Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1376

Lettuce hope characters get good match pictures from now on.

it's no surprise that Kefka started looking decent in these things the moment he stopped getting lettuce pics

It is hilarious that Dissidia ended up being the best thing to happen to Kefka simply because it gave him good official art.

LeonhartFour posted...

it's no surprise that Kefka started looking decent in these things the moment he stopped getting lettuce pics

Terra and Cecil too. Although they were still cursed to have awful bracket paths regardless.

Hasn’t Solid s*** gone undefeated?

Please don't use that as a justification that it's actually not bad for him. Again, you know better. Stop it.

He's undefeated in sprite rounds because he's usually facing characters who aren't close to him without a sprite

Snake/Frog is probably a 60/40 match without that sprite and instead Snake couldn't even get 52%

I never said it wasn’t bad for him. That was an honest question.

I push back on the sprite round hate because I was treated like garbage for years for liking it and I have a long memory.

You were not treated like garbage. No more than you treated me like garbage for not liking things you liked for years and years anyway.

So let's take it easy on playing the victim card, shall we

I never have or would treat you poorly, wtf dude, and this was resolved like a decade ago

This is what I'm saying

You were not treated like trash for liking other things any more than I was

We're passionate but outside of a select few trolls over the years like BT, we aren't trashing each other in here, so take it easy

Oooooh I understand now.

Yeah it wasn't mainly in the stats topic, I'll give you that, but there were a lot of threads outside of here that crossed a line, including one from KP accusing me of pic sabotage that I'll never forget because my feelings really were hurt for a long time after.

I really love the old school sprite rounds and enjoyed keeping the theme of them alive. It isn't anything else and it surely isn't sabotage. You can check the tape. I've always loved it.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1770-midgar-division-semifinal-cloud-strife-vs-squall-leonhart

Well, 23.79% of the site understands.

Squall would do better today, I think.

Probably, just due to the lessened severity of SFF and Cloud being weaker now than back then.

I'd guess it becomes a doubling instead of a tripling, but still not ideal...!

Ambitious but I could see it.

Well, I would still consider 69.99% a "doubling," so I'm giving him a little leeway...!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1771-midgar-division-semifinal-auron-vs-sephiroth

Not much Auron can do against Sephiroth. Does Squall still beat Auron today?

I think they're still relatively close. I could see either one winning.

What were squall and auron's 2018 x-stats? Very close I imagine?

Auron was projected to win with 53% but the X-Stats from that year are difficult to gauge because of the double elimination format throwing things off a bit

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1772-chaos-division-semifinal-sonic-the-hedgehog-vs-dante

Dante isn't weak. It's just rough going up against even the bottom of the Noble Nine.

This was also the sprite round, so they used his cameo in the PS2 Viewtiful Joe port, which...doesn't really capture Dante's appeal visually, so people blamed that for this performance.

The sprite round used to be bad in general for characters who didn't have sprites because you're putting up a really good looking sprite (like Sonic's) up against...that. You can love the sprite round all you want, but the blatant disparity in quality was super unfair for some characters.

Not that Dante was winning regardless, but it's not an accurate representation of what he was capable of doing.

Of course, this performance gave me a brief glimmer of hope that Sonic might have a chance against Samus...!

It’s a shame that character battles are dead because I would have been curious how much DMC5 being good boosted him

Devil May Cry games have never been strong on this site. I always figured Dante's character design propped him up more than his games.

DMC3 couldn't even double a game that was never released in English.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6111-best-game-ever-day-16-metal-gear-solid-3-vs-mother-3

I wouldn't really hold that against DMC3!

I imagine there's a sizable chunk of the site that went out of their way to play Mother 3, and if you did that, you're probably voting for it in a contest match.

Or if you've never played either but you like Earthbound, you're probably giving Mother 3 a vote.

Odd thought.. is Mother 3 stronger than Lucas himself?

Lucas has been in one poll in which he got under 6%. Granted, Kirby was also in the poll, but that's still a pathetic result. Yet Mother 3 has impressed in both of its matches.

Mother 3 became a meme that even showed up at Nintendo's e3 presentation one year.

I imagine Lucas would be prone to heavy SFF against other Smash characters, like Ness but even worse. He's probably fodder anyway but not as bad as he looked in 2008.

JRPG characters are usually weaker than their games. Ness isn't stronger than Earthbound and he's Smash Bros royalty.

On the other hand Captain Falcon is stronger than F-Zero games, and Mario is stronger than Mario Kart. Racing game characters = strong??

That's definitely true for silent protagonist-types and ensemble casts...

(of which Lucas is both a silent protagonist and part of an ensemble cast)

But it's still weird that Mother 3 has meme'd its way into some contest strength. It makes me wonder if Hollow Knight: Silksong could win a match if it was thrown into a bracket right now.

The character who's popularity vis a vis their games/series that has always confused me is Mega Man. Obviously the series as a whole is more popular than its individual games, but even taking that into account, Mega Man the character has always outperformed his series' overall strength, at least from what we could gather on it in 2006. I didn't start gaming until Christmas '98, so maybe my view of these things is warped, but it's weird to me that he gets the same amount of "icon boost" as someone like Sonic, who to me at least is on a whole other tier as far as iconicity goes.

Sonic games aren't very strong either. More than MM games, but not by a lot.

Sonic 2 would beat Mega Man 2? Have they ever had a direct matchup?

At the very least, Sonic Mania won two rounds in GOTD2, while Mega Man 11 didn't even make the bracket.

Mega Man X (the game) is way stronger than any Sonic game.

Yeah, MMX is the strongest game between either series. I'd say MM2 is weaker than Sonic 2 (or Sonic 1, I guess. It actually looked better in 2009!), but it's probably close.

in 2024 SMS vs SA2 actually happens

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1773-chaos-division-semifinal-sora-vs-samus-aran

Noble Nine continues to get the job done.

I miss the days when Sora impressed us instead of embarrassing himself

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1774-hyrule-division-final-link-vs-crono

Truly impressive Link performance. Crono finally gets his win over Mario and Link swats him aside like nothing.

Cloud and Sephiroth are still the only characters to break 40% vs. Link one-on-one.

He always wins.

I just checked the Oracle site and the consensus was Link with 57.64% and only 7 people predicted a 60%+ win

It's rare when Link actually surpasses our expectations by a notable margin.

Leonhart4 posted...

Cloud and Sephiroth are still the only characters to break 40% vs. Link one-on-one.

Hey now.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5267-character-battle-ix-bonus-battle-4-link-vs-solid-snake

Although it's questionable if anyone breaking 40% on Link is possible without a rally anymore. Cloud barely managed it in 2018, and that was during a rematch where people were probably anti-voting the obvious winner.

I mean if you count bonus matches...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/-4-special-for-board-8-link-vs-jay-solano

In a few more years, that isn't even a bad votal anymore. >_>

Santa almost managed 40% on Christmas Eve.

KamikazePotato posted...

Hey now.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5267-character-battle-ix-bonus-battle-4-link-vs-solid-snake

Although it's questionable if anyone breaking 40% on Link is possible without a rally anymore. Cloud barely managed it in 2018, and that was during a rematch where people were probably anti-voting the obvious winner.

Not an official contest match...!

But yeah, if you didn't get Link before BotW, you aren't getting him anymore.

It’s actually impressive from Samus that that percentage is close to what Link/Samus was in 2003

granted I think 2003 Link was weaker than 2004 Link (Twilight Princess reveal was 2004, right?)

Yeah, the TP reveal happened between 2003 and 2004.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1775-20xx-division-final-mega-man-vs-solid-snake

Snake would reverse this result in just 2 years. But, it wasn't meant to be just yet.

It's wild to think that Snake went from potentially the weak link in the Noble Nine to beating Sephiroth and going toe-to-toe with Cloud.

All thanks to two games that most of this site turned on within a few years...!