Contest and Stats Discussion - Part 1385

I voted Persona mainly because the little they showed looked intriguing, while I pretty much know what to expect from Veronica.

Whew, glad FFVII won before the OoT remake was announced

Today's poll another sign of the age of the site's users.

The percentage for Atari has basically not changed in 21 years.

69 Atari votes. nice

Currently on vacation right now, and I'm officially located in Wyoming. My vacation was originally planned for Colorado and going up to Wyoming was an unexpected detour.

I tried to vote from Wyoming by toggling airplane mode off and on again to try and force a new IP address to be assigned to me from the nearest cell phone tower. Then I voted for the first option in the PotD, which had 0% in both Wyoming and Colorado at the time I voted.

My vote got counted towards Colorado. Disappointing news, but I plan on going deeper into Wyoming tomorrow (towards Yellowstone) and farther away from any nearby state border. But I'm only 22 miles from the Colorado border right now (currently at a hotel in Laramie). Once I'm deeper into Wyoming and I'm more than 50 miles away from the nearest state border, that removes all possibility of connecting to an out-of-state cell phone tower.

Very cool. I'm excited to see your results.

LusterSoldier posted...

I plan on going deeper into Wyoming tomorrow

Stay safe.

After traveling deeper into Wyoming and being much farther away from any state borders, I am still receiving IP addresses based in Colorado despite forcing multiple IP address changes by toggling airplane mode on and off multiple times.

So I decided to look up information about how IP geolocation works, especially when it comes to mobile internet networks. I came across the following page:

https://lifetips.alibaba.com/tech-efficiency/why-does-my-ip-address-come-from-a-different-state

These 2 sections of the above page are most interesting:

Geolocation databases—like those used by MaxMind, IPinfo, and GeoLite2—do not track devices in real time. They rely on static, manually curated, and partially crowdsourced data: ISP registration records (WHOIS), network routing announcements (BGP), and historical ping-traceroute measurements. When an ISP acquires a /22 IPv4 block (1,024 addresses) registered to its Dallas headquarters, every device assigned an address from that block inherits “Dallas, TX” as its default location—even if the end-user lives in Shreveport, LA, or Little Rock, AR. This is efficient for routing but imprecise for localization.

Mobile network mobility: Cellular carriers use large, overlapping IP pools mapped to regional Mobile Switching Centers (MSCs). As you drive between cell towers, your IP rarely changes—but the MSC’s registered location remains fixed. Verizon’s “Chicago MSC-7” serves northern Indiana and southern Wisconsin, yet all associated IPs report “Chicago, IL.”

So yeah, it may be completely impossible for mobile users located in Wyoming who use Verizon to receive a Wyoming-based IP address when they connect to a cell phone tower located in Wyoming. This may very well contribute to the very low number of votes from Wyoming. Any votes coming from Wyoming most likely come from people who get their internet connection from a local, Wyoming-based ISP (like a local cable internet or fiber ISP).

Good research here. I never would have guessed.

Oh hey, another age poll. As I'm still on vacation right now, I'll have to wait until I get back home to calculate the site's average age and average date of birth.

We f***ing old!

OldFAQs

I'm still in the youngest 35% of the site somehow

The early 40's might actually win this poll which is crazy.

Average age came in just barely under 40 years.

The Nintendo 64 and Mario 64 are officially 30 years old. Mario 1 was 19 years old at the time of the first Games Contest.

A Favorite N64 Game poll! This time, Pokemon Snap gets replaced by Star Fox 64 but there's still no Mario Kart 64 for some reason.

Stop putting "None of the above" options in polls like this darn it

(also DK64 with 0 votes at the freeze lawl)

DK64 is being SFF'd on multiple fronts.

-First is N64 SFF, obviously
-Second is Rare SFF with Goldeneye
-Third is Platformer SFF with Mario 64 & B-K
-Fourth is "Games with Donkey Kong" SFF with Super Smash Bros

Donkey Kong 64 is cooked

Most importantly, the game sucks

people still don't realize there's an arcade-perfect port of Donkey Kong in it

I mean, you do need to play said port of Donkey Kong (and do well at it) for 202% completion.

Game of the Year So Far poll!

But also: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2422-have-you-entered-the-best-series-ever-contest-yet

I always love these polls where like 2/3 of the site is unaware or uninterested in contests, but somehow they always seem to vote!

Voters understood the assignment.

Requiem not dominating as much as I would have thought.

Also... good for Pragmata for not getting Capcom SFF'd!

And kinda shocked 007 is losing to Mina the Hollower.

Why is Death Stranding 2 on there? Is it because of the PC version? No other rereleases with similar reviews got on there. Taking a look at the reviews for games released this year it looks like next in line would be Nioh 3 which I completely forgot was a 2026 game. So not a major snub but still very strange.

Very good performance for Pragmata given that Resident Evil is in the poll too.

aw yeah requiem

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2423-how-do-you-feel-about-the-poll-contest-votes-starting-and

Perhaps one of the more noteworthy things about the Series Contest (oddly enough) is that this was the first contest where matches ended at midnight Eastern. Before this, sometimes they ended at 1 A.M. and sometimes even 3 A.M. (trying to stay up late for the end of those matches was tough sometimes).

RIP poll.

The change in poll time was great for my sleep schedule but bad for watching big vote swings as the day went on. Really diluted trends.

Nah, we still got plenty of huge day/night swings even with the time change. Kingdom Hearts and Halo in particular were still daytime beasts even after the time change.

UltimaterializerX posted...

RIP poll.

Have we ever gone a full day without them fixing it?

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2424-which-number-one-seed-do-you-think-has-the-best-chance-of

Most of our voters were smart! There was only one 1 seed with even a chance of losing early, but in the end, we got all four 1 seeds to the Final Four. I'm sure we'll cover this as we go, but the Series Contest was our most predictable contest ever. It's the only contest ever (if I'm remembering correctly) to have a winner with a perfect bracket.

Seanchan posted...

Have we ever gone a full day without them fixing it?

So far, it hasn't happened yet.

Yesterday's poll went up unusually late for a missed poll (which are usually put up no later than 1:00 PM EST). Yesterday's poll didn't go up until about 6:05 PM, so we had a less than 6 hour poll.

I think Rivalry Rumble had a single perfect bracket (and lots of Battel Brackets, but that's easier).

besides Pokemon who beats Metal Gear today?

Smash?

Metal Gear has dropped quite a bit from its heyday. There are probably a few series that would beat it now. Wouldn't be surprised if Resident Evil would beat it now, for instance.

It wouldn't surprise me if Elder Scrolls beat Metal Gear, either. Metroid probably has a good shot as well just from how much Super Metroid has boosted since then.

Oh, and also Castlevania. Can't underestimate what Netflix did for it.

I thought about Elder Scrolls, but I think Metal Gear would eke that out. Metroid and Castlevania would have good shots, too.

The x-stats say Sonic and Smash would have beaten Metal Gear back in the day and that's still probably true now. Mega Man was pretty close in the stats back then but I'd be skeptical on it pulling that off.

For Castlevania, we do have some data supporting that it has a shot:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7611-which-konami-game-series-is-your-all-time-favorite

And while both series have had their ups and downs since, I think Kingdom Hearts would at least improve on its 2006 showing in a rematch.

This is what gives me the most pause on any trust in Metal Gear's strength.

It went from

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2806-whats-your-all-time-favorite-konami-series

To

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7611-which-konami-game-series-is-your-all-time-favorite

So Metal Gear from the Series Contest probably completely wipes the floor with current Metal Gear.

I realize poll of the day isn't a good barometer for strength but losing a ton of % against effectively the same competition does have value.

Oh, it definitely does because Metal Gear is essentially a dead series, MGS3 remake or not.

Kingdom Hearts is a tricky one because it seems to still be strong despite what it's become.

Also Metal Gear was riding high on MGS4 hype in 2006 (as Smash was riding on Brawl hype) so this might be the strongest it ever was (or at least the stretch from 2006 to 2008).

Yeah, the Series contest was definitely great timing for Metal Gear. Going earlier from 2006 isn't probably that much of an issue since a lot of the series that beat it now weren't strong (Pokemon, Resident Evil) or established (Smash, Elder Scrolls, Kingdom Hearts) at that time, but the later you get away from peak Metal Gear in like 2008, the worse it gets.

Odd that MG dropped so much. It's not like post-2010 MGS was worse than post-2010 Castlevania. Revengeance and MGS5 should be better than the Lords of Shadow games, but I guess it's more of a nostalgia thing.

I think it's more that Castlevania has stayed in public consciousness (especially with the Netflix shows) and Metal Gear has largely been irrelevant for the better part of a decade (and MGSV was a divisive entry on top of that).

MacArrowny posted...

Odd that MG dropped so much. It's not like post-2010 MGS was worse than post-2010 Castlevania. Revengeance and MGS5 should be better than the Lords of Shadow games, but I guess it's more of a nostalgia thing.

The Netflix show measurably increased Alucard's strength, so i imagine it helped the series as a whole too. Sure it wasn't a game, but Castlevania already draws a lot of strength from people who never played most of the games anyway.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2425-hyrule-division-round-1-the-legend-of-zelda-vs-civilization

The first thing that stands out here are the vote totals. In 2004 and 2005, we had a hard time breaking 100k in these early round blowouts, but Zelda broke that number all by itself here, becoming the first contest entrant to do so. Final Fantasy was the B8 favorite to win the contest, but Zelda had made a big statement right out of the gate.

Man there were a lot of people here back then.

Random hypothetical, but I wonder what contest results would be like if you could take everyone who's ever voted in a GameFAQs contest poll and force them to participate in every single match. 300k votes per match, absolute anarchy.

Civilization would be a force here now with those vote totals

KamikazePotato posted...

Man there were a lot of people here back then.

Random hypothetical, but I wonder what contest results would be like if you could take everyone who's ever voted in a GameFAQs contest poll and force them to participate in every single match. 300k votes per match, absolute anarchy.

Looking at when votals were highest, casual bait like GTA and Halo probably does a bit better, with newer stuff being the big beneficiaries, cult classics like Chrono Trigger are negatively affected.

Unless of course, you do something like assume everyone votes with their preferences as of the their last poll vote, so someone who last voted in 2008 doesn't know anything that's come out since, which would be really wonky.