Lurker > red sox 777

Mario by the hour:

20:00 | 52.02%
21:00 | 50.14%
22:00 | 53.97%
23:00 | 49.51%
24:00 | 48.70%
01:00 | 50.10%

Mario squeezes out the hour by 3 votes. Votals were notably high this hour - didn't fall off from last hour as usual.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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This update was Mario's peak percentage against Sephiroth, outside of the board vote and first few updates. From here to the end of the poll, Mario lost 1.95% against Sephiroth. Based on that, Cloud is projected to win with 50.97% (about 550 votes).

Now, you may have noticed, the projection has changed a lot in the last half hour. That's what happens with our new very low votals. Percentages are extremely volatile in such a low votal environment, and trend projections are not nearly as accurate as they used to be. So this isn't over, even not considering rallying, but I would say Cloud is looking like the favorite.
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I think if (when) Cloud makes it back to Link he'll get a lead during the first five minutes this time.
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LeonhartFour posted...

I don't mean in terms of total votes

I mean in terms of quality

Oh. In that case Sonic/Crono was the worst!
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Mario by the hour:

20:00 | 52.02%
21:00 | 50.14%
22:00 | 53.97%
23:00 | 49.51%
24:00 | 48.70%

Cloud wins 2 hours in a row.
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XIII_rocks posted...

Wait

How is this not good for Mario

Can someone explain

Mario/Sephiroth trends project Cloud to win by about 300.
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LeonhartFour posted...

still the greatest successful comeback in contest history

I think that's Undertale vs. Mass Effect.
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Forever_Black posted...

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, Sonic didn't put up a single respectable performance this contest.

Sonic hasnt had a respectable performance since beating Crono

Serves him right.
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I probably shouldn't have said anything, looks like Mario heard me. But I have confidence, at this time, Sephiroth hadn't made any progress percentagewise from the end of the power hour. Mario's percentage didn't hit its non-early vote peak for another half hour from here.
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I'm pretty sure Sonic recorded the worst 1v1 loss a Noble Niner has ever recorded to an outsider against Zelda.
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Cloud is really moving now. He is over 49%, and his projection based on Mario/Sephiroth is up to 50.65%.
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Are there any Link quotes, maybe from SMRPG or somewhere he's an NPC?
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I want Link vs. Everyone.
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Mario by the hour:

20:00 | 52.02%
21:00 | 50.14%
22:00 | 53.97%
23:00 | 49.51%

Mario dominates the 3rd hour, and then Cloud wins the 4th hour.
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Based on Mario/Sephiroth, Cloud wins with 50.11%.

Looking like a barnburner!
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MWC is great, probably the funniest user here. I can just see Mario sitting by a computer somewhere, furiously stuffing votes for himself.
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Link winning is fun though. I was excited enough to do trend projections for yesterday's match, and Link ended up over 63% there. Watching Link gain 5000 votes with the ASV against Snake in the 2008 final was fun.

Crono and Link are my two favorite characters, and I probably wouldn't bother following the contest at all if Crono wasn't in the bracket. There are a lot more Link superfans out there than Crono superfans. If, at any point, more than 50% of the voters decide they don't want Link to win anymore - guess what? He'll lose.
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Mario vs. Cloud wouldn't be any more exciting if it was the final of the #2 Best Character Ever contest instead of the semifinal here.
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Come on Cloud. I do not want to see Mario leading Link even for a minute.
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Well then. Cloud is the new early vote champ. Who knew?
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Let's go for 55% Cloud, so that we can make Mario/Crono debatable.
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Cloud leads at the freeze.....this is good, I think.
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transcience posted...

you think Crono beats Sephiroth handily? I think that implies like a doubling on Ryu?

At this point I have no idea how much Crono should get on Ryu. My thinking is, Mario only got 53% on Crono in 2013, and Crono should be stronger now than in 2013. Mario should be stronger too, due to Nintendo being strong this year, but he shouldn't be able to do much better than 2013 if at all. The 2013 match and the classic Mario/Bowser proportion also lines up very well.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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So it looks like the only remaining Noble Nine matchups that haven't happened yet are Mario/Sonic and Crono/Sephiroth.
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Gotta keep those Cloud predictions going. Someday they'll pay off. Like Cloud > Link in the 2007 final. Where is hochi when we need him?

I don't know what to think here. On the one hand, Cloud being worth more than 59% on Sephiroth seems hard. On the other hand, I can't see Mario getting 57% on Crono (hard time seeing 55% either, if there was a bit of SFF in Cloud/Crono).
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tennisboy213 posted...

Haste_2 posted...

I've done some analysis, and the outcome of Cloud vs. Mario tomorrow may depend on the following:

If Samus vs. Snake is accurate, as well as Tifa/Sephiroth, Mario beats Cloud with 53.74%
If Mario vs. Zelda is accurate, Cloud beats Mario with 51.63%

This is assuming Crono 2018 = Crono 2013 and Sub-Zero 2018 = Sub-Zero 2013.

(I wouldn't be surprised if both calculations are bad, though)

What happens if 2018 Crono is a little better than 2013 Crono?

I would assume Cloud does better by the amount that you think Crono has boosted.

Cloud crushing Mario would be really sweet, especially after that Samus match.
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Under this scenario, Trump appoints himself to the Supreme Court and resigns as President effective upon his confirmation by the Senate. Would you support it?
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Link is sick of all the service he's performed to the royal family of Hyrule over the decades. What do they do for Hyrule? Sit back and wait for the legendary hero to save them. Well, the legendary hero deserves to be king, and he's going to take that throne by force!
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The only way Hillary is getting arrested is if she travels to Russia and gets arrested for interfering in Russian elections.
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creativename posted...

red sox 777 posted...

creativename posted...

@red_sox_777

Mario was the underdog against Cloud. Against Crono in 2003, he wasn't the favorite either - both characters had close to 50/50 support. He certainly wasn't anything like Link.

Zelda has never pulled off a single rally except for that Draven match - sure, part of it is that Zelda usually doesn't need rallies - but we saw nothing against Cloud or L-Block or Undertale. Draven provided the sense that an extremely powerful, outside, force was trampling the contest underfoot - and brought out the best in Link.

Weve had many matches with intense dueling rallies.

As both entrants cant be the favorites, the idea that favorites cant rally is clearly false.

And how many times has a perceived favorite won after a rally battle?

I dont know, mustve happened at some point.

Depends what your even mean by favorite. Bracket/pre-contest favorite, or day before match favorite? These can be pretty different.

And given the number of very close rally battles weve had, the results could have been flipped easily. Just because a rallied favorite barely lost, doesnt mean they couldnt have won.

I'm defining favorite as the character that an outsider would perceive as the character that would be naturally more popular on Gamefaqs. I can't think of any cases where there was a strong favorite who won a rally battle.
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creativename posted...

@red_sox_777

Mario was the underdog against Cloud. Against Crono in 2003, he wasn't the favorite either - both characters had close to 50/50 support. He certainly wasn't anything like Link.

Zelda has never pulled off a single rally except for that Draven match - sure, part of it is that Zelda usually doesn't need rallies - but we saw nothing against Cloud or L-Block or Undertale. Draven provided the sense that an extremely powerful, outside, force was trampling the contest underfoot - and brought out the best in Link.

Weve had many matches with intense dueling rallies.

As both entrants cant be the favorites, the idea that favorites cant rally is clearly false.

And how many times has a perceived favorite won after a rally battle?
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TheOneAboveAll posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Also yeah I'm not 30 yet so I'm going to go cry in a corner because Crono lost now.

You're not 30 yet?? How young were you back in 2002?

No, better question: How did someone that young end up such a Crono superfan?

EDIT: I'm also a Crono superfan. I didn't realize until after I posted this that I'm not 30 yet either. Man, I feel old.

I think my first vote in these things was Mario/Cloud. I think I was rallied from Planet Gamecube. I vaguely recall using Gamefaqs for an OOT walkthrough a couple years before that. After discovering these contests I realized they were much more fun than actually playing video games. As for Crono, um, Crono is just awesome.
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Also yeah I'm not 30 yet so I'm going to go cry in a corner because Crono lost now.
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No one is crying because Samus lost the match. And living at home is fine and commonplace in a lot of countries, and it saves them a lot of money. If you don't have a rapidly growing population there's no reason why you can't recycle the housing stock from generation to generation.

As far as arrested development goes, I think another thing that goes into that is more and more things requiring school - sometimes many years of school - now. And life expectancy going up.
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Lopen posted...

UltimaterializerX posted...

There is no rule saying you have to go to college immediately.

Just like there's no rule saying you need to get married, have children, or take out mortgages asap, but a lot of people do that too.

You have to go to college immediately, and you have to graduate in four years or less. Then you need to take out a mortgage ASAP to support the economy. And then you need to vote for Link to validate your existence.
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Getting mad that Mario beat Samus in a poll might happen because someone is comfortable with other stuff in life.

But personally, I don't think I've ever gotten mad at other people because my character lost in one of these. Sad and disappointed and upset, absolutely. Crono losing to Sonic and Vincent and Missingno was a punch to the gut, each time. But I don't see why that should translate into anger at their supporters?
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JJH777 posted...

What's the largest percent loss from the freeze to the final result ever? I feel like this match will probably take that record.

21.68% from L-Block in the 2007 final.
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Link over 59% now. Since this match has followed L-Block trends pretty closely so far, I did a projection based on that match, which states that Link is projected to win with....68.99%.
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Zelda has lost 12.29% from the freeze, in an hour and a half. L-Block started off slightly higher than Zelda, and at this time had lost 11.50% from the freeze.

Okay. I said a few hours ago that bandwagons gave a telltale trend shift, and this is exactly what we see here. Bandwagon trends. This is apparently quite a big bandwagon, at least today.
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I feel like Ulti has either claimed to be in school or be working or whatnot for years. I know these contests have a way of making you forget that so many years have passed, but getting classmates to vote in class doesn't seem like a terribly realistic scenario anymore.
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Link is consistently hitting the mid-60s now for updates. We'll probably see a bunch of 70% updates later.
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I probably posted it in one of the stats topics years ago but I did do a trendline analysis for Mario/Crono 2003 along the lines of what Lopen did for the Draven matches, and that's where the 10,000 number is coming from. The match pulled in about 10,000 more votes in the last 3-4 hours than it would have based on normal 2003 vote intake trends, and the reason people didn't notice it was so big at the time was that 40% of the extra votes went to Crono.

Granted, the male/female poll being responsible is not proven. But it does fit the data pretty well, and I don't know how else you could have rallied that many votes in 2003, especially for Crono. Another alternative is both sides were stuffing hard, and Mario stuffed more.
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Team Rocket Elite posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Also, the male/female poll explains how Mario could bring in 10,000 extra votes but only pick up maybe 2,000 votes against Crono. That kind of rallying has a built in backfire rate.

I have no idea what the real code used looked like but there was absolutely no reason not to hook up both options to vote for the same character. That way there's no chance to backfire.

But that way risks being caught. Mario coming back 800 votes on Crono in 2-3 hours with the second night vote after doing nothing with the day vote? Suspicious. Mario gaining 8000 votes in 3 hours with the SNV? Obvious stuffing.
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charmander6000 posted...

Mario was leading against Crono at midnight in 2003, not his fault CJayC started the poll early.

Mario is smart, he got CJayC to start the poll at 23:40 and end at 24:07 so it wouldn't look as bad. Although, I think the average poll start time in 2003 was around 23:50.....it fluctuated slightly every day but I don't know if we had any other matches longer than 24:05 or shorter than 23:55, except for Mario/Crono, which came in at 24:27.
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Lopen posted...

It's not even "your taste is bad." It feels more like your tastes are limited.

It's like, there's just not a lot of depth to the gameplay in Zelda games. Most people I'd imagine are playing it because they like exploring the worlds or the puzzles. Is that gameplay? I mean, I guess, but it's not Link feeling good to control as much as the world feeling good to explore. On the gameplay front it's dumbed down Kingdom Hearts at best. And Kingdom Hearts is like, a dumbed down version of games with actual selling point caliber gameplay. That's not to say Kingdom Hearts is necessarily worse than those games but Sora should lose to those characters on purely gameplay criteria. And Link should lose to Sora on those same criteria.

It'd be like someone saying Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is their favorite strategy game gameplay. Like yeah I mean, I guess if you have only played Tactics Ogre games and didn't care for their flavor I could buy it, but when FFT original and hell FFTA2 exist I'm like "ehhh"

Pft. People are playing Zelda games so they can bask in the glory of the King.
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Also, the male/female poll explains how Mario could bring in 10,000 extra votes but only pick up maybe 2,000 votes against Crono. That kind of rallying has a built in backfire rate.
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Mario colluded with CJayC, who not only did nothing while the poll received on the order of 10,000 "rallied" votes in 2003, but extended the poll by 27 minutes so that Mario could finish. Wasn't Mario caught pushing a male/female poll on male-dominated places around the internet that actually voted in Mario vs. Crono?

That said, Mario does his job as contest villain very very well. That's why we hate him and that's why we love him. Good luck to Samus in round 4.
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First 60% update for Link. We still have a lot of work to do if we are going to beat 62.09% and not record Link's worst ever showing against Nintendo.
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Man, people really want to take Link down. This board vote is worse than anything Cloud or Sephiroth ever had. Why can't you guys just let him have the victory he deserves? It would only be his 7th championship......not that many......he loses pretty often.
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59.94% update for Link.

Let's mosey.
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