inputting special moves isn't really an issue for pro players. At the point the pros just care about what version of the character is more viable and if having one buttons supers is worth the downside of having no overhead and whatever other tools she loses. Still tho to have a pocket character be tournament ready it requires a lot of grinding with that character to be ready with them
You people never seem to understand that popularity (even in high level competitive play, to an extent) doesn't directly equate character strength. The community could put Zangief at S+ tier and I'd wager he'd still be less popular than Ken (to an extent). And popularity matters for tournament results, because even if the character is strong, if there's just 5 ppl playing them out of 64 it lowers the chances of the character making to top 8. Case in point: Guile who has arguably been considered pretty good for a long time, but he's just not very popular. And right now Gief *is* certainly good, I wouldn't say I'm qualified to say *how* good compared to the others but this game is pretty balanced anyway. So get over Ken beating you in ranked.
....Nah. Some people might try that (Nemo is petty enough, I think) but Dhalsim is actually an extremely difficult character to learn that most people would probably rather just stick it out with their mains.
@@Boyzby unironically the answer. 10 times easier, but unfortunately she's also nearly 10 times as boring to play. If she was more fun and more fitting with people's preferred aesthetics (read a manly dude or a hot woman) then more people would probably have her as a secondary, but for now she's just the known easy gief counterpick that no one wants to play.
It's wild that that isn't part of tier list making for y'all, like matchup spread is like one of the best part of the tier list for st. So a lot of older games how many favorable matchups a character has and how favorable they are, and if they have good matchups against other strong characters or just weaker ones is like a huge factor in their tier list. Like Boxer in ST for example, in spite not having a fireball they are okay at dealing with Honda even if it's still a rough matchup, they have a very oppressive game against o. Sagat (strongest character in the game by numbers of winning matchups), strong matchups against the other shotos in the top teir, a even matchup against Chun Li (both sides complain it's bs because they can't commit their usual fraud, so it's even), and at worst even matchups against everyone else. I feel like based on that logic Zangief would probably be like upper mid tier here, tier list look very different when the question isn't who's the outright strongest but who's most likely to when any given tournament lol.
Matchup charts are what _used_ to be the sole determinant of tiers. If you look over old Gamest charts, they list each character matched against each other, with the overall win ratio determining the tiers. But as fighting game casts grew, the concept of using match-up charts to determine tiers fell out of favour because pure match-up charts became impractical (and in the case of team-based games, impossible). So tiers became more about relative strengths/weaknesses of the characters when compared overall, but make no mistake: Match-ups have _always_ been the most important thing. So yes, Gief having good matchups against top characters (BTW, I'm pretty sure Gief beats Bison, but I'm not convinced he beats Cammy) while losing to weak characters explains his performance this season, compared to Aki who is the opposite. From a total energy expenditure perspective, an Aki player has to expend more energy (or be that much better than the opponent) to overcome the horde of top tier characters she encounters, while Gief doesn't have to work _as_ hard for them, and the times when Aki gets to take a break (relatively speaking) against the weak characters she has good matchups with don't make up for it compared to the times Gief has to encounter a troublesome match. Mind you, Gief's bad matches are _really_ bad, so there's a still lot of bracket luck involved. In addition, going back to an earlier video of yours that I agreed with on the concept of character stability, Gief is also a very unstable character, so he can get RNGed out quite easily in otherwise event/slightly favourable matchups (though to be fair, he can RNG others as well). So Gief winning a major tournament is definitely not that straightforward!
@@luderzuckerfan6990 No? Matchups are how many times out of 10 X wins vs. Y, considering two equally skilled players using the characters to their full potential. A matchup chart lists all the characters vs. all other characters and tabulates the results, listing in order of who has the most number of wins. The ones with the most overall wins are the top tiers, the ones with the fewest wins are the bottom tiers. As I said, as fighting game casts got bigger, this approach got much more impractical. I think the largest cast I've seen this exercise conducted for was SFA2 (including the hidden characters) or even ST with the old characters. So now, players mostly go based on relative strength and performance (e.g. Ken feels really strong and had had good results, "Top 5", etc.) rather than any mathematical determination of ranking. Mind you, actual matchup charts are mostly theoretical since you will almost _never_ get a scenario where you have two _equally_ skilled players using their characters to their full potential. Evn if you got that for one particular matchup, you definitely won't get that for _all_ matchups in a game, even one with a smaller cast like Super Turbo. So the more mathematival matchup chart tier determination was only slightly less scientific than the method used now, BUT matchup method does explain situations like how current Gief is performing (read: Does well against common top tiers) compared to Aki (does not perform well against the common top tiers).
@@ShinUltima I did not say anything about a chart, but if you are saying Ken is S tier because of Jinrai Kicks you are basically saying that Jinrai Kicks is a tool that many other characters have problems dealing with. At this point you are saying Ken is good because Jinrai Kicks help him win x matchups
I don't know where people get the idea that matchup charts are less feelsy and more mathematical either, nobody organized dozens of people who sag in the arcades to gather hard data for super turbo matchups back in the day
There's kind of a funny thing with that consideration because gatekeepers that stomp everyone under them might be inflated over a better character that's overall stronger
I have written an analysis of that like 2 months ago and Broski basically boiled down the main points. Some things I want to add: Now that SF6 has been out a while, people are able to pick up new characters. An example I have heard FChamp talk about is that every pro should either push their character as a specialist or that they need to pick up a character per season to have increased their arsenal. If you look at MenaRD, he did exactly that: Began with Luke, added Blanka and now has added Zangief. Luke is all around coverage, Blanka is a very dominating pick which is hard to prepare for and Gief because of his strong mus in the current meta (as Broski elaborated). He is not considered the best on either char (except maybe his Blanka?), but he knows when to use them. A big point I do no see brought up often enough is that season 1 was very "basic" as in the meta was defined by strong allround chars that could do everything so that the "counterpicks" were not worth investing in. Luke, Ken, Chun, DeeJay, Rashid and Cammy all play "footsies" SF6 and are archetypes defined by mostly relatively basic options. Season 2 is a lot more diverse at top level: Ed, Gief, Cammy, Bison, (still) Rashid and Akuma are all chars with very different strengths and more polarizing than the first meta that was developed in season 1. Akuma is inherently inconsistent but extremely strong for every basestat other than HP. Gief has two of the most polarizing mus in the game, but statchecks many different chars (like the shotos, Rashid or Cammy). Cammy's divekick and footsies are kinda unmatched (as well as no 9k HP on a kit like that). Ed's keepout is absurd, and his corner pressure is some of the strongest in the game, but he got a weak DP and low range 5LP. Bison has insane pressure but weak defense. So these chars all have strengths but also more pronounced weaknesses (other than Cammy, lol) and counter mus actually make sense. A Luke or Ryu is less relevant because or their lack of winning mus. They do decently into most mus, and the worst are maybe like 6-4. But they also don't really win mus and that makes them less interesting to play this season. Luke before was broken because his worst mus (like maybe 3?) were at worst 4,5-5,5 and most he was at least 5,5 to even 6 because he was statchecking so hard and had no real weakness. No character comes close to that level of dominance at the moment, and as such the meta naturally also had to diversify.
Tier lists are in a vacuum, matchups are like putting the ecossystem in the equation. They work in tandem, but the latter is definitely more practical in use.
Great video. I think this is a commonly-accepted concept in other competitive games, but I don't hear a lot of talk about "the meta" of a fighting game except from videos like this. Makes perfect sense.
Yeah having recently watched Big Yellow's recent video on competitive RBY, it had me thinking about competitive meta. You'd think a 30 year old Game Boy RPG would have a somewhat stagnant meta, but she talks a lot about how the usage of certain Pokemon or moves in OU is a result of other Pokemon or moves rising or falling in popularity (i.e. Dragonite benefits from Starmie not using Blizzard, Kingler loses to more Zapdos usage.) I think when it comes to fighting games this is an underappreciated aspect of tier lists. If a character like Gief does particularly well against strong and popular characters, that means he's doing well in the high level competitive meta, and that should be factored into talking about tiers more than his matchups against Sim who is less prominent. A tier list is ultimately about the high level competitive meta, after all.
Agreed! I think these dynamics exist in every game, more or less. I'm a Magic player and I've heard people talk about the best deck for a given weekend or tournament, optimising for the distribution of opponents they expect. I suppose in fighting games people switch around a lot less. You do get the occasional Itazan equivalent in Magic who've played the same deck archetype for 30 years, but there aren't too many of them and it's widely understood that they thrive most when their deck of choice is good. That cultural difference probably informs the discussion around character strength quite a lot.
matchup charts are i think inarguably more useful, but i think tier lists have one real use case, which is giving people new to a particular game a broad, easily digested overview of what the meta looks like and which characters might be worth picking over others if they're in it for the long haul
This line of thinking makes a lot of sense to me, and it is a good reminder that tier lists are just a starting point for discussions about a game, not the be-all and end-all. Thanks for the video!
Tier lists reflect personal preferences and community perceptions, while matchups are grounded in data and objective analysis. Great video as always, my friend.
? Eventhubs for example does matchup spreads based on community voting iirc. Matchup charts for games with no ranked statistic (SF2,3 etc) are also just community perceptions
I'd say that besides the mind going "Hehe Zangief in Top 5" for Tierlists, Matchup Charts generally take more data to back up than a top player booting up Tierlist Maker and saying "I got fisted and stabbed by Itazan in the McDonald's parking lot and Daigo kidnapped my girlfriend so Zangief 1 and Akuma 2." Asking other players about matchups to make sure you're not crazy, actually figuring out from data you might not have onhand that you actually win most of your games against say Ken despite hating the matchup, nobody in your region or tournaments you've played has a respectable high tier character represented, and a myriad of other factors even if that data is used for making tierlists. My friend was trying to tell me that Guile(my main) absolutely claps JP(his main) and said that undisclosed top players say the matchup is awful but pulling up matchup charts from Cat Cammy, Capcom, and a wiki said that Guile-JP was around 4-6. They are useful but until we can clone a few Mena's and distribute them with characters like Honda and Kimberly to have a slightly Dee Jay biased matchup chart from one person, looking around at multiple people's tierlists to get an idea is easier.
Today, I subscribed to your channel, while i watched the video I thought to myself "this guy has won your time" so from the bottom of my heart, thank you and pls keep up the good work.
Excellent explanation, you convinced me. You also convinced me to try to main AKI and I find your AKI guide fantastically informative and helpful. Thank you!
As a baby Plat 2, everything here makes perfect sense. I think the UMVC3 might be the only game where matchup spreads don’t matter (or are at least harder to actually quantify, to the point of top players not bothering to make MU charts).
I think a lot of team games have this problem. But this is because you can’t rank characters for a match up, you need to rank Teams. And that is really hard to do, not because it is individually hard but because there are SO many teams.
Very good way to put it. Tier lists are helpful in denoting which characters are strong, but other characters find success by matching up well against those characters.
I think this same phenomenon happened with Abigail in SFV. His best matchups were the ones where he could just zone with his normals. I thought he did really well against Karin, Cammy, and a lot of the shotos, but there were low tier characters that just gave him a really hard time.
@@QuantemDeconstructor FANG vs Abigail was so annoying to play. You basically had to spam run flip (which was -12 on block) just to pray you could get through a fireball and land a knockdown.
I mean, tier lists are supposed to be based on a character’s overall matchup spread at high levels of play. So it’s not about tier lists being incorrect. They’re more like the sparknotes we’ve been cheating with instead of reading the textbook (the matchup chart).
Tier lists and matchups should be the same thing. You can make a tier list by finding the mixed nash equilibrium of all matchups. Basically if everyone could play every character you'd end up with this rps metagame where you'd blind pick each character x% of the time. The characters above 0% are your top tiers. Then to fill out the low tiers you look at your equilibrium metagame and see how likely you are to win a match into that metagame if you pick each low tier.
That's an interesting thought experiment. TBH, I think you could still generate an interesting stochastic model based on the likelihood of players to learn new characters, provided there's no more DLC
Yeah, this is something I hadn't quite put into words before, but yes, absolutely. I main Juri, and while she has some excellent matchups against the weaker half of the cast, every character with a regular fireball represents sort of a challenge, and Guile in particular feels incredibly difficult to overcome. Cammy feels mostly even, but Ken and Akuma are both quite challenging, and those are some of the most common characters I run into. It's one of the reasons I've kind of struggled to rate her highly in SF6 (Really good, but definitely not sniffing top 5). I definitely agree that just having solid matchups against the top tiers is extremely valuable.
0:03 Really hope we get another versus game some day with him in it. Maybe they can make his Mecha Zangief design the default in that series, this way he can breathe fire again, and maybe do some flying Piledrivers, kind've like Potemkin in Strive.
Very good analysis about the difference between tier list and matchup and good explanation why Gief can perform well from top 16. It also highlight why counter picking is important for your character bad matchup.
Tier lists, to me, have always meant the frequency of how much a character prevails in a given meta. Specifically, the match up spread usually shows characters that see more games won overall compared to the majority of the roster; as opposed to a hyper specific matchup. Characters that are ranked lower just don't see the same results/representation as characters in higher placements, despite otherwise being 50/50 with one or two more higher tier characters. The list should never be treated as the end-all be-all in discussion for something like ease of use, pay 2 win etc.
I really wish more people would do match up knowledge because I need that more than a tier list. I beat the odds, I feel so much better no matter what they say.
My take on this is that tier lists are obviously just condensed matchup charts. They list the characters with the best to worst matchup spreads in order. Something like absolute character power only makes sense on the level of the whole game (character power is high in strive cos u kill so quickly, is low in fabtasy strike cos limited movepool) but a character's strength within the game only means his relationship to the other characters.
I'm allergic to the relative strength of fighting game characters understood outside of a overly simplified and subjective format, you should do a tier list of all fighters' best match-ups
I personally think matchups should be a part of the tierlist making. If there's a character who is crazy strong with some very silly tools but all of their good matchups are weaker and less popular characters then that character might go down a step or two on a tier lis. So instead of there being a debate of tier lists vs matchup charts I think it should be a combination of the 2.
Zangief was really strong this season, they had to reel him in a bit as some of the buffs went so far that he almost didn’t have any bad matchups. Not surprised by RD swapping to him after the buffs and yes we have very strong pilots taking Gief to the top. But the buffs really did reduce the amount of bad mu he had season 1.
It’s tricky tho, even though street fighter 6 is relatively speaking so popular, information about matchups are super obscure for this game. Really you can only consider the masters character winrate info for reliable matchup data on the whole cast, but obviously that’s a different beast than offline
It's weird hearing that match-ups aren't considered for tier lists because, coming from Melee, half the reason Sheik is high tier is because she just shuts down lower tier characters with things like a down-throw chaingrab, and her match-ups with the higher tiers is even to losing.
Does anyone else remember back in the SF4 era when people got a bunch of top players together and made a gigantic matchup chart based on aggregates of top player opinions? I always felt like that was a more accurate list than any of the Twitter posting today
It could be argued that the Japanese have the right idea by basing it on players. Being abstract can be useful, but there is also practicality in narrowing your focus to your current opponent. Ultimately, MU spread is what defines most tier lists, so I would say that tier lists are essentially a shorthand to describe matchup spread so I would say that tier lists are essentially shorthand for matchup spread much of the time
There were both an amazing sim AND lily in top 24 and itazan just lucked out not having to face either. Gief's tournament success will always correlate to both what characters are currently top tier and just plain luck through brackets.
I've got some friends I'm trying to get into fighting games and I'm really trying to point them away from looking up Teir lists so they don't put time into a character they hate while raking up losses---which has more to do with them just being new rather than character tiers. One thing that's a little hard to do is match a character with someones playstyle knowing how they play other games. The issue with Street Fighter is, we often use terms like Shoto to describe a style -- except Ryu and Akuma feel like opposites. Or grappler-- where Gief and Manon have the "walk 'em down'' strategy, I wouldn't say Lily or Honda play like a grappler. I remember Blanka being called the "shenanigins" character in SF4, and I guess Kimberly fits that profile here in SF6. In any case, I don't think that I know enough about each character or all the playstyle types in fighting games to really describe them to someone. It would be sweet to hear your opinion on how to categorize these characters, especially the unorthodox characters like Dhalsim or AKI. I just say, "try them at your own risk."
Coming from other genres, it's pretty normal that whenever a meta develops, someone eventually finds a counter-meta. It's very rare that a strong option has _NO_ counterplay whatsoever. this makes a lot of sense.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's PTX-40A and Gold Lightan embody this idea. Arguably the only legal unranked-tier characters in fighting games because of just how little normal matchup charts matter when they're around. Big bodies and grapplers are often lesser versions of the same thing, as there is almost a different game being played.
I feel tier lists should take into account the matchup spread against other top tiers, I feel we would all agree that a character that has a 7-3 matchup against the top 3 in some game but have a 3-7 matchup against the rest of the cast would be considered very good, also I'm totally in favor of matchup charts over tier list, but both serving a purpose and working side by side is important.
If memory serves, there was a time where tier lists were informed primarily, if not exclusively, by match up charts. Even bad characters can have good match ups against specific characters. I still operate under this mindset, but it sometimes feels like this gets lost in tier discussions in modern fighting games. Gief having even or favourable match ups against strong characters doesn't necessarily make him a strong character in the context of the game as a whole. It just makes him a good counter pick.
I remember last season when Chun was arguably top 5 a knock some of her down players would use is that she loses to Lily, Honda, and Gief. Which it's like even if she did her other positive matchups against the other common top tiers far out weighed the losses to 3 bottom 5 characters you never saw in tournament.
The biggest knock against Chun was her tournament performance. She did awful with only really Leshar showing any decent results. Geif has actual wins to show.
@@lawnbb12372 she was tied for the 4th most qualified character for Capcom cup last year so she was definitely performing well and had good top 8 representation. She's performed just average this season, but I think that more so has to do with her match up spread not being as beneficial as last year. She fought Luke really well which was easily the importance character to fight well and now with his fall off that isn't as important. They also added 2 hard matchups for her in Bison and Akuma which definitely hasn't helped.
Been saying this a long time now as well. MU spreads will hopefully takeover at some point. Hell an Iron Tager player (shoutout Mastfam) just won a BBCF tournament and Tager is consistently at the bottom of tier lists. But his biggest weakness in that game is he gets smoked by the S tiers he has good to GREAT match-ups against plenty of the rest of the cast.
Who here immediately recognized the False Swipe Gaming reference? On-topic, though, MU spreads are super important, and I don't think you can get a truly accurate tier list without coming up with a weight system in place, because you get cases like Gief and AKI, as you described. Having hard MUs vs common tournament picks really harms your stock, but only really having bad MUs on weaker characters that don't tend to get too far into the brackets is a blessing (unless you're Brutus...poor guy always ends up facing the Sim army 😂)
I appreciate the AKI comparison at the end, it’s something I’ve been questioning in comment sections around town. Cammy and Akuma are the obvious cases, but even Bison and Rashid are problems for her, imo, and all 4 of them are very popular and very strong atm. It’s why I’ve remained quite pessimistic about AKI’s strength this season, despite her now being more than viable
Absolutely. Gief has slight advantages over the high tiers I agree. The only downsides to Gief is the volatile nature of his playstyle, which prevents him from most people agreeing that he is the best character in the game. Having said that, I'm leaning towards Ed as the best character in the game right now. Now this character I believe doesn't have any unfavorable matchup in this game. He's strong at all ranges, close, medium, long. Everything.
Apologies for the weird audio for the first 30ish seconds, the "happy happy happy" song playing over the daigo clip for literally 7 seconds apparently is enough to trigger the mother of all copyright violations because this website sucks, so I had to let youtube's AI thing artificially remove it.
Very unfortunate since the "happy happy" song is truly the cherry on top of the clip.
No big deal)
Can you link the clip?
@@elidamonsterz4222 x.com/Yokikunvideo/status/1845561907505487961
Don't do it again or i will unsubscribe
Not the false swipe gaming title
Actually the BKC title
False swipe gaming Vibes.
A man of culture
Pokémon ass video fr
@@PokAmakuteI’m pretty sure BKC edits FSG
Brutus faced like 3 dhalsims in pools and got eliminated. He walked so Itabashi could run.
Thats what you sign up for when you play a MU fish character really. Sometimes you just gotta take the L and hope for a better bracket the next time
Brutus getting his ass clogged with sims will never not be funny, dude has the worst luck
Itabashi would beat them
He always does
@@jamgUNoh wonderful phrasing
for some reason for a split second i thought you were talking about brutus from the story of caesar
like damn no wonder that guy got stabbed
Ayo? this is a pleasant surprise! I watched a lot of your JP videos when I mained him in Season 1
Well well well, if it isn't THE competitive history guys (for the Pokemon community)
Broski confirmed FSG viewer and secret strategic Pokémon enjoyer
This feels like a sequel to the video Sajam released yesterday about understanding balancing decisions
The thing that annoys me about that video is that Sajam claims that weaknesses exist because the characters with lopsided archetypes have overt strengths, but really, SF6 doesn't reflect that at all. Characters absolutely suck at what they are supposed to do.
Marisa armor might as well not exist beyond gold rank when people stop throwing out DI against a fully charged gladius because it's so slow. Dhalsim pokes are unsafe due to lack of cancels. Gief got nerfed on damage, of all things. I don't even know what Honda's supposed to do, because he sucks at everything.
Edit: Also, you can give JP back his anti air, but Gief can't even get a buff to his OD lariat that loses to jump ins? It's that hard to extend the air immunity? I refuse to acknowledge metered anti air losing to air attacks a valid balance decision.
Matchup charts provide a lot of context that tier lists don't. Like, Spinach is an S-tier vegetable because it has high concentrations of almost every micronutrient we need, but if you ignored Carrots for just being A-tier and didn't directly compare the two, you'd be missing out on the fact that eating only Spinach means you're probably down on vitamin A...I'm hungry.
most sane tier list comment
Down on vitamin A and probably developing a kidney stone
I love spinach, thank you for the reminder that I need to eat a wider range of food
Hold up is this writing fire
Pfp (Profile Picture) and / or Banner Source (Link to full Image and Artists Names?) 🗿
Another important thing to note is that the characters Gief loses to are also generally specialist characters that require you to main them to have a deep enough understanding to use them to counter pick. So even if Gief does lose 7-3 to sim nobody will ever bust out a pocket sim to counter pick, you same with the other characters he might struggle with like JP or Guile.
As a lily main lily is the easiest character in the game and I run my face across the controller to beat gief
Im also diamond 1 so take it w a grain of salt lol
@@trunks4671 Lily is one the easiest, but she's also not really a pocket character that's worth investing that much into because another thing that goes into learning a character for matchups is does this character cover most or all of my bad match ups. Lily has the Honda problem where her gameplan is too simple and one dimensional at a high level. Overall learning a bottom 5 character to cover one bad match up might not be worth it
@@MDToboggan You don't have to invest much time to pocket Lily, and Modern Lily is always an option.
Nothing puts a smile on my face like seeing a Gief when I'm playing JP.
@@Mr-Domino getting good at a high level on a character with modern compared to classic isn't that much faster since inputting special moves isn't really an issue for pro players. At the point the pros just care about what version of the character is more viable and if having one buttons supers is worth the downside of having no overhead and whatever other tools she loses. Still tho to have a pocket character be tournament ready it requires a lot of grinding with that character to be ready with them
I really admire that you give props to all the players that you quote information from, regardless of who they are, that's really damn awesome.
"you can see the Life leave his eyes in 480p" might be the most gangsta thing I have hear in years. 🗿🔥👍🏽
False Swipe wants to have a word with you
Nemo may secretly be the comic relief character we didn't know we needed.
we had 10 kens represented and it was alright, and as soon as we saw 2 giefs, the hell broke loose, what logic is that
It was never fine to have 10 kens. People were complaining about him. What are you talking about 🤨? Zangief is s-tier and that’s the truth.
@@Kenny-sl6hb if he is s-tier, why the match-ups are only about 50:50 across the board?
You people never seem to understand that popularity (even in high level competitive play, to an extent) doesn't directly equate character strength. The community could put Zangief at S+ tier and I'd wager he'd still be less popular than Ken (to an extent). And popularity matters for tournament results, because even if the character is strong, if there's just 5 ppl playing them out of 64 it lowers the chances of the character making to top 8.
Case in point: Guile who has arguably been considered pretty good for a long time, but he's just not very popular.
And right now Gief *is* certainly good, I wouldn't say I'm qualified to say *how* good compared to the others but this game is pretty balanced anyway. So get over Ken beating you in ranked.
@@blvk3 Gief mains be like "But he has really bad matchups against the hardest character in the game"
People dont like grapplers. Its dumb and well RKO their L opinion on the canvas everytime 😁
This is honestly the best explanation I've seen so far. Not just on why Gief is preforming so well right now but also why I HATE Akuma and Cammy lol
Prepare for every top player to have a pocket Dhalsim
thats exactly what i was thinking.
....Nah. Some people might try that (Nemo is petty enough, I think) but Dhalsim is actually an extremely difficult character to learn that most people would probably rather just stick it out with their mains.
Lily would be much easier.
@@Boyzby unironically the answer. 10 times easier, but unfortunately she's also nearly 10 times as boring to play. If she was more fun and more fitting with people's preferred aesthetics (read a manly dude or a hot woman) then more people would probably have her as a secondary, but for now she's just the known easy gief counterpick that no one wants to play.
With the buffs I think maybe a pocket JP is in the cards for people.
Nemo acting like he won't get command grabbed
Nemo is gonna have a mental breakdown live in top 8 one of these days, i dont blame him, hard to fight against a guy with so many loyal fans
It's wild that that isn't part of tier list making for y'all, like matchup spread is like one of the best part of the tier list for st. So a lot of older games how many favorable matchups a character has and how favorable they are, and if they have good matchups against other strong characters or just weaker ones is like a huge factor in their tier list. Like Boxer in ST for example, in spite not having a fireball they are okay at dealing with Honda even if it's still a rough matchup, they have a very oppressive game against o. Sagat (strongest character in the game by numbers of winning matchups), strong matchups against the other shotos in the top teir, a even matchup against Chun Li (both sides complain it's bs because they can't commit their usual fraud, so it's even), and at worst even matchups against everyone else. I feel like based on that logic Zangief would probably be like upper mid tier here, tier list look very different when the question isn't who's the outright strongest but who's most likely to when any given tournament lol.
Happy Daigo made the FGC pure for just a moment then things quickly devolved into new tier lists.
Matchup charts are what _used_ to be the sole determinant of tiers. If you look over old Gamest charts, they list each character matched against each other, with the overall win ratio determining the tiers. But as fighting game casts grew, the concept of using match-up charts to determine tiers fell out of favour because pure match-up charts became impractical (and in the case of team-based games, impossible).
So tiers became more about relative strengths/weaknesses of the characters when compared overall, but make no mistake: Match-ups have _always_ been the most important thing.
So yes, Gief having good matchups against top characters (BTW, I'm pretty sure Gief beats Bison, but I'm not convinced he beats Cammy) while losing to weak characters explains his performance this season, compared to Aki who is the opposite. From a total energy expenditure perspective, an Aki player has to expend more energy (or be that much better than the opponent) to overcome the horde of top tier characters she encounters, while Gief doesn't have to work _as_ hard for them, and the times when Aki gets to take a break (relatively speaking) against the weak characters she has good matchups with don't make up for it compared to the times Gief has to encounter a troublesome match.
Mind you, Gief's bad matches are _really_ bad, so there's a still lot of bracket luck involved.
In addition, going back to an earlier video of yours that I agreed with on the concept of character stability, Gief is also a very unstable character, so he can get RNGed out quite easily in otherwise event/slightly favourable matchups (though to be fair, he can RNG others as well). So Gief winning a major tournament is definitely not that straightforward!
"Relative strength/weaknesses of the character compared overall" that is just matchups?
@@luderzuckerfan6990 No? Matchups are how many times out of 10 X wins vs. Y, considering two equally skilled players using the characters to their full potential. A matchup chart lists all the characters vs. all other characters and tabulates the results, listing in order of who has the most number of wins. The ones with the most overall wins are the top tiers, the ones with the fewest wins are the bottom tiers.
As I said, as fighting game casts got bigger, this approach got much more impractical. I think the largest cast I've seen this exercise conducted for was SFA2 (including the hidden characters) or even ST with the old characters. So now, players mostly go based on relative strength and performance (e.g. Ken feels really strong and had had good results, "Top 5", etc.) rather than any mathematical determination of ranking.
Mind you, actual matchup charts are mostly theoretical since you will almost _never_ get a scenario where you have two _equally_ skilled players using their characters to their full potential. Evn if you got that for one particular matchup, you definitely won't get that for _all_ matchups in a game, even one with a smaller cast like Super Turbo. So the more mathematival matchup chart tier determination was only slightly less scientific than the method used now, BUT matchup method does explain situations like how current Gief is performing (read: Does well against common top tiers) compared to Aki (does not perform well against the common top tiers).
@@ShinUltima I did not say anything about a chart, but if you are saying Ken is S tier because of Jinrai Kicks you are basically saying that Jinrai Kicks is a tool that many other characters have problems dealing with. At this point you are saying Ken is good because Jinrai Kicks help him win x matchups
I don't know where people get the idea that matchup charts are less feelsy and more mathematical either, nobody organized dozens of people who sag in the arcades to gather hard data for super turbo matchups back in the day
There's kind of a funny thing with that consideration because gatekeepers that stomp everyone under them might be inflated over a better character that's overall stronger
I have written an analysis of that like 2 months ago and Broski basically boiled down the main points.
Some things I want to add:
Now that SF6 has been out a while, people are able to pick up new characters. An example I have heard FChamp talk about is that every pro should either push their character as a specialist or that they need to pick up a character per season to have increased their arsenal.
If you look at MenaRD, he did exactly that: Began with Luke, added Blanka and now has added Zangief.
Luke is all around coverage, Blanka is a very dominating pick which is hard to prepare for and Gief because of his strong mus in the current meta (as Broski elaborated).
He is not considered the best on either char (except maybe his Blanka?), but he knows when to use them.
A big point I do no see brought up often enough is that season 1 was very "basic" as in the meta was defined by strong allround chars that could do everything so that the "counterpicks" were not worth investing in.
Luke, Ken, Chun, DeeJay, Rashid and Cammy all play "footsies" SF6 and are archetypes defined by mostly relatively basic options.
Season 2 is a lot more diverse at top level:
Ed, Gief, Cammy, Bison, (still) Rashid and Akuma are all chars with very different strengths and more polarizing than the first meta that was developed in season 1.
Akuma is inherently inconsistent but extremely strong for every basestat other than HP.
Gief has two of the most polarizing mus in the game, but statchecks many different chars (like the shotos, Rashid or Cammy).
Cammy's divekick and footsies are kinda unmatched (as well as no 9k HP on a kit like that).
Ed's keepout is absurd, and his corner pressure is some of the strongest in the game, but he got a weak DP and low range 5LP.
Bison has insane pressure but weak defense.
So these chars all have strengths but also more pronounced weaknesses (other than Cammy, lol) and counter mus actually make sense.
A Luke or Ryu is less relevant because or their lack of winning mus. They do decently into most mus, and the worst are maybe like 6-4.
But they also don't really win mus and that makes them less interesting to play this season.
Luke before was broken because his worst mus (like maybe 3?) were at worst 4,5-5,5 and most he was at least 5,5 to even 6 because he was statchecking so hard and had no real weakness.
No character comes close to that level of dominance at the moment, and as such the meta naturally also had to diversify.
Tier lists are in a vacuum, matchups are like putting the ecossystem in the equation. They work in tandem, but the latter is definitely more practical in use.
Broke: Two Giefs have made it into Capcom Cup
Woke: Half of Capcom Cup is Gief.
those first thirty seconds had me thinking i dumped my computer in a vat of hot water
The fsg titles go absolutely hard
Great video. I think this is a commonly-accepted concept in other competitive games, but I don't hear a lot of talk about "the meta" of a fighting game except from videos like this. Makes perfect sense.
Yeah having recently watched Big Yellow's recent video on competitive RBY, it had me thinking about competitive meta.
You'd think a 30 year old Game Boy RPG would have a somewhat stagnant meta, but she talks a lot about how the usage of certain Pokemon or moves in OU is a result of other Pokemon or moves rising or falling in popularity (i.e. Dragonite benefits from Starmie not using Blizzard, Kingler loses to more Zapdos usage.)
I think when it comes to fighting games this is an underappreciated aspect of tier lists. If a character like Gief does particularly well against strong and popular characters, that means he's doing well in the high level competitive meta, and that should be factored into talking about tiers more than his matchups against Sim who is less prominent. A tier list is ultimately about the high level competitive meta, after all.
Agreed! I think these dynamics exist in every game, more or less. I'm a Magic player and I've heard people talk about the best deck for a given weekend or tournament, optimising for the distribution of opponents they expect.
I suppose in fighting games people switch around a lot less. You do get the occasional Itazan equivalent in Magic who've played the same deck archetype for 30 years, but there aren't too many of them and it's widely understood that they thrive most when their deck of choice is good. That cultural difference probably informs the discussion around character strength quite a lot.
matchup charts are i think inarguably more useful, but i think tier lists have one real use case, which is giving people new to a particular game a broad, easily digested overview of what the meta looks like and which characters might be worth picking over others if they're in it for the long haul
Thanks!
This is why tier lists where soley based on matchup charts before SFV.
Zangief is overrepresented because he has loyal fans.
This line of thinking makes a lot of sense to me, and it is a good reminder that tier lists are just a starting point for discussions about a game, not the be-all and end-all. Thanks for the video!
Seeing my boy Gief do well does my heart good
I will always be a loyal fan
Tier lists reflect personal preferences and community perceptions, while matchups are grounded in data and objective analysis. Great video as always, my friend.
? Eventhubs for example does matchup spreads based on community voting iirc. Matchup charts for games with no ranked statistic (SF2,3 etc) are also just community perceptions
I think tier lists are essentially a combination of matchup lists, but as you mentioned, matchup lists offer a much clearer understanding
I'd say that besides the mind going "Hehe Zangief in Top 5" for Tierlists, Matchup Charts generally take more data to back up than a top player booting up Tierlist Maker and saying "I got fisted and stabbed by Itazan in the McDonald's parking lot and Daigo kidnapped my girlfriend so Zangief 1 and Akuma 2."
Asking other players about matchups to make sure you're not crazy, actually figuring out from data you might not have onhand that you actually win most of your games against say Ken despite hating the matchup, nobody in your region or tournaments you've played has a respectable high tier character represented, and a myriad of other factors even if that data is used for making tierlists.
My friend was trying to tell me that Guile(my main) absolutely claps JP(his main) and said that undisclosed top players say the matchup is awful but pulling up matchup charts from Cat Cammy, Capcom, and a wiki said that Guile-JP was around 4-6. They are useful but until we can clone a few Mena's and distribute them with characters like Honda and Kimberly to have a slightly Dee Jay biased matchup chart from one person, looking around at multiple people's tierlists to get an idea is easier.
Today, I subscribed to your channel, while i watched the video I thought to myself "this guy has won your time" so from the bottom of my heart, thank you and pls keep up the good work.
Excellent explanation, you convinced me. You also convinced me to try to main AKI and I find your AKI guide fantastically informative and helpful. Thank you!
False swipe coming after you after this one
As a baby Plat 2, everything here makes perfect sense. I think the UMVC3 might be the only game where matchup spreads don’t matter (or are at least harder to actually quantify, to the point of top players not bothering to make MU charts).
I think a lot of team games have this problem. But this is because you can’t rank characters for a match up, you need to rank Teams. And that is really hard to do, not because it is individually hard but because there are SO many teams.
tag games in general are where matchup spreads don't matter cause assists exists
Yeah, Magneto v Haggar is about as close to a 9-1 kinda matchup I can think of. But Haggar with Strider changes everything.
Hawkeye would be a monster character in a 1v1 format due to spreads but mid assists make him a decent anchor at best😂
id definitely argue matchups are HUGE in team games
Very good way to put it. Tier lists are helpful in denoting which characters are strong, but other characters find success by matching up well against those characters.
Lily make sense because T.Hawk gave Gief problems in IV.
I think this same phenomenon happened with Abigail in SFV. His best matchups were the ones where he could just zone with his normals. I thought he did really well against Karin, Cammy, and a lot of the shotos, but there were low tier characters that just gave him a really hard time.
I remember back in SFV FANG gave some characters a lot of trouble
@@QuantemDeconstructor FANG vs Abigail was so annoying to play. You basically had to spam run flip (which was -12 on block) just to pray you could get through a fireball and land a knockdown.
I mean, tier lists are supposed to be based on a character’s overall matchup spread at high levels of play. So it’s not about tier lists being incorrect. They’re more like the sparknotes we’ve been cheating with instead of reading the textbook (the matchup chart).
Tier lists and matchups should be the same thing. You can make a tier list by finding the mixed nash equilibrium of all matchups. Basically if everyone could play every character you'd end up with this rps metagame where you'd blind pick each character x% of the time. The characters above 0% are your top tiers. Then to fill out the low tiers you look at your equilibrium metagame and see how likely you are to win a match into that metagame if you pick each low tier.
That's an interesting thought experiment. TBH, I think you could still generate an interesting stochastic model based on the likelihood of players to learn new characters, provided there's no more DLC
WIth that first clip all I can think of is Chris Hu saying "DAIGO IS SMI-O-LING!" lol
Broski MIGHT be Kellen from False Swipe Gaming
Brother might be a false swipe gaming sleeper agent
Yeah, this is something I hadn't quite put into words before, but yes, absolutely. I main Juri, and while she has some excellent matchups against the weaker half of the cast, every character with a regular fireball represents sort of a challenge, and Guile in particular feels incredibly difficult to overcome. Cammy feels mostly even, but Ken and Akuma are both quite challenging, and those are some of the most common characters I run into. It's one of the reasons I've kind of struggled to rate her highly in SF6 (Really good, but definitely not sniffing top 5). I definitely agree that just having solid matchups against the top tiers is extremely valuable.
0:03 Really hope we get another versus game some day with him in it. Maybe they can make his Mecha Zangief design the default in that series, this way he can breathe fire again, and maybe do some flying Piledrivers, kind've like Potemkin in Strive.
Omg the Nemo bit had me laughing out loud on the train…and I felt no shame.
5:42 One fireball jump and you get blown up ... yeah, Zangief is top tier 🔥
Very good analysis about the difference between tier list and matchup and good explanation why Gief can perform well from top 16.
It also highlight why counter picking is important for your character bad matchup.
Tier lists, to me, have always meant the frequency of how much a character prevails in a given meta.
Specifically, the match up spread usually shows characters that see more games won overall compared to the majority of the roster; as opposed to a hyper specific matchup. Characters that are ranked lower just don't see the same results/representation as characters in higher placements, despite otherwise being 50/50 with one or two more higher tier characters.
The list should never be treated as the end-all be-all in discussion for something like ease of use, pay 2 win etc.
Tierlist 🚮
Matchup chart 🤩
This was enlightening, thanks for the interesting discussion Broski.
No chip damage means you have to mix it up close to progress in SF6 and that's where gief eats
Bro likes the history of competitive pokemon
The irony of this theorem is that Booce tested it out vs itazan with the jamie pick and unfortunately fell just a but short
This is a revelation melee players all already know.
I really wish more people would do match up knowledge because I need that more than a tier list. I beat the odds, I feel so much better no matter what they say.
a tournament viability tier list is just the product of matchup charts times tournament character pick-rates.
Match ups make the tier list, not the other way around.
My take on this is that tier lists are obviously just condensed matchup charts. They list the characters with the best to worst matchup spreads in order.
Something like absolute character power only makes sense on the level of the whole game (character power is high in strive cos u kill so quickly, is low in fabtasy strike cos limited movepool) but a character's strength within the game only means his relationship to the other characters.
Great fgc content here 🎉 keep up the quality work from a '09 from nyc.
I'm allergic to the relative strength of fighting game characters understood outside of a overly simplified and subjective format, you should do a tier list of all fighters' best match-ups
I personally think matchups should be a part of the tierlist making. If there's a character who is crazy strong with some very silly tools but all of their good matchups are weaker and less popular characters then that character might go down a step or two on a tier lis. So instead of there being a debate of tier lists vs matchup charts I think it should be a combination of the 2.
I used to have fear fighting zangief, now I just accept his inevitability
false swipe would be proud
Zangief was really strong this season, they had to reel him in a bit as some of the buffs went so far that he almost didn’t have any bad matchups.
Not surprised by RD swapping to him after the buffs and yes we have very strong pilots taking Gief to the top.
But the buffs really did reduce the amount of bad mu he had season 1.
2:26 Man I wish I cared about blanka enough to feel sorry for this interaction
It’s tricky tho, even though street fighter 6 is relatively speaking so popular, information about matchups are super obscure for this game. Really you can only consider the masters character winrate info for reliable matchup data on the whole cast, but obviously that’s a different beast than offline
I mean, Zangief its in his gamer tag, that should say something already.
It's weird hearing that match-ups aren't considered for tier lists because, coming from Melee, half the reason Sheik is high tier is because she just shuts down lower tier characters with things like a down-throw chaingrab, and her match-ups with the higher tiers is even to losing.
Great point sir.
Does anyone else remember back in the SF4 era when people got a bunch of top players together and made a gigantic matchup chart based on aggregates of top player opinions? I always felt like that was a more accurate list than any of the Twitter posting today
I think Zangief if we are talking about tier lists is in a good spot with his archetype being in A tier mid or low.
It could be argued that the Japanese have the right idea by basing it on players. Being abstract can be useful, but there is also practicality in narrowing your focus to your current opponent. Ultimately, MU spread is what defines most tier lists, so I would say that tier lists are essentially a shorthand to describe matchup spread so I would say that tier lists are essentially shorthand for matchup spread much of the time
broski watches false swipe
aki matchup chart when?
There were both an amazing sim AND lily in top 24 and itazan just lucked out not having to face either. Gief's tournament success will always correlate to both what characters are currently top tier and just plain luck through brackets.
I've got some friends I'm trying to get into fighting games and I'm really trying to point them away from looking up Teir lists so they don't put time into a character they hate while raking up losses---which has more to do with them just being new rather than character tiers.
One thing that's a little hard to do is match a character with someones playstyle knowing how they play other games. The issue with Street Fighter is, we often use terms like Shoto to describe a style -- except Ryu and Akuma feel like opposites. Or grappler-- where Gief and Manon have the "walk 'em down'' strategy, I wouldn't say Lily or Honda play like a grappler. I remember Blanka being called the "shenanigins" character in SF4, and I guess Kimberly fits that profile here in SF6.
In any case, I don't think that I know enough about each character or all the playstyle types in fighting games to really describe them to someone. It would be sweet to hear your opinion on how to categorize these characters, especially the unorthodox characters like Dhalsim or AKI. I just say, "try them at your own risk."
Coming from other genres, it's pretty normal that whenever a meta develops, someone eventually finds a counter-meta. It's very rare that a strong option has _NO_ counterplay whatsoever. this makes a lot of sense.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's PTX-40A and Gold Lightan embody this idea. Arguably the only legal unranked-tier characters in fighting games because of just how little normal matchup charts matter when they're around. Big bodies and grapplers are often lesser versions of the same thing, as there is almost a different game being played.
Any worthwhile tier list uses matchups for placements anyway.
I feel tier lists should take into account the matchup spread against other top tiers, I feel we would all agree that a character that has a 7-3 matchup against the top 3 in some game but have a 3-7 matchup against the rest of the cast would be considered very good, also I'm totally in favor of matchup charts over tier list, but both serving a purpose and working side by side is important.
Basically, Zangief is counter-meta, and that's why we're seeing him win so much (aside from having really good players behind him of course)
If memory serves, there was a time where tier lists were informed primarily, if not exclusively, by match up charts. Even bad characters can have good match ups against specific characters. I still operate under this mindset, but it sometimes feels like this gets lost in tier discussions in modern fighting games. Gief having even or favourable match ups against strong characters doesn't necessarily make him a strong character in the context of the game as a whole. It just makes him a good counter pick.
I remember last season when Chun was arguably top 5 a knock some of her down players would use is that she loses to Lily, Honda, and Gief. Which it's like even if she did her other positive matchups against the other common top tiers far out weighed the losses to 3 bottom 5 characters you never saw in tournament.
The biggest knock against Chun was her tournament performance. She did awful with only really Leshar showing any decent results. Geif has actual wins to show.
@@lawnbb12372 she was tied for the 4th most qualified character for Capcom cup last year so she was definitely performing well and had good top 8 representation. She's performed just average this season, but I think that more so has to do with her match up spread not being as beneficial as last year. She fought Luke really well which was easily the importance character to fight well and now with his fall off that isn't as important. They also added 2 hard matchups for her in Bison and Akuma which definitely hasn't helped.
Tale as old as time
Been saying this a long time now as well. MU spreads will hopefully takeover at some point. Hell an Iron Tager player (shoutout Mastfam) just won a BBCF tournament and Tager is consistently at the bottom of tier lists. But his biggest weakness in that game is he gets smoked by the S tiers he has good to GREAT match-ups against plenty of the rest of the cast.
Who here immediately recognized the False Swipe Gaming reference?
On-topic, though, MU spreads are super important, and I don't think you can get a truly accurate tier list without coming up with a weight system in place, because you get cases like Gief and AKI, as you described. Having hard MUs vs common tournament picks really harms your stock, but only really having bad MUs on weaker characters that don't tend to get too far into the brackets is a blessing (unless you're Brutus...poor guy always ends up facing the Sim army 😂)
People need to realize fighting games are all based on vibes with all things being equal.
I thinks matchups should inform where your character places on a tier list. Top tiers should be the characters with the best matchup spread.
I appreciate the AKI comparison at the end, it’s something I’ve been questioning in comment sections around town. Cammy and Akuma are the obvious cases, but even Bison and Rashid are problems for her, imo, and all 4 of them are very popular and very strong atm. It’s why I’ve remained quite pessimistic about AKI’s strength this season, despite her now being more than viable
I think we shouod go back to matchup based tier lists in general
Absolutely. Gief has slight advantages over the high tiers I agree. The only downsides to Gief is the volatile nature of his playstyle, which prevents him from most people agreeing that he is the best character in the game.
Having said that, I'm leaning towards Ed as the best character in the game right now. Now this character I believe doesn't have any unfavorable matchup in this game. He's strong at all ranges, close, medium, long. Everything.
Idk if I would call the grand finals "tense". it was over in like 3 minutes lol
False Broski Gaming
For what is a tier-list but an abbreviated matchup chart (taking the averages of winning/losing matchups)? I always read them as such.
So magnanimous of you to say "we"
i feel Ed can also be in the 4 spot of quiggy's list
Just hit him hard with the subscribe! Ice cold like the murder face. 😅