We're going to add some "archetypes" to the character pages using a radar chart like so:
All up there's 10 different qualities being assessed. These are, in more detail:
- Poke
- Strength of fast, safe moves.
- Mixup
- Strength of mid/low mixups (or other mixups that beat guard). Consider both ease of enforcing and expected payoff.
- Keepout
- Strength of big neutral buttons.
- Whiff punish
- Strength of whiff punishers (consider: speed, complexity of input, reward, range, hit level, and safety).
- Okizeme
- Strength of ground hitting moves and tech traps. Consider also the chance of getting an opponent into such situations and how tricky they are.
- Pressure
- Strength of buttons to use in pressure when plus. Best moves here are things like Lidia d/f+2 which shuts down many defensive options while also applying a mixup.
- Defense
- Strength of buttons to use in pressure when minus. Think evasive moves, parries, powercrushes, or just strong fast buttons (e.g. good magic fours). Movement is a significant factor here.
- Tricky
- How much cheese the character has. How difficult it is to defend accurately against the character.
- Dexterity
- The difficulty of physically performing important inputs.
- Timing
- Tight timing windows on important inputs or links.
- Memory
- (Suggestions welcome for other names.) How many different moves, stances, transitions the character needs to incorporate into a complete game plan.
These axes were chosen because I feel they're what most distinguish Tekken characters from each other. Contrast with typical attempts to fit Tekken characters into archetypes, which end up getting messy pretty fast. Tekken characters are more-or-less capable of doing everything; it's more a matter of degrees.
Suggestions are welcome for other axes to consider.
While I could make the numbers up myself, they'll probably be more accurate if I poll the community on where things go.
How to give your hot takes
Make a tier list for each or any of the individual qualities being considered. For example, a list for “Memory” would order the characters by how difficult they are on that axis. Pretty easy.
The list must be submitted as a page in your user space on the wiki. For example, mine is at /archetypes.json. Once you've made such a page, add it to the list at the bottom of this page.
See Module:Fighter for an alphabetical ordering of the characters.
The list doesn't need to have every character in it. You can (and should) leave out characters you don't have good experience with.
The list should be fully ordered, i.e. there are no actual tiers in it. While the algorithm does work with ties, it works better without them. Just make a decision!
The preferred format is a JSON file similar to mine, but as long as I can figure out your intended order anything is fine. You can even make it on tiermaker and upload it here if you're really gormless.
The lists will be unified using an algorithm based on the Bradley–Terry model with added weights for judge quality. I might also challenge lists that look like they're trolling.
Other uses for this data
Aside from being able to display the “archetype” of a particular character, this data can also be put in a context where the whole unified list is used. For example, a table adding up the difficulty scores can show a roughly ordered list of characters by difficulty and be used on e.g. Tutorial to give context to new players.
Qualities not being polled for
Feel free to make a list for these, but we probably won't use it.
- Damage
- Block punishment
- While interesting, it's mostly redundant with the Template:Punishment visualization that'll accompany this data.
- Complexity of game plan
- Too vague and mostly redundant with “Memory”.
- Movement
- Can be quantified and put in infobox, and is mostly redundant with “Defense”.
- Neutral
- Mostly redundant with many other qualities, mainly “Poke”, “Keepout”, and “Whiff punishment”.
- Counter hits
- Mostly redundant with many other qualities, especially “Defense” and “Keepout”.