Being the fighting game fan that I am, I found myself whipping this together just for fun, only to realize just how many characters there are that I don't have experience with. I haven't been playing long so I'm no authority on this sort of thing, but it's the kind of crap I like to do anyway :P. I imagine the likes of Jack, BBH, Onslaught, etc. will have most valuable input on something like this. Also, I got the initial idea largely from ncannelora: http://www.beenhereandthere.com/SMF/index.php?topic=172.0 - where you at on those rankings, son?!?
I kept it very light to start, since there are many characters I have an idea but aren't completely sure about. I'm particularly interested in hearing about Galactus and Beyonder.
Overpower Tier List
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Top (no questions asked?)
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Spawn
Marauders
X-babies
High (character's you can build around?)
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Shadow King
Hand
Zealot
Juggernaut
Holocaust
Mid (strong supporting cast?)
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Jubilee
Blue Beetle
Doomsday
Starjammers
Jean Grey
Low (a saving grace or two?)
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Thing
Lex Luthor
Post
Bottom (much to be desired?)
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Apocalypse
Doctor Doom
Carnage
Nightwing
Doing tiers in Overpower is kind of weird since characters have different roles, so relative strength comes into play. Since you said you play fighting games, if you're familiar with MvC2 then a good analogy would be saying that a lot of Overpower characters are like Captain Commando. There are characters that glue your deck together and flesh it out, but they aren't a focal point like Spawn or Heroes for Hire. So in that sense, it's a bit hard to rank characters from top to bottom. For example, who is "better" - Scarlet Witch or The Starjammers? Does your answer change if I say I already have a negate character in my deck? What if the other two frontline characters were defensive? It's hard to say who is better or worse for a deck without taking things like that into account. Relative character strength gets even more murky when you take into account interaction with certain battlesites or mission sets. Like Tron teams in MvC2, some combinations of effects create a sum greater than its parts.
So really you have something that breaks down into anchors that you can base a deck around (such as Spawn, H4H, Beyonder), utility characters (like negate chars, Bishop, etc), theme augmenters (offensive or defensive people like Jammers or Invisible Woman), reserve characters (Hawkeye, Flash, etc), and so on. Even this is pretty broad considering the different strategies people have in building decks (which is an extension of your personal playstyle as well, i.e. your deck may be more focused on venture than KO, it may try to win in the powerpack, it may have a gimmick, and so on). For example, if you prefer a more old school style deck with a lower special count and more durability, you might find Professor X. to be much more valuable than Spawn.
All that being said, making an overall rankings list is way more fun than breaking things down by anchor, reservist, negater, etc. When I tried to think of the criteria for an all inclusive tier list, I posed this question to Overtime and DRDEATH25 a few months ago:
You already have a "perfect" team of four characters - one character with an 8 stat, one character with a negate, and two characters who back up stats/have various good interactions/synergy. If you were choosing a fifth character for that team, list your top 10 choices in order.
We controlled for point cost by imagining that there would be some sort of penalty or bonus depending on the point total of the character. Something like "if your fifth character costs 23 points, start with a mission in the defeated pile" or "for each point under 19 your fifth character is, you are +1 to venture each battle." The actual benefit or drawback isn't important, but it was just something to reward characters like Mr. Fantastic for having a lower grid total. I tallied each of our votes and assigned 10 points for a first place vote, 9 points for a second place vote, and so on. This is probably imprecise, but it was an easy way to weight each persons vote. The outcome for the top ten characters was:
1. Donald Pierce
2. H4H
3. Scarlet Witch
4. X-Man
5. Starjammers
6. Spawn
7. Professor X
8. Mr. Fantastic
9. Reavers
10. Beyonder
Since I used a shoddy point system, the Reavers came in 9th even though two of the three voters didn't even have him in the top ten. Donald Pierce was unanimously number one, and Mr. Fantastic/Professor X were basically a tie. I think the most glaring omission from this list is probably the X-Babies.
Trying to quantify Overpower can be interesting, but the only reason I still play this game fifteen years later is because of all the subtlety. I'm glad that there are a lot of intangible elements to deck construction, which I guess is a result of there being so many possible combinations. So, to anyone who may be feeling confined by seeing lists like this...please keep in mind that there is still a lot of room for building decks that are both soulful and competitive.
Yes, the MvC2 Commando example makes perfect sense. I fully expected some opposition to the tier list idea in general - Hell, it's a staple of fighting game discussion yet even many in that realm disapprove of the concept. It probably makes the most sense to break OP characters down into their respective grooves for ranking, but in the end, as you mentioned, it's still a lot more fun to make an ultimate list isn't it?
I think the way you conducted your experiment is fairly close to the way I'm thinking of characters as I make the list - in terms of general playability rather than their niche. In the end, a tier list does a great job of sparking discussions around specific characters, whether the list itself is accurate or not. Hopefully that sort of thing will happen here, so I can tool with the list as we go.
QuoteAlso, I got the initial idea largely from ncannelora: http://www.beenhereandthere.com/SMF/index.php?topic=172.0 - where you at on those rankings, son?!?
you know how life gets! my wife is out of town next weekend, so maybe i'll hammer some more of it out, then.
also, to be honest, there has been some... development... of opinion. with expanded experience and insights, some of our opinions have been a little changed. not a lot, but some. Since a lot of the quantifying was still based sort of on opinion (almost like grading on a curve), some of the overall formula needs to be revised.
My interest in this is revived, though ;)