GameFAQs Contests

From: Djungelurban | #295
Seriously, what's up with the UK hating MegaMan? I mean, it's hardly new but come on... Sore thumb much?

Captain Price is a SAS man. Britain wants to support their military.
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TGtBatU could only consist of its soundtrack and its final standoff, and it would still be better than most movies.- EndofDisc1 on The Good the Bad and the Ugly

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

Wasn't Mega Man not released there or something?

It most certainly was... In fact, Europe has had more Mega Man releases than the US! Sure, the MD was more popular in the UK than the SNES back in the day... But that was about 15 years ago... I can't believe this still has such an impact... And it's not like it's an European thing either, cause look at the other countries, Price is getting soundly beaten everywhere, even in the PC loving Sweden. The UK just hate Mega Man games for some bizarre reason.
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Nominate B.B. Hood for CB IX
http://miniurl.org/ntI

Does this interest anyone? Contrary to what it must looks like, it doesn't actually take a lot of work; maybe like 20 minutes. In subsequent analysis, I could just post the standard deviations, and then the suspicious updates (the bolded parts).

Seems pretty interesting. You may want to make those analysis less wordy so other people can understand it.
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Board 8 BOP: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB8%20BOP.xls
Character Battle VIII - 1/2 - Today's Winners: Ocelot and Mega Man X

A mean of -0.73 for Red basically implies that on average, Red gets -0.73 less votes in an update than he did on the update before it. Ideally, this would be zero, but stationarity does not adjust the data to absolute perfection.

This seems off to me. If Red is averaging -0.73 fewer votes in an update than in the previous one, then with 144 updates, it'd seem that Red would be projected to be getting way less votes towards the end than the beginning (and since you already excluded the first hour, that doesn't seem right). I understand that -0.73 is what the data shows after taking into account Red's vote intake diving down overnight before coming back up in the morning, but as it does come back up, first differencing might not be such a great model.
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6 years later, Crono's quest to defeat Sephiroth -- Round 1: Missingno
'Till shade is gone, 'till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared....

Thanks for that, Luste- wait what

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KrahenProphet lived up to his name.

Seems pretty interesting. You may want to make those analysis less wordy so other people can understand it.

Yeah I realize this, though I wanted to make sure that the explanations were there so people wouldn't think I was pulling this stuff out of my ass. For the record, I'm happy Red won because that's what my bracket got.

But yeah, I can make the posts a lot shorter for other matches.

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Hello, Dexter Morgan

Actually, which updates were the suspicious ones? Did they happen between, say, 8 AM and 11 AM, when vote intake is steadily increasing?

I believe if you apply this same method, the start of the ASV will show up as suspicious pretty much for anyone other than characters like Magus and Kefka. Nice analysis though!
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6 years later, Crono's quest to defeat Sephiroth -- Round 1: Missingno
'Till shade is gone, 'till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared....

I believe if you apply this same method, the start of the ASV will show up as suspicious pretty much for anyone other than characters like Magus and Kefka. Nice analysis though!

But I don't think the jump is *that* sudden. Maybe it is, though - I'm curious what the jumping updates were as well.

And you said more than three standard deviations away from the mean, but you didn't say whether they were high or low. I'm curious about that, too - were any of those differences on the low side of things?
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Mustache...and Green...
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Mega Man's weakness in England always confused me. Unlike Crono, all of his games were released there, and as far as I know, sold relatively similar to North America. At least Sonic's strength can be explained by the popularity of the Genesis there compared to here, but that also doesn't explain the opposite effect in South America where Mega Man is probably stronger than Link and Sonic is somehow weaker than usual.

And it's kind of amazing how big a difference there is between Canada and the US on some of these matches.
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http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/020/b/f/Ariel_by_lolita_art.jpg

From: Lightslayer987 | #289
But Soap has a more prominant role in the newer game.

Doesn't matter. Price has the advantage of you always seeing what he's doing and you can't see the **** Soap is doing because you control him and there are no cutscenes. Yes, you can argue that Soap played a side role in MW2 similar to Price in the other games.. but the fact is he's not in every mission, and besides this I don't remember him doing anything notable during the campaign (MW2's campaign being really short doesn't help). Price does do notable ****. You get the sense that Price is this grizzly, badass war veteran, while Soap is just another army guy IMO.

And Price is in every game. There's some fans of COD that HATE the modern iterations, but they still like Price.

Do you guys play COD a lot, and are you involved in the communities? I know most of you guys aren't really in to shooters. I can guarantee after having discussions with COD fans that they think Price is a better/cooler character.

From: KamikazePotato | #291
Price could be stronger than Soap based on Soap's dumbass hairstyle, for all we know. I wouldn't put it past GameFAQs.

Neither would I. A lot of fans have said his mohawk thing looks stupid (and I agree). Price looks way more badass with that old school beard of his, hahaha.
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"You guys have electricity? How do you manage that?"
"We have 2 giant hamsters running on a massive wheel in our secret underground cave..."

US/Canada are quite different when it comes to gaming tastes.

Then again so are the European countries.
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Board 8 BOP: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB8%20BOP.xls
Character Battle VIII - 1/2 - Today's Winners: Ocelot and Mega Man X

Do you guys play COD a lot, and are you involved in the communities? I know most of you guys aren't really in to shooters. I can guarantee after having discussions with COD fans that they think Price is a better/cooler character.

due to the fact most people thought he was fodder, I doubt it.
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

As for Red and Ocelot.. great analysis, and I do think Red probably had a bit more stuffing, buuut.. a loss of 183.. I'm not sure that the stuffing was enough to completely turn the match into a victory for Red. I think it would have been a VERY close win for Red without the stuffing, like less than 50 votes, but he still would have won.
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"You guys have electricity? How do you manage that?"
"We have 2 giant hamsters running on a massive wheel in our secret underground cave..."

Also something people shouldn't forget... nominations typically don't equal strength, but Soap got more nominations from CoD fans then Price did, since Soap is a 3 seed. Might not mean anything, but its something interesting to bring up.
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

Price is the Commander of Task Force 141, how badass is that!

Price will be ahead of all other MW characters in the stats. Bank on it.

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GT: TriggerTRE
"Nothing is true. Everything is permitted."

I ran the numbers myself and they match with Swarles_Barkley until we start counting suspicious updates. If we define a suspicious update as being greater than 3 SDs from the mean, I get:

Pokemon Trainer Red: 0
Ocelot: 1

The Ocelot update is the 11:08:01 update where Ocelot went from 216 to 276.

If we define a suspicious update as being greater than 2 SDs from the mean, I get:

Pokemon Trainer Red: 7
Ocelot: 6

Red's big gains
3:51:02 (+49)
10:17:12 (+50)
11:13:02 (+44)

Red's big drop offs
1:26:01 (-50)
1:56:02 (-54)
2:06:02 (-49)
3:26:01 (-47)

Ocelot's big gains
1:11:01 (+41)
8:12:01 (+50)
11:08:01 (+60)(same one I mentioned earlier)

Ocelot's big drop offs
2:26:01 (-59)
10:07:12 (-51)
11:33:02 (-43)

I was looking at 131 updates and excluded the updates from the first hour.
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"Those whose memories fade seek to carve them in their hearts..."
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From: Dilated Chemist | #317
Price is the Commander of Task Force 141, how badass is that!

Price will be ahead of all other MW characters in the stats. Bank on it.

Price can still be ahead of Soap in stats while Soap gets to round 3. Thats just how weak his 4pack is.
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

The -0.73 doesn't point to a statistical inaccuracy though; just if you take first differences from the 5-minute intervals, the average over the 130 updates is -0.73. That's just what it is; no numbers were changed in any way for this calculation. This is intuitive: Red is still getting over 300 votes per update at 1 AM, this sinks to a little over a 100 during the night, and only creeps back up to the initial levels at the very end.

Keep in mind that the data are now nigh-perfectly normally distributed. This means that the amount of votes will keep rising steadily, reach a maximum and will start declining steadily again. There is no one special point where the vote rises especially highly. And there certainly aren't 4. Also, you may be interested to know that Red's spikes were mostly on the low side.

The fact that we know vote intake goes down first and then up, and this happens every day, suggests that vote intake is associated not only with the number of votes cast in the previous update, but also with time. In other words, change in vote intake is also dependent on time.

Does the data really form a normal distribution, or does it only appear to form one? If you look at the mean of the first-differenced vote intake numbers from 1 AM to 5 AM, I'm positive you'll get a pretty negative number, considerably moreso than -0.73. If, however, you look at the mean of the first-differenced numbers from 8 to 11 AM, I'm just about certain it'll be positive, and significantly so. If changes in vote intake followed a random process with a normal distribution independent of time, you would not see that- the means of various periods of time would be about the same.
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6 years later, Crono's quest to defeat Sephiroth -- Round 1: Missingno
'Till shade is gone, 'till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared....

Red won? **** YEAH RED WON!

Good game, Ocelot, but my bracket is back on track!
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personally the me controlling soap makes him better than the cpu controlling price, also price is old

my one doubt is soap has a match pic as awful as price
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A wise man once said"when in doubt, do a barrel roll"
That man was Peppy Hare...

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=2805

look out dante

As for Soap/Price, my first instinct having only played the 2 non-WW2 CoD games is that Soap is way stronger. Aside from the fact that you get to play as him, he has a much larger role in MW2 than Price. And like someone said, Soap can be weaker than Price and still get to round 3 comfortably. This Big Daddy argument is hilarious.
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http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/020/b/f/Ariel_by_lolita_art.jpg

Yeah, I have Big Daddy getting to round 3.

Bleh. Oh well the sooner my bracket is destroyed the sooner I can innocently enjoy the contest.

I have some other picks I doubt will happen anyway(Sub-Zero > Tidus, Amaterasu > Shadow) so whatever
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A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

Tag. Looks like Red was almost exactly as weak as I thought. Good show!

When's the next tough match, Shadow/Ammy?
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"Calling Pokemon RBY a top 10 game was the most insane contest jibba-jabba ever
Woe unto he who sig bets with the near-invincible Lord High creativename

[This message was deleted at the request of the original poster]

This match has already matched the previous match's vote total, with five hours left to go.

When's the next tough match, Shadow/Ammy?

Yup and since I went with Shadow Amaterasu should win.

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Board 8 BOP: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB8%20BOP.xls
Character Battle VIII - 1/2 - Today's Winners: Ocelot and Mega Man X

Sub-Zero is going to kill Tidus. All you need to do is look at Subby/Auron 2006. And that was with Sub-Zero looking like Shredder.
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http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs14/f/2007/020/b/f/Ariel_by_lolita_art.jpg

I picked Shadow too, so there's still hope.
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Calling Pokemon RBY a top 10 game was the most insane contest jibba-jabba ever
Woe unto he who sig bets with the near-invincible Lord High creativename

Plus the possible western character boost is another nail in tidus' coffin
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

I'm expecting a pretty comfortable win for Shadow... sure Ammy did alright for itself in 4-ways, but lol 4-ways. I also did my entire bracket 20 minutes before lockdown, but that's besides the point.

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Class, Class, Classadelphia.

This is pretty much the last chance I'm giving Shadow to redeem himself. If he blows this match, he's going into that never picking again category with Magus, Kefka, and Chief/Halo.
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No match for KrahenProphet's extreme Guru skills.

I think the western character boost should be restricted to newer characters until further notice.
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Board 8 BOP: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB8%20BOP.xls
Character Battle VIII - 1/2 - Today's Winners: Ocelot and Mega Man X

From: charmander6000 | #334
I think the western character boost should be restricted to newer characters until further notice.

Thrall seemed to boost since 2007.
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

TRE, of course you are correct. I will delete my previous posts to avoid confusion. Urgh I can't believe this, my credibility is blown to pieces =p

What I did was look at the box-plot and just took it from there. Apparently this didn't measure standard variation as much as it did interquartile range, a small but ultimately fatal error on my part. Thank you for this correction TRE, I wouldn't want to lead any one to wrong conclusions.

Have you done this for before though? I only recently learned how to work with a statistical analysis program but found myself fascinated as I was crunching the numbers for this match.

Which is why I'll probably do this anyway for close matches from now on and I'll post the results here. If anyone has a request for a particular match I will happily do it as well (or TRE, of course). Though the difference in conclusions from TRE and I are massive, I would like to say again that it was due to a small oversight, rather than a structural problem. It goes without saying that I will not make this mistake again.

Does the data really form a normal distribution, or does it only appear to form one? If you look at the mean of the first-differenced vote intake numbers from 1 AM to 5 AM, I'm positive you'll get a pretty negative number, considerably moreso than -0.73. If, however, you look at the mean of the first-differenced numbers from 8 to 11 AM, I'm just about certain it'll be positive, and significantly so. If changes in vote intake followed a random process with a normal distribution independent of time, you would not see that- the means of various periods of time would be about the same.

It is normally distributed, around -0.73. It is affected by time of course, but not in the sense that the current difference will be affected by the difference you got in the last 5-minutes. If the previous 5-minute difference was -25 votes, there is an equal chance of the next interval being +0 than there is of it being -0, regardless of time zones. The ASV doesn't rise unilaterally, it has as many updates with votes going down and up than the night votes does.




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Hello, Dexter Morgan

Sub-Zero and Scorpion did pretty badly in the vote-in polls. I know, lol vote-in polls, but considering there's no evidence they'll be boosting this year (do people even consider them Western characters that much?), it's worth a mention.
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6 years later, Crono's quest to defeat Sephiroth -- Round 1: Missingno
'Till shade is gone, 'till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared....

Tidus showed he's around Vivi's level at least. At the least it'll be close, if Vivi can still put away Donkey Kong without much trouble(Sub-Zero struggle with Master Chief who he himself struggled with DK once upon a time)
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A refusal of praise is a desire to be praised twice.

sub zero did fine in the vote in poll... he won his.
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

It is normally distributed, around -0.73. It is affected by time of course, but not in the sense that the current difference will be affected by the difference you got in the last 5-minutes. If the previous 5-minute difference was -25 votes, there is an equal chance of the next interval being +0 than there is of it being -0, regardless of time zones. The ASV doesn't rise unilaterally, it has as many updates with votes going down and up than the night votes does.

This is what I am disputing. If it is 9 AM, there is a higher chance of the change in the next update being above the mean, and if it is 2 AM, there is a higher chance of it being below the mean. If it is 3 PM, the chances that the next update is higher than the last are pretty far above 50%, although it doesn't have to be far above or below the mean change to render the data not stationary.

Of course just because we are in the morning does not guarantee that the next update will get more votes than the last, but there is a consistent structural relationship there. There are more down than up updates overnight, and more up than down updates in the morning, or the start of the ASV.
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6 years later, Crono's quest to defeat Sephiroth -- Round 1: Missingno
'Till shade is gone, 'till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared....

He nearly lost to Jecht!

Of course, I know you'll just tell me that Jecht is stronger than Tidus!
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6 years later, Crono's quest to defeat Sephiroth -- Round 1: Missingno
'Till shade is gone, 'till water is gone, into the shadow with teeth bared....

I'm surprised there's such a difference between UK and the rest of Europe, considering that around 40% on their votes come from there. Imagine if UK wasn't included.
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Board 8 BOP: http://www.freewebs.com/charmander6000/CB8%20BOP.xls
Character Battle VIII - 1/2 - Today's Winners: Ocelot and Mega Man X

From: red sox 777 | #341
He nearly lost to Jecht!

Of course, I know you'll just tell me that Jecht is stronger than Tidus!

as he should be!
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http://i48.tinypic.com/24ytvz8.png
Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

It's a shame Soap and Big Daddy are against each other. They could be good against some midcarders.
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This is what I am disputing. If it is 9 AM, there is a higher chance of the change in the next update being above the mean, and if it is 2 AM, there is a higher chance of it being below the mean. If it is 3 PM, the chances that the next update is higher than the last are pretty far above 50%, although it doesn't have to be far above or below the mean change to render the data not stationary.

This implies that there is 1 point in time where vote intake suddenly changes spectacularly. If it is 9AM, you expect the vote to rise. But what about 8:55? In fact, hasn't it been rising little by little since 6:00? Any 5-minute interval in the ASV will surely have more votes than the mean for the match, but will the difference between, say, 15.45 and 15.40 have a higher chance of being positive than the difference between 05:30 and 05:25?

The question to ask is if the difference you now have will be influenced by the difference you had last time. You seem to suggest that there is a higher chance of getting more votes if you already had more votes the last time. The ASV doesn't go up in a linear line though, it has just as many ups and downs as the night vote does.

Anyway, rather than looking at this intuitively I just took a test (ADF-test) and was done with it. The data are stationary in first differences. Whatever effect there might be, it wasn't significant.

For the record, though I know you understand this, the non-stationarity was blatantly obvious without taking first differences. That is, the amount of votes you get in any 5-minute interval depends enormously on the amount of votes you got last time. However, this effect disappeared pretty much entirely with 1st differences.

You could break the data up in several points to account for the different voting blocks, and mind you I initially intended to do this, however I couldn't establish any specific breaking points, and the factor time proved to be insignificant statistically.

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Hello, Dexter Morgan

charmander6000 | Posted 1/17/2010 7:36:53 PM | message detail
I'm surprised there's such a difference between UK and the rest of Europe, considering that around 40% on their votes come from there. Imagine if UK wasn't included.

Yes, there is definitely a big difference between the UK and the rest of Europe.

charmander6000 | Posted 1/17/2010 5:27:33 PM | message detail
The series never caught on in Europe I guess.

Mega Man is not popular in the UK, but this isn't the case with the rest of Europe. Let's take a look at a good example here:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/index.html?poll=3447&region=EUR

May have lost to Pac-Man in Europe, but that's all because of the UK. The results for the UK looked like this:

Mega Man 2 19.86% 1254
Pac-Man 48.54% 3065
Pong 27.28% 1723
The Oregon Trail 4.32% 273
TOTAL VOTES 6315

Mega Man 2 got 19.86% in the UK and 32.46% in Europe. In order for Mega Man 2 to be brought all the way up from 19.86% to 32.46% in Europe as a whole, the results for the rest of Europe (excluding the UK) would have to look like this:

Mega Man 2 41.32% 3715
Pac-Man 29.76% 2676
Pong 26.06% 2343
The Oregon Trail 2.86% 257
TOTAL VOTES 8991

And that's a pretty severe difference between the UK and the rest of Europe. A similar thing is seen with Sonic, which is very popular in the UK.
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Luster Soldier --- ~Shield Bearer~ | ~Data Analyst~
Popular at school, but not as cool as KrahenProphet, Guru Champ!

That claptrap topic got me thinking... might he be one of the characters who may benefit from the western gaming boost? Borderlands looked quite good on that original gaming poll, and Zidane isn't exactly a powerhouse himself.
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Albion Hero is the Cream of Loli Fanboyism

What western gaming boost? Price only getting doubled as opposed to getting tripled on an unknown character hardly seems like solid evidence for a western gaming boost.
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"The great GF...Bahamut."
"...GF? I...? Using my powers...It is you humans...I fear..."

By the way Red Sox, stock is handled in the same way. Without a doubt, the stock market rises in value over time. Yet at any one point in time, there is an equal chance of going up at the next juncture than there is of going down.
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Hello, Dexter Morgan

I wouldn't call MMX unknown, we have a pretty good idea of where he lies, somewhere between upper near-elite and Mega Man.
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Hay guys!