Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1381

Leonhart4 posted...

Yeah, I don't think flipping them around would matter too much. Ramirez was more popular than Galcian, so he got into Villains. However, the rivalry was really between Vyse and Galcian, so it makes sense for that one to get into Rivals.

I don't know. I always thought that Vyse and Ramirez were meant to be foils for each other, and Galcian's lust for power is what brings the entire plot into motion.

Wasn’t Vyse/Galcian a Guru nomination?

Zylothewolf posted...

Wasn’t Vyse/Galcian a Guru nomination?

Mega Man X vs. Zero was the Guru choice for Rivals (and I believe the Guru winner invoked that choice since X vs. Zero wasn't an auto-fill nomination), but I do seem to remember some sort of movement that at least ensured Galcian and Ramirez weren't splitting themselves out of contention.

Oh that’s right, maybe it was a board rally?

Or maybe I just traded nomns with someone.

Vyse/Galcian was definitely supported by B8 in some way.

Yeah, Vyse/Galcian was a push by someone on the board, but I forget whom. It was definitely someone very popular. My gut says Sine, but I'm not totally sure about it.

Ramirez's rivalry (and foil) in the game was with Fina, not Vyse.

Was Sine even around at that point?

No it was DetroitDJ who ran some contest between boards that then all won and so each board could chose a foundation he would donate a very generous amount of money to. We chose CCFA and he posted video proof doing so, then someone suggested giving him full support of a nomination in return and someone else remembered when the contest came along.

I remember that his first choice was Jack from Harvest Moon but rivals made him go for a different choice.

I still say Vyse and Ramirez are still supposed to be counterparts with each other, in the sense that the game (particularly through Fina, the one person that knew pre-game Ramirez and Vyse) implies that Ramirez was a lot like Vyse until Galcian enters his life and corrupts him.

I also don't really think there's much of a rival dynamic between Vyse and Galcian either. Certinaly not on Galcian's end, who probably doesn't view Vyse much different from anyone else in the makeshift navy at the end of the game.

That said, I think anyone who played will agree that Skies of Arcadia is just an amazingly well-written game. A remaster with sped-up battles and some tweaks to the battles themselves, and the game would be damn perfect.

Yeah, that's who it was. I knew it was a mod, but I couldn't recall which one.

Eh, nah, Ramirez and Fina are meant to be foils. Galcian works for Vyse because he's the one person in the game he truly hates. I don't think Ramirez thinks much of Vyse either.

The most incredible part of that was that he didn't split the prize between the winners, he just donated what three or four times the money intended at first.

Not sure they even make it in otherwise.

Also Vyse is for Fina what Galcian was for Ramirez. They both shape and inform how the other views the world.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8033-division-7-final-dark-souls-vs-the-last-of-us

People were betting on TLOU2 hype to help propel the first game to victory here, but that strategy backfired after the leaks came out. Dark Souls won without any struggle.

I don't know how many times I had to flick my screen to get through Ulti's writeup on the Wiki rambling about TLOU2 but my word

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1994-jenova-division-round-1-vergil-vs-ghaleon

This is one of the most infamously bad match pics ever, featuring Calendar Vergil (because the calendar wasn't Photoshopped out of the bottom right of his side of the pic) vs. Immodium Ghaleon (because he looks, well, constipated).

There was actually a little debate about this match. Some people thought Ghaleon had a shot because he's an RPG villain since RPGs reign supreme here. As you can see, that didn't happen.

I wonder if Vergil would be stronger now that DMC5 kinda blew up. Probably not much though.

Oh I remember being so hyped about getting Ghaleon in the contest, and then I saw this picture. I don’t remember how my reaction was but I’m glad I didn’t get warned.

This is the base image used for Calendar Vergil. It really is a calendar wallpaper.

I never noticed the calendar in the match pic before.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8033-division-7-final-dark-souls-vs-the-last-of-us

People were betting on TLOU2 hype to help propel the first game to victory here, but that strategy backfired after the leaks came out. Dark Souls won without any struggle.

I don't know how many times I had to flick my screen to get through Ulti's writeup on the Wiki rambling about TLOU2 but my word

The sequel was bad enough to tank the original’s perception. Sorry you don’t like the writeup but this is undeniable.

Then people tried saying gamers just hate strong women, which is patently false. I have proof we love the ladies.

Almost every writeup is maybe one paragraph of you talking about the actual match followed by three plus paragraphs of you rambling about something you don't like. This has been the formula for a long time and it's why I stopped reading your PCAs to begin with.

I don't actually read the ramblings. I was just trying to get to the next thing on the page.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8034-division-8-final-elder-scrolls-skyrim-vs-pokemon-heartgold

Our faith in Skyrim had waned to the point that the Oracle average was actually just below 55% here. Naturally, Pokemon got off to the early lead and Skyrim only had a slight lead at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there, and now it was headed into a showdown with Dark Souls as the favorite.

As these recaps have shown, one line about what happened is usually good enough outside of really close matches >_>

I would get so bored if I treated them like a history class.

I mean I'm not trying to do full recaps of these matches, they're just quick blurbs

Not to mention I'm trying to talk about these things literal decades after they happened in some cases so I've forgotten some things

My comment was not shade. I very much enjoy these. And yeah I could have picked a better way to spruce things up a bit but very angry younger me chose that one.

Wish we had a contest with best game from the top half of the decade. 2020-2024. And yeah I know the first place but it would be nice to see the others too...

I wish we had a contest.

Is there a reason why the Contests stopped? And yeah I know. Low traffic. I get it. But they could offer like 500 $ total prizes for the whole contest. Don't tell me this is much for a site. So yeah.

Safer_777 posted...

Is there a reason why the Contests stopped? And yeah I know. Low traffic. I get it. But they could offer like 500 $ total prizes for the whole contest. Don't tell me this is much for a site. So yeah.

Fandom doesn't care

The bigger issue than the money is that it takes a lot of employee time which could be spent on improving the website. So contests can be a tough sell to higher ups since they take a lot of time and some money while their benefits are more murky.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8035-quarterfinals-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-vs-mass-effect-2

This was the first time we saw Breath of the Wild face a game that was in a previous contest, and it was still as impressive as ever. Ocarina of Time was projected to get 73% on Mass Effect 2 in 2015, and BotW wasn't too far off from that number. We were finally getting an idea of just how strong it was.

The only downside to a game of the 90s is not seeing how BotW stacks up against the best

pjbasis posted...

The only downside to a game of the 90s is not seeing how BotW stacks up against the best

That's what a bonus match would have been for.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1995-jenova-division-round-1-lavos-vs-mother-brain

In a battle between two giant last boss monsters with no personality to speak of, most people went with the one from the more popular game, which turned out to be correct. Lavos was over 60% for the first couple hours, but then Mother Brain tanked its percentage the rest of the way.

Also CJayC had been on the leaderboard up to this point, but he dropped off after this match.

Mass Effect 2 is probably the most bizarre game in terms of contest strength we have.

It boosted Shepherd and co. to the moon, but I'm not sure it's much stronger than Mass Effect 1, if at all.

It'd destroy ME1 head-to-head

This feels like how we used to think Tidus could beat Auron back in the day because some performances fooled us into thinking they were comparable

I'm sure it'd win head-to-head effortlessly, but indirectly ME2 has always seemed weaker than it should be while 1 has always done way better than we'd guess.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8036-quarterfinals-super-smash-bros-ultimate-vs-xenoblade

It's hard to say if Ultimate disappointed or if Xenoblade had developed a bandwagon by this point that enabled it to resist any SFF and overperform. Or maybe this was SFF? Seems unlikely but who knows!

I feel like I buy Mass Effect’s opponents being a tad weaker in 2015, only oddity is the MGS3 match but there’s probably some weird SFF or something that caused that

Yeah, the MGS3 match feels like an anomaly, but there's no real reason why it should've been.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8037-quarterfinals-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-vs-persona-5

Once again, the Oracle average essentially pegged the final result for Persona 5, which was neck and neck for the first few updates. Witcher 3 began to pull away, but then P5 randomly pulled a 20 vote cut to lower the lead from 80 to 60.

We started to get excited about the possibility of an upset, but then Witcher 3 doubled its lead on the next update and never looked back.

Witcher 3 really was on cruise control until the finals. Do we think it beats, say, Smash Ultimate?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7473-best-of-2018-game-of-the-year-final-final-vote

I could see Witcher 3 beating SSBU. I wish we had a better read on SSBU.

KamikazePotato posted...

Witcher 3 really was on cruise control until the finals. Do we think it beats, say, Smash Ultimate?

How much stronger do we think Persona 5 is than Xenoblade?

How about Witcher 3 vs. SSBU after SSB6 is released?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1996-jenova-division-round-1-liquid-snake-vs-officer-tenpenny

There was some hype surrounding Liquid Snake after his X-Stats from SC2K4 had him ranked pretty highly. Unfortunately, he was locked into a set path with two easy wins and then a loss to Sephiroth. I wonder how he fares if you switch him and Ridley (and if Lavos could have beaten Ridley).

Regardless, Liquid came out of the gate strong with a near quadrupling of Tenpenny, who would wind up dead last in the X-Stats by a decent margin. That's quite an accomplishment in this field. He was the only one to finish under 10% against Sephiroth.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8038-quarterfinals-dark-souls-vs-elder-scrolls-skyrim

Dark Souls had been a sexy upset pick that looked increasingly more likely as the contest went along. When the match rolled around, Skyrim was still the clear favorite, but everyone acknowledged Dark Souls had a chance.

The match was mostly even for the first three hours. Skyrim would try to pull away, but then Dark Souls would cut the lead back down. It repeated like this for a while, but then Skyrim eventually put some distance between them and scored a hard fought victory.

This match also essentially decided the Guru Contest in favor of azuarc. If Dark Souls had won, then Ngamer would have been the winner. Still standing in line, I guess!

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1996-jenova-division-round-1-liquid-snake-vs-officer-tenpenny

There was some hype surrounding Liquid Snake after his X-Stats from SC2K4 had him ranked pretty highly. Unfortunately, he was locked into a set path with two easy wins and then a loss to Sephiroth. I wonder how he fares if you switch him and Ridley (and if Lavos could have beaten Ridley).

Regardless, Liquid came out of the gate strong with a near quadrupling of Tenpenny, who would wind up dead last in the X-Stats by a decent margin. That's quite an accomplishment in this field. He was the only one to finish under 10% against Sephiroth.

quite the accomplishment for Samuel L Jackson’s contest debut

If we're bringing up Hollywood actors into the mix, would Johnny Silverhand (Cyberpunk 2077) be able to win a match by using Keanu Reeves' star power?

Only against turbo fodder.

Big_Bob posted...

If we're bringing up Hollywood actors into the mix, would Johnny Silverhand (Cyberpunk 2077) be able to win a match by using Keanu Reeves' star power?

Based on how Tenpenny did, I'd say not