You’ve probably seen a tier list before. If you don’t, basically it’s a list ranking things from best to worst. But rather than the typical Top 10 or whatever number list, each thing is categorized within “tiers.”
How do these things even work? Typically it ranges from S (the best), A, B, C, D, and F, kind of like school grades. Sometimes A to C can have plus and minuses too if we’re going with the letter grade thing. Another way to categorize them would be top, high, mid, low, and bottom. One of the key points of a tier list is putting multiple things into a tier. Sometimes they will be ordered within tiers, other times they will be unordered. You can do this in software like photoshop or also websites such as Tier List Maker. There are pretty cool designs you can use but I feel like the one that’s provided by Tier List Maker is the best since they’re just squares.
The origins of tier lists can be traced back to the fighting game community. People would put characters into tiers to determine which characters were better than others. When people posted these online, it would set the tone for what characters people are going to be using for the game’s lifespan. There are multiple things to account for when looking at a tier list for fighting game characters. These include moveset, strengths, weaknesses, and usability. Whenever I check a tier list, I go with the best character that’s easy to use. Even if there are better characters, I wouldn’t consider them the best for me. You also need to take into account who does better against who. Just because a character is the best doesn’t mean it will be easy to fight every other character. Sometimes a mid-tier character will work better against your opponent than a top tier. Since not a lot of people play mid-tier characters, that would mean that people don’t have that much knowledge in the match-up which will make it harder to fight. There are websites dedicated to fighting game character tier lists but most of them run differently. Sometimes they are community-built, other times they don’t specify who is making them. Just don’t trust online gaming news websites that are for all kinds of games. They usually don’t know a lot about the games and will rank things that nearly everyone will disagree with
Tier lists start to really take off when people started using them for other things like fast food places, movies, bands, and other various things. As long as the topic doesn’t offend anyone, they’re pretty harmless on their own. People would start wars over others’ opinions such as ranking McDonald’s in low tier or saying that The Magic School Bus was not a good show. However, sometimes people only rank things the way they are in relation to each other. Just because one thing is in the C tier doesn’t mean they’re that horrible compared to something in B. People only do this when it’s a tier list based completely on one person’s opinion. It’s a bit different when it’s made by a group of people. You can get rid of outliers and it will give people a better idea of what is good or not.
Sometimes people will try to rank something they don’t know about. Or maybe even a bunch of things they don’t know about. In this case, I wouldn’t even rank things. That’s like me trying to rank hockey players or Star Wars characters. I wouldn’t know how to rank them because I know nothing. I even made a tier list a while ago ranking my favourite metal vocalists. For the ones I didn’t know a lot about, I was honest and said I need to listen to them more.
Tier lists are now looked down upon as a cheap way to farm interactions on the internet. However, I think it’s just a way to express how you feel about certain things. A mass audience shouldn’t be a reason why you rank certain things. Whenever a “community-built” tier list is made, most of the time it’s limited to a select group. This is for the best so we don’t have huge debates over extremely differentiating opinions. Different opinions are fine, but when it seems that everyone has a different answer, it makes it hard to build these things.
Yes, those who voted on the community tier lists on event hubs are those people. You not liking their opinion does not make them wrong.
— ClemPrime13 (@lbrennan1992) November 7, 2022
As someone who has seen my fair share of tier lists, I will admit there were times when I just yelled “YOU’RE WRONG!!” That was pretty immature of me and I should not do it again. However, this is unfortunately how most people react to tier lists. The debates I have seen on the internet over these lists are insane to the point where I feel like animals are the ones talking. I think it’s because people lack the ability to judge things for themselves and seek others’ opinions. When their opinions don’t exactly line up, they feel like they need to defend it in every way possible. There really shouldn’t be any need for this if everything is down to opinion.
https://twitter.com/lamarmvpszn/status/1593744086598656000?s=20&t=7T0Iuf310BL3sSpc1txg_w
Tier lists are just a novelty. They don’t actually hold any value to determine what is good. Unless it is a community-built list, there will always be biases when making a tier list such as personal experiences or influence from those around you. Tier lists are one of the few things that have helped people rank things over the years. Sure they’re not perfect, but they get the job done. Would I use it to determine how I perceive things? Not exactly. I’m not going to think of tier lists as the holy grail, but rather to see what the consensus is. I might disagree with them, but I’m not always going to say their opinion is invalid. I think when people stop looking at one person’s tier list as the truth, people will finally be able to judge things for themselves.