OMG it's a tier list

[dondon151]

If you think the idea not worth discussing, you're free to ignore the discussion.

stop here. why is option 3 - a debate on whether the idea is worth discussing - not an option? you and red fox have both championed this sort of anti-intellectual argument-quashing, and i'd like to know why.

[Baldrick]

Nono, it means the term hasn't been defined properly yet! ^_^

[Baldrick]

FE6 0% growths is not a subject I'm interested in. Do I:

A) leave the discussion to those who enjoy it

B) make snarky comments in the thread

You're free to challenge the idea, but I get the impression the topic makes PKL's blood boil. So I'm just letting him know he doesn't have to put on the red light.

[dondon151]

I was just noting that 103 seemed arbitrary at a glance, so a simple vector with a range of enemy atks could reveal some interesting information.

realistically you're not going to blindly throw jill into a pile of laguz of arbitrary levels, races, and weapon ranks. that would be the sort of tiering rhetoric employed back before 2009.

[Redwall]

EDIT: oh nvm I think I misread the Energy Drop point?

The Energy Drop is intended specifically for helping Jill get EXP more reliably; I would be surprised if it directly helped a Beastfoe-equipped Jill in 3-6.

And yeah, I more or less just pulled 103 out of thin air, lol. Wasn't entirely sure what to put in, but it doesn't seem too unreasonable looking at the enemy-stats page.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Nessie

[Baldrick]

@pkl: speeding haar is intuitive because his speed is bad, but everything else is awesome. Flying has nothing to do with it, giving Boyd wings is also intuitive. Jill's offence and defence aren't bad, so improving them won't occur to you unless you know a lot about the meta game.

[PKL]

FE6 0% growths is not a subject I'm interested in. Do I:

A) leave the discussion to those who enjoy it

B) make snarky comments in the thread

You're free to challenge the idea, but I get the impression the topic makes PKL's blood boil. So I'm just letting him know he doesn't have to put on the red light.

I just think, like, you know, we should be discussing tier placements instead of all this theory stupidity bullcrap :)

EDIT: Except the fact, that Jill(T) is more than just a flier. She has existing stats, and theyre pretty good.

EDIT 2: wrong, it would be the first thing to spring to my mind. Like Haar needing a wing. What's the difference here?

Edited October 8, 2013 by PKL

[Espinosa]

FE6 0% growths is not a subject I'm interested in. Do I:

A) leave the discussion to those who enjoy it

B) make snarky comments in the thread

You're free to challenge the idea, but I get the impression the topic makes PKL's blood boil. So I'm just letting him know he doesn't have to put on the red light.

The difference is that this thread isn't dedicated solely to discussions of the concept of intuitiveness, and users with faith in the community can criticse dubious directions the topic takes. Similarly, if a 0% growths thread started erring somewhere in preparation or resource allocation or whatever, it wouldn't be out of place (on the contrary, it'd be in everyone's interest) to make corrections and ensure the run is progressing properly, not necessarily in a snarky manner (though I do sometimes wonder if people here are as harsh and straightforward offline as they are here, then they must be getting into health-threatening trouble regularly).

[dondon151]

FE6 0% growths is not a subject I'm interested in. Do I:

A) leave the discussion to those who enjoy it

B) make snarky comments in the thread

you're comparing apples to oranges (and i think you know this full well, otherwise you wouldn't be making this attempt at straw-grasping). the question of intuition is wholly relevant to the topic at hand, i.e., a tier list. so your choice to censure a dissenting viewpoint, which is that intuition is irrelevant to this topic, is directly suppressing an avenue of discussion.

so let's compare apples to apples instead. suppose that i opened a new thread in the FE6 forum that made the contention that the official FE6 tier list, and by extension, probably all official FE tier lists, should tier units based only on the assumptions of 0% growths. do you:

a) leave the discussion to those who enjoy it

b) make snarky comments in the thread (an epithet for disagreement, i presume)

well, if you think that the assumptions of 0% growths is unrepresentative of real gameplay in any way, then you should by all means make those snarky comments, and i wouldn't attempt to stop you from doing so.

back to the original scenario. since you were willing to bring it up in the first place, then by all means, i entreat you to go to my FE6 0% growths topic and try to troll the living daylights out of it. i can assure you that your posts would be summarily deleted and that your warn bar would quickly accumulate. you know as well as i do that this is an experiment with a predictable outcome, so why did you attempt to draw the parallel between my FE6 playthrough thread and this tier list thread in the first place?

[Baldrick]

@pkl: that's all you have to say. The best approach is to drown out discussion you don't like with discussion you do :)

@espinosa: sure, but doesn't change the fact that the intuitive thing is roughly on topic and snarky comments are not.

That said, I've given the theory a fair go, and the reaction is overwhelmingly negative, so that's that. I'm done with it.

[shadykid]

So, like, why is giving Haar a speedwing because he's the only GM flier intuitive while giving boosters to the only DB flier unintuitive? Seriously, like dondon says, this is absolute nonsense.

obvious spoilers: your average player is gonna completely ignore Haar in favor of Ike and a GM of their choice

so much for "intuition"

Edited October 8, 2013 by shadykid

[General Banzai]

intuition is a bollocks system of measurement

[Florete]

@RFoF. You say stuff like its simple or hard or obvious. Your counterargument to people asking why is your judgment any better than mine/anyone else is literally no you are wrong. trust me i am right. Not only is it dodging the question, its proving their point.

While the ambiguity of intuition is not a huge issue currently (at least to me, you seem fairly reasonable thus far), it has problematic implications for the list in general. While you can ignore it for a time, it is a valid concern (and fundamentally inconsistent, actually). Does this truly not bother you?

EDIT: for some clarification

I don't know why you say I'm being reasonable right after saying that I am saying something that is completely unreasonable. But I'm not saying "You're wrong, I'm right." All I've been saying is that I want to try something. Is it going to work? I don't know.

Intuitiveness needs to be defined. I would call a strategy or tactic intuitive if it could reasonably be formulated by an intelligent player who has absolutely no information beyond what the game gives them. Conclusions such as "forging effective weapons is more effective (ahem) than forging normal weapons" can be reached with some experimentation and careful thought. I can't think of a reason to intuitively conclude "It is best to give Jill all your stat boosters". Possibly, because fliers are inherently better, but how valid that is depends on how fast we're going.

@rfof: i may have missed it, but what is that, incidentally? Do we assume fast enough to hit BEXP limits, some non-standardised 'brisk pace' metric, or something else?

I can agree with that.

I think BEXP limits would be a good place to start.

I find this intuitive-ness (<- is that even a word? Insert English isn't my main language excuse here it it isn't) thing kinda silly. Just tier how good units are relative to the rest of the cast and forget about this silly stuff imo.

That's exactly what I'm doing. It's just that "how good units are" is an incredibly broad idea.

I just think, like, you know, we should be discussing tier placements instead of all this theory stupidity bullcrap :)

Tier lists can no longer exist without theory crap because no two people can agree on a similar way to do it.

I mean, really, why do you guys actually think I'm trying to just shut out your arguments about the potential problems with the list? It's not because I don't think they're problems but don't want to bother explaining why. It's because I don't want to be bogged down with that crap. I want to try a new idea, not try to try it. If you don't give it a shot and play it by ear, it's never going to stand a chance; if you take the test, you might fail, but you're guaranteed to fail a test you don't take.

so let's compare apples to apples instead. suppose that i opened a new thread in the FE6 forum that made the contention that the official FE6 tier list, and by extension, probably all official FE tier lists, should tier units based only on the assumptions of 0% growths. do you:

a) leave the discussion to those who enjoy it

b) make snarky comments in the thread (an epithet for disagreement, i presume)

well, if you think that the assumptions of 0% growths is unrepresentative of real gameplay in any way, then you should by all means make those snarky comments, and i wouldn't attempt to stop you from doing so.

Except that's still not a good comparison because what I'm doing here is limited to this topic. If it goes well I might try to extend it, but for now I'm working with what I have here, and I've even stated already that there's a place for LTC that just isn't right here (didn't Celes/whateverhisnameis have an RD LTC tier list somewhere here?). I would agree that Huck Finn's analogy wasn't entirely accurate, but it was more accurate than yours simply because of the scope; that's what matters most, because right now, this topic isn't trying to affect anything else on the forum.

And there's no such thing as an "official" FE tier list. For any game.

[dondon151]

Except that's still not a good comparison because what I'm doing here is limited to this topic. If it goes well I might try to extend it, but for now I'm working with what I have here, and I've even stated already that there's a place for LTC that just isn't right here (didn't Celes/whateverhisnameis have an RD LTC tier list somewhere here?). I would agree that Huck Finn's analogy wasn't entirely accurate, but it was more accurate than yours simply because of the scope; that's what matters most, because right now, this topic isn't trying to affect anything else on the forum.

you're going to cherrypick that one little blurb, "probably all official FE tier lists," and just ignore the rest? really? his analogy was more accurate than mine because my little pet project of a playthrough bears what kind of resemblance to a tier list?

And there's no such thing as an "official" FE tier list. For any game.

that's bullshit.

you know what happened to jushiro's tier list? it's dead. it has to compete with this behemoth of a thread that has almost 5 years of tiering history in it. don't go around touting your segregationist philosophy as if it were true. don't like this tier list? then go ahead and make another separate, but equal one, and watch it die. this community has neither the effort nor the patience to maintain continued discussion on multiple tier lists, much less a single tier list (if the stagnation of this one is any indication), and the evidence for this is buried within the depths of this forum and several others. so no, in the most nominal, literal sense of the word, there is no "official" tier list, but rest assured, the impetus of 400+ pages of argument is not so easy to act upon. i doubt very many would disagree with me that this tier list is official in everything but name only.

Edited October 8, 2013 by dondon151

[nflchamp]

"Intuitiveness" is stupid. We aren't using it. It's like heading down the road to "average player" tier list. Which is also stupid.

Jill won't reach top on the back of a bunch of stat-boosters though. Certainly, the difference between good and bad units in this game is usually based on ability to use resources. But that doesn't make the cost of resources go away. The resources Jill would be getting can go other places that are easily good options. Yes, if we pile all the resources into Jill we might get a better result. But I have trouble believing it is by so much of a margin that Jill as much upward mobility on the tier list because of it. After all, with the loss of resources Jill is decidedly not that great of a unit. She can still be an amazing unit by Part 4 and the end of the game, but her utility before then is rather poor - closer to the realms of self-improvement than major help to the team. And Jill not getting many resources isn't terribly worse than giving them all to her.

[dondon151]

Jill won't reach top on the back of a bunch of stat-boosters though. Certainly, the difference between good and bad units in this game is usually based on ability to use resources. But that doesn't make the cost of resources go away. The resources Jill would be getting can go other places that are easily good options. Yes, if we pile all the resources into Jill we might get a better result. But I have trouble believing it is by so much of a margin that Jill as much upward mobility on the tier list because of it. After all, with the loss of resources Jill is decidedly not that great of a unit. She can still be an amazing unit by Part 4 and the end of the game, but her utility before then is rather poor - closer to the realms of self-improvement than major help to the team.

i don't think anyone disagrees with you. jill (T) is going to top and jill (N) is going to high at best. this has been agreed upon by many, many people.

the biggest payoff by investing in jill is that she can clear 3-12 very, very quickly. the secondary payoff is that she also accelerates 4-P and 4-3. you can claim that 3-6 reeks of self-improvement, but that's true for every other viable option (nolan and volug) in that map.

And Jill not getting many resources isn't terribly worse than giving them all to her.

even more reason for elevating her, then!

Edited October 8, 2013 by dondon151

[Snowy_One]

If you ask me the topic of 'intuition' is easily solvable. It's really simple too. It goes like this.

'Assuming a decently skill player ONLY had access to the information here on Serenes Forest or only took a quick glance at the tier list (didn't read any arguments), could they be expected to figure out why X unit is better/worse than Y unit?'

Here is the thing. We can claim Lyre is 'Da worst unit eva' all day while Titania dominates, but when someone sits down and plays there is NOTHING stopping Titania from getting only 1-stat levels and Lyre getting EVERY stat for at least one player. PEME. However, if that player came here and saw our tier, he'd be utterly confused as to why we ranked Lyre so low and Titania so high. He can't be expected to read our arguments either as most of them (none of them) will have to do with Lyre vs. Titania and only a VERY small portion will have to do with either one of the characters (we have an entire tier list to work with). BUT if he went to the site information he could notice, on his own, that his Titania is unusually screwed/Lyre blessed on his own. Additionally, figuring out things like 'BEXP always gives 3 stats per level' followed by 'So I should wait until most of my high-growth stats are capped then level up the crap ones) is fairly easy to figure out and if you CAN'T figure out that forging is awesome or that certain skill combinations just rock while others are meh, nothing the tier list provides can really help you.

As for strategies, I generally assume FE players are more focused on keeping their armies strong and healthy or focusing on the objective than in doing things like maximizing BEXP or lowering turncounts. Sure, good units should result in lower turncounts, but that should be a RESULT OF GOOD UNITS BEING GOOD, not units being good because the player was employing a strategy that allowed them to cut more turns. No one would question that, for as long as he exists, the Black Knight is simply the king of units. However he has low movement speed so a unit like Jill, who has the distinct disadvantage of being nowhere near as awesome, but can rescue-drop/fly, would be ranked higher than him even if both existed for the same amount of time. Is more movement an advantage? Yes. But how is that movement going to be used, especially if the player *isn't* going to be gunning for LTC?

Having gamble is an advantage, even if you don't use it. Being able to use gamble properly is a different matter entirely.

[nflchamp]

even more reason for elevating her, then!

I meant the overall situation when resources are sent other places, not Jill herself. That is, the resources aren't terribly spent sending them elsewhere.

[Camilla]

Posting for Celes since he's busy:

Intuitions are obviously what make tier lists possible. Tier lists are all about using subjective axioms (i.e. intuitions). Tier lists are by definition subjective rankings, so if you discard intuitions you also discard the very reasoning this tier list is based on. We pick efficiency because of our subjective preference for it--because of our intuitions. So it's honestly nonsense to just say things like this:

I find this intuitive-ness (<- is that even a word? Insert English isn't my main language excuse here it it isn't) thing kinda silly.

Why should being intuitive matter in tiering?

Because they make tier lists possible?

But obviously you guys are right when RFoF is just making up a bunch of things that he claims are intuitive. For any intuition you need to reach a consensus on it. Pretty much anyone will agree that pleasure is an intuitively good thing, for example, and the reason why pleasure is so commonly accepted as a good thing is because of majority rule. Reach a consensus on what is intuitive and what isn't--this is harder than it sounds though. But it has been done before: almost everyone accepts efficiency.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Sumia

[Redwall]

Posting for Celes since he's busy:

Intuitions are obviously what make tier lists possible. Tier lists are all about using subjective axioms (i.e. intuitions). Tier lists are by definition subjective rankings, so if you discard intuitions you also discard the very reasoning this tier list is based on. We pick efficiency because of our subjective preference for it--because of our intuitions.

A tier list is by definition going to have arbitrary criteria, for a tier list is itself an arbitrary ranking of characters based on criteria which we subjectively prefer.

But that doesn't mean we should add more and more meaningless arbitrary criteria. It certainly isn't a good thing to use more than we need. I've been advocating a minimalist approach for a while now.

[Camilla]

Posting for Celes since he's busy:

Intuitions are obviously what make tier lists possible. Tier lists are all about using subjective axioms (i.e. intuitions). Tier lists are by definition subjective rankings, so if you discard intuitions you also discard the very reasoning this tier list is based on. We pick efficiency because of our subjective preference for it--because of our intuitions.

A tier list is by definition going to have arbitrary criteria, for a tier list is itself an arbitrary ranking of characters based on criteria which we subjectively prefer.

But that doesn't mean we should add more and more meaningless arbitrary criteria. It certainly isn't a good thing to use more than we need. I've been advocating a minimalist approach for a while now.

There's a difference between rejecting all intuitions (people here) and rejecting most (Celes).

Edited October 8, 2013 by Sumia

[-Cynthia-]

Posting for Celes since he's busy:

Why don't you just post for yourself? Clinging to someone else's words like they're the Messiah is just rather well...sad. Or makes you seem like an alt of that person.

[Camilla]

I didn't know it was a crime to post an opinion for someone while they're doing homework because they can't do so themselves, and I didn't know that doing so makes me a worshipper. I'm so sorry.

Edited October 8, 2013 by Sumia

[dondon151]

There's a difference between rejecting all intuitions (people here)

no one here has said that.

[PKL]

I think I probably did, but I didnt mean that. I blame engrish.