Board 8 > Next contest needs to be characters. No Link, Zelda, Cloud, Mario, or Samus

(+) Yeah! (+)

I recognize how oddly specific those exemptions are but theyre just too strong. Snake probably wins relatively easily but itll be a way better bracket with him than not. Or take him out too, itd still be an amazing bracket.

Even if you know for sure which of Zelda, Cloud, Mario, or Samus will win in a Link-less contest, that's no guarantee your conviction will prove true, and it certainly doesn't mean anyone else knows.

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I dont allege to know. My argument is that finding out whom among those four is strongest is worth less than finding out who the strongest is aside from them. Especially when you can put them in a separate mini bracket.

hows about no kirby

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Eh I'd normally agree, but I'm pretty eager to see how FF7R boosts the cast. Tifa I Zelda would be crazy and I think Cloud vs. Link would be close.

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how about...

no whining about who is or is not in...

Cloud will get 43% instead of 40%.

We need Samus and Cloud to face each other so we can find out once and for all who's our number 2! Granted, odds are far better for Cloud now than previously....

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as long as kirby not in the contest im fine with that

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Link's the only one who needs to be banned. Zelda in particular would be very interesting to see again, just to see how much of her strength was bandwagon vs. Breath of the Wild megaboost.
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Sure, thats why you put them against each other. You can even do a doubles elim to add more matches against each other.

Winner of bracket
v
Snake

V

Cloud
v
Zelda

_______

Samus
v
Mario

Link goes against winner after doing some double elims.

Moonroof posted...

I dont allege to know. My argument is that finding out whom among those four is strongest is worth less than finding out who the strongest is aside from them. Especially when you can put them in a separate mini bracket.

I don't agree with that argument, personally. You can still have all the matches you mentioned in your initial post even with those four (and Snake) around; they just won't have a chance of determining the main bracket winner, which I don't see as much of a loss when we have such a close foursome on top. Also, if (for example) Crono, Mega Man, Pikachu, and Tifa are tightly bunched together in strength, either those direct matches will be close enough to prevent us from knowing who's truly the strongest of them, or indirect extrapolation through the top five will give us the answer. The same thing goes for deciding whether Sephiroth or Sonic is the weakest Noble Niner - either a direct match would be too close to give us an answer, or if they're a bit further apart, indirect extrapolation will reveal the answer.

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Wouldnt you rather them go head to head to find out?

Even if the matches are too close to definitively say, then I say all the better. Close matches are what makes the contests exciting and while we may not have totally accurate 100% surefire rankings, we are closer than if we had to rely on extrapolations.

Moonroof posted...

Wouldnt you rather them go head to head to find out?

Yes, but as I said before, there's no reason they can't do so even in a bracket with the big four in it. Of course it's true that close matches make these contests exciting, which is all the more reason to have Cloud, Mario, Samus, and Zelda in the main bracket as opposed to retired on a nonexistent pretense. That way, we get to have potentially 3-4 more genuinely close matches between even stronger characters than the likes of Crono that truly matter, including the finals for the first time since the original GotD.

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Just put Link in a bonus match if you really want the result (spoiler : he still beat Cloud easily)

Of you're going to keep ANYONE out, the only one who is really necessary at this point is Link.

Mario/Cloud/Zelda/Samus are on even enough playing ground as of 2018 that any matchup of the four of them is a toss-up, and since we never thought Zelda would be in that discussion before the 2018 contest, they could be fallible to another newfound elite (Pikachu perhaps? Maybe Snake finds his old strength again?). I've never really understood the purpose of taking out characters just so someone else can get an "on paper" championship. We tried that in the mid aughts and all it did was result in the next strongest character winning each year.

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We just need ANY character that has ever appeared in a videogame. Batman, Spiderman, Bruce Willis, anyone.

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Set the contest near Christmas and watch John Mcclane destroy all that Nintendo trash!

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shane15 posted...

Set the contest near Christmas and watch John Mcclane destroy all that Nintendo trash!

Santa couldn't beat Link on Christmas Eve.

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Underleveled posted...

Santa couldn't beat Link on Christmas Eve.

But Santa didn't have a machine gun.

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Get rid of Link and only Link.

Cloud/Zelda/Mario/Samus were all pretty close together last contest, then Link got 59% on Cloud.

The only hair in that soup is that Cloud might have boosted enough thanks to Remake that his #2 placement is beyond doubt, but he should be given the chance to show it. Previously this argument was just a slippery slope - you take out one, where do you stop, etc etc - but that absolutely does not apply based on 2018's results.

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Im simply saying those four are not allowed in the main bracket. They still go against each other in a separate bracket. Because if they are allowed in the main bracket, how do you expect to have the matches that I mentioned earlier?

I suppose if its a 128 entrant bracket with 8 divisions, you can put the five I mentioned as one seeds and then the other non-elites as two and four seeds, but then whoever gets the three seeds is going to be deprived of a chance of a close match.

Sweet Sixteen:

Mario/Dante
Tifa/Sonic

Zelda/Bowser
Kirby/Squall

Crono/Pikachu
Mega Man/Sephiroth

Samus/X
Cloud/Snake

Doesn't give you ALL the matches you requested, but just removing Link allows us to make it that much more interesting.

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XIII_rocks posted...

Previously this argument was just a slippery slope - you take out one, where do you stop,

Those arguments always felt a bit disingenuous tbh

The answer was always 'You stop at LINK'. It wasn't a hard call to make

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MechanicalWall posted...

Those arguments always felt a bit disingenuous tbh

The answer was always 'You stop at LINK'. It wasn't a hard call to make

I'd say back in the day Sephiroth was the hard stopping point. Even though the upper echelon was clearly Link > Cloud > Sephiroth and wasn't going to be disturbed, there was still a clear enough break between Sephiroth and Mario/Crono/Samus/Snake, and those four were close enough that any one of them could take it any given year without Clinkeroth.

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Underleveled posted...

Sweet Sixteen:

Mario/Dante
Tifa/Sonic

Tifa v. Sonic is good but thats it here

Zelda/Bowser
Kirby/Squall

Kirby v. Squall MIGHT be good but thats it here

Crono/Pikachu
Mega Man/Sephiroth

This is an awesome four pack

Samus/X
Cloud/Snake

Samus v. Cloud would be awesome

Moving on from there youd have a pretty stellar semi-finals and finals. That could definitely work.

Moonroof posted...

Im simply saying those four are not allowed in the main bracket.

We already did some form of that like 3 times (2005, 2006, 2018 - any more?), I don't need it anymore personally.

MechanicalWall posted...

Those arguments always felt a bit disingenuous tbh

The answer was always 'You stop at LINK'. It wasn't a hard call to make

No, I buy it to some extent, at least in the mid-00s when this was first brought up and even when a retirement first happened. In 2005 - the first contest to have a post-contest gimmick - Mario won the tournament fairly comfortably, then lost to Sephiroth in the ToC...fairly comfortably. There was a very clear Link > Cloud > Sephiroth > Mario line of succession, to the point that excluding Link would just create the same problem with Cloud, then Sephiroth. I could kind of buy it back then. But not now.

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I mean yeah, not every match is going to be a bang-up, which is why in the top half I set up the long-anticipated Mario/Sonic 1v1, and a grudge match opposite Zelda, to make up for the fact that the more interesting/unpredictable four-packs are both in the back half.

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kirby is dumb

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In my bracket, Dante was merely a placeholder for whatever character gets fed to Mario at that point. Could easily be Ryu/Leon/Alucard/Ganondorf/whoever else is on that tier.

Not Luigi though, because that'd just be dumb.

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There are just so many good matches we should see that dont involve the top dogs. All the ones you just mentioned, Vivi, etc.

Well that's what the early matches are for. Eliminate most of the trash, make 90% of the field characters who are currently at fodder-line and above (for reference sake, Isaac ought to be in like the 10th percentile instead of a decent mid-point), and the entire bracket becomes a bloodbath.

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we should actually have all different incarnations of Link together in the bracket

Put all the fodder in the 5 divisions with the big dogs, and the other 3 divisions will be the real bloodbath. Then the divisional winners going against each other can have double elim to really make it epic.

Here's a list of 128 characters you could make a bloodbath bracket out of. The bolded characters were absent from 2018, but have been in before and have proven that they can avoid being completely embarrassed (or have a legitimate reason such as a significant new release to have drastically increased),with just a very small few of our lovable old fodder; otherwise, this list is all fodder-line and above.

2B
Aerith Gainsborough
Akuma
Albert Wesker
Altair
Alucard
Amaterasu
Auron
Balthier Bunansa
Banjo
Bayonetta
Big Boss
Bowser
CATS
Captain Falcon
Cecil Harvey
Charizard
Chris Redfield
Chun-Li
Claire Redfield
Cloud Strife
Commander Shepard
Crash Bandicoot
Crono
Dante
Diablo
Donkey Kong
Ellie
Ezio
Fox McCloud
Frog
Ganondorf
Garrus Vakarian
Geralt
GlaDOS
Gordon Freeman
Guybrush Threepwood
HK-47
Ike
Isaac
Jak
Jecht
Jill Valentine
KOS-MOS
Kairi
Kefka
Ken Masters
King Dedede
Kirby
Knuckles the Echidna
Kratos
Kratos Aurion
Lara Croft
Leon Kennedy
Lightning
Link
Liquid Snake
Lloyd Irving
Lucario
Luigi
M. Bison
Magus
Mario
Marth
Master Chief
Mega Man
Mega Man X
Meta Knight
Mewtwo
Midna
Miles Tails Prower
Morrigan Aensland
Nathan Drake
Ness
Nightmare
Pac-Man
Phoenix Wright
Pikachu
Pit
Pokemon Trainer Blue
Pokemon Trainer Red
Prince of Persia
Princess Peach
Protoman
Ramza Beoulve
Ren Joker Amamiya
Revolver Ocelot
Ridley
Rikku
Riku
Rosalina
Roxas
Rydia
Ryu
Ryu Hayabusa
Samus Aran
Scorpion
Sephiroth
Shadow the Hedgehog
Shulk
Simon Belmont
Solid Snake
Sonic the Hedgehog
Sora
Spyro the Dragon
Squall Leonhart
Squirtle
Strider Hiryu
Sub-Zero
Terra Branford
Terry Bogard
The Boss
Tidus
Tifa Lockheart
Tina Armstrong
Toad
Tom Nook
Urdnot Wrex
Vincent Valentine
Vivi
Waluigi
Wario
Yoshi
Yuna
Zack Fair
Zelda
Zero
Zidane Tribal

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what ever no kirby

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^^ With proper seeding and manual overriding to ensure supreme matchups, it could be the best contest ever. Though youd definitely have to take out Link.

I wouldn't mind seeing a round-robin style contest

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Why would we remove our most popular characters? If you really have to, I could countenance putting the main bracket winner up against Link in a grand final, but there's no reason those other characters should be removed from the bracket.

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Underleveled posted...

otherwise, this list is all fodder-line and above.

I think you could still whittle down that list a bit further, even while keeping those few cutesy contest history nods (CATS, Guybrush, Tina, Gordon at this point) who clearly don't measure up.

For starters, the KH characters who aren't Sora don't belong. Riku already looked to be below the fodder line in 2018, even before KH3, and he's Roxas and Kairi's ceiling. If you must have a second KH character, Aqua might not have any real strength, but at least she has a good chance of making the next character battle, something which I wouldn't even say about Riku at this point.

I can't see Tales going without a character battle representative any time soon even though they're all fodder, but Kratos Aurion might not even be the #2 from his game - 26% on Zero in 2013 is just awful, especially compared to Lloyd's inexplicably high 31% on Pikachu that same year. Of course, Lloyd then looked like a lamer once again in 2018; Velvet's very likely the strongest Tales character in addition to being by far the most nominated of them in 2018.

There's a few other characters I'm skeptical about being on that list, particularly Altair, Nightmare, and Prince of Persia. They're all casual bait characters who have had every reason to fall off hard since we last saw them, plus Nightmare already looked awful in 2013, and PoP barely skated by even when he was actually relevant. You could replace two of those with Aloy and Kazuma Kiryu, who aren't going to be missing the next character battle despite both being piss-weak, and the last with L-Block, who really ought to be on a list with Guybrush Threepwood and Tina Armstrong regardless of your possible stance on non-characters or take on the block's 40% on Kefka in 2018.

Otherwise, I like the idea, but I worry it wouldn't be quite the bloodbath it deserves to be with Link in there to invalidate 2-3 of the most important matches of a contest.

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