Oh right, because SW division is a trainwreck of suck.
Also, I'd like to give some dishonorable mentions to the people who nominated Sonic/Robotnik over Sonic/Knuckles or Sonic/Shadow. The same goes for Megaman/Wily.
And big thanks to BT for picking X/Zero as his guru nom, as looking at the previous examples, the casuals would have gone with X/Sigma.
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http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/0/0e/Ffx-bahamut.jpg Support Bahamut if we ever get another real contest.
Hi Luster, if you have the numbers could you post the average votals for the 2010 character contest and games contest? I seem to remember votals falling about 20% between those contests in the span of like 6 months. And the 2010 character contest is the relevant one here, since that's the last time we saw characters in action.
Sure, I have the numbers.
Character Battle 2010
Night Matches - 52590 Day Matches - 73248
Game of the Decade
Night Matches - 38752 Day Matches - 52330
-- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as BlAcK TuRtLe, Guru Champ!
So a 28.6% decline for day matches and 26.3% decline for night matches in a 9-month period. Wow. If we get another similar drop in the 12 months since the GOTD contest, we're looking at votals around 1/2 of what they were in the last character battle. If we lose half our voters, we can expect some major shakeups......so go ahead and don't cut cookies!
So a 28.6% decline for day matches and 26.3% decline for night matches in a 9-month period. Wow. If we get another similar drop in the 12 months since the GOTD contest, we're looking at votals around 1/2 of what they were in the last character battle. If we lose half our voters, we can expect some major shakeups......so go ahead and don't cut cookies!
The decline for night matches is lower than the decline for night matches. I guess the slight difference would be hardcore visitors favoring night matches over day matches and hardcore visitors being less likely to leave GameFAQs over a more casual visitor. In fact, this is a poll that kind of proves that hardcore visitors dominate the first half of a poll:
The first option did well at the beginning of the poll and still managed to remain strong in the morning, even if it was getting crushed by "Around once a day". In the last several hours of the poll, "Several times a day" simply rolled over and died, allowing "A few times a week" to come close to winning a whole hour over "Several times a day". The first 2 options mainly represent the hardcore visitors, while the last 4 options are dominated by casuals. Most hardcore visitors had already voted in the poll, so there are very few hardcore visitors remaining in the final hours of the poll.
-- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as BlAcK TuRtLe, Guru Champ!
I thought about more day voters leaving helping out CT. But I did some calculations that show the effect purely from the 26.3% vs. 28.6% losses would be minimal. Say hypothetically that Mario/Crono is a 50/50 match, and Mario wins the day 52/48 while Crono wins the night 53/47. Even if we assume the same losses happened again in the period since the GOTD contest, so that day matches are now at 51% of their 2010 Character Contest votals, and night matches are at 54.3% of their 2010 Character Contest totals, if we just remove votes evenly, Crono only moves up to........50.08%.
Unless, of course, it's the "casual" voters who are leaving in both day and night, and "hardcore" voters are staying in both periods. Then the day/night difference would just be the result of casual voters leaving, and that could have a much bigger impact on matches.
It's somewhat amazing how quickly the site traffic on GameFAQs declined. Just a year and a half ago, we were still getting over 100000 votes on non-contest polls. Now we are struggling just to break 60000 votes. It seems like 60000 votes is the new "100000" these days. Our highest votal of this year was 89202, which was on an age poll. But that was early in the year, when average votals were around 65000, due to MvC3 and Pokemon B/W bringing in more visitors.
There's definitely more to the traffic decline than Wikis and Youtube being used more heavily for game help. I think there has to be other factors that went into the quick decline in traffic.
-- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as BlAcK TuRtLe, Guru Champ!
There has also been a massive shortage of big games released since... I dunno, April? I guess traffic should increase in November, when every killer-app of the year releases simultaneously.
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http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/0/0e/Ffx-bahamut.jpg Support Bahamut if we ever get another real contest.
I don't think the lack of big games are a problem here. Keep in mind that 2009 was one of the worst years for video games during the 2000-2009 decade and average vote totals in 2009 were 85797. Even though 2010 was a much better year for video games (especially the multiplatform area), average vote totals were only 72588.
-- Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~ Popular at school, but not as cool as BlAcK TuRtLe, Guru Champ!
Number of Entrants by Series 9 - Final Fantasy/Tactics 3 - Metal Gear 3 - Resident Evil 2 - Chrono Trigger 2 - Mega Man/Mega Man X 2 - Street Fighter 2 - Super Mario 1 - Ace Attorney 1 - Amaterasu 1 - Animal Crossing 1 - Assassin's Creed 1 - Banjo-Kazooie 1 - Castlevania 1 - Catherine 1 - Conker 1 - Crash Bandicoot 1 - Devil May Cry 1 - Disgaea 1 - Donkey Kong Country 1 - Earthbound 1 - Earthworm Jim 1 - Fire Emblem 1 - F-Zero 1 - God of War 1 - Guilty Gear 1 - Half-Life 1 - I Wanna Be The Guy 1 - Kingdom Hearts 1 - Kirby 1 - Mass Effect 1 - Metroid 1 - Mortal Kombat 1 - Pac-Man 1 - Pokemon 1 - Portal 1 - Professor Layton 1 - Ratchet and Clank 1 - Secret of Monkey Island 1 - Skies of Arcadia 1 - Sonic the Hedgehog 1 - SoulCalibur 1 - Star Fox 1 - Starcraft 1 - Super Meat Boy 1 - Tales of 1 - The Legend of Zelda 1 - Warcraft 1 - Wolfenstein
By Company 13 - Nintendo 12 - Square Enix 10 - Capcom 4 - Konami 3 - Namco 2 - Blizzard 2 - Rare 2 - Sega 2 - Valve 1 - Arc System Works 1 - Atlus 1 - Bioware 1 - id Software 1 - Insomniac 1 - LucasArts 1 - Michael O'Reilly (individual) 1 - Midway 1 - Naughty Dog 1 - Nippon Ichi 1 - Shiny Entertainment 1 - Sony 1 - Team Meat 1 - Ubi-Soft
Every series with more than one entrant is Japanese. Blizzard and Valve are the only two Western companies with more than one entrant. All in all, I think Capcom did well to hang with Nintendo and Square like that.
-- Yoblazer: http://i33.tinypic.com/ml36gl_th.gif Watch and you'll see... someday I'll be... part of your world!
Do we have any speculation about the falling votals of late and whether the scale-back is equal across demographics? I'm curious if the site loses enough traffic, then maybe 90's games that are down-trending could reverse the process because more people that comprise the core of the site stick around and support these games / characters who were slightly stronger in earlier polls.
Alucard v. Shep is probably the toughest call. Alucard exited to Link 72-28 in 2010 and Auron 65-35 in 2006. Shepard looked good against Ellis (who?) but in retrospect who wouldn't 75-25 that worse-than-fodder. Shep then loses 62-38 to Pikachu. Is Auron that small bit stronger than Pika? Probably. Also at least Dracula is a recognizable name to add to the bill, as opposed to Saren.
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"Getting lucky 100% of the time... it's called PRO SKILL." -BlAcK TuRtLe
Unless Shepard had boosted since the last contest, I don't see any way he wins that match. Shepard vs. Alucard is debatable, but Dracula probably beats them both and Saren is a turd. The Rivalry factor easily favors Alucard/Dracula as well.
Are the hivemind "no brainer" picks? Crash and Conker just seem like the kind of things that'd be picked against without thought. If so, would rate both as decent contenders for the "wow, never saw that coming" upset that always seems to catch people out.
Crash isn't as bad as people think he is. He got 38% on Ryu Hayabusa last year and almost was 1-2% away from getting 2nd in that Phoenix/Bomberman match years back. Pac-man seems like the easy eye-test choice, but I wouldn't be surprised if Crash won. No one really cares about Pac-man.
KamikazePotato posted... Crash isn't as bad as people think he is. He got 38% on Ryu Hayabusa last year and almost was 1-2% away from getting 2nd in that Phoenix/Bomberman match years back. Pac-man seems like the easy eye-test choice, but I wouldn't be surprised if Crash won.
I know that and you know that but I'd wager 90% of the people filling out the brackets don't.
Doing a quick look at the BOP everyone so far (8 brackets) has Fox/Wolf > Yuna/Seymour. While I also have that I would think people would take the upset, maybe it's too early to say right now.
charmander6000 posted... Doing a quick look at the BOP everyone so far (8 brackets) has Fox/Wolf > Yuna/Seymour. While I also have that I would think people would take the upset, maybe it's too early to say right now.
One of those cases where I think the "rivalry" wins out over the transient strength of the characters.
I took this as well, I'm thinking theres a few reasons to side with it.
- Jill's recent strength has been quite reasonable, Kirby is deflating a little. - The more a poll has to do with Kirby the game and less with the character the worse it is for him. - Night poll. - Jill/Nemesis strikes me as quite a chilling and iconic rivalry
Would have some degree of confidence in this one, in fact.
Pac-Man beat Revolver and Ness while Crash loses to Nightmare, any ghost is more recognizable than Neo Cortex, you are ALWAYS at odds with your rivals in Pac-Man (unless you have a power-pill!), and I don't trust Crash in this battle of older forgotten icons. That one feels pretty easy.
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http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/3492/eponaharr.jpg Nominate E P O N A.
I think Fox and Yuna are fairly close, but a day match would heavily favour more or less any entrant against FFX, never mind one that's Brawl-powered. Not impossible for Yuna/Seymour to win, but I'd be surprised.
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Praise the Black Turtle, Game of the Decade Guru Champ. (Well, I never promised creativity, did I?!)
...GameSpot offers the least helpful gauge possible: 22.3% against Vader in R1. I wouldn't rule out anything fishy from this either -- it's not like either one's actually known for their games.
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http://img812.imageshack.us/img812/3492/eponaharr.jpg Nominate E P O N A.
I've gone for Crash/Cortex > Pac-Man/Blighty. Crash is stronger than people think, Neo Cortex is a memorable villain (see that 3-seed, and no B8 help either!) and I don't know how many people really see an individual ghost as Pac-Man's rival (I'd probably have picked Pac-Man if the entry was "Pac-Man vs. Ghosts" actually). Night match should help Euro-centric Crash too (remember that he outright beat Ryu H there). Think it has good "upset value" as a pick at least - few will take it.
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Praise the Black Turtle, Game of the Decade Guru Champ. (Well, I never promised creativity, did I?!)
HaRRicH posted... Pac-Man beat Revolver and Ness while Crash loses to Nightmare, any ghost is more recognizable than Neo Cortex, you are ALWAYS at odds with your rivals in Pac-Man (unless you have a power-pill!), and I don't trust Crash in this battle of older forgotten icons. That one feels pretty easy.
Revolver was six years ago when Metal Gear was a shadow of what it was today and Ness was with Mewtwo in the poll. Pac-Man would rightfully be favourite but it feels to me a 55/45 kind of situation with a possible 90/10 prediction ratio. Those kind of matches tempt me and one of them always comes off every contest.
IngmarBirdman posted... Do we have any speculation about the falling votals of late and whether the scale-back is equal across demographics? I'm curious if the site loses enough traffic, then maybe 90's games that are down-trending could reverse the process because more people that comprise the core of the site stick around and support these games / characters who were slightly stronger in earlier polls.
In 2004 with a similar deflation of votals we saw a marked increase in the more obscure brands with the power of Chrono Trigger being particularly noticeable. I wouldn't bank on that remaining the same, is the core Gamefaqs audience really 90's gamers anymore? According to the latest age poll 75% of visitors are under 25. Kinda hard to see the Snes era returning to power amongst an audience who were predominantly at most 10 at the time.
PartOfYourWorld posted... Sonic gave Kirby an easy 55/45 last year, and that's clearly a more accurate representation of their true strengths than the Kirby upset. Meta-Knight may be stronger than Robotnik, but the Sonic/Robotnik rivalry is pretty iconic. I know noms are a dubious metric to judge anything, but I'm surprised Robotnik even outgunned Knuckles and Shadow to get in. I think that alone is testament to the quality of the rivalry. Also, Kirby and MK's rivalry is probably weak here. I bet MK gets the lion's share of his strength from his awesome design and Brawl. The Kirby games are so damn weak on this site that the rivalry can't mean much to most people.
True. Didn't even think about that. That probably pushes it back in Sonic's favor.
__Smurf__ posted... PartOfYourWorld posted... IN FACT
Jill takes on Kirby in a night match.
caaaaaaaall me crazy!
I took this as well, I'm thinking theres a few reasons to side with it.
- Jill's recent strength has been quite reasonable, Kirby is deflating a little. - The more a poll has to do with Kirby the game and less with the character the worse it is for him. - Night poll. - Jill/Nemesis strikes me as quite a chilling and iconic rivalry
Would have some degree of confidence in this one, in fact.
Disagree about Kirby deflating a little; if anything he seems to have been getting stronger recently, but you're absolutely right that Kirby the character is stronger than most Kirby games. Actually, Meta Knight might be stronger than most of the Kirby games. Really a shame, too; the Kirby games are very underrated imo.
-- (this space for rent...okay, not really.) [NO BARKLEY NO PEACE]
charmander6000 posted... I agree Pac-Man won't win by much, but at the same time losing seems like a longshot IMO.
I considered picking Crash, but when I saw "Blinky" was paired up with Pac-Man, I realized that Crash is going to lose.
While Pac-Man doesn't have a ton of strength on his own, the choice to go with only one specific ghost gives it a "joke vote" factor that's going to seal the win for him.
__Smurf__ posted... IngmarBirdman posted... Do we have any speculation about the falling votals of late and whether the scale-back is equal across demographics? I'm curious if the site loses enough traffic, then maybe 90's games that are down-trending could reverse the process because more people that comprise the core of the site stick around and support these games / characters who were slightly stronger in earlier polls.
In 2004 with a similar deflation of votals we saw a marked increase in the more obscure brands with the power of Chrono Trigger being particularly noticeable. I wouldn't bank on that remaining the same, is the core Gamefaqs audience really 90's gamers anymore? According to the latest age poll 75% of visitors are under 25. Kinda hard to see the Snes era returning to power amongst an audience who were predominantly at most 10 at the time.
I'm under 25, and I would vote 90% of SNES games/characters over newer ones. If the majority of the site was under 20, you might have a point.