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A new method to create a tier list


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Before this gets forgotten, let's cover one of the easiest chapters to tier.

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Chapter 5x

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Obama tier

Orson

Sarah Palin tier

Ephraim

Kyle

Forde

Edited by Vykan12
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Basically all there is to whine about is "tier gaps", but I don't think it's worth it.

Next few maps don't have any new recruitable units, though I think the structures are different enough to warrant different lists.

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Interesting approach. I think it will eventually become a very tiresome job to do when you reach the later chapters, though, but then, so are normal debates and tier list debates, so there's no big difference :P

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In fact, if you read one of vykan's posts on FEP, you'll see why it may even be better to not use rankings to judge.

I disagree simply because playing with ranks means that there is a tangible goal (5-stars, A rank, w/e) whereas not playing for ranks means there's the arbitrary, fuzzily defined goal called "efficiency." All of Vykan's arguments in that thread are true, though.

I personally think Funds should measure the total amount of assets obtained over the course of the game instead of the total amount in possession at a certain point in the game, because we want to use those stat boosters, promotion items, and awesome staves.

Edited by dondon151
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=Chapter 6=

-Top-

Seth

-Good-

Franz

Joshua

Moulder

Natasha

Gilliam

Garcia

Ross

Vanessa

-Okay-

Eirika

Colm

Arthur

Lute

-Bad-

Neimi

Not too different from Ch5, except Joshua is available for the whole map. I put Vanessa in Good because she can stop the spider from killing the civilians, which means you no longer have to cough up 5000G when taking longer than like 6 turns to kill the boss. Gilliam is that high because you are not likely to advance anywhere fast, and he and Seth are the only people who can repeatedly take Cavalier blows. Note that Colm has torch utility (torch vision without using a torch, and super hax vision when using one).

=Chapter 7=

-Top-

Seth

-Good-

Franz

Joshua

-Okay-

Vanessa

Garcia

Ross

Colm

Eirika

Moulder

Natasha

Gilliam

Lute

Arthur

-Bad-

Neimi

I'm not too sure on this one. This map calls for much less healing than Ch6, since enemy density is low and most attacks can either be dodged (Fighters with Steel Axes near forests, oh no) or healed off with vulneraries without efficiency lowering (Mercs, Mages, Soldiers). Franz and Josh are a tier above everyone else because they one-round everything on the map except for the boss, and their durability is also much better than the squishy's.

For Ross vs Garcia:

3/0 Ross has 25 hp/6 def defensively and 12.5 str and 6.3 spd offensively.

7/0 Garcia has 30 hp/6 def defensively and 10 str and 7.4 spd offensively.

So I'm not inclined to put Ross over Garcia just yet.

=Chapter 8=

-Top-

Seth

-Good-

Ephraim

Franz

Joshua

Colm

Kyle

Forde

-Less Than Good-

Garcia

Ross

Lute

Arthur

Vanessa

Eirika

Moulder

Natasha

Gilliam

Neimi

This map promotes ranged attacks due to the many walls and chokepoints, so that's basically why Neimi is not in her own tier for a change, and why Lute and Arthur are up higher. Colm is shoved up since he gets you an Elysian Whip, Angelic Robe and Silver Sword, which are hax, hax and cool respectively (essentially makes Vanessa improve a lot later, give anyone of your choice 7 hp and increase some sword user's offense by a lot).

I disagree simply because playing with ranks means that there is a tangible goal

I don't think they're very efficient goals though. The good parts of ranking (low turn count, no deaths, that kind of stuff) are represented in most people's idea of efficiency, while the bad parts (lower level = more exp = good thing by itself? wtf?) can be omitted.

Edited by Mekkah
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The chapter 5 one can be misleading, Orson is one of the worst units in the game as you only use him for one chapter and he just hogs up Ephraims EXP.

You lose him and his weapons, after that one chapter.

Someone might think that is can be used after seeing him placed that high.

No, there are no other units that "want" to be ranked because they are all thrown in one tier.

A general flaw with this method.

It should be

Top

Ephraim

Middle

Kyle

Forde

Trap

Orson.

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The Gambit, please just stay out of my topic if you don't understand the concept. No matter how little Orson is available, he is your best unit for that particular chapter (more move, offense and defense than anyone), so he is placed in top.

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C9 Eph is Fort Rigwald, right? Tana for her own tier now, and surely Neimi's offense has reached the level where she can actually kill things now, making her>Gilliam.

Also, Seth has to at least be taking competition from Franz now, meaning he's probably lost his tier lead, but I dunno what the exact levels/enemy stats are.

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Heh I have an idea that might help make this process more accurate. With codebreaker, I could set any given character to average stats with a certain amount of supports and whatnot in a chapter and upload a savestate. That way, people could play a chapter in the context of an efficient playthrough and could extrapolate from their personal experience in those circumstances of what they think of those characters. That, backed with the average stats of the PCs and the enemies of that chapter seems like a rather foolproof way of covering the later chapters which may cause difficulty in theorycrafting.

The main issue would be in the level estimates themselves. One would have to account for units with better stats getting more enemy phase exposure, but also account for exp degradation when levelling faster than others (eg/ Franz vs Neimi). Moreover, it can be considered an ideal approach to baby a unit immediately as a lesser negative than having inferior performance over time, so that would likely be neglected. Then of course promotional issues would be hard to deal with, and possibly some other things I'm not anticipating.

Thoughts?

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I think that playtesting the tier list is a bit unreliable for spotting distinctions between characters in similar positions on the tier list. Each character can only be in one circumstance in one turn and occupying that possibility prevents others from being in that same circumstance, so truly fair play isn't possible when judging empirically. There are even ways to use slightly more inefficient characters to preserve the same efficiency in turn count (i.e. there is more than one efficient playstyle, or sequence of actions), and each sequence may slightly favor one character over another, etc.

For looking at how differently Franz performs from Vanessa, for example, it's pretty good.

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Either an intuitive or a mathematically approached average of their performance. Assigning a value to their performance in each chapter, give a certain weight to each chapter (less to earlier, more to later), then add it all up.

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Off the subject of supports for just a second, does Seth still have a tier to himself? If Franz is still pwning everything on either map with a low risk of dying then 1 move isn't really worth a tier gap anymore.

Also, Duessel should be around where Seth is for C9Eph. He's probably on par with Seth in speed, plus he's a lot more durable[Not trying to say Seth sucks now but he's definitely not the solo machine he used to be], an area Seth can struggle in, especially when Eirika's not around to give him that def/avo boost. Not to mention EphxDuessel support is pretty cool, fast and gives w1n bonuses.

...In fact, Duessel should probably be above Seth for a while.

Oh, yeah. WTA over Lances, too, totally forgot about that. IIRC FE8 is decently lance-heavy if i'm remembering right so that's another edge Duessel has.

Edited by Sweet Tooth
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Seth isn't very likely to stay in his own tier for much longer, no. For other units catching up to him, it depends on your team size. I think I'm going to stick with a certain amount of combat units for now as a given, thinking of about seven (+ a healer) to get a more accurate estimate of what level people are at what point. But note that Franz isn't a very good example of "your other units" - I think it's more likely that Duessel, Franz and Seth will be getting a tier of their own than that Seth moves down. I suppose Kyle/Forde may have a case, though they clearly have areas they struggle in.

I can only be arsed to do one route at a time though and I was thinking of doing Eirika's.

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