Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1377

Would make more sense for Microsoft to pull out of the hardware game then focus on PC only to get the best out of their games.

I feel like Microsoft would see that as just leaving money on the table.

Something funny I noticed about the game of the year polls. In New York, the GOTY semi-finals had FF7R beating Astro Bot by an even greater margin than the general poll. Yet, in the 1-on-1, Astro Bot won.

The logical explanation is that Metaphor fans in NY hate Final Fantasy.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3730-hyrule-division-round-1-link-vs-thrall

A tradition unlike any other: Opening with a Link blowout

Although this was actually an underperformance based on expectations since the Oracle average was 85%

This contest would be a stark contrast from SC2K4 and all its 80%+ blowouts

He always wins.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3731-hyrule-division-round-1-alucard-vs-magus

This was a highly debated match pre-contest, both on the board and sitewide. Alucard was a slight favorite in the Oracle and overall prediction percentage. Maybe it shouldn't have been though. Not to pat myself on the back too hard, but my 2008 X-Stats predicted this match within a quarter of a percent...! People point to Sandbag as Magus's nadir, but being completely non-competitive against a known midcarder was a pretty bad result for him, too.

This was also the only contest where I attempted to make match pics, and I got a few round 1 submissions accepted. My Alucard was chosen for this one, although a lot of people complained about the lime green background!

For a debatable match, Magus sure folded hard.

I'm neutral on Magus, but Alucard is awesome. He deserved that win.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3732-hyrule-division-round-1-red-vs-ocelot

I feel like this is underrated as a good match. Red had some hype behind him coming into this, as well as some skepticism because of the whole "Pokemon Trainer Red" moniker. He was the clear B8 favorite and a slight favorite sitewide, although I think most expected this to be close.

This was almost the first time the 12-hour format mattered because Red almost certainly pulls away and wins comfortably with the day vote in a 24-hour match. But alas, once again, Ocelot comes up short in a debated match.

Red was hard to grasp because on hand he was a main character and on the other hand the trainer was never the appeal of the games. He looked stronger in 13, 18 and of course Rivalry Rumble.

It was a great match. Red also wins the night match only because it was on a weekend match, didn't have to wait for kids to get home from school, just had to wait for them waking up.

The match has a place in my heart because matches for a while had ended at 6AM my time meaning I was never around for the photo finishes but with this format I could reasonable be around for the photo finishes as the match ended at 6PM my time.

Red!🔴🌊🍃🔥

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3733-hyrule-division-round-1-john-price-vs-mega-man-x

Speaking of hyped characters, there were high expectations for Mega Man X when Allen finally said he was eligible in 2008. Some people thought he could be just as strong as the original and maybe even stronger. He got saddled with Mario in 2008, so many thought we didn't get a clear look at him.

Well, he didn't quite live up to expectations here. The Oracle average was almost 73% but he couldn't even get the doubling here. You couldn't even blame brackets and lower seeds here because he had a 75% prediction percentage.

Also that 2 year period when GameFAQs kinda liked Call of Duty was something, huh.

I think it was pretty clear in 2008 he wasn't far from Mega Man levels.

Sure, but the question was how far and Mario may have prevented us from figuring that out.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3734-hyrule-division-round-1-luigi-vs-meta-knight

This match went pretty much exactly as expected. The Oracle average was within half a percent. I feel like Meta Knight never really got a fair shake to show what he could do.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3257-division-4-round-1-l-block-m-knight-ryu-sf-the-dog

This is MK's only match without SFF or LFF.

what happened to meta knight in the year dedede won a match

pjbasis posted...

what happened to meta knight in the year dedede won a match

Dedede didn't actually win against Ocelot!

But yeah, Meta Knight didn't make the bracket at all in 2018.

KamikazePotato posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3257-division-4-round-1-l-block-m-knight-ryu-sf-the-dog

This is MK's only match without SFF or LFF.

hey the dog is there that’s SFF

Leonhart4 posted...

Also that 2 year period when GameFAQs kinda liked Call of Duty was something, huh.

Yes, shows that when something gets as big as CoD it could make an impact even here. Few western games from that era really stuck with us though - probably only Skyrim (mind you, Fallout 3 hasn't been in a poll for nearly 10 years, and in 2015 it faced Undertale and Life is Strange).

Interesting how big a shift there was between the SMG / CoD4 GOTY and their match in the contest (even allowing for the SFF in both polls CoD4 had clearly strengthened by mid-2009).

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2994-best-of-2007-game-of-the-year-final
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3475-division-8-round-1-cod-4-pokemon-dp-s-mario-g-tf2

With CoD it was ultimately just oversaturation. The exact turning point was 2011, which is also where its general popularity peaked (though obviously still very high selling). Modern Warfare 3 was when the discourse around that franchise started to sour and reviews started to get worse. Black Ops 1 from 2010 is actually still the highest selling CoD game (as far as we know) despite MW3 launching bigger, which imo is kind of a sign that that’s where the fatigue started. Of course even with that fatigue it’s still big but it is there.

If CoD had been once or twice a generation and kept up the quality of CoD4 through Black Ops, it would likely still be strong on here.

Pretty rough round 1 match there.

LiquidOshawott posted...

hey the dog is there that’s SFF

This is pre-Smash 4...!

Still Nintendo characters

LightningStrikes posted...

Black Ops 1 from 2010 is actually still the highest selling CoD game

Is that right? I thought BO3's 43 million was the highest known number, which was just revealed last week.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Still Nintendo characters

All four of those characters have strong Nintendo ties!

Not to the same degree!

I mean I'd argue the biggest overlap was Dog and L-Block

Yeah that's fair

MacArrowny posted...

Is that right? I thought BO3's 43 million was the highest known number, which was just revealed last week.

Interesting I hadn’t heard that and fan’t find it, what’s the source? Wondering if that includes the PS+ figures.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3735-hyrule-division-round-1-amaterasu-vs-shadow

This was the first upset of the contest, both on B8 and sitewide. Shadow had a 2-to-1 advantage in brackets and Oracle picks (wish I had access to the Guru numbers but alas), although I think people expected it to be close either way. I wonder how this match would go now with the Shadow resurgence and Okami being a little older but with a sequel on the way.

It's kind of wild that Ammy has been consistently as popular as she's been in these contests.

This was a match I had forgotten. I’m sure I as a Sonicfan pocked Shadow but Ammy winning is no surprise. I mean she took down a Champion in 2018!

Looking at the Oracle, I had Ammy. It's weird how many close matches Shadow has been in and hasn't won any of them.

Ness, Ammy, Zidane, Tidus, and (somehow) Mario are all matches that were 55/45 or closer and Shadow lost them all.

Ammy just has a great design which helps

wonder if Red XIII could have been interesting but alas

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3736-hyrule-division-round-1-wccube-vs-sandal

This sure was a match that happened. This is probably the match that would be the biggest giveaway to an outsider when this contest happened.

Also it's low key hilarious that Sandal is still the only Dragon Age character to make a contest.

Leonhart4 posted...

Also it's low key hilarious that Sandal is still the only Dragon Age character to make a contest.

Answering my "who/what the f*** is Sandal" question before I could ask it!

It’s very strange that Sandal got in. Also possible Joke SFF though to be honest how many WCC voters actually got the Sandal joke.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3737-hyrule-division-round-1-nathan-drake-vs-the-boss

This was a highly debated match. The first time we saw Nathan Drake, he was getting doubled by CATS. Would the near universal acclaim of Uncharted 2 be enough to boost him above The Boss, who had demonstrated herself to be a low midcarder based on her 2006 and 2007 appearances?

Turns out the answer was no, but for Drake to boost as high as he did from where he started was still impressive. He was a pretty big favorite on the board and only a slight favorite overall, but most expected a close match regardless.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3738-chaos-division-round-1-sonic-vs-lightning

This is one of those results that makes no sense without the proper context. Lightning was allowed into the contest on a technicality: FFXIII had been released in Japan, but it wasn't out worldwide yet.

Everyone expected Sonic to win fairly easily (the Oracle average was 72%), but he was never above a doubling at any point in this match. The strongest Lightning we ever saw was the one before people played her game, which is further evidence that pre-release hype is one of the biggest forces in these things.

This result would also be a contributing factor to how surprising/hilarious it was when she lost to DK with Falco in the poll in 2013.

The whole Sonic gang looked bad in round 1 IIRC, which helped fuel the thought that Kirby (or Ganondorf) could upset Sonic. Of course mostly motivated by Kirby knocking out Sonic in 08 for no real reason.

Lightning got weaker when her game got released, that should tell everyone how awful FFXIII was.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3739-chaos-division-round-1-cecil-harvey-vs-knuckles

Cecil Harvey Never Wins, but this is the closest he ever came. Two times in one day, Sonic Team suffered an embarrassing performance despite the win. The Oracle average for Knuckles was 60%, but he still manages to defeat every Square character except Squall.

Cecil never held the lead against Knuckles, but you do have to wonder if he could've won a night match. There wasn't much reason to believe he had a chance based on getting tripled by Kirby (with an utterly unrecognizable Amano art picture) in 2005 and getting SFF'd by Zack in 2008.

We wouldn't fully realize the importance of Dissidia providing recognizable pictures for old school FF characters until Kefka's match, but this should've been the first sign of it.

If you said “Dissidia boost” today with no context people would think you were joking lol. Times have changed a lot! Forgot thst was even a thing.

We should try giving cloud his amano art and see if it affects performance

The Dissidia boost was always the strangest thing. It's not like the game was super-well received or anything.

I remember being in the Crew for that match and doing a handwritten letter to Santa asking for a Cecil win.

Big_Bob posted...

The Dissidia boost was always the strangest thing. It's not like the game was super-well received or anything.

Because it wasn't about people liking the game. It was about how terrible Amano art is for people who aren't familiar with it.

Dissidia helped keep a lot of FF crew recent. Every character natural weakens over time if they aren't kept in the public eye.

And even people who didn't like Dissidia admit Kefka was a bright spot, which is probably why he seemed to benefit the most.

Squall was great in Dissidia too by the way imhotbqh