Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1376

TeamRocketElite posted...

Was it always so easy to break 80%? If feels like there have been a bunch of them now.

Link couldn't even break 80% on Ganondorf in the 2018 rematch. They just don't make blowouts like they used to.

EDIT:

For comparison:

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

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7358-finals-bracket-round-1-link-vs-ganondorf

80%+ blowouts in 2004: 15

80%+ blowouts in 2010: 1 (Mario vs. Falco)

(Decided to go with 2010 instead of 2018 since the Noble Nine minus Seph were pulled from the main bracket there)

Even if we go with only 75%+ in 2010, that number is only 10. SFF in particular seemed to get less severe over time, too, for whatever the reason. Look no further than the difference between Link/Ganondorf in 2004 vs. 2018.

This is also in a 64 character bracket in 2004 vs. a 128 character bracket in 2010.

Holy cow, 15 80%+ results out of 63 matches. That's an insane ratio.

2010 had the vote-ins too, so that probably increased the caliber of the lower seeds.

Yesmar_ posted...

2010 had the vote-ins too, so that probably increased the caliber of the lower seeds.

That's actually a fair point. The quality of lower seeds did go up as a result of that.

But even still, look at Guybrush. Bowser easily blows past 80% against him in 2004, Vincent can "only" muster 77% in 2010.

I think two factors contributed to less blowouts:

1. Voters wising up to who the top dogs were, and being less motivated to vote for Noble Niners after a decade of dominance.
2. Fewer total votes. Big blowouts happens when you've got a bunch of casual drive-by voters supporting Mario over Frank McDude, the protagonist a game they've never heard of. As the casuals migrated to other sites, we were left with the more 'hardcore' voters. The old fogeys who've been here for years and know a lot about gaming in general.

We only had 4 80%+ blowouts in 2005 and 5 in 2006, but those were also brackets with Clinkeroth removed, so that probably contributes to the drop a bit.

I think #1 is a fair point, but vote totals were still quite high in 2010 (Cloud/Snake got 125,000 and Cloud/Link got 129,000). I guess the 12 hour format could've diluted trends enough to prevent some characters from pushing out of the high 70s into the 80s, but those still wouldn't be very many.

2004 is pretty much the ideal recipe for blowout city. Company cap effectively swapping out popular tertiary characters like Tifa and Zelda with bottom feeders like Guybrush and Tanner. Intentional SFF bouts placing the secondary characters that did make it through with their more popular counterparts.

I'd even go as far as to say that a smaller field only compounded things here too. I know it seems counter-intuitive at first glance, but if you expand 2004's bracket to 128 (and we'll stack the second half of the bracket on the 64 entrant bracket we did get), 15 seed Tanner becomes 7 seed Tanner, and while he still very likely loses horribly in the first round, he almost certainly doesn't struggle to break 5% either against the 11th or 12th most nominated Nintendo or Square character that draws the 10 seed. And of course, whoever takes Tanner's spot in what is now Round 2 of the contest is still almost certainly losing to Snake, they aren't getting blown out that bad either.

Post '06 we had three four way contests, three contests with vote-ins, another multi-way contest, a character contest with the Noble Nine removed, and a GOTD contest with a relatively weaker lineup. I just don't think we've had the opportunity to have a lot of 80%+ blowouts. The only contest where we had a very strong elite and a huge range between them and the weakest games was 2015, and I just scanned through the first round, and CT, FFVII, FFVI, LttP, OoT, SM64, SMB3, and SMW* all had 80%+ Round 1 matches, and CT had an 80%+ Round 2 as well.

*I'm going off of what it had before the Undertale rally

2002 didn't have proper nominations or pre-existing data and 2004 had company caps so those years' entrants were naturally going to have more fodder to beat up than would otherwise be expected. Plenty of strong entrants also hadn't had pushes for them or chances to prove they belonged so there was more room for flavor of the month fodder even in other early years, and with more casual nominators and the board having less data on who had worthwhile strength the bracket was filled accordingly..

Characters who missed even the 2003 bracket despite likely being above the fodder line at the time include:
Tifa
Vincent
Frog
Liquid Snake
Rikku (might have been weaker pre-FFX-2?)
Sub-Zero
Mega Man X (specifically ruled ineligible I think?)
Chun-li
Vivi
Peach
Diablo

This is also true. It's why I started the Nomination Rally Tournament, to try to get in characters who are more deserving. It's hard to believe but there were people skeptical of Vincent, Tifa, or Sub-Zero before they got in. "If they're so popular, why haven't they been in yet?"

It's odd how some characters stuck around after seeing NRT success, and others didn't. Tifa and Vincent (usually) didn't need our support after they made a splash on the front page. Then there's Squirtle, who literally beat Cloud and then peaced out.

Also, wasn't Squirtle/Blastoise decided by like 1 vote on B8's NRT tournament? We could've had an entirely different timeline.

I had no idea Sub-Zero was stronger than Scorpion until Sub-Zero debuted. Until then, I thought Scorpion was the #1 for Mortal Kombat.

The NRT also somewhat coincided with the larger bracket sizes, so the barrier to entry for some of these characters that were already a hair away from qualifying without our help was certainly blown away as time went on.

Lots of fodder and debuts in those 20 and below seeds in 2013, but mixed in there are mainstays like Aerith and Vincent too.

Also, I'm pretty sure users got more nominations to play with as brackets got bigger, which compounds how much influence things like the NRT can influence the bracket. B8 gets more nominations, but they can't manifest more free-time into gaming, so we have more nominations to throw towards board movements and such, and even to help characters that aren't missing the contest get better seeds.

TeamRocketElite posted...

I had no idea Sub-Zero was stronger than Scorpion until Sub-Zero debuted. Until then, I thought Scorpion was the #1 for Mortal Kombat.

My rationale for backing Sub-Zero was literally blue >> yellow in general color popularity, and I was so confident that I would have bet my account on it in a second. It can be argued that the blue ninja has a slightly cooler (LOL) name, but it really is all about the colors.

KamikazePotato posted...

Tifa and Vincent (usually) didn't need our support after they made a splash on the front page.

Tifa went from almost breaking the Noble Nine through goddamn Samus to not making the field in a contest twice the size.

Also she has literally only been put up against Seph and Samus since, easily the biggest waste of potential ever.

Well...not so much a waste of potential in the most recent instance.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7369-loser-bracket-round-1-tifa-vs-sephiroth

It was all buildup for that!

Oh I mean I would never forget that one, but as fantastic as that was she was rewarded by running straight into a Samus everyone wanted to beat Mario for the second.

http://www.oraclechallenge.com/archives.php?contest=SC2k18&type=match&match=132

Frame it.

Imagine the momentum Tifa would have been able to come with against literally everyone else.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

The NRT also somewhat coincided with the larger bracket sizes, so the barrier to entry for some of these characters that were already a hair away from qualifying without our help was certainly blown away as time went on.

Well, the first two were 2005 and 2006, so you were still trying to break through into a 64 character bracket then. It did get easier after that, but I'd still argue some of those characters never make it without the NRT, even with bigger brackets.

Also I'm pretty sure we almost always got 10 nominations, no matter the bracket size.

If you had Link vs Ganondorf happen in a Zelda fansite, the results would probably be even closer. On FF fansites Cloud isn't even a guarantee to win anything.

Hardcore players just have a wider appreciation of what they're consuming. A casual is limited to the connections that really stand out, which are gonna be more protagonist centered.

Well yeah, the more "specialized" you get, the better the more "niche" characters will do because you have a larger portion of the base who's familiar with them and is more invested in the game/series.

I think lower vote totals basically captures that effect and why CT will always do better and SFF not as harsh.

I suppose, but we had lower vote totals in 2004 compared to other years during the height of contests and SFF was still brutal.

Can you really compare the effect of SFF over those years though?

If we had a Link vs Ganon match with 100k votes maybe we could see the difference!

You kinda can. Link gets 80% on Yoshi in 2004 and 70% on Luigi in 2010. I don't think an extra 20k is the reason for the disparity.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1727-20xx-division-round-1-tidus-vs-shadow-the-hedgehog

This was the most hotly debated round 1 match in the contest because Shadow and Tidus were separated by a mere 0.03% in the 2003 X-Stats. It lived up to the billing of being a close match, although it wasn't particularly dramatic. Tidus jumped out to an early lead, built it up to a 1500 vote margin overnight, and essentially held steady the rest of the way.

The fact that Tidus and Shadow were as close as advertised is another thing that obscured Magus's true strength because it seemed to validate their values.

Setting up the perfect storm.

I think this might also be the only debatable/close match Tidus ever won.

It's wild he has never made it to round 3.

Meanwhile, Jecht showed up once, made it to Round 3, and never came back.

Tidus has had some tough draws though. Not to say some of them weren't winnable, but he's had very few gimmes along the way.

Yeah, very tough bracket placement often.

I'm just realizing we're going to have a ton of stuff to look back on next year. 20th anniversary of Villains and SC2K5, 15th anniversary of CBVIII and GotD, 10th anniversary of Games 2015, and 5th anniversary of GotD2. We always get something in year divisible by 5!

The hilarious part is that Tidus probably wouldn't be able to replicate what Jecht did, because I certainly wouldn't take Tidus > Phoenix Wright now. In 2010 sure, but not any later than that.

Nah, I think Tidus could beat Phoenix. I wouldn't say Ike is clearly stronger than him. Tidus has never been weak. He's just firmly middle of the pack.

Tidus fails to reach round 3 for the same reason Knuckles does, he's popular enough to get a decent seed, but too popular to get the sort of seed that he can take advantage of overseeded characters in round 2.

Really his best chance was 2018, and the Iconic Characters AND Smash Ultimate Hype happened which made him look terrible, but it turned out to not so much be him looking bad as just a bunch of the field shifted up.

Yeah, Tidus getting stuck against DK in 2018, a character who was primed to benefit from having to vote in every match, was bad luck. Leon Kennedy suffered the same fate!

Although I'd say he probably had better shots in 2003 (he barely lost to Ganondorf, who barely lost to Magus) and in 2010, where the winner of Tidus/Sub-Zero was almost certain to beat Roxas in round 2.

Oh right, winner of Sub-Zero/Tidus faced Roxas next. That's definitely his best shot.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1728-20xx-division-round-1-tommy-vercetti-vs-max-payne

Remember these guys?

Somehow they were still making the bracket as recently as 2013!

Max Payne 3 came out in 2012 so it sort of makes sense there. Apparently that game even reviewed well.

TeamRocketElite posted...

Max Payne 3 came out in 2012 so it sort of makes sense there. Apparently that game even reviewed well.

And then he lost to Guybrush!

But yeah, I guess it makes sense in light of that, although apparently nobody here cared.

And it is kind of fun to watch Vercetti's stock slowly tank over the course of a decade.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1729-20xx-division-round-1-zero-vs-protoman

Proto man deserved better than this. Probably not a bad result all things considered.

I was going to say Protoman never got a fair shot, but then I remembered he narrowly lost to Ike in 2013.

Which isn't too bad really

We like Ike.

I guess Protoman didn't have to suffer the shame of losing to a horse, at least.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1730-20xx-division-round-1-frog-vs-liquid-snake

I think this was the closest wire to wire match for many years

Also I'm pretty sure this was the match that convinced me to give MGS a try

Yeah, this held the record for closest wire-to-wire 1v1 match until 2010.

And yet, I would wager it's the least memorable Frog match of 2004, which is insane to think about.

Frog and Liquid also felt like they had similar traits in these things. They were notoriously difficult to predict at times, except Frog usually won the debated matches and Liquid often didn't.

The fact that Chrono Trigger and MGS have pretty similar trends was what made this match so good, but man if it was just about 85 or votes closer (give or take a few)...