GameFAQs Contests

Link 2002 = Link 2003

Link 2003 > Link 2002

It feels so bad knowing I started SM64 in January 2016 and left it unfinished until now. I'll also obviously need to start from scratch since I've lost the vibe, feel and flow of the game.

I'm surprised at least 10% has gotten all 150 stars in the DS version. I couldn't get used to the controls until 75 or so stars in.

Super Mario 64's playrate has increased to 88.80% (it was 88.42% in last year's poll). This new playrate result has been added to this page:

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Have_You_Played

Interesting results for the restroom poll today... Over the last two years, a lot more people have experienced a "gotta hold it in for a little longer" situation.

Interesting poll today:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6850-

I didn't expect "Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One" to win today's poll due to PS4 having a much larger library as a result of being nearly 4 years old, but this is an impressive performance for the Switch considering it's only been out for about 7 months now.

Based on the freeze so far, here are the current results for first place and last place for each console:

PS4 first place - 56.41%
Switch first place - 36.92%
Xbox One first place - 6.67%

PS4 last place - 6.67%
Switch last place - 12.31%
Xbox One last place - 81.02%

lol Xbox One

With the final results from yesterday's poll locked in place, here were the first place and last place results for each console:

PS4 first place - 64.78%
Switch first place - 28.24%
Xbox One first place - 6.97%

PS4 last place - 6.56%
Switch last place - 18.42%
Xbox One last place - 75.01%

Switch was basically all board vote and Power Hour, as it dropped pretty hard after that. Almost all of the Switch's collapse after the board vote went to the PS4, while Xbox One only slightly improved itself after the board vote.

Despite Switch looking very good early on, it ends up being more than doubled by the PS4 in the final results. And for good reason, since the PS4's game library is 4 years deep right now while the Switch has only been out for about 7 months.

Is the Xbox One really that bad?

The E3 reveal and the various controversies surrounding it pretty much killed the goodwill Microsoft got from the 360, and the PS4 has much better exclusives overall. The One doesn't really look like it has anything good exclusive-wise coming for it either, so it probably won't even recover from its slow start like the PS3 eventually did.

Oh god, a first half poll for October's games. I guess Allen felt October was too stacked to the point where a single poll of 12 games wasn't enough for October. The decision to split October into 2 polls (based on today's poll) could result in today's poll getting under 10000 votes, considering the known vote total penalty associated with a poll happening on a Saturday.

2017 in general has been stacked as f*** for video games.

LusterSoldier posted...

Oh god, a first half poll for October's games. I guess Allen felt October was too stacked to the point where a single poll of 12 games wasn't enough for October. The decision to split October into 2 polls (based on today's poll) could result in today's poll getting under 10000 votes, considering the known vote total penalty associated with a poll happening on a Saturday.

Looks like the vote totals are pretty bad indeed. It's already after 8:00 AM and the poll isn't even at 4000 votes yet. Looks like this poll gets under 10000 votes for sure.

GameFAQs was down for roughly 4 hours, 18 minutes today. Not that it mattered since today's poll was on pace for less than 10000 votes before the site downtime happened. All the downtime did was possibly make the already terrible vote totals even worse.

Not_Wylvane posted...

The E3 reveal and the various controversies surrounding it pretty much killed the goodwill Microsoft got from the 360, and the PS4 has much better exclusives overall. The One doesn't really look like it has anything good exclusive-wise coming for it either, so it probably won't even recover from its slow start like the PS3 eventually did.

What were the controversies exactly? No backwards compatibility or something? It's been already way too long since it launched and it's like the company gave them the finger somehow and never apologized, because the hate has been standing strong.

And really, what difference is there between the One and the PS4? Both of them have a heck of a lot of multiplatform titles (like no other past Gen has had before), and both have really weak exclusives (Uncharted is apparently no longer what it used to be, and hyped games like Titanfall, Sunset Overdrive and Halo 5 have been doing great at sales, but are barely popular).

The biggest one was (and I can't remember if it was just rumors or much more substantiated), that they were gonna kill the second hand market by tying your physical games to your console

I remember Sony made a big deal about "here's how you let your friend borrow your game" with someone simply handing it to someone else to huge applause.

Xbox was making a lot of changes people didn't care for. No backwards compatibility was one of the lesser problems (more successful systems had this problem too). The system wasn't going to work if it wasn't online and the Kinect was being required at a time Microsoft was catching major s*** for the NSA, so that narrative loomed heavy over them. Games were going digital only which has its pros and cons -- see Steam -- but consoles were uncharted territory there so that scared people. Microsoft was also talking down on gamers and tried to win over the Fantasy Football crowd while being the most expensive console on the market.

They lost so much of their goodwill from the 360 and loyalty from people who made their first online accounts with them. They really could have retained so much of their fanbase just because of what Xbox Live brought to consoles and how many gamers and their friends were built around that, but instead the PS4 picked up a lot of what they left on the table.

I'm not sure how many worse PR bungles have been made in the gaming industry than Microsoft with the Xbox One, but there can't be many and Sony absolutely played their cards right along the way too so the damage was magnified. Halo's no longer top dog in the FPS genre and there aren't other exclusives to save them from this mess they made, so...they'll be mad about this for a long time. Good.

Even after Microsoft dealt with most of the initial problems, they still didn't really have anything to win people back. They had weak exclusives and slightly worse performance across the board on multiplatform titles. Being about close to equal doesn't really give people reason to come back once they have left.

Yesterday's poll probably got around 500 less votes as a result of the downtime. It had been on pace to surpass 9000 votes, but finished with only 8629 votes.

Today's poll is performing better, with 1068 votes at the end of the first hour. This is enough to put this poll on pace to surpass 10000 votes.

HaRRicH posted...

Games were going digital only which has its pros and cons -- see Steam -- but consoles were uncharted territory there so that scared people.

This wasn't an issue limited exclusively to Microsoft. It applies to Sony and Nintendo as well.

Poor Microsoft... At least they're still in the market.

Predict this contest match: Legend of Dragoon vs. Grand Theft Auto III

GTA III based on GotD stats, San Andreas and Vice City losing respectably to much-bigger name PS1 JRPGs in 2015, and my impression of Dragoon's popularity (or lackthereof).

That's not a match that could realistically happen at this point though, because we probably won't be seeing either game in a match ever again. Neither made it into the 2015 contest and Legend of Dragoon had to survive a vote-in to even make it into GotD.

GotD 2 is gonna be our next contest isn't it

pjbasis posted...

GotD 2 is gonna be our next contest isn't it

Character Battle X - The current Overwatch meme lord vs Draven finals.

I hope the reason we're not getting contests is more than just being scared of rallies

Well, they don't generate the interest they used to, so I guess there's no point in having one annually anymore.

The BGE 2015 contest generated a lot of interest prior to Undertale happening.

Please, let's do GotD2.

Just with the decade being the 90s.

3.39% of GameFAQs poll voters had an NES Classic the day it was released.

13.49% of voters had an SNES Classic the day it was released.

That's a 300% improvement. I expected numbers to be higher, but not THAT much higher....

Oh, yeah, and 5.9% of those who had an SNES Classic planned to scalp it, as opposed to 14.5% of NES Classic owners. I didn't expect a drop that big... maybe the purchasing limits online really did cause the number of scalpers to drop. Perhaps scalpers didn't want to go through the trouble to pre-order one SNES Classic at each store, as opposed to when they could purchase like ten of them per store with the NES Classic?

Edit: Actually, it makes sense that the scalping % is lower, because a much larger percentage of sales September 29th and earlier were at brick-and-mortar stores.

Haste_2 posted...

Edit: Actually, it makes sense that the scalping % is lower, because a much larger percentage of sales September 29th and earlier were at brick-and-mortar stores.

Although there was a slight increase in the percentage of scalpers for the SNES Classic poll, it was greatly offset by the massive increase in people on GameFAQs who were able to get an SNES Classic on launch day. So the overall percentage of scalpers among those who got an SNES Classic was much lower compared to the NES Classic.

I had a weird dream that Allen just decided to host a Character Battle on April Fools Day, for that day only

Every 10 minutes the matches would change until a winner was crowned (it was Luigi) and then Allen hosted another one immediately after, which randomly threw users that posted on board 8.

Man that would be incredible but probably unlikely to ever happen

That sounds like a fun dream.

B8 essentially deciding everything would be fun

Pokemon winning every match it's in and Square losing every match it's in would not be

although who knows maybe Phoenix Wright would have a chance

LeonhartFour posted...

Link 2003 > Link 2002

We're the only two people on the planet that still care about x-stats that long ago... (just slightly) =P

Something that I've been stumped over for a long time: How strong was Tidus in 2003?

Tidus 2002 (adjusted): 30.4%
Tidus 2004 (adjusted): 27.19%

True, 2003 Tidus could have been somewhere inbetween those numbers, but you could make a case for his being equal to both 2002 and 2004.

A reason to believe Tidus 2003 = Tidus 2004 is Magus' opponent, Sam Fisher. Sam proved to be far weaker than originally anticipated the next two years. If Sam Fisher was the same strength in 2003 and 2005, note that Magus did slightly better than Donkey Kong against Sam Fisher. Using the adjusted 2005 Donkey Kong, 2003 Magus is at 28.50%, just slightly above 2004 Tidus. It's crazy how well that fits.

Another reason to consider the above is Magus. If Tidus 2003 = Tidus 2002, Magus tumbles in strength between 2003 and 2005, while Crono moves in the opposite direction. This is assuming Knuckles overperformed against Squall in 2005.

Or.... maybe Magus really did stay constant and Knuckles was actually as strong as his x-stat in 2005 (he was at 32% instead of the usual 27%)? If so, TIdus 2002 = Tidus 2003 would almost certainly be the case. But I don't think that's right, because that would mean a HUGE fall for Magus by 2007... as if the fall wasn't big enough already.

A reason to believe Tidus 2003 = Tidus 2002 is Ganondorf. If this wasn't true, Ganondorf goes from 28% to 32% to 35% (adjusted) in just two years. That's a big increase! Zelda went from 30.29% to 33.71% in that same period. Kinda weird how Ganondorf overtakes Zelda...

Who knows where the fluke matches were (aside from the obvious Link/Magus). For all we know, Tidus overperformed against Sonic in 2002, meaning Tidus might have been at the same level all along.

I'm siding towards Tidus 2003 = Tidus 2004 at this point. Thoughts, Leon? (probably nobody else will bother)

Magus overperformed on Link, but the fact that Ganondorf gained so much in 2004 due to TP hype masked it. I used Sam Fisher as one of my prime examples to prove Magus 2003 was overrated and thus Squall would beat Magus in 2005 (and DK smashing Sam Fisher by nearly the same margin in 2005 only further reinforced it).

Knuckles definitely overperformed against Squall in 2005 (no surprise considering the magnitude of his upset against Magus). It makes everything else in the Devil Division make sense.

I seem to recall someone saying there were several hours of site downtime (or at least lag) in Sonic/Tidus 2002, but they never bothered to rerun it since it wasn't close enough.

That doesn't really answer my question. Even if Tidus 2002 = Tidus 2003, Magus' four-pack was still highly overrated. Magus would be at 31.00% compared to Squall's pre-adjusted 31.72%, enough for Squall to beat Magus with 51% in the year 2003. If you adjust Squall up, the margin of victory is even greater.

Obviously Squall was capable of a larger margin than that in 2005, but part of the question was whether Tidus and Magus were stronger in 2003 than in 2005.

I'm guessing you meant to say that Tidus 2003 = Tidus 2004, though.

But now I realize that Tidus AND Magus falling by a similar amount is fishy... yeah, I'm even more convinced that Tidus 2003 = Tidus 2004. Pretty confidently now.

There's really no way to tell the difference between 2003 and 2005 with Magus and Ganondorf because SFF ruins the whole thing. I'd say that 2004 Tidus is probably very close to what he was in 2002 and 2003. He didn't really have much reason to shift in those three years.

the best thing about the 2003 X-Stats is that Tidus and Shadow were proportionately overrated, which only further cemented the Magus deception until it was gloriously exposed

And don't forget Frog! Frog was the final piece of the Magus deception... after all, if Frog is at 32% on BL, then surely Magus is stronger than that!

Frog's overperformance on Snake sealed the deal, yeah.

hard to believe we actually thought Liquid Snake was anywhere near Solid Snake in popularity

that should've been a humongous red flag

also hard to believe that I argued against pics mattering for a long time too

man I was dumb

I had GTA IV winning the GotD 2010, so.....yeah

LeonhartFour posted...

Knuckles definitely overperformed against Squall in 2005 (no surprise considering the magnitude of his upset against Magus). It makes everything else in the Devil Division make sense.

Was Knuckles > Magus really that big of an upset to the general GameFAQs voters?

Sure, to Board 8, it was a massive upset that literally no one saw coming, but Board 8 was a drop in the hat to nearly 100,000 voters, most of whom had no idea of the significance of a Round 1 match between two side characters that one third of the site still picked correctly anyway.

Knux > Magus was the biggest upset of round 1, even bigger than Pac-Man > Ocelot. Only 35% of brackets had it.

I mean, you can downplay it all you want, but Knuckles has never been that strong before or since, so what's the most likely explanation?

Magus being overrated in 2005 had some merit and I remember exploring the option back then before going against it and taking Magus to win the division and Tidus > Kirby. Still, the worst case scenario for Magus still had him over Knuckles with some breathing room and the general idea back then was that Chrono Trigger was either stagnate or going up. We probably won’t ever know what happened because both characters missed 2006 and in 2007 there was a format change and it was clear both Chrono Trigger and Sonic characters were weaker.

I may do a small write-up when I have my stats with me.

My research actually put Magus below Knuckles in one scenario, but even then, I still didn't think of pulling the trigger on the upset.

Yeah, it's a pretty hard upset to call even if you do find a situation where it might happen.

Definitely tracking today's poll since there's the potential for huge trends (AIM should be less commonly used outside the US).

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Please, let's do GotD2.

Just with the decade being the 90s.

No, no more OoT > FFVII in the finals!

Although... actually, things have changed in the last 8 or so years. FFVII has lost a lot of power and Chrono Trigger has picked up a lot of steam. Hmm...

Either way, I don't think we were getting that many new entrants, and they wouldn't matter anyway. Let's just wait for BGE3 and hope that we get some fun contests in the meantime.

By the way...

pjbasis posted...

I hope the reason we're not getting contests is more than just being scared of rallies

I got myself thinking... How many contests in the history of GameFAQs did not come with a prize? I'm assuming Allen also wants participants to have an incentive to participate, but since videogames have been getting so freaking costly, maybe that's also an issue.

Advokaiser posted...

How many contests in the history of GameFAQs did not come with a prize?

Sitewide contests? Zero.

I don't think money is the issue. The last two contests have had rather generous prizes.

Huh, we haven't had a favorite Mortal Kombat character poll since 2004. That one only had the playable characters, but this one has Goro, Reptile, and Shang Tsung.