The Power Tier List
Summary: A Hypothetical question that I asked myself during the pandemic which I decided to find the answer to. A whopping 584 characters were ranked.
Role: Systems Designer/Creator
Project: Personal (1 Person)
Development time: August 2020-March 2021
Made Using: Google Spreadsheets
A Hypothetical question that I asked myself during the pandemic which I decided to find the answer to. A whopping 584 characters were ranked.
Lesson Learned:
Simplifying Data Systems: Some statistical systems have complicated variables to work with, simplifying them not only can help with understanding, but also speed up the production process.
Creating Reference Variables: Systems with a wide variety of variables can quickly go into disarray if they do not have a strong reference variable to source from.
Data Analysis: Looking at trends in data as well as looking at all the various entries on a macro level can reveal certain unbalances in the game or even something your players are doing that can be capitalized on!
Origins and Collecting Data
There was already a major stumbling block in this hypothesis which is, whether or not I collect information and data on characters from non-videogames.
one of the most popular crossover games of all time, Marvel vs Capcom is built on the premise of video game characters vs non video game characters. I originally had planned to include non video game characters but soon found that trying to do so was a fool’s errand.
characters from franchises such as Marvel or Dragonball is that they fluctuate so often that it would prove too difficult and beyond the scope of this personal project.
I did, however, include several indie crossovers and fan games as well as some fighting game like games to make my list more thorough in its analysis of video game characters. for example, i included a game called Super Smash Crusade since it included Crash Bandicoot, a highly popular character that has not appeared in any cross-over fighting games
After deciding my scope of data, I then began to work on how to exactly categorize the characters.
Power scaling has always been a somewhat popular activity among various fandoms, so much so that there is a dedicated hub for this titled VsBattlesWiki.
However I personally disagree with how they do their rankings since they operate on a comparative scale that also incorporates gameplay. for example, in the wiki, multiple characters from the Tekken franchise are considered superhuman because all of them can, within the gameplay, survive a hit from the character Kazuya Mishima.
However, if you look at the context of the games universe and story. one will realize that, at least within the games own story, this logic is not supported.
On top of this Powerscaling often becomes entrenched in its own terminology that becomes to difficult to parse for the common layman.
I wanted to create a system that not only felt more accurate to a games narrative but also was simple to understand to the average person, Thus, the 3T system was created
Creating the Power Scaling System
The 3T system was meant to factor a characters own individual traits as seen in their home series, this system doesn’t account for any crossover media or hypothetical power comparisons as it tries to consider a characters current canonical strength. The only comparisons one are ones that are done directly in the series itself, such as when a character defeats a strong enemy in a boss fight.
I then would do research on the character, read up on their backstory, watch and read plot summaries, consult friends who knew about the franchise. and then would write down their statistics into the system.
As seen in the previous picture the statistics are divided into 10 categories. These 10 categories were meant to cover all the possible comparison statistics one could use to compare two characters.
Depending on how well the character is in the canon of their story at that particular statistic, they would then be assigned a number seen above in that category.
Once a character has all its rankings completed, their numbers are then summed up. Depending on how high that total sum is the character is then placed in a certain “Tier” of strength.
These tiers operate almost like almost like weight classes for canon power or for those more fighting game inclined, matchups.
For example, a character with a power ranking of 50-59 lands in the “Walking Nuke” Tier they can fight anyone from the rankings before them and have and 50/50 chance of beating people within their category. however their odds of winning begin to lessen if they fight someone above their tier
Here is a visual example of one of the characters being ranked in this system. This character has a total of 35 points meaning he lands in the Super Normie Tier, which is populated with characters who display peak or trained human feats, often being martial artists or particularly strong or skilled normal humans.
This was my first foray into spreadsheeting at this scale, which means it was a great experience to learn a variety of experience. my favorite feature ive learned of which is the Freeze row, this feature, while simple, greatly improves my productivity as it allows me to keep track of categories easily
Here is a portion of the spreadsheet used to calculate these in ascending order of points. Do you see any characters you recognize?
Here is a graph showing the number of entries that were individually ranked. As mentioned before, over 500 characters were evaluated from over 50 franchises!
For Reference here are the 5 strongest characters in video game fiction according to this list
5.) Elizabeth - Persona 3
4.) Morrigan Aensland - Darkstalkers
3.) Megaman.EXE - MegaMan Battle Network
2.) Ragna The BloodEdge - Blazblue
1.) Kirby - Kirby
This idea first started off from many a strange idea, boredom in the pandemic.
I enjoy many crossover media and have always wondered what the legitimate victor in a battle between all the various crossover media would be I enjoy.
So, i asked myself the question that you saw up above and began to collect data.
I collected from all major crossover fighting games as well as guest characters from franchises, such as Soulcalibur and Tekken.