An analysis of the Super Street Fighter IV game balance

Well balanced in street fighter terms comes down to the saturation of tiers, and how diverse top level play can be. Every fighting game has a high tier, no matter how well balanced they try to make it. The interesting part is how tiers evolve over the lifetime of a game. New tactics are discovered, strengths and weaknesses shift and the game moves on.

There are a lot of factors that come into tournament play beyond inherent tiers. Matchup experience, fatigue, ego, execution percentage, mind games. It's a far more interesting world than it may seem at first glance.

The main problem with Tier-lists is that it relies on the players to get matchup experience before they really reflect reality.

I'm not a competitive SSFIV player, but lets take Smash for instance. Melee has Yoshi climbing up the ranks in the later years, as the community learned how to put up with Yoshi's disadvantages, and take advantage of some new tech.

Similarly, Brawl had Olimar climb like 15 positions or something. He was considered like C-Tier at the beginning before moving up to top5 by the end of Brawl's run.

Some characters take longer to learn than others. Tier lists change over time, as they are a reflection of the community. The "true" tier list... the one with hypothetically perfect players... will never be discovered. Humans always learn and adapt to each other.

That said, Tier Lists are an excellent tool for learning the metagame and discussing game balance. But within the context of "which character should I pick"... Tier Lists are generally a poor tool. Especially early in a game's life before the community establish's a metagame.