Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1327

LeonhartFour posted...

or those are games that didn't get enough nominations

Yet we live in a world where 30 or so obscure indies got enough nominations while Skyward f***ing Sword didn't.

Yeah right.

None of those games are games I would have been confident in getting in the bracket. The indies have more fans that most of them!

ZeldaTPLink posted...

I mean let's be honest when does gameFAQs suddenly decide they do not want to flood the bracket with Nintendo entries.

the bracket has lots of Nintendo in it!

it just doesn't have the third tier games

There's a division, I think 5, where every match on Round 1 is "known game blows indie out".

I've never seen this many indies in a contest.

It's got some Allen hand in it.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Yet we live in a world where 30 or so obscure indies got enough nominations while Skyward f***ing Sword didn't.

Yes, absolutely

No one cares about Skyward Sword when they can nominate BotW or ALBW

LeonhartFour posted...

the bracket has lots of Nintendo in it!

it just doesn't have the third tier games

And when has that ever happened in gameFAQs?

ZeldaTPLink posted...

There's a division, I think 5, where every match on Round 1 is "known game blows indie out".

I've never seen this many indies in a contest.

It's got some Allen hand in it.

I mean it was a huge decade for indie games

I don't know why you think Allen was the one pushing them into the contest

people only had ten nominations so why are you going to nominate Skyward Sword when you're already nominating Breath of the Wild or LBW

why would you even think about nominating Smash 4 when Ultimate exists

If Allen lets only nominations decide it, this has all tiers of Nintendo games up to 10th.

All RPGs.

All square games.

Every single remake of something that can be used to let old things in.

What it does not have is dozens of indies with low playrates that didn't also get huge rallies in the board. Who nominated those games?

I mean Allen said up front that it won't be purely nominations that decide it anyway

he also took ratings and review scores into account

you're choosing a weird hill to die on

you can blame Allen for stacking the upper half with too many Nintendo games but I don't think there was some elaborate plot to keep Skyward Sword out

LeonhartFour posted...

I mean Allen said up front that it won't be purely nominations that decide it anyway

he also took ratings and review scores into account

you're choosing a weird hill to die on

you can blame Allen for stacking the upper half with too many Nintendo games but I don't think there was some elaborate plot to keep Skyward Sword out

I don't think it was specifically about SS> That's just the most obvious example.

I do think Allen approached this bracket with a "There will be variety even if I have to enforce it" mindset.

Let's be honest, a bracket like this just doesn't happen on gameFAQs. Not that I'm exactly complaining, because it's a very interesting one. But one actually made by this community is just Nintendo vs Nintendo all over Round 2.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

I do think Allen approached this bracket with a "There will be variety even if I have to enforce it" mindset.

something he has literally never done so why start now

Should've just made it a 64 game bracket to get rid of all the fodder.

also I imagine the total number of nominations was pretty paltry which makes it a lot easier for niche games to get in

LeonhartFour posted...

something he has literally never done so why start now

Why not? With votals shrinking and people complaining about constests not having variety he might as well do it.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

people complaining about constests not having variety

which they've been doing since the first contest

so why care now

LeonhartFour posted...

which they've been doing since the first contest

so why care now

This site hasn't been literally dieing since the first contest. It is now.

But Allen has been trying to spice things up every contest since he became admin. This is just another round of that.

so Allen's solution to help make the contests more popular is deliberately excluding popular games

all right then

LeonhartFour posted...

so Allen's solution to help make the contests more popular is deliberately excluding popular games

all right then

Maybe having games from different franchises would bring people from outside instead of just the shrinking gameFAQs base?

Not that I would gamble on that, but maybe he did.

Allen honestly doesn't care about bringing people in from outside at this point. He's made that pretty clear. These contests are for us.

LeonhartFour posted...

Allen honestly doesn't care about bringing people in from outside at this point. He's made that pretty clear. These contests are for us.

Do we want this contest to be just Nintendo vs Nintendo every match, though?

Wasn't there like a committee that decided on what makes the bracket? I thought I saw something about that. The nominations were just a suggestion. SBAllen could've picked some games to be in it over others that did get enough noms to make it in. He chose not to over saturate the bracket with games from the same series.

And if so, I thank him for that.

No, not a committee. He just factored in more stuff than straight nomination counts.

SwiftyDC posted...

Wasn't there like a committee that decided on what makes the bracket? I thought I saw something about that. The nominations were just a suggestion. SBAllen could've picked some games to be in it over others that did get enough noms to make it in. He chose not to over saturate the bracket with games from the same series.

And if so, I thank him for that.

Well there is an upside and a downside to that.

The upside is that later rounds will look less like a meeting of Nintendo fans and have much more variety.

The downside is that Round 1 will be the Blowout Show.

LeonhartFour posted...

No, not a committee. He just factored in more stuff than straight nomination counts.

From the GOTD rules page. So, take that as you will.

I would have assumed pokemon S/S would make it in no problem being as popular as it is. So either the site really has stopped caring about newer pokemon in favor of the old, or Allen really did just say "f*** it I'm only putting 1 pokemon in the contest"

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and its sequel Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward both scored 15 seeds in 2015, the contest with the most similar seeding process to this one. This time around, Zero Escape went up to a 10 seed, which is about what you'd expect. Yet apparently the likes of Subnautica somehow beat out 999? To me, that's the surest proof that something was up with the seeding process this time.

(Also, just sayin', FF13 has a legitimate, even vocal fanbase, and this was a notoriously weak decade for the franchise)

Seeding and qualifying for the bracket aren't the same thing. SBAllen sometimes plays with the seeding of the entries that make the bracket. The 8th seed in 2013 wasn't a coincidence.

MetalmindStats posted...

(Also, just sayin', FF13 has a legitimate, even vocal fanbase, and this was a notoriously weak decade for the franchise)

I love FFXIII, but I wasn't nominating both it and FFXV because I only had 10 noms. People had to make these choices.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Seeding and qualifying for the bracket aren't the same thing. SBAllen sometimes plays with the seeding of the entries that make the bracket. The 8th seed in 2013 wasn't a coincidence.

Labeling it the selection committee makes me think they had their hand in choosing not just the seedings.

I have managed to work out the exact schedule for this contest.

Round 1 - 4 matches per day
Round 2 - 4 matches per day
Round 3 - 2 matches per day
Round 4 - 2 matches per day
Round 5 (Quarterfinals) - 2 matches per day
Round 6 (Semifinals) - 1 match per day
Round 7 (Final) - 1 match per day

There will be a 6 day break after the final day of Round 3 so people can fill out a Second Chance Bracket. The break will start on April 14th at 8:00 PM EST, with the contest resuming again on April 20th at 8:00 PM EST.

Disappointing that we don't go to one match per day until the last three matches. Top 16 and Top 8 matches should be made to feel more weighty than this.

LusterSoldier posted...

I have managed to work out the exact schedule for this contest.

Round 1 - 4 matches per day
Round 2 - 4 matches per day
Round 3 - 2 matches per day
Round 4 - 2 matches per day
Round 5 (Quarterfinals) - 2 matches per day
Round 6 (Semifinals) - 1 match per day
Round 7 (Final) - 1 match per day

There will be a 6 day break after the final day of Round 3 so people can fill out a Second Chance Bracket. The break will start on April 14th at 8:00 PM EST, with the contest resuming again on April 20th at 8:00 PM EST.

Thanks, Luster!

2 matches a day in R3 is great.

Team Rocket Elite posted...

Seeding and qualifying for the bracket aren't the same thing. SBAllen sometimes plays with the seeding of the entries that make the bracket. The 8th seed in 2013 wasn't a coincidence.

True, and I guess your argument is that Zero Escape only scored a 10 seed this time because of that, and would have barely made the bracket otherwise? However, that seems pretty implausible to me.

If we take the seeds in 2015 to be 'legit' and not manipulated in this way, and I don't see anything obvious to suggest they were, Zero Escape was the 31st highest-seeded eligible 2010s game (or 32nd if you count SMT: Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden as the same game).

If we likewise do the same for this contest, Zero Escape was the 41st highest-seeded game that was eligible for 2015 (or 42nd if you count SMT: Persona 4 and Persona 4 Golden as the same game).

That modest standings decline is about what I'd expect post-Zero Time Dilemma, and I see no reason why 999 would have been affected disproportionately by that game's release. Likewise, 999 making 2015, which had a practically identical nomination process AFAIK, provides a counterargument to the theory that it was penalized by people only searching for the series name Zero Escape.

Or people had to choose one or the other and VLR is more popular among the fanbase

anyone else think Mario Kart 8 is about to do really good?

Leonhart4 posted...

Or people had to choose one or the other and VLR is more popular among the fanbase

Looking at Board 8's 2015 nominations on the wiki, I'm quite certain that contest only allowed 10 nominations per user - across the whole sweep of gaming, not just the 2010s. In other words, Zero Escape fans didn't choose between 999 and VLR back then; instead, they nominated both about equally. Why would that have changed much today?

LeonhartFour posted...

I love FFXIII, but I wasn't nominating both it and FFXV because I only had 10 noms. People had to make these choices.

You should know that you're one of the few people who loves both of those games.

Also, as someone who's insistent that FFXV will be pitiful this contest, isn't it in basically the same position as FFXIII, where both games aren't well-liked, yet have vocal minority fanbases? Or did that many people really nominate a not-so-beloved game just because it was the most recent Final Fantasy?

It's not as though FFXV has a clear advantage in metrics other than nominations, either; for example, its Metacritic scores and GameFAQs user ratings are both about the same as FFXIII, and the latter has a volume advantage if that matters.

No, we had 15 in 2015. It was a much larger field to choose from.

And you could argue that the three FFXIII games cannibalized each other because the fanbase is split on which one is best.

Also, we had a bigger group of people nominating. You have to take that into consideration when comparing 2015 to now.

Leonhart4 posted...

No, we had 15 in 2015. It was a much larger field to choose from.

Huh, it's really strange that the mean of games nominated per B8er that year was only 9.21875, then. I wouldn't have though that most B8ers would have left slots blank, let alone an average of nearly 6 slots per user.

This was still an easier field for 999 to make, though, considering we have about twice as many 2015-eligible 2010s games this time around than were in 2015. I also wouldn't think most of the 999 fans just left GameFAQs since 2015 even as the VLR fans more or less stayed put.

Or another way to put it: as I said above, VLR's seed rank among games eligible for both this contest and 2015 went from 31 in 2015 to 41 today. 999's went from 32 in 2015 to no higher than 72 today. That seems off to me.

Fair point about FFXIII. I would think the original scored the lion's share of those nominations, but I suppose it's possible there was enough dissension to legitimately keep it out.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

Yet we live in a world where 30 or so obscure indies got enough nominations while Skyward f***ing Sword didn't.

Yeah right.

SS was garbage. name me 10 games that SS is better than

I can probably come up with 1

xenoblade 2.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

There's a division, I think 5, where every match on Round 1 is "known game blows indie out".

I've never seen this many indies in a contest.

It's got some Allen hand in it.

theres been a s*** ton of good indie games last decade.

LeonhartFour posted...

I mean Allen said up front that it won't be purely nominations that decide it anyway

he also took ratings and review scores into account

you're choosing a weird hill to die on

you can blame Allen for stacking the upper half with too many Nintendo games but I don't think there was some elaborate plot to keep Skyward Sword out

its good for Ss that its not in. Would have embarassed the zelda franchise here.

zelda has always been strong on gamefaqs. No need to add games that will tarnish that reputation.

Leonhart4 posted...

And you could argue that the three FFXIII games cannibalized each other because the fanbase is split on which one is best.

I'd rather argue the entire 13 trilogy is trash that didn't deserve to make the bracket though!

I mean, that's fine! All of the games would've done poorly. If they had any strength, they'd have made it.

linid0t posted...

I would have assumed pokemon S/S would make it in no problem being as popular as it is. So either the site really has stopped caring about newer pokemon in favor of the old, or Allen really did just say "f*** it I'm only putting 1 pokemon in the contest"

It's not about the fanbase stopping to care for the franchise. It's about the developers (Game Freak) not wanting to listen to their fans for the last 7 years or so, which has resulted in worse and worse-received games among them. Each passing generation of Pokémon receives worse reception than the last nowadays.

All of this "included and excluded games" conundrum might have been easily fixed with a vote-in phase.

Advokaiser posted...

All of this "included and excluded games" conundrum might have been easily fixed with a vote-in phase.

I mean, yeah, but none of those snubs are games we can't do without.

Pokemon XY and Pokemon SM were both very well received games. GameFAQs doesn't really care much for them, though.

I think Samus Returns could have been a fun addition

Skyward Sword too

To add to my previous point, GameFAQs hasn't really cared much for Pokemon after GSC (and GSC is a step down from RBY). It's not something that just started in the last few years. Pokemon RSE isn't really strong on GameFAQs either.