Character Viability

What does it mean exactly?
Pretty much how good a character is (in this case it's the viability of a character in a video game) although it is...very flawed.
Now there are a few reasons to why it doesn't really matter and why someone's viability is never going to be accurate.

Something that is quite common is saying that a character is broken because of one or two things thay have (could be a lot of damage, weight, recovery, etc)
but the issue is that it doesn't really include every other factor but instead it's just that characters strenghts that are focused on. The issue itself is that it
doesn't really consider the character's weaknesses and matchups for example Ganondorf hits really hard and has armor on some of his moves but he can theoretically just
get destroyed by a campy (very defensive) projectile style which should theoretically not allow him to get close and use that specific strenght and even then we have to mention
his below average recovery and slow speed so saying a character is good while only mentioning their strenghts is not a good way to determine whatever it's good or not.

Second issue is that a lot of people say a character is good based on how the top players do in tournament which isn't too bad of an idea but it's still super inaccurate
because I think we often forget that it's the player that's really doing the magic instead of the character itself (there are people saying that a character carries which
p much implies that the character is good and not the player which is a very silly concept) and this is kind of an issue because then is a tier list really based on the
viability of the characters or their tournament results?.
Even then tournament results basically prove that a character CAN do well but not that they're necessarily good or broken and this is because a lot of characters are simply
underdeveloped because of a lack of a big enough playerbase which leads to lower representation at tournaments which means a lot less resuls (and the players of the character
themselves have to be good for them to get relevant enough results so their character can be considered good). A very basic example is from a game called Super Smash Bros Melee
(which is used as an example because its competitive scene has been going for around 19 years) and we're just gonna go through the history (albeit it's gonna be the short and sweet
version) of the best character:
2002-2004:Sheik (Best player in 2002-arguably 2003 played Sheik)
2005-2016-ish:Fox (Although Fox wasn't really dominant in 2005, he was probably considered the best in 2006 because grand finals of the most important tournament were Fox mirror matches
and then from that point on he took a backseat until 2013-2014 when someone did use Fox to become the best)
2017-2020:Jigglypuff is unofficially considered the best due to current best player using her despite her low tournament representation.
Although the tier list made some sense, behind the scenes was a different story:
-Marth was considered the best by many in 2004-2007
-Fox and Marth fell from grace after 2008 and then Falco, Puff were considered broken (Best player in 2009 played both) and then after they weren't performing as well people started
claiming that Falco and Puff's metas (and specifically for Falco) are dying and such.
The problem here is that the game has remained the same since its release in 2001 and the characters themselves haven't changed which leads me to believe people thought a character's
viability just depended on who's #1 at that point in time which, again, also leads me to believe nobody really thought about the #1 player's skill as a potential factor to why
the character is doing so well but instead people just jumped towards the "that character is broken" train which is not a great way to think.

Tier lists:
Oh boy tier lists, they're a problem and a half for a few reasons actually.
This doesn't apply to everyone but I think a large majority of people just say a character is good because someone else did instead of trying to think for themselves (which I think
is a very bad thing). The problem with tier lists is that they're not really a ranking of the best characters in the game but rather they're ranking characters based on how well
they do in tournament (which p much means matchups, strenghts and weaknesses aren't a factor as long as that one player is doing well with that one character). A simple example
is Ike, at the start of Ultimate, MKLeo the current best player in the world, played Ike and got really good results which lead people to believe that the character was very good
and that means Ike was near the top of tier lists but since MKleo quit Ike, now people suddenly started ranking Ike lower even thought he character hasn't really received any changes
and the meta didn't really change either.
I do not think tier lists should really exist due to the fact that we're humans.
What does this mean exactly? well tier lists are p much based on how characters should do against each other if they were p much both playing as good as possible with the best possible
strategy...although ranking like this is p rare because not many people have that much knowledge about each character and if there was someone that knew that much about every character
it still wouldn't be accurate because there could ways be new techniques that haven't been discovered so most of them are just based on the best player's characters.
The most relevant example of tier lists not mattering is #5 in the world (in 2005), NEO.
NEO was a Melee Roy player which got pretty consistent top 8 results with...Roy of all characters, p much consistently beating the top players with Roy, a character that was considered
a lot worse than Marth and awful but how was he able to do it when performing well with Roy should've been theoretically impossible?
He was just really good and that's how he made Roy work, it's just that simple.
At that point in time he just basically proved that you should win if you're better than your opponent and that's just what he did regardless of what matchups he had to deal with, which leads
to the final point

The Human Factor
This is where matchups charts and overall tier lists that claim to rank based on viability fall apart.
Let's just use NEO as an example again, theoretically Roy should not be able to win at all vs characters such as Marth and Peach but that's all in theory. In practice, NEO overall just outplayed
his opponents and beat them in so called "very hard or even impossible matchups for Roy". Yeah sure a character should theoretically struggle vs another but this doesn't really account for the skill
of both players, mind games or even overall strategies (basically when one makes a matchup chart, it's never gonna be accurate due to the fact that it's p much just based on experience which isn't great
because you can't really just perfectly understand all of the character's strategies and counters for the opponent's strategies because experience only really shows you what the opponent does with the character
and not what the character is fully capable of in that matchup).
To put it simply, this game should not be character vs character but instead player vs player.
This is how low tier mains win their bad matchups (by p much just being the better player and countering what you are doing and not what the character could do).
Of course, another important factor is the fact that a character can be played in a lot of ways as well so in a matchup chart you are p much just saying how
well you think your character does vs the specific style of your opponent rather than how your character might actually do against the other character.
Of course, making an accurate matchup chart would take months or even years because of the absurd amount of research you'd have to do which includes the amount
of different styles, strategies and possible counter strategies to the strategies.

In conclusion, yeah just play against the player and not the character
and don't look at matchup charts or tier lists as they can quickly become outdated and try to think for yourself :p. At the end of the day tier lists don't really
matter as long as you're just better.