Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1381

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2011-triforce-division-round-2-ganondorf-vs-ansem

This was considered a massive underperformance. After all, CATS had actually been ranked higher than Ganondorf in the 2004 X-Stats, so how had Ansem managed to lose this match? This may have been the first true LOL X-Stats moment.

Seriously though, Ganondorf did underperform relative to expectations here, as the Oracle average was around 78% for this match. The answer to this may be due to the debut of a rather famous GameFAQs Contests meme: Bacondorf. In other words, this was Ganondorf's first sprite round appearance, and so we got the LttP sprite for Ganon. Some people complained that this shouldn't have been allowed as Ganon and Ganondorf could be considered distinct entities, but obviously that complaint fell on deaf ears, as we would see Bacondorf many times over the years.

bacondorf should be pic advantage imooo

ALttP Ganon should be a positive (at worst, neutral). It's the Zelda 1 sprites you gotta watch out for.

Why would ALTTP be a positive? 'Ganondorf' didnt even exist until Ocarina of Time, and most voters are going to prefer the human design over a big pig.

Ganondorf as another name for Ganon is in LttP.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2012-triforce-division-round-2-dr-robotnik-vs-master-hand

Master Hand was actually the Oracle favorite here. There wasn't a lot of confidence in Robotnik after he struggled against the Sin Fin, and people figured Kuja had to be stronger than that.

Turns out they were wrong! Robotnik was actually pushing for a doubling overnight before the Smash day vote allowed Master Hand to get above 40% by the end. This was definitely even more of a beatdown than the final result indicated.

Sin vs. Master Hand would have been a really funny Round 1 match pic. Fin vs. Glove.

That would've been a weird match pic considering it was the "sprite" round and it would've had an FFX background since Sin was the higher seed

Trying to imagine what a Sin sprite round picture would have looked like without any of the remaster or spinoff content available.

My best guess is that he just reuses the fin pic. I just wonder what he would've chosen for the background.

Probably some random image of Zanarkand, I would imagine.

Just to make a random fin floating in the air stand out even more!

Well, Master Hand's picture probably wouldn't change, so it would hilarious to see a floating fin vs. a floating hand in front of probably this, but lower quality.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2013-mushroom-division-final-bowser-vs-revolver-ocelot

It feels like Ocelot had a disappointing contest considering some people had high expectations for him, but he actually finished 5th in the final X-Stats behind the characters who made the final four of the contest. I think Ocelot was a decent low midcarder who had some weird and/or embarrassing showings (as characters of his strength tier tend to have). It's too bad we never got Gray Fox in when he could've potentially had decent strength, but I don't think there's anyone else out there from the series who didn't get in who could've been stronger than Ocelot.

I think Ocelot had such high expectations here because we all saw good Liquid Snake looked in 2004 and figured Ocelot should also be around that range.

But of course, it was just a Chrono Trigger character overperforming on a Noble Niner during the sprite round again, and we had yet to realize it for both Magus and Frog. Ocelot having a close match with Pac-Man later that year probably isn't seen as such a bad thing if Liquid wasn't a low key fraud.

Doesn't help that few characters have had a more volatile contest career than Liquid. We weren't prepared for who is essentially Kefka in MGS form.

Yeah, Ocelot was pretty consistent, all things considered, and he made every contest since his debut other than 2006. Liquid was up and down, and you couldn't rely on him to consistently make contests.

Actually, who was the third strongest MGS character between Liquid, Ocelot, and The Boss? Liquid finished ahead of the other two in 2008, Ocelot did in 2010, and The Boss beat out Ocelot in 2013 (for whatever it's worth) and 2018.

Leonhart4 posted...

Actually, who was the third strongest MGS character between Liquid, Ocelot, and The Boss? Liquid finished ahead of the other two in 2008, Ocelot did in 2010, and The Boss beat out Ocelot in 2013 (for whatever it's worth) and 2018.

I would be utterly shocked if it wasn’t The Boss.

Which makes me wonder if the actual third strongest character is MGS3 Ocelot

We just never got to see him outside of the Wily match

It’s probably Raiden but we have no proof because his history is all screwy.

oh yeah Raiden exists doesn't he

Eh, I guess there's a decent chance he's third simply because he's the main character of MGS2 but I wouldn't feel confident about it

Maybe during peak Raiden aka 2013 Revengeance

but now would go Boss or Ocelot especially with the MGS3 remake coming out

I would have to imagine time has been the kindest to The Boss, ironically.

Revengeance is more popular nowadays than on release, but I'm not sure that would mean anything for Raiden.

I'll go with Liquid, since his highs are higher than anyone else. Getting 45% against Luigi in '08 and going 50/50 with Frog in CT's best year is better than anything the others have done.

How did he not even make 2013 though

He was in 2013 though

THROUGH THIS ARM

More accurately, Liquid was in 2013

THROUGH THIS MATCH PICTURE



(bottom of Tifa's side)

I thought you were doing a bad pun talking about the water behind L-Block

_SecretSquirrel posted...

More accurately, Liquid was in 2013

THROUGH THIS MATCH PICTURE



(bottom of Tifa's side)

I love that pic so much

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2014-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-liquid-snake

Speaking of Liquid! The Oracle average for Sephiroth was about 69% but then he finished with nearly 76% by the end. It's rare for a match between two known entities to be this far off from the average without SFF being involved.

Of course, we know the reason for it now, but it was certainly perplexing back then. In fact, some sort of Playstation SFF was suggested for this result (much as it had been for FFVII vs. MGS1 in the Games Contest the year prior).

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2015-ruin-division-final-kefka-vs-diablo

This was essentially a 50/50 split in the Oracle, with Diablo only having two more pickers than Kefka. Unsurprisingly, Kefka jumped out to a fast start, building up a lead of nearly 300 in the first hour. However, between how Diablo dominated the day vote against Bison the round before and how Kefka's day vote tanked against Mithos in round 1, nobody expected it to hold.

Sure enough, Diablo had caught up by 5 hours in and never looked back. He eventually won by nearly 7000 votes and posted the lowest prediction percentage of the contest. A mere 14.76% of brackets predicted Diablo to get to the Final Four.

The Ruin Division certainly ruined the most brackets, that's for sure.

Looks like 5% of the site started gaming after 2005. Not unexpected, but does illustrate just how much GameFAQs belonged to web 1.0 and lost its place following the rise of Youtube / Facebook / Reddit etc.

Kotetsu534 posted...

Looks like 5% of the site started gaming after 2005. Not unexpected, but does illustrate just how much GameFAQs belonged to web 1.0 and lost its place following the rise of Youtube / Facebook / Reddit etc.

Some interesting statistics when looking at the previous results of this poll.

According to today's poll just over 14% of the site started gaming in 1984 or prior. In 2009, despite the period being much closer in time, only 6.3% of the site had been gaming since before '84.

Also, in 2009, just over 43% of the site had started gaming between 1994 and 2002. According to today's poll, the amount of people currently on GameFAQS who started gaming between 1995 to 2004 has fallen to 27.76%

People say that GameFAQS is frozen in time, but it's not only that, it's actively going backwards!

Back in my day, this was the hip, cool site. Now it’s just for navel gazing old farts!

Well I mean, the totals are down for all options and it's just a higher percentage stuck around from those times.

Yeah, it just means the younger you are, the less likely you are to still be here

Which tracks

The data does indeed suggest the average date on birth on gamefaqs has gone backward over time.

https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/GameFAQs_Average_Age

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2016-triforce-division-final-ganondorf-vs-dr-robotnik

The Oracle average here was 64% for Ganondorf, and yet he beat Robotnik worse than he beat Ansem. Robotnik actually finished below CATS in the final X-Stats.

This may lend credence to the idea that Ansem overperformed the round before due to Bacondorf, but Robotnik didn't appear this weak when he showed up again in 2013. Could it be the impact of bracket voting or just people valuing the concept of the contest? Who knows!

There might have been some SFF in the match as well. The Nintendo/Sonic fanbases were starting to overlap more and more by that time.

Yeah, I think Nintendo and Sonic overlap pretty heavy to start with. It would be interesting to see if Sin would have done any better as an entity nearly equal to Robotnik, or if Ganon was just cruising on some combination of bracket votes or people rallying behind the Nintendo villains going into their matches against Sephiroth.

Bracket should not matter too much at this stage of the contest, should they?

Seems like a clear case of SFF in hindsight

I wonder if Sonic in general just gets skewed a lot with Nintendo and is how the series tends to upset/overperform a lot when facing Square/Konami/other Non Nintendo

Sonic does feel like a Nintendo thing now. I get the feeling his games sell more on Nintendo systems.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Bracket should not matter too much at this stage of the contest, should they?

Normally you'd be right but Ganondorf had 75% of brackets in that match

I meant more lile was the contest not basically decided at that point. Everyone caring remotely would have Seph, Ganon, Seph. I suppose people not coming here could be different, but b8ers bracket vote less once they know they aren't winning anyway.

Well, this is why it's hard to quantify how much bracket voting actually matters. At what point does it drop off? When people perceive their bracket is dead or when they don't have the right winner in the match?