Board 8 > So what were the major trends of this year's Contest?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Some that come to mind are:

- Decline in the bottom half of the NN and rise of former 'Nearly Noble Niners' such as Pikachu, Tifa, Zelda

- Rise in the popularity of female characters

- Firming up of Link's dominance with a new 2nd tier of Cloud, Mario, Samus and Zelda established

- Lack of the potential to drum up any major rallies (commensurate with the decline in prominence of the contest across other sites)

- Rise in popularity of mascot characters like Pikachu, DK, Tails

- Rise in popularity of secondary characters when compared to primary ones (Tails/Sonic), and new SFF/rSFF weightings Tifa/Sephiroth Mario/Samus

- Return to 2010 levels of Pokemon popularity (bucked only by the rise of Pikachu)

- Weakening of characters from post 2000 videogames, and a failure for new games to make a mark

- Minor rallies (Hentai) and smaller vote stuffing efforts having an increased effect on outcome

- Decline in voting

- Increase in close matches

Any that I have missed?

Hentai rallies and Link.
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Smash is REALLY loved.
BOTW is the best game ever.
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OFool posted...

Some that come to mind are:

- Weakening of characters from post 2000 videogames, and a failure for new games to make a mark

- Decline in voting

I don't think the former by itself is necessarily true. The userbase on this site is older (in comparison to other sites) and are primarily the ones voting (thus the decline). So anything pre mid-2000s has a major boost in CBX. If it was held on other sites with a different demographic, the results would still likely have the majority of the final 16..but more power to the 2000s for a lot of the first and second round matches.

From the Final 16 only 1 character was after 2000. Yeah.
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smash boost
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that the peoples that r running this contest can't figure out how to put together an decent contest backet.
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enthusiasm decreased as the contest went on
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you definetely pointed out some good ones tho Ofool
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final fantasy characters losing to furry characters

Smash boost was my omission but what truly evidenced it?

I.e which characters would you point out that got a smash boost?

Was it just Cloud not declining like Seph, because I wonder if that was due to other factors.

Smash didnt help Mega Man beat Crono in a debatable match and it didnt stop the Sonic decline.

Didnt do much for Beyonetta.

I reckon the Smash boost might be a red herring, and was sort of dispelled a bit late in the contest

Dels posted...

final fantasy characters losing to furry characters

There's no fur on Master Hand!
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@OFool All of them of course! Duh.
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TerrorPain posted...

that the peoples that r running this contest can't figure out how to put together an decent contest backet.

i mean how can Bomberman be more popular than Kazuma Kiryu,
how Chris Redfield lose to Phoenix Wright,
how Samus beaten Tifa but yet lose to Mario twice.
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I think another trend was "badass, traditionally cool, alpha-male lead characters underperforming"

This means Snake, Sephiroth, Zidane, Sonic, Noctis, Squall, Mega Man X, Leon Kennedy, Zero, Big Boss., Mewtwo(I know there's female Mewtwos now... but still he's seen as a guy)

Another one, Riku
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Another one, when in doubt, women character would win
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Safer_777 posted...

From the Final 16 only 1 character was after 2000. Yeah.

And he was the weakest character there lol
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Decline in enthusiasm and care across every level.(site administrator, users, voters, bracket-makers, 2nd chance bracket makers, topic creators, discord server activity, new people coming in, guru entries, oracle participation, other contest pariticipation)

"people will be so excited to vote for the Noble 9 in the legends bracket" not being a thing
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You pretty much got them all, I'd just add that for the first two rounds there were some effects for 4 matches per day + being forced to vote in all 4, namely:

- rallies were way harder to get off the ground (casuals didn't want to take the extra few second to vote in the other three)

- the most recognizable/iconic characters got a large boost, because they became the default choice for people who didn't care strongly about that matchup (but were forced to vote in it)

- characters that stood out from the other options also got a boost (for instance by being a bright colorful cartoon in a field of 7 realistic humans- similar to what we saw in 4 way battles)


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Also might be worth mentioning that the Contest lost momentum due to the 6 day Thanksgiving break; casuals didn't realize it was back until 2-3 days later and vote totals never fully recovered.

This wasn't a HUGE trend but it might have been enough to swing some matches, for instance Pika > MM.


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SuperNiceDog posted...

I think another trend was "badass, traditionally cool, alpha-male lead characters underperforming"

This means Snake, Sephiroth, Zidane, Sonic, Noctis, Squall, Mega Man X, Leon Kennedy, Zero, Big Boss., Mewtwo(I know there's female Mewtwos now... but still he's seen as a guy)

Another one, Riku

Yeah that's a great call actually

SJWFF and hentai rallies
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SuperNiceDog posted...

I think another trend was "badass, traditionally cool, alpha-male lead characters underperforming"

This means Snake, Sephiroth, Zidane, Sonic, Noctis, Squall, Mega Man X, Leon Kennedy, Zero, Big Boss., Mewtwo(I know there's female Mewtwos now... but still he's seen as a guy)

Another one, Riku

Ehhhhh

Snake, Big Boss and Seph have valid reasons to have dropped, MGS going to shit and FF7 not having a meaningful release in over a decade.

lol @ considering Zidane to be 'alpha'

Sonic is a mystery to me, the rest of Sonic team looked good coming off of Mania, but again, I don't think anyone considers Sonic to be 'alpha'

Noctis is a garbage character from a garbage game that noone played

X and Zero looked pretty good after you see where Tifa and Pikachu ended up

Leon was a surprise, but I think his strength was based off of RE4 getting a port on every console up to last generation, and that finally drying up.

Mewtwo was always suspect in terms of strength

I don't know that I buy your theory
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Sonic is so alpha
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OFool posted...

SuperNiceDog posted...

I think another trend was "badass, traditionally cool, alpha-male lead characters underperforming"

This means Snake, Sephiroth, Zidane, Sonic, Noctis, Squall, Mega Man X, Leon Kennedy, Zero, Big Boss., Mewtwo(I know there's female Mewtwos now... but still he's seen as a guy)

Another one, Riku

Yeah that's a great call actually

Riku was one of the biggest flops of the whole contest.
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BlAcK TuRtLe posted...

SJWFF and hentai rallies

yepppp. SJWs were out in full force this contest. They all rallied for Tifa and Zelda to spite the patriarchy.
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