1. Chrono Trigger (1) 2. Resident Evil 4 (2) 3. Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow (3) 4. Super Mario 64 (5) 5. Super Mario World (6) 6. Super Smash Bros. Melee (7) 7. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (8) 8. Super Mario Galaxy (10) 9. Super Mario Galaxy 2 (9) 10. Metal Gear Solid (11) 11. Super Mario Bros. 3 (4) 12. Final Fantasy VII (12) 13. Final Fantasy VI (15) 14. Final Fantasy X (14) 15. Final Fantasy IX (17) 16. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (18) 17. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (16) 18. Tales of Symphonia (20) 19. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (19) 20. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (13) 21. Paper Mario (24) 22. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (22) 23. Portal (21) 24. Okami (23) 25. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (NR)
Dropped out: Mario Kart 64 (25), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations (25)
Also receiving votes:
36 - Half-Life 2 34 - Mario Kart 64 30 - Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 18 - Metroid Prime 17 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations 12 - Star Fox 64 5 - Final Fantasy Tactics 4 - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 4 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl 3 - Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 2 - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
For the first time all season, Mario 3 is not ranked in the top 10, and MGS1 moves in to take its place. OoT is now the 3rd highest ranked Zelda, getting overtaken by Majora's Mask in the wake of two straight losses. T&T's well of votes dries up for some reason this week as it doesn't get anywhere close to the Top 25. And despite the big upset, it's not enough to get Persona 4 into the Top 25.
475 - Chrono Trigger 448 - Resident Evil 4 418 - Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow 401 - Super Mario 64 398 - Super Mario World 383 - Super Smash Bros. Melee 338 - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 333 - Super Mario Galaxy 330 - Super Mario Galaxy 2 306 - Metal Gear Solid 302 - Super Mario Bros. 3 257 - Final Fantasy VII 238 - Final Fantasy VI 228 - Final Fantasy X 203 - Final Fantasy IX 145 - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 133 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 117 - Tales of Symphonia 115 - Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater 94 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 90 - Paper Mario 86 - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night 81 - Portal 47 - Okami 44 - Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest 36 - Half-Life 2 34 - Mario Kart 64 30 - Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 18 - Metroid Prime 17 - Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials & Tribulations 12 - Star Fox 64 5 - Final Fantasy Tactics 4 - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island 4 - Super Smash Bros. Brawl 3 - Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance 2 - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Really though, P4 has a boatload of straight-up bad performances, and seems like it took massive advantage of bad votals to win. I'm more inclined to believe the performances prior to an obviously situational result are a better showing of P4's strength than that singular match. And since I'm being fair, I can't really punish both PWs for being uninspiring outside of a few very oddball results and then reward P4 for an oddball result.
Also since we're nearing the 2/3rds mark, it's time for...
BUBBLE WATCH (because I'm bored edition)
This is your chance to gain a bit of insight into the Tournament Committee! I'm afraid to ask for people like LMS to ask about any game they like, but it's a risk I'll have to take. Ask about my opinion of a game's chances of making the tournament, and you'll receive an in-depth analysis. Although please keep this to games that have at least some chance of being close to the bubble, asking about things like Chrono Trigger, or a variety of the Mario games cluttering the top 10 will get you annoyance AND nothing.
In regards to LMS's post in the previous topic, I have Super Metroid beating Phoenix Wright, too. That's why I have Phoenix listed 5th and Super Metroid 4th. And yeah, I wasn't quite sure what to make of the SH2/KH2/SC trio, either, As for the "Half-Life 2 got 58% on something that FFT lost to" argument, you're the one that points it out every time direct results point in a circle. Fire Emblem 7, the game you're referring to, also lost to Valkyria Chronicles, a game that FFT very nearly doubled just one week before losing to FE7. Now, I'm not saying that FFT is nearly twice as strong as FE7--heck, I still think VC > FE7 was a low votal-induced fluke--but I definitely think that FFT > FE7 indirectly, and I even have an explanation for why the direct results pointed the other way: turn-based strategy SFF (or rSFF). FFT is, from what I hear, a great game (I've never actually played it, unfortunately), and due to having the Final Fantasy name, it's going to be pretty strong. However, while most FF games are traditional JRPGs, FFT is a turn-based strategy game. And ever since Nintendo decided to allow it to go international, the Fire Emblem franchise has become one of the premiere names in turn-based strategy.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
The Tournament Committee will be the select group of users who will determine the games that are and are not in the Tournament after the regular season and conference tournaments are over!
I believe ONLY the conference tournament champions will be given auto-spots in the tournament, but it's very very unlikely that a game in the voter top 25 will miss the tournament, just because the voters usually have a good grasp on strength and performance.
Let's see, bubble-type games that would be interesting to discuss...
First off, Sonic Adventure 2. Currently 42nd in the RPI and comfortably looking like it will be in, but grossly untested at the moment due to a horrible non-conference schedule. Its conference, on the other hand, is tied for the second-strongest at the moment as far as W-L record is concerned, so theoretically conference play should be a chance for it to get some real quality wins...or possibly for it to be exposed as a fraud.
Second: Super Smash Bros. Despite being just 9-8, it sits at 68th in the RPI, just outside the bracket. (Only one 9-8 game is ahead of it, and no games with losing records; meanwhile, numerous 10-7 games sit behind it, and the two immediately behind it are both 11-6). In addition, it happens to be a member of the Smash Trigger Conference, which in spite of hosting the strongest game is one of the weakest conferences. Would a potential 10-1 conference run be enough to boost it into the bracket, or would the weakness of said conference opponents drag it down too much?
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
WarThaNemesis2 posted... The Tournament Committee will be the select group of users who will determine the games that are and are not in the Tournament after the regular season and conference tournaments are over!
Wait, we're not just using the RPI like we did last time? At least, I'm pretty sure that's what happened last time...am I wrong about that?
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
Persona 4 has a good record (apparently 'winning is enough' works for PW, so why not use that logic here) and a win over a game previously in the top 5 and top 3. Good enough for top 25 to me; but somehow games with an equally less impressive schedule and no big wins (MK64, Half Life 2) are worthy of more votes than P4.
Sonic Adventure 2 RPI Rank (going into this week): 42 Record vs. RPI top 25: 0-0 Record vs. RPI 25-50: 0-0 Record vs. RPI 50-75: 0-2 Record vs. RPI 75-100: 6-0 Losses to RPI sub-100: 0 Effective Record: 6-2 Notable Performances: L 16-38 Super Smash Bros. L 21-22 Donkey Kong Country W 25-18 Devil May Cry 3
You may be confused by my "Effective Record" term. For the simplicity's sake, looking good against competition that has no place being anywhere near the tournament isn't going to get you any points in my book. This is to prevent games from having a shiny record against a bunch of nothing and being rewarded for it. I'd actually like to thank Tsunami for choosing Sonic Adventure 2 first, because no game better represents my style than it. With losses against it's only two top 75 competition, Sonic Adventure 2 can't be saved from its soft schedule, although I noted DMC3 as a key win since it sits at #76, and thus is close to joining in the 50-75 parade. However, with Hotel Dusk and an unknown as the remaining non-conference opponents, it will be nearly impossible for Sonic Adventure 2 to get a vote of confidence from me without a quality conference performance, where I see a potential 8 losses (9 including failure to win the conference tournament). Good luck to Sonic Adventure 2, but right now it is the very definition of a game that would be safely in under the old system but instead finds itself firmly on the bubble.
Sonic Adventure will need to beat FFT, HL2, and/or Bioshock to stand a chance of making it in, and it absolutely cannot lose to anything below them. It just doesn't have the quality wins.
(Doesn't have a chance of beating S3&K, so I didn't include it)
LeonhartFour posted... Personally, I'm kinda surprised MGS1 actually ended up ahead of Mario 3! I figured Mario 3 would stay ahead of it.
The RPI respects MGS1 though, at least!
Yeah, well, I suspect the two are at least somewhat related. I, for one, moved MGS up a bit not so much because I was impressed with its most recent result but because I realized that its previous wins were more impressive than I'd previously given it credit for. Although it does still have this nasty tendency to let a lot of games get close to it.
I was more surprised at SM64 moving ahead of SMW right at the end. It really looked as though SMW was going to jump it, and then SM64 made the late move. Then again, ALttP spent most of the voting topic stuck behind both Galaxy games and ended up ahead of them in the end, so I guess early results don't really mean much.
Also: the three ranked Zelda games are now in the order that the direct results dictate! Sure, it's kind of meaningless because Majora's Mask also lost to the very much unranked Wind Waker, but it's good to see Majora's Mask starting to get some respect! It did, after all, beat both Metal Gear Solid and Ocarina of Time and got 48% on A Link to the Past. (As I mentioned before, I'm still amazed that after barely making the preseason top 25, Metal Gear Solid managed to remain in the top 25 after losing in Week 3. Final Fantasy IX didn't lose until Week 6, and it...
...wait, Final Fantasy IX should have been in bold, after all. I could've sworn that it had gotten thrown out of the Top 25 at some point, but upon further review, it just narrowly managed to hang on. Need until it was 9-1 to even get back into the top 20, but yeah, never actually unranked. Even though there are still people leaving it off their ballots, with it at 15-2 and once again in the RPI top 10.
Oh, darn it, I started a parenthetical and then ended up on another paragraph. ), just to close that off.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
LeonhartFour posted... Sonic Adventure will need to beat FFT, HL2, and/or Bioshock to stand a chance of making it in, and it absolutely cannot lose to anything below them. It just doesn't have the quality wins.
(Doesn't have a chance of beating S3&K, so I didn't include it)
I don't see it beating HL2 or FFT, or of course S3&K, but I see the race for fourth place in the conference to be wide open between SA2, Banjo-Kazooie, BioShock, and Chrono Cross. I would be seriously surprised if any of those four games went 3-0 or 0-3 against the other three, although Chrono Cross is probably the weakest.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
LinkMarioSamus posted... Ironically, SM64 is the lowest of the "big five" in the RPI but it was highest ranked by voters this time.
I'm going to assume that StarCraft and Civ4 have no chance of making the tournament, nuts.
If I may step in for a moment?
I'm not going to give a full analysis like WarTha's, because I'm not in the mood to get anyone mad at me at the moment, but Civ IV is another game in the Sonic Overload Conference, which has nine games with winning records at the moment. So while it's definitely not on the bubble yet, it still has a chance to play its way in due to the strength of its conference schedule. Frankly, though, I don't foresee a great conference run for it.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
Super Smash Bros. RPI Rank (going into this week): 68 Record vs. RPI top 25: 0-1 Record vs. RPI 25-50: 1-5 Record vs. RPI 50-75: 1-1 Record vs. RPI 75-100: 3-1 Losses to RPI sub-100: 0 Effective Record: 5-8 Notable Performances: W 38-16 Sonic Adventure 2 L 21-26 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time W 29-22 Assassin's Creed II L 25-31 Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island W 28-20 Elite Beat Agents L 19-25 Goldeneye 007
Smash Bros. has had a rough schedule, and certainly losses to Goldeneye and Kingdom Hearts, along with a poor performance against EBA don't help it. Obviously it got murdered by Melee, but I feel like a bad case of SFF from the worst possible opponent for Smash Bros. isn't worth yelling at it for. However, just as it has weak performances, wins over Sonic Adventure 2 and Assassin's Creed II are huge for it, along with strong performances against Yoshi's Island and Ocarina of Time. Conference play won't help it much in terms of meaningful wins, but assuming it does what it needs to, it should be in, especially if Goldeneye or Kingdom Hearts manage to trend upwards.
Too Long, Didn't Read: BUBBLE, leaning IN
Edit: Civ IV and Starcraft? Dear god. Well, let's look under the hood...
LeonhartFour posted... T&T's well of votes dries up for some reason this week as it doesn't get anywhere close to the Top 25. And despite the big upset, it's not enough to get Persona 4 into the Top 25.
Let's see, my guesses are that voters were attracted to all of the shiny wins put up by fringe contenders. Persona 4 scored a huge upset last week; Metroid Prime got a quality win over SMW2, and some of the voters that dropped Paper Mario from their ballots last week after its loss to Okami probably put it back after it beat Super Metroid. (This actually seems pretty plausible--looking at last week's totals, there was a huge gap between #22 Symphony of the Night and #23 Okami, and then there was a big cluster of games right behind it, including #24 Paper Mario. This week, there is once again a huge gap between Okami and the game immediately in front of it (Portal), but now Okami is #24 and Paper Mario has moved up to #21.)
As for how DKC2 managed to get past it, though...I don't know. Maybe PW3 was adversely affected by PW1's loss because there does seem to be a persistent belief that PW1 is stronger and people wanted to continue putting PW1 ahead of PW3 even while dropping PW1 down the ballot for its loss? Or maybe the people who were voting for Metroid Prime noticed that DKC2 beat SMW2 by a larger margin than Prime did? I don't know.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
WarThaNemesis2 posted... especially if Goldeneye or Kingdom Hearts manage to trend upwards.
Hmm, yeah, that's something to consider. GoldenEye 007 was, after all, thought of highly enough that it started the season in the top 25, and it's started to come back from that nightmarish, absolutely killer SOS-driven bad start it had gotten off to. 8 of those 10 losses came against games that have been in the Top 25 at some point in time, and TTYD isn't exactly horrible, either. Once you're done looking at the games LMS picked out, how about analyzing 007's chances of playing its way back in? Just looking at its conference, I figure it's got 7 wins easily, more likely 8 or 9 (but definitely no more than 9), and its Week 18 opponent is strong enough that a win would definitely help its case.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
Civilization IV RPI Rank (going into this week): 83 Record vs. RPI top 25: 0-0 Record vs. RPI 25-50: 0-3 Record vs. RPI 50-75: 0-2 Record vs. RPI 75-100: 1-2 Losses to RPI sub-100: 0 Effective Record: 1-7 Notable Performances: W 25-23 Professor Layton W 24-20 Grand Theft Auto IV W 19-17 Psychonauts L 17-24 Dragon Quest V
L 22-23 Valkyria Chronicles L 18-22 Gold/Silver/Crystal L 21-29 Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Civ IV has three good performances. The problem is that it has more wins that are much more bad than those losses are good. Right now, given remaining schedule, as much as I love Civilization IV, I can't even put it on the bubble right no. Maybe after I look at more games I'll change my mind, but right now it needs to get multiple in-conference upsets just to reach the bubble.
WarThaNemesis2 posted... Civilization IV RPI Rank (going into this week): 83 Record vs. RPI top 25: 0-0 Record vs. RPI 25-50: 0-3 Record vs. RPI 50-75: 0-2 Record vs. RPI 75-100: 1-2 Losses to RPI sub-100: 0 Effective Record: 1-7 Notable Performances: W 25-23 Professor Layton W 24-20 Grand Theft Auto IV W 19-17 Psychonauts L 17-24 Dragon Quest V
L 22-23 Valkyria Chronicles L 18-22 Gold/Silver/Crystal L 21-29 Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance
Civ IV has three good performances. The problem is that it has more wins that are much more bad than those losses are good. Right now, given remaining schedule, as much as I love Civilization IV, I can't even put it on the bubble right no. Maybe after I look at more games I'll change my mind, but right now it needs to get multiple in-conference upsets just to reach the bubble.
Yeah, that was my thoughts as well. Right now, it's not on the bubble, but because it has such a strong conference schedule, it has a chance to play its way onto the bubble.
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Ulti (in one of his Post-Contest Analyses): God of War turned a 5 hour deadlock into a total laugher Anagram: Oh God, Tidus and Yuna were involved?
I used BCS there just basically as a comparison for a really flawed system, not on how it actually operates overall. Much like NCAA Basketball, often there are many critical errors in how things are decided.
When a game near the top 40 RPI fails to make the tournament field of 64 though? I call shenanigans.
vcharon posted... I used BCS there just basically as a comparison for a really flawed system, not on how it actually operates overall. Much like NCAA Basketball, often there are many critical errors in how things are decided.
When a game near the top 40 RPI fails to make the tournament field of 64 though? I call shenanigans.
That's not likely to happen. Since this tournament is much more transitive than a sporting event, the top 40 in the RPI should all make it. Unless SA2 is in that Top 40. I'll make no promises about that one.
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If you are reading this signature, then you are wasting a great deal of your time.
Well, no system is going to be perfect one way or the other.
I think if we can get a group of several people to come together and agree on worthy contest entrants, we'll end up with a better bracket because the RPI (obviously) has no regard to making a good bracket. It just lines up 1-64 regardless of who they are.
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"I can set you free, mate." "My freedom was forfeit long ago!"
Oh, we can do much more than that. First we'll weight the board 8 user final top 25 with the RPI to produce a preliminary BCS top 25. Then we'll go through the user votes to see how much individual ballots differ from the preliminary BCS top 25, and lower the weight we assign to ballots that are far away from it, by a formula such that a small or medium deviation from the consensus will lower the weight of your ballot by very little but the rate at which your ballot's weight is lowered will accelerate thereafter.
We will then retally the votes, producing the final BCS top 25, with a cardinal numerical value for each. The RPI for the other games will then be recalculated using only matches against the BCS top 25, and the top 37 games from that will be entered into the bracket.
If SA2 finishes the season in the RPI Top 40, chances are good that it will have won multiple meaningful matches and didn't lose any embarrassing ones in conference play, so it should be good.
From: LeonhartFour | #046 Well, no system is going to be perfect one way or the other.
I think if we can get a group of several people to come together and agree on worthy contest entrants, we'll end up with a better bracket because the RPI (obviously) has no regard to making a good bracket. It just lines up 1-64 regardless of who they are.
I said this before you made the NCAACII bracket and you proceeded to ignore me!
-- thelefty for analysis crew 2008 imo -tranny I have a third degree burn in flame-o-nomics -Sir Chris