Why matchups might be everything - The Zangief Theorem

[@BroskiFGC]

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.

[@7Archon]

Very unfortunate since the "happy happy" song is truly the cherry on top of the clip.

[@KBACpro]

No big deal)

[@elidamonsterz4222]

Can you link the clip?

[@BroskiFGC]

@@elidamonsterz4222 x.com/Yokikunvideo/status/1845561907505487961

[@Asdfgfdmn]

Don't do it again or i will unsubscribe

[@pandabs6845]

Not the false swipe gaming title

[@PokAmakute]

Actually the BKC title

[@Nicomartz52]

False swipe gaming Vibes.

[@bryanjones7965]

A man of culture

[@luackx]

Pokémon ass video fr

[@MegaMetal96]

@@PokAmakuteI’m pretty sure BKC edits FSG

[@Appei473]

Brutus faced like 3 dhalsims in pools and got eliminated. He walked so Itabashi could run.

[@benross9174]

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

[@jamgUNoh]

Brutus getting his ass clogged with sims will never not be funny, dude has the worst luck

[@shads123]

Itabashi would beat them He always does

[@Sestze]

@@jamgUNoh wonderful phrasing

[@MUGENanaya]

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

[@CulturedDegenerate]

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.

[@sirpikapika1129]

most sane tier list comment

[@TooManyDuckies]

Down on vitamin A and probably developing a kidney stone

[@rosheafan]

I love spinach, thank you for the reminder that I need to eat a wider range of food

[@teomcnasty]

Hold up is this writing fire

[@SimoneBellomonte]

Pfp (Profile Picture) and / or Banner Source (Link to full Image and Artists Names?) 🗿

[@slinnkys5405]

This feels like a sequel to the video Sajam released yesterday about understanding balancing decisions

[@HellecticMojo]

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.

[@FalseSwipeGaming]

Ayo? this is a pleasant surprise! I watched a lot of your JP videos when I mained him in Season 1

[@QuantemDeconstructor]

Well well well, if it isn't THE competitive history guys (for the Pokemon community)

[@jeanriviere2599]

Broski confirmed FSG viewer and secret strategic Pokémon enjoyer

[@MDToboggan]

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.

[@trunks4671]

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

[@MDToboggan]

@@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]

@@MDToboggan You don't have to invest much time to pocket Lily, and Modern Lily is always an option.

[@gloomy_gus]

Nothing puts a smile on my face like seeing a Gief when I'm playing JP.

[@MDToboggan]

@@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

[@MasterChibi]

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.

[@notasquiremario3299]

False Swipe wants to have a word with you

[@MikeRosadoGaming]

"you can see the Life leave his eyes in 480p" might be the most gangsta thing I have hear in years. 🗿🔥👍🏽

[@AkibanaZero]

Nemo may secretly be the comic relief character we didn't know we needed.

[@A-Spoto]

Prepare for every top player to have a pocket Dhalsim

[@Kanashi_9]

thats exactly what i was thinking.

[@verbatim7508]

....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]

Lily would be much easier.

[@Resener1]

@@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.

[@lawnbb12372]

With the buffs I think maybe a pocket JP is in the cards for people.

[@blvk3]

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

[@Kenny-sl6hb]

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.

[@blvk3]

@@Kenny-sl6hb if he is s-tier, why the match-ups are only about 50:50 across the board?

[@icantthinkofaname2722]

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.

[@HeDronHeDronHedron]

@@blvk3 Gief mains be like "But he has really bad matchups against the hardest character in the game"

[@markmessi9020]

People dont like grapplers. Its dumb and well RKO their L opinion on the canvas everytime 😁

[@aledantih6524]

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

[@trippersigs2248]

Broke: Two Giefs have made it into Capcom Cup Woke: Half of Capcom Cup is Gief.

[@kurtis_schmurtis]

Happy Daigo made the FGC pure for just a moment then things quickly devolved into new tier lists.

[@ShinUltima]

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]

"Relative strength/weaknesses of the character compared overall" that is just matchups?

[@ShinUltima]

@@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).

[@luderzuckerfan6990]

@@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

[@luderzuckerfan6990]

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

[@QuantemDeconstructor]

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

[@JB_CY]

The fsg titles go absolutely hard

[@MuscularAlligator420]

Nemo acting like he won't get command grabbed

[@emanuel81111]

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

[@Raxyz_0]

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.

[@RockBottom7626]

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.

[@TeethedGlory]

Zangief is overrepresented because he has loyal fans.

[@apocalypticsquirrel]

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.

[@snackerfork]

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.

[@apocalypticsquirrel]

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.

[@noah-ux2cz]

those first thirty seconds had me thinking i dumped my computer in a vat of hot water

[@prinnydood]

This is why tier lists where soley based on matchup charts before SFV.

[@JasonRoberts-v9x]

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!

[@shirwinhu]

Thanks!

[@AJMurdoc]

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).

[@1inimilian567]

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.

[@someaccount5200]

tag games in general are where matchup spreads don't matter cause assists exists

[@No1Porkchop]

Yeah, Magneto v Haggar is about as close to a 9-1 kinda matchup I can think of. But Haggar with Strider changes everything.

[@cheef825]

Hawkeye would be a monster character in a 1v1 format due to spreads but mid assists make him a decent anchor at best😂

[@azu1394]

id definitely argue matchups are HUGE in team games

[@Seppen_GO]

Tier lists reflect personal preferences and community perceptions, while matchups are grounded in data and objective analysis. Great video as always, my friend.

[@luderzuckerfan6990]

? 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

[@natethebad]

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!

[@leoschue8071]

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

[@Mage_Nichlas_]

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.

[@Capt._Cheese_Balls]

Seeing my boy Gief do well does my heart good

[@TheWaInut]

I will always be a loyal fan

[@lukeblaker8009]

False swipe coming after you after this one

[@SynKyller]

Lily make sense because T.Hawk gave Gief problems in IV.

[@Specifen]

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.

[@Paravervideoschoros]

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.

[@ZachHenke]

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]

I remember back in SFV FANG gave some characters a lot of trouble

[@ZachHenke]

@@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.

[@sm7085]

I think tier lists are essentially a combination of matchup lists, but as you mentioned, matchup lists offer a much clearer understanding

[@EnbyVess]

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.

[@letsmakeit110]

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.

[@benli9656]

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

[@dobiqwolf]

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.

[@DrSwazz]

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).

[@EbonMaster]

WIth that first clip all I can think of is Chris Hu saying "DAIGO IS SMI-O-LING!" lol

[@Oldo]

No chip damage means you have to mix it up close to progress in SF6 and that's where gief eats

[@Neji-XIV4306]

Broski MIGHT be Kellen from False Swipe Gaming

[@AvangionQ]

5:42 One fireball jump and you get blown up ... yeah, Zangief is top tier 🔥

[@ZephyrK_]

This was enlightening, thanks for the interesting discussion Broski.

[@himuragoXD]

Great fgc content here 🎉 keep up the quality work from a '09 from nyc.

[@jhawkdx4000]

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.

[@smokingred5813]

Tierlist 🚮 Matchup chart 🤩

[@jcminer8466]

Brother might be a false swipe gaming sleeper agent

[@theprismaticsystem2833]

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.

[@mmaldonadoofficial]

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.

[@Azure888]

Omg the Nemo bit had me laughing out loud on the train…and I felt no shame.

[@trevarlewisjr5472]

Bro likes the history of competitive pokemon

[@retrofraction]

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.

[@magusomnius3201]

I used to have fear fighting zangief, now I just accept his inevitability

[@Ellienollie]

This is a revelation melee players all already know.

[@mkeonine]

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.

[@rensten4893]

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.

[@luderzuckerfan6990]

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.

[@atrainrandom8603]

The irony of this theorem is that Booce tested it out vs itazan with the jamie pick and unfortunately fell just a but short

[@erichthegraham]

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

[@stoike3958]

I am curious Broski, you mentioned not liking ranked data for determining the matchup grid, is this because you believe that there might be some subtle EOMM going on under the hood to juice the win/lose ratios or is the 1900 MR floor too low for you to consider the results consistent enough or is there some secret third reason I cannot think of?

[@SomniaCE]

Tournament setting vs playing online are just different. The skill difference between a CPC contender and a 1900MR online warrior can also be very vast.

[@trunks4671]

Ranked is not a reflection of the best players/characters it’s a reflection of who grinds the most

[@TheGreektrojan]

Its more the former. Matchmaking tries its best to get to 50/50 so its naturally going to smooth out different matchups. While 1900 isn't win ECT good, its probably 'can hang in ECT and not get washed in round one' good. Its good data for what it is but it has its limitations.

[@HotCrossB1S]

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

[@CommandThrow]

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.

[@EstelleFGC]

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.

[@Amaling]

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

[@h2_]

a tournament viability tier list is just the product of matchup charts times tournament character pick-rates.

[@TenaciousGronn]

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.

[@MerkaRaukea]

Dhalsim main, it's rough... until I get to fight a Gief. Sooooo much of what Gief can do is easily evaded or just MP'd out of. Avoid the lower kicks too much though, hurtbox goes out farther than you think.

[@Calhasnopals]

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

[@element9219]

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

[@cocorochefort882]

Match ups make the tier list, not the other way around.

[@Boyzby]

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.

[@alanhorton7859]

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."

[@RougeMephilesClone]

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.

[@Altra_duck]

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)

[@nintendogodxeno8997]

2:26 Man I wish I cared about blanka enough to feel sorry for this interaction

[@merlinthetuna]

I think the sentiment here largely works, but a lot still boils down to "People like to yap". When Sim-Gief is the worst matchup in the game at 6-4, the game is just... well-balanced. Matchups play differently, and certainly I'd rather be the 5.5 over the 4.5, but we're not looking at a Super Turbo matchup spread with 8-2s all over the place.

[@MDToboggan]

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.

[@lawnbb12372]

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.

[@MDToboggan]

@@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.

[@pedroscoponi4905]

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.

[@Raxyz_0]

Also, I don't play at high level, but Bison-Gief MU seems Bison favored. Gief has a slow walk speed so that makes harder for him to mess up with your scissors' timing, and the armored stHP doesn't work because it's a two-hit move. He also lacks good 4 frame punishes, which means you can get away with poorly spaced H scissors very often. If Bison's damage gets nerfed in S3 (which I expect it will) it might be even since Gief can exploit his poor defense pretty well, but Bison being able to negate the "health as a resource" concept Gief players have to abide by with Psycho Mine is a huge plus in his favor right now.

[@21leowheeler]

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.

[@bar_bar1296]

To me, tier lists should always rely on MU spread as the primary data for the list, not sure when it shifted to be primarily results/recency bias oriented. How good a char’s overall MU spread is + how many of their good/bad MUs are common tournament characters is the best measure to compare character’s strength in my opinion. I do understand that making nuanced matchup charts is really hard and not possible for single individuals too.

[@Gadlight]

I mean, Zangief its in his gamer tag, that should say something already.

[@JohnnyTheFlash_]

broski watches false swipe

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

People need to realize fighting games are all based on vibes with all things being equal.

[@ustinodj]

Any worthwhile tier list uses matchups for placements anyway.

[@mastertwin216]

false swipe would be proud

[@greenoftreeblackofblue6625]

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.

[@dangerouslydubiousdoubleda9821]

Brutus got dealt every Dhalsim in the bracket it was rough. Ultimately its disrespectful to ignore the men behind the stick Punk has the best neutral on the planet rn, so when he's given a character with amazing walk speed and great buttons, yeah he's gonna do extremely well, and win EVO, hell even in Season 1, bro finished 3rd in two back to back supermajors. Itazan is considered the greatest Zangief ever, Mena is a legend in his own right having two Capcom Cup's plus spending months in Japan training his Gief. Characters have strengths that when applied to players that share those similar strengths can absolutely find success at the elite level.

[@buzeriotv]

I think if you're making a tier list for how good a character is in a tournament, you have to consider matchups. A character being strong in a vaccum is very different to a character being strong in the current meta of the game. Lilly and Dhalsim being bad matchups isn't too big a deal, you don't encounter those very often. A character like Cammy or Akuma being a bad matchup means you might want to consider a secondary. 100% agree on matchup charts being more useful than tier lists. Focusing on tier lists is a trap.

[@hackprefect]

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.

[@toniosan1590]

Everything is true in this video. I'm surprised of people really thinking gief is "broken" while I personally realised all you said 2 months ago as a gief player. And everybody seam to forget that we are just out of a 6-8 months where we just saw Ken/luk/JP and gief was not even on top 8 of tournaments

[@THTB614]

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 😂)

[@LunaDachi]

False Broski Gaming

[@pretzels7437]

I think the reason gief is working is just because his damage carries him. SFV he was nigh unusable unless you played the casino with heavy spd. Here he lost the casino but now just needs 3 spd to kill. And because he gets way more damage off PC spd, you get scared to parry which in turn allows him to annihilate your drive

[@user-wg1gd5gg7s]

Been using Guile for 30 years and the minute I felt how good Gief could do in that MU in SF6 instantly opened my eyes to how powerful he is. The concept of his archetype kind of falls apart due to drive rush which many people predicted. Not sure why people still hang onto the old idea of Gief needing to work super super hard to close distance. Apart from perhaps Dhalsim he doesnt struggle and even then because SF6 skews towards forced interactions so hard I think anyone with a command grab is quite simply at a big advantage. A good gief can gamble big and beat absolutely anyone in a ft2.