| 02 July 2010
I've wanted to do a type of tier list for Super Street Fighter IV for a while but in a different way. It wouldn't be based on my opinion, but rather the community's performance. So yes, those that played in a tournament had a direct impact on what the above graphic is.
This graphic is the beginnings of a tier list for Super Street Fighter IV. This is a statistical tier list, in that I have a formula in my head and have applied it to more than 2,000 rounds of competitive play. Today's list is a draft, and will become official when I reach 5,000 rounds on my database. Click on it to see it in a larger size.
Almost all of the matches involved in this tier list come from tournaments. The exceptions have been showcase exhibitions such as Level|Up's 19-game series. I wanted it to be based on matches that counted. There's also a mix of online and live tournaments, although mostly live.
My primary question out of this was ... based on competitive play, what would a tournament tier list look like? This is not without precedent. When Brawl was released, someone charted character usage of the top eight players in tournaments throughout the nation. A point total was awarded, and a tournament tier list was formed. Meta Knight was tops, with Snake close second. When the SBR tier list came out, it nearly mirrored the tournament tier list.
I told myself I wouldn't consider thinking about a tier list until I had 1,000 rounds of tournament play. There wasn't any other reason other than it was a nice number. But I passed the 2,000-round mark earlier this week and I figured it's time to start planning it out.
Two thousand rounds was an ideal time. The statistics in my database are starting to level out. Example: The player that gets the first combo wins nearly 64 percent of the time. A major movement in gameplay would tilt that statistic; one match can't anymore.
So with that in mind, it turned out to be good to come up with the tier list. This will change as more matches happen. When I have 5,000 rounds of play, the next and official update will come in, which should be a couple months.
There's five rules to this at the moment:
1. The factors involved are win percentage, usage percentage and win rate with more than 50 percent health remaining. Obviously, if you don't see a character on here, it means I don't have a match of that character in my database (that would be Hakan, Gen, Gouken and Dan). And by the way, if you have a tournament match of a missing character, let me know. But just because I get one Hakan match doesn't mean he'll jump immediately to mid-tier. There'd have to be a load of Hakan matches AND he'd have to win.
2. The ONLY opinion I have in this is the weighted factors. I value wins and strength of wins over usage but slightly. If 50 out of 100 players use Ryu and they all go 1-2, then I consider the .333 win percentage a little more important than the .500 Ryu usage.
3. While I am based in SoCal, there's a wide range of matches that have counted toward this. Among the events have been broadcasts from FADC (East Coast), iPlayWinner (NorCal), and the Pacific Northwest. I don't cherrypick matches. When I see a tournament, I chart as many matches as possible from it. So if a tournament happens to have a lot of Sakuras, it just happens and I chart it.
4. This is NOT meant to replace any current or future tier list made by anyone else.
5. This list, at the moment, is based off of 2,000 rounds. Today I'm showing you what I'm planning for. At 5,000 rounds, I'll put out the "official" list.
This will always evolve with more matches. And I'll always keep adding matches to my database. So maybe we'll see things change. But who knows?
Finally, just because one character is listed ahead of another doesn't mean it's a done deal. I'm fairly sure Sagat can beat Cammy consistently. But Cammy, in the matches I've charted, has had a more consistent usage and success rate. Sagat has barely been used in any of the tournaments I've charted.
