Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1381

I just looked at my old bracket and I had KOS-MOS beating Luigi. I can't even begin to imagine how I ended up with that. Was there really a time I wasn't a massive X-Stat hugger?

TeamRocketElite posted...

I just looked at my old bracket and I had KOS-MOS beating Luigi. I can't even begin to imagine how I ended up with that. Was there really a time I wasn't a massive X-Stat hugger?

It was because of the X-Stats most likely! I'm pretty sure they were close in the 2003 and 2004 X-Stats. That was a popular upset too, believe it or not.

It honestly didn't feel like too much of a stretch based on how disappointing Luigi had been in 2003 and 2004.

Oh hey a "what's your GotY so far" poll

Feels like Clair Obscur's to lose right now

Clair Obscur is the real deal.

Clair Obscur is probably even further ahead of everything else than it looks like, since most MKW voters likely haven't even played it.

Too bad Hundred Line isn't in the poll, though. It's more of a GameFAQs game than half of these.

I know the competition is weak, but this is still an impressive performance from Clair.

If we assume Mario Kart World = MK8, what does Clair Obscur get on Skyrim?

MacArrowny posted...

If we assume Mario Kart World = MK8, what does Clair Obscur get on Skyrim?

65.16%

WTF @ Agent 47?!?!? I think we have our Adventure/Tanner of the Contest.

Why were we so obsessed with Agent 47 being weak? He even got dubbed Neo-Tanner, I believe. I guess we were just desperate to have a Tanner 2.0

It was a combination of most of us not knowing who he was (because Hitman wasn't that big yet) and the unappealing design of a bald dude in a suit and tie

Wonder if the latest online controversy has had any impact on that Mario Kart vote

I'd say minimal. Clair is much more of a GameFAQs game than Mario Kart World, is generally better received, is more accessible (both costing less and being available on more than a $500 brand new purchase), and (questionably important) sold more copies.

Mario Kart is doing fine, honestly, it's just there's a big bright Obvious Game of the Year contender in the poll too.

Mario Kart also generally doesn't do well in these GotY polls. MKDS made the GotY final in 2005, but that's widely regarded to be a weak year for games (or it was at the time).

I think Mario Kart needs a bit of time to get going. One of its strengths is a high play rate and it'll take time to get there. Although, it's probably will end weaker than Mario Kart 8 when all is said and done.

Mario Kart is also a great apathy vote magnet, which is ideal for 1v1 situations, and even better in a multiple match forced vote situation. Not so much in a GotY mutli-way setting.

Also, it would appear that gamefaqscontests is back up for now, probably since we are in a new month for bandwidth allotment.

I wonder how well would Raven Beak do in a contest?

Who would be the strongest Clair Obscur character in GameFAQs contests, and how strong would they be?

I think Gustave would be the strongest and would probably be at least a bit below the fodder line.

Either Verso or Gustave would be strongest I'd think. I dunno how they'd do compared to older characters, but you could compare them to other 2020s characters, like the Baldur's Gate 3 cast, and I think they'd do well.

Esquie

R.I.P. B8 Wiki

Leonhart4 posted...

R.I.P. B8 Wiki

Between the Guru site, the Wiki, and GameFAQs Contests being up and down, our resources are dying.

the b8 wiki went down??

I’ll see if I can log in when I get home. It’s weird that was closed given it was still in regular use.

@Zachnorn did you get an email or anything?

It's up for me:
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page

It's back up again, thankfully

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2051-have-you-entered-the-summer-contest-yet

Over half the site was totally unaware of the contest, for shame!

Also I did manage to find a spreadsheet on the Stats Archives that has both the Guru predictions and the Board Odds Project predictions on it for SC2K5, so that's handy.

I'll share some predictions for the Mushroom Division as a preview of what we were thinking as we get ready for this retrospective in a couple weeks.

Round 1

Mario - 100% for both
Carl Johnson - 87.50% for BOP, 93.50% for Guru
Zero - 100% for both
Lloyd - 98.03% for BOP, 100% for Guru

Round 2

Mario - 100% for both
Zero - 98.03% for BOP, 99.19% for Guru

Round 3

Mario - 98.68% for BOP, 100% for Guru

Pretty straightforward! Very few people believed in Ness, and even fewer believed in Wesker after his Villains Contest bomb. Honestly, you can really see how influenced we were by the X-Stats in this contest because most matches had overwhelming favorites, even the ones that seemed debatable and had the potential to be good.

There was only one Round 1 match that had under 80% of users on one side or the other, and that was Kefka/Vercetti, where Vercetti had 60% of the picks. There's only one true 50/50 toss-up match in the entire bracket in both the BOP and Guru stats, and that was Alucard/Sora in Round 2. Every other match has a clear favorite, in most cases a heavy (75%+) favorite. It's kind of wild looking back on these stats.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

TeamRocketElite posted...

I think Mario Kart needs a bit of time to get going. One of its strengths is a high play rate and it'll take time to get there. Although, it's probably will end weaker than Mario Kart 8 when all is said and done.

MKW definitely stands as a game to grow in strength over the course of the Switch 2's life cycle, from a combination of the playrate growing over time and any updates made to the game which introduces new content (I expect some DLC for the game).

Metroid Prime 4 is a potential contender for the number 2 game of this year after Clair Obscur if doesn't get pushed back to 2026. MP4 has the advantage of being on both Switch 1/2, but I expect most of its lifetime sales to be on Switch 2. As MP4 has not yet been released, it's not possible to speculate on its strength, but it'd certainly fare better in the 2026 GotY polls as a 2026 release than if it had to go up against Clair Obscur in the 2025 GotY polls.

I'm skeptical MP4 will do better than Donkey Kong Bonanza.

Let's do a quick Zebes Division preview for Guru and BOP picks!

Round 1

Samus - 100% for both
Frog - 98.03% in BOP, 99.19% for Guru
Ganondorf - 100% for both
Auron - 99.34% for BOP, 99.19% for Guru

Round 2

Samus - 100% for both
Ganondorf - 82.89% for BOP, 91.87% for Guru

Round 3

Samus - 99.34% for BOP, 100% for Guru

It's wild to think that Ganondorf was such an overwhelming favorite against Auron, but then I remember that this is back when we weren't convinced he'd even be stronger than Tidus, who had already lost to Ganondorf.

It can be rather difficult for side characters to be stronger than the lead. It just so happened that Auron was one of those cases.

Gear Division Preview!

Round 1

Snake - 100% for both
Zelda - 80.92% in BOP, 88.62% in Guru
Alucard - 94.74% in BOP, 99.19% in Guru
Sora - 100% in both

Round 2

Snake - 96.71% in BOP, 97.56% in Guru
Sora - 51.32% in BOP, 58.54% in Guru

Round 3

Snake - 96.05% in BOP, 96.75% in Guru

Snake was considered the most likely suspect to break the Noble Nine in this contest, and for good reason after his SC2K4 showing. There were a handful of people who picked Zelda > Snake (and even one Vivi > Snake).

Sora had a 78-73 pick advantage over Alucard in the BOP, but the gap was noticeably bigger in the Guru, where he had a 72-51 pick advantage.

LeonhartFour posted...

There were a handful of people who picked Zelda > Snake (and even one Vivi > Snake).

Even 2018 Zelda barely gets the job done.

Dream Division preview!

Round 1

Kirby - 100% for both
Tidus - 98.03% for BOP, 100% for Guru
Bowser - 100% for both
Ryu - 99.34% for BOP, 100% for Guru

Round 2

Tidus - 83.55% for BOP, 89.43% for Guru
Bowser - 81.58% for BOP, 86.99% for Guru

Round 3

Bowser - 73.03% for BOP, 81.30% for Guru
Ryu - 14.47% for BOP, 10.57% for Guru
Tidus - 8.55% for BOP, 8.13% for Guru

The Dream Division was considered to be a division of death featuring four high midcarders. As you can see, Kirby > Tidus was a massive upset on the board. Bowser was the clear favorite to win the division, but Ryu and Tidus had their share of support, too. Kirby only had 5 picks in the BOP to win the division, but he had zero picks in the Guru.

I had Tidus over Kirby... and Bowser. ;_;

I'm pretty sure I had Tidus > Ryu in that division lawl

I know I had Bowser winning this division, because I also had him over Snake. And I thought I had it too when we saw the match picture too.

Flood Division preview!

Round 1

Master Chief - 100% for both
Donkey Kong - 98.03% for BOP, 99.19% for Guru
Tommy Vercetti - 60.53% for BOP, 65.04% for Guru
Crono - 100% for both

Round 2

Master Chief - 96.05% for BOP, 100% for Guru
Crono - 100% for both

Round 3

Crono - 100% for both

This was considered a fairly straightforward division aside from Kefka/Vercetti. That assessment basically turned out to be correct.

Devil Division preview!

Round 1

Dante - 87.50% for BOP, 87.80% for Guru
Vincent - 81.58% for BOP, 86.99% for Guru
Magus - 100% for both
Squall - 100% for both

Round 2

Vincent - 53.95% for BOP, 61.79% for Guru
Magus - 82.24% for BOP, 92.68% for Guru

Round 3

Magus - 77.63% for BOP, 85.37% for Guru

First of all, LOL Magus. It probably hasn't happened too often that the favorite to win the division loses in the first round. There was a lot of debate over this division though, and deservedly so. For the record, here are the breakdowns for Vincent's fourpack (first number is total BOP picks, second number is total Guru picks):

Vincent - 82/76
Dante - 51/34
Kerrigan - 15/9
Terra - 4/4

And for the division overall:

Magus - 118/105
Squall - 19/8
Vincent - 10/9
Dante - 3/1
Kerrigan - 2/0

Poor Magus.😂

All of us (B8) should fund the contest goddammit

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/9979-of-the-classic-franchises-that-got-their-start-on-the-nes

Final Fantasy has still got it.

Bring on the three way best series ever contest

I would've voted FF here 10 years ago...

I have a strange relationship with the FF series. For a long time I considered myself a big fan. But, the last one I played that I really liked was FF6. I did play FF13. While I probably liked it more than most, I didn't love the game. It eventually hit me that I'm probably not actually a fan if I haven't really liked a game from the series in like 15 years and it's been like another 10 years since then. I really need to get around to playing FF7 or FF10 one of these days.

It's time to talk about the Mario Movie boost, who is ready for Peach > Squall next contest?

I tried playing FF7 again earlier this year and I couldn't help but think this was the first major example of AAA brainrot with all the pre-rendered cutscenes it throws at us, but nobody would know that back in 1997.

Whatever it is, I've never been able to get far in the game. I always drop it early. I think the furthest I got was just past the cross dressing segment, 12 years ago.