Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1380

Dark Souls 3 is the one platinum from them I don’t have and I’ll never care. I think that game is overrated with a formula that was long old before it came out.

From realized this, too. We probably never get a “Dark Souls” ever again.

We need a new King's Field

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7999-division-6-round-2-persona-5-vs-assassins-creed-black-flag

It speaks to how far Persona has come that a 70% performance on a mainline Assassin's Creed game is viewed as ho-hum and expected, as this was only 0.15% off of the Oracle average.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8000-division-6-round-2-sonic-mania-vs-super-meat-boy

On the other hand, it is rare for us to be this far off on our predictions for a match. The Oracle average for Sonic Mania was only a little over 52% here and a quarter of the users actually picked Super Meat Boy to win. Only one person picked Mania to exceed 60% here.

Sonic Mania achieved a rare feat of being one of the turds of the round in one round and being one of the stars of the round in another. This could be seen as the emphatic death knell of indie games in this contest.

Dark Souls I is the one that really kicked the series off (though I personally think III is the better game).

Actually, I think Lies of P is better than most FromSoft games, if only that you can beat it without having to constantly look up information online.

Sonic Mania had an indie developer!

LightningStrikes posted...

Sonic Mania had an indie developer!

Sure, but I still don't think we'd consider it an indie game

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8001-division-6-round-2-portal-2-vs-kingdom-hearts-iii

This result had people thinking Portal 2 might have a chance at beating Persona 5 to win the division. It was an impressive showing, but it said more about Kingdom Hearts III than anything else. Fun fact: This was the first time KH had been held below 40% in a 1-on-1 Games Contest.

Also, I believe this match was one of the key differences between azuarc and JONALEON in the Guru. If Jona had picked Portal 2 here instead, he would've won.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8002-division-6-round-2-animal-crossing-new-leaf-vs-red-dead

Not much to say about this one as it basically went as people expected. Portal 2 went into the next round as the favorite, but RDR2 had done enough to say it at least had a chance.

Sonic Mania deserved votes just for the studiopolis music.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8003-division-7-round-2-dark-souls-vs-rocket-league

Rocket League had a fun first round win, but Dark Souls was all business in this one. It was showing that its ceiling had raised enough that it was now a legitimate threat to Skyrim.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8004-division-7-round-2-yakuza-0-vs-metal-gear-solid-v

MGSV underperformed its Oracle average by about 5% here, but it's not like it mattered. Allen had set up a 2015 rematch nobody asked for. MGSV had lost easily to Dark Souls five years before, and there was no reason to think the gap hadn't widened by a sizable margin since.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8005-division-7-round-2-batman-arkham-city-vs-bioshock-infinite

The Oracle average for this match suggested we thought Infinite and Xenoblade 2 were basically equals because I think it was still difficult for us to fathom it was actually legit. Well, we couldn't really deny it after Arkham City nearly put up 60% here.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8006-division-7-round-2-diablo-iii-vs-the-last-of-us

Speaking of denial, if you had Last of Us beating Dark Souls, it was hard to convince yourself it still had a chance after this performance. Diablo III was only going to be so strong, and this definitely wasn't a division winning performance.

Leonhart4 posted...

The Oracle average for this match suggested we thought Infinite and Xenoblade 2 were basically equals because I think it was still difficult for us to fathom it was actually legit. Well, we couldn't really deny it after Arkham City nearly put up 60% here.

For some reason I'm having trouble understanding what this is saying as far as Infinite vs Xenoblade 2 goes.

It projects Xenoblade 2 to win with 55.88%

But the Oracle picks suggested we didn't think it would be stronger than Infinite because we picked Batman to win with about as much as it beat Xenoblade 2 by

Infinite is honestly probably way more polarizing than Xenoblade 2 was

For some reason I thought that was the Xenoblade 2 match, that's where I confused myself.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8007-division-8-round-2-elder-scrolls-skyrim-vs-journey

Another round, another slow start and underperformance for Skyrim. There was no denying it was looking vulnerable, but now the question was if it would even make it to Witcher 3.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8008-division-8-round-2-final-fantasy-xiv-vs-mario-kart-8

Most people expected Mario Kart 8 to win. The question was whether FFXIV would do better or worse than Uncharted 4. It ended up doing a couple percentage points worse. Now we waited to see how Skyrim would do against a big name Nintendo game.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8009-division-8-round-2-pokemon-heartgold-vs-rayman-legends

End of round 2! These last two matches were basically to see which would outshine the other between Pokemon and Automata. HG/SS put up the higher percentage and essentially maintained its favorite status.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8010-division-8-round-2-divinity-original-sin-ii-vs-nier-automata

We didn't really know what to think of Divinity in terms of its strength, but this felt like an underperformance. The Oracle average was 71% for Automata, so it wasn't off by much, but it wasn't what you wanted to see if you had it winning next round.

I always forget FFXV wasn't the only FF in the contest.

How does XV vs XIV go

FF14 wins easily, I think? FF15 looked pretty bad in the end. I sort of feel like FF14 isn't as popular as it used to be but FF15 probably trended downward over time as well.

I'd guess XIV wins but maybe not as easily as some would think

Spoilers for next match but FXV folded harder against BotW than what reflects its strength.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8011-division-1-semifinal-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-vs-final

With round 3, we move to two matches a day, so we can slow the pace a little bit! Breath of the Wild joined elite company with 2004 Link and 2006 Legend of Zelda (from the Series Contest) as the only entrants to score over 80% in their first three matches. This was our obligatory Zelda/FF match for this contest, and what a sad affair it was.

The other two cases had SFF matches too, this is really impressive.

We have never not had FF vs Zelda but this was close to not happening. 2013 also only had Sephiroth > Midna and Vivi > Ganondorf.

The weakest game according to the x-stats was the one that faced BotW two rounds in a row. I don't think that's a coincidence.

FF15 just looked dreadful in that match. It's so bad I'm not really sure FF15 is actually that bad even accounting for BotW being a beast.

The whole fourpack looks unreasonably weak. The whole upper half of the division actually

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8012-division-1-semifinal-monster-hunter-world-vs-dragon-quest-xi

Dragon Quest XI was the favorite to advance out of the bottom half of the division, but Monster Hunter put up a better performance than expected since the Oracle average was 57% here. It was never close though, as DQXI raced out to 59% at the freeze and MH gradually whittled the percentage down.

I’ve always been impressed by Monster Hunter’s popularity even though I’ve never played one.

How good are those games?

I've never played them, so probably not that good

Monster Hunter probably got a few points of percentage from its rallies.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8013-division-2-semifinal-mass-effect-2-vs-horizon-zero-dawn

The final percentage here is misleading. Mass Effect 2 had around 58% (which falls in line with the Oracle expectations for this match) before spillover from the RE2/Bloodborne rallies (more on that later!) favored Horizon and allowed it to chip away a little to make the match look closer than it actually was.

Rally spillover is more annoying to track/adjust for than the actual rallies sometimes.

Actually maybe I should've waited until now to post that first match because there was a 2 hour and 10 minute delay to the start of this day's matches. It was the first time since Sonic/Samus 2002 that there was this big of a delay in starting a match, and much like that match, this day had a controversial ending. Still don't know why Allen simply didn't push the matches back a day, but I guess he needed to stay on schedule for some reason.

Interesting that Horizon would be favored over Mass Effect 2 by any kind of adjacent rally.

As a Game Boy Pocket owner I always hate this poll.

I think my original Game Boy is still around here somewhere. I doubt it works though!

AxemRedRanger posted...

As a Game Boy Pocket owner I always hate this poll.

Exactly! I voted option 3 but didn’t feel right.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8014-division-2-semifinal-resident-evil-2-vs-bloodborne

This is probably the match of the contest. RE2 was the favorite and acted like it early on, jumping out to about a 400 vote lead a couple hours in. Then a rally was posted on the Bloodborne Reddit, and the game stormed back to take a 180 vote lead.

Then something unexpected happened when a mod on the Reddit pulled down the rally post. You'd think RE2 would run away with it from there, but that's not what happened. From 8:30 A.M. on, the lead never got above 100 votes.

It looked like we were headed to a photo finish because the match was tied with 25 minutes left. However, RE2 got a few big updates at the end to win by 88 votes. We've seen suspicious last minute surges like that before, but ultimately, the result stood.

I wonder how much stronger the original RE2 might be, if at all.

Something a game of the 90s bracket could answer!

I doubt OG RE2 would be that strong. If anything, I think the remake stands up as a rare instance of being stronger than the original.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6080-best-game-ever-day-8-final-fantasy-tactics-vs-resident-evil
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3458-division-4-round-1-dk-country-2-goldeneye-re2-s-mario-rpg

We've seen OG RE2 and it looks decent

It was a good match!

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8014-division-2-semifinal-resident-evil-2-vs-bloodborne

This is probably the match of the contest. RE2 was the favorite and acted like it early on, jumping out to about a 400 vote lead a couple hours in. Then a rally was posted on the Bloodborne Reddit, and the game stormed back to take a 180 vote lead.

Then something unexpected happened when a mod on the Reddit pulled down the rally post. You'd think RE2 would run away with it from there, but that's not what happened. From 8:30 A.M. on, the lead never got above 100 votes.

It looked like we were headed to a photo finish because the match was tied with 25 minutes left. However, RE2 got a few big updates at the end to win by 88 votes. We've seen suspicious last minute surges like that before, but ultimately, the result stood.

You’re welcome FFD.

#blessed

if SMRPG can win that poll now, maybe RE2 would take second place as well.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8015-division-3-semifinal-super-smash-bros-ultimate-vs-marvels

The Oracle average here was 69% but this was taken as a sign of Smash's weakness. People were still reluctant to ascribe real strength to Spider-Man, for some reason. As such, we had a lot of people ready to flip from Ultimate to Odyssey for their showdown next round.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8016-division-3-semifinal-shovel-knight-vs-super-mario-odyssey

We needed a breather after the craziness of the day before, and Odyssey was happy to oblige. It did pretty much exactly was expected and gave us more reason to believe it could win against Ultimate. Shovel Knight, on the other hand, had done well against a big name Mario game, all things considered.

Yacht Club forgot to rally

did they forget or did they just not bother once they saw the results

Good question. No idea what they would assume their pull could be they did it very late in the previous match.

pjbasis posted...

Interesting that Horizon would be favored over Mass Effect 2 by any kind of adjacent rally.

Well, it’s a first party PlayStation game so it makes sense that a rally for another one would help it. Especially since Mass Effect 2 was a timed Xbox/PC exclusive.

AxemRedRanger posted...

As a Game Boy Pocket owner I always hate this poll.

Yeah I was very confused which I should vote for but went for it counting as an original one.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/8017-division-4-semifinal-grand-theft-auto-v-vs-persona-4-golden

This was the last match of the contest where the Oracle underdog won. Yes, believe it or not, Grand Theft Auto V was the favorite coming into this match. A lot of people assumed it would be naturally stronger than Red Dead Redemption, or that Persona 4 Golden wouldn't be able to pull off another rally.

In reality, P4G won a little more easily than last time. It kept GTAV in the 400-600 vote range most of the match. GTA made a couple of comeback attempts, but it never got to the point where it felt like a real threat to pull it off.