Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1352

(+) Yeah! (+)

I only needed 1 correct pick yesterday to make the leaderboard.

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I had picked RDR to the division finals originally. That doesn't look that bad honestly. I just expected people to vote against Persona 4 slightly more than they did because it's an early decade remake.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Could be a stronger Galaxy 2!

Ill agree with this. Well all agree that Nintendo had good reason to be vulnerable in 2015 (and 2013!) due to the Wii U years, and we can see this through both the top flight if Nintendo games (except for SMW and SMRPG, both of which had shenanigans) not looking their strongest in the stats, and Nintendo not performing as strongly in GotY polls. So it is entirely possible that Nintendo in general is stronger and thatll help games weve seen before. Galaxy 2 will also probably have the registered users on its side. Lastly there is also the strongly rumoured Mario 3D collection coming to Switch this year, so more people have been talking about Galaxy recently.

Even before all that, this looks like a top 20 overall performance for The Witcher. When you take into account those other factors, this could be very good indeed.

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Xstats
Witcher 3 - 33.78 (2015 SMG2)
Persona 5 - 33.12 (2015 Civ5)
God of War - 32.07 (2015 BoI)
God of War - 31.57 (2015 NV)
Skyrim - 28.40 (2015 Journey)
Dark Souls - ?
Dark Souls III - 25.59 (2015 NV)

If Xstats are right, the Witcher 3/Persona 5 match will be fireworks. Depends a lot on whether you believe Civ 5 and SMG2 are constant.

Under current results against SMG2:
Witcher 3 - 51%
Persona 5 - 49%

Assuming Witcher 3 ends the match with 60% against SMG2
Witcher 3 - 51.72%
Persona 5 - 48.28%

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Lightning Strikes posted...

Ill agree with this. Well all agree that Nintendo had good reason to be vulnerable in 2015 (and 2013!) due to the Wii U years, and we can see this through both the top flight if Nintendo games (except for SMW and SMRPG, both of which had shenanigans) not looking their strongest in the stats, and Nintendo not performing as strongly in GotY polls. So it is entirely possible that Nintendo in general is stronger and thatll help games weve seen before. Galaxy 2 will also probably have the registered users on its side. Lastly there is also the strongly rumoured Mario 3D collection coming to Switch this year, so more people have been talking about Galaxy recently.

Even before all that, this looks like a top 20 overall performance for The Witcher. When you take into account those other factors, this could be very good indeed.

SMG2 looked pretty iffy against Stardew Valley, so unless we believe SV is significantly stronger than pretty much every other indie out there, there's only so much stronger SMG2 can be than 2015.

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If those percentages are made through a constant SMG2 and CivV, then I think Witcher 3 is gonna win with relative ease.

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Woke up, checked the results. I believe as expected?

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squexa posted...

SMG2 looked pretty iffy against Stardew Valley, so unless we believe SV is significantly stronger than pretty much every other indie out there, there's only so much stronger SMG2 can be than 2015.

Not by nearly as much as you would think:

Shovel Knight (2015g) has a strength of 18.80 against Base Link.
Mario Galaxy 2 (2015g) has a strength of 27.47 against Base Link.
Mario Galaxy 2 wins with 65.78% of the vote!

And of course Shovel Knight has very good reason to get stronger as well - so Stardew doesn't even need to be the strongest indie for SMG2 to get a fair bit stronger.

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transience posted...

if the witcher community gets fully behind this contest, it'll beat BOTW no problem.

Zelda has a much bigger subreddit, though I dont think rallies there will do as well.
Also based of off this performance witcher isnt touching 35 against zelda.
Of course things could change later.

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Whoever makes the final will probably get some decent support. Most people will have the "oh look it's Zelda in the final again!" sarcasm and vote against it.

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I think BotW has most of those votes against it already.

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MetalmindStats posted...

To this, I will respond with Yoblazer's words, which I fully agree with: "How as a community can we not realize that the degree of something is what matters?"

The key difference is that minor/midsized rallies that don't completely disenfranchise normal GameFAQs voters actually make matches more interesting overall, whereas Melee and Undertale predictably mowing over everything in their path made 2015 infinitely less interesting.

Also, there is no possible way The Witcher 3 (or whatever makes the finals in its stead) fails to break 35% on Breath of the Wild, and heck, I'm still expecting it to reach 40% even without a major rally.

But how would you control size of said rally once it starts? The simple fact here is that these contests are meant to reflect what the website thinks is or isnt game of the decade.
The second you rally you're bringing in a group of votes from an outside source with the express intent of enforcing a result you want, and that ends up tainting the voting statistics in the long run.
So in this case, degrees don't matter, since the very action of rallying goes against the point of these contests, doesnt matter whether its Zelda or witcher doing it, or if its an indie like undertale.

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raptor36000 posted...

Zelda has a much bigger subreddit, though I dont think rallies there will do as well.
Also based of off this performance witcher isnt touching 35 against zelda.
Of course things could change later.

things like this are so premature. Name me a western game thst gets close to 60 on a big hitting nintendo game in the past.

skyrim hit 38% on mario 64 5 years ago. No reason why witcher cant do it

people are putting botw on the same level as the absolute elite when theres no evidence to do so

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They were doing that through Life is Strange, which was also in the 2015 contest.

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ctesjbuvf posted...

I had picked RDR to the division finals originally. That doesn't look that bad honestly. I just expected people to vote against Persona 4 slightly more than they did because it's an early decade remake.

i think Persona 5 being as popular as it is and recent Royal release helped persona 4 A lot.


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raptor36000 posted...

Also based of off this performance witcher isnt touching 35 against zelda.

Um, no? Did you not even see the extrapolation earlier in this topic that pegged Breath of the Wild at ~69-71% indirectly on Galaxy 2? Based on that, Witcher 3 will break 35% even if said extrapolation proves 100% transitive to the finals, and I personally think Witcher 3 will also benefit significantly from the circumstances.

raptor36000 posted...

The simple fact here is that these contests are meant to reflect what the website thinks is or isnt game of the decade.

Straight from the entry page (archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20200315083650/https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd_entry):

Don't forget: This is not a contest to see which game is your favorite, or even which one is critically the best. It's all a big popularity contest, and visitors who have never visited GameFAQs before will be sure to stop in and vote.

And again further down:

Remember, it's all a big Internet popularity contest. Outside forces can influence the results, and have done so in the past. We take many steps to prevent vote-stuffing by individuals, but the power of the masses is unstoppable.

That hopefully makes it abundantly clear that rallying in fact doesn't go against the point of these contests. Also, keep in mind that small/midsized rallies have always been a part of these contests, ever since they began in 2002. Are you suddenly going to throw out a huge chunk of past results because voters rallied from other parts of the Internet happened to influence them, or would you prefer to raise said past contests onto an imaginary pedestal?

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witcher 3 is the poor man's baldur's gate 2. new vegas is also superior

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Yuri_LowelI posted...

things like this are so premature. Name me a western game thst gets close to 60 on a big hitting nintendo game in the past.

skyrim hit 38% on mario 64 5 years ago. No reason why witcher cant do it

people are putting botw on the same level as the absolute elite when theres no evidence to do so

But it wasn't premature when people took last weeks performance and put witcher on a pedestal and as a sure shot the finalist? Im just saying it works both ways.

Also Galaxy 2 is at best the 5th strongest nintendo game in this contest.
Right now witcher is around the same level as Skyrim, SMO and Smash(Those games would get a similar % on SMG 2).
What's premature is calling it a sure shot finalist. It could very well still get there, but I dont think beating skyrim or persona will be the cakewalk some people think it is.

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MetalmindStats posted...

Um, no? Did you not even see the extrapolation earlier in this topic that pegged Breath of the Wild at ~69-71% indirectly on Galaxy 2? Based on that, Witcher 3 will break 35% even if said extrapolation proves 100% transitive to the finals, and I personally think Witcher 3 will also benefit significantly from the circumstances.

Straight from the entry page (archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20200315083650/https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/features/gotd_entry):
And again further down:
That hopefully makes it abundantly clear that rallying in fact doesn't go against the point of these contests. Also, keep in mind that small/midsized rallies have always been a part of these contests, ever since they began in 2002. Are you suddenly going to throw out a huge chunk of past results because voters rallied from other parts of the Internet happened to influence them, or would you prefer to raise said past contests onto an imaginary pedestal?

So what you're saying is small rallies are fine but big ones arent? Who decides what is medium sized and what isnt. And how do you control the size of a rally once it starts?
Why is it okay if a medium sized rally changes the result of a close contest but its bad if a bigger rally like (undertale or draven) does the same? Is it because the medium sized rally is for a game that you think deserves to win whereas the bigger rallies are by trolls? Objectively speaking you can either be for rallies or against them.
Also the link you shared basically has it written that rallies are inevitable which they are, it isnt encouraging rally's in any way, which btw is why user votes have more weightage.

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What I'm saying is that I personally dislike huge rallies that disenfranchise GameFAQs voters - certainly that has nothing to do with their morality or any sort of objective stance (hint: no such thing exists here, as with lots of subjects). The fact that you have no idea where the line between midsized and massive rallies lies, and your assumption that any random rally can reasonably catch fire in such a way, tells me that you lack the type of knowledge that would serve you well when commenting on a subject such as this.

Anyways, this is the last comment I'll make on this incredibly tired topic.

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Rallies are fine! Probably.

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raptor36000 posted...

Objectively speaking you can either be for rallies or against them.

No. I can't believe after 7 years that people still insists this is the case. When people find themselves to be somewhere inbetween, they're basically always getting accused of just liking when their favorite game is winning.

Everyone should be capable of understanding. In general, it's my idea that people enjoy the rallies if they bring more excitement to the match results and if the games have even rallying possibilities, while there are exceptions on both sides of course. Something like Octopath vs. Shovel Knight was close and exciting match for almost the full time and got more exciting due to the swings in votes for both games. It appeared to still be close, so people were a lot more split on that one. You can find people that enjoyed that, but didn't enjoy Draven and Undertale, because they were nothing like that. The other games were completely burried and never stood a chance, not just in one match, but clearly for the rest of the contest. The Mario and RBY gauntlet and Chrono Trigger's way through the big names were probably the matches people in general were most excited about and none of them happened while we were instead given very uniteresting matches to see the results for.

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ctesjbuvf posted...

No. I can't believe after 7 years that people still insists this is the case. When people find themselves to be somewhere inbetween, they're basically always getting accused of just liking when their favorite game is winning.

Everyone should be capable of understanding. In general, it's my idea that people enjoy the rallies if they bring more excitement to the match results and if the games have even rallying possibilities, while there are exceptions on both sides of course. Something like Octopath vs. Shovel Knight was close and exciting match for almost the full time and got more exciting due to the swings in votes for both games. It appeared to still be close, so people were a lot more split on that one. You can find people that enjoyed that, but didn't enjoy Draven and Undertale, because they were nothing like that. The other games were completely burried and never stood a chance, not just in one match, but clearly for the rest of the contest. The Mario and RBY gauntlet and Chrono Trigger's way through the big names were probably the matches people in general were most excited about and none of them happened while we were instead given very uniteresting matches to see the results for.

Rallies have yet to make a single result more exciting. Trends make exciting matches, not rallies. I'm guess the people you refer to like shit such as Game Of Thrones season 8, or The Last Jedi because of how "unpredictable" they were. I'll take a Sonic/Mega Man style match over that bullshit RE2 match any day of the week.

I refrained from posting my own opinions there. Really just want to kill the idea you can only enjoy all rallies or hate all rallies. It's incredibly stupid and always has been.

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pjbasis posted...

Yeah just like how JRPGs are just for rotating models of your waifus and fapping. That's what 97% of all fire emblem sales go to.

lol
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ctesjbuvf posted...

I refrained from posting my own opinions there. Really just want to kill the idea you can only enjoy all rallies or hate all rallies. It's incredibly stupid and always has been.

There's no room for nuance here. You must be all or nothing!

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See that I don't agree with one bit. It depends on the match, the trends, and the rallies. "Oh here comes the night vote to rescue Cloud from Samus" is not more interesting than the nuts RE2/Bloodborne match. By that same token, rallied Undertale lolstomping OoT was not more interesting than Celeste vs. Rayman.

"Unpredictable" is only bad if it's unearned. Something like The Last Jedi was good, since it earned what made it unpredictable. The Rise of Skywalker was bad because it played it as safe as possible. And Game of Thrones Season 8 was not bad because it was unpredictable (in fact it was completely predictable), it was bad because it was a poorly drawn and developed mess.

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I'm pro-rallies mostly on the principle that telling people not to vote in our contests is idiotic. But I can't say the Draven and Undertale rallies were fun to watch.

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Axem_Turtle posted...

Rallies have yet to make a single result more exciting. Trends make exciting matches, not rallies. I'm guess the people you refer to like shit such as Game Of Thrones season 8, or The Last Jedi because of how "unpredictable" they were. I'll take a Sonic/Mega Man style match over that bullshit RE2 match any day of the week.

"I only pay attention to these contests to see what this site's voterbase thinks. People from elsewhere getting involved in the contest ruins it."

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LeonhartFour posted...

this feels like it could be Xenoblade/Three Houses all over again where it's 50/50 at the freeze and ends 60/40

Well, this was spot-on.

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I'm against rallies that hurt my bracket.

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Oh hey The Witcher well over 60% now.

The Witcher 3 vs. FFX who ya got

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Obviously the Witcher 3. FF name isn't what it used to be years ago.

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Seems like witcher 3 and Geralt have the exact same trends

The Skyrim match looks like itll be fun.

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Skyrim has similar trends, the Persona 5 match will be much more interesting trend wise.

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MechanicalWall posted...

Still, I'll be disappointed if Witcher doesn't crawl up to 60 at some point, hopefully when I wake up in 8 hours

Woke up, it's at 60

Cheers, this is now a satisfactory result

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Witcher 3 is flying now.

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honestly i think this is a great performance for what was supposed to be the 4th or 5th strongest game in the bracket pre contest.

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PrinceOfKoopas posted...

Well, this was spot-on.

Trust the trendmaker

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Like I said, nuance is not allowed.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Like I said, nuance is not allowed.

Yep! Rallies "suck" but if they're going to happen, at least I can take solace in getting the pick correct.

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Persona 4 deserves to win D4 after that run.

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So for division finals we will have probably based on Seeds this

1VS2
1VS3
1VS2
5VS3
1VS2
1VS2/3
1VS2/3
1VS3

So yeah that means the seeding was perfect. Except of course the 4th division and that was barely off. So is this the best seeded contest ever?

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Hey you're consistent about hating them all!

I do but there's definitely a sliding scale of which are worse and if people want to fall in the middle somewhere that's fine

I just have no interest in a skewed perspective

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shane15 posted...

Persona 4 deserves to win D4 after that run.

If we're just going by shocking strength and an upset, Xenoblade is much more impressive. Star of the contest so far.

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that rally topic on witcher 3 reddit got a little bit of traction with 40 upvotes...might have brought in a couple hundred votes

Safer_777 posted...

So yeah that means the seeding was perfect. Except of course the 4th division and that was barely off. So is this the best seeded contest ever?

Pretty much, even in the first round there were only seven seeding upsets and four of them were 7/10 and 8/9 and one was a 6/11 (Rayman > Celeste) so that's not too bad. The other two was due to Undertale being overseeded while Mario Kart 8 was underseeded.

The second round was quite similar, the lowest seed other than Mario Kart 8 to win was six seed Shovel Knight who technically didn't commit a seeding upset as it defeated 14 seed Octopath. The five seeds outdid the four seeds 4-3.

Of course some first round losers were a bit underseeded (Resident Evil 7, South Park, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 etc.), but the bracket was well made.

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Sharinnegan posted...

that rally topic on witcher 3 reddit got a little bit of traction with 40 upvotes...might have brought in a couple hundred votes

I think this is still not much, i mean the difference now is around 4.5K votes, so 100-300 votes are nothing impactful.
The subreddit is active but it seems they like posting pictures and cosplaying, so if i were Breath of the Wild or Persona fan i wouldnt worry too much about rallies from there. They dont give a fuck.

Maybe try their forums next time, someone maybe will post some rally at CDPR forums, dont know if that is going to impact either but you do this now and if they dont you can safely say rallies won't worry you in the future, so its like kinda an experiment.