Character Tiers?

I was wondering what the characters tiers are for Virtua Fighter 4 version C. Are Akira and Lei Fei top tier? If yes, who else? Which characters are the mid and low tiers?

 

IMO, Jacky, Lau, and Akira are top tier.

Then it's Lion and Sarah as high tier. Then the rest are mid tier except for Shun, Pai, and Aoi who are near the bottom.

 

There are NO TIERS in Virtua Fighter. If there is any character that is much more effective on a consistent basis, then it is an unintentional accident and AM2 will be looking out for this to try to balance future versions. I have some opinions on some characters being stronger than others, but that also has to do with what I have seen, and how many players play each character, and how devoted players tend to play certain characters more than others.

If you think about it, every character has its strong points and weaknesses. If you look at Sarah, there are very few Sarah players in Japan, yet she can be a monster in the right hands. The same is true with Lion as demonstated by Chibita. Any really good player can be a beast with any character.

I have no real problem with people saying which characters they think are stronger. But what annoys the heck out of me is when people state Tiers like they are factual VF categories rather than opinion. This is very misleading to new VF players.

 

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If you think about it, every character has its strong points and weaknesses.

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Yeah, but some characters strengths are much better than others, yet their weaknesses are far less than other characters as well. Jacky and Lau are in this catagory. They got a ton of strengths with few weaknesses, while someone like Shun has a few strengths and a lot of weaknesses. Hence, IMO, there is tiers of some sort. Now, it's not as unbalanced as say Tekken 4 or CvS2, but it's there none the less.


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But what annoys the heck out of me is when people state Tiers like they are factual VF categories rather than opinion. This is very misleading to new VF players.


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Well, it's all just opinion to me, and I'm not in any way saying I'm right and my views on the matter is written in stone. It's just what I think, and VF has always had tiers IMO. VF3 had Kage and Akira as top tiers who were noticably stronger than everyone else. Again, it's all my opinion, but that is what I gathered from playing VF3.

But I really believe it's almost impossible to make a game 100% balanced. There has to be one or two characters with an edge over everyone else. That doesn't mean they dominate all the time, just like you don't need the top tiers in CvS2 or Tekken 4 to win tournaments, but if you had to rate everyone, they would be on top.

 

valiance sounds like a new age hippie!
Modesmouse, you are right, there are definitely ters in this game.whilst the differences may not be major, they are there. imo:
1st tier Jacky&Akira
2nd tier Lau
3rd tier Jeff, wolf.
4th Tier Lion, Vanessa, Lei
5th tier Sarah
6th tier Aoi, pai
6th tier Shun

 

"there are definitely ters in this game"

Your intelligence is amazing. You have specifically defined 6 tiers - well actually 7 since you have two 6 tiers. Your english is also retarded, especially for someone in England.

Obviously no game can be made 100% balanced, but thanks for stating who you have more trouble playing against. Maybe if you practice more, you'll be able to deal with them better.

Bottom line: Don't mislead new VF players by making them think of the characters in terms of tier categories like in some other fighting games. Some characters will always tend to be stronger, but there are still no tiers in VF.

 

The reason I asked this question is because I am relatively new to Virtua Fighter 4 (but not to fighting or video games in general), and I wanted to get people's opinions as to who the better characters are. Obviously, how good a character is depends greatly on the player, so tiers are little more than opinions and that's all I was asking for in this thread.

I realize Virtua Fighter 4 is much more balanced than other fighting games, and I greatly commend Sega for doing this. However, even a game as great as VF4 is not PERFECTLY balanced and therefore I happen to believe there are tiers in this game. Supporting my belief is Sega's classification of characters as recommended for Beginners, Medium, or Expert players as seen on the game's very own character select screen. This leads me to believe there are characters who can deal out very good damage with a smaller effort than other characters, which is a big part of what tiers are all about.

Again, if you have opinions on tiers in VF4 I'd be interested to read them, especially if you support your reasoning. /versus/images/icons/smirk.gif

 

There is really no way to properly justify who is stronger unless we go into huge long threads analyzing the statistics and other properties of each move for each character, which usually spurts arguments. Just keep in mind that this is not the case of SF2 with Guile and Dhalsim. With a game this complex, anyone claims on tiers would just be a somewhat ignorant opinion. Take Shun Di for example. His moves on their own don't deal too much damage, but there he has many special properties in his moves and recovery that can be just pure evil in skillful hands. One thing that there is no doubt about is that some characters are "easier" to learn and play than others. In that respect, there is no denying. Shun Di being an example of a much more difficult character to learn than a character such as Jacky, and so many intermediate players would claim that he is lower tier. In actuality, Jacky is a ridiculously simple character to learn, whereas Shun requires countless hours of dedication to become good at. It is also not worth choosing a character based on who you think is stronger, because minor tweaks in future versions can change all that. Pai seemed a bit underpowered in VF4, so Sega gave her new effective moves in Evo and all of a sudden she seems quite brutal.

So my advice to a beginner player is to choose a character that fits your style and personality. If you really insist on a tier philosophy, many people say that the main-4 middleweight original VF1 characters are the strongest (Kage, Lau, Jacky, and Akira). But when you see what a monsterous Brad or Jeffry or Lei Fei player can do, you can basically throw that simple belief out the door. I hope you understand now.

 

I see where you're coming from, saying that since in the right hands, you can use anyone to beat anyone else, so there can't be any tiers. This is what you're saying, right? Forgive me if it's not But isn't that true for any game? Just cause there's tiers in other fighting games doesn't mean everyone stops playing the lesser characters and sticks with the top tiers only. Not everyone uses Jin, Nina, and Lee in T4 and a lot of people are good with characters that are considered mid tier. Good enough to win tournies. Does that make T4 a game that has no tiers since let's say a master at Lei (who many say is crazy weak) can beat a master who uses Jin?

Again, if I'm totally off base with this analogy and it's totally different from what you're trying to get across, then forgive me.

 

Well, some characters are easier to pick up than others.
The Beginner/Intermediate/Expert ranking of the characters shows this quite well IMO.
I find it a lot easier to pick up Sarah and play somewhat effeciently.
Vanessa for example has a monstrous command list with her two changable styles, Akira has some commands I have trouble executing consistantly (Knee, m-dbl palm, m.shrm) or at all (Dragon Lance Combination).
So to wrap it up, I'd say there are tiers at beginner/intermediate play level. However, once you get past the level where you worry about getting your commands right, all characters are too balanced that you could split them up in tiers (except for Shun in version C maybe, a lot of Shun players in Japan complained a lot when version C was introduced.)

 

err...Pai is awesome in Evo, easily near top tier!!

She has too many good options and mug-up games. Strongest she has EVER been, about time too!

 

uk-guy, I'm very glad that Pai is much improved in VF: Evolution. From what I've been hearing all around, she will definitely be a character to contend with now.

If anyone else has their list of tiers to contribute, please go right ahead. I am more interested in Version C tiers than Evo, but those would be good as well.

 

I've developed a system of rating moves and on the basis of that system I found "Akira" to be possibly the strongest character in the game just by move properties and frames alone.

The system is based entirely on frames and properties. Which is what the game is based on so IMO I think its pretty accurate to see which character has the most options and moves that a human can use that doesn't require the accountability of other moves.

Formula: Block + Hit + MC = "General Rating"(with respect to negative #'s)

If the move has a special property i.e.(Knocks Down, Sabaki's, Parries, Forces Crouch, Executes into Crouch, Hit throws, Staggers, Crumples, Floats, Slams or hits tech-rollers during tech add "10" bonus rating points.

Also: if the move is semi-circular add "5" points, and if the move is Crescent add "10" bonus points.

After all this is accounted for, you'll get a #. This # will let you know whether its a good move or bad move, trust me. The formula works and you'll get an idea as to what character is MONSTER or not. Plus its kinda fun to try to find the most horrible move the game along with the best move in the game based on my system.

PS- This is solely on the system of the game and not anyone individually. Obviously human skill has nothing to do with overall rating. Its based solely on the system, once again. Later dudes.

 

/versus/images/icons/laugh.gif ...I wondered if such a thing would be doable, but it'd have to be pretty freaking complex. For example jeffry's headbutt, is it useful because within float combos it slams, allowing for 100 pt combos on version C? Or useless because you'd never throw it out in the open?

I guess such a system would have to take into account speed of execution, recovery on block, damage potential (just average the damage from all the max-damage-combos stemming from that move)... damage potential without major counter (would need a little experimentation)... and even then there are intangibles, i.e. how do you score lion's meteor punch, which is slow as hell but still quite useful? And shouldn't a mid move be considered more useful than a high attack for obvious reasons? That's why pai's high kick doesn't get the attention akira's SDE does...

anyway, I'll be interested to see it. Brace yourself /versus/images/icons/wink.gif

 

Clearly VF4 is not and never was "perfectly" balanced. The fact that we are up to Evolution Version B pretty much proves it. That said, the game is balanced enough such that you should never be surprised to see any given character winning any given tournament (not true for many other games, including Tekken).

In any game, the success of your ability with the character depends on the skill of the player and the "strength" of the character itself (relative to other characters in the game). In abstract: success with character = (Kn * player skill) + ([1-Kn] * character's relative strength) where K is the weighted importance of a player's skill. In VF, Kn is very large and so the skill of the player greatly dominates the equation. Conversely, in games like MVC2, Kn is probably much smaller.

You should probably ignore 90% of the tier lists you see here, and you should definitely ignore everything you read in GameFaqs on this subject.


Blonde_one don't forget to take into account range, "avoidability" (i.e. character ducking while executing), sabaki, knock down, damage potential, part of a string, etc. Good luck.

 

me stoopid...doiy?
twat.

 

Actually, for MvC2, Kn is still a very important factor because the tiers are so well-defined: "strength of character" is pretty much the same for the big 4, then nearly equal for the next 8, and then there's a huge jump to the rest of the cast. Once you eliminate all but the top dozen characters, the game paradoxically becomes rather well-balanced. Of course, VF doesn't even HAVE this problem /versus/images/icons/smile.gif

 

LOL, I was wondering if someone was going to point that out. Yes, Kn can very from character to character within the same game, but then, we're probably trying to do too much with a simple equation...

As for the MVC2 case, what's interesting is that the top dozen is actually a decent number. Evo itself only has 15 characters. Ironically, if Capcom eliminated those "weak" characters entirely people would think MVC2 as being a balanced game. Of course, that assumes Capcom knew which characters were going to be better than the others...

 

I'd say that yes, there are tiers in VF4, but the difference between even the first and character is so small that it doesn't matter. Also, I think that any notion of tiering is heavily swayed by playstyle. For example, these boards are saying that Lau and Jacky are top-tier. These board members also don't reverse 95% of the time. To someone who does, Pai is better than Lau, and Akira and Aoi are a lot higher on that person's tiering list, which brings me to my main point. In VF4, tiering is only true on a personal level, i.e. everyone has their own tiering.

 

not to talk TOO much about it, but to add:

top tier in MVC2:
Storm
Sent
Mag
Cable

you find these actually to pretty well matched up against each other... although some may find their ability to nearly end characters' lives(and sometimes entire matches) with 1 hit essentially to be a bit overpowering as well as cover the screen like mad, but that's MVC2 for you. the other 8 are usually some former top tiers or good assist characters that are used.

ice-9: and that's the interesting thing about Capcom; they do make good 2D fighting games IMO, but i believe they're more interested in churning out dozens of fighting games than actually testing for the balance of them... i heard they just sorta packaged MVC2 as soon as possible, which accounts for the numerous glitches, infinites, and 60%+ damage combos in the game. imagine what would've happened w/MVC3 if they had kept their marvel license and used the same slapstick-everything-together philosophy...

btw, if we were to look at tiers as a "rating of how often a character wins in a game" then technically there's not really any top tiers in VF: you've all heard about chibita, and of course, many lower tier characters such as shun get tourney wins occasionally.

not that i don't believe in tiering, i really think there is such a thing even in VF because a game can never be 100% balanced. but maybe we should tier based upon a different definiton

a better tiering definition for VF might be one or more of the following:
-who is easier to use(easier, in that they are either very straightforward or can be played very well mechanically)
-who has better damage potential(this accounts not just for damage in combos, but how often can you get those combos to start; also accounts for throw strength)
-who has better strikes("better" is a pretty vague word, but you should get the idea; Akira's SDE is better than some other person's elbow almost anyday)
-who can force the nitaku game better(or for beginners who don't get what this means, how many oppurtunities do they have to force a 2-way guessing game between combo starter and a throw, and how damaging is that 2-way game? ie Jeff's is very dangerous)

of course you combine em all essentially you are tiering based upon how often you think they'll win, but still, these are the basic ways ppl tier in VF... usually.