Contest and Stats Discussion - Part 1385

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5146-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-shepard-vs-olimar-vs

Shepard rode the high from Mass Effect 3 to a 2 seed. The only notable thing from this match is that we got FemShep in the match pic. Everything else here went pretty much as expected.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5147-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-tharja-vs-juliet-vs

We had a few matches like this in round 1, where we had three completely unknown characters, and we were pretty sure none of them were very strong. It was just a matter of trying to guess who was the least bad.

Tharja was the big Guru favorite, with 72.65% support. Juliet was second with 22.86% support. Tiny Tina only had 4.49% support. That was the order they started the match off in, too. However, after 20 minutes, Tiny Tina passed Juliet and never looked back.

Tharja managed to push her lead out to 421 votes a couple hours in, and then it turned into a giant stall fest for the rest of the night. When morning came, Tina surged and managed to take the lead with a few hours to go. However, after a short struggle, Tharja managed to shake her off for good and pull away for a close victory.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2434-mushroom-division-round-1-grand-theft-auto-vs-warcraft

I feel like this match was the nexus point for Grand Theft Auto in contests. Up to this point, GTA wasn't elite or anything, but it was usually strong enough to take care of business in round one, at least (unless RacistFAQs came into play anyway). People didn't expect GTA to blow out Warcraft or anything (the Oracle average was about 55%), but it was surely good enough to handle Blizzard's #3 series.

It's kinda weird to realize now, looking back, that World of Warcraft wasn't even two years old at the time. It had already become a big deal, but GameFAQs didn't care about MMOs, so it shouldn't really matter, right? For what it's worth, this match did take place on a Tuesday, which was usually maintenance day, so if a rally was going to manifest on battle.net, this was the best shot for it.

For the first ten minutes, GTA was doing about as expected. Then Warcraft made a decent cut, and they went back and forth for the rest of the first hour, which ended with a 100 vote cut. Warcraft had the lead 30 minutes later and slowly pulled away the rest of the day. GTA would try to make the occasional push, but it could never cut consistently to threaten Warcraft. GTA has never been the same since this result.

Oh right, this result also prompted a post from CJayC.

From CJayC Posted 7/12/2006 12:06:25 AM #001

As with the last few contests, I'll try to do this whenever a vote is extremely close (under 1% difference).

13 users got axed for egregious vote stuffing (i.e. can't even begin to argue it was accidental, or that their brother, cousin, friend, and dog just happened to vote on the same computer). 12 of them were stuffing for GTA.

And, just for the conspiracy theorists, all the fraudulent votes we caught put together would have added just 600 votes for GTA, still not enough to put them over the top.

Most Ironic Account Name Banned: "SC2K6Champ".

Even back then it was always the loser that was stuffing more.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5148-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-hero-vs-rinoa-vs

The first of our Board 8 seeds was the Dragon Quest V Hero. However, even with Aerith and Rinoa LFFing each other, nobody had any expectations of him finishing anything other than last. The fact that he beat Rinoa and got a quarter of the vote was a pleasant surprise for most.

But for me, I was annoyed that we finally got other FFVIII characters into the contest, and Rinoa and Seifer both got stuck in LFF situations. Rinoa in particular probably got her worst possible matchup. The fact that it was only a doubling meant she could have been decent, but we'll never know.

I’ll never understand why Ceej and Allen both loved SFF/LFF matches so much.

Well, one good thing about them is that they stop a certain series from taking over the contest. If multiple games/representatives face each other early, then you'll have a wider variety of contestants in the later rounds.

Which is why it was funny how Shadow of the Colossus screwed up the MGS hierarchy battle.

I don't really care about variety. I just want good matches, or failing that, at least an interesting result I can do something with. SFF/LFF matches rarely provide either.

Especially in the later years when they became diluted and we stopped getting the hilarious beatdowns like Link/Ganondorf.

Also ironically the couple of times we could've had interesting SFF matches, something interrupted them, whether it was SotC in 2010 or Undertale ruining the Mario/Pokémon gauntlet in 2015.

Still curious how Witcher 3 would've done against Mario Odyssey and Smash Ultimate. I wouldn't be surprised by literally any result, but we'll never know. At least SMO vs. SSBU was moderately interesting I guess.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5149-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-draven-vs-chie-vs-jak

Here is where it all began. This was another one of those matches where you were just trying to guess who was the least bad, although Jak was at least a known commodity. Draven was the Guru favorite behind the power of League of Legends and rally potential with 64.08% of brackets. Jak had 28.57% of brackets, and Chie had only 7.35% of brackets.

This was one of those matches that looked like it was over at the freeze. Jak had 42%, Chie had 34%, and Draven was dead last with 24% of the vote. From there, Jak and Chie continued to go up, while Draven continued to go down. Chie's lead over Draven peaked at 1458, and Jak's peaked at 2572. This was three hours in. Draven overtook Chie in an hour and 45 minutes, and he overtook Jak an hour and 15 minutes after that. The final margin over Jak was 2890 votes for a total swing of 5462 votes over the span of 9 hours. Draven went from 20.82% at his lowest to 40.47% by the end.

This was a weird one for me personally because I was working night shift at Amazon at the time. When I got off of work and checked my phone to vote, Jak was still winning by about 1000 votes. By the time I got home, Draven had taken the lead, so I had no idea what was going on at the time.

Looking at the final vote total, it was almost 40,000 votes, which was higher than what we'd seen so far, but only by about 6-7k. It wasn't this massive explosion of votes. As such, we could convince ourselves that Draven could do this against weaklings like Jak and Chie, but wait until he faces real competition in Ryu and Mega Man X in round two. That would be too much for him to overcome. How wrong we were.

But this is also another example of a rally champ getting a lucky draw in round one. If Draven had gotten Mega Man X and Ryu in round one, it really might have been too much to overcome because he likely would've been down by over 5000 votes, and the rally pulled in just under 5500 votes. It might have been possible, but it would've been really close.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2435-mushroom-division-round-1-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-devil-may

One of the most debated matches in the entire contest was the imminent round two battle between Sonic the Hedgehog and Super Smash Bros. Sonic was a classic series with many well-liked games over the span of many years. Smash only had two games under its belt with a massively hyped third entry that had just been unveiled almost exactly two months before on May 10th.

Sonic got the first chance to impress, and it did not disappoint. The Oracle average was around 65% here, and it surpassed that with relative ease. Now it was Smash's turn to show what it could do.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2591-which-upcoming-big-name-sequel-are-you-most-looking-forward

wild poll

LeonhartFour posted...

But this is also another example of a rally champ getting a lucky draw in round one. If Draven had gotten Mega Man X and Ryu in round one, it really might have been too much to overcome because he likely would've been down by over 5000 votes, and the rally pulled in just under 5500 votes. It might have been possible, but it would've been really close.

With the absolutely huge 200+ character bracket, I don't think that's really a feasible round 1 match, but I also don't think that would be the worst case scenario for a huge rally run to start.

I think he'd have a tougher time claiming first place if he drew something like Ryu and Chie since more of the non-rally votes would be concentrated on one entity. That would also be much more likely to happen, especially since one of the forgotten aspects of his run was that Draven was a 3 seed, and all the 3 seeds were gifted to contest newcomers, so it's not exactly clear where he would have been placed just based on nominations.

Yeah, fair enough. I was just thinking of the scenario where Draven would have the fewest votes before the rally kicked in.

Let me look at the other 3 seeds and see what other scenarios might have been able to take him out.

Honestly, the best bet is probably to get in the match with Zelda and Sackboy instead of John Marston. Most of the 3 seeds got pretty decent draws, even if they didn't all win.

That’s a good point about round 1 being the most important for a rally character/game, which is why Undertale was so impressive. Missingno and L-Block are also low key the most impressive ones, because they had strong opponents immediately.

Nah, L-Block got a good draw for the first two rounds. Kirby was strong, sure, but 2nd place was good enough and the other two opponents were Laharl and Nathan Hale. Then Kirby got LFF'd by DK in round two, which enabled L-Block to survive again. The real question is what would have happened if the fourth character in that match were a neutral entity instead of DK.

And Undertale got a good draw getting ME3 right off the bat, too. If it gets a strong opponent, the rally doesn't succeed because it started so late.

Leonhart4 posted...

Yeah, fair enough. I was just thinking of the scenario where Draven would have the fewest votes before the rally kicked in.

Let me look at the other 3 seeds and see what other scenarios might have been able to take him out.

Honestly, the best bet is probably to get in the match with Zelda and Sackboy instead of John Marston. Most of the 3 seeds got pretty decent draws, even if they didn't all win.

Yeah, there's a good shot that Draven could have won the contest even if he trades places with most of the other 3 seeds. That Zelda/Sackboy combination was the only one that would have presented him with a really good gap between the 1st and 2nd place entrants.

The real luck may have been hitting whatever criteria Allen had for gifting those 3 seeds. Most likely as a result of being in a game/series that was both new and unrepresented in previous brackets, since I can't believe Draven would have made the top 9 newcomers overall in terms of just raw nomination numbers. If he gets seeded just based on nominations, he probably lands in the 10-18 range, which is far more likely to give him a strong/weak combo in the first round, which is the worst case scenario for a rally in 2013's format.

Teemo got an 11 seed, and I'd imagine Draven probably got more nominations since Allen made him the 3 seed.

LeonhartFour posted...

Teemo got an 11 seed, and I'd imagine Draven probably got more nominations since Allen made him the 3 seed.

Swapping Teemo and Draven is actually an interesting one in itself, because the idea of Draven trying to rally against the OG contest disruptor in L-Block in Round 1 is a real interesting thought experiment.

That was also a day match, so who knows how that impacts the initial rally.

MacArrowny posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2591-which-upcoming-big-name-sequel-are-you-most-looking-forward

wild poll

Man, Galaxy is far and away the best game in that poll, and it got its ass kicked.

No pre-release hype will ever top Brawl though.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2022-which-big-name-sequel-are-you-most-looking-forward-to

It's too bad we didn't get Brawl and TP in the same poll in 2006.

Big_Bob posted...

Man, Galaxy is far and away the best game in that poll, and it got its ass kicked.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2646-which-upcoming-big-name-sequel-are-you-most-looking-forward

they did one a month later and removed Brawl

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5150-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-yuri-l-vs-ryu-vs-face

Believe it or not, Yuri Lowell was the Guru nomination for this contest, which explains how he got a 4 seed. I forget who won the Guru for Rivals, but Yuri was in the previous Character Battle and had gotten throttled by Tifa. The logic was that it was a bad matchup for Yuri and maybe he could win with a high seed.

Well, unfortunately for him, he got pitted against a chronically underseeded character in Ryu. At least Yuri beat the random dude from Borderlands.

Yuri Lowell is a good character from a bad game.

SuperNiceDog won rivals. I remember because he changed the guru nom from Lugia to Yuri during the nomination period which effectively got them both in.

Oh right, that did happen. I had forgotten about that swap.

ctesjbuvf posted...

SuperNiceDog won rivals. I remember because he changed the guru nom from Lugia to Yuri during the nomination period which effectively got them both in.

this makes his milkshake duck during 2018 or so make perfect sense

Big_Bob posted...

Yuri Lowell is a good character from a bad game.

Get out, Vesperia is amazing.

I tried it for the first time a couple of years ago. Bored the hell out of me. The plot for the first several hours is so low-stakes, it's ridiculous. Your team is basically a bunch of people who got bored and decided to join Yuri on an errand he was doing. And it's not like the graphics or battle system is exceptional, either.

I do see why people like Yuri though, he's legitimately cool.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5151-character-battle-ix-division-1-round-1-x-vs-welkin-vs

Jigglypuff was the only character from the original Smash Bros. who had yet to make a contest, and this result showed why. Mega Man X had made two contests before, but it was hard to get a reading on his exact strength because he had been paired with Mario in 2008 and had gotten SFF'd by Link in 2010 after facing two newbies. He was facing two newbies again (hello Welkin Gunther, you are also here), but beating down a Gen 1 Pokemon from Smash felt impressive.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2436-mushroom-division-round-1-super-smash-bros-vs-dragon-quest

This match basically went as expected. The Oracle average was only a tenth of a percent off from the final result. That being said, every contest has a result that draws the ire of casual fans despite being patently obvious to those of us who follow contests closely. This was that match.

There was so much complaining about Dragon Quest losing this match because it had such a longstanding history and it was incredibly influential, while it was debatable if Smash should even be considered a series with only two series. While those may be reasonable positions, at the end of the day, it's a popularity contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5152-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-sonic-vs-fei-vs-dan

Not much to say about this one. The order felt pretty clear on this one. As weak as Sonic was at this point, old JRPG non-FF protagonist and joke fighting game character couldn't make him look bad.

Not much to say about the blowouts but I'm still reading!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5153-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-lucina-vs-dracula-vs

After Rivalry Rumble indicated that previously nebulous characters like Dracula were eligible, there was a push to get him into CBIX. He was the big Guru favorite here, although there were a few who believed being female Marth would be enough to push Lucina over the top. Also somehow this wouldn't be the last we would see of Caim this contest despite his paltry 1586 votes.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2437-ultima-division-round-1-final-fantasy-vs-diablo

After Zelda and Mario put up massive blowouts, it was now Final Fantasy's turn. This match actually started 30 minutes late, but it still put up high vote totals. The Oracle average was just under 80% and Final Fantasy blew past that. Diablo was probably the strongest of the first round opponents the big three faced in round one, although it probably helped FF quite a bit that the match pic was Cloud, Squall, and Tidus against three random dudes with no Diablo in sight.

I'm actually a little surprised Jigglypuff isn't a little better, especially in that contest.

LeonhartFour posted...

three random dudes with no Diablo in sight.

Imagine that. Diablo without Diablo.

pjbasis posted...

I'm actually a little surprised Jigglypuff isn't a little better, especially in that contest.

It probably could have been in a better spot.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5154-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-layton-vs-barret-vs

Barret was one of our NRT winners, but he chose a bad year to show up because this was probably FFVII's nadir in these contests (except Tifa. Tifa is always the exception). This was not a great showing. We'd seen Layton get stomped twice before, and the other character was from Touhou. There might also be some RacistFAQs at play.

I do wonder how Barret would do now since he's widely regarded as one of the best characters in the remake.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5155-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-phoenix-vs-marth-vs

This was one of the more debated round one matches between known commodities. Phoenix was the board favorite, with nearly 70% of Guru picks. Marth had around 30% and a handful of people actually picked Nightmare to win (again, SoulCalibur never looked as good as it did in that 2004 match against Kingdom Hearts). Everyone knew Phoenix would come out of the gates strong, but the question was if he could hold against the inevitable collapse long enough to prevent Marth from catching up by the end.

As expected, Phoenix started off strong, with over 50% of the vote at the freeze. While his percentage did gradually dip, it was not the precipitous drop-off we had seen in the past and Marth never made a serious comeback attempt. He only cut occasionally and Phoenix was able to increase his lead the entire way. He was still very front-loaded, but his joke trends had finally begun to diminish a bit.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2438-ultima-division-round-1-mega-man-vs-mario-kart

While Mega Man was the clear favorite in this match, there was a sizable contingent behind Mario Kart as well. At their forefront was yoblazer, who was so confident in Mario Kart's victory that he bet his account on it. The case for both series made sense. Mega Man was a Noble Niner, which meant his games had to be generally well liked. However, it was unlikely that any individual game was that strong. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

On the other hand, Mario Kart was a super popular series, especially with casuals. It didn't seem farfetched to think both Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 would be stronger than any individual Mega Man game (which, looking back on it now, appears to be the case if we're only counting the original series). Of course, GameFAQs prefers platformers over racing games (even ones with Mario in them), so when push came to shove, yoblazer had to bid his account farewell.

As for the match itself, it wasn't much of a contest. Mario Kart led for the first minute before Mega Man seized control. It got up above 60% for a while, but Mario Kart gradually whittled that away over the course of the match.

I wonder if Mario Kart pulls the upset now after the success of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

Well, the success of all the Mega Man Legacy Collections shows that series still has a modern audience. They and Mega Man 11 were successful enough to bring us Dual Override. Plus, GameFAQs generally doesn't like casual games.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5156-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-kos-mos-vs-dunban-vs

Hey, that's Dunban over there! Tough break getting stuck against KOS-MOS though. This was FFVII's second match in the contest, and it was the second underwhelming showing. Vincent was predicted to get nearly 70% on KOS-MOS based on previous X-Stats and he barely got 60% here.

There were plenty of excuses and rationalizations made for Vincent here, such as FFVII anti-voting, KOS-MOS standing out in the match pic, and things like that. However, the writing was on the wall for him. Of course, we had no idea what was in store for him in round two.

Vincent got hit hard by GameFAQs' aging audience. Stoic badass cool guy characters just aren't the same anymore.

Even if you gave Vincent every Dunban vote over there, that would still have been an embarrassment for him.