Forum:Tier list debate 2020: Part 1

This discussion is in regards to a proposed change on SmashWiki. The discussion must first meet with a consensus before it is implemented.

Historically, SmashWiki was part of SmashBoards, and SmashBoards was the unchallenged hub for all Smash Bros. discussion and research. As a result, we only recognized tier lists produced by the SmashBoards backrooms, as they were accepted by the entire community as being the most accurate and trustworthy.

But since then, some depressing realities have arisen:

• SmashBoards is no longer the community's uncontestable central location, and does not even have a backroom for SSBU.
• Some games (i.e. SSBM) may have a metagame that's substantially changed since the last SmashBoards tier list.
• Nintendo keeps applying updates to recent games, regularly invalidating any high-effort tier lists. Only quickly-collected ones with less data can exist.

So we have a problem: we hold up SmashBoards as being the only source for The Tier List, but they have stopped making them. And even if they did, the community might not respect it as they used to.

This will change.

Option one: Step back and go hands-off

Fundamentally, tier lists are opinion. Often a combined opinion of many skilled players, but an opinion nevertheless. In a world where many tier lists of various states of credibility run rampant, perhaps it is best to only note whether a character is good or bad, and let the reader make their own judgement.

• Remove exact tier position from all character pages. Keep general designations like "high-tier" or "mid-tier", but do not go as deep as a specific ranking outside historical notes or extreme outliers.
• Remove exact current tier lists from the tier list page. Keep the history of SmashBoards tier lists.
• Remove matchup charts. Maybe keep them on a "for historical purposes" page.

This is certainly the easiest option: a one-time burst of extra work plus not having to care about tier lists forevermore. But after having tier lists for over a decade, the wiki will feel a bit emptier and less complete, and newer readers will likely feel slighted that they have to look elsewhere.

Option two: Pick a new source for The Tier List

There is an expectation for a series' prime wiki to contain tier lists, so if SmashBoards isn't helping us, we should look somewhere else.

• Select a new source to draw "official" tier lists from and begin using them instead as simply another step in history.
• Remove matchup charts. There's no way we'll find a source that has complete ones.

This is the "cheap" option in that it requires the least work. But it will be very painful to pick the new source, especially as the wiki is supposed to be neutral, and we need to be very confident that whoever we pick has enough staying power so we don't have to repeat this process for a while. (Presumably you have a source in mind if you vote for this option, but try to keep that understated. We're not picking the source in this vote.)

Option three: Aggregate many trustworthy tier lists

There is an expectation for a series' prime wiki to contain tier lists, even if doing so requires a large amount of work and consternation over what is considered acceptable and notable.

• On a semi-regular schedule, or when a major shift/update happens, create a SmashWiki Aggregate Tierlist (SWAT) that combines multiple trustworthy tier lists together. We would show character placements on each list, perhaps elaborate on why each list is valid and notable, and use the aggregated ranking on character pages and such.
• Keep the history of SmashBoards tier lists, but use the SWAT on the main tier list page.
• Remove matchup charts. (Yes, this is happening either way. We can't fix them.)

A whole lot of effort and bureaucracy will be necessary for this idea to work. (Don't worry about the details for this vote.) But if it does work, it ought to be quite useful, and be a mark of pride on the wiki.

Votes

There is no "status quo" or "other" option. Make your stand. Toomai Glittershine The Brass 19:54, January 30, 2020 (EST)

Option 1: Hands-off

1. Support. Unless an official tier list that the majority agrees upon is released, it's better to keep tier placements general. This allows the best accuracy as tiers other than the top tier are often immensely different from one opinion to the next, especially with a roster as big as Ultimate. Hitbox Enthusiast Zeck (talk) 20:02, January 30, 2020 (EST)
2. Support. Ultimately, outside of extreme cases such as MK in Brawl, there is no such thing as an objective placement for a character on a tier list. All tier lists are opinions, and a factual wiki is not the place for opinions. I wouldn't be completely against option 3, since it's at least a bit more fair than treating any specific tier list as "official" (which is in hindsight kind of a stupid thing to do), but I think our best option is to simply provide information about how the community generally views the strengths and weaknesses of each character, rather than outright stating that this character ranks at this specific position. Alex the Weeb 20:06, January 30, 2020 (EST)
3. Support: While I don't really care for tierlists, having an up-to-date understand of what character falls where has been valuable information for the Smash Bros. community. That said, we live in a time when updates are continuously happening, which can put some work strain on those at SmashBoards, so I'd rather wait for a finalized tier list than one that is constantly changing. Alex95 (talk) 20:10, January 30, 2020 (EST)
4. Support. Without much competitive expertise personally, I feel like this is the best option. If there isn't a definitive Ultimate tier list to begin with and it's constantly subject to change anyway, it's probably best to just continue what we currently do and list the collective opinion of the community without making a definitive placement. As above, if a widely-agreed-upon tier list is created, we can use that, but I don't think we should make our own list, since as stated earlier the community simply isn't centralized. ~ Serena Strawberry (talk) 20:13, January 30, 2020 (EST)
5. Support. Option 2 can't prove to be reliable, and would require some arbitrary bias. Option 3 would take quite a bit of time, and ultimate's ever growing roster would cause this method to demand a lot of commitment. Also this option suits best for the amount of diverse strengths and weaknesses the roster has. Super ASuper A (talk) 20:13, January 30, 2020 (EST)
6. Support. Everyone agrees upon tier placements, but in most cases no one agrees where in the tier characters should be placed. I feel like generalizing it is the best, since not only does it give us a more neutral point of view towards all professional opinions rather than just the Backroom, but it's also something people would debate less, especially on the placements. Also, the MU charts - aside from Brawl's - are mostly inaccurate nowadays, although I still believe best and worst MU's should still be noted somewhere. CookiesCreme 20:15, January 30, 2020 (EST)
7. Support I think specific numbered tier placements are sort of outdated nowadays, and I think keeping the old ones for historical purposes is a good option either way. Awesomelink234, the Super Cool Gamer Leave a message if needed 07:37, January 31, 2020 (EST)
8. Support: More general statements like "this character is generally considered to be mid tier" are better suited for a wiki that strives to be neutral. Option 3 is interesting, but it poses a problem in that the continuous updates, and various other metagame developments, continuously call in question the ordered placements within a tier, especially within the lower ones. I think that if we want to pursue option 3 we have to do it only after Ultimate has stopped to receive updates for good, so for now it's better to just stick with option 1. --Rdrfc (talk) 05:32, February 1, 2020 (EST)
9. As per my comment I support going hands-off. SupαToαd64 09:13, February 1, 2020 (EST)
10. Support: Due to the reasons mentioned, at least until (if) a back room is ever convened for a future tier list. Option 2 would be highly prone to bias and Option 3 would have the same problem in addition to taking more time and effort to aggregate. Until there's a clear and obvious alternative we should avoid giving exact tier placements with obvious exceptions like Brawl MK. Antimony (talk) 13:49, February 2, 2020 (EST)
11. Support: I feel this is the best option simply because aggregating a tier list from "trustworthy sources" introduces a plethora of problems. For example who would qualify as "trustworthy" and how do we avoid appearing biased? If we're talking tier lists from notable players, they tend to update those very often and often times find themselves not numerically organizing lower tier characters? Does that mean we should avoid numerically ranking characters and simply stick to a letter categorization format? Then comes the question of if there's even enough tier lists to create an aggregate tier list without seeming too one-sided. In the end, there are just too many factors to consider and a lot of maintenance would be required. Maintenance after every patch would likely not be fast enough to keep up with ever-changing opinions. Pokebub (talk) 21:13, February 2, 2020 (EST)
12. Support: I think that Smash Wiki aggregation would cause a lot of issues, such as what tier lists to aggregate and how they'll be meshed together. I think it's not Smash Wiki's power to do such a thing anyways, and the Wiki should try to remain objective. --Mpo9 (talk) 22:37, February 5, 2020 (EST)
13. Support: I don't think any one widely accepted tier list source exists, and one probably can't be made. While Option 3 is good, I don't think it could be implemented easily in an unbiased way. Many subjective opinions could arise, like "whose opinion should count" and "should outdated tier lists be kept, and how outdated." In addition, people rank in a variety of ways that could be hard to aggregate: some people rank with S/A/B/C/D, some use + or - with letters, some just say top/high/mid/low/bottom, and some don't rank a lot of characters they don't know about, especially Mii Fighters. It sounds good on paper but I don't think it will work to a degree that will be agreed upon by most players as a factual list. Tier lists are an opinionated matter that can vary wildly from person to person and are ever-changing. Even some of the official tier lists are immediately outdated or unpopular, like the Smash 4 tier lists. I think the best course of action for an unbiased article is to not list tier lists at all. Exact placements can be removed from characters' pages, but they can certainly be explained that most people in the community agree they are top/high/mid/low or even a specific placement, like best/Top 5/Top10/Bottom 10/Bottom 5/worst. The Backroom tier lists can be removed from the "Tier list" article, but we should still link to the historical tier lists. The matchup charts should be removed, they are even more outdated and can making them would be difficult post-Brawl. Again, we can list commonly agreed upon matchup spreads and positive/even/negative matchups, and list the historical matchup charts on their pages. --Meester Tweester (talk) 18:49, February 7, 2020 (EST)
14. Support: We talk about not using subjective terms, such as best, worst, and the like. Tier Lists are the epitome of subjective. LegendEH Is Very Handsome~ 10:52, February 14, 2020 (EST)
15. Support: Definitely keep the existing tier lists and matchup charts for historical purposes; no sense in deleting them. But yeah... it's unfortunate, but I don't see any way to get around this. I don't think there's any comparable "official" source to make Option 2 workable. As for Option 3... hoo boy. Not only do you need some way of determining which tier lists to include, you also need some way of aggregating them! And like, uh... Arrow's Theorem, anyone? (At least we don't have to worry about the equivalent of strategic voting here. :P ) Not that you can't come up with a way (I know average placement is often used), but no way anyone comes up with will be, like, the one correct natural way, so... yeah. Probably just best to leave this to others... Sniffnoy (talk) 03:28, February 21, 2020 (EST)
16. Support: I have to agree, Nintendo's updates have killed the potential of a tier list. The added bonus of tier lists being extremely subjective, and you have tier lists that not many would want to set their eyes upon. I feel like a more appropriate list would be to rank usage of certain fighters and their win-loss ratio, like how many Melee Fox mains have won with their specific character, but that's a lot of work. Similarly, aggregating every tier list might be time-consuming on the basis that we have to consider what sources we pull in to make each tier lists, and we can't go around town to see if there's another tier list we can manage. Feels like the idea of a tier list is dead for now. I want to keep it that way, because it means we don't see the community preferring to main a specific fighter because he's high tier and they can't fight jackshit whenever they go to tourney. I'm interested for diversity when it comes to what fighter is picked at a tourney, instead of just high-tier non-stop (though the Melee side will sadly deal with 'Fox only' shenanigans for a long time; that game's never getting updated). -- Scorbunny (talk • contributions) 16:14, February 29, 2020 (EST)
17. Support: I'm torn between this and the third option, but I'm slightly edging towards this one. While I do think it's a good idea to continue documenting characters' strengths and weaknesses as well as what is the general consensus of how good they are, explicit tier lists have always only ever been argument fodder - not only with the precise placement of characters but in terms of whose list is taken as (the most) valid and how egos have historically played into that; as aside, this is one of the reasons why I have never been okay with people seeing SmashBoards and particularly the reclusive Back Room(s) as the sole authority on Smash, so the notion that things are becoming decentralized (which is news to me, honestly) is the exact opposite of what I'd call a "depressing reality". What I'd recommend instead of tier placement on the game and character pages themselves is a collection of links to popular tier lists on each game's competitive page, as a means of quick reference and comparison for people explicitly looking for competitive info. Admittedly, this ties into my long-running wish for the wiki to become a more general informational resource like other NIWA wikis with all the competitive/community material cordoned off into its own hub or sub-wiki, but that debate on the whole is outside the scope of this discussion. On this topic in particular, my vote is for the wiki to be largely hands-off but to point players interested in that kind of info in the right direction rather than just leave them hanging. VinLAURiA (talk) 12:28, April 1, 2020 (EDT)
18. Support: Yeah, with the exception of extremities like Brawl Meta Knight and Smash 4 Bayonetta, it isn't exactly a good idea to claim that, for example, Mr. Game & Watch in Melee is ranked 20th out of 26 (as opposed to 21st, 19th, or 22nd, which have all been his ranking on official SmashBoards tier lists of the past)—the best we can really go for is to say that he's a low-tier character that probably isn't tournament-viable. Not everyone even agrees that Fox is 1st out of 26 in Melee. Option 3 may or may not also be able to work, but deciding on exactly how to average them can be a hard task on its own. A similar thing mostly applies to matchups: there are a select few that are undisputably in one side's favor (such as Sheik against Bowser in Melee), but otherwise, we can't really say much about them (except that high-tiers generally have favorable matchups over low-tiers). Plainly we should at least keep historical tier lists and matchup charts, though, but plainly we should also mark them as being historical and therefore potentially out of date. --Volleo6144 (talk) 18:09, April 5, 2020 (EDT)
19. Support with some doubts: I think one of the safest ones and would cause least controversies for wiki. Option 3 assumes voting, and its unreliable. PGRU voting tier list is an example. Averegly, Palutena got the best result, so she's the best character in the game? And that's my biggest problem with Option 3, altrought it would be much smaller if we use Clarniet Hawk's way. Option 2 has, as stated by Toomai already, painful to aquire trustful and probably notable source and it's the worst one in my opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.229.158.109 (talk • contribs) 02:37, April 10, 2020 (EDT)

Option 2: New source

1. Support: I think we could find another trusted source for this.Kesterstudios (talk) 20:08, January 30, 2020 (EST)
2. Support. I feel that a new source would be easier than both other options. Option 1 seems to have way too much subjectivity that would make the platform too easy to discredit. Option 3 would be highly subjective and take quite a bit of work that I don't believe SmashWiki will always be able to afford. It doesn't appear sustainable. In terms of what source to use, I feel that one that uses a mix of empirical and general analysis would be best: usage for effect on the metagame, general perceived matchup spread, results, character and overall metagames, and more. While this would likely be difficult to find, I believe that this is one of the best approaches to take without causing some weird outcry that the Smash Community likes to do. --Plague von Karma 20:07, January 30, 2020 (EST)
3. Support for the same reasons as Plague von Karma. Aykrivwassup (talk) 21:43, January 30, 2020 (EST)
4. Support I think a better source is a better idea if not maybe this website should decide or make a tier list Thegameandwatch (talk) 06:18, February 2, 2020 (EST)
5. Support Ryobeat is currently conducting a survey of the MPGR top 100 to create a new tier list (https://twitter.com/RyobeatPeach/status/1232121227088736256). If this gets a good response rate it will likely be accepted by the community as the main tier list. This seems like a much more realistic solution than attempting to aggregate all the tier lists ourselves. Jaydyn (talk) 16:20, February 25, 2020 (EST)
6. Support. There's probably going to be a new reliable tier list of some sort in the foreseeable future. Zakawer2 (talk) 12:37, February 28, 2020 (EST)
7. Support You see the top player tier list from PG? Yeah, that. Pepdog2 (talk) 00:42, March 7, 2020 (EST)
8. Support. As with the above vote, I would like to use the character tier list from Panda Global as our official tier list. It was essentially conducted in the same manner as a SmashBoards tier list with over 30 PGR players offering an opinion, so to me it feels like the direct successor to the SmashBoards tier lists of old. It doesn't even conflict with the wiki's approach that much, as we already deem the PGR to be 'official', so their tier list is a logical step. Complimenting this, I would like to retain the SmashBoards tier lists for all previous games leading into Ultimate. Realistically we can't ask anybody to accurately create new tier lists for old games. Even if the vote favours a different option, I still believe we should retain SmashBoards tiers for the first four games. Toast ltimatum 07:52, March 25, 2020 (EDT)
9. Support: I think maintaining tier lists helps new players a lot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.34.65.94 (talk • contribs) 08:35, April 7, 2020‎

Option 3: Aggregate

1. Support I believe this to be the best method. Picking just one tier list to arbitrarily refer to would just show bias and create controversy as to why we picked this and not others. Listing multiple significant tier lists the competitive scene finds reliable and having an aggregate of that list would be the best way to go. EDIT - I would like to add that Wikipedia has a very similar method for ranking US Presidents based on scholarly surveys. The principle is exactly the same and can be applied to tier lists for us. And for people voting for Option 1, please think long term about this as Ultimate won't always be updating; there will be a time when the patches stop and this isn't just about Ultimate. EDIT 2 - There seems to be running theme in the Option 1 votes that tier lists are based on opinions and therefore don't belong here. 1) Wikis document opinions all the time - I know we're not Wikipedia for me to refer to it again, but I think it's good to take a peek at how they do things: that scholarly survey for US Presidents I mentioned earlier is also based on opinion, and any article for a movie, book, video game, music album, etc. will have a section dedicated to the reception that piece of art received based on the reviews (opinions) it received. All these things are based on opinions and that's okay; all it does is acknowledge how people feel about it by documenting it. While the opinion itself is subjective, it is an objective fact that people feel a certain way about that piece of art; Wikipedia is just simply documenting that, and the same is true for a myriad of other Wikis. The same with the tier list. Yes, they are based on subjective opinions, but it is an objective fact that people feel certain ways about characters and tier lists is the most common and digestible way it is expressed, which leads me to the next point. 2) Tier lists are noteworthy enough to document - Tier lists have such a big part of the Smash community that even if I were to give you the point of it being just an opinion, they still have such a significant place in the community that it would be irresponsible of us to not document them (not to mention we're a common reference for the competitive scene). The best we could do is document the significant ones and create an aggregate. In fact, the original concern brought up on our Discord about the tier lists we currently have was not whether we should have them, but how outdated they are since we normally only use SmashBoard's Back Rooms tier lists, which haveb't been updated in years. On top of that, this concern was brought to our attention by a reddit post on r/SSBM, which just goes to show that people care about not only tier lists, but our documentation of them. Getting rid of them isn't the solution, using current ones and adapting to how they are made now is the solution. 3) A good read - For those downplaying tiers as "just opinions", I encourage people to read Semicolon's Treatise on the Existence of Tiers. VoqéoT 17:14, February 1, 2020 (EST)
2. Support. Given that this wiki is very much focused on not only the franchise, but the community surrounding it, I feel like option one shouldn't even be an option. I also feel like option two isn't the best way to go, because having one source and only one source limits our options (see our current predicament). By both logic and process of elimination, option three seems to be the best. I almost feel like the "general" ranking part seen in option one should be here, because we can very easily say which category (based on letter, not "top/high/mid/low") each character falls into, even while doing this; it would save us the time of, say, "averaging" out the rankings on multiple tier list sources. Aidan, the Rurouni 20:05, January 30, 2020 (EST)
3. Support for basically the same reasons as Voqéo. Tier lists will always be fought over and have multiple thoughts on the matter, so it's best we factor together multiple sources instead of depending on a single one. That way we may be able to achieve the most accuracy possible. Only concern I have is how exactly this WILL be done. It's easy to say there will be a way to combine tier lists, but execution is always harder than ideas. Crazy456Rhino (talk) 20:10, January 30, 2020 (EST)
4. Support: I generally think that aggregated tier lists is a good idea. On one hand, you'll have the opinions coming from the best players in the world, and all of these opinions combined would make for a solid substitute for the Backrooms. While we might have the occasional Samsora with "King K Rool is Top 15", if we opinions from enough top players, it'll balance itself out in the end. Wizardgeno (talk) 20:32, January 30, 2020 (EST)
5. Support Top players make tier lists every day, combining them and listing them with there update number seems to be a great way to get a general overview of tiers. Just dont use sites like Eventhubs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by CR4VE (talk • contribs) 20:39, January 30, 2020‎
6. Support. KungFuLakitu, Spiny Overlord 20:45, January 30, 2020 (EST)
7. Support - Aggregating tier rankings from various trusted sources seems like the best option to go with. Option 1 doesn't sound encyclopedic to me, and at the moment i don't think there is any single widely accepted tier list that we could use for option 2.- Searingjet (talk) 20:57, January 30, 2020 (EST)
8. Support: In a game with over 80 characters, general "high-tier" and "low-tier" has a lot of gray area to it. A high tier can be the very best character in the game, or they can be be the fifteenth best. While Ultimate doesn't have a dominating top tier like Meta Knight, many people on the internet do agree that the best character is Joker. Option 2 favoring one tier list would be a bad idea, as there are multiple reliable tier lists, while Option 1 would make this wiki feel blank after listing the most widely-accepted tier lists for years. Averaging out the tier lists of the top players sounds like the best option, as it doesn't completely favor one player as God, but it also doesn't make this wiki way too vague. While specific numberings may arbitrary, there are too many characters to simply generalize the tiers. 72.203.118.154 16:40, January 31, 2020 (EST)
9. Support: I feel that a reliable tier list is one of the most integral parts of any Wikipedia of an online multiplayer game - players will visit this site much more often to find a tier list than they will to find, say, the size of a stage or frame data on a move. I also think that a compromise could be made between options 2 and 3, and if option 2 was not an option than it's supporters would favor option 3. Of course, a tier list will always create controversy, no matter what. But it's important to have, to create a discussion of what characters need to be changed, and how. And if this site does not have a tier list, controversy will still happen, but there'll be more of it and it'll happen in other places. Mogo (talk) 14:55, February 1, 2020 (EST)
10. Support: In my humble opinion, this option will be the best one for the community. Both other options have their uses, of course, but I feel like it's the most respectful for the community as a whole to try and create an accurate, ultimately beneficial tier list instead of stepping away from it altogether. Although it would take an irritating amount of work, granted, I believe doing this would make the community at large more grateful in the long run. GloverMist (talk) 05:50, February 2, 2020 (EST)
11. Support: This method is easily the best. You're gathering opinions from multiple sources and as such it becomes less controversial. It's unbiased and works perfectly in the long run. Falcon-X (Freedom House) 13:15, February 2, 2020 (EST)
12. Support for reasons pretty much already mentioned above. I think the Wiki should have some form of tier list, and I don’t really like Option 2, hence my choice. Gizmo (talk) 14:57, February 2, 2020 (EST)
13. Support: I think that even though aggregating multiple tier lists will undoubtedly require lots of work and deliberation, these aren't really bad things and are frankly the best for both the community and the wiki. Having an unofficial tier list based on averaging our others is better than having no tier list at all, especially for a website where some players may refer to for information about how a character fares or has fared competitively. I think it will be worth it in the long run to spend time searching for worthwhile tier lists and aggregating them. Acgamer28 19:02, February 2, 2020 (EST)
14. Support: This is the best option. Although I'd love to designate a new official place for tier lists, I personally think it'd be better to create a group of people that take tier lists from various trusted sources and put them together. Of course there will always be controversy, but this method is able to give a voice a number of different places rather than just SmashBoards. Nevertheless, it's been far too long since we've had an update to SSBM's official tier list, and I feel like it suggests (be it true or not) that Melee is dying. Regarding SSBU tier lists, however, I don't think it'll be possible to have one for quite some time. Nitrodragon523 (talk) 02:02, February 3, 2020 (EST)
15. Support: The most encyclopedic approach. Anthony1996 (talk) 21:47, February 3, 2020 (EST)
16. Support. Character pages already have recorded opinions based on how well they're doing in tournaments from Smashers. And yeah, those MU charts are never going to be updated again so absolutely no use for them. MHStarCraft 22:37, February 3, 2020 (EST)
17. Support. Alright so... First and foremost, with no primary source for tier lists now, and some readers having different judgments compared to others, I don't believe the first method to be reliable at all. Tier lists are usually aggregate opinions from top players and/or a large group of well-informed users in forums/similar pages, so the second method seems promising. However, I think that this method, despite being slightly similar to the second one, is the most reliable, since the resulting end will provide us a similar result to the second method while also including opinions from top players, keeping both parties happy. Second of all, all the old tier lists from SmashBoards for the previous four games are still considered to be very trustworthy tier lists, so their history should be kept for research purposes, as events like Super Smash Con will likely still be using these tier lists for mid-/low-tier events. Last but not least, I don't believe it's going to be a sweet goodbye to matchup charts since a lot of people are going to look for them and try to see, for example, what characters do their main excel against; but since no aggregate matchup chart was ever released for SSB4, and it doesn't seem to be the case for Ultimate, it's ultimately for the better to get rid of them. --Beep (talk) 18:16, February 6, 2020 (EST)
18. Support. As a brand new Smasher, I have looked up countless and countless different tier lists, and most of them placed my main, Samus, "mid-tier". Honestly, I don't mind, because Samus fits my play style. But, looking at tier lists from different sites really helped me weed out who I thought I was going to main. So, that is why I support this option. C.J.Anton (talk) 11:10, February 17, 2020 (EST)
19. Support. I think data is the most important thing in a tier list. I dont support gathering tier lists because they have a lot of bias. A person who hates playing against Jokers could easily put him in a lower tier. However, I think the tier lists should go by data such as results and matchups. I know a few Discords like Mac Nation could help with data such as matchups. Birdygamer1122 (talk) 9:28, February 22, 2020 (EST)
20. Support: This is our best option going forward as it provides readers with immediate, concrete information about the current metagame based on a variety of sources, and we can always note which characters have the highest deviation in placement between sources. It will take a bit more work than the other two options, for sure, but there are two important things to note here. First is that no matter which option we choose, we will still have to do some level of work or outreach. 1 and 3 both involve gathering community opinions, just with one being more general than the other, and 2 requires us to reach out to interested parties to create this tier hub in the first place unless we want to use Reddit's or Eventhub's list, which may be shaky. Second, the competitive community would likely be happy to help with this project; we have no shortage of analysts such as PracticalTAS who are able to gather a ton of data for us or possibly help directly with suggesting aggregating methods. Ryobeat (a top 100 level Melee player), in particular, has expressed interest in making a central Google Doc for top 100 players to share Melee tier list opinions, which would take a lot of work off our backs if they allow us to use that data. I feel like Option 1 can only really work with Ultimate in its current state and will just create more work for SmashWiki down the line when Ultimate top player opinions become more concrete. It does not work for older games in the series that are still played because it's far more important to have an ordering of characters in more developed (albeit sometimes still developing) games with smaller roster sizes. Option 2 is extremely prone to bias unless the data is an aggregate from high-leveled players anyway, though I wouldn't be opposed to it if one of the community members mentioned above becomes the host for that central source. -- Yellow of the Grove 15:48, February 24, 2020 (EST)
21. Support: I Ike this idea for many reasons, and as someone who’s been wondering what had been halting a SSBU tier list, this option seems like a beautiful way to compromise giving the people an accurate tier list while the SmashWiki gets to mark its place into Smash history. As long as this approach is done with care, SWAT could be an extremely valuable way to finally give SSBU its long-needed “official” tier lists. TCBlitz (talk) 20:39, March 14, 2020 (EDT)
22. Support (possibly with a slight change)) First off, even as is, this is by far the best option. Tiers are a very important part of the Smash community (and really the fighting game community as a whole). The discussions on this wiki (and Alex's an my treatise in particular) have been discussed not only in the larger gaming community, but in academic writings on gaming culture and design. We need to stay involved in the tier discussion. If we cannot agree on a single source, then aggregating the different sources is the best option. It is also completely within the purview of an encyclopedia to make determinations on what sources meet the criteria for inclusions, so long as that is based on a review of the methodology and larger community acceptance rather than personal dissent. Now, for my slightly proposed change (which some users above have also hinted at): we should aggregate the tier lists, but not assign numerical rankings to each individual character. We can average out the tier placement from however many sources we deem to be worthy of inclusion, then look for the gaps in placement and assign tiers to each group. We do not need to make a firm distinction between a set of characters who average between 1.8 and 3.2 on the tier list, but if the next fighter after those averages at 4.4 we draw a cutoff. Does this require the most work? Yes. But I still think it's by far the best option. Clarinet Hawk (talk · contributions) 12:59, March 25, 2020 (EDT)

Comments

My biggest reason for not choosing option 3 is that I'm not the biggest fan towards numerical placements, especially for anything Smash. Having witnessed the dumpster fire of the Fall 2019 PGRU and the 2019 MPGR - where many placements and bias were called into question - I believe that even if we do aggregate the tier lists there will still be some discord. CookiesCreme 20:36, January 30, 2020 (EST)

Another point that I should make: Melee and Smash 64 basically have less viable characters than Ultimate or Smash 4, and therefore it's easier to place where the better characters are. Even by the end of Smash 4's lifespan the placements of certain characters like Jigglypuff, G&W, and King Dedede were up in the air since the metagame was still changing 2 years after the last patch. None of these options really cover this point well, but I still believe option 1 does it the best since it's a generalization. CookiesCreme 20:39, January 30, 2020 (EST)

Considering that Brawl and 4 no longer maintain active competitive scenes, i think it'd make sense to keep the SmashBoards-sourced tier lists for those specific games, instead of changing them to a new tier list system. - Searingjet (talk) 21:17, January 30, 2020 (EST)

I agree with this. We could even keep this for Melee and 64 too, just for preservation's sake as well as because their tier lists are hardly ever updated anyway. Aykrivwassup (talk) 22:28, January 30, 2020 (EST)

Ramble:

I'm surprised we kept the matchup information on the pages to begin with: we have considered removing them before after all. But evidently, that proposal went nowhere despite pretty significant comments that the information was at least useful if not horribly out of date, and it was at least worth preserving if not on the character articles where it only detracted from what the rest of the page demonstrated. If we do go the excision route, we might as well nix the tier information in the start of each character article and save it for the history sections, since obviously that information isn't relevant to any other part of the article. Yeah, it'll make the place feel a bit emptier, but I'm hoping that the majority of people can adapt.

Option 2 is never going to work. At least, not anymore. Endless arguing over tier lists created by reddit, eventhubs, and even those of Smash pros make it unlikely in my eyes that there will be a single entity to cite. Even the SBR's tier list was never safe from the flack (however minor/inconsequential it was). Of course, once notable always notable: the back room tier lists should obviously be noted for their historic reputation. But recent developments in the metagames should largely be divorced from them. I can't fathom to count the number of times I've read "viability/tier placement is up for debate": at this point, this seems less as the exception and more of the standard. The Smash community is also bigger than it's ever been, and that will only make establishing consensus for these kinds of things all the more difficult.

But on that note, since we are never getting around a shitstorm, one that's actually productive to the Wiki would be the best choice. Let's begin an effort to at least somewhat iron out the assessments of Smash players. Because honestly? The community already does this. Take everyone's opinion, weigh them based on reasoning, and make a judgement from there. Which, if I'm not mistaken, is exactly how this Wiki works. I imagine the only problem will be "drama", but.....let's be real people. Disputing the notability of certain opinions and sources are literally what talk pages on Wiki's are meant for. If the community can't do that, it probably has no place on the Wiki in the first place. So, since the community will endlessly argue who is the best and the worst, we might as well make it into something productive. If they can decide what sources do and don't matter, we will report on it. If it demonstrates nothing except Smash fans will never agree on anything, let's bury the hatchet and leave this debate in the rungs of threads filled with those satiated by the vapid need to delve into the meticulous detail of something that may never have even existed.

End rant. - EndGenuity (talk) 21:30, January 30, 2020 (EST)

As someone who doesn't play or watch competitive Smash, I'm of the opinion that tier lists shouldn't be on character pages as they go against the neutral point of view, if anything we should have a competitive history page for the fighters for this matter. Tier lists are opinions. Even if they're commonly agreed upon by players, they're still opinions. However we still often treat the tier lists as if they're "official", which they're not, and even though SmashWiki is not official, we shouldn't take opinions from players and treat them like it's "official", as wikis are not supposed to be opinionated.

When we put tier placements on character pages, we're basically describing who is the best and worst respectively. But the problem with tier lists is that once a fighter has been established as a top or high tier character, they become popular in competitive play and thus continue to advance, whereas low or bottom tiered characters are considered garbage and are never used, and if they have untapped potential, chances are it will never be known due to how rarely they're used. Take Melee for example: For years Fox has been consisered the best character in the game and so is seen everywhere in competitive play, and the rest up to the Ice Climbers have recieved good results in competetive play. However everyone else is only occasionally used and a lot have almost non-existent results, and so we cannot say how accurate everyone's placing actually is. When it comes to untapped potential look at Yoshi in Melee: it wasn't until the 12th tier list in December 2015 for him to rise out of the low tiers, nearly 13 years after the first tier list. We often even go as far as saying "X has awful matchups and is non-viable" which goes against SW:NPOV and SW:MOS. And then look at Brawl's tier list: it centers around how well a character can match up against Meta Knight. The question is though "How are the other characters against each other?" "How will it look if Meta Knight was taken out?". A tier list that revolves around one character does not make a reliable source on how good a character is, and we shouldn't make that detetmination.

The biggest problem with option 2 and 3 is that, as I said, it's still an opinion. For option 2 here's the issue: If a new source is chosen, the question is "How accurate is it?". Even if everyone agrees a character is the best in the game, it's still an opinion and we will never know exactly if that is 100% true.

Now for option 3. If we aggregate reliable tier lists, we're still making an opinion based on players. I don't see how this would be any different from the current situation when it comes to accurate tier lists. What we're basically doing is inventing our own tier lists. Of course it is more reliable as it's combined opinions, but nonetheless, it's still an opinion, and goes against the neutral pount of view.

However, competitive Smash is still a big part of the community and we cannot discard tier list altogether, as I'm of the opinion "once notable, always notable". For historical puropses they should stay, but not on the main character pages. As I've mention above I believe adding a competitive history page for each individual character can be considered someday.

So in conclusion option 1 is the best one. It best follows with the wiki policies while still giving an idea on how said fighter matches up. SupαToαd64 09:12, February 1, 2020 (EST)

"[...]tier lists shouldn't be on character pages as they go against the neutral point of view[...]"

In what way? Judging a character based on how well they perform (which is exactly what a tier list does) is not being necessarily biased. This discussion has been had before.

"However we still often treat the tier lists as if they're "official", which they're not, and even though SmashWiki is not official, we shouldn't take opinions from players and treat them like it's "official", as wikis are not supposed to be opinionated."

You're looking at the "we aren't official" thing the wrong way. We aren't official because we aren't affiliated with Nintendo. That's all that policy states. Additionally, the usage of "official tier list" has, in the past, only referred to the one main tier list from SBR that, while they were still active, was accepted as fact.

"[...]whereas low or bottom tiered characters are considered garbage and are never used, and if they have untapped potential, chances are it will never be known due to how rarely they're used."

Is that a fact?

"And then look at Brawl's tier list: it centers around how well a character can match up against Meta Knight. The question is though "How are the other characters against each other?" "How will it look if Meta Knight was taken out?". A tier list that revolves around one character does not make a reliable source on how good a character is, and we shouldn't make that detetmination."

The problem with Brawl, though, is that Meta Knight is undoubtedly the best character in the game, and is perhaps one of the most broken characters in fighting games in general. Thus, the meta of Brawl centers around that. I know you said you don't watch or play competitive Smash, but this is still important in the grand scheme of the game, because if you can't stand up to a god, then where does that place you?

Aidan, the Rurouni 14:13, February 2, 2020 (EST)

If I may butt in, I don't think Shulk is the best example since his most dedicated mains have always performed pretty well at tournaments. I believe SupaToad has characters like Zelda and Jigglypuff in mind, who all have their gimmicks and bouts of success but didn't have the time and the players for metagame development. CookiesCreme 16:24, February 2, 2020 (EST)

My main point was that Shulk is a lower-tiered character in Smash 4 (not as low as Zelda or Jigglypuff, but still low) whose "untapped potential" has been known due to the memes surrounding the infinitely long acronyms for his intricate techniques that have made him not terrible. The people who dedicate their time to play him play him well, but that can be said for just about any character, no matter how bad they are. Aidan, the Rurouni 19:45, February 2, 2020 (EST)

Should option 3 come into fruition, would it be unwise for SmashWiki (admins and perhaps any other trusted users) themselves to create a backroom of players? It would continue Smashboards' method of creating tier lists and if properly managed, would be fairly simple to create new tier lists every couple of months. Of course this plan in mind would require a lot of cooperation as well as careful selection of top players. To be honest, I'm not sure if it'd really work, but I think this would be the best way to go about creating a new aggregate tier list. Pokebub (talk) 21:13, February 2, 2020 (EST)

If I may clarify a few things, I never said tier lists as a whole create bias. Truthfully not only should I have worded it better, this was put in the wrong place. It was supposed to be with why I didn't choose option 3: there can be bias surrounding where the character should be placed on the tier list and there will be disagreements when we are aggregating the tiers. So except for extreme cases like Brawl MK, we shouldn't put the exact placements on the character pages unless it was fundamentally agreed upon that they belong in that spot.

Your second point is justified since I misunderstood the "official tier list" parts.

Cookies already went over the "untapped potential" part with better examples, though for me it was more of the Yoshi example I used: he had the potential to be better but it wasn't fully seen until the 12th tier list.

Even though MK is absolutely busted we still need to see how characters fare against others besides MK as well, especially if it is decided option 3 is the best, which I'm not at all against but still have some concerns about. SupαToαd64 21:25, February 2, 2020 (EST)

Considering that all tier lists innately suffer from some degree of bias/inaccuracy, one point I'm seeing made is that any tier lists we aggregate will also suffer from that as well, and as such the wiki should avoid tier lists because it isn't an objective stance. I personally still support the aggregation process, but if it comes to fruition and we eventually do start assembling an aggregate, would it be in the wiki's interest to provide a disclaimer stating that the aggregate is not meant to be interpreted as an official / objective / widely supported tier list? (Assuming that we don't yet exist in the timeline where the SW goes on to be the primary source of tier lists, lmfao.) Acgamer28 01:22, February 6, 2020 (EST)

This is the best option. We average out several known reliable tier lists, source them, and then have a visible disclaimer that these are just the averages, and should not be taken as the official tier list. In fact, all of the tier lists on those pages should probably have these disclaimers. 72.203.118.154 17:05, February 19, 2020 (EST)

I think that either averaging out the other tier lists from other websites or to make our own but that's just what I think. Special:Contributions/MeleeBoi8:14 PM (PST) Feburary 19, 2020

I have already voiced my support for Option 2, but Option 3 would probably be my second choice. Aykrivwassup (talk) 11:40, February 20, 2020 (EST)

Would it be in poor taste for me to plug my own WIP tier list aggregate? I've been working on it for months and would be very happy to work with the SmashWiki team on tweaks to better fit the wiki's needs. Grapevine (talk) 16:34, February 24, 2020 (EST)

This section isn't for putting what you choose: that's for the actual sections themselves. Aidan, the Rurouni 19:35, March 8, 2020 (EDT)

I’m not sure, but I think that Option 1 is the best choice for me and not Option 2 or 3 as that the tier list needs to be specific like S A B C D E F and G tier. Howplayz (talk 18:45, March 8, 2020 (PST)

OK I just read Clarinet Hawk's suggestion that if we do aggregate tier lists, we average the characters instead of listing them numerically. In my opinion should option 3 work that would be the best way to go, and it's more in line with why I chose option 1. That way tier lists will stay but there will be less discord when deciding the characters' placements. Unless a character is undoubtedly the best character in the game or possibly the most broken character in the series, it's almost not possible to know exactly where a character belongs on the list. OmegαToαd the Toαd Wαrrior (BUP) 02:48, April 4, 2020 (EDT)