GameFAQs Contests

How many people are on board the Ganon > Sonic train?
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"Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around." - Calvin

2005 started at 3 AM, but let's pretend that it didn't:

Sonic beats Mega Man by 300 in the day
Bowser beats Snake by 1000 in the day (!)
Kirby loses to Bowser in the day by only 50 votes, and loses the night by 3000
DK beats MC by 1350 at night and loses by almost 3000 in the day
Magus only loses the day by 50 votes to Knuckles
Kefka was ahead of Vercetti by 400 at "noon," but, well, you know
Riku only lost to Frog by 400 in the day
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From an earlier topic:

charmander6000 | Posted 12/15/2009 12:05:32 AM | message detail
Actually it looked like western won the board vote. Can't wait for its ASV though.

And with that post, I decided to do a trend chart for that poll. I did two trend charts, a time period based one and an hourly trend chart:

http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/7668/easternvswestern.png
http://img30.imageshack.us/img30/8343/hourlytrends.png

I can't put that information in the form of plain text since I can't really format it properly so it displays nicely on the boards. So I decided to put it in image format.

I think "Mostly Eastern" and "Mostly Western" seemed balanced all the way through the entire poll. The only noticeable shifts I see are for "Around Half" with a beastly night vote and sucky day vote and "Beats me" performing horribly until the day vote starts.
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Bowser beats Snake by 1000 in the day (!)

Aw yeah Bowser!

Magus only loses the day by 50 votes to Knuckles

I assume you used 3 PM to 3 AM as "day"? I just find that really funny, that Magus did better with the "day" than "night."
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Link he come to town to dominate all other characters and trample them down with his sword of more votes.

This is true, actually. Magus tried to make a comeback during the afternoon and cut several hundred votes before stalling.
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http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5240/r1kefka.png

If this gets picked, does Kefka have a shot against Arthas?

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KrahenProphet lived up to his name.

If he doesn't, he has no excuses, and he should be banned from the contests.
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Wow, so 1v1 huh? I may actually have to be interested in this thing again.

(Kax, in case anyone's forgotten who this alt belongs to...)
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diablo beat arthas easily at night in 06, and Arthas has proven to be stronger

i dont see why people hold onto hope that kefka has a shot
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Kefka has no chance.
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"Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around." - Calvin

Blizzard characters are pathetic in these contests, mostly.
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From: AsurasKordoth | #311
Blizzard characters are pathetic in these contests, mostly.

and as i said, kefka lost to a blizzard character in 2006 who is weaker then arthas
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Okay, caught up with the stats topics at least. The rest'll have to wait until tomorrow, I think.

Something Everyone Is Talking About: The day/night thing. I honestly didn't expect this to be as big an issue as it's turning out to be. I'm going with most of the recent posts in guessing this will only make a difference on the closest of matches. I'm talking 51/49, here. My reasoning is that in the old contests, percentages rarely changed much after the first hour, let alone the first twelve hours. And with people now allowed to vote in the day and the night, the difference will be even smaller. That said, there's a number of matches where we could very well end up with 51/49 results. Hmm...

Someone Everyone Is Talking About: Charizard. I didn't bother mentioning him earlier because I knew a bunch of other people would, and I was right :P I believe he'll bounce Duke in Round 1 (hooray!), but after that I don't like his chances. The only reason I even give him Duke is he showed up in Brawl. Other than that he hasn't been relevant for years. He may be the "face" of a beloved old game, but those don't always do well around here. The face of FF6 is Kefka. The face of Pac-Man is Pac-Man. The face of Tetris is L-Block. ...wait, scratch that last one

Someone No One Is Talking About: Cid Highwind. Wasn't Mega Man supposed to be one of the weaker Noble 9ers? Meanwhile in the vote-ins, Cid just went even with Aeris, who went even with Sonic back when he was still relevant. If Vincent's got a shot against Sonic, I give Cid a pretty good shot against Mega Man. Of course, I give Lightning a shot against Sonic, so apparently I am insane.

Something No One Is Talking About: Two matches daily is a much better way to drive traffic to the website than another 4-way. Kudos to Bacon, you magnificent bastard you.

I expect Cid to give a very impressive performance, but I doubt he can topple Mega Man. To say that he can is simply overrating him way too much.
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"Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around." - Calvin

As much as I'd like to see Cid upset Mega Man, I just don't see it happening.

Now Zack Fair, THERE's an upset to get behind!
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How's Shadow/Ammy?
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Krahen Prophet did a fatality.

I've got Ammy, or more accurately, I suppose I should say I picked Not-Shadow.
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I took Ammy mostly because I have no faith left in Shadow. Both of them get eaten by Luigi in round 2 anyways.
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"Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around." - Calvin

Diablo didn't even make the bracket this year, even though it's 128 chars. Shouldn't he be the most popular blizzard character? And a more worthy than a lot of the characters that did make it. He finished right about the middle of the field in his only 1 vs 1 regular character battle.

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From: Agent M | #319
Diablo didn't even make the bracket this year, even though it's 128 chars. Shouldn't he be the most popular blizzard character? And a more worthy than a lot of the characters that did make it. He finished right about the middle of the field in his only 1 vs 1 regular character battle.

Arthas beat Diablo in a match they were both in during 2007, and Arthas only has reason to boost since then due to WoW. Theres no reason to think Diablo is stronger then Arthas
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If Diablo ever gets Diablo 3, then we can start talking Diablo > Arthas. Until then, nah.
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"The great GF...Bahamut."
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Yeah, Arthas supplanted Diablo after 2k7 by showing he was the toughest Blizzard guy.
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Something No One Is Talking About: Two matches daily is a much better way to drive traffic to the website than another 4-way.

Oh, and I should mention that this is very true. Plus, I think this format might help to make the contest more unpredictable, at least for this year. Remember why we started thinking contests were predictable, even in 4-ways? Because we knew the trends! If we'd seen the character in action before, we knew his trends, and we could basically predict how the match was going to play out after the first hour 99% of the time. Now Bacon's taken that knowledge away from us, and I hope it messes things up.
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"But you have been given freedom. Freedom to be...outside."
"I am lightning...the rain transformed."

Diablo 3 is the only game that might take longer than Duke Nukem Forever to get released.

Either way, surprised he's absent considering a 128 character bracket starts to bring in a lot of weak punching bags.

When a relative newcomer actually performs well for a change, but gets shafted in placement, it's just asking for a second chance. Didn't Kratos (God of War) lose in the first round, 2 contests in a row? But he's a pretty solid contender.

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Diablo missed the contest last year, too, I believe.
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"Stay with me until the end. Please."
"Not until the end. Always."

Oh wow, a 1 vs 1 bracket. And I see Laharl and Isaac finally win a match! Oh yeah!
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Neku > Laharl!
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"The great GF...Bahamut."
"...GF? I...? Using my powers...It is you humans...I fear..."

Here's an interesting question. How many GameFAQs users in a given day actually come to the site more than once? Of course I ask because I think it's likely that your average GameFAQs user will be around enough to vote in both matches in a given day, making trends irrelevant and pretty much narrowing the difference gap between night and day matches. I don't think time trends will matter too much here. Now, international preferences could be skewed a bit, but seriously, considering how most people are awake around 16 hours a day and probably have the time to be around a computer at least when they wake up and before they go to sleep, I imagine most GameFAQs users will have ample opportunity to visit twice a day for both matches.

So I don't think characters with strong night trends are necessarily going to overperform. Plus the arguments that even with trends, the percentage swing is going to be small anyway. So yeah, I'm probably just going to go ahead and treat each match like a normal match and not take time into it.

Another interesting factor here is that with twelve hours, rallies are going to be incredibly difficult to pull off. I can't see 4chan, Steam, or Twitter rallies doing too much damage in a 24-hour fourway match, so what the hell are they going to do in a twelve-hour 1v1 match? Even if there are less votals, I doubt they'll be half a 24-hour match, more like 70-80%. That still won't do much damage, so I wouldn't expect Gordon to steamroll through the competition or L-Block and WCC to go past their intrinsic strength.

Also, damn you guys for making so many posts that it took me an hour to catch up. I'll make another post on my actual thoughts on the bracket in a minute or so.
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Not Wylvane

I guess we'll find out how many people will take the time to voice twice (or notice there are two matches a day) as we see the vote totals.
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"The great GF...Bahamut."
"...GF? I...? Using my powers...It is you humans...I fear..."

I am pretty surprised we didn't get Diablo. He didn't even get into the play ins...
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Diablo missed the contest last year, too, I believe.

Right, the one where Decard Cain DID make it?

Haha

Although Cain had a rally didn't he. Because there's a 0% chance he'd naturally get in over Diablo.

Blizzard is more known for their games rather than the characters in them, I guess, but then most PC characters aren't worth much. Diablo/Arthas/Thrall along with Gordon Freeman might be the only chars not to completely fold, unless I missed any?
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How many GameFAQs users in a given day actually come to the site more than once?

35.51%
http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3661
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From: Not_Wylvane | #328
it's likely that your average GameFAQs user will be around enough to vote in both matches in a given day, making trends irrelevant and pretty much narrowing the difference gap between night and day matches. I don't think time trends will matter too much here. Now, international preferences could be skewed a bit, but seriously, considering how most people are awake around 16 hours a day and probably have the time to be around a computer at least when they wake up and before they go to sleep, I imagine most GameFAQs users will have ample opportunity to visit twice a day for both matches.

I was going to post this. I feel like the night/day vote isn't going to have the drastic effect seen in 24 hour voting trends.

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"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny." - Frank Zappa

First of all, the idea is great. The worst part of the contests is waiting for the next match, and this really cuts the waiting time in half. Hell, look at Gamespot and how the momentum was killed waiting a week for a match to end. 24 hours can be dull at times, but now we're just speeding through the matches. Great idea, and I hope it lasts awhile. Of course, we'll have to see how the idea executes before we know whether it's worth keeping around for more years.

As for the bracket, it's rather disappointing. A lot of big names are wasted, a lot of potential match-ups are left ignored, and there are few potential upsets. Not to mention all the fodder matches. Good thing they're only twelve hours!

Let's quickly check out the divisions.

Hyrule: Red's kinda wasted, but I'm fine with that considering how overrated he seems to me. Alucard/Magus should be hilarious, and if Shadow gets past Ama (who I currently have beating Shadow) we'll have the hilarious Luigi/Shadow match that will probably be the closest we'll ever get to Mario/Sonic. I think The Boss could be decent enough to take out Drake, who while boosted I imagine will still be horribly weak here, especially since he didn't impress on Gamespot. I picked Luigi over WCC, though the Cube may have some potential to take out the green plumber. Either way, Link cleans house and starts his murderous path to victory.

Chaos: Sonic/Knuckles should be an interesting match. I actually chose Fawful over GlaDOS, though that's purely fanboyism and to be honest PC should dominate handhelds, so I think GlaDOS is the easy favorite there. Donkey Kong sucks, but I'm still taking him over Vivi, dammit. I'm also going for Liquid Snake over Altair, my second 15 > 2 upset so far. While the Sonic/Kirby rematch is awesome, sadly I think Sonic will win here, because as others have said, if Sonic could beat Ganondorf, he'd be Kirby, and I'm not ready to pick Kirby > Ganondorf yet. That said, if Sonic doesn't come out of this division, this contest will have been worth it.

Mushroom: I have Zidane > Ike right now, though I'm kinda iffy about that. Zidane's showed he's not pathetically weak, but Ike may have some strength in him that Zidane can't stand up to. Then again, I'd probably take Ike over Shadow, so I may change that. Mega Man's sort of interesting in going against two FF7 characters, even if they are the weakest ones in the bracket, though he's wasted against Mario. No Crono, Sonic, Vincent, Squall, or Auron to challenge him? Though who knows, maybe Master Chief may give the Blue Bomber trouble, since Master Chief's so god damn unpredictable in these things. I'm sure as hell taking him over Ryu H at any rate. Other than that, go Mario.

Heart: For a division with no N9 or elites, this looks to be one of the most interesting divisions. Sure, you've got horrible fodder matches (Neku, Arthas, and Isaac should be set to win), but you've got Sora, Bowser, L-Block, Charizard, and Kratos all having good chances of leaving their divisions. Between these five, Sora has the edge, though Bowser may take him out. Kratos will have GoW3 hype, the next huge PS3 game, and that alone should give him an edge over L-Block, who he's already bested before, and Charizard, but I wouldn't count either of them out. I currently have Sora > Charizard, but I'm 90% sure that'll be Sora > Kratos or Kratos > Sora before brackets close.

Rest in next post.
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Not Wylvane

I think Kefka/Arthas will be really close. Picked Kefka, but I think Arthas will win.
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Blizzard is more known for their games rather than the characters in them, I guess, but then most PC characters aren't worth much. Diablo/Arthas/Thrall along with Gordon Freeman might be the only chars not to completely fold, unless I missed any?

WCC, though thats on joke value
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Varia: Niko/Jill seems hilarious, but I gotta give it to Jill. I have Sub-Zero > Roxas, but I have no idea who's supposed to be the favorite there (or who's even the favorite in Tidus/Sub-Zero). Ratchet/Eddie Riggs is hilarious, but the real match here is Phoenix/Jecht. Whoever wins has a set path to lose to Zelda in Round 3, but it'll be interesting to see who gets there and how he performs. Right now, I've got Jecht advancing. Other than that, kinda dull bracket with an easy Samus > Zelda final.

Midgar: Sackboy's weak, but still, lol Tales, so gotta give it to the Sackboy. Other than that, the only interesting thing here is the Capcom trifecta. I have Ryu myself, but it certainly wouldn't be the first time I overestimated Street Fighter! Boring division.

Gear: Another depressing division. Pikachu is just wasted here, especially considering how ambiguous his 1v1 strength is, being given turbo-fodder before getting his ass kicked by Snake. Shepard/Ellis is a hilarious turbo-fodder match, though at least the ME fanboy in me will be happy that Shepard will actually win a match. I'm giving Revan the nod over Terra myself, don't have much faith in FF6. Basically, the only highlight is Squall/Auron, and despite FFX being stronger I think Squall's the more higher-profile character and more-liked of the two, so I've got Squall facing Snake again. Squall/Auron should be a great match, though.

Jenova: Talk about wasted potential. Instead of going against Crono or Mega Man or pretty much any other character, Vincent's sacrificed to ****ing Sephiroth in Round 2? The potentially powerful Missingno is just tossed to Crono immediately? A Tales character gets a higher seed than Tifa? Gordon/Tifa should be entertaining, and Yoshi/Crono may have small potential, but this will be one of the easiest divisions to predict. There's what, Soap vs Big Daddy (Big Daddy being much more iconic and a stand-out should give him an easy win) and Ness vs Geno (backing Ness here)?

After that, the only debatable match is Snake/Sephiroth, and I'm not taking that upset there. So we get Link/Mario and Cloud/Sephiroth before we once again get Link/Cloud. Yipee.

I hope 2011 has the Top 6 out for a ToC with the two finalists and a better bracket. Watching Crono, Mega Man, Vincent, Squall, Auron, and Kirby battle it out for Contest Champ would be fantastic.
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Not Wylvane

Christ, I should be asleep.

Damn this contest, and damn me actually being employed for once.
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Not Wylvane

Bacon should just man up and remove the NN completely and watch the ensuing ****show.
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~AK~ // Merc

And looking at the board, Charizard > Kratos is definitely going to be the board favorite. Now to see if Charizard > Sora becomes the board favorite.
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"Stay with me until the end. Please."
"Not until the end. Always."

Or Charizard > Bowser, whichever.
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"But you have been given freedom. Freedom to be...outside."
"I am lightning...the rain transformed."

my god pokefear is at critical levels
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I'm not buying into these Charizard shenanigans. Kratos is going to beat him, and fairly comfortably at that.
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Charizard isn't passing The Duke anyway
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I still don't know why I chose Charizard > Kratos. At least I didn't pick him over Sora.

Though I may bite on Kratos > Sora myself. Now that looks like a juicy upset.
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Not Wylvane

Not that Charizard beating Kratos would be a super big accomplishment. Kratos let Sonic get like, 64% on him last year. I dunno, seems kind of eh.
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saying charizard beats kratos is like saying that charizard is at pikachu levels

which is silly
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Yeah, I don't think Zard tops Kratos myself.
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It's not entirely silly. I'm not convinced that Charizard will be that strong, but at the same time, I can't say it's completely without merit and impossible.
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"The great GF...Bahamut."
"...GF? I...? Using my powers...It is you humans...I fear..."

saying charizard beats kratos is like saying that charizard is at pikachu levels

which is silly

It's not unreasonable at all for Charizard to be stronger than Pikachu.
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