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Though balancing is a huge part of what made Street Fighter IV work so well, a lot of emphasis has been put on tier lists. Are tier lists BS and and do they hurt the game?

I don’t think tier lists are BS, or that their existence necessarily hurts anything, but it’s certainly true that many players put far too much emphasis on them. It’s easy to understand why–if you lose because a tier list said you “should” lose, then your loss is Capcom’s fault, not yours. That’s a pretty seductive idea if you find yourself losing regularly: “it’s not me, it’s those goons at Capcom who are to blame!”

If you understand tier lists for what they are they can be a useful tool, but you have to keep in mind they are an imaginary, highly abstract concept–not some kind of reality carved into stone, and they won’t win (or lose) any matches for you. Think about it: how do you get a tier list? You play sets of 10 matches, where 2 players of equal skill with different characters (what does that even mean? how do we know they’re of exactly equal skill?) face off, with both players playing at their best, and not taking dramatic chances, but playing “by the numbers.” The # of wins is then tallied, and the match is judged to be, say, 5-5 for Sagat vs Dhalsim. Did anyone actually fulfill any of those criteria, or even play that set of 10 games? Probably not–instead, the numbers are just sort of the gut feeling of a lot of good players over time. That’s not to say that doesn’t matter (those feelings DO matter, and are based on real experiences), it’s just to show that just because there are numbers and a chart involved doesn’t mean you’re necessarily doing hard science.