Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1382

If Knuckles got a 2 seed I am confident he would get like Pikachu as his 7 seed.

In a bracket where every other 2 seed is like Joker level.

Speaking of the guru pick, since it was introduced later on in the guru content's history, I wonder what/who the winners of the earliest contests would have chosen had they got a pick back then?

Ulti and probably also yoblazer are still around to be asked. I don't think guru existed before BGE1.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2111-chaos-division-round-2-tifa-lockheart-vs-luigi

Dunno if CJayC knew what he was doing with this match pic or it was just unintended consequences, but it allowed Luigi to steal the pic advantage from Tifa, which isn't easy to do! The Oracle average was about 57% here, and that's what Tifa had for the first several hours of the match with her inverted FFVII trends. Luigi used the day vote to shave off a few percentage points by the end.

Although Tifa had won the match, this felt like a huge moral victory for Luigi. Even if you thought Tifa was weaker than Squall, it wasn't by this much. It was hard to deny that this was a stronger Luigi than the one who'd been embarrassed in his debut in 2003.

FF characters beating big Nintendo characters feels like a small project result at this point. To the tune of 100k is crazy. But back then it was expected! wild

Nintendo won every Nintendo vs. Square matchup in SC2K5 except for Tifa/Luigi and Sephiroth/Mario

Dark times

Ngamer has fixed the xstats page.

https://thengamer.com/xstats/

Matchup stats on the Guru pages work again, too. That makes my job a little easier.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2112-20xx-division-round-2-mega-man-vs-leon-kennedy

Between the potential for Capcom SFF and "this guy let Gordon Freeman break 40% on him," expectations for Leon were low. The Oracle average was 71% for Mega Man, and it was over a doubling out of the gates. RE's strong night vote let Leon bring the percentage down a good bit, and Mega Man recovered a little with the day vote. Now we had to face the reality that we were dealing with a new and improved Gordon and the possibility that he might actually win a match someday.

And it would be against the B8 mascot himself.

It is wild to think that a Phoenix Wright vs. Gordon Freeman match would probably completely reverse now, if not Phoenix winning by more than Gordon did, judging by how horrid Gordon did in 2018.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2113-20xx-division-round-2-yoshi-vs-pac-man

End of round 2! We already saw the year before what happens when you throw Pac-Man against a Mario character. A weaker Luigi scored 67% in 2004, and Yoshi outdid that by a full 5% here.

Yoshi's paths are often super boring for someone who can hang around near the top. I guess he did have that match against Dante one time.

Oh and I guess his loss to Bowser that first appearence came as a shock.

He also had his 2008 path where he was matched against Squall and then he and Fox got boxed out by Sora somehow

Those were the days

I guess noth Sora and Fox resisted SFF better than expected.

"Those days" ended next round when this caused Mewtwo to beat Squall and Sora in the next round.

I mean it took triple SFF for Mewtwo to advance

What a fraud

Yes, Squall or Yoshi moving on his place would have been better!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2114-mushroom-division-final-mario-vs-zero

Samus was the heavy favorite to win the contest. There was a small contingent who believed in Mario for various reasons, whether it was the hierarchy, rSFF, or what have you. For me, this was the first time I seriously believed Mario might actually win next round. In my opinion, this was one of the most impressive results in the contest against a well-established near elite like Zero.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2115-zebes-division-final-samus-aran-vs-ganondorf

Right after Mario impressed against Zero, Samus fell a little flat against Ganondorf. Even if you argued that Ganondorf was stronger than Zero, the fact that Samus couldn't SFF him at all wasn't a good sign going into a match against Mario.

Felt real bad to bet on Samus because her indirect strength should overcome hierarchy nonsense, then gradually realize in 2k5 that Mario was indirectly stronger this year.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2116-gear-division-final-solid-snake-vs-sora

This match pic might be CJayC's magnum opus, and it's all because of one little detail: Adding the "!" above Sora's head. Without it, this is probably still regarded as a good match pic but not the legend we look back on with fondness now.

It almost certainly helped Snake in this match, too, unless you're wanting to chalk this up to some weird Playstation SFF. Snake was only projected to get about 57% on Sora here, but instead he beat him nearly as badly as Samus did the year before.

Leonhart4 posted...

unless you're wanting to chalk this up to some weird Playstation SFF.

Nowadays we could blame Smash instead!

Speaking of match pics, just went ahead and added the match pics for the later rounds of the 2018 (Legends and Losers bracket matches) and 2020 (Round 4 and onward) contests onto each match's respective wiki page using the wayback machine for help. I'll probably go back and do the same for the earlier matchups for both contests at another time. Would have done the same for the 2015 and 2017 contests but the wayback machine only went as far as 2018.

I kind of wish the ! in the Snake/Sora picture was a little bit more visible. I have to squint to see it, and that's with monitors made in the last 10 years.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2117-dream-division-final-kirby-vs-bowser

Bowser had looked dominant in his first two matches, and it was expected to continue here against Kirby, somebody who was clearly lower on the Nintendo hierarchy. The Oracle average was 58.25% here, but when the match started, Kirby was going toe to toe with Bowser. Most chalked it up to the dum pink ball's board vote, but he just wouldn't go away.

It's hard to explain what happened here. I doubt you could chalk it up to brackets because Bowser had a 38% prediction percentage, so he was probably the overall favorite. It's possible Kirby had picked up a bit of a bandwagon, but after Snake's surprisingly dominant performance against Sora the day before, Bowser was now the clear underdog again.

Kirby then spent the rest of his contest career looking great, especially in multi-way polls. He straight-up defeated Sonic without LFF involved. He effortlessly blew out weaker opponents and put the brass tacks to multiple Noble Niners. Then, after years of impressing, and after being the showcase of Smash Ultimate's World of Light trailer, he gets a rematch with Bowser...and what happens?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7353-division-4-final-bowser-vs-kirby

Lesson learned: You don't f*** with the hierarchy.

Kirby is just a more popular Pac-Man.

UltimaterializerX posted...

Kirby is just a more popular Pac-Man.

Only in terms of their shape

I think there is a bit of truth in that. Kirby is in pretty much every big crossover Nintendo project ever, and because of his top-tier design and longevity, does not feel out of place next to your Marios and Links of the world. And that's a great asset to have in four ways lacking another Nintendo entrant.

But put him against a real icon like Bowser, and enough people vote like the only Kirby game they've ever played is Smash Bros.

IMO, if Snake and Sora's match pic could shift 5%+ the former's way, why couldn't Kirby and Bowser's have done the same in a markedly low votal bout between two characters with far greater fanbase overlap? Versus Melee Kirby in Melee Dream Land, that Bowser art looks just as clearly out of place as Sora did, and I think the contrast of expressions and match of ice puff against fire breath imparted in Kirby an underdog aura that played perfectly into his appeal.

...another unmentioned possibility (albeit one I tend not to favor) is that nothing notably unusual happened there at all - after all, Luigi arguably has been about on par with Bowser (with some fluctuations in the two's relative standing) ever since the Nintendo Boost.

The difference is that Pac-Man folds hard against anything that can SFF him and Kirby holds up really well.

People like Kirby. I'm not convinced that people like Pac-man. Know, respect, but not like.

MetalmindStats posted...

IMO, if Snake and Sora's match pic could shift 5%+ the former's way, why couldn't Kirby and Bowser's have done the same in a markedly low votal bout between two characters with far greater fanbase overlap? Versus Melee Kirby in Melee Dream Land, that Bowser art looks just as clearly out of place as Sora did, and I think the contrast of expressions and match of ice puff against fire breath imparted in Kirby an underdog aura that played perfectly into his appeal.

...another unmentioned possibility (albeit one I tend not to favor) is that nothing notably unusual happened there at all - after all, Luigi arguably has been about on par with Bowser (with some fluctuations in the two's relative standing) ever since the Nintendo Boost.

I certainly don't think the match pic was really biased enough to do much of anything for Kirby. If anything, the fact that Kirby's high seed advantage got him his Smash Bros stage kind of drives home that everyone really knows the character from Smash first, which isn't helping him against Bowser, who also doesn't seem out of place since everyone is already used to seeing every major Nintendo character against that background anyway.

kind of a shame the nintendo hierarchies don't shift, besides Zelda herself of course.

Eh, it's definitely changed, Pokemon in particular.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2118-flood-division-final-master-chief-vs-crono

If you want to see how extreme trends can be, this is a prime example. Crono had nearly 70% two hours into the match. It was still a doubling when the morning vote hit. He didn't fall below 66% until halfway through the match.

From there, Chief managed to shave nearly 5% off, which might be his most impressive performance despite losing 60/40. This was also the only time Chief faced a Noble Niner in a one-on-one setting.

Chief was a weirdly volatile, somewhat non-transitive character. Made for fun matches though.

I miss when we had trends like this. Feels like a combination of lower vote totals and moving the start time back to 8 P.M. basically killed them.

And smartphones and not being in school anymore.

Pretty much the only way we'd ever get anything resembling trends again would be to have the start time at like, 4AM so only Europe and the hardcores can vote at the beginning.

Smartphones did a lot yeah.

We still have geographic trends.

I remember having an archaic flip phone I could kinda use to check contest results in school. GameFAQs didn't have anything resembling a mobile web page back then, so the layout was borderline unreadable. Also, we weren't allowed to use phones at my school, so I got detention for checking a match once. Worth it.

Phone internet was virtually unusable until what the iphone came out in the late 2000's.

TeamRocketElite posted...

And smartphones and not being in school anymore.

Yeah, that diluted trends, but it felt like they were basically nonexistent in 2018 and 2020.

I think around the last time we saw signs of a real ASV was when Sora and Riku used it to bury Hitler.

KamikazePotato posted...

I remember having an archaic flip phone I could kinda use to check contest results in school. GameFAQs didn't have anything resembling a mobile web page back then, so the layout was borderline unreadable. Also, we weren't allowed to use phones at my school, so I got detention for checking a match once. Worth it.

Loading times were also unbearable and mobile data was quite limited and/or expensive.

Children not being allowed phones in school is still a thing. But basically none of them are voting here. Also kinda doubt it would favor the same things.

Not typical trends obviously, but there was definitely an ASV during the Tumblr/Undertale matches as well.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2119-devil-division-final-vincent-valentine-vs-squall-leonhart

I honestly feel like this match is overlooked and underrated as a really good match. It's a rare SFF match where it's close the whole way with multiple lead changes. It was as much of a tossup as it gets. Vincent was the slightest of favorites, with an Oracle average of 50.25% and only four more total picks. The max lead was only 1150. Vincent winning was the lowest prediction percentage of the contest at a mere 12.47% of brackets picking him to win.

But as a Squall fan, it was brutal watching the slow bleed toward the end as Vincent gradually pulled away. This really felt like Squall's chance to finally make the fourth round, and he came up tantalizingly and agonizingly short. He'd eventually make the fourth round in 2007 and 2010, but that was also in an expanded field, so he never did make it to the final eight.

I don't understand this. Hollow Knight Silksong. The first game was good I get it. But seriously? Over 15 million sales? And the sequel that came out. Crushing Xbox, PS and Steam stores? For real? Over 550.000 players on Steam? Pirates saying just buy it and don't pirate it?
And don't tell me well the games are good. There are tons of good games. But they don't do that. Especially indie ones.
I just don't get it...