Do people understand the difference between "skill ceiling" and "skill floor"?

[ManiacOverlord.ttv]

I noticed a lot of people using the term "Skill Ceiling" when they actually mean Skill Floor.

Skill Ceiling is the pinnacle of a character or playstyle's effectiveness. It's the mountaintop, the absolute best that they can possibly perform within the boundaries of the game under standard conditions.

Skill Ceiling is the "upper limit". A low Skill Ceiling means that the character is easy to master but usually is not as effective at optimal play, while a high Skill Ceiling means that it takes a lot more time and effort to learn how to play the character "optimally".

Skill Floor is the term a lot of people are looking for. Skill Floor is the lower limit; it's the effort and practice required to play the character or playstyle -effectively- and be able to compete with other characters or playstyles at the same level.

Skill Floor is therefore the "baseline". A character with a high Skill Floor is really hard to pick up compared to other characters, but usually also has a higher skill ceiling. A character with a low Skill Floor is easy to pick up and can readily compete with high Skill Floor characters at a much earlier point.

To compare to a fighting game, a character with a rushdown style usually has a lower Skill Floor than a Parry-focused character, but a Parry-focused character often has a higher Skill Ceiling.

What this means is that if both players have the same amount of experience and skill, at Floor level a Rushdown player will likely have an avantage, but at Ceiling level the Parry player will likely be able to outplay a Rushdown player because the Parry player's ceiling is higher.

...Or in RPG terms, the Low Skill Floor character gets their key skills at level 10 as opposed to the Higher Skill Floor character's level 26, but the Low Skill Ceiling character's level is capped at 30 while the High Skill Ceiling character's level is capped at 60.

I dunno if any of this is really clicking, but I've been seeing people confusing the terms and it's been bothering me.

Blight has a high Skill Floor and a high Skill Ceiling.
Bubba and Wraith each have a low Skill Floor but also a low Skill Ceiling.
Billy and Nurse have a middling Skill Floor and a high Skill Ceiling.

Usually, in most games in general, the characters with a high Skill Ceiling are considered high-tier, because tier lists are typically created for high-level play (i.e. gameplay at the skill ceiling).

It's really weird to see people say a certain killer has a high Skill Ceiling when in context they really mean that the killer is hard to pick up (i.e. has a high Skill Floor).