When a competitive game gets an update, a question that arises is how the changes in the game will affect the tier list. Even when no balancing changes actually took place, the inclusion of new characters or new systems can affect tier lists. In fighting games, the strength of a character is always held relative to that of other characters, meaning that something that is strong in one fighting game does not necessarily have to be strong in another. The metagame may shift over time as dominant strategies get overturned using less popular characters.[2]
Tier rankings may be listed using letter gradings. The competitive community surrounding Guilty Gear Xrd, for instance, ranks characters as 'S', 'S-', 'A+', and 'A', where 'S tiers' are particularly powerful and 'A tiers' less so.[2] Major video game news websites such as The Daily Dot, Kotaku and PC Gamer may publish their own tier lists for popular games.[3][4][5] 'S' tier may mean "Superb" or "Super" and may originate from academic grading in Japan.[6]
For a game like Super Smash Bros. Melee, which was released in 2001 and has not been updated since, but is still popular in tournament settings, characters originally overpowered remain that way, due to their inability to receive character balancing updates. Different versions of the game may have different tier lists as well. The website Smashboards bases its yearly tier lists for the Super Smash Bros. series on polling results.[7]