User talk:9988/Fantasy universe tier scale/@comment-2214419-20110223142600/@comment-47205-20110223144719

Basically, when Tier 0 is the highest tier, you have to define all of the technology more advanced than the most basic technolgy of that tier as being "Tier 0 technology" - basically, you could end up cramming loads of advanced technology (and races) into a single tier. One example would be before we had a Tier 0, and Tier 1 races included everything from the DCP with basic spacetime manipulation to the Xhodocto (and more obviously, sci-fi races such as the Q that could probably destroy the DCP by clicking their fingers). At that time, the solution was to just add a Tier 0 on top of that, but nothing like that could be done now without going into negative numbers.

In addition, a 0=highest system means that there can be infinitely lower Tiers with less advanced technology, which just isn't the case in reality - when you get down to basic tools made of stone and sticks, you can't really get any less advanced without being completely non-technological.

The main solution to these issues would be to split "Tier 0" into multiple seperate Tiers when necessary, and move all of the lower Tiers to a higher number.

Of course, this isn't necessary a problem with either the sci-fi or fantasy universes, since Tier 0s in the scifiverse are likely to all be incomprehensible to us, and there probably won't be any civilisation with technology greater than steam power in the fantasyverse, but it's still a problem that could potentially arise.