Acku80 compiled a SSF4 community matchup tier list based on votes from players. Over 500 people participated in creating this project. Acku80 had this to say about it.
Since all match-up points are summed and averaged you could call this a tierlist, however, you need to take into account the different levels of skills the players have. At worst it gives you a view on the common ongoing competition for most dedicated players and how they experience their matchups. At best it gives you a fresh view on tierlists that are usually put together by a handful of players that don't actually main the characters they judge.
To provide better results some measures were taken:
• One could only vote if he had a password for the character he wished to vote on. These passwords were distributed per character on the shoryuken.com SSF4 character boards.
• Only the middle 80% votes per matchup were used in the calculations.
You can also compare these with the current tier rankings for SSF4 here on the site, which were last updated in October 2010.
After checking out the list, leave a comment below with your thoughts on it.
I see that you're not going to mention anything about this being from Shoryuken.com. Yeah, that makes sense!
It should be labeled that way, so that there is some kind of distinction. The entire Eventhubs community is not on SRK.com and the same goes for the opposite.
The list seems more to be about popularity rather than strength.
Honda and guile are tooo low. They are in my opinion one of the strongest character, I main guile and I use honda, and it always suprises me how much and how easily I can win with honda.
I also use dudley and he is way too low, he never has the upper hand in this list.
the official one is the most accurate in my opinion
Oh, I see that Catalyst updated the entry with more details about how the list was constructed. No problems now.
@Ralenzo
If you read the post again, you'll see it's not about popularity. The poller asked players on all of the SSF4 character forums on Shoryuken.com to rate matches for their main character. By taking the average and excluding outliers, he basically got a fairly accurate depiction of the tiers based on the people he polled. Also, I main Dudley and voted, and he is right where he belongs in my opinion. He is one of the weakest characters in SSF4.
(Well the list is right considering Hakan vs Blanka, can't say much else tho...been away from the game for too long)
Dee Jay is just like how he is in Super Street Fighter 2, extremely underrated. The only thing really holding Dee Jay back is that his damage output is atrocious. Him being above Ryu is not that surprising.
@darkyellow
Yeah I kno, it wasn't about popularity. I said it looked like it was about popularity, Yeah dudley is also one of my main, and I win far more often than I lose with him. I think he is so underrated. Maybe it's just my playstyle I dunno.
I love playing against shoto characters with him for an instance. The only problem I have with him is charge characters,like honda, guile and balrog. They are my main problem.
Dudley is actually pretty good against the shotos. Capcom gave him enough tools to deal with them fairly well. Ken is a problem though because of the step kick and kara throw from the step kick. The characters that give him problems are the ones that have better footsies than he is, which is a very large portion of the cast. Chun, Bison, Rog, Vega, Honda, Dhalsim etc. are tough because their normals are just better than Dudley's. Rog is actually my personal worst match-up since he can get in on an opponent better than Dudley, his normals have more range than Dudley's, he has a lot of focus breaks, he has better frame traps than Dudley, and his normals are better than Dudley's at Dudley's effective range.
I'm interested to see how this tier list will be revamped come AE. It does look respectable though. Cammy at the top of the list is pretty impressive though, she generally is a solid character has a lot of ways of punishing opponents so no wrong doing there.
So you're saying because of lag tactics Ryu is better than he's ranked. Man, I totally forgot that all major tournaments are played online. Silly me
@ #21
In my opinion he really is that bad
poor stamina
one risky wake-up option(ex gekiro, gets stuffed quite often from a cross up and is very gimmicky.. can be punished, which for the damage output is not worth it) other than that he's gotta block well.
Slow meter gain
Hard links
poor ultra 2
bad damage output
he has decent normals but that's about it.. the rest is gimmick
for the work that you put in with that character the reward is easily the worst in the game.
Gen can also get easily out-footsied when he is on the ground.
Having a cross-up is much better than an overhead in this game. A cross-up doesn't normally lose to Shoryu FADC or backdashing.
Gief community representing moat of the match ups for him are accurate
@ TheRakeCLown
I actually have to agree with everything there. I main gen post vanilla (yea i know i missed the boat lol) and aside from his footsies, which i think are fine, most of his options are incredibly unsafe. ogas against even a semi compitent player get blocked and punished 90% of the time. every roll is unsafe to all grapplers, and his only safe special is hilariously weak, AND difficult to do in combos! i use crlp st mp cr crane mpxx lp roll, or (mp) mp mk hands, and both at their level of difficulty dont do as much as codys cr hpxx hp c.upper. i love using him, but he just doesnt have whats required to be played at high level. then again, neither do i lol XD just give us back our ex oga, it was like the ONE thing aside from mk hands that made him viable... :(
I've been a Gen player since vanilla. He is far less of a character than he was back then.. he was IMO mid - mid upper tier back then.
He's easily bottom 3 in super.. I can admit I'm salty and biased, but when I look at the options, stats and effort of characters, I can't see my answer changing. AE might be a different story due to damage output, but as far as the wake up game goes... it won't have improved. With Gens poor stamina, he really needed a better wake up game (EX OGA would of been the key to make Gen complete). Which is why I think Gen will be around the bottom area of the tier list for the rest of the street fighter 4 series.
Rogs moves are only unsafe if you do them right in the player's face. Balrog has tons of range and much easier ways to get in. He can just do a well spaced dash punch and he's in a good range for him. Not to mention that EX dash punches nullify cross-up attempts.
Gen is definitely the worst character in this game. I'm a Gen player myself, and like RakeClown said, yeah, perhaps slightly salty abd biased, but I'm pretty sure he's the weakest character in the game atm. And what's slight off-putting is seeing someone like Makoto getting some love, putting her in something like top 5 in AE.
I'd probably say Bison is overall best atm, he should've gotten top spot.
As an amateur Gen player, here are my opinions of what Gen needs to be truly competitive in SSFIV Arcade Home-Edition. :) Remember, these are my opinions as an amateur Gen player.
1st, ultras and supers:
1) Teiga ultra needs increased speed and/or increased hit-box.
2) Sh*tenketsu ultra would improve greatly if it was invincible at start-up.
3) If an opponent misses a cross-up or has their back turned towards you, then they eat a Zetsuei ultra or Zan'ei super.... no questions asked. Both whiff all too often in Super.
2nd, normals and specials:
4) EX Oga needs to re-receive the invincibility for escape. Capcom should have never removed this.
5) More normal links. It looks like they are making an effort here as it is claimed he can cancel more normals in A.E., but A.E. Home-Edition wouldn't hurt from having even more links and combos available.
6) Finally, they can leave his Vitality and Stun alone as long as they give us the changes listed above, and increase his damage output ever so slightly.
I main Gen (and Honda).
Yeah, he's that bad.
He's a low-health character that lacks damage without meter, mixup, ability to get in easily, and wakeup options. That doesn't leave him with much.
What he does have going for him is great pokes that can easily be hitconfirmed into damage with meter, probably the single best super in the game, a lot of damaging situational ways to land Ultra, and good frame traps on the inside (standing strong is +5 on block!). He can play footsies pretty well and after an untechable knockdown he has a lot of crossup shenanigans (especially with Oga though they're character and situation-specific).
AE isn't going to fix much. His damage potential is going to go up quite a bit, and he builds more meter now that he has better and safer blockstrings. But he still has to get in range to use them, and he still has bad wakeup, mixup, or ability to get in.
Gen just isn't tournament viable, unless you're _significantly_ better than your opponents (which is why Yeb still wins).
However, if you compare him to someone like Sean or Remy, he actually isn't that terrible. Super is a balanced game and even the worst character still has mostly 3-7 and 4-6 matchups. Compare that to 3s where the bottom tier had a lot of 2-8 matchups - playing low tiers in SSF4 is much easier.
But, this brings me to the second issue with Gen. He's a high-execution character that takes a lot of time to learn. But he doesn't reward all the time spent on him, as someone like Viper or Ibuki (who're comparably hard) would. So really from a competitive standpoint there's no reason to spend time on him at all, which is why you don't see much Gen.
Capcom's party line of "people don't play Gen to compete but because they're drawn to his style" is insulting BS. Most people don't play Gen period. I play him because I mained him in vanilla and still like the character, but I only play him casually now and go in with Honda. And I have to work less to win in Honda's hardest matchups than I have to in Gen's easiest.
Also: I think this tierlist ranks Honda more or less right. Honda in Super is like Gief was in Vanilla: abusive against half the cast, loses badly to the other half. Honda doesn't have a whole lot of even matchups. Rushdown characters without projectiles lose to Honda. Honda loses to projectile keepaway characters. That's pretty much it. He wins his good matchups by a bigger margin than he loses his bad ones so he looks very good on the official tierlist, but he's a B+ character, and always has been (in SF4 anyway).
I'm actually really looking forward to AE. Despite his nerfs I think most of his bad matchups will be easier (except Sim and maybe Sagat) and his good matchups won't be as abusive. Plus people are finding out a lot more changes to him than what Capcom noted so he'll have some new BnB's as well.
@34:
Fei vs. Rog is bad for Fei. Balrog has EX moves, which go through Rekkas. Fei's focus can be pretty useless because of Rog's safe armor breaking moves. FK doesn't break armor on first hit, so it trades with Rog's EX moves. Even U1 trades with EX moves 'cause it's not armor breaking.
Not to mention Rekkas are pretty bad because Rog's jabs are waaay too fast to punish. Generally Fei has to guess to be successful in this match-up.
However, a badly spaced turn punch can be countered with HK CW into cl. HP > Rekkas/FK, but that's pretty risky too.
Fei has to bait and react like hell in this match-up. And you have to be on point to punish his Dash Straights with cr. LP > Rekkas.
Voluntary response sample. You can't really do much with this data as it is likely some people tried to make their character look better or worse than they really are. You have dishonesty add to the fact that there is also more votes for certain characters than others.
@ #46
That's not a character difference that is a player difference. Those guys are very talented and very skillful. They put the work in at the game let alone the ins and outs of their characters and their match ups. They're not an example of Gen not being the worst character in the game, they're a testiment to the idea of "you can win with any character" and "this is the most balanced fighting game around" and I agree with both of those sayings. The saying of you can win with any character though lessens and lessens as you enter high level tournament play, when others know the ins and outs of their match ups and characters too, then Gen fundamentally will not succeed. It's why you'll never see Gen place anywhere close to top at a major (same goes for most other bottom tier characters).
But genuinly, much respect to the 2 players you mentions. Hard working players and decent people.
With all due respect to the effort made, the list is bull and just a concoction of unexamined intuitions, bandwagoning, and scrub-thinking. It's nice to collect user opinion and all, but if you really wanted to do something helpful here, just collect the opinions of those people who are very high level and follow the same process (limit them to their character). Don't throw out the 20% of the data either just because it is at extremes. Some *good* people I know actually believe, for example, that Seth vs Gief is 9-1.
Some thing else to consider: only 2 of the top 5 characters on this list have won a major. Top players are going to view these matchups differently. Better to get the opinion of the top players who play a character than randoms... because the reason some of the characters are so high is because scrubs do not know what to do against those character's standard tactics (cammy, bison) and not because these characters are top tier.
Gen is a bad character (but I like him because he's not boring, unlike Ryu and Blanka, lol).
1) Poor Stamina
2) High Execution
3) High Risk/High Reward with little pay off (it's like feeding lions in the wilderness without a radio and gun, rflmao.)
4) Very LOW damage output
5) Needs to hit opponent a lot to kill them
6) Has to back off so he doesn't get killed in two or three combos.
Gen does OK against fireball characters sometimes, but he loses to grapplers and other rush down characters are just....better, like Viper/Ibuki/Makoto.
Fei vs. Balrog is definitely not favorable. Balrog breaks armor easily. Balrog's Jabs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Fei's Focus attack because they are stupid fast and have good priority. Fei Long can't even compete face to face, lol, he'll get knocked out. He has to pace back and fourth and pick a spot to catch Balrog off guard. While Balrog can just rush in and pressure Fei, only when Rog is knocked down can Fei really capitalize or when Balrog whiffs.
Gen is the worst character in the game? HAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA dont make me laugh guys: seriously
Thanks for posting it up. In the analysis part I actually compare it to the 'official' list posted here. Make sure to check that part out :)