Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1357

Safer_777 posted...

Woke up, checked the results.

Withcer 3 a lock for finals now for sure. Also P5 strong?

And what happened yesterday? I guess P4 had a rally somewhere?

Yeah, P4 got its rally pinned to the top of the Persona reddit. In fact, it's still there, with Persona 5's match edited in.

Is Witcher rallying or something?

_SecretSquirrel posted...

In fact, it's still there, with Persona 5's match edited in.

...*sigh*

Guess I'll just add that to the list of random factors to think about when making the X-stats...the list is getting long...

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Is Witcher rallying or something?

Nothing I'm aware of. This performance is probably just Witcher being a beast, possible Western SFF, and maybe even some Persona rally spillover.

If we accepted SFF between Automata and Bayonetta 2, which are by the same developer yes but on different platforms, then I don't understand why someone doesn't want to think there could be SFF between Witcher and God of War. No way that is as much of a stretch.

This is deffo Western SFF. Even though I believe the Galaxy games are significantly stronger (at least now) than we thought, I just can't see Galaxy 2 beating God of War plainly if at all. It only needs to be 5%.

As for action RPGs, the wall of what is an RPG has been almost completely broken down, everything has some RPG elements. To the point where we kind of need to redefine what an action RPG actually is. Personally I say we take a broad stance. If it has character building (in ways other than just combat) and puzzles and/or exploration, it's an action RPG. If it has puzzles and/or exploration but minimal to no character building, it's an action adventure game. If it's purely combat focused it's an action game. Thus God of War (2018), RDR2, Souls-likes, and BotW are all action RPGs. Action adventure games are more like Uncharted or Resident Evil. And DMC would be an action game.

On the topic of Kingdom Hearts, I listened to Lore Reasons where people who have never played Kingdom Hearts go through it without playing it, and there were a lot of points that made me want to get back into it. There were also a lot of points that made me want to stay away. I watched the KH3 cutscenes where the Lingering Will returns and Terra comes back and I was like "this seems awesome". Then I saw other stuff and I was like "oh". I can't help but feel that this series needs an editor. Given that Disney wholly owns it you'd think they would be more hands on! But nope.

My second chance bracket is actually doing really well.
This can't last long. That just can't happen for long.

MechanicalWall posted...

Yah I'm gonna say RDR1 > RDR2 for the sake of my sanity

Fire Emblem's the only one in the 4pack that's in RDR1's division and it got SFFed by Xenoblade. The rest are all in RDR2's division.

So Witcher 3 looks to be slowly but surely catching the night vote, and it might just surge past 65% before these matches finish. Am I crazy to think that every single reasonable explanation for this result might be true at once?

MetalmindStats posted...

So Witcher 3 looks to be slowly but surely catching the night vote, and it might just surge past 65% before these matches finish. Am I crazy to think that every single reasonable explanation for this result might be true at once?

Yeah. I think it’s a little bit of everything. Witcher 3 is naturally strong. It’s SFFing God of War. And any votes coming from the Persona subrebbit are mostly going Witcher’s way. All of it is contributing to Witcher’s domination.

I have a question, does portal 2 beat god of war? Or vice versa?

The Persona rally thing still makes no sense to me:

1. The rally was stickied about ~4 hours before the P4G/Xenoblade match ended. It only needed about 200 votes to overtake the lead, but wasn't able to do so and even lost the final hour.
2. The registered/anon split were close to even with anons barely favoring P4G over registered. This is very different from other P4G rally matches like the RDR match, where the anon voters significantly favored P4G (as you would expect from a P4G rally)
3. Portal 2 won the board vote over Persona 5, despite the potential P4G rally spillover which should theoretically be favoring P5, as we've seen in similar situations.

We probably need to untangle what is happening here, before speculating on how the rallies are affecting the Witcher 3 match.

I think perhaps the Persona rallying isn't all too effective? It clearly hurt Xenoblade for a while, but died down and allowed Xenoblade to win.

Moving to the second thing. Persona 4 got about as many raw votes as anon votes in all three close matches. However, GTAV and RDR were significantly favored by registered users. Like Xenoblade they won with a small margin there, but they lost big with the anon votes. So I'm thinking the rally was less effective against Xenoblade, which makes somewhat sense, they're more similar, so users rallied at the Persona board probably liked Xenoblade better than the Rockstar games.

I imagine the backfire rate for Xenoblade is much higher than the backfire for GTA or RDR. I almost wish I could blame the one rally topic that said the match was ending an hour early for Persona 4 dying in that last hour, but that wasn’t the one that got pinned to the top of R/Persona.

Also, we did have a last minute 4chan rally “for Persona” that seemed to help Xenoblade out.

And to add to my previous post, and what point was the rally changed to mention Persona 5? In any case, I don't imagine that was as effective, at least not initially. The rally had died down a bit and people need to notice the title change instead of noticing a thread name change.

Of course, the board vote is a bit weird then given what we've previously seen of Portal and Persona

The big surges P4G saw were telltale signs of effective rallying. Each time a new rally emerged, and when the main sub pinned the rally, we saw these large surges. At one point it cut 40 votes in one update then Xenoblade went right back to gaining. It’s just that these rallies are more of a oneshot thing. Xenoblade got a couple of counter-rallies when the thread was pinned too. In one of the Persona rallies, there was also a bad faith attempt at creating urgency by claiming the match ended earlier than it did, but that may have backfired and put off some potential voters.

As for P5 losing the board vote, it’s probably a mix of board 8 punishing Persona for rallying, and a delay on the Persona rally switching to the P5 match.

ctesjbuvf posted...

And to add to my previous post, and what point was the rally changed to mention Persona 5? In any case, I don't imagine that was as effective, at least not initially. The rally had died down a bit and people need to notice the title change instead of noticing a thread name change.

Of course, the board vote is a bit weird then given what we've previously seen of Portal and Persona

The current thread pinned to the top of r/Persona says about nine hours ago.

Alternately God of War and Fallout are worthless now.

Great news for Skyrim!

KamikazePotato posted...

...*sigh*

Guess I'll just add that to the list of random factors to think about when making the X-stats...the list is getting long...

I mean we'll never see most of these games again and probably not for another five years for the ones we do so I wouldn't worry about it too much

I have still yet to be shown any examples of games SFFing each other for no reason other than being 'Western'.

MechanicalWall posted...

I have still yet to be shown any examples of games SFFing each other for no reason other than being 'Western'.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8031-division-5-final-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-vs-god-of-war

Edit: I'm just being cheeky. I guessed the Witcher would get 64 based on a few points of shared interest. That was based exclusively on the fact that all the people I know in real life who played God of War got their start in gaming this generation on Skyrim and then Witcher 3. I doubt it makes a massive difference to the point where results get genuinely skewed.

Rollthebones2 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8031-division-5-final-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-vs-god-of-war

Oh obviously

Rollthebones2 posted...

Edit: I'm just being cheeky. I guessed the Witcher would get 64 based on a few points of shared interest. That was based exclusively on the fact that all the people I know in real life who played God of War got their start in gaming this generation on Skyrim and then Witcher 3. I doubt it makes a massive difference to the point where results get genuinely skewed.

I can see 2 or 3 points maximum between these two games. Like I said last page there are better explanations.

MechanicalWall posted...

I can see 2 or 3 points maximum between these two games. Like I said last page there are better explanations.

I agree, especially with the Reddit part. That site is obsessed with The Witcher. I would guess that getting more Reddit eyes on this contest will help TW3 disproportionately to other games.

KH1 was a charming game with awkward gameplay. As the story got more convoluted and less charming, the gameplay became less tolerable. And with the ability to use the actual character models and locations from the films in KH3, the whole concept has lost even more of its charm.

I don't think there are any vastly different points about it than you ones you've said yourself. It's just a matter of how much we think it does. They're games with some similarities that have a good amount of fan overlap and the losing game is only available on the winning game's most succesful console (perhaps it's bigger on PC, but that hardly matter here). They're not from the same company is basically the best reason as to why there shouldn't be SFF.

I'm thinking it's about 5% personally and I don't think any of the three reasons you mentioned should be worth more than the 2 or 3 points you can yourself.

P5 only won the last hour by 7 votes btw. Portal 2 was winning it until the last update too.

Is there some sort of Portal rally somewhere?

The Owner of FF9 posted...

And with the ability to use the actual character models and locations from the films in KH3, the whole concept has lost even more of its charm.

"even more?"

There is no charm left in Kingdom Hearts, my dude.

At a quick glance I see no rally for Portal anywhere, but I did find out the God of War subreddit had one posted 15 hours ago.

I could see Portal doing better throughout the day as the pinned Persona rallies presumably lose steam.

there is a 4chan thread about the new Xenoblade trailer that got derailed and is now 75% about Xenoblade and 25% about Persona 5 vs Portal 2, lots of fun slurs being thrown around

So my most idiotic pick in the contest that cost me the most points is...Animal Crossing winning today

I dunno I kind of thought that the new AC would give this nostalgia boost or something

I've done pretty well about avoiding huge mistakes. I think the only pick I've made where I've been off by more than one round was Three Houses winning the division, and I didn't feel good about that one the whole time.

i've made a few mistakes.
Doom the biggest.
was banking on Eternal hype and love to push it over. helped Animal Crossing a lot, didn't help Doom as much.

X gave it to ya

Wanglicious posted...

i've made a few mistakes.
Doom the biggest.
was banking on Eternal hype and love to push it over. helped Animal Crossing a lot, didn't help Doom as much.

I mean, they both lost by similar margins after 1 round!

Some kind of SFF with Witcher 3 right? No way GOW is that weak.

Safer_777 posted...

Some kind of SFF with Witcher 3 right? No way GOW is that weak.

It's not GOW weak
It's Witcher being a monster

but there is definitely some degree of SFF happening yes. probably like 3 ~ 4% at most though

if it's God of War being weak, then Smash sucks
if it's Witcher being a monster, then Galaxy 2 did pretty well which means Mario is better than Smash

either way rSFF hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

transience posted...

either way rSFF hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

YES WE HAVE YOU NOW

I'm still maintaining no rSFF in SSBU > SMO:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78658278/938672793

And I don't feel too bad about my bracket-picking this year. I got my dumbest picks in a long time with taking the Witness/Destiny/Hearthstone to win their matches, but also I got a perfect Division 4 too so pros and cons. I think ultimately my lesson from this contest is remember to properly submit a bracket (didn't save my tie-breaker in the main contest, left my bracket as For Fun in the second chance bracket) and remember to look over my picks again before lock-down.

transience posted...

if it's God of War being weak, then Smash sucks
if it's Witcher being a monster, then Galaxy 2 did pretty well which means Mario is better than Smash

either way rSFF hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Or maybe it means Galaxy 2 > Odyssey!

Stardew Valley secretly a beast confirmed.

There were people pre-contest who speculated it was the strongest indie!

transience posted...

if it's God of War being weak, then Smash sucks
if it's Witcher being a monster, then Galaxy 2 did pretty well which means Mario is better than Smash

either way rSFF hahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

or smash is stronger than it was in 2018 and GoW is weaker

(partly due to the GotY poll taking place less than a month after Smash came out?)

or non-contest polls are meaningless for contest strength!

LOL I risked my bracket on a pick that's going to barely avoid a doubling! Good job, God of War!

I've been totally out of the gaming loop the last three years and it showed - got pretty much all the stuff from the 1st half of this decade right, and made some huge clangers on what's changed since 2015.

Yay first time on the top 50 leader board ever in these contests!

Buuuuut that will only last a day. Tomorrow will kill me

Kotetsu534 posted...

LOL I risked my bracket on a pick that's going to barely avoid a doubling! Good job, God of War!

I've been totally out of the gaming loop the last three years and it showed - got pretty much all the stuff from the 1st half of this decade right, and made some huge clangers on what's changed since 2015.

Godraldo hit this board like a tornado