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How Are Top Tiers Born?

I would like to preface this with the fact I am not looking or interested in debating Top Tier Characters in this game. I am not attempting to begin or further any existing witch hunts, nor am I complaining about any character in particular. All I'm looking for is to have a civil discussion with peers regarding the creation or maintaining of Top Tier characters and the thought process behind them.

Now, it is no secret that certain characters throughout the course of this game have either come out of the gate very strong or have been made that way through patches/hot fixes. Examples of original higher tier characters would be the likes of Quan Chi, Raiden, Kung Lao, Jax etc. Whereas there characters who were made stronger over patches such as Takeda, Kano, Ferra Torr.

Some characters such as Scorpion, Raiden, Quan Chi as mentioned launched at higher levels and were then nerfed in some way. While others, D'Vorah, A-List Johnny Cage, Jax, were released at a higher tier and have either been further buffed in some ways, or left alone for the most part. What I'm mostly curious about is Why? To reiterate I'm not asking for any of these characters to be nerfed or 'normalized'. Though what is the thought process behind it? Are there some characters who are chosen to be top tier during the development process? If so is it a random choosing, or is there a purpose behind it? Or, does it just happen at random. Characters receive adjustments that Colt or another power determine are necessary and voila, you have a top Tier character? If a character remains at a very high level or is over buffed (in the opinion of some not all) what is the deciding factor to let the character remain as is, or be adjusted?

ex: (Not a witch hunt) A-List Cage is a very potent character in the right hands. Great D4, plus frame ex fireballs, a re-stand and multiple jailing block strings. A-List from what I know has been the same way he is now for some time, yet no adjustments were made to him like they were to other FBC type characters (Liu Kang, Erron Black) Was he originally planned to be this way? Or was this just his accepted nature at this point in the game?

I may never receive answers to these questions directly from NRS, which is fine. Though I'd be fine in talking with those in the Community whose roots in this franchise or others run deeper than mine.

What do you think?
 

TyCarter35

Bonafide Jax scrub
I don't think the devs intentionally make some characters ridiculous or op. Top tiers are generally say in this game comes down to who benefits from the game's style of play in the meta. I think the damage was intended to be fairy high since the beginning of development. But some characters like those who have mixups were made top tier as a result of the system. The devs probably didn't mean to make Kenshi bad in this game. It's just the game's style which goes in his favor. If the gameplay was more "balance" Kenshi might not even be bottom tier. I believe it comes down the gameplay favors which style of characters more. Again just my opinion
 

SM StarGazer

The voice of reason in a Sea of Salt
"You hate Scorpion?"
"Yep!"
"Why?"
"Vortex."
"I beat he's like top 10 just cause of that."
"YEAH MAN BY THAT LOGIC EVERY VORTEX CHARACTER IS TOP 10. Thats half the cast..."
"HO."
"LY."
(Together)"Shit."
"That means this game is kinda balanced if everyone is viable."
(Puts gun to friends head)"Say balance in regards to an NRS game again and i'll.."
"Calm the hell down cause they just rereleased the cyborgs?"
(Puts gun to own head.)"I see. Hello darkness my old friend."

+boom+

And thats how babies are born Jimmy.
Good Talk.
 

xSamuel

Player of All, Master of None.
Um, NRS makes a really bad character/variation and then they overbuff them and nerf the original top tiers. They messed up this time though, they forgot to buff Hat Trick :DOGE
 

ABACABB

End Of Humanity
Maybe not on topic but .... everyone have their fav character and want this said character to be very good. So lets say for a moment that every character in this game is top tier lol ...Everyone have stupid dmg ,safe 50/50s , good normals ,armor...

Would this game be fun like this ? I know its not possible but lets say for a moment it is .
 

coconutshrimp

Damn vro, hadda mess with yo auntie
Nothing decides whether or not a character will be top tier. It's mostly random. There may be a little bias though since I don't believe that with all the "please buff this character, this character sucks and really needs so and so buffs" Not naming names but you know who you are, that they wouldn't have buffed those characters already.
 

God Confirm

We're all from Earthrealm. If not, cool pic brah.
good thread, just want to point out Jax lost over 10% on his optimal corner combos this patch, and the punish window on his overhead more or less tripled, so he's not really in the same category as characters like DVo who've only got stronger


edit: not saying hes a bad character at all nor am I tiering anyone, just saying that might be the best example to use for the point he was trying to make, is all
 
I don't think they develop characters to be top tier. I'd say alot if it had to do with them looking at it on paper and thinking this needs to be buff/nerfed then some in house testing to adjust it and boom put it to the public. The competitive community usually discovers ways to use those tools to develop combos, vortexs, etc which in turns puts the character in the top tier.

That would be my guess at least. Something on paper is alot different than actually putting it in capable hands and letting them use it for a month, year, etc to discover what can be done with it.
 
Reactions: GQJ

Second Saint

A man with too many names.
There's an obvious correlation between how vocal people are about how good a character is and how they will be handled in patching. If everyone is screaming about Lao, Tanya, and Quan, other characters like Jax, Johnny, and D'vorah get a whole lot less heat, so they don't get nerfed as hard, or at all.

This just starts a cycle of complaint though. The characters just outside of top tier are now the top tier, and everyone will complain about them. Human nature won't really allow for 100% of people to think, "Yeah, this characters great but not OP." As soon as you have what you want, you'll want something else. There will always be someone calling for nerfs because there is no such thing as perfect balance without uniformity.
 
I may believe some of that to be true. Though it's hard to imagine that someone can input the data for a character and not at least in the back of their mind know they're making said person above others.
 

Juggs

Lose without excuses
Lead Moderator
Premium Supporter
Top tiers are based on match-ups, there's no possible way the developers will know who is and isn't top tier.
 

WakeUp DP

GT MK OshTekk.
In MKX whenever your main struggles against certain chars:DOGE


When are low tiers born? Whenever your main gets punished for going for 50/50!
 
When characters are designed they're given play styles/tools. How strong those tools are combined with which tools the overall game mechanics favor determines what characters are top tier. I'd say by design MK mechanically favors characters with certain play styles but in the interest of variety we get a bunch of play styles that are less ideal even if they're tools are good.
 

Nedyrc

Noob
"You hate Scorpion?"
"Yep!"
"Why?"
"Vortex."
"I beat he's like top 10 just cause of that."
"YEAH MAN BY THAT LOGIC EVERY VORTEX CHARACTER IS TOP 10. Thats half the cast..."
"HO."
"LY."
(Together)"Shit."
"That means this game is kinda balanced if everyone is viable."
(Puts gun to friends head)"Say balance in regards to an NRS game again and i'll.."
"Calm the hell down cause they just rereleased the cyborgs?"
(Puts gun to own head.)"I see. Hello darkness my old friend."

+boom+

And thats how babies are born Jimmy.
Good Talk.
I dont know what the shit you are on about but i love it
 

Vjeekes

DevilApes
IMO the choice of making a character OP is based on marketing purposes.

Before the release of mkx, they watched the statistics of MK9. Which character was played the most.
For example: If Lao was popular and had a million fans in mk9 and Kitana had only 2 fans (see what i did there? :) )
They make the million people happy by making lao badass.

Why?
Well, If half of the fans of Lao drop MKX for STV, They probably wont buy the next kombat pack.

Why did they make KP characters badass?
Marketing
Why did they add guest characters in the KP's?
Wel euhm... Marketing

Can we blame them... NO