Why Do People Play Low Tiers?

the virgin tier list vs The Chad “This character is cool lol”

Strive Faust really illustrates one of the possible strengths of a low tier, which is no one practices the match up and Faust in particular has a lot of quirks specific to him. He's bad because of unsafe tools. But if the opponent doesn't know or practice the punishes, well then those weaknesses disappear

I'm one of the "Believers", and I know exactly why too. My introduction to competitive games was Overwatch. The first character to be added was Sombra who, at the time, was considered easily the worst character in the game. They said she could do any damage, her teleport and invisibilty were liabilities. I took this as a challenge to prove that she was actually one of the best characters in the game; I believed that a good Sombra could win literally any fight due to Hack being such a crippling ability. I decided to main her. I ran the numbers and found she actually did the same amount of damage as tracer over 3 seconds. I found that the teleport had invulnerability on activation meaning it could hard counter D.Va's Self Destruct and essentially take her out of the fight with Hack. EMP entirely negated Lucio's Sound Barrier and shields meaning offensive pushes were no longer a threat provided Sombra had her ultimate which was among the fastest charging ultimates in the game. Hacking a large health pack gave her better single target healing than Mercy. I had found that this character was BUSTED from a balance perspective. I knew that Sombra would define the meta someday. Lo and behold, she later was the hard counter to the infamous GOATs team composition and considered to be the most broken character in the game. It felt amazing knowing that I correctly predicted the hard counter to the metagame of a massive esport 2 years in advance, and I play low tiers because I want to be along for the ride Sombra went on again someday.

1: playing top tiers is boring and feels unfair even if everyone can pick them 2: losing against a low tier is humilliating 3: i get bored of seing the same character everytime so i rather play unpopular chars

I feel like a reason you didn't mention is exploiting matchup unfamiliarity by playing a low tier. Most players will be less practiced against these less common characters.

I play Anji in Strive and he just clicked for me. Now I'm addicted to hopium and the sound of heavy counter hits.

Friend: "So, why did you pick Ramlethal as your main?" Me: "Oh I liked the swords and the zoning potential and cool design" My Soul: "You picked her because of the thighs"

A little tip for anyone getting into a fighting game: Look at the tier lists AFTER you get a favorite character to play. I have seen many friends starting to enjoy a low tier but then not playing it cause they saw the tier list before getting deep into the character.

Honestly I only play low-tiers because I can blame my character instead of my lack of skill for losing, and double the humiliation for my opponents when they lose to an underwhelming character.

I always pick characters based on how much I enjoy them… and more often than not I find out later that they’re low tier lol. Faust, bowser jr, Enkidu and so on. But I don’t feel like just changing whoever I play just because they’re not necessarily as good, I just want to play whoever’s fun.

“Why do people play low tiers” Uhhh they can be fun

Man, as someone who hasn't played it for many years, Melty Blood suddenly being everywhere thanks to a meme is quite something.

I just play characters I think are cool, but I also try to avoid the highest of high tiers cuz I don't like playing characters everyone else is playing.

From the wise words of a FGC boomer legend: "Just pick a top tier".

I'm a dedicated Yoshimitsu in Tekken 7. He has the lowest win rate in the game, but somehow no one knows what to do against him

I like that when the character loyalty segment started you started playing Adachi’s theme. Adachi is the antithesis of low tier

Most of the time, Low Tiers are either joke characters or unorthodox/gimmicky characters, and those are by far my favourites since they always have the most wacky designs and I enjoy playing a different game from everyone else. But it's not always the case, for example I play Arakune in BlazBlue and he is not bad at all. Also, I wanted to play Faust and I knew he was a great top 5 character in almost all the GG games, but when I started playing Strive (my first GG), he just happened to be Low Tier.

I just play whoever falls into the category of "Who I vibe with" and "Playstyle I can immediately grasp". Statistically, it hasn't really ever been a high tier character, but I'm a fairly low execution player anyway so there's that too.

I remember when a new game came out, I looked up a tier list and played the **worst** character because I like a challange and I thought it would be cool. Some people may call me dumb and say pick a top tier, but I feel it more as being a underdog in an anime. I ended up being more competitive in the game and turned into believer. "If you play near perfectly she has options for everything." Course, while putting in so much time, I kept losing to people who dont even pratice because their options were more consistant. People kept reminding my character sucks and I started wondering if I should pick a top tier. When doing player rankings I got ranked out of the top 10, which makes sense as I lose more than others, but it stung as it felt all my effort was going to nothing. Regardless, now that I'm replaying the game after a couple months, I realize I don't regret the character choice. They were genuinely fun and felt like an extension of me. Maybe I would of won a tourney if I picked a different character but this is the path I chose and I should fine with that. And you should too.

Personally, I really relate and gravitate towards joke characters. And it just so happens that joke characters are often low tiers. I'm someone who mained Neco-Arc in Melty Blood and (not a FG but) Techies in Dota 2 before the rework ruined him. There's something really cathartic about the small little dumb joke character that appeals to me. The one that makes competitive people rage and get salty. I exclusively play video-games for fun and despise hardline competitiveness and people who don't tolerate having fun, so playing the bottom tier joke character speaks to me on every level. I don't think there's a single PvP or PvE game I can think of that I ever played as anything even slightly meta.