you can definitly differentiate between a generally strong unit and a generally weak or niche unit. but in the end it depends on a lot of factors how good a unit can be
Making tierlists is useful, it's a great way to visualize information and we fellow humans love visual information as compared to a brick of text, but the format itself is very restrictive. Because tierlists provide information in a "single dimension" for lack of a better term, each unit is placed on a vertical line and it's the only way to differentiate them from each other, the format works best when comparing a single factor between the units, because we then have a direct comparison. And that's where our problem lies, Arknights units can't be reduced to a single factor without losing varying degrees of accuracy, the whole generalisation vs accuracy thingy you explained. I don't really have a solution for this matter other than "tierlists are not adapted for this kind of work", not without heavily specialising them to insane degrees or adding a thousand addendums as to why it is that way and not another one.
I think tier list only useful for newbie players to give a rough outline of the operator's power level. Like for example, Kroos is great and deserve an A+ rating for newbie if they didn't have any other snipers to use, but she's easily replaceable by, say, Exu because Exu deals more damage even at E1 and has an average DP cost even for an undeveloped team. In 4* team there are only some unit that can match the usefulness of Kroos with little investment like for example, May. Jessica, for example, needs some investment before she can exceed Kroos' power level and for newbie players, these aren't cheap. These aren't applicable to the more experienced players of course but they're useful for newer players to give an idea whom to target in the future recruitment.
I think the best and primary use for tier lists should be a relative cost-effectiveness list. New players need bang for their sanity more than anything else, while vets really should have more luxury if they've played consistently. If you're a minmaxer who wants max risk clears and other challenges, a max difficulty meta tier list looks way different from the average player's list, and is probably more expensive at that. But if you're new and trying to clear Risk 18 and events, knowing which core operators you can build strats around for minimal investment is way more important.
You know, I was just reading the video description after watching the video and I think the one thing that bugs me the most about the casual versus non-casual sides is how hard it is to stay cordial. I don't think it matters if you are casual or not as long as you can respectfully disagree. My biggest gripe about the metaslave side of things are those who just outright say "the unit is terrible" without giving any real explanation about why they are terrible. Just a one liner stating their immense dissatisfaction of a unit and they disappear. On the flip side, I'm beginning to dislike the Waifu > meta argument that comes too because there is clearly and objectively better operators when you start to weigh their pros and cons. I personally feel very few operators in this game are truely unredeemable and there is always an edge case utilization for everyone. Anyway, in terms of tier lists, I agree that they should be easily readable and accessible. I feel like anyone making a tier list for Arknights though should put a heavy emphasis at the beginning of the list to indicate what they are judging operators on as everyone had their own subjective values they put onto the tier list. Thus the onus is on the reader / listener to sift through that information and see in what degree the assessment affects them. Good work on the video and thank you for the thoughtful listen.
The waifu>meta thing is mostly a response to metaslaves who act as if tier lists are objective metrics of absolute value and that following the "top tier" is mandatory to play the game effectively. There are better and worse operators, but even the jankiest/weakest units like Ebenholz or Tsukinogi have ways to make them fun and effective enough to clear content. Ultimately the point is - you CAN clear all content using just your waifus. I mean, E0 Sui-Xiang is possible. At this point the game is cracked open so thoroughly in terms of strat viability that you can do whatever the hell you want, if you're prepared to suffer more or spend more or get real gud. It may not be the objectively best option, but people often act in ways that suggest they need to be reminded that it is an option.
When it comes to tier lists I use them mostly in figuring out who to focus on next. " My team doesn't have an answer to a high Def unit what are some good arts units.. Oh I have her lets put resources into her." the game press list does this best because I can easily select classes and then read descriptions on WHY they are good at what they do.
If HyperGryph had a simulator where players could test an operator in a given situation, players themselves can come to their own conclusions. Like having 4 waves of 5 drones, so player can test Kroos vs Archetto. Since that won't happen, I think tier list, though imperfect, helped to fill the information gap.
I only recently started and used the gamepress list a lot in the first few weeks to have an idea which units to focus on raising. It worked out pretty well.
Tierlists are helpful. Especially when one is a new player. But at the end of the day, as a player gains more experience, they are going to mention all kinds of things. Different operators for different situations... then there are things like different players prefer to play differently and value different things. I, for example, like to sort units by what they are trying to do and how good they are at performing that role, or how often/how much they are needed to do that. I do not mean the official classes or subclasses assigned by the game.
It would be cool to see how that "3D Vector" tier list would actually look like. I wanted to make it for myself, but I would say that I'm not well versed in the game yet to accurately judge the operator's performance and how it compares to other operators, even though I have been playing the game for quite a while.
I tried for like 2 months, it was incredibly hard LOL Eventually I ended up with a visualisation similar to 3b1b's EoLA graphs but couldn't set up the 'interactive' side of things which basically makes it unreadable to anyone without source control, so I scrapped it.
You weren't wrong when you said you were happy with this video, because it's good and reasonable as always. Tierlists are supposed to be practical and operators can be compared to one another in a helpful way. One idea for a new type of tier list would be to look at common problems (new) players face and look at which operators deal with them most effectively. For this to work we need a list of problems, weighted by how common they are and give each op marks. This would allow players to look at their roster and easily see what they are lacking, e.g. "oh Blaze has an A rank in trash clearing, but she's also got an B rank in tanking dangerous enemies. Mountain has an S rank in trash clearning because he doesn't need a healer, but he only has a C rank for tanking dangerous enemies. My best unit for elite disposal only has a C rank, so I should go for Surtr over Mountain."
Role solutions are a great way to organize tierlists, but for new player-oriented ones, probably the most important secondary factor will be cost-effectiveness. Sometimes the cheapest solution to a roster deficiency can be the most preferable when you're very low on LMD, mats, chips, and glue. I suspect that kind of list would focus more on operators who perform many roles well rather than an operator who does one role the best. Schwarz might be one of the most powerful high-end operators in the game for certain niches like extreme def/res risk CC or boss killing, but she's so specialized in that role and so technical to use outside of it that average or newer players might prefer investing in cheaper alternatives. Thorns on the other hand isn't the highest DPS or survivability or DP-economy, nor is he the quickest to set up, but he's an operator people can just bring and be reasonably confident they can deal with contingencies, because he's just good enough at everything that he's almost never dead weight. Meanwhile something like S2M3 Warfarin might be great for squeezing peak performance out of a team, but that's a luxury mastery only buff army enjoyers really "need". Exusiai is pound for pound stronger than Archetto, but she falls off past midgame without buffs... Archetto may be weaker in a vacuum, and her swiss army knife-style toolkit is basically just a mix of all the other, lower rarity AA snipers, but if she's your first high end sniper there's no reason not to invest in her over raising multiple 5* that an old player's roster might have had first, basically saving a lot of time and effort and getting the most versatility for one investment. And so on.
In the tierlist issues section you forgot #4: The inherent bias of tier lists due to propagation of entrenched ideas/idealogy re: operator strength. In layman's terms once an operator is placed into a credible tier list source like some of the ones you referenced it is far more likely to be placed similarly in future community tier lists. Even if you have some people challenging the status quo (which can be a good thing though sometimes just stems from ignorance) overwhelmingly the majority of people will align with the popular idealogy.
That would be the case if there was any semblance of an "agreed upon" tierlist by the community that doesn't have everyone at each other's throats. The 'major' tierlists floating around now are GP, Cesith, and NGA, all of which are more or less completely independent of one another. There's nothing made by what the current community might view as an 'authority' i.e. say, Kyo, that can influence future tiering, at least to a significant extent in my opinion. If one wishes to say something unorthodox in AK for example, you'll likely get a platform just for being "against metaslaving" or whatnot.
Correct, I'm making the claim that your aforementioned bias will not have a significant enough impact given scarcity of sources of bias and prevalence of "safe spaces" for contrarily ideas.
@@Drails It would be difficult to quantify the impact. Any example provided could be dismissed as "misinformation" easier than it could be quantified as bias. Said differently, the source and their opinion would first have to be considered credible otherwise there would be too many variables to confidently classify it as true bias. The number of objectively credible sources is incredibly sparse so it would be difficult to determine any correlations. I don't know that I necessarily agree with your view but I think I have to concede given the lack of empirical evidence.
@@Drails I think that effect is more common outside of formal tierlists: Mainly, AK reddit has had a history of being well poisoned by CN metaslave opinions. It's a real thing but not hugely represented in actual lists, mostly randos commenting to say someone's waifu is shit tier.
Thanks for the good analysis as always, man. Just one thing, there's no "top right corner" feature in CZcams anymore, so we have no means to know which video you're talking about when you said that. Please post the link in the description next time.
@@Drails Strange indeed, mine doesn't have that feature for a while now... Might be a local thing? Or maybe Premium idk. Either way thanks for clarifying.
imo the problem with tier list type of information, for the people who doesnt try to understand further, can be hella misled. granted this is less of the tier list fault, but more the reader. tier list can never fully explain its contents, but also some people just doesnt care that much about the missing information. and this is where online debate starts :)
yeah a lot of the criticisms with tierlists can extend to more nuanced opinion pieces i.e. youtube videos, operator summaries, whatever - it's a slippery slope argument when people say tierlists cause reader to not think because... when you're consuming any form of online content, it kind of also does the thinking for you? like, there's definitely people who share a differing opinion on Horn than me, and that's great, but obviously in the comments section of my video on her it's going to be really one-sided with my narrative winning out, which is expected but overall the issue still remains
Personally I don’t think it’s that complicated to make things more clear to players. Just make a separate tierlist for different aspects of the game. Such as “general” content, cc high risk, lane holding and so on. It helps clearly define niches and roles for operators and shows which characters can go almost anywhere. Modules are going to really mess with them moving forward tho once the lvl 3 ones become abundant
Having multiple tierlists for everything reduces shareability to shreds when the main purpose (to suit the average audience) is to convey information in a succinct, one-image format imo.
@@Drails if your “average audience” is very new players saying “great use of resources”, “worth your resources”, “maybe consider”, and “don’t consider for awhile” would probably be more helpful then. It’s a challenge trying to convey so much information down into a single picture
I agree. It is nigh impossible to tell which you unit is actually good, at a certain point in the game, and how good they are at that point in the game. Take Ling for example kukki said that she is near worthless for players between level 40~95 and anyone who has a well-built roster IIRC BUT my account was level 75~ in CN back in the days and had all the OP Operators (Flagpipe, Skalter, Surtr, Mudrock, Eyja, Ifrit, Mountain, Exu, SA, etc) BUT I always ended up using Ling instead as she replaced half of them, and I could then run Flagpipe everywhere instead of pulling my hair out everytime they drop a new CC trying to build up a team. Events would be a breeze as well since the summons act as AOE Guard, Tank, Arts DPS and can be deployed anywhere on the map without worry of Medic. A unit like say Melantha is poor and shitted on, called "outclassed" by gamepress and their goons BUT is incredibly valuable for newbies, as she can handle the caster mob BY HERSELF! Sth that most newbies struggle with. So it is very hard to actually rank a unit as certain unit might be OP for one person but "shit" for others, depends on how they play the game and what do they got. I cant imagine a better tank than Mudrock and she absolutely deserves the S+ rankings BUT a new player will have absolutely NO USE for her, as the hefty 31 DP cost is too immense for an undeveloped roster and she will be riding the bench 90% of the times certainly, as the stage would be longggg over before she even manages to get on the field !
While i agree with the first half, i get what you mean by the second half, but i must defend Gamepress here. When i had just joined, i started with Silverash and Exusia as 6*, Zima and Liskarm as 5*, and quickly got more 6 stars (Eyja, Ifrit and Mudrock), and when i looked at Gamepress tier lists, they always had explanations, notes and even a new player tier list, saying stuff like "this 3/4 star op might me replaceable later on, but at early levels, it will work better than 5/6 stars, cause its cheaper to develop and deploy, so new players won't run into DP problems and can upgrade their skills more"; so yes, they do say Melantha is replacable, but they also say that she has high enough stats to be able to perform her job properly, and even carry doctors for a long time, and they also have separate tiers of skills masteries for story, hard content and roguelike. If it wasnt for their tier lists, i would have done a lot of shit with my OPs and wouldnt be able to clear anything with expensive, underdeveloped OPs, cause it took me a really long time just to get Myrtle, and even longer to get Bagpipe.
I mean omni blade is a nintendo creator really. So the warning to not take him as seriously as AK sweats is pretty valid ig, but may be misconstrued as gatekeepish.
The biggest problem with tower lists is the absurd ranking system that's people are using. What is wrong with sticking to ranking from A to F, that you have to invent new tanks above A? Are you afraid to hurt someone's feelings if you down grade your favorite character because Newer characters have power crept up to make your old characters feel obsolete? There is no such thing as S rank or S+ or SS or Ex rank or whatever the hell your inventing. Look, none of these newly invented ranks should exist
For a new player, I don't think tier lists hold much value, you don't know enough to understand what is being presented. P.S would you recommend a new player make a throw away account, play it for a week or two before making his real account?
1) Partially why I support generalised tierlists as then it reduces the amount of 'understanding' a new player needs, with high tier good, low tier undesirable kinda deal. Sure, they won't be able to grasp all the intricacies, but there's an argument to be made that new player TLs should be centred around that assumption and seek to give them a direction. 2) One of the fastest ways to make a new player lose interest imo. I've always been a proponent of rerolling and I've seen players start a new account for a week, realise they have say, a Shining Hoshi start, and then attempt to reroll and quit the game another week after. The 'superior' progression approach in this case clashes heavily with actual game enjoyment, I find.
@@Drails 😂 My start was Shining and Hoshi, but Arknights got under my skin nontheless. But I see your point, most people should be pointed at meta operators, if the game captures thier attention, they will look for deeper information independently.
On the contrary, tier lists are mostly targeted at newer players, if you are a veteran player you are 1) at the point where you are sufficiently knowledgeable about individual operator quirks 2) experimenting with different strategies 3) have a wide range of different operators as is, and have far lesser need to be told what to roll on, what is considered "strong" etc. New players want a simplified go-to resource because they are already overloaded with burden of knowledge from everything else happening in-game. "P.S would you recommend a new player make a throw away account, play it for a week or two before making his real account?" And this is why tier lists are so important for the new player experience, they absolutely don't want to go through 2 weeks just to hit a big roadblock in progression because they started the game out with operators like Shining and Chen and find out everything is so much harder as a result.
Nah, the hate for 252 base is that it's a shitshow of micromanagement. Objectively the most efficient, sure, but even with "Dorm 5” for those who were fortunate enough to reach the R6S banner, it leaves a lot of base rotation. Good for players who like routines of checking in every few hours to maximize output but the worst base for anyone who leaves the game for longer periods.
@@FelisImpurrator with 252,the dorm is mostly left at lvl 1,so that means your ops' morale recover slower (1.6 morale/hr),thus you don't need to rotate ops frequently while for 243,the dorms are probably at higher lvls,so ops' morale recover faster,thus you need to rotate ops frequently sorry for the late reply
Hilarious that you dismiss the argument that tierlists are worthless. 1. Tierlists for games that rely on team composition will never be really helpful. (Btw, that is the reason gamepress GFL part abolished tierlists alltogether and gives a sorting feature per archetype with an explanation, which makes a lot more sense.) 2. You never know the personal view of someone viewing a tierlists, there are way too many variables to generalize operators in a tierlist. (Maybe a player already has a character that fulfills the same role, or uses tactics that won't make sense with certain characters, or already has too many of a certain cost threshold, or is still in a phase of the game that influences choices massively...) 3. Through simplification, it leads to a lot of stupid shit, like players with completely unbalanced accounts, or simply players that never read skills of operators and in turn never learned to actually play the game. 4. Operators that might have very specific roles that might be harder to use, but are actually extremely powerful if used right, completely fall to the wayside, which leads to massive misinformation about the power of these operators from someone that doesn't understand the nuances, and if you understand the nuances you don't really need a tierlist. The only tierlist I looked at that actually made a certain amount of sense is the 'new player' aimed tierlist in Gamepress, that looks at operators and how much sense these operators make to build for a new player. That tierlist seemed to make a lot of sense because it helped to give a basis through the massive pool of Arknights operators without really impeding on anything after the beginning stages. In general, general tierlists are garbage, and when they aren't, because you are experienced enough to be able to read and understand them, you don't need them anymore.
I mean.... it's my opinion piece which I explain the usefulness of tierlisting.... you must live in a really nice bubble where anything which doesn't align with your own prerogative is a dismissal. 1. Assertion with nothing to back it up. Teamfocused/multicharacter oriented games have nothing which invalidate tierlisting as certain characters will be - sometimes quantifiably and sometimes not - stronger than others. Take even League for instance - they'll have winrate sorted tiers on U.GG and such which are generally accepted as a useful guideline for lower elo players. - 2. Personal opinions of new players will be - and this comes from years of helping them at this point - either build the operator that they find attractive or the ones they see on the high pedestal of a shiny tierlist. Do you really think any new player will waltz into Arknights, see a Surtr on S+ on GPTL for instance, and have a strong personal opinion which drastically alters the value of the list? As for experienced players, they should (and from experience, they mostly do) understand that any tierlist just gently guides opinion. I have yet to see any player take a foreign TL as their personality and hard base all decisions off that, and I suspect you're intentionally pulling this into the extremes to make what can only be a lowstakes argument look bad. - 3. Generalisation accepts that it will sacrifice a portion of accuracy for the overall better outcome. I'll be very much willing to wager with you on the outcomes of an account blindly following a tierlist or an account of an average new player trying to figure the game out. "Never learned to actually play the game" is an interesting point you bring up, but even taking you at face value, is this not the same as guides? Tierlists abstract away investment decisionmaking and guides abstract away gameplay decisionmaking, and I believe most will agree that (i) has a greater chance of leading to a 'better' player, if you may be so elitist as to attempt to quantify that. - 4. If something is niche to the point where their average usecase is significantly weaker than their 99th percentile usecase, then they deserve to be ranked lower - what's the deal? If I have a hypothetical operator Surtr2 who instakills all enemies of a specific trait but acts like Melantha everywhere else, but the specific trait is linked to an obscure event, it's not a difficult task at all to claim that Surtr2 leans significantly closer to Melantha in terms of powerlevel- i.e., tierlist placement. This is also where the little bit of nuance added to nonlateral tierlists come in. It's very possible to pick out the average specific content performance on various operators are categorise them separately on the same tierlist, i.e. "Strong (Niche)" vs "Strong (All-rounder)", accepting that the former may have generally lower performance but specific scenario performance. A tierlist wouldn't destroy nuance away from "oh hey this unit is good against this mechanic" any moreso than literally every other AK based guide on the planet, and any sufficiently relevant one would have some form of justification, which both NGA and GPTL have. - You cannot tell me with a straight face that Surtr and Mostima - hell, even postmodule - are anywhere near the same pedestal in the role of DPS, and the only ambiguity that arises is when you pit stuff like Skalter against Surtr, i.e. utility vs burst but even in these situations the winner is fairly clear - even if it isn't, that's what TIERS are for, you can just stuff sufficiently close comparisons into S+ or whatever.
@@Drails Yes, it is your opinion piece, but you have to allow me to disagree with your opinion, that is what a discussion is. :P God this is getting long, but for once I will do the honors: 1. You mention that I have nothing to back up my point and refute it by citing LoL statistics, but by making that point you actually back up my point, because if you look at LoL or Dota (I played LoL, but am way more familiar with Dota) it massively shows how pointless those statistics are if a professional team uses a low ranked unit and wins with it, sometime even dominating to the point that other teams ban the unit. Team composition and tactics are king, not singular units. Freaking Yato can kill Patriot with the right set up. Is that optimal? No, but it shows how unimportant specific pieces can be if the overall tactic leads to it. 2. I don't think you understand how subtle we as humans are influenced (After the whole Diablo Immortal fiasco, I thought about writing a piece to dissect how even a fair game like Arknights uses psychology to influence players to spend more money...), a new player seeing a shiny Surtr on top of a tierlist might even be influenced to built a character which design they didn't like previously, because we are able to deceive ourselves, but that would lead a bit to far into the psychological rabbit hole, I will just say that the subtle influence, especially on new players, can be way more damaging that one might think at first. 3. What is the better outcome you are talking about? A new account with someone that has Surtr, Chen alter, Silverash and Mudrock, and struggles because they have no DP to field all these expensive operators? Or people raising Texas because she is high up the tierlist first, which can absolutely break your neck because Texas is made out of paper, which will become a massive problem when you really need a vanguard? And yes, guides are obviously also a massive problem. I would argue a lot of people that stop playing the game do so because they never learned how to play the game in the first place, and that becomes boring fast if all you do is follow a guide for every map. 4. You are clearly misusing niche in your argument here. Niche doesn't mean what you said, but niche can also be things you can influence and if you can influence it is about you creating the opportunity for that unit to shine. An easy example are operators that get buffs if an enemy is blocked or not blocked, something that is easily influenced, but can hardly be recognized in a tierlist. Yes, there are good allrounders, or units that are very easy to understand (I think that is how Kukkis words it), and those tend to be shoved down the throat of everyone that looks at a tierlist, but as you mentioned they may not be the best for a certain job, but just the ones that are easy to understand or that can do the job somewhat because they are jack of all trades. I can tell you with a straight face that Mostima can be better than Surtr, if you have no melee tiles to hit the enemy for a certain amount of time exist. Nice of you to make an easy example to prove how fucked that kind of thinking is... That is just a simple example, and obviously it is easier to show what I mean from extremes or simple examples, but that doesn't mean that there are no milder things that could lead to similar outcomes.
@@zomfgroflmao1337 All of this is moot, because again, tier lists are generally targeted at newer players and their primary concern when it comes to power levels is what are the operators that are far more versatile and powerful compared to others to invest with their limited amount of resources. Specifying "well if there are no melee tiles Mostima is better than Surtr" is just asinine and nitpicking because realistically in at least 999 out of 1000 scenarios newer players won't encounter extremely fringe scenarios like this because this really only happens in very late-chapter challenge modes or very high risk CC clears. Neither of which isn't and shouldn't be the primary concern of new players in the short or mid term.
I feel like the community's idea of "meta/tierlists do not apply to Arknights, because of niches" is really weird. It is true that niches can make certain mediocre operators be much better in a few situations than a meta operator in that same situation, however this is true for most games. Yet Arknights has the only community that fails to grasp the concept of meta/tiers. Having a strong niche which is the only thing an operator is good at, is exactly why they are lower on a tierlist. It is not an excuse to forego tierlists all together. There has scarcely been a game where a tierlist is absolute, there are exceptions in almost all cases. High tier units across all games are usually not just good at what they do, but they are good at it under a lot of circumstances, or what they do is very relevant across a lot of content. That often translates into big damage, but there are always more complexities to it. Arknights is not unique in the fact that it has diverse units with diverse skills and talents. "But Khroniclas, tierlists don't matter at all, because some gamemodes favour certain niche operators more often." This is true young one, however basically every game has multiple tier lists to reflect viability of units across the different gamemodes that require different things. This could be tier lists for pvp, pve, raid bosses, etc. In Arknights the natural tier list categories would be general content, CC, Annihilation and IS. The existence of multiple tier lists per game for different content is expected. It does not mean that tier lists are not useful, it merely means that the game (thankfully) has a bit more depth and that you have to evaluate things somewhat differently based on the gamemode you are playing. You may also notice among the examples, that the tierlist categories tend to be based around gamemodes/broad categories. Not around every small little mechanic in a game. This is because you broadly need certain things, and these things need to be done well, fulfilling a niche only becomes relevant once you notice that you need this niche against a specific boss or stage, but it hasn't been fulfilled within your squad yet. For example, I have a strong medic like Ptilopsis in my squad and she can carry healing in 99% of the stages and she has a very strong SP talent, but the enemies have a lot of arts nukes in this stage. This is where my generally good medic Ptilopsis would be good to swapout for my Nightingale. Does this one stage mean Nightingale is equally viable to Ptilopsis? No, it just means that she is viable and in this one rare instance she is better than Ptilopsis. Ptilopsis is still better in 99% of all other stages though, and that difference is why Ptilopsis would naturally be in a tier (or multiple) above Nightingale. Would you need Ptilopsis to beat those other 99% of the stages? Nope. But she is the better choice in those 99% stages, which is once again, why she would be higher in the tierlist. Also keep in mind that 99% and 1% for serious arts damage that requires mitigation may not be completely accurate. It could be 90/10 for all I know, but I am sure that most people here are aware of how few times you need the arts mitigation of Nightingale. 99% is obviously an exaggerated number, but all things considered I would not be surprised if it is accurate. Arknights is a wonderfully balanced game, that allows you to beat most stages with any operator you want, even E0 only. You don't have to follow any tierlists to have fun in the game, nor to beat it. This does not mean that tiers or meta do not exist, it just means that you don't have to sweat about it. To me it feels incredibly pretentious to say otherwise.
It's sad that it took a while for people to notice this, with the whole "No bad operator, only bad doctor" agenda in early AK. I mean, there were AK content creators that got shunned from the community just because they called an operator bad.
@@sejama6625 Well, they're still correct. Mostly. The number of truly bad operators can be counted on one hand and shrinks every time HG decides to give one a ridiculously broken module (lmao hi Skadi/Mostima). Just wait for Ebenholz to get some kind of "only attack when at max stacks" Module-Y someday, or Tsukinogi to get SP charge on attack or something... "There are no bad operators, only niche ones" is just less catchy.
@OP The attitude is directly a response to arrogant metaslaves who were extremely common early in the game's lifespan, whose opinions were basically "just Eyja/SA/Surtr/Chotgun it, anything not meta is useless garbage and you're stupid if you don't build according to these objective and absolute facts". It's just overzealous backlash against dumbass opinions. The same scenario is prevalent in another game I play - Warframe, where tier lists are commonly just made by extreme metaslaves and presented as objective fact to shit on off-meta play.
6:58 Myrtle in niche......... im convinced the person who made that tier list hasnt actually played the game XD i disagree with a good handful of the list ofc but that one just... wow...
That's Silvergun, the best 4*-only player in all of EN. The TL is specific to 4*-only optimised gameplay, for which there are very little uses for Myrtle. Go and call him out on not playing the game here: czcams.com/users/DrSilvergun
@@Drails I'm not gonna head to his channel just to pick a fight or say I disagree lol, but I gotta say.... To play the game in a very niche way then make a tier list and call characters niche just kinda tickles my funny bone 😂
@@ScroteGoblin 4 stars are cheap as hell, if you only use 4 stars to play this game DP is not even a mandatory problem to begin with. Myrtle does not do anything outside of generating DP so it's understandable why because... others like Bean generate enough DP and bring sth else like stalling or blocking Plus there isn't a correct way of playing the game, calling other people playstyle niche is somewhat flawed
you can definitly differentiate between a generally strong unit and a generally weak or niche unit. but in the end it depends on a lot of factors how good a unit can be
Making tierlists is useful, it's a great way to visualize information and we fellow humans love visual information as compared to a brick of text, but the format itself is very restrictive.
Because tierlists provide information in a "single dimension" for lack of a better term, each unit is placed on a vertical line and it's the only way to differentiate them from each other, the format works best when comparing a single factor between the units, because we then have a direct comparison.
And that's where our problem lies, Arknights units can't be reduced to a single factor without losing varying degrees of accuracy, the whole generalisation vs accuracy thingy you explained.
I don't really have a solution for this matter other than "tierlists are not adapted for this kind of work", not without heavily specialising them to insane degrees or adding a thousand addendums as to why it is that way and not another one.
I think tier list only useful for newbie players to give a rough outline of the operator's power level. Like for example, Kroos is great and deserve an A+ rating for newbie if they didn't have any other snipers to use, but she's easily replaceable by, say, Exu because Exu deals more damage even at E1 and has an average DP cost even for an undeveloped team. In 4* team there are only some unit that can match the usefulness of Kroos with little investment like for example, May. Jessica, for example, needs some investment before she can exceed Kroos' power level and for newbie players, these aren't cheap.
These aren't applicable to the more experienced players of course but they're useful for newer players to give an idea whom to target in the future recruitment.
I think the best and primary use for tier lists should be a relative cost-effectiveness list. New players need bang for their sanity more than anything else, while vets really should have more luxury if they've played consistently. If you're a minmaxer who wants max risk clears and other challenges, a max difficulty meta tier list looks way different from the average player's list, and is probably more expensive at that. But if you're new and trying to clear Risk 18 and events, knowing which core operators you can build strats around for minimal investment is way more important.
You know, I was just reading the video description after watching the video and I think the one thing that bugs me the most about the casual versus non-casual sides is how hard it is to stay cordial. I don't think it matters if you are casual or not as long as you can respectfully disagree.
My biggest gripe about the metaslave side of things are those who just outright say "the unit is terrible" without giving any real explanation about why they are terrible. Just a one liner stating their immense dissatisfaction of a unit and they disappear.
On the flip side, I'm beginning to dislike the Waifu > meta argument that comes too because there is clearly and objectively better operators when you start to weigh their pros and cons.
I personally feel very few operators in this game are truely unredeemable and there is always an edge case utilization for everyone.
Anyway, in terms of tier lists, I agree that they should be easily readable and accessible. I feel like anyone making a tier list for Arknights though should put a heavy emphasis at the beginning of the list to indicate what they are judging operators on as everyone had their own subjective values they put onto the tier list. Thus the onus is on the reader / listener to sift through that information and see in what degree the assessment affects them.
Good work on the video and thank you for the thoughtful listen.
The waifu>meta thing is mostly a response to metaslaves who act as if tier lists are objective metrics of absolute value and that following the "top tier" is mandatory to play the game effectively. There are better and worse operators, but even the jankiest/weakest units like Ebenholz or Tsukinogi have ways to make them fun and effective enough to clear content. Ultimately the point is - you CAN clear all content using just your waifus. I mean, E0 Sui-Xiang is possible. At this point the game is cracked open so thoroughly in terms of strat viability that you can do whatever the hell you want, if you're prepared to suffer more or spend more or get real gud. It may not be the objectively best option, but people often act in ways that suggest they need to be reminded that it is an option.
When it comes to tier lists I use them mostly in figuring out who to focus on next. " My team doesn't have an answer to a high Def unit what are some good arts units.. Oh I have her lets put resources into her." the game press list does this best because I can easily select classes and then read descriptions on WHY they are good at what they do.
If HyperGryph had a simulator where players could test an operator in a given situation, players themselves can come to their own conclusions. Like having 4 waves of 5 drones, so player can test Kroos vs Archetto.
Since that won't happen, I think tier list, though imperfect, helped to fill the information gap.
I only recently started and used the gamepress list a lot in the first few weeks to have an idea which units to focus on raising. It worked out pretty well.
What's up with the "Stealgun" bit? Silvergun has never stolen anything, i've never seen him not credit a clear from CN if he's showcasing one.
Check his nickname in AKO (or was it another server?, 'Dr. Stealgun'), it's a selfimposed joke lol.
Gotcha, thanks for clearing that up.
Tierlists are helpful. Especially when one is a new player. But at the end of the day, as a player gains more experience, they are going to mention all kinds of things. Different operators for different situations... then there are things like different players prefer to play differently and value different things.
I, for example, like to sort units by what they are trying to do and how good they are at performing that role, or how often/how much they are needed to do that.
I do not mean the official classes or subclasses assigned by the game.
It would be cool to see how that "3D Vector" tier list would actually look like.
I wanted to make it for myself, but I would say that I'm not well versed in the game yet to accurately judge the operator's performance and how it compares to other operators, even though I have been playing the game for quite a while.
I tried for like 2 months, it was incredibly hard LOL
Eventually I ended up with a visualisation similar to 3b1b's EoLA graphs but couldn't set up the 'interactive' side of things which basically makes it unreadable to anyone without source control, so I scrapped it.
@@Drails F
You weren't wrong when you said you were happy with this video, because it's good and reasonable as always.
Tierlists are supposed to be practical and operators can be compared to one another in a helpful way. One idea for a new type of tier list would be to look at common problems (new) players face and look at which operators deal with them most effectively. For this to work we need a list of problems, weighted by how common they are and give each op marks. This would allow players to look at their roster and easily see what they are lacking, e.g. "oh Blaze has an A rank in trash clearing, but she's also got an B rank in tanking dangerous enemies. Mountain has an S rank in trash clearning because he doesn't need a healer, but he only has a C rank for tanking dangerous enemies. My best unit for elite disposal only has a C rank, so I should go for Surtr over Mountain."
Role solutions are a great way to organize tierlists, but for new player-oriented ones, probably the most important secondary factor will be cost-effectiveness. Sometimes the cheapest solution to a roster deficiency can be the most preferable when you're very low on LMD, mats, chips, and glue. I suspect that kind of list would focus more on operators who perform many roles well rather than an operator who does one role the best.
Schwarz might be one of the most powerful high-end operators in the game for certain niches like extreme def/res risk CC or boss killing, but she's so specialized in that role and so technical to use outside of it that average or newer players might prefer investing in cheaper alternatives. Thorns on the other hand isn't the highest DPS or survivability or DP-economy, nor is he the quickest to set up, but he's an operator people can just bring and be reasonably confident they can deal with contingencies, because he's just good enough at everything that he's almost never dead weight. Meanwhile something like S2M3 Warfarin might be great for squeezing peak performance out of a team, but that's a luxury mastery only buff army enjoyers really "need". Exusiai is pound for pound stronger than Archetto, but she falls off past midgame without buffs... Archetto may be weaker in a vacuum, and her swiss army knife-style toolkit is basically just a mix of all the other, lower rarity AA snipers, but if she's your first high end sniper there's no reason not to invest in her over raising multiple 5* that an old player's roster might have had first, basically saving a lot of time and effort and getting the most versatility for one investment. And so on.
Havent even watched a second of the video, but i'll give a like for the thumbnail
In the tierlist issues section you forgot #4: The inherent bias of tier lists due to propagation of entrenched ideas/idealogy re: operator strength.
In layman's terms once an operator is placed into a credible tier list source like some of the ones you referenced it is far more likely to be placed similarly in future community tier lists. Even if you have some people challenging the status quo (which can be a good thing though sometimes just stems from ignorance) overwhelmingly the majority of people will align with the popular idealogy.
That would be the case if there was any semblance of an "agreed upon" tierlist by the community that doesn't have everyone at each other's throats. The 'major' tierlists floating around now are GP, Cesith, and NGA, all of which are more or less completely independent of one another.
There's nothing made by what the current community might view as an 'authority' i.e. say, Kyo, that can influence future tiering, at least to a significant extent in my opinion. If one wishes to say something unorthodox in AK for example, you'll likely get a platform just for being "against metaslaving" or whatnot.
@@Drails
Bias occurs regardless of consensus but to your point there will be competing biases.
Also, bias isn't necessarily synonymous with meta.
Correct, I'm making the claim that your aforementioned bias will not have a significant enough impact given scarcity of sources of bias and prevalence of "safe spaces" for contrarily ideas.
@@Drails
It would be difficult to quantify the impact. Any example provided could be dismissed as "misinformation" easier than it could be quantified as bias. Said differently, the source and their opinion would first have to be considered credible otherwise there would be too many variables to confidently classify it as true bias. The number of objectively credible sources is incredibly sparse so it would be difficult to determine any correlations.
I don't know that I necessarily agree with your view but I think I have to concede given the lack of empirical evidence.
@@Drails I think that effect is more common outside of formal tierlists: Mainly, AK reddit has had a history of being well poisoned by CN metaslave opinions. It's a real thing but not hugely represented in actual lists, mostly randos commenting to say someone's waifu is shit tier.
Thanks for the good analysis as always, man.
Just one thing, there's no "top right corner" feature in CZcams anymore, so we have no means to know which video you're talking about when you said that. Please post the link in the description next time.
Oh, that's strange. Works on my end: media.discordapp.net/attachments/810731977862021171/997637254069616740/IMG_1618.png?width=1170&height=622
@@Drails Strange indeed, mine doesn't have that feature for a while now... Might be a local thing? Or maybe Premium idk.
Either way thanks for clarifying.
I see i don't understand
ah yes, tierlist of tierlists
imo the problem with tier list type of information, for the people who doesnt try to understand further, can be hella misled. granted this is less of the tier list fault, but more the reader. tier list can never fully explain its contents, but also some people just doesnt care that much about the missing information. and this is where online debate starts :)
yeah a lot of the criticisms with tierlists can extend to more nuanced opinion pieces i.e. youtube videos, operator summaries, whatever - it's a slippery slope argument when people say tierlists cause reader to not think because...
when you're consuming any form of online content, it kind of also does the thinking for you?
like, there's definitely people who share a differing opinion on Horn than me, and that's great, but obviously in the comments section of my video on her it's going to be really one-sided with my narrative winning out, which is expected but overall the issue still remains
@@Drails horn is hot. there is no debate there. horn uwoogh
Personally I don’t think it’s that complicated to make things more clear to players. Just make a separate tierlist for different aspects of the game. Such as “general” content, cc high risk, lane holding and so on. It helps clearly define niches and roles for operators and shows which characters can go almost anywhere.
Modules are going to really mess with them moving forward tho once the lvl 3 ones become abundant
Having multiple tierlists for everything reduces shareability to shreds when the main purpose (to suit the average audience) is to convey information in a succinct, one-image format imo.
@@Drails if your “average audience” is very new players saying “great use of resources”, “worth your resources”, “maybe consider”, and “don’t consider for awhile” would probably be more helpful then. It’s a challenge trying to convey so much information down into a single picture
Umm, thumbnail pic source? :>
mobile.twitter.com/eru_illust/status/1260493362697834496
I agree. It is nigh impossible to tell which you unit is actually good, at a certain point in the game, and how good they are at that point in the game.
Take Ling for example kukki said that she is near worthless for players between level 40~95 and anyone who has a well-built roster IIRC BUT my account was level 75~ in CN back in the days and had all the OP Operators (Flagpipe, Skalter, Surtr, Mudrock, Eyja, Ifrit, Mountain, Exu, SA, etc) BUT I always ended up using Ling instead as she replaced half of them, and I could then run Flagpipe everywhere instead of pulling my hair out everytime they drop a new CC trying to build up a team. Events would be a breeze as well since the summons act as AOE Guard, Tank, Arts DPS and can be deployed anywhere on the map without worry of Medic.
A unit like say Melantha is poor and shitted on, called "outclassed" by gamepress and their goons BUT is incredibly valuable for newbies, as she can handle the caster mob BY HERSELF! Sth that most newbies struggle with. So it is very hard to actually rank a unit as certain unit might be OP for one person but "shit" for others, depends on how they play the game and what do they got. I cant imagine a better tank than Mudrock and she absolutely deserves the S+ rankings BUT a new player will have absolutely NO USE for her, as the hefty 31 DP cost is too immense for an undeveloped roster and she will be riding the bench 90% of the times certainly, as the stage would be longggg over before she even manages to get on the field !
While i agree with the first half, i get what you mean by the second half, but i must defend Gamepress here.
When i had just joined, i started with Silverash and Exusia as 6*, Zima and Liskarm as 5*, and quickly got more 6 stars (Eyja, Ifrit and Mudrock), and when i looked at Gamepress tier lists, they always had explanations, notes and even a new player tier list, saying stuff like "this 3/4 star op might me replaceable later on, but at early levels, it will work better than 5/6 stars, cause its cheaper to develop and deploy, so new players won't run into DP problems and can upgrade their skills more"; so yes, they do say Melantha is replacable, but they also say that she has high enough stats to be able to perform her job properly, and even carry doctors for a long time, and they also have separate tiers of skills masteries for story, hard content and roguelike. If it wasnt for their tier lists, i would have done a lot of shit with my OPs and wouldnt be able to clear anything with expensive, underdeveloped OPs, cause it took me a really long time just to get Myrtle, and even longer to get Bagpipe.
I mean omni blade is a nintendo creator really. So the warning to not take him as seriously as AK sweats is pretty valid ig, but may be misconstrued as gatekeepish.
Is this video a tierlist of tierlists?
soonTM
The biggest problem with tower lists is the absurd ranking system that's people are using. What is wrong with sticking to ranking from A to F, that you have to invent new tanks above A? Are you afraid to hurt someone's feelings if you down grade your favorite character because
Newer characters have power crept up to make your old characters feel obsolete? There is no such thing as S rank or S+ or SS or Ex rank or whatever the hell your inventing. Look, none of these newly invented ranks should exist
agree
For a new player, I don't think tier lists hold much value, you don't know enough to understand what is being presented.
P.S would you recommend a new player make a throw away account, play it for a week or two before making his real account?
1) Partially why I support generalised tierlists as then it reduces the amount of 'understanding' a new player needs, with high tier good, low tier undesirable kinda deal. Sure, they won't be able to grasp all the intricacies, but there's an argument to be made that new player TLs should be centred around that assumption and seek to give them a direction.
2) One of the fastest ways to make a new player lose interest imo. I've always been a proponent of rerolling and I've seen players start a new account for a week, realise they have say, a Shining Hoshi start, and then attempt to reroll and quit the game another week after.
The 'superior' progression approach in this case clashes heavily with actual game enjoyment, I find.
@@Drails 😂
My start was Shining and Hoshi, but Arknights got under my skin nontheless.
But I see your point, most people should be pointed at meta operators, if the game captures thier attention, they will look for deeper information independently.
On the contrary, tier lists are mostly targeted at newer players, if you are a veteran player you are 1) at the point where you are sufficiently knowledgeable about individual operator quirks 2) experimenting with different strategies 3) have a wide range of different operators as is, and have far lesser need to be told what to roll on, what is considered "strong" etc.
New players want a simplified go-to resource because they are already overloaded with burden of knowledge from everything else happening in-game.
"P.S would you recommend a new player make a throw away account, play it for a week or two before making his real account?"
And this is why tier lists are so important for the new player experience, they absolutely don't want to go through 2 weeks just to hit a big roadblock in progression because they started the game out with operators like Shining and Chen and find out everything is so much harder as a result.
But the big question is, who is doing the Tier List for the AK Content Creator's Community, and where does Drails lie on that list?
Hint: It's S+
I don't think all community content is controversial,the hate for 252 is just that the community hates math lol
Nah, the hate for 252 base is that it's a shitshow of micromanagement. Objectively the most efficient, sure, but even with "Dorm 5” for those who were fortunate enough to reach the R6S banner, it leaves a lot of base rotation. Good for players who like routines of checking in every few hours to maximize output but the worst base for anyone who leaves the game for longer periods.
@@FelisImpurrator with 252,the dorm is mostly left at lvl 1,so that means your ops' morale recover slower (1.6 morale/hr),thus you don't need to rotate ops frequently
while for 243,the dorms are probably at higher lvls,so ops' morale recover faster,thus you need to rotate ops frequently
sorry for the late reply
Hilarious that you dismiss the argument that tierlists are worthless.
1. Tierlists for games that rely on team composition will never be really helpful. (Btw, that is the reason gamepress GFL part abolished tierlists alltogether and gives a sorting feature per archetype with an explanation, which makes a lot more sense.)
2. You never know the personal view of someone viewing a tierlists, there are way too many variables to generalize operators in a tierlist. (Maybe a player already has a character that fulfills the same role, or uses tactics that won't make sense with certain characters, or already has too many of a certain cost threshold, or is still in a phase of the game that influences choices massively...)
3. Through simplification, it leads to a lot of stupid shit, like players with completely unbalanced accounts, or simply players that never read skills of operators and in turn never learned to actually play the game.
4. Operators that might have very specific roles that might be harder to use, but are actually extremely powerful if used right, completely fall to the wayside, which leads to massive misinformation about the power of these operators from someone that doesn't understand the nuances, and if you understand the nuances you don't really need a tierlist.
The only tierlist I looked at that actually made a certain amount of sense is the 'new player' aimed tierlist in Gamepress, that looks at operators and how much sense these operators make to build for a new player. That tierlist seemed to make a lot of sense because it helped to give a basis through the massive pool of Arknights operators without really impeding on anything after the beginning stages. In general, general tierlists are garbage, and when they aren't, because you are experienced enough to be able to read and understand them, you don't need them anymore.
I mean.... it's my opinion piece which I explain the usefulness of tierlisting.... you must live in a really nice bubble where anything which doesn't align with your own prerogative is a dismissal.
1. Assertion with nothing to back it up. Teamfocused/multicharacter oriented games have nothing which invalidate tierlisting as certain characters will be - sometimes quantifiably and sometimes not - stronger than others. Take even League for instance - they'll have winrate sorted tiers on U.GG and such which are generally accepted as a useful guideline for lower elo players.
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2. Personal opinions of new players will be - and this comes from years of helping them at this point - either build the operator that they find attractive or the ones they see on the high pedestal of a shiny tierlist. Do you really think any new player will waltz into Arknights, see a Surtr on S+ on GPTL for instance, and have a strong personal opinion which drastically alters the value of the list?
As for experienced players, they should (and from experience, they mostly do) understand that any tierlist just gently guides opinion. I have yet to see any player take a foreign TL as their personality and hard base all decisions off that, and I suspect you're intentionally pulling this into the extremes to make what can only be a lowstakes argument look bad.
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3. Generalisation accepts that it will sacrifice a portion of accuracy for the overall better outcome. I'll be very much willing to wager with you on the outcomes of an account blindly following a tierlist or an account of an average new player trying to figure the game out.
"Never learned to actually play the game" is an interesting point you bring up, but even taking you at face value, is this not the same as guides? Tierlists abstract away investment decisionmaking and guides abstract away gameplay decisionmaking, and I believe most will agree that (i) has a greater chance of leading to a 'better' player, if you may be so elitist as to attempt to quantify that.
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4. If something is niche to the point where their average usecase is significantly weaker than their 99th percentile usecase, then they deserve to be ranked lower - what's the deal? If I have a hypothetical operator Surtr2 who instakills all enemies of a specific trait but acts like Melantha everywhere else, but the specific trait is linked to an obscure event, it's not a difficult task at all to claim that Surtr2 leans significantly closer to Melantha in terms of powerlevel- i.e., tierlist placement.
This is also where the little bit of nuance added to nonlateral tierlists come in. It's very possible to pick out the average specific content performance on various operators are categorise them separately on the same tierlist, i.e. "Strong (Niche)" vs "Strong (All-rounder)", accepting that the former may have generally lower performance but specific scenario performance.
A tierlist wouldn't destroy nuance away from "oh hey this unit is good against this mechanic" any moreso than literally every other AK based guide on the planet, and any sufficiently relevant one would have some form of justification, which both NGA and GPTL have.
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You cannot tell me with a straight face that Surtr and Mostima - hell, even postmodule - are anywhere near the same pedestal in the role of DPS, and the only ambiguity that arises is when you pit stuff like Skalter against Surtr, i.e. utility vs burst but even in these situations the winner is fairly clear - even if it isn't, that's what TIERS are for, you can just stuff sufficiently close comparisons into S+ or whatever.
@@Drails Yes, it is your opinion piece, but you have to allow me to disagree with your opinion, that is what a discussion is. :P
God this is getting long, but for once I will do the honors:
1. You mention that I have nothing to back up my point and refute it by citing LoL statistics, but by making that point you actually back up my point, because if you look at LoL or Dota (I played LoL, but am way more familiar with Dota) it massively shows how pointless those statistics are if a professional team uses a low ranked unit and wins with it, sometime even dominating to the point that other teams ban the unit.
Team composition and tactics are king, not singular units. Freaking Yato can kill Patriot with the right set up. Is that optimal? No, but it shows how unimportant specific pieces can be if the overall tactic leads to it.
2. I don't think you understand how subtle we as humans are influenced (After the whole Diablo Immortal fiasco, I thought about writing a piece to dissect how even a fair game like Arknights uses psychology to influence players to spend more money...), a new player seeing a shiny Surtr on top of a tierlist might even be influenced to built a character which design they didn't like previously, because we are able to deceive ourselves, but that would lead a bit to far into the psychological rabbit hole, I will just say that the subtle influence, especially on new players, can be way more damaging that one might think at first.
3. What is the better outcome you are talking about? A new account with someone that has Surtr, Chen alter, Silverash and Mudrock, and struggles because they have no DP to field all these expensive operators? Or people raising Texas because she is high up the tierlist first, which can absolutely break your neck because Texas is made out of paper, which will become a massive problem when you really need a vanguard? And yes, guides are obviously also a massive problem. I would argue a lot of people that stop playing the game do so because they never learned how to play the game in the first place, and that becomes boring fast if all you do is follow a guide for every map.
4. You are clearly misusing niche in your argument here. Niche doesn't mean what you said, but niche can also be things you can influence and if you can influence it is about you creating the opportunity for that unit to shine. An easy example are operators that get buffs if an enemy is blocked or not blocked, something that is easily influenced, but can hardly be recognized in a tierlist.
Yes, there are good allrounders, or units that are very easy to understand (I think that is how Kukkis words it), and those tend to be shoved down the throat of everyone that looks at a tierlist, but as you mentioned they may not be the best for a certain job, but just the ones that are easy to understand or that can do the job somewhat because they are jack of all trades.
I can tell you with a straight face that Mostima can be better than Surtr, if you have no melee tiles to hit the enemy for a certain amount of time exist. Nice of you to make an easy example to prove how fucked that kind of thinking is...
That is just a simple example, and obviously it is easier to show what I mean from extremes or simple examples, but that doesn't mean that there are no milder things that could lead to similar outcomes.
@@zomfgroflmao1337 All of this is moot, because again, tier lists are generally targeted at newer players and their primary concern when it comes to power levels is what are the operators that are far more versatile and powerful compared to others to invest with their limited amount of resources.
Specifying "well if there are no melee tiles Mostima is better than Surtr" is just asinine and nitpicking because realistically in at least 999 out of 1000 scenarios newer players won't encounter extremely fringe scenarios like this because this really only happens in very late-chapter challenge modes or very high risk CC clears. Neither of which isn't and shouldn't be the primary concern of new players in the short or mid term.
I feel like the community's idea of "meta/tierlists do not apply to Arknights, because of niches" is really weird.
It is true that niches can make certain mediocre operators be much better in a few situations than a meta operator in that same situation, however this is true for most games. Yet Arknights has the only community that fails to grasp the concept of meta/tiers.
Having a strong niche which is the only thing an operator is good at, is exactly why they are lower on a tierlist. It is not an excuse to forego tierlists all together. There has scarcely been a game where a tierlist is absolute, there are exceptions in almost all cases.
High tier units across all games are usually not just good at what they do, but they are good at it under a lot of circumstances, or what they do is very relevant across a lot of content. That often translates into big damage, but there are always more complexities to it. Arknights is not unique in the fact that it has diverse units with diverse skills and talents.
"But Khroniclas, tierlists don't matter at all, because some gamemodes favour certain niche operators more often."
This is true young one, however basically every game has multiple tier lists to reflect viability of units across the different gamemodes that require different things. This could be tier lists for pvp, pve, raid bosses, etc.
In Arknights the natural tier list categories would be general content, CC, Annihilation and IS.
The existence of multiple tier lists per game for different content is expected. It does not mean that tier lists are not useful, it merely means that the game (thankfully) has a bit more depth and that you have to evaluate things somewhat differently based on the gamemode you are playing.
You may also notice among the examples, that the tierlist categories tend to be based around gamemodes/broad categories. Not around every small little mechanic in a game. This is because you broadly need certain things, and these things need to be done well, fulfilling a niche only becomes relevant once you notice that you need this niche against a specific boss or stage, but it hasn't been fulfilled within your squad yet.
For example, I have a strong medic like Ptilopsis in my squad and she can carry healing in 99% of the stages and she has a very strong SP talent, but the enemies have a lot of arts nukes in this stage. This is where my generally good medic Ptilopsis would be good to swapout for my Nightingale.
Does this one stage mean Nightingale is equally viable to Ptilopsis? No, it just means that she is viable and in this one rare instance she is better than Ptilopsis. Ptilopsis is still better in 99% of all other stages though, and that difference is why Ptilopsis would naturally be in a tier (or multiple) above Nightingale. Would you need Ptilopsis to beat those other 99% of the stages? Nope. But she is the better choice in those 99% stages, which is once again, why she would be higher in the tierlist.
Also keep in mind that 99% and 1% for serious arts damage that requires mitigation may not be completely accurate. It could be 90/10 for all I know, but I am sure that most people here are aware of how few times you need the arts mitigation of Nightingale. 99% is obviously an exaggerated number, but all things considered I would not be surprised if it is accurate.
Arknights is a wonderfully balanced game, that allows you to beat most stages with any operator you want, even E0 only.
You don't have to follow any tierlists to have fun in the game, nor to beat it. This does not mean that tiers or meta do not exist, it just means that you don't have to sweat about it. To me it feels incredibly pretentious to say otherwise.
It's sad that it took a while for people to notice this, with the whole "No bad operator, only bad doctor" agenda in early AK. I mean, there were AK content creators that got shunned from the community just because they called an operator bad.
@@sejama6625 Well, they're still correct. Mostly. The number of truly bad operators can be counted on one hand and shrinks every time HG decides to give one a ridiculously broken module (lmao hi Skadi/Mostima). Just wait for Ebenholz to get some kind of "only attack when at max stacks" Module-Y someday, or Tsukinogi to get SP charge on attack or something...
"There are no bad operators, only niche ones" is just less catchy.
@OP The attitude is directly a response to arrogant metaslaves who were extremely common early in the game's lifespan, whose opinions were basically "just Eyja/SA/Surtr/Chotgun it, anything not meta is useless garbage and you're stupid if you don't build according to these objective and absolute facts". It's just overzealous backlash against dumbass opinions. The same scenario is prevalent in another game I play - Warframe, where tier lists are commonly just made by extreme metaslaves and presented as objective fact to shit on off-meta play.
6:58
Myrtle in niche......... im convinced the person who made that tier list hasnt actually played the game XD i disagree with a good handful of the list ofc but that one just... wow...
That's Silvergun, the best 4*-only player in all of EN. The TL is specific to 4*-only optimised gameplay, for which there are very little uses for Myrtle.
Go and call him out on not playing the game here: czcams.com/users/DrSilvergun
@@Drails I'd say he's the best in any server
@@Drails I'm not gonna head to his channel just to pick a fight or say I disagree lol, but I gotta say.... To play the game in a very niche way then make a tier list and call characters niche just kinda tickles my funny bone 😂
....the tierlist is specific to his niche i.e. 4* only, thus I mentioned that it wasn't helpful to new players and more for veterans
@@ScroteGoblin 4 stars are cheap as hell, if you only use 4 stars to play this game DP is not even a mandatory problem to begin with. Myrtle does not do anything outside of generating DP so it's understandable why because... others like Bean generate enough DP and bring sth else like stalling or blocking
Plus there isn't a correct way of playing the game, calling other people playstyle niche is somewhat flawed