Lurker > KamikazePotato

I considered Vivi but ultimately went with Auron because yeah, the Black Mage design is cheating a little.

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-Xenoblade Chronicles
-Dark Souls
-Breath of the Wild
-Last of Us
-Persona 4 Golden
-Smash Ultimate
-Mass Effect 2
-Pokemon HGSS
-Dragon Quest XI
-Resident Evil 2
-Portal 2
-Persona 5
-Skyrim

Ranging from 'best game ever' to 'still pretty good'.

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So here's a sidebar. I was wondering why Shulk didn't do better in 2018 despite being in Smash and Xenoblade being on the upswing, and if he would do better nowadays, and then came to the conclusion that Shulk being weaker than the game he came from is actually par for the course. One-off protagonists on GameFAQs generally suck. We attach ourselves to games way more easily than characters. Here's a list of just some of the main characters that are weaker than the games they come from:

-Zidane
-Tidus
-Cecil
-Noctis
-Ramza
-Vyse
-Isaac
-Serge
-Yu Narukami
-Joker
-Modern Kratos
-John Marston
-Kazuma Kiryu
-Terra
-Commander Shepard
-Booker DeWitt
-Lloyd Irving
-Yuri Lowell
-Joel / Ellie
-Gordon Freeman
-Aloy
-Geralt
-Nathan Drake

At this point you're probably going: but wait, KP, what about all those main characters that are super strong? Mega Man is way stronger than any of his individual games! And you're right, but here's the thing: characters like Mega Man and Sonic are legacy characters that have starred and appeared in many games throughout the years. They draw strength from multiple sources. Even Cloud, who has only ever starred in one game, would not be nearly as relevant as he is without Kingdom Hearts and Advent Children and Smash Bros propping him up. Here's a list of some characters that are as strong or stronger than the games they come from, but largely because they've been around for a while:

-Mario
-Mega Man
-Sonic
-Cloud
-Solid Snake
-Samus
-Phoenix Wright
-Dante
-Alucard
-Ike
-Ryu Hayabusa
-KOS-MOS

So after mulling that over, I tried to come up with the main character that is the (relatively) strongest despite having appeared in one game and having minimal exposure across alternate media and...I'm not sure. Crono is the easy answer in terms of pure strength, but Crono the character is still much weaker than Chrono Trigger. Using fodder like Velvet Crowe (who is weak but apparently a good bit stronger than her base game) feels like cheating. Squall WOULD have been the answer before 2018 but he's not the same anymore. I might have settled on 2B before this contest, but Nier Automata is looking like a strong game in its own right.

I think the award to 'most impressively strong non-main character' goes to Auron, though. Aside from a Kingdom Hearts 2 cameo, he's almost no presence since FFX came out, but is significantly stronger than any other character from that game.

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You are now remembering that Lugia was a Guru pick

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GameFAQs Contests as a whole for sure inspired me to look into the MGS series. I wouldn't say Board 8 did, though.

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Leonhart4 posted...

Heck, MGS3 could legit have beaten RE4 in 2015, too. I don't think it would've beaten MGS1 in previous contests, for instance.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6161-best-game-ever-day-32-round-3-metal-gear-solid-vs-shadow-of
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4187-west-division-final-metal-gear-solid-3-vs-shadow-of-the

The second match is when Shadow of the Colossus was in full Bandwagon Mode. MGS3 might have been a bit stronger in 2015 but I don't think it was by much - if anything, MGS1 was weaker.

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My gut based on the results we've seen so far is that most things from 2015 are either static or have dropped dramatically. There doesn't seem to be much in-between. The only things that look outright stronger are Xenoblade and the From Software games, which means GameFAQs is starting to improve its tastes.

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Take out Draven and Epona becomes the true dark spot of 2013

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"X is going to win because of logic, but I like Y, so fuck everything Y wins" are the best writeups

transcience posted...

man i have no memory of that

or what a face mcshooty is

Borderlands 2 humor didn't age very well

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RE4/SMRPG is the single biggest statistical anomaly of that contest. RE4 has shown itself to be slightly stronger than MGS3 on numerous occasions - there's absolutely no reason for MGS3 (and Oblivion, for that matter) to suddenly be way stronger than RE4. Here's one out of the seven or so cross-references I used when adjusting the stats:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4177-west-division-round-3-metal-gear-solid-3-vs-paper-mario
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6106-best-game-ever-day-14-resident-evil-4-vs-paper-mario

You can make up any argument you want for why the matches played out the way they did. Maybe MGS3 resisted the bandwagon because it had barely edged out MGS1 the prior round and was riding high. Maybe SMRPG sapped RE4's Nintendo support. In the end, it doesn't matter - adjustments needed to be made.

Division 7's entrants in the current contest are, I think, pretty much in line with what most of us expected. Infinite dropped like a rock because people like it way less now. GTAV's number was already questionable (which was openly talked about pre-contest) and it dropped because it's not as highly regarded anymore either. New Vegas is the same because people still like New Vegas.

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A lot of Visual Novels - surprisingly not Ace Attorney, though, I was one of the original adopters.

There's many games I don't try without GameFAQs in general, but the biggest B8-specific one is probably Shadow Hearts.

EDIT: OH YEAH Zen I specifically remember you sold me on Persona 3 FES back in the day.

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New Vegas isn't overrated in the 2015 stats. Everything related to RE4 was adjusted independently of SMRPG because SMRPG was super weird that year.

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DMC2 is an incredible game if you look at it under the lens of "had a 4-6 month development cycle". That's really impressive! It's a bad game looked at it any other way, but hey.

Few other series have survived as many major pitfalls as the DMC series has. DMC2 is DMC2, and while DmC is a better game than 2 on its own merits (not a high bar to clear), it caused such a shitstorm among the fanbase and hurt the series' brand name so badly that it almost killed off Devil May Cry entirely.

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Master Moltar posted...

Leonharts Embarrassing Confession of the Match: I dont like playing super long RPGs. Give me something manageable.

Leonharts Vote: UhhhhDead Rising, I guess.

Character Development

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I take God of War to win most of these divisions outright.

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Kinglicious posted...

fate go to the kitchen.

No that's Heaven's Feel

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iiicon posted...

the old VAs are re-recording/recording new dialogue

Does this include Papa Nier

No Papa Nier no sell

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FF7 Remake has had a significantly better reception than it could have. It was always going to have that 10% of people that hated it but on the whole, the reception I've seen outside of the crazies has been overwhelmingly positive. Granted, GameFAQs has a lot of those crazies.

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Persona 5 > ToS > Persona 4 in contest strength

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YouTube guides for Celeste will save your bacon and it takes barely any time to find what you need. Trust me.

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MetalmindStats posted...

We all know GTAV is overrated in the 2015 stats, and it's probably declined since then on top of that, but I'm seriously unconvinced it's by enough to make P4G the weakest Top 16 game this contest.

GTA5's 2015 value no longer means anything. It had a chance to back up that number - one it likely achieved by overperforming on SMRPG, as its only other result before then was an iffy match against Shenmue - and failed. Considering that P4/RDR and Portal 2/RDR2 lined up very well, I'm more than willing to state that GTAV has fallen and the rest are pretty much the same in strength.

Yes, World launched its franchise firmly into the mainstream, but how much does that really matter on GameFAQs?

Significantly. There's probably like three times as many people on GameFAQs that played Monster Hunter World as the MH games on the 3DS.

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transience posted...

I do. RDR would put up better than 54% on MH.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/6144-best-game-ever-day-24-round-2-shadow-of-the-colossus-vs-red

RDR isn't very good. It ranked 70th in the 2015 stats. It's only notable in this contest because of the weak field, and even then it's not a game that wins more than one match in most of these divisions. It looks okay now because the top half of Division 4 had a bunch of close matches but that just hides that Persona 4 Golden is by far the weakest Top 16 entrant we've got. Unless Persona 4 catches some weird bandwagon from having such a low pick rate to get this far, it's going to get absolutely exposed by Xenoblade next round.

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I don't think it's impossible for DQ11 to beat Red Dead Redemption.

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VLR

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Look in the end I don't really care exactly how SephG got banned or whether it was more or less deserved than other postings - as far as I know it seems like he's not coming back for now and isn't that all that really matters? Positive net gain for the universe

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I wish we'd seen Mass Effect 2 at peak strength. Run a Games Contest like six months before ME3 comes out and ME2 would annihilate all of Division 2.

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Theatrhythm

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CaptainOfCrush posted...

Dunban's never leaving my party.

The new faces look good, but I'm worried that they won't be very expressive.

I'm mixed on the new art style, but from the limited footage I've seen the new faces do look more expressive this time around. Here's a small example of Fiora:

https://twitter.com/NintendoEurope/status/1254734689228685312

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MegamanX posted...

is the top the new? I hope cause that looks better

It is for Shulk, Reyn, Fiora, and Melia. For Sharla, Dunban, and Riki, the bottom is the new version.

Also the individual renders I posted are all the updated versions.

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https://i.redd.it/ijok7xbm6ev41.jpg

Holy shit Reyn

Solo renders:

https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254666590026698752
https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254674139564003328
https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254681690686930949
https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254689239423315968
https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254696791942914049
https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254704338552881152
https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP/status/1254711890732650496

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I was referring solely to Rockstar video games, and Vice City LFFing past Metroid Prime is the '1' in that record. If you include characters, Tommy Vercetti on his own has more clutch moments than the rest of his entire parent company's contest history.

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Rockstar games have like a 1-9 record in debatable matches. Golden Sun is the most infamous because the stars topic hates Golden Sun but there's plenty of others, like GTA4 losing to Pokemon Emerald and GTA losing to Warcraft in the series contest.

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Well I'm glad I helped some people out but I didn't want to be right about this one!

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Fun with numbers:

If you set Three Houses = Red Dead Redemption 2015 and assume that Xenoblade didn't SFF it, 2020 Xenoblade gets about 61% on 2015 Xenoblade.

Assuming a constant MGS5, 2020 Dark Souls gets about 59% on 2015 Dark Souls.

If you account for the rally and assume Bloodborne gets about 55% on Awakening this year, then 2020 Bloodborne gets about 58.5% on 2015 Bloodborne.

The Last of Us, despite poor Round 1/2 showings, did slightly better against Arkham City than 2015 projections, implying it hasn't dropped in strength.


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Oh man did we lose SephG permanently?

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MoogleKupo141 posted...

aww I didnt even see it

what was it about

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transience posted...

if a picture of a smash character is enough to derail its chances (from a popular game, no less) then it's a pretty wishy washy game in the first place.

Every Smash fanbase except Melee's is wishy-washy. If Brawl got in it these days it would be maybe the least-transitive game we've ever had.

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Casual players heavily outweigh competitive types on GameFAQs, but casual players are also much more fickle

I said this on The Show but I honestly think that if someone put Byleth in a user-submitted Smash Ultimate pic it would be the highest form of pic sabotage

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I genuinely haven't had fun playing with items since Melee and none of my friends group have either. Ever since Brawl the items in Smash have gotten really, really strong to the point where many items are straight-up better than an entire character. In Smash 64 and Melee even the strongest items felt more like modifiers or bonuses that added twists that could be played around. Now you've got stuff like the Wind Bellows that just kills you for free.

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In retrospect, the people who said that Byleth might deboost Smash Ultimate may have been closer to the truth than I realized. The Smash fanbase is exactly the kind of fanbase to turn on a game with a metric shitton of content because 1 character that they disapprove of was added.

adamko posted...

There's nothing you can do when you have cancer like Leffen as one of the leaders of the smash community

This is also a problem. The loudest, most obnoxious voices ALWAYS rise to the top of the Smash community.

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CaptainOfCrush posted...

This sounds... pretty entertaining to watch and laugh about.

Yesterday a well-known pro player was down 2-0 in bracket. He stopped the match complaining about lag (his opponent had taken a lag test previously and passed). His opponent was DQd because the squeaky wheel gets the grease as long as people know who you are, and the pro player went on to win the tournament.

In a previous tournament, there was a mid-Grand Finals disconnect and the winner was decided by community vote.

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Nier Automata.

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The most interesting part about the quarantined Smash community starting up online tournaments to fill the void is watching pro players slowly turn just as cancerous as the community at large

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Smash fans are the worst. It is known.

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I don't think MK64 would wreck Dark Souls. It would be a competitive match that I think Dark Souls takes by a little bit.

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'for 3DS and 'for Wii U' were the actual, real subtitles. Cause, you know, it was the 4th Smash game, and 'for' reads like 'four' and...yeah they weren't the best titles.

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So...

MGS5 vs. Mario Kart 8?

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Props to the guy with the balls to take Final Fantasy 14 over Skyrim.

Advokaiser posted...

I'd be okay in trying to play Fata Morgana myself!

But didn't you also traded all of your nominations in CBX to get the main character in?

Each one of those trades went to a worthy cause!

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I don't think the number of people that actually played HGSS on GameFAQs is very high.

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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

One day people will learn that new Pokemon generations just make RBY stronger.

Thanks to Sword and Shield RBY is now up to 55% on OoT. After next generation it'll be up to 58%.

There's a big disconnect the hardcore Pokemon fans have with how the site actually votes. They come in to make arguments based on them being plugged into the forums and reddit and serebii.com ect., without realizing that GameFAQs doesn't give a fuck. GameFAQs doesn't care if Pokemon's status as a quality series is declining, because they already stopped playing 15 years ago. GameFAQs is the site that voted an N64 game as its previous Game of the Decade and is voting a remake of a game released two decades ago as one of the 16 best games of THIS decade. GameFAQs is the site where all of its Top 10 Games were released before the year 2001. GameFAQs doesn't complain about Genwunners - they ARE the Genwunners.

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