Gross vs Net

[Narga_Rocks]

No, you don't get the same results. Gross system hands you things like Rebecca > Harken. That's why I pointed it out in the first place.

Really? She's got like 3x his availability, or something around that. Is she really at least 1/3 as good as him on average throughout her existence?

[CATS]

Really? She's got like 3x his availability, or something around that. Is she really at least 1/3 as good as him on average throughout her existence?

It's closer to 4x his availability. 26-27 chapters vs 6-7 iirc.

Her abilities would only be a small fraction of Harken's if she stayed as shitty as she starts off throughout the entire game, but that's not the case. She develops good offense well before Harken joins.

The Rebecca vs Harken under Gross System argument went like this:

Before Harken joins, Rebecca is being compared against nothing at all, an empty slot. She beats nothing by more than Harken beats her. A L15 Rebecca has 9.6 Str and 14.4 Spd, so she beats an empty slot by that much, whereas base Harken vs 20/5 Rebecca just has 6 Str in Harken's favor and 3 Spd in Rebecca's favor, along with Harken countering vs Rebecca using Ballista, Longbows and getting more privileges with her Silver/Brave weapons. And she's being compared against nothing for alot longer than she's being compared against Harken.

dondon essentially countered with "enemy phase." To which I responded:

Player phase and promoted enemies both exist. Indeed CoD, SoT and Light all have promoted enemies as a significant portion of the total enemy count, and they certainly exist in BBD and VoD aswell.

Perhaps if you expose Harken on enemy phase over all your other melee units at every opportunity, his game-total body count would add up to more than Rebecca's. Other than that, I don't see it. Assuming Rebecca kills one enemy per player phase, Harken has to kill one on player phase followed by approximately three on enemy phase, every time. If you have 10 units on your team, 8 of which can counterkill garbage enemies, then you'd need to get attacked by an average of 24 enemies per enemy phase in order for Harken to average 3 enemy phase kills per turn.

If you want to place so much value on enemy phase, then let's just take a different example; Harken is rated above Canas, yet by the time Harken joins, a promoted Canas can also rape most of the same things that Harken can with 1-2 range. Canas has about three times as many chapters as Harken, and he's able to counterkill the hordes of garbage enemies in the lategame just like Harken.

The point is that, going with the Gross system, a unit who is only average for 20 chapters contributes more than a unit who is good for 5 chapters, and the tier lists often don't reflect this.

[dondon151]

No, you don't get the same results. Gross system hands you things like Rebecca > Harken. That's why I pointed it out in the first place.

You know what, I reconsider my position on this. Rebecca probably should go way up considering that the way she was previously ranked implied that she wasn't being used at all past her forced chapters.

So you can assert that ignoring opportunity cost of deployment slots gives you "absurd" conclusions while I can point out that those conclusions are perfectly reasonable.

Edited November 17, 2009 by dondon151

[CATS]

And how are you defending these conclusions as reasonable? Tier lists are based on which characters contribute more towards an efficient playthrough, and Rebecca absolutely does not contribute more towards an efficient run. If you remove Rebecca from the game, units who are better than her or at worst similar can simply go in her place, and there is no noticeable impact. Whereas if you remove Harken, you don't have anyone else that good to replace him with for his chapters, and your overall efficiency is lowered. These are hard facts, and should not just be casually ignored.

Taking a more extreme example, look at Jeigan in FE11. Implementing the gross system in that tier list, Jeigan gets booted way down on the tier list, easily into the lower half of it, as almost any unit can simply be deployed for the entire game, significantly outperform Jeigan for the vast majority of it, and claim to have garnered greater positive utility, no matter how much they might suck in general. Is this truly reasonable and accurate? No, it isn't, for the same reasons outlined above.

The amended net system takes these facts into account where they are significant, and is thus more accurate than the gross system. When you go low enough on the tier list that you can remove both units in question from the game and never miss either one of them, then the opportunity cost of deployment is no longer significant and can be reasonably ignored for purposes of discussion.

[cheetah7071]

I think the system that CATS would like to see most (if I may guess as to the inner workings of his mind) is a system I've been wanting for years now: A system that ranks average utility, not total utility; i.e., a system where availibility means nothing. Harken contributes more to each of his chapters than Rebecca contributes to any of hers, and thus Harken is higher. This does end up with some foreign-looking stuff like Athos auto-topping, but I at least have never had a problem with that.

Note that I'm not advocating tier lists actually become this except perhaps through an unlikely gradual shift in public opinion. Trying to implement this philosophy would completely upend every list currently in existence.

[dondon151]

And how are you defending these conclusions as reasonable? Tier lists are based on which characters contribute more towards an efficient playthrough, and Rebecca absolutely does not contribute more towards an efficient run.

Every character contributes more to an efficient playthrough than an empty slot, and Rebecca is no exception; furthermore, Rebecca has been doing whatever she does for longer than Harken can, so it's pretty reasonable that she deserves to be higher than Harken.

If you remove Rebecca from the game, units who are better than her or at worst similar can simply go in her place, and there is no noticeable impact. Whereas if you remove Harken, you don't have anyone else that good to replace him with for his chapters, and your overall efficiency is lowered. These are hard facts, and should not just be casually ignored.

If a player uses Rebecca up until chapter 27 and then removes her from the game, he wouldn't have anyone else good enough to replace her, either.

Taking a more extreme example, look at Jeigan in FE11. Implementing the gross system in that tier list, Jeigan gets booted way down on the tier list, easily into the lower half of it, as almost any unit can simply be deployed for the entire game, significantly outperform Jeigan for the vast majority of it, and claim to have garnered greater positive utility, no matter how much they might suck in general. Is this truly reasonable and accurate? No, it isn't, for the same reasons outlined above.

You're claiming it unreasonable because you're creating an unreasonable premise for you to defeat. That's a strawman. Jeigan still beats anyone with poor availability (by poor I mean around half of the game), he beats most prepromotes simply by virtue of having early chapters weigh more than later chapters (and prepromotes have terrible base stats for the most part anyway), and he could be assumed to have bishop utility once his combat declines. That doesn't sound like a drop to me.

The amended net system takes these facts into account where they are significant, and is thus more accurate than the gross system. When you go low enough on the tier list that you can remove both units in question from the game and never miss either one of them, then the opportunity cost of deployment is no longer significant and can be reasonably ignored for purposes of discussion.

It is futile to debate with characters that won't be used (against whomever, it doesn't really matter) unless there is a preliminary assumption that that character has been selected for use. This is a problem still not addressed by your system.

[CATS]

Every character contributes more to an efficient playthrough than an empty slot, and Rebecca is no exception; furthermore, Rebecca has been doing whatever she does for longer than Harken can, so it's pretty reasonable that she deserves to be higher than Harken.

However, you don't have an empty slot if Rebecca is taken away. Rather, the number of deployment slots is highly limited, and there are many other units available who can and will fill that slot in Rebecca's absence.

If a player uses Rebecca up until chapter 27 and then removes her from the game, he wouldn't have anyone else good enough to replace her, either.

You're going to have to explain this point better. You get multiple units ranked above Rebecca well before Ch 27.

You're claiming it unreasonable because you're creating an unreasonable premise for you to defeat.

No, I'm not. I'm basing this argument on the premise of the tier list as stated in the tier list FAQ, which I did not write. On the other hand, you're quite clearly creating your own premise below when you assume that discussion of low tier units under a net system is futile, when there is nothing written anywhere which states what sorts of discussion are or are not futile.

Jeigan still beats anyone with poor availability (by poor I mean around half of the game), he beats most prepromotes simply by virtue of having early chapters weigh more than later chapters (and prepromotes have terrible base stats for the most part anyway), and he could be assumed to have bishop utility once his combat declines. That doesn't sound like a drop to me.

Beating some units through availability alone is a good point, and it simply serves to demonstrate further inaccuracies. Someone such as Horace, currently ranked above Jeigan, might easily fall below him now that Jeigan has more time to freely build up utility before Horace joins. Likewise, Nagi and Gotoh would go almost directly to the bottom of the list, able to beat only units who join almost as late as they do. Etc.

It is futile to debate with characters that won't be used (against whomever, it doesn't really matter) unless there is a preliminary assumption that that character has been selected for use.

It's futile in your opinion, and were such discussions to occur (as they already have), you would be free to not participate in them. However, you can't tell everyone else that a certain discussion is futile and that they are not allowed to carry it out. Obviously discussion of lower tier units in this manner is quite possible, and thus if people wish to pursue it, they are free to do so; after all, tier discussion in general is carried out purely for its own sake.

[Dat Nick]

You know what, I reconsider my position on this. Rebecca probably should go way up considering that the way she was previously ranked implied that she wasn't being used at all past her forced chapters.

I've never ever made this assumption.

[CATS]

I've also realized that the main basis for this whole argument--the assumption that use of a net system causes low tier units to never be used--is faulty to begin with. The fact that low tiers aren't used stems not from the use of the net system, but rather from the conditions of the tier list. The tier list assumes efficient play, and under efficient play, shitty units don't get used, regardless of what system you use to judge utility or w/e. Even under the gross system where everyone is creating positive utility, a player going for efficiency will still try to use the combination of units which creates the greatest amount of positive utility, and those low tier units still don't get used.

Net/gross are just different ways of looking at a unit's utility in the event that he/she does get used, and has nothing to do with whether or not they'll be used in the first place.

[Dat Nick]

CATS, I don't mean to be rude, but I gotta say, I never expected to hear that from the same guy who tried to argue that fielding L'Arachel for a single chapter was such a negative that Rennac deserved to Bottom the list.

[CATS]

I don't see the point you're trying to make.

[Dat Nick]

I'm not trying to make a point, I'm just saying it's fairly ironic.

Edited November 19, 2009 by laws b122

[CATS]

Oh. I don't see the irony, either, in that case.