Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1378

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3813-varia-division-round-2-zelda-vs-ezio

On the subject of rematches we didn't need to see, these two would meet again in 2018, and Zelda jumped her percentage up to a tripling. Poor Ezio, he deserved better than one career contest win.

Of all rematches, that was amusing enough

I remember there was some rando who was very insistent that Ezio would beat Zelda, and refused to listen to/acknowledge any of the contest knowledge that we had.

Didn't Ulti and Curt account bet it? Was it him? Ulti was the one picking Zelda.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Didn't Ulti and Curt account bet it? Was it him? Ulti was the one picking Zelda.

I think Curt put out an account bet, but no one wanted to take it because it felt like low hanging fruit since his defeat was basically guaranteed, especially after round 1.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3814-midgar-division-round-2-cloud-strife-vs-chris-redfield

One of the rare times in this contest when FFVII exceeded expectations. The Oracle average was 68.75% for Cloud, who started off at 66% at the freeze and never stopped climbing.

The other significant aspect of the 2010 Zelda vs Ezio match was that when they had their rematch in 2018, it was the sign that Zelda was now top tier. I had Squall beating her and the moment I saw that result I regretted that instantly. For that reason the rematch was very helpful!

I think people still held hope that AC simply sucked in 2018 after the first match, but yeah, it was a big warning for Squall.

Indeed that was the thought, but the interesting thing about Assassins Creed is that it has held on better than most non-Nintendo franchises. This is probably because they actually take breaks and change things up every now and then like with Origins. If it had stayed on the 2009-2015 trajectory of annual games it likely goes the way of Call of Duty. Or alternatively like Half-Life it could have gotten no games at all.

I didn't pay much attention to Zelda/Ezio because Gordon got absolutely slaughtered by Bowser like two days prior. Figured some western characters were just cratering. Stomping The Boss as well next round meant more.

To me in the case of Gordon it was obvious that it was a result of Valve just letting Half-Life die effectively. After all, in BGE3 Half-Life 2 looked a lot weaker than it did in GotD. Assassins Creed did not have the same reason to weaken and had actually looked pretty reasonable in recent GotY polls. In fact Origins went neck with Resident Evil VII! If anything there was more reason for The Boss to weaken, but to be clear I dont think either did very much.

GameFAQs still likes Assassins Creed. Origins saved the series, if they had kept it as is it probably would have gone the way of some other franchises. Very relevant poll:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5777-how-do-you-feel-about-the-trend-of-non-sports-game

In fact, were there to be a games contest where they met, Assassins Creed II>Half-Life 2 might be a good cheeky upset pick.

Is Ezio still around in the AC series or has the series moved on to other characters?

TeamRocketElite posted...

Is Ezio still around in the AC series or has the series moved on to other characters?

Ezio is just in 2-Brotherhood-Revelations.

...unless there's a cameo in a later game I'm not thinking about.

Ezio hasn't been the protagonist in the animus segments for 14 years now. The main games usually focus on a singular assassin before moving on to a new one in the next, though sometimes old assassins get new developments in new games (like Altair being developed further in the Ezio games). Ezio is the only exception to that routine, getting 3 games for himself.

Since then he just gets dragged out of the coffin for third party collabs, like Balatro, Fortnite, Fall Guys, etc.

His first two games are still the most beloved though, and he is the face of the franchise along with Altair hence why all those cameos are there. It is not so dissimilar from Final Fantasy overall.

Yeah Altair and Ezio still gets reps between the smash costume and being one of the Balatro card reps for AC respectively

it helps that the series has kinda just floated between reps the next choice would be Bayek? Evie Frey? Edward Kenway?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/b/bce52160.jpg

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3815-midgar-division-round-2-riku-vs-captain-falcon

Riku was no match for the Falcon Gaze. Seriously though, Riku was a big favorite on the board, not because we thought he was particularly strong (he had shown himself to be a decent midcarder, but no more than that), but because Falcon's rising strength may have been obscured.

Falcon got tripled by Crono in his debut in 2006, and a lot of us kinda dismissed him after that. Then he was hidden behind Nintendo LFF in 2007 and 2008, so there wasn't much reason to believe he had improved from his first match.

Well, the match itself was over pretty quickly, as Falcon had nearly 57% at the freeze and just held Riku at bay the rest of the way. This is also a situation where we were outsmarted by the casuals. Falcon had a 46.68% prediction percentage here, meaning he was the overall favorite to win this fourpack.

LiquidOshawott posted...

it helps that the series has kinda just floated between reps the next choice would be Bayek? Evie Frey? Edward Kenway?

My gut says Cassandra from Odyssey would be the third-strongest behind Altair and Ezio. She did show up as DLC in Valhalla.

Not that she'd be strong. Might win a match against turbofodder, but that's it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3816-midgar-division-round-2-leon-kennedy-vs-sackboy

Not much to say about this one. Leon essentially had a predetermined path in this contest with an easy fourpack, and few had much confidence in his ability to defeat the winner of Ryu/Dante, especially with the sprite round and a Resident Evil Gaiden sprite awaiting him.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3813-varia-division-round-2-zelda-vs-ezio

On the subject of rematches we didn't need to see, these two would meet again in 2018, and Zelda jumped her percentage up to a tripling. Poor Ezio, he deserved better than one career contest win.

http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k18&type=match&match=36

The Oracle crowd did predict that Zelda would do better in the rematch and still undershot Zelda by around 6% in the Oracle average. I was very much on board with a massive Zelda blowout for the 2018 rematch and somehow managed to overshoot on Zelda.

LightningStrikes posted...

After all, in BGE3 Half-Life 2 looked a lot weaker than it did in GotD.

As did Assassin's Creed II!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6059-best-game-ever-day-3-final-fantasy-vi-vs-assassins-creed-ii

Also, to this day, I still don't get how Squall/Zelda was (iirc) a 50-50 match before 2018 started - perhaps that's mainly because I don't think much of Squall's 2013 showings, though.

Riku vs. Falcon was a day match and people were thinking the ASV would matter. It was a weekend match though.

MetalmindStats posted...

As did Assassin's Creed II!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6059-best-game-ever-day-3-final-fantasy-vi-vs-assassins-creed-ii

Also, to this day, I still don't get how Squall/Zelda was (iirc) a 50-50 match before 2018 started - perhaps that's mainly because I don't think much of Squall's 2013 showings, though.

True but this was also post-Unity when the franchise was at its lowest point, it got rescued later. Also not sure how well Assassins Creed II was expected to do there while Half-Life 2 had a direct rematch.

Edit: Should have gotten 36% through Wind Waker, so that is a pretty severe underperformance. Makes what Origins did for the series more impressive.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3817-midgar-division-round-2-ryu-vs-dante

This match has one of the most unique circumstances surrounding it that we've ever had. If you were here at the time, you might remember the Hockey Factor. This match took place on the same day as the 2010 Winter Olympics Hockey Gold Medal Game between the U.S. and Canada.

You wouldn't expect that to matter, but you could track it as it was happening. Ryu was winning in America and in Canada, so while the game was on, Dante would be winning updates. During commercial breaks, Ryu would be winning updates. As soon as the game was over, Ryu took over and managed to pull away (relatively speaking, of course, but his biggest lead was at the end of the match).

For Dante, he had come up short in a debated one-on-one match yet again. His biggest lead was just over 300, and Ryu's biggest lead was just over 500, so it was basically neck and neck the whole way. Somebody had to lose, and on this occasion, it was Dante.

Ryu/Dante is one of those matches that's so vivid in my mind, it's hard to comprehend today is the 15 year anniversary. I'm gonna have college students younger than Ryu/Dante before I realize it.

Yeah, I have a lot of fond memories of this match, too. I might dive into the Stats Topic archives to relive it a little bit.

poor dante

he needs a smash boost

The first three games are on Switch, he can make it! Also apparently the Switch version of 3 is the best one.

The previous Ryu/Dante match also took place on the day of the 2003 Blackout, so if we ever get another contest and the two of them have a match set up, well, watch out, something big's about to go down.

Sorry to be a downer, but have we honestly conceded how improbable another contest is? I brought it up to DToast last year, and he didn't even know what the contests were. With SBAllen gone, the odds of another contest are probably no higher than 1%.

Glad we did

if we don't have prizes we might be able to convince them

they will never shell out though

Yeah, many of us took Allen resigning as the unofficial death of contests. It's part of the reason I started doing these contest retrospectives, just so we could remember the good old days.

We've said this for years, but Allen refused to do a contest without prizes.

A contest now with how pitiful our vote totals are would feel kinda sad to me, honestly. I guess I might eventually warm up to it, but it wouldn't be the same.

It would also feel strange because the guy in charge would have absolutely no idea what he's doing. I wouldn't even wanna do that to DToast.

I wish there was a way to prevent topic polls from being so easily stuffed because I wouldn't mind running our own little B8 contest every now and then.

YoBlazer posted...

It would also feel strange because the guy in charge would have absolutely no idea what he's doing. I wouldn't even wanna do that to DToast.

A bracket with funny seeding could have its own charm.

A modern day contest would be the first time a final doesn't even hit 10,000 votes.

Having such low amounts of votes also makes it criminally easy to completely flip a match by dropping a link in any moderately sized discord server. There's basically zero chance every match doesn't have a "rally" in effect (for as much as you can call it a rally with 4 digit votals).

Leonhart4 posted...

I wish there was a way to prevent topic polls from being so easily stuffed because I wouldn't mind running our own little B8 contest every now and then.

Just do it the old fashioned way with users posting who they wish to vote for and ban/block votes from illegitimate users or people who cheat.

paulg235 posted...

Just do it the old fashioned way with users posting who they wish to vote for and ban/block votes from illegitimate users.

Yeah, I suppose we could do it that way. I just know we'd get fewer votes.

If we did something like this, we'd have to do nominations first, right? Or should we just craft the bracket ourselves?

If we did nominations, my thinking is that we'd give the Noble Nine and the 7 division winners from 2018 automatic entry so we don't have to get people to spend their nominations on them, and we could give them the top 2 seeds in each division. We'd pair them up based on the 2018 X-Stats.

(1) Link
(2) Ganondorf

(1) Pikachu
(2) Mega Man

(1) Zelda
(2) Bowser

(1) Samus Aran
(2) Sephiroth

(1) Solid Snake
(2) Tifa Lockhart

(1) Mario
(2) Alucard

(1) Crono
(2) Sonic the Hedgehog

(1) Cloud Strife
(2) Auron

Something like that. And then we'd do...10/15/20/25 nominations per user? And we'd have the same limitations as the contests normally have, so no all-fictional Character Battle (sadly).

To me it seemed like the sale from CBS was the death knell, Red Ventures was not interested in any of the gaming side of CBSi at all and while Fandom is a bit more interested, they run everything on a shoestring budget and just keep cutting costs. Then with Allen gone that was that. I do think we should keep lobbying for them though, you never know what could happen.

Leonhart4 posted...

You wouldn't expect that to matter, but you could track it as it was happening. Ryu was winning in America and in Canada, so while the game was on, Dante would be winning updates. During commercial breaks, Ryu would be winning updates. As soon as the game was over, Ryu took over and managed to pull away (relatively speaking, of course, but his biggest lead was at the end of the match).

Geolocation trends also played a role here, as Dante was cleanly winning over Ryu in Europe:

https://web.archive.org/web/20100507051207/http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3817&region=EUR

This would have affected trends, mainly in the last 6 hours of the match when Europe would be going to sleep.

LightningStrikes posted...

To me it seemed like the sale from CBS was the death knell, Red Ventures was not interested in any of the gaming side of CBSi at all and while Fandom is a bit more interested, they run everything on a shoestring budget and just keep cutting costs. Then with Allen gone that was that. I do think we should keep lobbying for them though, you never know what could happen.

That's really what it comes down to. Even the prize pool is irrelevant. They don't event want to pay any of the operating expenses in administering the contest, especially if it fails to draw people to the site (or if it draws just one fanbase to swamp the poll for seven matches just to go back to where they came from afterwards).

Can't wait for squall to go auron into cloud

pjbasis posted...

Can't wait for squall to go auron into cloud

The bracket will purposely avoid putting Squall against Cloud or Snake