Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1382

KamikazePotato posted...

Huh, I guess it was. I forgot Wesker snuck a decent result in there.

I think the voter pool increasing by like 50% really helped Wesker, as Resident Evil is a pretty well-known mainstream series.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2070-zebes-division-round-1-samus-aran-vs-yuri-hyuga

This was the biggest blowout of the contest and certainly what you wanted to see from Samus if you had her winning it all. Too bad more people haven't played Shadow Hearts. Is that Penny Blood game ever going to come out?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2071-zebes-division-round-1-riku-vs-frog

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiMmZYx-eXA

Wow, beat to the punch! The Oracle expectation for Frog was nearly 60% here, and the overall prediction percentage was only 53%, so the board and the casuals were both off on this one!

Frog actually started strong, hovering around 60% early on, but Riku gradually dragged the percentage down while never seriously threatening to come back. The second half of the match was basically a giant stall fest, as Frog only added 400 votes to his lead the last 12 hours of the match.

Now the question is why were we so far off? Was it because Riku was stronger than we thought and actually pretty close to Sora in strength? The idea that 2004 Frog was just massively overrated didn't really become a topic of conversation...yet, but it was coming.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2072-zebes-division-round-1-ganondorf-vs-yuna

Ganondorf underperformed relative to Oracle expectations, but his prediction percentage was 86.55% here, which is ridiculously high when facing an opponent who isn't fodder. It seems clear that there was some Villains Contest spillover, although it's hard to quantify what it was and what it meant.

Also this ended my time atop the leaderboard because what loser actually prefers Ganondorf over Yuna.

All hail the King of Evil.

The match where George Romeo made his first appearance! For an hour or two in the afternoon, Yuna would get a suspicious surge of votes at regular intervals, and while it was very clear someone was vote stuffing, we didn't yet know what the point of it was.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2073-zebes-division-round-1-auron-vs-big-boss

Nobody really knew what to think of Big Boss, especially with an old man picture. The Oracle average was 64% for Auron, so he exceeded expectations there, but the prediction percentage was only 77% here, so it was lower than Ganondorf's against Yuna. Ganondorf was already favored in their showdown next round, and Auron didn't do enough to change that perception.

Also I wonder how this match would go now, especially in the wake of the MGS3 remake.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2074-gear-division-round-1-solid-snake-vs-manny-calavera

Believe it or not, this was considered a small disappointment for Snake because the Oracle average was around 87% for him here. Plus, he'd had the infamous Tanner match the year before, and nobody really knew what to expect from Manny Calavera, who mostly got in due to a campaign from Shake. We already knew Guybrush weak, but would Manny actually be worse? Well, Manny ended up finishing 2nd to last in the final X-Stats (ahead of only Yuri Hyuga, sadly), so yeah, he was pretty weak, but the days of breaking 90%+ were largely over.

Also Snake got a Metal Gear Acid pic both this round and next. Remember those PSP games?

Manny isn't as generically looking as Tanner either.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2075-gear-division-round-1-vivi-vs-zelda

Zelda had missed SC2K4 due to the company cap, but now she was back in the field. She was the clear favorite against Vivi in terms of predictions percentage, but the Oracle average was 53% here, so people expected a semi-close match. Instead Zelda jumped out to a 60/40 lead early on and cruised to an easy win, and that started some rumblings about a Snake upset the next round.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2076-gear-division-round-1-kratos-vs-alucard

This marked the contest debut of Kratos. This was an almost 50/50 split for overall prediction percentage (Alucard had just over 51%), but B8 had no real expectations for Kratos, especially against an established midcarder. The Oracle average was 60.75% for this match.

And that number looked good for about the first six hours, where Alucard was over 60% the entire time. Then the day vote hit and Kratos cut into the percentage fairly consistently the rest of the way, although he couldn't quite hit the 45% mark. Despite the loss, Kratos had earned a bit of respect as a newcomer showing off decent strength, but it also didn't bode well for Alucard's chances against Sora next round.

Yeah, tough r1 draw for Kratos.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Yeah, tough r1 draw for Kratos.

He got Ryu next year. Couldn't catch a break.

In 2006 making the bracket itself was a reasonable success for midcarder males.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2077-gear-division-round-1-sora-vs-agent-47

When the bracket was revealed, Agent 47 was dubbed "Neo Tanner" because he was thought to have the best chance to be that bad. Uninteresting name, unappealing design, game that isn't that popular on GameFAQs, it felt like he had all the ingredients. As such, the Oracle average for Sora was 76.49% here.

As you can see, that's not what happened. Suddenly, the showdown with Alucard felt like it was up in the air again because Sora had laid an egg, but that was mostly because we had unrealistic expectations of Agent 47's strength. Even so, Agent 47 would finish in the bottom 5 of the X-Stats, but a certain match pic for Sora may be partially to blame for that. More on that when the time comes!

Agent 47 being Neo Tanner felt like Board 8 being in a bubble rather than anything that would realistically happen.

He was going to be fodder, but the conditions that allowed for Tanner to be such a statistical failure weren't at all present here.

Agreed, it's far from the same situation. Even if you out Agent 47 in the spot Tanner was in, it wouldn't go as bad.

Leonhart4 posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2069-mushroom-division-round-1-lloyd-irving-vs-albert-wesker

The Oracle average for Lloyd was 63.62% here, which sounds crazy, but it makes sense when you consider Mithos and Wesker both faced Kefka in the Villains Contest. Mithos was expected to get 58% on Wesker through that comparison, so it made sense to predict Lloyd to do better.

Of course, the easy answer to this conundrum is that Kefka overperformed against Wesker due to getting his angel sprite, but it's still amusing to see Mithos do better.

This would be the only Character Battle match a Tales character won until Velvet in 2018. Lloyd was also one of the original five NRT winners, which would explain how he got a 2 seed here.

With how much Tales characters have stunk up contests since then, I'm mildly surprised that Lloyd even won this match.

2004-05 was genuinely the peak for Tales

being the sole GameCube JRPG carried a lot of weight amongst the Nintendo faithful

Well, it was that and TTYD, but yeah, being a big deal on the GameCube at the time of the Nintendo Boost gave Symphonia strength no other Tales game has ever had.

Nobody likes Baten Kaitos.

I guess, Mario RPGs along with Pokemon just feel different though it’s hard to describe

DaZettaiRyouiki posted...

Nobody likes Baten Kaitos.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1870-best-of-2004-best-gamecube-game

You are correct!

That's crazy baten kaitos was cool

Baten Kaitos is proof that Symphonia blowing up wasn't (just) a case of an RPG-starved audience attaching to whatever they could find. Skies of Arcadia did benefit from this too and is a bit stronger than your average non-Square JRPG, because unlike Baten Kaitos it's actually a great game, but it still didn't reach the heights of ToS. Something about Symphonia just really resonated with the fans of 2004/5. This board was already pretty steeped into JRPGs at the time and ToS took it over for like a solid six months.

"If you said Baten Kaitos and Baten Kaitos Origins, you are wrong! They were never popular!"

Personally speaking, Symphonia was the first JRPG to show me that you don't need to have 3-5 allies + 1-8 enemies all standing in a row taking turns and combat could instead be fast, free form(ish) real time combat. Regardless of the story cliches and perceived aging of its combat over time, it'll always hold a place in my heart for that. It still feels great to pick up and play and combo enemies or a boss to death in the corner (in spite of the lack of manual free run).

It also helps (hot take incoming) that the Tales follow ups on PS2 look, feel, and run worse than Symphonia does, while also having worse casts. Abyss' fandom love is entirely foreign to me, in particular. I played Legendia longer than that game, and I find Legendia pretty boring/mediocre overall. So Symphonia looks even better when compared to the following two duds.

Yeah this is probably not what the core Tales fanbase wants to hear, but as young lad I went from Symphonia -> Abyss and bounced off hard. It simply was not anywhere near as fun, in any capacity. I think that happened to a lot of people who owned both a Gamecube and a PS2 back then, and owning multiple consoles was less common back then as well, so the fanbase never had a chance to grow.

EDIT: In retrospect I have no idea why Bandai-Namco saw unprecedented success in the west with ToS then never released another Tales game on the Gamecube. Truly baffling business decisions that set the series back for like 15 years.

Not many people even gave TotA a chance back in the days. ToS outsold it by around 6x in North America based on sales numbers from around 2012. TotA didn't really do any better or worse in NA than the other Sony system Tales games of the day. ToV also sold a lot better than TotA. In NA, Sony fans just didn't seem to care about the series. I believe Japan was the opposite and the more important region which left the Tales series in a bind that the fanbase in different parts of the world were on different systems.

Symphonia was just the quality exclusive jRPG that Nintendo loyalists hadn't really seen on a Nintendo console since the late-SNES times, other than the two Paper Mario games. It filled a niche and found an audience at a time where it was really wanted, whereas the Playstation Tales games were just another jRPG in a lineup just full of them.

GameFAQs being the mix of Nintendo and jRPG fandoms, especially in 2005 before votals completely exploded, it was always going to respectable while it was fresh. I think the big reason Lloyd and Kratos fell off in following contests was because the votals exploded in the next few years, and the influx of new voters seemed to come at the expense of the jRPG fans. Hell, ToS itself was still pretty respectable in every games contest we've seen it in.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2078-dream-division-round-1-kirby-vs-cecil

Say what you will about Lettuce Kefka, but nobody got shafted by Amano art harder than Cecil, especially when put up against one of the most photogenic characters in the contest. Plus, he didn't even get his last name on the poll. However, he was still the main character of a mainline Final Fantasy game, so how weak could he be?

Not to mention that Cecil was up against Kirby, who was thought to be the weakest or second weakest 1 seed in the contest. As such, nobody really knew what to do with this match in terms of percentages. The Oracle average was 63.66% for this one.

You can imagine how shocked we were when Kirby pulled off the tripling. This was the first time that the notion of a Nintendo Boost began to be widely discussed. We've seen Cecil since, and we know the picture really hurt him (the 2010 X-Stats project a 65-35 match), but this certainly had some people rethinking Kirby's next match, especially after what his opponent would do.

That has to be a contender for worst screw over.

Yeah. At least no one could claim it flipped the match.

I went Symphonia -> Vesperia and then fell off.

Are the later games supposed to be good or is that era still considered the peak?

It has Abyss between those so probably the peak

Berseria is my favorite overall Tales game.

Not even using Cecil's standard Amano art was bad. The Black Knight form being used was some crazy work, just to make sure people wouldn't recognize him.

That was the moment Allen knew he had to be CJayC's successor

to put in perspective how bad that cecil art is, i remember voting for kirby in that match because i didn't realize that was ff4 cecil

we're also getting close to the match that got me to join b8!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2079-dream-division-round-1-tidus-vs-king-of-all-cosmos

It's hard to have your biggest margin of victory also potentially be your most embarrassing performance, but if anyone could do it, it's Tidus. After Kirby tripled Cecil, the pressure was on him to match him, as the Oracle average was a tripling as well.

King of All Cosmos had a good board vote, as we would have expected, and it was 65/35 at the freeze. Now it was time for Tidus to take off and leave him in the dust, and...it didn't happen. Sure, he gradually went up, but not at the rate people hoped for who had Tidus winning next round (which was most of us). It took him two hours to break 70% and he never came close to the tripling.

At this point, it was hard to rationalize that Tidus should still be the favorite against Kirby. I think I might have argued that he might have a vote ceiling due to how many anti-votes he naturally gets or something like that, but we all knew he was in big trouble.

The last match Tidus has ever won.

Wow has it been that long? Meanwhile Jecht just strolls right into round 3 first try.

The last time Tidus finished in 1st place at any rate

He did advance to round 2 in 2nd place in 2007 and 2008

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2080-dream-division-round-1-bowser-vs-chun-li

Bowser was one of the more intriguing characters coming into SC2K5 because of his Villains Contest showing and the path he had here. Was his performance against Sephiroth legit? If so, could he potentially break the Noble Nine against Snake? If not, could he even make it out of this division with Ryu and the winner of Kirby/Tidus standing in his way?

His first opponent was Chun-Li, who was making her contest debut. Out of the gate, Bowser was over 70% for several minutes, which raised some eyebrows. Chun-Li managed to bring it down under 64% during the night vote, and Bowser's day vote caused the match to end just shy of a doubling, which was right around the Oracle average. How would Ryu respond?

Also I wonder how close this match is now. Chun-Li got 41% on Ganondorf in 2018, so that would be her floor in a rematch since she likely hasn't gotten weaker due to SF6.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2081-dream-division-round-1-ryu-vs-rikku

For the second fourpack in a row, the first winner put up an impressive performance and the second winner fell flat. It was hard to know how strong Rikku was, but she couldn't have been that far above the likes of Yuna. Regardless, she had far outperformed the Oracle average of 62% for Ryu.

After the first three Character Battles, Ryu earned the nickname Mr. Consistency because his X-Stats values were very close together, and that generally continued to be the case for most of his appearances. That was part of the argument for picking Ryu. His strength value was reliable, and it was above what we had seen from Bowser before the Villains Contest.

Regardless, it was hard not to call this a flop or feel good if you had Ryu beating Bowser. After all, Rikku would have to be able to give Bowser a pretty good fight for Ryu to be able to win, and that was hard to envision at this point.

I miss high vote totals.

And somehow Ryu was in for his worst beating yet

I miss contests. I don't care if the votals are low.
Give me a Link vs. Cloud match with only 10k votes!