Contest and Stats Discussion - Part 1385

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Even if you gave Vincent every Dunban vote over there, that would still have been an embarrassment for him.

Correct, because it would still be worse than what Luigi did against KOS-MOS in 2005.

Learned from the Discord that the MarioWiki is running a Character Contest! Currently in Round 2:

https://www.mariowiki.com/MarioWiki:Anniversary/All-Time_Favorite_Character_Bracket

So far the biggest blowout appears to be:

Yoshi - 89.70% 2201
Rabbid Peach - 10.30% 253

and the closest match was

Diddy Kong - 50.33% 1219
Dry Bones - 49.67% 1203

Diddy Kong isn't popular anywhere, huh

also wow Waluigi beat Admiral Bobbery, what a travesty

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5157-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-chester-vs-mewtwo-vs

The second Board 8 seed was Chester. I assume everyone reading this probably knows the story behind Chester, but just in case, this was a game made by Board 8 user, agasonex. He named the titular character after Icehawk's dog. More than anything else, this character was a Board 8 creation in every sense of the word. Ever since 2004, we've been searching for a character weaker than Tanner, and this felt like Chester could be it. He certainly did not disappoint, not even getting 1000 total votes. We also had multiple Zeroes in this contest. This was the one from the Zero Escape series. As such, Mewtwo was able to score the biggest blowout of the entire contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2439-ultima-division-round-1-the-elder-scrolls-vs-street-fighter

Elder Scrolls got a 3 seed in this contest despite the fact that I'd never even heard of it before Oblivion came out. Despite the massive success of that game, Street Fighter was still the heavy favorite, even among the casuals, as it had a 65% prediction percentage here. It actually outperformed the Oracle expectation by quite a bit, too, as the average was only around 60% for it. As with the Smash/Dragon Quest match, there was a lot of whining from the losing side despite this being an obvious result.

Fun Fact: There has only been one new Elder Scrolls game released since this match occurred despite it being twenty years ago now.

LeonhartFour posted...

Diddy Kong isn't popular anywhere, huh

probably people that don't think DK is mario enough

TeamRocketElite posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/669684-the-elder-scrolls-online

Fine, one numbered mainline game

Does TES win that match nowadays? Does it win in, say, 2015?

Nah, I don't think so. Street Fighter commands too much respect, and I think that matters.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5158-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-chrom-vs-the-boss-vs

I forgot to mention this in the first division, but Allen also reserved the 3 seed for newcomers, presumably to give them better opportunities to succeed. That didn't help Chrom here against The Boss, who used the basics of CQC to beat him into submission with relative ease. Heavy was also here, who was in every multiway contest and finished last every time.

I could see Elder Scrolls winning once upon a time, but that time seems to have passed

At the height of Skyrim mania it might have won, but not these days.

What're Skyrim and Oblivion projected to get against SF2?

If Street Fighter is as strong as it was in 2004, it could be close!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6100-best-game-ever-day-13-oblivion-vs-super-mario-rpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/1610-division-16-round-1-super-mario-rpg-vs-street-fighter-ii

(But no, Street Fighter II probably loses badly even against Oblivion. Most recent stats we have on it are from 2009 and it lost to Sonic 1 twice)

Unfortunately, SF2 didn't make it into 2015, so we didn't get to see what kind of 90s boost it might have gotten.

Yeah, I would agree with Leon and say it probably gains in lockstep with every 90s SNES-or-adjacent game in the bracket, and has a good shot of having the same trajectory as its 2004 superior Super Mario RPG did if you stick it in SMRPG's place.

I wouldn't guarantee it, as there still is a bit of strength difference between the two and I don't think they would gain at the same proportion, but there's a lot of places in the bracket it could have done damage in.

I dunno, I wouldn't say Ryu looked great in 2018. Of course, that doesn't necessarily reflect on SF in general. Feels like the SFV era might've been a low point for the series though.

Chun-Li looked great though, so yeah. Characters =/= Games, as we know.

2006 was also before Street Fighter 4 came out.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5159-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-garrus-vs-sub-zero-vs

Mass Effect 3's success meant that we got other squadmates into this contest (somehow Tali wasn't one of them, but I wonder if her name was an issue). Garrus was thought to be the strongest of them, but he got a tough draw against Sub-Zero. He performed well, but the result was never in doubt.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2440-ultima-division-round-1-resident-evil-vs-shadow-hearts

Last match of round 1! We knew Shadow Hearts would be weak, but even we didn't expect this. The Oracle average was just under 77% here, and Resident Evil blew right by it. Shadow Hearts was a great series. Maybe one day that Pennyblood game that's inspired by it will actually come out.

77% for Shadow Hearts feels like wishful thinking in retrospect, but I guess there was still a bit of respect given to non-Square or Nintendo (or at least Nintendo adjacent) RPGs at this point.

Or maybe we just didn't think Resident Evil was capable of going as high as it did.

We weren’t far removed back then from Luca Blight getting 40% on Wesker.

The Shadow Hearts games are one of those where it's a shame there's no version for modern consoles. We need a remake of Shadow Hearts & Covenant.

Also Skies of Arcadia, but Sega has been loving its remakes lately so that's still a possibility!

There was a prediction contest on the board prior to the Series Contest where people were guessing which series would make it in. Even with most people predicting/expecting 64 entries, Shadow Hearts had either 0 or only 1 or 2 predictions to make it in, IIRC. It was the least predicted entry, and Chrono was the biggest snub. Which kind of surprised me, even at the time. Yuri had made it into 2005, so I was little surprised that so few people thought the series could make even a 64 entry contest.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5160-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-bowser-vs-archer-vs

Did we ever get a good read on Meta Knight? In 2007, he had Peach in round 1 and Fox/Wario in round 2. In 2008, he was part of that weird L-Block/Duck Hunt Dog/Ryu match. In 2010, he went up against Luigi. Here, he had to face Bowser, and then he didn't even make the 2018 Character Battle. I'm not saying Meta Knight is some hidden power, but it's lame we never figured out how strong he actually was.

Also it's cool that Archer made a contest. All things considered, I think he did decent here.

Meta Knight seems to at least be alright. If he's better than Dedede he could've won matches in 2018.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5161-character-battle-ix-division-3-round-1-sephiroth-vs-midna-vs

Like Barret and Vincent before him, Sephiroth also put up a lackluster performance. He finished well below X-Stat expectations against both Midna and Little Mac here, and this was pre-Smash 4, so you couldn't even use that excuse for the latter.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2441-hyrule-division-semifinal-the-legend-of-zelda-vs-mega-man-x

Zelda started off round two with a bang. Another 80%+ performance and another match of breaking 100,000 votes all by itself. The Oracle expectation was a tripling, but it decided to go beyond that and get the quadrupling instead.

Also, since this was a shorter contest, this functioned as the sprite round for match pics. The theme was having the hero for one series fight a bad guy from the other series. In this match, Link was fighting a Metool and X was fighting a green soldier.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5162-character-battle-ix-division-3-round-1-morrigan-vs-edgeworth

Morrigan was the original TJF character from SC2K2, but she hadn't been back in a contest since then. With the expanded field, she got a good push and a good draw. The real debate here was over who would finish 2nd between Edgeworth and Agent 47. Edgeworth got the customary Ace Attorney board vote and rode that to a comfortable second place finish.

Morrigan would have been amazing to see if 2013 was her first appearance, and that's an easy hypothetical since the first contest was just whoever CJayC felt like putting in. Would anyone have expected to see such a solid midcarder right out of the bat?

While I get the idea, I think Morrigan got into 2013 exactly because we wanted to see her again after the iconic Spyro match. Was she a NRT winner? I think she was. In any case the push came from her contest history, not really the character.

ctesjbuvf posted...

Was she a NRT winner? I think she was.

Looking it up, you're right. I had forgotten she won the Returners Tournament.

I figured Morrigan had to have some sort of nomination drive to score a high seed after a decade of nothing, not even making the Female Bracket in 06. Still, you do wonder if there was anyone else with good strength that just never got the nominations.

there's probably another 5 FFVII characters we haven't seen that would win that match with a similar margin

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Still, you do wonder if there was anyone else with good strength that just never got the nominations.

Dark Link

Well, aside from tertiary characters from the games we already know, maybe?

pjbasis posted...

there's probably another 5 FFVII characters we haven't seen that would win that match with a similar margin

Red XIII, Yuffie, Cait Sith, Reno, and of course Palmer

I was thinking DIO

Don't forget the random piece of FFVII furniture

That would actually win the contest we're talking about low/midcarders

GameFAQS's audience is maybe too old to be swayed by this now, but I wonder how well Gray Fox could have done. Possibly the most photogenic character to not make it in.

Yeah, I think Gray Fox would've done well if we could've gotten him in early, but it just never materialized.

I think Skull Kid could have done well if the match pics included Majora’s Mask

Just popping in to say love ya guys =)

_SecretSquirrel posted...

Well, aside from tertiary characters from the games we already know, maybe?

...does Mai Shiranui count as a tertiary character from games we already know? Don't think she would've been on par with Morrigan, but probably not far off in any format with match pics that aren't just face/head shots.

I don't think the Doom Slayer(/Doomguy) would've been very impressive in 2018, but fodder line-level strength is enough to count as a snub to me, and I'm still a bit annoyed Allen didn't include him in the nomination suggestions form.

Almost all other snubs seem to me to either be the xth character from an already-established game/series, characters who probably would've been below the fodder line, or characters who didn't become contest-relevant until after 2018.

YoBlazer posted...

Just popping in to say love ya guys =)

Miss seeing you around, hope you're doing well!

Likewise! I still check in pretty much every day, but usually too busy to post