From League of Legemds to anime to novels, there seems to be a wide spread ranking system that has permeated chinese, japanese, korean, american, english and every other culture I can think of. I am of course refering to the S class system. The bottom ranking changes from D to F or even FFF(Multiple letters of the same rank further divide tbe rank for diversity.), but all of them have a S class or S rank at the top(Usually. In some cases it can be SS or SSS). Its so wideslread that even the US education system uses a dumbed down version of F- to A+. My question is where did such a wide spread system come from? My first thought was Pokemon or some other widespread media and I was wondering if anyone else knew.
I'm pretty sure it came from some Japanese games, which in turn took it from the Japanese grading system.
I always thought that the S rank was the "Secret rank" or "Special rank" beyond the A rank but I don't really know where the system comes from. The 1st time I saw it was in Danmafuku games years ago
Japanese in which they got from Americans. . . and the likes. . . it goes down to our ancestors. . . the Alpha and The Omega, the beggining and the end,
S as a ranking above A originates from Japanese games. Aside from Metal Gear Solid 4, it has also been used in other games, such as Gran Turismo series (driving licenses), Devil May Cry (level performance), Final Fantasy VII (chocobo classes), Guilty Gear (character rankings), and countless others. While the origin is universally acknowledged as Japanese, apparently, no one really knows what it actually stands for. It's been speculated that it stands for anything from Super toSpecial, but there's no confirmation that I can find of any sort of "official" meaning. Giant Bomb's S-rank article states that because C was the lowest passing grade in the Japanese school system, "S" was used to allow for a wider range of grades. See the following excerpt: Originally created in Japan where anything below grade ‘C’ was considered a failure. The 'S-Rank' allowed for a wider range of obtainable grades and thus player motivation, meaning that it was soon adopted by western developers who realized that the ‘S-Rank’ was much cooler than the boring ‘A’. An A rank is commonly obtained by getting a 90% to 95%. If the player is flawless or achieves perfection in something, it qualifies as an S . Many people have wondered what the S stands for… Special? Super? No one knows for sure. The Rank Inflation article on TVTropes mentions the S-ranking as well, however, without any speculation on the origin: But then what about the players who are really looking for a challenge for whom mere golds aren't enough? The solution — give them platinum medals to aim for. A-grade not good enough for you? Go for A+, or S. Sometimes, even these inflated ranks are subject to inflation, with A being about average and the real goal being a more different S rank: SS or even SSS. Urban Dictionary's S-Rank article also lacks a concrete origin: Something that is so superlative that it cannot be described by any traditional ranking system. It is A++, 11/10, six stars, and three thumbs up. In rare cases, something can be so exemplary that it becomes SS or even SSS-rank. Many people have wondered what the S stands for. Special? Super? Schwarzenegger? No one knows for sure. Comes from Japanese video games, like the Devil May Cry series, where A-rank just wasn't good enough. In addition, all 3 of these sites are editable by anyone on in the Internet, so I'm not sure that any of these can be considered concretely reliable, and the assertion on the Giant Bomb article that it's related to the Japanese grading system has no source and isn't one I can confirm because I am not familiar with the system. Basically, as the TVTropes article stated, it's just a way for there to be a ranking that is better than the "best", similar to how some games have Platinum medals on top of Gold.
For some people it is hard to count from 1 to 10. They simply don't comprehend numbers. It is such a hard and alien to human nature concept after all. Though I respect a little more those authors who put bronze, silver, and gold etc. ranks instead of double backwards foreign alphabet.
Probably because assigning letters to percentages is the easiest and most logical way to give a rough estimate without having to go into specifics. Some places use numbers too, but you could argue that it's more confusing to represent numbers with different numbers. Logical/easy things tend to see widespread adoption. Take one of the education systems I had, HD > D > C > P1 > P2 > F1 > F2. Isn't basic A-F just easier? I think having A at the top is much more common than S, especially outside of Asia. Some JP games which use rank S are even modified so that S rank is removed and A rank is the top when the game is released overseas.
Elo rating system The Elo system was originally invented as an improved chess rating system, but is also used as a rating system for multiplayer competition in a number of video games, American Football, basketball, Major League Baseball, Scrabble, snooker and other games. The difference in the ratings between two players serves as a predictor of the outcome of a match. Two players with equal ratings who play against each other are expected to score an equal number of wins. A player whose rating is 100 points greater than their opponent's is expected to score 64%; if the difference is 200 points, then the expected score for the stronger player is 76%. A player's Elo rating is represented by a number which increases or decreases depending on the outcome of games between rated players. After every game, the winning player takes points from the losing one. The difference between the ratings of the winner and loser determines the total number of points gained or lost after a game. In a series of games between a high-rated player and a low-rated player, the high-rated player is expected to score more wins. If the high-rated player wins, then only a few rating points will be taken from the low-rated player. However, if the lower rated player scores an upset win, many rating points will be transferred. The lower rated player will also gain a few points from the higher rated player in the event of a draw. This means that this rating system is self-correcting. A player whose rating is too low should, in the long run, do better than the rating system predicts, and thus gain rating points until the rating reflects their true playing strength.
First time I saw it was when I watched Naruto on tv a loooooooong time ago, all of the missions they took seem to follow a similar ranking system. It's probably safe to say that mangas/novels/anime have been using a similar ranking system at least since the 90s maybe even late 80s. Other than that I have no idea where it could've originated from lol. I guess it just caught on after a while.