GameFAQs Contests

Final Fantasy VI barely broke 55% on Link's Awakening directly in 2009. Then again given how poorly FFX fared last contest I wouldn't be surprised if it failed to meet that mark.

Are there still people willing to claim the opposite though, even after the 2015 contest? I don't recall seeing any.

It still doesn't change the fact that MGS games have never been elite on this site.

And yeah, FFX would be hard-pressed to beat FFVI head-to-head at pretty much any point in time, although the difference probably isn't that great.

Then again, I didn't think MGS3 could beat MGS1 either...!

LeonhartFour posted...

Then again, I didn't think MGS3 could beat MGS1 either...!

Hey, that was just pic factor and you know it!

...And maybe a case of rSFF to some extent. MGS1 is the most iconic in the franchise and technically the strongest one by itself, but I can see why people would think it looks out-dated in comparison, specially when being put in a 1v1 match.

Bump

How on earth did Metroid Prime lose to GTA in '09?

GTA got more votes

Pre 2010ish GTA wasn't complete trash. The only thing which is even less liked/more hated is Call of Duty.

Halo, CoD and GTA are probably the least liked franchises on GFaqs of all the mainstream stuff.

huh, today's poll is pretty surprising to me. I use my phone for internet browsing almost exclusively these days.

spooky96 posted...

Pre 2010ish GTA wasn't complete trash. The only thing which is even less liked/more hated is Call of Duty.

Halo, CoD and GTA are probably the least liked franchises on GFaqs of all the mainstream stuff.

Don't forget Assassin's Creed, the crown jewel of which got 23% on FFVI.

And Metroid Prime got LFFed by Paper Mario. GTA's weaker now and Prime is stronger but take Paper Mario out and it doesn't lose that match.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

How on earth did Metroid Prime lose to GTA in '09?

Paper Mario.

The Mana Sword posted...

huh, today's poll is pretty surprising to me. I use my phone for internet browsing almost exclusively these days.

GameFAQs is pretty bad to use on your phone.

Plus this site is full of "old" people

I am an old person who does not like to browse the internet on my phone, so I can confirm this.

I'm an old person!

I will admit that the GameFAQs mobile site is awful unless you jump through hoops to disable the ads, though.

LeonhartFour posted...

LinkMarioSamus posted...

How on earth did Metroid Prime lose to GTA in '09?

Paper Mario.

The stupid thing is even Paper Mario would own GTA now.

Paper Mario would've had a good chance back then, too.

But it got completely destroyed in that match. Yet it has performed much better in later contests.

Maybe in 4-ways the later Nintendo games always got screwed over by having to share polls (see: Brawl destroying MGS4 in round 3 before losing to it the very next round when Twilight Princess entered the picture). Perhaps it's best not to make sense out of 4-ways lol.

It has seriously been a decade since the debut of that format.

Last Place Factor and being the weaker of two Nintendo games hurt Paper Mario there. I don't think it magically became much stronger in GOTD.

Advokaiser posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

Then again, I didn't think MGS3 could beat MGS1 either...!

Hey, that was just pic factor and you know it!

...And maybe a case of rSFF to some extent. MGS1 is the most iconic in the franchise and technically the strongest one by itself, but I can see why people would think it looks out-dated in comparison, specially when being put in a 1v1 match.

MGS3 vs. MGS1 extrapolated using their 2015 results (before going head to head) had MGS3 winning with like 50.01%, so if there was rSFF there it was minimal.

People heavily overrate the MGS series drop. MGS2, 3, and 4 all did pretty much as-expected. 5 sucked but it was a new game that disappointed people so that's not surprising. 1 did seem to drop - it went from beating GSC in 2008 to being projected to lose to it in 2015 - and it's the flagship series title, so that's probably where a lot of the perception comes from.

KamikazePotato posted...

Advokaiser posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

Then again, I didn't think MGS3 could beat MGS1 either...!

Hey, that was just pic factor and you know it!

...And maybe a case of rSFF to some extent. MGS1 is the most iconic in the franchise and technically the strongest one by itself, but I can see why people would think it looks out-dated in comparison, specially when being put in a 1v1 match.

MGS3 vs. MGS1 extrapolated using their 2015 results (before going head to head) had MGS3 winning with like 50.01%, so if there was rSFF there it was minimal.

People heavily overrate the MGS series drop. MGS2, 3, and 4 all did pretty much as-expected. 5 sucked but it was a new game that disappointed people so that's not surprising. 1 did seem to drop - it went from beating GSC in 2008 to being projected to lose to it in 2015 - and it's the flagship series title, so that's probably where a lot of the perception comes from.

Except for the fact that MGS1 did beat Shadow of the Colossus by a fair margin just the Round before facing MGS3:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6161-best-game-ever-day-32-round-3-metal-gear-solid-vs-shadow-of

Let's remember how SotC was a fairly overlooked, niche game by the time of its release, until it showed its true colors by the time Game of the Decade came around -- the monster that MGS4 was back in 2008-2009 lost a lot of steam, causing SotC to have a (very narrow) chance to shine since MGS fans weren't hyping for MGS4 as much but no one had taken SotC seriously enough to see it even remotely put up a fight against it, hence taking everyone by surprise. Then, MGS2 failed as well. Finally, MGS3 put an end to it, so even if we could speculate about a possible case of SotC-victory-bandwagoning factor, it still wasn't enough to get past MGS3. (Then it lost to Majora's Mask pretty easily, but that was probably MGS series dropping while MM being more powerful than everyone realized, although that's another story.)

The point is, the only logical explanation I can come up with for the result shown in the poll I posted, aside from the aforementioned pic factor + rSFF, is that both MGS1 and SotC dropped significantly from 2010 to 2015, which I actually find even less likely since SotC+ICO HD came out just a year after, which would've only made it stronger and that's even without contemplating The Last Guardian's small-but-still-present hype. At least I never thought of picking SotC over MGS1, and I'm sure a big majority weren't.

The SotC MGS3 faced wasn't the same one MGS2 and MGS4 faced, so I don't take that result at face value.

In the same way, the SMRPG MGS3 faced wasn't the same one GTAV faced. Bandwagon effect is legit.

Plus silly stuff naturally happening late in contests.

Just for the heck of it, I took the GOTD x-stats and adjusted Fallout 3's result on Brawl by 5%. That resulted in Fallout 3 being about equal to Kingdom Hearts II and Metroid Prime being slightly stronger than the original Kingdom Hearts.

SotC/MGS3 is completely irrelevant except in terms of managing how much a bandwagon can affect things. When it's not trying to solo the entire series, SotC is pretty much equal to MGS2.

The Mana Sword posted...

huh, today's poll is pretty surprising to me. I use my phone for internet browsing almost exclusively these days.

I'm actually surprised there's been a huge increase in people that only use a portable device over the past year, based on these 2 polls:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6801-
https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6302-

GameFAQs is notorious for their extremely obnoxious ads for people using portable devices and there have been numerous complaints about this issue. Because of this, I thought people would have moved away from using GameFAQs on a portable device to avoid these obnoxious ads. Also, we know that the people who vote in the polls are mostly long-time users who are far more aware of how obnoxious the ads are for people who use GameFAQs on a portable device.

Instead, the percentage of people who mostly browse the site on a portable device has gone up over the past year despite the fact the ads are very obnoxious.

KamikazePotato posted...

SotC/MGS3 is completely irrelevant except in terms of managing how much a bandwagon can affect things. When it's not trying to solo the entire series, SotC is pretty much equal to MGS2.

So RE4 > MGS1? I can get behind that.

MGS3 and RE4 have been pretty much equal in every contest they've been in. 2015 was the first time MGS3 appeared to be slightly stronger though.

I would have picked MGS3 > RE4 last contest anyway.

LusterSoldier posted...

GameFAQs is notorious for their extremely obnoxious ads for people using portable devices and there have been numerous complaints about this issue.

Wait, what? Maybe you wanted to say the opposite. I've never seen ads other than on desktops.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how popular fictional characters would fare in an All-Fictional Battle. Since I don't know how to seed, feel free to do it if you want.

Notable examples:

Batman
Mickey Mouse
Bugs Bunny
James Bond
Goku
Darth Vader
Homer Simpson
Harry Potter

I tried to put not only the most popular but also the most iconic characters from different universes, and I think these could take down a couple of Noble 9-ers too. But I wanna know what you think.

Batman and Vader are probably the best choices for the gamefaqs demographics' non-gaming cultural touchstones and there have been some pretty popular Batman and Star Wars games too but the people on this site have gaming as their main hobby so I don't think most are gonna be deep enough into other stuff for non-game characters to beat Noble Niners. Could be pretty good midcarders, though.

Homer Simpson could maybe do something; he's iconic and his show is/was popular even here (https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/2944-do-you-watch-the-simpsons) but something feels really wrong about an incompetent comedy protagonist being strong in a gamefaqs character battle. I don't watch the show though and was only ever briefly into it so I might be too remote from other people's taste here to accurately gauge him.

Not sure exactly what to think about Goku but I don't think the percentage of gamefaqs that remember Dragon Ball Z positively is going to be high enough for him to be really strong. Probably better now than before DBZ Abridged took off, though.

Bugs Bunny would be the Pac-Man of All-Fictional in pretty much every sense; well known and respected but too old, irrelevant, and not really beloved by anyone to do much. He also has never had a game that either the mainstream or gamefaqs niche even remotely cared about. I'd take Golden Sun Isaac over him without worrying about it and I view Isaac as the fodder line.

Mickey Mouse is pretty much Bugs Bunny plus Kingdom Hearts appearances. (Also some of his other games are/were considerably more relevant than Bugs' but KH dwarfs the rest of them so massively they might as well not exist) I don't think he comes even close to Sora, and Riku's decline is not encouraging for people other than Sora from that franchise doing much. Maybe he could beat some midcarders though. I never actually got far enough into KH to meet him there but I remember people thinking KH Mickey was cool.

James Bond had some relevance to mainstream gaming with Goldeneye even if that was forever ago and the game looked kinda bad in the 2015 contest but I'm not sure caring about the Goldeneye game necessarily means caring much about Bond. And while Bond films were and remain popular I definitely don't get the sense that they are childhood/adolescence-defining properties for the gamefaqs demographic the way that Star Wars or Batman are - not even the Goldeneye film. At the end of the day though, I guess Goldeneye's a big enough name that James Bond isn't likely fodder.

People who really love Harry Potter are probably going to swing younger than optimal for this site's user base and I have the impression that the majority of them are female. None of the Harry Potter games matter at all. In addition, the popularity of his franchise aside, something about Harry himself as a character doesn't pass the smell test with me - people who like Harry Potter a lot seem to love the cast in general and think Harry's a pretty good protagonist and all but Harry himself has like zero hype. Real skeptical about him being worth much but I'd still probably put his floor above Bugs Bunny's ceiling.

Who won the years contest again?

The LAW and PokeFAQs of course

That's quite a great analysis, Axem!

LeonhartFour posted...

The LAW and PokeFAQs of course

I meant user

You know what, my bad, I meant who won the guru.

I just want to change my sig lol

Come to think of it though, I'm not sure I even entered the guru.

Maybe I'll just delete the line for now

I completely forgot I made the final Top 50.

BK_Sheikah won the Guru.

pjbasis posted...

Come to think of it though, I'm not sure I even entered the guru.

Correct, you didn't enter the Guru. I tried to search for your name on here:

http://www.thengamer.com/guru/

Bump

Thanks for that Luster.

And I mean that unironically!

he doesn't know the difference between ironically and unironically anyway

Batman and Vader would be the only two fictional characters to beat some Noble Niners. I also think Eric Cartman might surprise if he was in such a contest; He's the star of a 21 year old show and Stick of Truth won an RPG poll or two here. He could win a round or three with the right path.

(also boo Fictional Character idea, boooooo -- give us Link VS Batman as a bonus after a contest and have it after a new Batman movie too so we can finally accept THE LAW)

HaRRicH posted...

(also boo Fictional Character idea, boooooo -- give us Link VS Batman as a bonus after a contest and have it after a new Batman movie too so we can finally accept THE LAW)

http://imgur.com/9ATRjhE

It's an especially terrible idea considering we have Batfleck now.

Is Goku still really popular? I see a lot of people trash on him these days in Dragonball topics but I imagine most voters probably aren't keeping up with recent Dragonball stuff.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Is Goku still really popular? I see a lot of people trash on him these days in Dragonball topics but I imagine most voters probably aren't keeping up with recent Dragonball stuff.

Blue-haired Goku and Vegeta have been a noticeable trend since Dragonball Super and the recent movies came out. That being said, some people wonder why they have blue hair now.

DB Super might be weak in terms of it being pretty popular among the DB fanbase but at the same time really bashed since it came out, in terms of animation (just Google "DBS Episode 5" and click on images) and poor continuity/characterization. It's still an ongoing series, as far as I'm concerned, but I'd dare to say that DBZ is still talked more about this days.

If Goku has strength, it'd be because he taps into widely-shared nostalgic memories people have of the late 90's/early 00's when they'd get home from school and watch Dragon Ball Z on Toonami or their local station. (Well, U.S./Canada did; most other parts of the world got the series a bit sooner.) I'd say basically nothing happening currently with Dragon Ball or among its fanbase is going to matter at all to the general gamefaqs audience. Most of these people aren't anime fans. Thinking about it more I'm gonna backtrack and say DBZ Abridged probably didn't do much; if a pretty good portion of the site didn't already (passively) view the franchise positively before then, Goku has no shot at being strong.

I'm definitely tracking today's poll because it will be North America vs. The World in terms of trends.