Lurker > ZeldaTPLink

Safer_777 posted...

But that is fair. It is the nature of the consoles. In every generation we have 3-4 dominant consoles. But so many come out. So why they shouldn't be allowed?

Because we don't need two whole rounds of boring blowouts.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

I'm sorry, my friend. The universe can be very cruel. But it can also be kind. Things will work out eventually, some way.

It's not your fault or your wife's. Hope you both recover.


---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

1- PS2
2- DS
3- GB
3- GBC
4- PS4
5- PS1
6- Wii
7- PS3
8- X360
9- GBA
10- PSP
11- 3DS
12- NES
13- Switch
14- SNES
15- XOne
16- Genesis/Mega Drive
17- N64
18- Atari 2600
19- Xbox
20- Gamecube
21- WiiU
22- Sega Game Gear
23- PSVita
24- Master System
25- TurboGrafx-16
26- Sega Saturn
27- Dreamcast
29- WonderSwan
32- N-Gage
36- CD-I
PC

How about this

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

AxemRedRanger posted...

Virtual Boy being a massive flop is exactly why its guaranteed to get in assuming people nominate the consoles instead of Allen just taking the top 32 best selling. I figure the CD-I Zelda and Mario games getting memed so hard for awhile would get it a spot too.

Hmm a CD-I Link pic sounds tempting.

Ok was looking for a reason to kick Sega Pico out, so bring CD-I in.

I still don't see why the Virtual Boy gets noms tho,. It never gets mentioned except to say how much it sucks.


---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

On a second thought, keep PC as a single entry (splitting it probably gets too confusing in practice) and bring N-Gage back so we can have a Jay Solano pic.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Looking at the ranking of biggest selling systems worldwide on WIkipedia:

1- PS2
2- DS
3- GB/GBC
4- PS4
5- PS1
6- Wii
7- PS3
8- X360
9- GBA
10- PSP
11- 3DS
12- NES
13- Switch
14- SNES
15- XOne
16- Genesis/Mega Drive
17- N64
18- Atari 2600
19- Xbox
20- Gamecube
21- WiiU
22- Sega Game Gear
23- PSVita
24- Master System
25- TurboGrafx-16
26- Sega Saturn
27- Dreamcast
(SNES Classic Edition)
28- Sega Pico
29- WonderSwan
30- Color TV Game
31- Intellivision
32- N-Gage

That is close to your list.

Of course, you want to add PC, so no N-Gage (sorry, Jay Solano). You might want to split GB and GBC too, so bye Intellivision. And maybe you want to do that thing they said in the SHow and split PC in two eras, so no Color TV Game (whatever that is).

As for the others mentioned, CD-I is a few positions below and I'm pretty sure Sega CD and Virtual Boy were huge flops.


---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Leonhart4 posted...

There is always an Oracle just like there's always a Guru.

Nope. Oracle site doesn't show Years.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

System is better than Years because it's something people are actually passionate about.

You can't believe the level of apathy this board was like in Years. I think we didn't even have an Oracle.

Didn't help that after two consecutive contests of rallies, the general feeling was that contests were dead and Allen was giving us a terrible contest because that was the only left to protect us from rallies (thanks for trying though, Allen!)

Still, the bracket itself will probably not be much more interesting than Years. But we'll probably have our reddit whiners, our memes, etc, and that may make it somewhat better.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

RPGlord95 posted...

Oh if you have to manually don't bother. I have no idea about scripts for that kind of stuff and assumed you could make one.

I don't either, lol. I'm just using spreadsheets.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

what is this thread for, specifically

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

RPGlord95 posted...

Hey TPLink. I know it's a huge amount of work. Is there any way you could go back and see who wins the guru in past years with different scoring systems?

I can try, but I'm not sure it will work because I don't have a decent way to automatize it. I have to manually look at each match, check who winned it, and pick which one was the winning %.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Common_Sense posted...

lmao, like a member of the Discord clique will block any other member regardless of how awful they act. He'll block me, and no one else, and pretend only I did anything wrong here despite the years of harassment I've seen from those goofs without really saying much in my own defense. If they want to be miserable and prove my point, good for them. There is a reason most are not successful in life as of yet, and they know full well this is the truth in their most private moments. They can troll all they want. I see right through them, and they don't like it. That's where all this comes from.

It is as hilarious as it is predictable.

No, I'll just block you, and respectfully ask others to stop arguing with you, because I know they can listen to reason.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

ShatteredElysium posted...

Some permutations

1 > 2 > 3 > 5 > 8 > 13 > 21
Perfect score = 295 points
Correct final 2 and winner = 85 points / 28.8% of possible points
Correct winner only = 53 points / 18% of possible points

1 > 2 > 3 > 4 > 5 > 6 > 7
Perfect score = 247 points
Correct final 2 and winner = 49 points / 19.8% of possible points
Correct winner only = 28 points / 11.3% of possible points

1 > 2 > 4 > 6 > 8 > 10 > 12
Perfect score = 304 points
Correct final 2 and winner = 74 points / 24.3% of possible points
Correct winner only = 43 points / 14.1% of possible points

1 > 2 > 4 > 8 > 8 > 8 > 8
Perfect score = 312 points
Correct final 2 and winner = 70 points / 22.4% of possible points
Correct winner only = 39 points / 12.5% of possible points

1 > 2 > 4 > 8 > 16 > 32 > 64
Perfect score = 448
Correct final 2 and winner = 200 points / 44.6% of possible points
Correct winner only = 127 points / 28.3% of possible points

How much of the max possible points do you want calling the winner to be worth?

I think there should be some acceleration between a round and the next one, so the first one is the best. Though it's still a lot higher than what all the prediction %s so far have shown. It does look smooth though, and maybe is a good concession.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Ringworm posted...

I know this will never happen. I would be interested to know if someone who had traditionally won would have been beaten by someone who tipped more upsets correctly though. As an example, would anyone have beaten Azuarc, who went near perfect from Rd 3 onwards this contest, by picking up enough points in the earlier rounds in the matches he missed (and also correctly predicting enough later round matches)? I would say it's possible, but I wouldn't expect many people would have managed it in this last contest. Probably much more likely in contests with an upset winner, such as L-block, Draven or Undertale.

It's probably Jonaleon, tbh.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Ok I've decided to do this for the rest of the contests.

We are going to do it from the most recent to the oldest. First, CBX:



Hmm that is a lot to unpack.

The first four rounds have very similar scorings to GotD1, which suggests my hunch of taking it as the standard was a good one.

The later rounds, though, can't really compare to anything else though, due to Legends/Losers structure. Looking at it, we can see "Round 5" showed a drop in difficulty, due to the possibility of just betting on noble niners to win everything (which worked except for Pikachu and Zeld matches). The next two rounds show a fibonacci-like increase of difficulty (yes, I second on the Fibonacci idea being great). The last legends bracket seems another drop, thanks to Link.

Losers matches are worth 8, but we can see they maybe should have been worth 4. The final Link match is only twice as hard as Round 1 ones, which seems to be a global trend. In a given contest, about 30-40% of casual bracket makers will correctly identify the Zelda entry that is guaranteed to win.



Best Year in Gaming only has one format weirdness, the Wildcards round. I decided to keep Round 1 as the normal instead, so we can see Wildcards is worth about 80% of it (due to having obvious blowouts between old years).

The rest is actually pretty smooth. Years is one of the chalkier brackets, but aside from, again, the finals, it shows a soft progression (1.3, 1.4, 1.4). Not much that I can compare with other contests: not only it's a 5-round contest so round 1 should be intrinsecally more valuable than usual, but it's also fucking Years. Moving on.

So it seems Character Battle 2013 doesn't have prediction % data in the site. This sucks, because I wanted to see how much the Draven picks were worth. Someone feel free to provide them to me if they have it.

Let's go to Rivals, then.



Eh this one is all over the place. I wasn't around at the time of Rivals though, so I don't really know how to explain it. It seems every round after the first one is worth roughly 1.3, until we get to the Link finals which again, is worth about 2. I think this is another very chalky contest though, so it makes sense for numbers to be lower, and the wonkiness could just be the normal statistical deviation.

And with this I think I covered the whole decade, except for 2013. I'll cover the previous decade later this week.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Mr Lasastryke posted...

how does that work

people can still post in your topic even if you block them

Hmm I thought I could ban them from posting in my thread, but I can only ban them from seeing my thread it seems.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

You people can stop using my analysis thread to throw shit at each other, or I can block you all to make you stop throwing shit at each other. Pick one.

Disagreeing with me is fine and well, but I don't care about any of your interpersonal drama.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Actually what you posted is a great example of why early matches should be worth more, since calling Undertale to lose is as hard as calling Skyrim to lose. The fact many people called that and yet it barely mattered in the grand scheme of things shows why the current scoring system is broken. Thanks for providing another example, Ulti!

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Might as well post the logic:

1- Gut says it's not Link because of 2005/2006, but this feels like a trap. Also a later question says Link has the most votes ever. Gonna guess there are enough semifinals/finals for him to be in the top without those two contests.
2- Has to be from an early contest. Cloud actually won one of those, was in a lot of finals. Zelda/Draven are recent contest wonders. Samus didn't quite dominate anything as Cloud. L-block had a lot of votals but I suspect it wasn't quite of a consensus.
3- Kirby used to suck, Squall sucks now, Ryu has never been big, Ganon used to be known as the Zelda character who is not that strong. Bowser is the only one who is good across all eras, I think.
4- Pick the franchise that puts 10 characters in each contest. Pokemon.
5- Tifa and Vincent are historically the strongest, and iirc Vincent didn't appear in the first couple contests and started to suck in the later ones.
6- Default vote for the L-Block contest. I think it's got the highest voted finals too. 2007.
7- Cecil feels like someone who has reason to be in every contest, compared to others. It's old final fantasy, those always get nominated.
8- Average makes it tricky. I'm going with Yuna cuz she is one midcarder who doesn't quite have a history of choking I think. Yoshi does, Dante shouldn't be that strong, Master Chief is over, Aeries isn't that strong either I think. Or maybe she is? But Yuna looks like the harder guess to make.
9- It's Zard or Mewtwo. Mewtwo choked harder last contest. Going with Zard on a hunch.
10- Crono and Sonic are the most mistreated N9ers. Crono at least was in a final, Sonic wasn't. I picked Crono first, now I'm editing and picking Sonic.
11- Is Caim the one from SotC? Hope so.
12- The trap here is that old contests have 5x more votes than new contest, so if you got tripled in any contest after 2012 you might have had less votes than Tanner. So I'm going for the highest number. 28.
13- That's the question that spoiled #1, I think. Logic says it's Cloud, with the most finals and all.
14- GFNW. FE doesn't either. ME had one great contest and that's it. Mother kind of sucks too. Portal is from 2006, and has Glados, so probably won matches every contest since then.
15- Tricky. But I think Magus had one contest where he did great? DK had too, but it's a later contest with less votals. So Magus it is.
16- Too lazy to list. I think L-block qualifies (it's Russian). Otherwise I don't remember, but I wouldn't be surprised if the list was 100% Japan outside of that, especially with early contest having the most votals. Gonna pick 1.
17- I see Lloyd actually showing up in conversations as a character who has some strength. May be because of that.
18- Big Boss has the most contest strength. This one feels easy.
19- Which one has the old character who was probably in every contest and is a solid midcarder? Look no further than Starfox.
20- Yoshi is an epic choker. I don't recall Knuckles and "strength" ever being mentioned in the same sentence. Vivi was notable in 2013, so notable I suspect he was worth jack shit before. Zero is that kind of character who has reason to be strong since the dawn of time.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

1. Who has been in the most character battle matches? (Link | Cloud | Sephiroth | Solid Snake | Samus)
2. Link has the highest single match vote total in contest history (oddly enough, in a fourway match). Who is second? (L-Block | Cloud | Zelda | Draven | Samus)
3. Which non-Noble Nine member has received the most total votes in contest history? (Bowser | Squall | Ganondorf | Ryu | Kirby)
4. Which franchise has been in the most character battle matches? (Sonic | Mega Man | Pokemon | Chrono)
5. Which of these Final Fantasy VII characters has received the most total votes? (Aeris | Tifa | Vincent | Zack)
6. Which contest gathered the most total votes? (2003 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2010)
7. Which winless character has gathered the most votes? (Guybrush Threepwood | Ramza | Kratos Aurion | Cecil | CATS)
8. Which non-Noble Nine member has the highest average number of votes across all their contest matches (minimum 10 contest matches)? (Dante | Master Chief | Aeris | Yoshi | Yuna)
9. Which of these Pokemon characters has received the most total votes? (Charizard | Mewtwo | Red | Missingno)
10. Which Noble Nine member has the least number of contest matches? (Mega Man | Sonic | Solid Snake | Crono | Mario)
11. Which "kain" has the most contest votes? (Kain (Legacy of Cain) | Kaim Argonar | Kane | Caim | Kain Highwind)
12. How many characters have received less total votes than Tanner? (0 | 4 | 11 | 28)
13. Link has the most votes in contest history. Who is second? (Cloud | Solid Snake | Sephiroth | Samus)
14. Which franchise has the most character battle wins? (Half-Life | Fire Emblem | Portal | Mass Effect | Mother/Earthbound)
15. Which perennial contest failure has received the most contest votes? (Kefka | Tidus | Magus | Donkey Kong)
16. How many of the top 25 highest voted characters were developed outside of Japan? (0 | 1 | 3 | 6 | 9)
17. The worst winning percentage for a contest character who has won a match is 12.5% (1-7). Who is it? (Lloyd Irving | Laharl | Ratchet | Wesker | Sam Fisher)
18. Which of these Metal Gear Solid characters has received the most total votes? (Big Boss | Liquid Snake | Revolver Ocelot)
19. Which of these series' has had the most character battle matches? (Fire Emblem | Tales of | Xeno- | Starfox | Ace Attorney)
20. Which 'sidekick' character has the most contest wins? (Knuckles | Zero | Yoshi | Vivi)

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

GildedFool posted...

What does averaging all the contests together look like?

Ok that doesn't take as much manual labor. I'll post it this week and see what we get.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

The Beat Goes On

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

LeonhartFour posted...

so we get Super Mario Maker beating Journey and getting blown out by Skyrim in round 2 instead

Ok maybe that wasn't the best example. Maybe I'll need to write this bracket.

But the logic is that, for each turbofodder game you replace with a decent game, you increase the probability of two fodder line games or two decent games going against each other (or even decent against fodder line, which is not a huge blowout).

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

KamikazePotato posted...

Super Mario Maker as the lower seed in the match (which it would be) is an automatic Round 1 loss against anything except like...The Walking Dead. What exactly are you expecting its inclusion to change?

SMM itself might not win any debatable matches, but its inclusion (and of all the other games) as entrants that get to Round 2 pushes stuff like Divinity and Journey down to being Round 1-only entrants, and with that we indirectly get more debated Round 1 matches. Stuff like Celeste vs Rayman, for example.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

KamikazePotato posted...

I think the number of 'snubs' people say we missed out on are vastly overstated and overvalued. When Super Mario Maker - a game that got doubled by Awakening - is one of the most-requested snubs, then I think we did pretty good.

There's also no guarantee any of the games people keep mentioning actually got enough nominations. Friendly reminder that Brawl missed the last Games Contest entirely.

Awakening would triple most of those indie turbofodder we had in Round 1, though. And so would Mario Maker.


---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

If we were going to punish the covid guy, we should have disqualified him mid-contest, not retroactively fix it now.

I think a better idea is to make sure next time the guru contest actually predicts the possibility of disqualification if someone uses an alt and doesn't say what their main account is.

Poly found a gap in the rules and used that to make an hilarious meme. I'd say give him props for making it happen, and prevent it from happening again.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

LeonhartFour posted...

I mean, it still would've happened. Adding one more Zelda, Mario, or Pokemon game here or there wasn't going to completely stop that from happening.

No, but adding the maybe ~15 games that got snubbed would have lessened it.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Another big star of the contest nobody mentioned is Mario Galaxy.

I mean, would you ever take it to end Top 10 in the xstats before the contest?

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

MetalmindStats posted...

KP, you asked for an explanation of the opposition to an all-fictional character battle. As perhaps one of its most vocal opponents (even though I'm not vehemently opposed), I can condense my previous explanations. In short, you'd have yet another boring, predictable winner in the absence of the very real possibility of mass rallies hardly anyone wants to see, and there'd be issues with Allen having to add a few hundred characters to the nomination form. Plus, I think the idea in general is one whose time has passed, and now you're more likely to have casuals complaining about (ex.) Batman being in a video game character contest than being more interested because it has Batman in it. From a purely personal perspective, I'm pretty sure there would even be fewer characters I'd care about, and I'd care less about those characters.

You are using this "casuals would complain" argument a lot but I don't see that should everstop us from doing anything. Or heck, if it wouldn't be a good thing altogether.

If you let casuals decide how to make a bracket, they will split divisions by geenre.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

I'd say this contest is a B+ for me in enjoyment but an A- for Allen's work.

Allen doesn't go higher than A- because his decision of capping series caused the fodder nightmare we had in Round 1, and I didn't like that much. But otherwise, he did a superb work with everything else: keeping the systems from previous contests that worked, implementing the oracle thing, the match pictures, etc.

My enjoyment is a little lower because there's only so much I can care about a contest whose entries I barely played at all. But still had a blast overall, athough in a more stat-related way than because of the games themselves.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

_SecretSquirrel posted...

(Oh, and for Game of the 90s, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. That eventual contest is my baby, and that bracket needs all the top series fully represented.)

This please.

If Allen tries to cap the number of Mario games in a 90s contest that contest is an automatic D for me.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Advokaiser posted...

Hey, @LeonhartFour @Ngamer64 @CaptainOfCrush , kind of off-topic, but...

How was my English? Did I have any perceivable accent?

You probably won't ever get rid of your accent unless you spend like 10 years in an English speaking country.

Being fluent is more important than being accent-less, imo.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Seanchan posted...

Since all the guru brackets are out there for analysis, what's their difference in results using your proposed system?

I'll see if I can calculate that later, since it will take a lot more manual labor than copying the %s from the standing pages (since the guru site doesn't list the winner %s in a structured way, just the %s per pick)

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

NFUN posted...

you keep saying "round" instead of "match". the current system is designed around each round having equal weight, which affects the relative importance of individual matches

And if that's the case then it does not accurately reflect the difficulty in getting each point, since predicting Link will win in the finals is not as easy as predicting all 64 Round 1 matches right!

What I'm trying to do is index the actual difficult of each match to their individual score. I'm referring to rounds because points vary by round, but what I want is to adjust the scoring per match, not the scoring per round.

You could, in the same vein, say each match should have equal weight, and that would be as arbitrary as saying each round having equal weight! Instead, I'm trying to calculate the score proportional to the daverage difficulty of getting the match right, to get a scoring system that is better indexed to skill.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Conclusions:

One one hand, this research failed to provide a realiable measure of what scoring system will most accurately reflect the difficulty of each round, due to not having a ton of contests to pick from (I could look at other contests, but then I'd have to make arbitrary adjustments for the different bracket sizes). On the other hand, I believe it gave us a great sense of scale: we can see that even in particularly unpredictable contests, the current system still gives way too much weight to late rounds compared to their actual prediction difficulty. A finals match, in order to be actually worth 64 points, should have a prediction rate of 1.56% (assuming Round 1 had 100%, otherwise it should be lower), the semifinals should have 3.13% on average, and so on. And what we usually see instead for later rounds are prediction %s in the double digits. And this is all taking in consideration the fact I'm using data for the overall brackets submitted, not just gurus or B8.

If I had to take a guess at an actual system, my instinct is to take GotD1 as the standard, since it's the one that looks the most neat. I'll then multiply all the numbers by 10 and do some rounding, to get more manageable numbers:

Round 1 - 10
Round 2 - 13
Round 3 - 18
Round 4 - 28
Round 5 - 40
Round 6 - 100
Round 7 - 180

If you think the last two rounds are two high compared to the first one, then you should assume it's because Majora and Brawl getting to the finals is a crazier result than average. In that case, you could settle for something chalkier, and reduce those numbers a bit. I made that adjustment, and also did a little more rounding for early matches.

Round 1 - 10
Round 2 - 15
Round 3 - 20
Round 4 - 30
Round 5 - 45
Round 6 - 75
Round 7 - 120

So, what do you think? Do you agree with this analysys? Do you have a better idea of that system would work best? Give me your opinions, and thanks for reading this!

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Greetings!

In the past few weeks, both in this board and Discord, I've noticed a discussion about whether the current points scheme of the contests is fair. I refer to the system that awards points for each round in geometrical progression, which is the following way:

Round 1 - 1
Round 2 - 2
Round 3 - 4
Round 4 - 8
Round 5 - 16
Round 6 - 32
Round 7 - 64

The argument I've often seen against this system is that it places too much weight on later matches, in the sense that someone who did very well in early rounds would lose to someone who did not but who got a single great upset in the later rounds. We have seen that in this contest with the Skyrim vs Witcher match, whose 32 point prize made entire early rounds pointless.

This system does follow a mathematical logic, which is that, assuming each game has an equal chance of winning any match, the probability of a given game winning a match goes down by half each round. Therefore, it makes sense for that match to be worth double points. But this logic skips over the fact that not all matches are made equal: while Rocket League vs DBZ was a very debated match, Dark Souls beating Hotline Miami and then beating the winner of that debated match was all but a foregone conclusion. Even the most casual bracket makers would overwhelmingly agree on that. Yet, the Rocket League vs DBZ match is only worth 1 point, while the winner vs Dark Souls is worth 2.

Arguments in favor of this system include its simplicty, and the fact it's based on systems used in bracket contests of real life sports tournaments. Whoever, a sports tournament can have much more variance than a bracket contest, since it depends on human parformance in the moment, while the tastes of a gaming community are much easier to predict based on sales, reviews, overall word of mouth, and previous contests. Hotline Miami will never beat Dark Souls, except with a rally, and rallies big enough to flip such a match around are extremely rare.

Based on this argument, I had an idea to calculate what would be a fairer scoring scheme. Turns out we actually have data on the difficulty of predicting matches for each round, and it's the prediction percentages available in the Contests Stats page! Using that data, I've made a formula to calculate the ideal points for each round. I'm setting Round 1 with 1 point as the standard, then calculating the score for later rounds by dividing the average prediction % of Round 1 by the average prediction % of each round.

DISCLAIMER: the goal of this topic is not to question the merits of any contest winners or winners of any side contest, of this year or any other year. Everyone who have won contests here made a great bracket. The goal is to propose an improvement the scoring system so that future contests award points based on a more accurate measuring of the relative difficulty of each match.

So let's get to the numbers already. Based on the formula I just explained, here is what the points for the recent Game of the Decade should look like:

(note: decimals appear with commas instead of points because that's the Brazilian standard and it's what my Excel is set to. Just pretend you are seeing points instead)



That's very different from a geometrical progression, huh?

Looking closely, Rounds 1 to 4 seem to follow something similar to an arithmetical progression, with each round adding 0.3 points. Round 5 onwards is when it gets wonky, though. I suspect one reason is the BotW effect: as BotW starts making for a larger fraction of the round, the round itself becomes easier to predict. Another thing is that in this year, Round 4 was where most debated matches happened, while Round 5 and beyond were fairly chalky, with the exception of the Skyrim matches.

Still, that doesn't give us an accurate representation of what the diffficulty for each round should be, so I decided to dig deeper. I made the same analysis for a few other contests. For the sake of simplicity, I restricted myself to contests that have 128 entries, 1v1 matches, and 7 rounds. That means GotD1, Character Battle 2010 and Best Game Ever 2015. Here are the results.



BGE3 is also pretty wonky in the later rounds. That said, the first 4 rounds do show a good degree of consistency.

That 77 in the finals has an obvious reason: Undertale. While this means we can't really take that score as our standard, it does offer a good perspective. 77 is not much above 64, so this shows what it takes for a finals match to actually be worth the 64 points we normally award them: a turbofodder indie game almost nobody heard of getting a Tumblr-fueled rally and winning 7 upsets in a row until it beats Ocarina of Time and wins the contest. Not something that is too likely to happen again, imo. And even then, previous rounds are way below their normal awarded points in difficulty, thanks to being populated by obviously strong games instead of fodder.

Round 5 is worth more than Round 6, and the reason for that is that R6 consisted of Undertale and Ocarina of Time, while R5 was Undertale, Ocarina, Meelee and Super Mario RPG, so on average, R5 has more crazy upsets, including two mega rallies.



The first game of the decade gives us the more smooth results. Rounds 6 and 7 feel like they spiked a bit more than the usual, but hey, those are the last two rounds so maybe they should do that! And it's still a lot less than 32 and 64. This can also be explained by the fact this contest is famously one of the least predictable ones we've had, with legendary results such as Brawl beating Melee and then losing to Majora's Mask. Also rounds 1 to 3 seem pretty similar to the two previous charts, while 4 and 5 go a big higher.



I didn't think I would see a contest chalkier than GotD2, but here we are. The finals are only twice as hard to predict as the average Round 1 match, which makes sense because, well, it's Link > Cloud. Although there are crazy results here and there (i. e. Charizard), they get dampened by the majority of the bracket being a standard Noble Nine, 1v1, no items, final destination story. This is also the easiest Round 4 of the pack, being even easier than Round 3 somehow.

This makes some sense if you think this is the 8th character battle during a time spam of 9 years. There was a ton of data to make predictions from, such as a quick read on the board or the wiki could give someone an idea of what is likely to win here.

(on an unrelated note, this does give us a good idea of what will happen if the next Character Battle doesn't make any big innovation in terms of what characters are in, such as an All Fictional bracket. Expect that contest to even more predictable and have fewer upsets than this year's Game of the Decade).

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

"Starting" is an interesting choice of words for a community where most people are over 30.

I'm 28 and I've already lost a good amount of it, especially in the front, but still have most of my hair left.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Leonhart4 posted...

I mean, you didn't save poor Jack Shipley!

Also, I'm in the weird position of being one of the biggest DD fans on the board while simultaneously saying 5-6 is overrated. Don't get me wrong. It's really good, but I think it's 3rd or 4th best in the game, not the best case.

Like I said, the most consistently good game in the series.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Nah, Athena is alright.

I think TC is gonna like AA6, though.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

LeonhartFour posted...

yeah that coincidence was a bit too contrived

Well, it almost kinda has to be disconnected since it's DLC and there's no guarantee everyone would play it. I feel like if they put something essential into it, people would've complained about hiding important stuff behind a paywall.

I do think 5-6 has the biggest "classic Phoenix" moment in the game (along with Phoenix figuring out everything from random dead leaves) when he refuses to accept Marlon's confession and realizes something isn't adding up.

"The Dissin' of Phoenix Wright" is also one of the greatest testimonies ever.

I like how this is like the one case in the entire series where you can just save everyone. AA is always about getting the killer to be punished no matter how tragic their backstory was. Here you can finally achieve a perfectly idealistic ending. It's not something that always happens, but it's nice to see it happening once.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Man Tropical Freeze sucks

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Yeah AA5 does the anachronic order thing pretty well.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Yeah 5-5 is not as good as other epic cases, but it's pretty solid.

That describes the entirety of AA5, imo. It's the most consistently good game in the series. Not a single case in it is bad. It doesn't quite reach thye same highs other games can reach, though.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

ROUND 1

(1) SNES

(4) PS3

(3) Playstation

(2) Mega Drive/Genesis
-
(1) PC

(4) N64

(3) Gamecube

(2) PS4

(1) Nintendo Switch

(4) iOS

(3) Wii

(2) Xbox 360
-
(1) PS2

(4) NES

(3) 3DS

(2) DS

ROUND 2

(1) SNES

(3) Playstation
-
(4) N64

(2) PS4

(1) Nintendo Switch

(2) Xbox 360
-
(1) PS2

(2) DS

ROUND 3

(1) SNES

(4) N64

(1) Nintendo Switch

(1) PS2

ROUND 4

(1) SNES

(1) PS2

FINALS

(1) SNES


---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Otherwise it's fine, I think you covered everything.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

No way an Xbox or a Sega console get a higher seed than PS1

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

You guys care too much about the winner tbh. A normal contest has 127 matches, there's a lot more than debate than just the #1 game.

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

azuarc posted...

Why does the content for the contest disappear so quickly? I remember not being able to find the rules after the contest began, and now I don't even know where to look for the results and leaderboard. Sure, we'll have some of that up on the wiki eventually, but I can't look at the full contest results or see who was at the bottom of the leaderboard any more (unless maybe I happen to have the link bookmarked.)

There is a page that lists all contests since the beginning, but I don't know how to find it from the main page. You can find it pretty easily by typing "gamefaqs contests" on google, though.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/contest

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Ngamer64 posted...

* Show Exclusive: COVID-19 unmasked in a rare one on one interview!

What

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!

Standing in line for the last one!

---

There is only one Guru of the Decade, and his name is azuarc. Congratulations!