Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1368

(+) Yeah! (+)

We need a Character Battle so Knuckles can get that Idris Elba boost

Going through the 2015 x-stats trying to determine any changes in strength from GOTD1 hurts my brain. And I get the feeling that could be the case even without rallies.

IIRC, the two x-stats held up quite well for most games.

Honestly yes, it's just in some cases. Plus I'm applying my own "unofficial" adjustments in several instances. Two more things regarding Smash's influence on contests:

-Someone pointed out earlier how Smash characters seemed to be excelling all over the place in 2018. Truth be told I think it was more their competition being crap most of the time due to their franchises/companies going through dry periods, plus the possibility of old-school characters getting recognizability boosts for various reasons not necessarily involving any new games (or even having to vote in every match on a given day). I mean, Simon Belmont almost lost to Ryu Hayabusa despite the high-profile Smash announcement vs. the latter's series being seemingly dead, and it's not like that was a bad contest for Castlevania since Alucard later gave Bowser a scare.

-I seriously thought Undertale would be stronger in the 2020 games contest compared to in the 2015 one (obviously not counting rallies in the latter instance) due to getting exposure through Smash. I did not take into account how Undertale was already perceived to have been over-exposed and if anything the Smash content would have only increased the hype backlash against the game. I know a lot of us view Undertale flopping in GOTD as being payback for winning the 2015 contest, but it could have just as easily been anti-votes simply due to perceived overexposure. That's probably the #1 reason for anti-votes in just about any case really.

Considering both Undertale (and Draven) performed better among user voters than non-users, I'd argue that the exposure led to more support than anti-votes.

It's just neither option were very strong

Certainly a possibility, but I still feel like at least in Undertale's case people got sick of it. It came out at the perfect time to do damage in the 2015 games contest but afterwards everyone just wanted it to go away.

Before the rallies, Undertale was getting 35% against Mass Effect 3 and 30% against Fallout 3, it wasn't that strong in 2015 and it's not that much better than the ~25% it would be expected to get against Super Mario Odyssey.

I'm speaking more generally, not so much relating to contest strength.

I actually thought Undertale did pretty well in 2020 all things considered. Cements it as one of the strongest indie games on the site.

Agreed. If there is ever a Best Indie Game Ever contest, Undertale would still be a contender. I'll be curious to see if Deltarune makes any impact for Undertale too since its last contest.

Pretty much, Undertale was worth around 46% against Shovel Knight which I believe is the strongest indie game.

Not sure how well Deltarune will perform. Sales-wise I think it's doing better than Undertale at the time, but it doesn't have the same cultural impact Undertale had.

It's probably not a good idea to do a "best indie game" contest, because it's so ill-defined. Is Minecraft an indie game? Is Cuphead an indie game, considering it had Microsoft's backing? Half-Life 2 was developed without a publisher, does that make it indie?

Indie is definitely a vague term, but I would give a shout out to Doom.

Would a double-elimination bracket be too crazy?

SwiftyDC posted...

Would a double-elimination bracket be too crazy?

For an entire contest? Probably. He did it for the last part of the last Character Battle, and I'd be okay with that being a recurring thing as long as Allen learns how to reseed a round robin tournament for next time

SwiftyDC posted...

Would a double-elimination bracket be too crazy?

Yes, because Bacon doesn't know how to put together a good one.

The double elimination bracket could be fixed by flipping how the losers drop down after each round (e.g. Normal-Reverse-Normal...)

The losers bracket would have looked like...

Round 1
Ganondorf
Mega Man

Alucard
Bowser

Solid Snake
Auron

Tifa
Sephiroth

Round 2
Mega Man
Samus

Bowser
Sonic

Solid Snake
Crono

Tifa
Pikachu

Round 3
Samus
Sonic

Solid Snake
Tifa

Round 4
Samus
Cloud

Solid Snake
Mario

Round 5
Cloud
Mario

In this case there were no rematches, but they are technically possible.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Please no. Allen botched it so badly last time. The actual double elimination bracket was set up in the wrong order, so we had all rematches, plus the main bracket never actually finished. It was a bad setup.

I suspect a reason he did it this way is so that if you get some wrong, you're not penalized as much. With his setup, say you pick a character to lose in round 2 and make a big run in losers. If that character makes loses in round 1 and makes a long run in losers, you get some points at least. With the traditional setup, you'd get no points since the character would be in a different part of the bracket.

The 2015 contest x-stats are surprisingly well-done all things considered. I'm more just pointing out certain things that stick out. That said:

-It looks like Pokemon Gold/Silver declined since 2010. Maybe it was overperforming on HGSS hype back then? Remember though I'm assuming that whole division is overvalued in the stats because I couldn't see Chrono Trigger getting 54% on Ocarina even back then. Speaking of which...

-I think Chrono Trigger did SFF Dragon Quest VIII, otherwise both the latter and Persona 3 actually declined since 2010.

-Pokemon Red/Blue being worth 51.5% on Mario 3 looks nice, but I just want to ask where this adjustment came from.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

-I think Chrono Trigger did SFF Dragon Quest VIII, otherwise both the latter and Persona 3 actually declined since 2010.

There was clearly some DBZ SFF in that match

Oh I'm perfectly aware of the Toriyama connection.

We need to get Blue Dragon up against one of these to test.

Blue Dragon would be terrible fodder anyway.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

-Pokemon Red/Blue being worth 51.5% on Mario 3 looks nice, but I just want to ask where this adjustment came from.

I would be so Internet angry if that happened.*

*For all I know it actually might have at some point.

I think it was where the match was before the Undertale rally began.

The adjustments are generally based on percentages before the rally began or SBAllen's voter breakdown if it was provided.

I've been wondering how a "Best Studio Ever" contest would go. Obviously, Nintendo >>>> Squenix >>>> everything else, but after that could be more debatable. I'd think Capcom's #3.

Random Matchups:
Sega vs Konami
Intelligent Systems vs HAL Laboratory
Rare vs Retro Studios
Activision vs Level-5
CD Projekt Red vs Monolith Soft
Rockstar North vs Platinum Games
Game Freak vs FromSoft

Square would do much better than Square Enix

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5051-who-is-your-favorite-major-third-party-video-game-publisher

konami has since committed Sudoku so Capcom certainly beats them now. Not sure on Bethesda. Think theres a lot of Japanese LFF there and 2021 Bethesda isnt going to be seen nearly as positively as in 2013 but thats a big gap to overcome.

That poll's asking favorite "right now" though, which I'd think would be different than "all time". Also 2013 was right after RE6 and DmC were released which was probably when Capcom was at an all time low.

The contest should only be relevant to 1994-2000 so I can vote Rare.

So...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8674-ten-years-later-got-vita should have predictable results based on https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8669-do-you-still-own-a-psp , right?

The last option should be quite similar. At the very least, it should give us an insight to day-day variation.

FOURPACK OF FUN: newcomers edition!

Raven Beak (Metroid Dread)
Lady Dimitrescu. (Resident Evil 8)

Jin Sakai (Ghost of Tsushima)
Jessie Rasberry (FF7/FF7 PRemake)

Jessie wins due to only being mid fodder instead of terrible fodder?

Jin > Dimitrescu

Dimitrescu > Jessie

Random piece of FFVII furniture > all those losers

Jesse stomps that 4 pack and promptly fails to break 15% on Link.

I was more trying to "defend" The Last of Us Part II earlier by saying if the game would perform poorly in a contest setting it would be due to TLOU not really being this site's cup of tea, not so much because this site actually embraced the backlash. The gap between the two in contest strength is probably no different than the gap between Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker if anything. Which is still pretty big, especially considering TLOU isn't that strong in the first place, but I hate how people like Ulti will try to spin it into this site hating Naughty Dog.

Although TBH, 42% on Dark Souls isn't bad and it only looked that way because the match was debated pre-contest. Dark Souls was basically GOTD2's equivalent of Shadow of the Colossus as a game that got a big boost out of seemingly nowhere due to "respect" - although I say this as someone who picked it to get to the finals because I didn't know enough about Witcher and figured Skyrim would get caught up in Bethesda backlash when it really wasn't. TLOU is directly projected to get 39% on Skyrim which isn't half bad considering Skyrim is a high midcarder. I'd take TLOU over something like StarCraft or KOTOR. Dark Souls doesn't get enough credit. I will admit though that I'm mostly ignorant about The Last of Us and figured Dark Souls would be more this site's cup of tea. Also I remembered how certain games' strengths seemed to fluctuate massively between the 2009 and 2010 games contest so I figured the same could happen here. I just saw the match as "old-school RPG vs. cinematic survival horror game" and figured RPGFAQs would carry Dark Souls to victory.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I was more trying to "defend" The Last of Us Part II earlier by saying if the game would perform poorly in a contest setting it would be due to TLOU not really being this site's cup of tea, not so much because this site actually embraced the backlash. The gap between the two in contest strength is probably no different than the gap between Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker if anything. Which is still pretty big, especially considering TLOU isn't that strong in the first place, but I hate how people like Ulti will try to spin it into this site hating Naughty Dog.

Whenever a game or character loses, its this site's users sending a message to that developer that they suck now.

If only they'd listen

OrangeCrush980 posted...

Whenever a game or character loses, its this site's users sending a message to that developer that they suck now.

Literally the logic I used to pick Dark Souls over Skyrim, not realizing all the "Bethesda was never good" people were a vocal minority at best.

Either way, assuming the gap between TLOU and its sequel is as big as that between Ocarina and Wind Waker, TLOU2 is only slightly weaker than BioShock Infinite at worst (I'd estimate Wind Waker to be indirectly worth around mid-30's on Ocarina). Not good, but not that bad either.