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Tiering Philosophy - It's that time again


Narga_Rocks
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Unfinished logic there. Without the bexp dump (an investment far more sizeable than simply choosing to have your mounted healer follow Sigurd), Mia is 0% likely to push Ike from one square to another. At least Sigurd is somewhat likely to not get too hurt if you just play through a turn without constantly saving. Without the bexp dump, Mia can only visit the villages and will not contribute to the 6-turn completion.

Nobody is going to punish Thany or Rutger for their dubious interrelation, I'm sure, though there are plenty of other reasons to penalise either of them.

My view is that the investment doesn't matter if there is no opportunity cost to it. So if Mia getting bexp does not negatively affect reliability, and our future turn count somewhere else in the game, then I see no reason to penalize her. I don't penalize units based on needing investments if their investments have no significant opportunity cost.

I don't think the investment itself matters when a mounted healer follows Sigurd. I agree that the investment is trivial. But it is not the investment I am attacking; rather, it is the fact that Sigurd needs this mounted healer to help him--it's proof of the fact that his reliability is less then perfect, which is why I think he should be penalized.

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IMO, all the FE theory in the world means jack if it can't be applied to the FE game in question.

I'm applying the theory in front of your eyes. At least read the thread thoroughly before posting.

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I'm applying the theory in front of your eyes. At least read the thread thoroughly before posting.

I have. I still don't see how Thany/Marcia theoretically saving 50 turns is practice.

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........they aren't. I've already explained this. We were discussing direct vs. indirect reliance to see which is more important by using physically possible examples (while this may not be true in practice, it is physically possible that these examples could come up in future games.)

I then argued that they were equally important, then said we should ignore both because if direct and indirect reliance do not negatively affect reliability, then I see no reason why we should penalize a unit simply for the same of relying on another unit.

Now my claim is that we should be penalizing the normal FE4 Sigurd (not a hypothetical one) for needing healing; not for the sake of needing healing but just because of the fact that he needs healing, which means that his reliability is less than perfect.

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Have you considered penalising units for forcing you to move them around the field and attack enemies? The thought progression is begging for it.

I don't understand. What does penalizing Sigurd for not having perfect reliability have to do anything with this at all?

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I don't understand. What does penalizing Sigurd for not having perfect reliability have to do anything with this at all?

Other units will run into the same problems, such as needing healing/being out of position because I hate Chapter 2. Does this mean that such things should be held against Sigurd?

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Other units will run into the same problems, such as needing healing/being out of position because I hate Chapter 2. Does this mean that such things should be held against Sigurd?

So what? Better reliability > worse reliability. Perfect reliability > worse reliability. You guys are arguing against basic common sense at this point. I have no idea what your point is.

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So what? Better reliability > worse reliability. Perfect reliability > worse reliability. You guys are arguing against basic common sense at this point. I have no idea what your point is.

Rather than putting the issue of Sigurd as "needs healing", perhaps it should be scaled, instead. Otherwise, no one belongs in top tier (since everyone will need healing at some point). Sigurd will probably need less healing than, say, Aideen, if you were to throw them into the same hostile force with pointy weapons.

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Sigurd is still relatively superior, which is reason enough for him to go into the top tier. Tier lists are by definition relative things to compare units to other units

He is still penalized, but his relative superiority puts him in top tier.

Edited by Olwen
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You're probably the only debater in history who has an issue with "fabricating" definitions for terms. The truth is that when there is no widely accepted definition for technical terms, it's perfectly okay for you to introduce your own sense of the term which you think prevents a logical contradiction. For example, a man named Harry Frankfurt argued 30 years ago against the commonly held belief that free will was "the ability to do otherwise." Then, a man named Widerker gave his own sense of free will, in which he argued that it was the ability to make decisions. Frankfurt, in his reply, argued that a person is someone who has second-order volitions (again offering his own definition for a widely understood term). In "Survival and Identity," David Lewis redefined identity as non-transitive in order to prevent a logical contradiction with the fission case. People much more experienced than either of us have no issue with "fabricating" definitions.

i have never had an issue with "fabricating" definitions for terms as they apply to fire emblem.

read carefully. i clearly "fabricated" the definition of "reliance" as it applies to fire emblem. let it be known that you were the one who expressed dissatisfaction with my "fabrication" of this definition. i was merely pointing out your self-contradictory position, since you have no problems with making things up.

frankly i think that it would be better if we kept the definition shenanigans to a minimum. there are issues with employing these definitions - 1) not everyone knows exactly what they mean, 2) people use them incorrectly, and 3) people argue over them unnecessarily. perhaps the most salient effect of promoting the use of arbitrary definitions is that it solidifies the exclusivity of the serenes forest tiering clique.

It isn't my fault if you aren't experienced with arguments enough to make solid ones, though I really suggest you do some readings. Here is an aforementioned reading: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_possibilities. And here is Lewis redefining identity: http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/metaphysics/readings/Lewis.SurvivalAndIdentity.pdf

i don't need an article on metaphysics to tell me what makes sense and what doesn't. (and, um, it's not my fault if you do?)

but that's okay, i never really respected you either. i'm glad that you have the courage to so subtly imply it in your post.

You seem to have simply ignored my argument about Titania. I am not claiming that Titania goes poof and disappears. As Cynthia puts it, tier lists measure how likely a character is to be used. So higher tiers have a higher chance of being used. If Titania has a 90% chance of being used, that doesn't mean she is going to be used for certain, and that we can take her use for granted. If one decided not to use her at all for exp hog issues, Marcia would indeed be screwed.

no, i haven't. this has already been addressed by other users, but i am going to say it once more: if titania is deployed (for free) and you choose to eschew her, that means that you are violating the premise of LTC. now say that titania being an EXP hog is a real issue. well, if you drop her after her forced deployment ends, chances are that you will take fewer total turns using titania and having a slightly weaker team when you drop her compared to not using titania and having a slightly stronger team when you drop her.

so guess what? using titania is still good! now, i'm sure that this will prompt you to launch into hypothetical-idealized-olwen-version-of-FE9 v. 42 where somehow using titania during her forced period is a net detriment, but let me warn you ahead of time that such a tangent is fruitless.

the real issue that you have is what we mean by "using" a unit. traditionally the definition of "using" a unit serves the primary purpose of securing a single resource: a deployment slot. obviously, deployment slots are valuable resources, and it would be nonsensical to penalize units for requiring deployment slots (since the opportunity cost of deploying rolf is deploying marcia). it says nothing about forcing a unit to stand in a corner of the map.

Second, you conveniently ignored my counterargument on your examples, in which I found a middle ground to illustrate that there are cases in which indirect reliance matters.

Say we have ridiculously hard to get LTC requirements, so hard that only someone like me can get them. And they require everyone to be used: Titania, Shinon, Oscar, Boyd, and so on. Now, as Cynthia puts it, a tier list measures a character's likelihood of usage. But it does not say that every single character has to be used. So Marcia would rely on the low probability chance that every single character has to be used: Boyd, Shinon, Oscar, Titania and so on, for if they are not used, Marcia cannot get a bexp dump great enough to promote her.

i ignored it precisely because it was so impractical. but because you seem so firmly convinced that i have the argumentative capabilities of a neanderthal, i suppose i'll have to address it now anyway.

suppose that this hypothetical situation were representative of FE9.

1) marcia would not need to promote immediately in order to be a top tier unit. you could plow her to 16/0 instead of 20/1 and she would still be head and shoulders above every other unit. in fact, you could get her to just the bare minimum level where she can be an adequate frontline unit and she'll become a juggernaut in no time.

2) the positions of boyd, shinon, oscar, and titania on the tier list should already represent their contribution to LTCs in those chapters. gaining BEXP is a side effect of LTCing those chapters. giving credit to those units for earning that BEXP would be double-counting their contributions.

note that 2) is logically consistent with my opinion on thany and rutger. if rutger saves more turns on a team with thany than on a team without thany, then that just means that rutger "got better." again, i don't need to fall back on some abstract definition of "reliance" to illustrate this point. read post #127 again.

Edited by dondon151
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I have no idea what you mean by the first two lines, but I will respond to the third. Why on earth would it be better "if we keep the definition shenanigans to a minimum?" There is nothing more important than defining our concepts in a non-ad hoc way in arguments. Why would we rely on our intuitions to vaguely define terms for us? There is no rational debater alive in the world who would claim that definitions aren't important, and that we shouldn't argue over them. If we can't establish solid, agreed-upon definitions, how on earth can we have a rational debate?

1) Everyone will know exactly what they mean once I define them--and once we list those definitions out after agreeing on them.

2) They won't use them incorrectly if we define them properly.

3) People argue over everything unnecessarily, but in the end, a democracy wins once we can agree upon some definitions.

The issues with the definitions you guys use is that none of them are well-defined. And once you guys do define them, you seem to add various ad hoc adjustments such as stuff about direct reliance and indirect reliance without even being able to articulate your view coherently. They aren't logically necessary things to consider at all, so I don't see why we should even waste time arguing about them.

Here are the non-ad hoc, very simple definitions for the terms I use.

Complexity: the number of calculations to complete a chapter efficiently. I believe this is logically necessary, to prevent contradictions like Edward from rising to the top of the FE10 tier list. Furthermore, I believe that this is preferable over a subjective notion like "difficulty."

Turns saved: A unit saves turns if and only if the highest possible turn count for a chapter without them is higher.

Reliability: The chance that a unit will do actions with reliability. This is measured by percentages.

Note that I am not adding anything logically unnecessary with crap like "reliance on other units" or "double-counting." I am taking a minimalist approach, whereby I only consider the terms which I consider to be logically necessary and nothing else. These are the only things which I would like to use when comparing units to each other in tier lists. So I don't take points from FE9 Mia for taking bexp if there's no opportunity cost, as the effect on reliability is trivial, whether it be direct or indirect. There is also nothing about "uniqueness," which I think is inherently contradictory. If we had a million Marcias in FE9, I see no reason for them to go into bottom tier, or for them to go into low tier and the rest of the units in bottom tier. For it would be silly to put them in low tier when the very term has negative connotations, while there is nothing intuitively negative about having a million Marcias. I do not find it logically necessary to penalize units based on uniqueness--only award if necessary (such as the case of Volke being one of the only two thiefs in FE9).

It is not complete to claim that if we deploy Titania and if we don't use her, we are violating the premise of LTC, as you put it. In tier lists, I still rank Jill and so on even though it would "violate the premise of LTC" to recruit Jill--I even rank her very high. I rank Stefan and so on at decent places despite causing us to lose turns. I could make an ultra-super-LTC tier list, of course, but I think that would be too strict to be a good tier list. After all, the idea of a tier list is for other people to see, and not just for myself. So it is not necessary to use Marcia even in LTC tier lists--though I grant that the probability of that will be very high. The strategies I use in my tier list are both reliable and go as fast as possible. But we can go as fast as possible without using Titania; we can go as fast as possible without using Marcia; and we can go as fast as possible when we recruit Jill. My tier list considers all of these possibilities.

But if it were the case that Marcia could not promote immediately, then we would have issues in Chapter 12, where Marcia saves 6 turns alone. She would not be able to kill the boss, and that could cost us a turn or two--I'm not sure. So if Marcia misses out on this bonus experience, the other units and your strategies have disappointed her--because Marcia relies on your other units and your strategies to get this bonus experience and shave one or two turns. You could make the counterargument that Thany relies on Rutger alone, and without him she is useless and has no way to get back up to par without him, unlike Marcia, who can promote with a couple of chapters of bexp. But remember that Rutger is replacable, and he is not the only unit you get in the game. I believe even mounted units like Lance can be rescued (I don't know if Thany can rescue Lance, though) so there are other units which can replace Rutger. Dieck could be one of them. I'm no expert on FE6 though, so feel free to correct me.

But I do not see an issue with double-counting, as we discussed earlier. I believe it would be ad hoc to claim that double-counting is an issue, for I do not see a logical contradiction with double-counting.

Also, further note that I had no intention of insulting you. I was simply pointing you to sources to illustrate that definitions are important and worth arguing over in debates.

Edited by Olwen
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Efficiency varies with the motive a player wants to achieve, be it a low turn count game or just a simple, casual run. Whether tiering is based on a statistical average of stats, opinions, or other factors, I honestly don't know, but no tier list is perfect. A character deemed to be low-tiered could easily turn out RNG blessed, or a high tier character could be RNG screwed. You also have to bear in mind that tier lists are generated by people, and where there are people, chances are, the list author's bias toward specific characters can easily be incorporated into the list, or perhaps even the author's luck with the RNG system for better or worse could be as well. For example, many lists I've seen tend to bash on Micaiah a lot for her low speed and fragility, but on my first run of RD, her speed turned out decent (but not bad enough to get doubled by everything like others claim), and you do have to admit that compared to Rapiers (or other similar weapons), Thani is particularly efficient due to it being able to deal magical rather than physical damage. Personally, I don't care for tier lists, but I know that while some are based off of trivial reasons like the ones I specified, there are some based off of cold, hard facts as to a character's efficiency. A good tier list requires a player to have experimented with every character of a particular game at least once rather than forsaking them as benchwarmers. My example of this was with Lucia, who was quite useful and grew fairly well in the Hawk Army chapters and the Tower of Guidance (no babying or nepotism involved, unless giving her the Adept ability from Aimee's bargains counts) regardless of how many tier lists tend to place her in low tiers. Not only must stats, ability to tank, damage output, or other basic things be taken into account, but also other forms of tactical utility such as Canto or Tanith's Reinforce skill. Efficiency varies with not only basic tactical utility, but more importantly, consistent applicability of a character's tactical utility. Like I said, depending on the player's motive, a character's tactical utility should be flexibly applicable, and sometimes even sporadically applicable in certain situations.

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But I do not see an issue with double-counting, as we discussed earlier. I believe it would be ad hoc to claim that double-counting is an issue, for I do not see a logical contradiction with double-counting.

An employee at your business makes a new advertisement. You pay them their salary. The advertisement is used to generate money for your business.

Do you need to pay them again since they made you money?

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An employee at your business makes a new advertisement. You pay them their salary. The advertisement is used to generate money for your business.

Do you need to pay them again since they made you money?

Two replies: It isn't practical to pay them money again, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't rationally pay them money again.

It isn't practical to base our lives on the fact that natural selection is true, though it is the rational thing to do.

As there are no practical disadvantages to double-counting in tier lists, I don't see an issue.

Another reply is that the salary could include the fact that they made you money.

Edited by Olwen
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Complexity - This is really vague. What is being taken into account?

Turns saved - You lost me.

Reliability - How precise do you want to be? Saying "about 50%" for hit rates/dodge works if you're dealing with a range of 49%-51%; if you decide that "about 50%" is 47%-53%, the true hit gap widens from about 4% to 7.5%. Obviously, the further away from 50% you deviate, the more precision you'll get, but even that has some variance.

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It's more "complex" to clear Chapter 4 of FE9 than Chapter 1 of FE9. More thinking and calculations are required in order to do so. So turns saved in such a chapter are more valuable than a turns saved in a less complex one.

Chapter 1 can be cleared in 5 turns without Titania. With Titania, that's 2 turns. So Titania saves... 5 - 2 = 3 turns. Very simple.

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As there are no practical disadvantages to double-counting in tier lists, I don't see an issue.

For somebody who has spent the entire topic talking about what's -logical- this line just seems... wrong. There's no practical disadvantage to doing anything in any way when it comes to tier lists because they don't actually matter.

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There's a clear line between what's logical and what's practical.

Consider 3 drunk drivers. One drives and doesn't harm anyone. One drives and hits a person. One drives and kills a person.

Logic dictates that they are equally to blame, as it was a matter of chance that they hit someone or killed someone. Logic says they should all get the same sentence.

But we practically can't do that. Can you imagine the consequences of sentencing people for a couple months for killing someone?

Funnily enough, I agreed with you in the post you replied to. I said we should not do anything practical on tier lists as they don't matter; instead rely on pure reason.

Edited by Olwen
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It's more "complex" to clear Chapter 4 of FE9 than Chapter 1 of FE9. More thinking and calculations are required in order to do so. So turns saved in such a chapter are more valuable than a turns saved in a less complex one.

Chapter 1 can be cleared in 5 turns without Titania. With Titania, that's 2 turns. So Titania saves... 5 - 2 = 3 turns. Very simple.

Putting stuff like this in your definitions as examples helps a lot. While I'm a bit sketchy about the values of turns saved in terms of complexity, at least I have a better idea of what you're talking about.

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There's a clear line between what's logical and what's practical.

Consider 3 drunk drivers. One drives and doesn't harm anyone. One drives and hits a person. One drives and kills a person.

Logic dictates that they are equally to blame, as it was a matter of chance that they hit someone or killed someone. Logic says they should all get the same sentence.

But we practically can't do that. Can you imagine the consequences of sentencing people for a couple months for killing someone?

Funnily enough, I agreed with you in the post you replied to. I said we should not do anything practical on tier lists as they don't matter; instead rely on pure reason.

Well, yea. One gets a DUI, the other two get worse charges with the last getting a manslaughter/reckless endangerment charge in addition to the DUI depending on the case. That's hardly the same thing though as counting something twice on a tier list.

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Putting stuff like this in your definitions as examples helps a lot. While I'm a bit sketchy about the values of turns saved in terms of complexity, at least I have a better idea of what you're talking about.

Edward in FE10 saves around 30-40 turns due to 1-P. Does he deserve to be a couple tiers above Haar?

Clearly not. That's why I thought of complexity in the first place, to come up with an objective solution.

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