Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1372 - The Last Hurrah?

UltimaterializerX posted...

Melee had a similar rally that exact contest and lost >_>

Completely predictable result and utterly boring match, Melee wasn't outrallying Undertale

Oh let's just stand by and watch these two outside forces see who can rally more votes, how interesting to see a match where we have zero impact on the outcome

If a second rally did beat undertale it would have been pretty fire though

pjbasis posted...

If a second rally did beat undertale it would have been pretty fire though

Nah Melee winning the contest via rally would've been the worst possible outcome

It's a shame we couldn't get another Link type rally for ocarina.

Melee would have fallen to OoT without much kerfuffle, I think. The Smash fanbase can't counteract such a natural discrepancy in the Nintendo hierarchy.

YoBlazer posted...

Melee would have fallen to OoT without much kerfuffle, I think. The Smash fanbase can't counteract such a natural discrepancy in the Nintendo hierarchy.

When the rallied votes vastly outnumber Gamefaqs votes? I daresay if you held a Melee vs. OOT poll on a Smash website Melee would win.

It's sad but there's probably no way back now that it's become so much easier to reach a large audience on the internet quickly. The Starcraft, Frog, Mario, etc. rallies back in 2002-2006 were small in scale and required a ton of work on the part of the ralliers. They weren't totally invincible, as SSBM/Starcraft demonstrated. A 2000 vote lead by Wind Waker was defeated by Starcraft rallying, but SSBM's 3800 vote lead was too much.

I do want to say - I think if Starcraft had won that match with SSBM, FFVII vs. Starcraft would have been a lot closer than x-stats predicted and I don't think Starcraft's chances were zero.

red_sox_777 posted...

When the rallied votes vastly outnumber Gamefaqs votes? I daresay if you held a Melee vs. OOT poll on a Smash website Melee would win.

Probably, but it would likely be closer than you think. The reason Link had a chance against Draven was because the rally had a high backfire rate, and OoT would have the same advantage.

I don't see why Ocarina would have that *same* advantage.

Melee is an actually popular game (that got a lot more gamefaqs votes), Draven was a short-lived meme. League players are not necessarily even a fan of Draven.

Smash fans are not necessarily Melee fanboys...!

A lot of Smash fans detest the Melee fans.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1338-north-division-round-2-ganondorf-vs-magus

A pretty consequential match looking back, because our expectations of Magus and Tidus would be radically different if Ganon had went on to get 80-20ed by Link one year earlier.

Expectations for Magus were pretty high. People thought he'd be as strong as Crono, and his performance next round fooled us for a few years!

UltimaterializerX posted...

A lot of Smash fans detest the Melee fans.

where did the rally come from? I was under the impression it was a melee specific source

LeonhartFour posted...

Expectations for Magus were pretty high. People thought he'd be as strong as Crono, and his performance next round fooled us for a few years!

Yeah, but if you sub in that result with Ganondorf getting the brakes beat off of him instead, then we don't get the big visual of Magus ranking #9 in the x-stats above Sonic, and all the talk about him being the potential Noble Nine killer in the next few years does not happen, or if it does, it's merely seen as one possibility out of many.

Magus beating Ganondorf is such a strange result. By 2006, Ganondorf wasn't too far behind Vincent Valentine. Did Ganondorf boost through the roof due to TP hype? He never really looked back either.

Yeah, I don't know what we think of Magus and Tidus if Ganondorf wins that. We were barely beginning to grasp the concept of SFF back then.

Makes me wonder if SC2K4's bracket is a little different if we get Link/Ganondorf on 2003. Surely Ceej wouldn't have set it up again, but we did get Snake/Knuckles three years in a row for no reason!

TeamRocketElite posted...

Magus beating Ganondorf is such a strange result. By 2006, Ganondorf wasn't too far behind Vincent Valentine. Did Ganondorf boost through the roof due to TP hype? He never really looked back either.

Honestly, he must have. It's the only thing that makes sense. 2004 really kept us from getting good reads on him and Magus though. It was an odd coincidence to see some 2004 matches validate the 2003 X-Stats despite the (what we now know to be) errors.

Ganondorf absolutely boosted between 2003 and 2005, with Twilight Princess hype beginning to take shape and the general Nintendo boost that many a Nintendo character benefitted from. Also, if you are believer of momentum in contests, those who had good runs in the villains contest seemed to overperform in the Summer bracket.

One thing that you can look back on in 2005 is the prediction percentages Ganondorf, Bowser, and Diablo had, and you can tell they had otherwise abnormal bracket support. In particular, you had Ganondorf with 67% of brackets taking him to Round 3 over Auron (and Yuna & melty Big Boss), which is insane considering how debated that four pack was.

Undertale wasn't a lock to win the contest if it won thst match but it was certainly the big favorite to do so. RBY could've put up a fight if the fanbase wasn't busy wanting to be clear about what a terrible fanbase they are. Melee met it too late for sure.

If Melee or RBY gets Undertale in round 2 they probably both have better chances.

Also Melee outrallying Undertale to get smashed by OoT so we get the same winner would have been the most gamefaqs contest moment.

Magus had a lot of hype. I remember that many (including myself lol) thought that of he couldn’t beat Link, then no one could.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1338-north-division-round-2-ganondorf-vs-magus

A pretty consequential match looking back, because our expectations of Magus and Tidus would be radically different if Ganon had went on to get 80-20ed by Link one year earlier.

Nah, 80-20 is what happened when we saw their 2018 rematch.

2004 gave us...this:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1750-hyrule-division-round-2-link-vs-ganondorf

I guess the question is whether 2003 would've been the same, more, or less of a beatdown. Ganondorf got stronger in 2004, but Link did, too.

It's a great thing for both Ganondorf and Magus that Magus won that match. Also, that was a really excellent match. One of the rare times when the night vote winner lost most of his lead to the day vote but was able to hold on for victory.

Magus looks so good in 03 and then never again, it's very weird.

If Ganondorf beats Magus we probably have a real bracket for 2004.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Magus looks so good in 03 and then never again, it's very weird.

He overperformed against Link. It's really that simple. Compare his performance against Sam Fisher to DK's two years later.

Magus didn’t even look that good in 2003. Vote totals in his first two matches weren’t great, which is a good indicator of voter apathy.

Leonhart4 posted...

He overperformed against Link. It's really that simple. Compare his performance against Sam Fisher to DK's two years later.

Yeah which is why he only looked good in 03 (well part of it at least).

But the Link result is still crazy

It was probably a combination of bandwagon (Magus had a low prediction percentage to get to the third round), winning a really close match, and the CT sprite against a bad sprite. Frog used the same formula the next year!

It's still a lot and those things by themselves doesn't explain beating Ganondorf. Maybe it was just the hype. It's an odd performance to be sure.

Ironically, 2005 Magus might have been his strongest version.

ctesjbuvf posted...

It's still a lot and those things by themselves doesn't explain beating Ganondorf. Maybe it was just the hype. It's an odd performance to be sure.

2003 Ganondorf just wasn't as strong as every other version of the character. He was basically equal with Tidus that year, which we know now isn't that impressive.

There's also a significant Magus drop involved in that.

ctesjbuvf posted...

There's also a significant Magus drop involved in that.

Around 2007, but that happened to all the CT characters.

2005 Magus is also overrated because Knuckles overperformed on Squall the next round.

Rotten Tomatoes is doing a best director of the last 25 years contest:

https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/best-directors-of-the-last-25-years/

Can’t wait to see the x-stats on this, though I’m guessing Nolan is about to absolutely bury everyone.

And he should.

Wow, no Peter Jackson?

Peter Jackson debuted in the 80’s! It’s directors who had their first film in the last 25 years

Oh, I thought it was for films in the last 25 years.

I know he’s not the most mainstream director (though he’s not super niche either) but I’m a little surprised Martin McDonagh is relatively struggling with JJ Abrams. Maybe people love JJ after all!

No Zack Snyder?

Magus looked pretty good in 2018! "Would narrowly lose to Sub-Zero" based on Auron and Vincent's matches is a pretty solid boost from his woeful 2010 showing.

Yeah, Chrono Trigger in general has recovered from its 5-year slump.

I feel there was probably something inflationary about cn's method of comparing x-stats across years. As in, I would prefer to say that 2003 was the strongest year for Square and Square strength gradually fell in the years after that, while Nintendo rose, rather than saying that Square was constant after that and Nintendo boosted a lot.

Also, while we are talking about Magus, while I of course have no personal disagreement with Crono destroying Magus with SFF in 2004 (and support Crono to get arbitrarily high scores on other characters), I do find it surprising how strong that SFF was given how many people talked up how they thought Magus was a better character.

AxemRedRanger posted...

Magus looked pretty good in 2018! "Would narrowly lose to Sub-Zero" based on Auron and Vincent's matches is a pretty solid boost from his woeful 2010 showing.

Poor Vincent though. Although I suppose "would also narrowly lose to Sub-Zero" was also a massive improvement from his godawful 2013 showing.

Though it is funny that we finally got that match after we thought it would happen in the Devil Division Finals in 2005, and it was exactly the match we thought it would be all that time ago.

Well, it's hard to compare across years with X-Stats because there's no way to create a constant. We can really only say whether a character has risen or fallen compared to its competition. Chrono Trigger had a 5 year stretch where it was losing to stuff it hadn't lost to before.

The funny thing about discussing this is that enough time has passed that for characters like Magus 2018 X-Stats are pretty worthless.

Could Chrono Trigger (and by extension the characters) have continued to boost along with the rest of the SNES in the last 5 years? Hell yeah they could.

Could another dozen Nintendo characters have boosted to the moon thanks to Ultimate, Dread, Tears of the Kingdom so Magus loses to generic Smash character? Sure.

Could JRPGs have continued to drop in a world with more games like Elden Ring? Sure, that sounds fair.

Could we instead be in a Square resurgence? Yeah that sounds possible.

I miss the days when we'd discuss how strong we think Clive would be in the next contest.