GameFAQs Contests

That would just be stupid..

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Sephiroth_vs_Tifa_Lockheart_vs_Kratos_vs_Jill_Valentine_2008

I mean Tifa did much better two years later

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3849-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-tifa-lockheart

but I think it's hard to overturn a hierarchy within a game or within a series (although it does occasionally happen)

Even taking TJF into account, Tifa barely gets 40% on Sephiroth nowadays.

Tifa looked like she had deteriorated the least of the FFVII characters in 2013, although that doesn't really mean much five years later.

Brawl playrate poll today:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7012-

Okay...let me adjust the question...could Tifa have beaten Sephiroth in 2013?

The whole point of that question stemmed from the fact that Cloud and Sephiroth both dropped like crazy between 2010 and 2013 (Vincent, too... and most likely Aeris)...

Now you might say that Tifa MUST have dropped a bunch if the others did.... however, if you look at Tifa has performed between 2005 and 2010... she didn't' drop. Cloud and Sephiroth did during the span of time. Tifa improved monumentally against Sephiroth, too... it's true that one match was four ways and the other was not, but the improvement was HUGE.... What I'm trying to say is that the momentum of popularity change favored Tifa over the other characters.....whether it's due to TJF, I really can't say.

Let's move on to 20013 matches.

Tifa definitely looked stronger than Sephiroth then... 45% on Samus. Sephiroth got 42% on Mewtwo. Mewtwo is a monster these days, but stronger than Samus? Nah.

Perhaps Sephiroth underperformed in the Draven match due to Mewtwo stealing the Draven anti-votes or something, and L-Block does seem to have a little overlap with Nintendo characters?

Sadly, those performances are also consistent with the earlier rounds.... Tifa got 64% on Yuna and 70% on Chun Li, while Sephiroth got 53% on Kirby, 57% on Big Boss, and 66% on Morrigan. Come on now... It doesn't look like Tifa deteriorated at ALL... but I like Aeris so much more than Tifa, so the data had BETTER be wrong....grrrrrrrr, Tifa.....how dare you be so strong...

Finally, hierarchy changes indeed happen.... we saw Bowser beat Yoshi with 56%. Yoshi beat Luigi the next year. In 2009, Luigi goes and beats Bowser.

Guess what other match was a 56/44 result in 2010? Sephiroth vs. Tifa!

Come on, you've got to give Tifa a 1% shot against Sephiroth, at least!

78.84% playrate for Brawl at the freeze. Expect this to drop off overnight from the Asia/Europe vote. Still too early to say where the playrate will end up at, except that it should at least finish over 70% based on the early results so far.

This result would imply that Melee's playrate should be just as good as Brawl's playrate, if not even better due to being an older game.

You can't trust that Draven/Mewtwo/Sephiroth match even a tiny bit. Pokemon and Draven were both way out of wack that year.

also Tifa has always been stronger than Aerith

You're no fun, Leonhart. You could at least point out that something that is compelling instead of nitpick one thing. And I'm not asking you to believe or even consider Tifa > Sephiroth!

You can take Pokemon and Draven out of the equation and Tifa still looks better than Sephiroth multiple times. I never said Aerith was ever stronger than Tifa... just that I'm angry that Tifa is stronger than Aerith!

you are in fact asking me to consider it or you wouldn't have brought it up

I don't trust much of anything we saw in 2013 one way or the other regardless

Yes because like hell I'm going against TJF.

Nobody's going to deny that Tifa has had some impressive results over the years but there are good reasons to be suspicious of a lot of them and Tifa > Sephiroth goes wildly against common sense so yeah, not necessarily gonna be a lot of backing on that one!

Tifa > Sephiroth just feels wrong.

I will go over weaknesses of my argument, as well... later.

I consider the three-way character contest to have more reliable results than the four-way contests, as least...

It seems nobody in the topic likes to discuss major upsets and not even entertain the thought on them. But people have been positive about match results and missed them, anyway... which is the entire reason I like to discuss "impossible" contest results.

But I'll finish the opposite side of the argument, anyway.

First off, all of Tifa's good results can be called into question. First of all, Tifa/Samus/L-Block in the last contest. Now recall that Tifa overperformed against Samus in the female character contest. While the picture was obviously a big factor in that, could it be that Tifa just has a tendency to overperform against Samus regardless? Samus' strength could be called in question based on Snake/Samus/Draven, too. She clearly underperformed, but how close is she to Snake, really?

Secondly, Tifa's other good performances were against female characters... she could have SFF'd Yuna. And maybe she overperformed against Chun Li, too. Finally, Tifa's performance on Dragonborn...yikes, that doesn't look good. Dragonborn failed to 60/40 Tom Nook, of all characters.

Also, in Sephiroth's favor is that he put in a similar situation as Samus, in that Sephiroth was the 3rd place character in a Draven match. Thus, it's very likely Sephiroth underperformed in that match and is closer to Mewtwo in true strength than the match suggests.

Finally, it's been five years now, and I think FF7 anti-voting is starting to decrease...maybe... I honestly don't know.... But if that's the case, I'm sure Sephiroth will have gained ground Tifa. Regardless, I feel way worse about taking Tifa over Sephiroth today than back in 2013.

Haste_2 posted...

I consider the three-way character contest to have more reliable results than the four-way contests, as least...

not the 2013 contest

it was riddled with LFF and rallies so it's utterly useless

Tifa and Sephiroth weren't affected by rallies or LFF that much. Mewtwo benefitted from the general Pokemon rallying, true.

I mean Sephiroth was directly affected by a double rally in that Draven/Mewtwo match you keep mentioning

but regardless the CBIX X-Stats predict 65/35 for Sephiroth

boom

Would anyone take Sonic > Sephiroth in a fair 1-on-1?

I've taken Sonic over a lot of strong characters 1-on-1 throughout the years. I have only really been right in 2006. If we have a Character Battle this summer, people will be looking for any opportunity to pick Cloud/Sephiroth upsets.

AxemRedRanger posted...

Would anyone take Sonic > Sephiroth in a fair 1-on-1?

Hell no, not SONIC.

sonic matches next contest might be fun

he simultaneously got brought back to life (Mania) then crash and burned (Forces) in the span of like 4 months. that has to be a record. i really do wonder what side of the fence GameFAQs will be on.

i think I'd honestly take Sonic over Sephiroth, but I wouldn't trust Sonic against any other NN character, or against most Pokemon (though I'd take Sonic over all the non-Pokemon near elites)

I don't think I'd take Sonic over Sephiroth, but I might take Crono or Mega Man over Sephiroth.

LeonhartFour posted...

I mean Sephiroth was directly affected by a double rally in that Draven/Mewtwo match you keep mentioning

but regardless the CBIX X-Stats predict 65/35 for Sephiroth

boom

Whoops! Wasn't thinking clearly. I need you to keep me in line, as usual. =P And yes, you are correct about 2013 being BY FAR the worst contest as far as measuring characters.

At first I was thinking the contest might have been worse if it had been four-way....but, probably not. For one thing, three-way LFF is worse than 4-way with only two characters leeching each other. Secondly, the four-way contests had something VERY useful for determining character strength... the fact that two winners would move on in each round.

2013's character contest is absolutely 100% useless as far as x-stats go, which is why I never used x-stats in my argument.. But I still say three-way predicts two-way matches significantly better than four-way as far as consistent performances go, assuming no leeching or SFF. I would rather go with 2013 results than 2010 x-stats. That's because I think there would has been less change in characters' strength between 2013 and 2018 than between 2010 and 2013... and that is because the vote totals dropped like crazy between '10 and '13.

Yes...NW is correct. We need a character contest! This year! 128 character contest, with 12-hour matches! (no simultaneous polls, plz...b/c of the stupid rally spillover)

A repeat of the 2010 format would be nice, but the 12-hour quarterfinals were just plain wrong.

Haste_2 posted...

with 12-hour matches!

get out

Shadow of the Colossus vs. BioShock who wins?

In honor of this video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3xlkZXL4SM

Who would be the strongest Breath of the Wild character (ignoring Link/Zelda/Ganondorf)

Haven't played, can't say!

On a related note, are either of Zelda or Ganondorf notable and likable enough there that a boost would be plausible? I assume they'll do at least marginally better just because of the series being big and relevant again.

"Calamity Ganon" is just this big ugly smoke monster pig thing and I don't think they ever even mention "Ganondorf" but the brand association would be a small boost. I don't think Ganondorf is ever going to massively spike in popularity but he might make small gains consistent with his franchise continuing to have strong and relevant entries.

But what would def help out is his Hyrule Warriors key art being in match pics. He looks like a goddamn badass:

https://i.imgur.com/GvotGI1.png

Zelda would probably get a slightly larger boost just from not being as bland in this one. She's still bland, but we're not talking snooze-fest Zelda from Skyward Sword or Goth GF Zelda from Twilight Princess. She actually is shown going out and doing stuff and her diary entries make her a bit more compelling. Also for the first time ever her match pics can feature her without a princess dress without it being a hinderance to her recognizability.

As far as the strongest NEW character from BotW, Mipha and Sidon seem to be super popular with fans, but you would also see an outside chance with Urbosa. I don't think anyone cares for Daruk and people actively dislike Revali.

Mipha and Zidon are indeed the best BotW characters

but Urbosa would probably be the most popular (which is to say she'd probably be a little stronger than Groose)

Revali is the best BotW character because speedrunners love his ability.

...Yeah, nobody from BotW is going to be worth much.

Favorite Chrono Trigger character poll today:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7014-

All I know is that the first 2 votes went to Frog, but I did not monitor the poll to see how long it took for someone other than Frog to get a vote.

Huh, favorite CT character poll. Interesting.

Looks like Frog might be the Yoshi of CT.

also I hate it when Allen adds "I've never played it" to favorite character polls

Is this the first CT character poll we've had?

I could understand why that option would be in a Chrono Trigger character poll, simply because the game is almost non-existent in certain parts of the world in terms of people who have played it.

Despite the presence of the "I've never played it" option, I won't treat it as a valid proxy for playrate because it differs very significantly from this poll 3 years ago:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5810-

The above poll shows a playrate of 71.38% based on the last option, but today's poll already shows a playrate of 63.90% and we're only in the Power Hour (CT's best time period). The last option would also be expected to go up in percentage overnight, likely surpassing 40% (or a playrate under 60%).

Tifa can beat Sephiroth...if Tifa is in Smash 5 and Sephiroth isn't.

yeah but this poll isn't about whether or not you've played the game

if you haven't played the game you just don't vote

If the poll did not have an option for "I've never played it", then you wouldn't vote in this poll if you have not played the game. But since that option is present in the poll, there's an option for people who have not played the game.

LusterSoldier posted...

If the poll did not have an option for "I've never played it", then you wouldn't vote in this poll if you have not played the game. But since that option is present in the poll, there's an option for people who have not played the game.

I know your thing is stating completely obvious things but man you're dense

Frog adds another upset to his GameFAQs history, yowza.

If we had seen this poll before Frog ever debuted in the contests, man, B8 would have taken him over Solid s*** in a big way...and then him barely beating Liquid would have been heartbreaking to those very same brackets.

I mean I think people learned their lesson from Yoshi in 2003

Wow, Crono has really fallen on hard times.

Crono isn't even the strongest character in his own game?! ha

I always love the weirdness of CT characters. Like, only on GameFAQs would Crono vs. Mario be an actual god damn rivalry of legend.

LeonhartFour posted...

I mean I think people learned their lesson from Yoshi in 2003

Maybe! They could have also taken a bad lesson from Magus getting 35% on Link that same year though, plus we saw Crono go toe-to-toe with Mario again too.

If people had seen this poll play out like this after the 2003 contest and then saw who Frog could face in the sprite round of 2004, I think there would have been a whole lot of bandwagoning.

Maybe not you since you had your Magus-skepticism for awhile, but I don't think many people would have looked at Yoshi (or Knuckles) in an effort to discredit this CT-poll. They probably would have been brushed aside as platformer-weirdness with a variety of spin-offs to complicate things.

Also, are there RPG polls like today's that get their strongest character wrong? FF3/6 is the only other one I can think of, and even then we've not really PROVEN it by either including Kefka in their poll or seeing Shadow/Sabin in a contest to compare against Terra (or Locke):

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/847-who-is-your-favorite-final-fantasy-vi-character

I don't think we've seen any favorite RPG character polls other than this one and some Final Fantasy polls that are generally 15+ years old.

In these kinds of polls, there certainly seems to be a lot of LFF.

Honestly I'm impressed Crono is beating Magus here even though he'd throttle him in an actual contest setting.

I guess Magus being edgy and cool doesn't mean s*** now that the userbase is much older on average. I wonder if the same think will happen with Vincent (if it hasn't already).