Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1379

Smash Ultimate was in the hype cycle at the time, which is why you saw stuff like Dedede almost beat Ocelot and K. Rool almost beat Shepard.

Well yes, it was very close to release so perfect timing.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7923-division-2-round-1-mass-effect-2-vs-resident-evil-7

This was a concerning performance for Mass Effect 2, who was the 1 seed and favorite to win this division. The Oracle average was a doubling, and we didn't think RE7 would be very strong. Turns out even a divisive mainline entry in a popular series like Resident Evil is only going to be so weak, so this wasn't as bad as it initially looked. It did raise doubts as to whether ME2 could beat the more popular RE2 later on.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7924-division-2-round-1-fallout-4-vs-vvvvvv

...If it could even get there! With our newfound respect for indie games, Fallout 4 putting the hurt on VVVVVV made us wonder if it had upset potential next round. It had outperformed its Oracle average by 6% in this match, so now what was thought to be an easy victory for ME2 next round had some intrigue to it.

I wonder how much damage Master Hand would have done post-SSBU (and if he was also able to avoid Nintendo).

Donkey Kong stocks about to go up fellas

too bad about no contest though

Turns out RE7 was just good and indie games weren't worth much. It's fun how much of a detour round 1 allowed our perception to take.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7925-division-2-round-1-borderlands-2-vs-bloodstained-ritual

This was another debated fourpack. Borderlands 2 was our Game of the Year once, and even though it hadn't looked great in 2015, it was still the overall favorite to advance from this group. It basically did what it was expected to do here. Not much to say about this one.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7926-division-2-round-1-horizon-zero-dawn-vs-fortnite

Fortnite was a subject of some discussion before the contest started. It was immensely popular but with an age demographic that doesn't visit this site in large numbers. Some wondered if there was rallying potential for a game this big, but others wondered if young people even knew what GameFAQs was or would care.

As it turned out, Horizon Zero Dawn put a massive beatdown on it. Even those of us who expected Fortnite to be weak didn't see this coming, as it exceeded Oracle expectations by over 10% here. We weren't sure if it meant anything for Horizon's chances next round since Fortnite was likely one of the weakest games in the field, but it was good to see if you had it beating Borderlands 2 next round (as I did).

Honestly I wouldn’t call RE7 divisive. There were split opinions before it released then it came out and got acclaim. Wound up as the highest selling RE game until it was passed by RE2. That was also following a relatively low launch so it did that on its own reception. It may even be the third strongest Resident Evil game, it just got significantly under-seeded which happened a few times this contest.

As for Borderlands 2, it was consistently talked about as a game that could have gotten a lot weaker but it wound up looking the same. At least it can claim to still be the strongest game that was actually a new release that year! Which is to say not P4G or Xenoblade.

Xenoblade would still count from that year since our GotY is based on English release dates

The English version of Xenoblade released in 2011!

I always forget how weird Xenoblade's release window was

Looking back on the 2012 GotY polls, I forgot how weak of a year that was for new releases, wow

what's the weakest game to get over 80% in a match

In this contest, I believe it is DOOM which still looked pretty good, it is difficult to get over 80% even against a weak game. It feels like there is probably a weaker game from earlier than that however. With Horizon it wound up going and looking incredibly respectable against Mass Effect 2, that game is quite strong. Though there was probably some anti-voting in its match against Fortnite.

After doing a brief scan of previous results, it does indeed seem to be DOOM, with the possibility that the original Final Fantasy may have weakened to the point where DOOM could beat it. There just haven’t been that many 80%+ results other than the strongest games.

Well, it's not stronger than the version of FF1 that got 80% so Doom is probably the answer

I was surprised how good it looked in its other results! That game would probably just be a litmus test for the strength of the Final Fantasy name at a given time.

Yeah, 40% on Mario 3 is no joke. This was also when 8-Bit Theater was still a thing, so I wonder if that helped.

Damn FFI was that good?

Can't imagine it doing that today

It looked pretty good for a round in 2009 too, to the point people thought it might have a chance against FFIV, but then the latter squashed it.

Falling in line

Leonhart4 posted...

This was also when 8-Bit Theater was still a thing, so I wonder if that helped.

Man that picture had Black Belt and White Mage on it, definitely minimal.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7927-division-2-round-1-resident-evil-2-vs-danganronpa-2

After ME2 fell flat in its first match, this was RE2's chance to prove it was a worthy challenger, and it did just that. Yeah, we all knew DR2 would be pathetic, but 83% is a hard percentage to reach unless you have real strength.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7928-division-2-round-1-doom-vs-inside

In our ALL-CAPS BATTLE, Doom actually managed to outdo RE2 by a full 3% and hit 86% here. Now we had a reason to believe Doom could actually score the upset next round. INSIDE would have to be the weakest game in the bracket for that match not to be close...!

*checks final X-Stats*

128. INSIDE - 7.12%

Whoops!

INSIDE was just happy to be there.

Inside is a great game. Tried it because of that contest and I was happy with it.

Capital letter SFF

Sequel SFF vs. ALL CAPS SFF

I know someone who worked on INSIDE, all about just being in there.

I tried super hard to get INSIDE in and I’m glad I did, fantastic game that got people on here to play it because of the contest. Was still pretty surprised it got destroyed to that extent though lol.

Original Resident Evil playrate poll today:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9873-

You can get a sense of how gaming was a bit different in the UK from the US by looking at the % who said didn't play various series e.g. from (mostly) recent polls I've put together the below table.

% of poll respondents saying they never played any game in the series at all
============== US ==== UK
Grand Theft Auto: 20% ---- 9.7%

Gran Turismo: --- 24.1% -- 16.3%
Half-Life ----------- 48% ----- 40.3%
Devil May Cry: --- 40% ----- 33.2%
Metal Gear Solid: 30% ----- 23%
Uncharted: -------- 46% ----- 38.8% [2016 poll]
Tekken: ------------ 28.3% ---- 19%
Bioshock: --------- 37.8% --- 32.6%
Resident Evil: ---- 23% ---- 17.4% [live poll]

Portal: -------------- 37.3% --- 34.6%
Fallout: ------------- 32.3% --- 31.7%
Soulsborne: ------- 45.4% --- 45.8%
Pokemon: --------- 16.8% ---- 17.8%
Persona: ----------- 52.4% ---- 55%
Final Fantasy: ------- 9% ---- 12.4%

Mario: --------------- 2.4% ---- 8.1%
Zelda: --------------- 4.6% ---- 11.3%
Banjo-Kazooie ---- 42% ---- 48.2%

World of Warcraft: 66.4% --- 74.6%
Tales of: ------------ 39.1% --- 51.4%
Chrono Trigger: --- 25.3% -- 46.9%
Castlevania: ------ 20.5% ----- 34%
Smash: ------------- 12.3% --- 27.7%
Metroid: ------------ 12.8% --- 30.6%
Xeno-series: ----- 39.2% ---- 57.4%
Mega Man: -------- 15.2% --- 49.2%

Obviously this is reflecting people who are still using GameFAQs today, so don't take it as gospel, and it mostly reflects trends which are pretty well known anyway. Interesting to me that GTA has the biggest playerbase gap in favour of the UK.

Annoyingly Call of Duty, Mass Effect and The Last of Us haven't been polled - my suspicion is they'd all have higher playrates among UK GFAQers.

Yeah the older crowd in the UK were always on the Sega/Sony bandwagon.

Ah, Sonic's another series that hasn't been polled which really should be.

Although from this poll you can see how much stronger it was in the UK than the US relative to Nintendo in the 90s - Sonic 2 outright won it there despite coming 5th with less than 8% of the vote in the US.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8648-of-all-the-games-first-released-on-november-21-which-is-your

I would actually guess CoD may be higher in the US, at least that’s what the relative sales suggest. Of course the UK like the US saw the 360 do significantly better than the PS3 which was a distant third that generation.

What I also want to see is a Xenoblade playrate poll because that would probably be more even. Xenogears and most of Xenosaga never came to Europe so are probably skewing the poll.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7929-division-2-round-1-fire-emblem-awakening-vs-deus-ex-human

It might be hard to remember now, but this was a debated fourpack. Awakening was actually the favorite, too. This was one of the rare fourpacks where both of the favorites were in the 2015 Games Contest. Awakening had been the stronger game back then, and people were betting on the status quo holding. It really stands out when you're the only game not to get a quadrupling of the four matches on this day, even if Deus Ex isn't that bad. Awakening truly didn't win by enough.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7930-division-2-round-1-bloodborne-vs-call-of-duty-black-ops

A lot can change in a decade. Ten years prior, Call of Duty was winning Game of the Year and advancing multiple rounds in a Games Contest. I know that was CoD4 and this is CoDBlOps, but it's quite a fall for the series. And quite the rise for Bloodborne, which had lost to FFXII in 2015. The Oracle average was a doubling, and it pulled off a quadrupling instead.

Bloodborne gets way more respect votes in a GotD titled contest, but it was also quite new in the other contest. I'm sure its playrate was a lot higher by 2020.

Bloodborne had only been out for months at that point, it was never going to be indicative of its eventual strength. Those games always increase over time. However in this match it was probably benefiting from anti-voting as well.

I hope Sekiro went up since 2020 too.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7931-division-3-round-1-super-smash-bros-ultimate-vs-tekken-7

There was no real question about what the strongest game in the field was, but there was some debate over what the #2 game would be. Many of us defaulted to Smash Ultimate. After all, it was the newest Smash game on a popular Nintendo console (unlike Smash 4 with the Wii U). There were some who were skeptical of its strength after a lackluster showing in its GotY polls, and the series wasn't as big as it had been back in the days of Melee and Brawl. Of course, you couldn't draw any conclusions from this match as Ultimate did what it was expected to do.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7932-division-3-round-1-zelda-link-between-worlds-vs-bayonetta

There were many who lamented the fate of A Link Between Worlds. It had missed the cut in 2015, and it was locked into a guaranteed win against Bayonetta and a guaranteed loss to Smash Ultimate next round. Personally, it's hard for me to feel bad that a Zelda game didn't get a chance to make a deep run, but that's just me...! Also, it underperformed its Oracle average by 5% here, so maybe it wasn't as strong as people thought anyway.

Leonhart4 posted...

Personally, it's hard for me to feel bad that a Zelda game didn't get a chance to make a deep run, but that's just me...

We really don't have good reads on handheld Zelda, even Link's Awakwening, much less something like Link Between Worlds. Entrants with a hell of a range for their ceiling and their floor make for interesting bracket set ups, so seeing Link Between Worlds in a set up with no chance to test either is disappointing.

I mean I get it, the game had potential for interesting matches

I just don't care that a Zelda game didn't get a fair shake

I feel like most people here care more about interesting matches than what series a game is from.

MacArrowny posted...

I feel like most people here care more about interesting matches than what series a game is from.

I care a lot about both

So yeah, the king of contests finally caught a bad break, tough luck

I also feel like the general strength level of the contest is playing a part here too. Did we need to give LBW such an uninteresting placement when at least 80% of the bracket would be lucky to draw a 16 seed in an all games contest?

Personally, I would've been happier to see it in an unwinnable battle R1 than what we got. Throw it up against Witcher 3 R1 or something. SFF battles are never good.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

I also feel like the general strength level of the contest is playing a part here too. Did we need to give LBW such an uninteresting placement when at least 80% of the bracket would be lucky to draw a 16 seed in an all games contest?

LBW couldn't draw a 16 seed in an open Games Contest either...!

Leonhart4 posted...

LBW couldn't draw a 16 seed in an open Games Contest either...!

It would at least have a decent shot of getting to Round 2 in one.

Also, focusing just on LBW is only half the issue. This was also a colossal waste of Bayonetta, another game with far more interesting potential set ups than most of the field as well.

_SecretSquirrel posted...

It would at least have a decent shot of getting to Round 2 in one.

Also, focusing just on LBW is only half the issue. This was also a colossal waste of Bayonetta, another game with far more interesting potential set ups than most of the field as well.

I mean...did it really, though? 36% on ALBW isn't anything special.

Put me in the 'I just don't like SFF matches' camp.

Yeah, getting stuck against Smash Ultimate round 2 was kind of lame because it prevented us from getting a clear read on it, but other than that, no big deal.

I think Bayonetta could've won a match or two in the right spot, like Bravely Default. It's just bad luck. It happens.

Not gonna do this to my boy Spider-Man

Play Spider-Man