Lurker > red sox 777

Vote away!
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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I'm not sure what was wrong with Lasa's post. San Francisco is very not liberal in a lot of ways (such as extreme inequality), and it's worth pointing out.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Snake winning over Draven because the League subreddit took down the rally topic would have been awful. You can't just win a contest without beating Link fair and square.
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PerfectChaosZ posted...

Its because the places the conversations run are actually the dirtiest and the poorest. Whenever a conservative is screaming about something you can be 90% sure with a little investigation that theyre projecting and trying to hide by pointing the finger at others so no one suspects them. And this applies to so many things like the anti-gay ones that call homosexuals pedos always getting caught with young boys or voter fraud or making stuff up all the time then yelling fake news and pointing. Which is so dumb by this point because its so transparent and theyve been caught so many times but apparently its not enough for everyone to just know by now.

Like the liberals who scream about inequality while living in the most unequal places in the country.
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Predicted MWC reactions:

Mario/Cloud 2002:

Mario stuffing, totally outrageous, the contest lost all credibility.

Mario/Crono 2002:

Mario stuffing again and getting away with it again, CJayC has the gall to accuse Crono of doing what Mario did, an outrage.

Mario/Samus 2005:

Nothing to see here, move along.

2007 final:

Stuffing. Stuffing. More stuffing.

Link/Cloud 2003:

The most important match in contest history.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Oh, yeah Mario/Samus 2005 is probably it then. I guess it deserves it for the debate it generated for 13 years.
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5 left.

Mario/Cloud
Mario/Crono 2002
Link/Cloud 2003
2007 Final
Link/Mario 2002?
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xp1337 posted...

KamikazePotato posted...

As someone who wasn't there - what was the justification for running the poll past the time limit? Because that seems absurd.

Well, the added time was always on the front end. The matches started early and the stated reason IIRC was to let us move on to the next match when the previous one was obviously decided.

I don't recall the exact way this always played out because I don't think it ever remotely mattered until that match, but I think they played out much the same way (ran until midnight even if they started at 11:45 or whatever unless it too was a blowout etc) just... again, it never mattered until - of course - Mario/Crono of all matches.

There were no other matches in Summer 2003 that went to the wire. Magus/Ganondorf was probably the closest and Magus was 600 votes up and rising again by the last hour.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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If a few of the Undertale ralliers in the late afternoon of RBY are on vacation, or at a party, or otherwise busy, the supercharged portion of the rally might never materialize. And RBY wins, having defeated UT with a combination of its own rallying, natural strength, backfire rate, and the rally failing to grow from the SMW match.

Then RBY either falls to rallied SSBM or loses the SFF battle to OOT. And OOT wins. Or, in a world where Melee's rally doesn't beat CT, RBY might not either.

We have only had 2 super rallies in our history. That's not enough data to just conclude that all super rallies will produce whatever surge in strength necessary, every time.
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FinaIFantasyV posted...

red sox 777 posted...

The cheater in Starcraft was dumb enough to stuff around 1300 votes in 20ish minutes. Not counting that period, Starcraft cut 2000 votes starting from 3800 down against SSBM, which is actually basically in line with it cutting 2200 against WW starting from 2000 down, which looks like a rally plus Starcraft having an A+ SNV back when the SNV lasted 6 hours and meant something. If the cheater had the sense to gradually stuff over a period of 7 hours, he might have gotten away with it.

Funny you think there was only one cheater....

WW wins by thousands if CjayC has a fucking clue

If there were more, the others were a lot better at hiding it. I will say that CJayC at least tried to catch stuffers. He told us there was stuffing 3 times, and removed votes once. Twice (Mario/Crono 2002 and SSBM/Starcraft) the amount of votes he caught didn't change the result so he left them in. In Kefka/Vercetti he removed votes.

I wasn't here for Mario/Crono 2002 so I don't really have anything to support me thinking Crono was innocent other than fanboyism and the fact that his opponent was Mario, but even if we strike that match, it still leaves 2 matches where there was stuffing and CJayC did something about it. And it's not that easy to prove stuffing - stuff can be suspicious, but how do you get enough evidence to justify removing votes?
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I wonder if Trump is shorting the market. Maybe in the 2020 campaign, Trump will reveal that he is now the richest person in the world because he has been trading on advance knowledge of his decisions through his whole presidency. Because you see, no other president has been smart enough to make so much money off of his presidency. So we should vote for him again.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Also, notwithstanding that the people proclaiming the contest over after round 1 with Undertale and Draven are 2/2, that doesn't mean they were right that it was a certainty at that point. And I'm pretty sure some of those people who said Undertale was a lock to win after round 1 threw in the towel about 16 hours into the RBY match when RBY had a lead of 7000, Undertale was not cutting, and Undertale's vote intake was falling. Then it was a lock, and RBY had it won. Until an hour later when the big rally started, then it was a lock for Undertale again.

I find people proclaiming things certainties to be annoying.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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The cheater in Starcraft was dumb enough to stuff around 1300 votes in 20ish minutes. Not counting that period, Starcraft cut 2000 votes starting from 3800 down against SSBM, which is actually basically in line with it cutting 2200 against WW starting from 2000 down, which looks like a rally plus Starcraft having an A+ SNV back when the SNV lasted 6 hours and meant something. If the cheater had the sense to gradually stuff over a period of 7 hours, he might have gotten away with it.
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This is Trump's style. Keep people on edge by announcing surprises at the last minute.
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If we aren't prepared to actually use enough force there to win the war, we should get out. Otherwise we are just prolonging a losing war. It's burying our head in the sand and refusing to face reality.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Also, if we did get an all Zelda final four, that or the next one (where Link beat Cloud to retake his crown) might have been the last contest.
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People picked FFVII because we wanted something not from Zelda to win, and this was the last hope.

MWC, I'd like to hear how Starcraft could have caused Zelda to lose the other 3 divisions.
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CJayC was trying to make Link lose with the WW pics. Not sure if it swings the 5000 vote margin, but I'm okay with not knowing, because we very well might not have gotten any more contests after that if Cloud doesn't win the most important match in contest history.
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I will say, for me, the entire GOTD contest sucked, except for the last 2 days. But FFX/MM was the most fun I've had in a match probably since the start of 4-ways. The only thing that comes close since is Link/Draven.

And a big part of that is, almost everyone lost hope in MM when FFX took a big lead overnight, but my trend projections were right and the big comeback materialized as called for.
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KamikazePotato posted...

Surprised you think so when it basically sealed's FFX fate

FFX wins the contest if Melee wins that

Or Melee wins...
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Majora's Mask didn't save the day. The day was already lost when Brawl beat Melee, or maybe further back, when the GOTD contest was announced, or maybe when Gamefaqs decided the 00s were way way worse than the 90s. Majora's Mask delivered vengeance. Ocarina's of Time's black sheep sequel, a game that one has to check a calendar to realize is not a 90s game, beat the champion of the 00s. And justice was done.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Link tried his hardest to let Cloud get a good score in the final, and he succeeded in staying under 60%. Guess that wasn't enough to fend off the calls for him to be removed.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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You can have a bracket where Link doesn't face title contenders until near the end. We actually got this in 2002, by accident, where Link didn't face above midcarder strength until the semifinals. For anyone who isn't a title contender, facing Link is an honor, privilege, and joy.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Oh yeah. I had forgotten the score in this match, but Mario only got 55.1% against Shadow the Hedgehog in 2003. Not Sonic, Shadow. In 2002 he got 74% against Servbot and 67% against Morrigan Aensland. And of course in 2003 he failed to break 39% against Sephiroth. That's "normal" Mario in 2002-3, and it looks a lot like the Mario we saw in 2004.

Then you have the three matches everyone remembers. Where Mario went 3-0 against Cloud, Crono, and Crono by a combined margin of 500 votes. This looks like the Mario that we've seen since 2005.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Ulti_PCA posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Crono would have had a great year in 2003 if he hadn't run into a rally/stuffing fest with Mario. Magus did have a great year in 2003.

He really didn't. People thought him vs Link was the true final of that contest and he crapped the bed twice before overperforming with a sprite.

That's only because this board, for whatever reason, expected Magus to be stronger than Crono. Just because people here went into the contest with outlandishly unrealistic hopes for dethroning Link, doesn't mean CT didn't have a good year in 2003 relative to other years.
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transience posted...

maybe Mario was the issue in 04. you can't actually see any Mario characters' results outside of Crono/Mario because of how awful the 04 bracket was.

Yeah Crono's result against Link in 04 was not so great. Not even 3% better than Magus did in 2003. I'm happy to entertain silent protagonist SFF because it makes Crono look better, but Crono is kind of an awesome character so my intuition is that not even Link would be able to SFF him.
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I also don't know what to think of Crono in 2002. The final week of that contest was so weird - if you look at the changes in votals between matches the only thing that looks like that is the 2015 contest with Undertale and Melee rallying. By direct comparison through Mario, Crono = Cloud in 2002, but Cloud's match got 24k more votes so it seems unlikely Crono could have actually won that.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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Crono would have had a great year in 2003 if he hadn't run into a rally/stuffing fest with Mario. Magus did have a great year in 2003.
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Honestly, new Square did pretty well in 2006. Didn't Link vs. Cloud take place on Twilight Princess's launch day? And Cloud still broke 46%. Only 1.5% worse than in 2005. If Link vs. Cloud happened on the first day of the contest instead of the last, Cloud very likely beats his 2005 score.

2 days before Link vs. Cloud, we had a 4-way with Link vs. Cloud vs. Sephiroth vs. Snake.....and Snake barely beat a Sephiroth who was facing SFF from Cloud. Earlier in the contest, Tifa got 49% on Zero Suit Samus, Vincent got 48% on Sonic, and Auron got 46% on Crono. Squall put up good numbers too, although I forgot the details.

Knowing what we do about the power of hype and launch days of big titles, I think we can't rule out Cloud beating Link that year if the poll were held a month or 2 earlier.
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xp1337 posted...

Peace___Frog posted...

So we have flynn being sentenced, and the judge presiding over it has been a darling of the fox news / breitbart folks - but he's said that flynn is arguably a traitor to this country so their faith may be misplaced. Any bets on how long until they begin pretending that the judge has been a Democrat in disguise all along?

Just checked in on how this all went down and wow that was a swerve. It almost can't be understated how disastrously that went for Flynn.

Judge point-blank made him answer whether he knew lying to the FBI was a crime (He did) and if he believed he was entrapped (He didn't.) Said he arguably sold his country out. Asked Mueller's prosecutor there if the SCO felt Flynn's actions could be charged under treason and if they considered it. (They were like "uhhhhh that's a serious question so we're hesitating to answer." Before later saying, we don't think so.) Judge stated how he disagreed with how Petraeus had gotten out of felony charges for his case (Flynn's lawyers had brought him up to compare to Flynn)

Flynn took the Judge's offer of a recess and came back to take the Judge's offer to "delay sentencing in the hopes he can point to further cooperation as credit" (Next status hearing is in March)

remember the special counsel's office recommended no jail time and this all happened.

He sounds like one of those law and order judges. Although, this doesn't really help Mueller's position. If defendants can't trust that their deal with the special counsel will keep them out of prison because it might be overturned by a judge, they'll be less willing to make deals. If Mueller's investigation is really in its closing stages though, that might not matter to him.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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TheRock1525 posted...

Peace___Frog posted...

So we have flynn being sentenced, and the judge presiding over it has been a darling of the fox news / breitbart folks - but he's said that flynn is arguably a traitor to this country so their faith may be misplaced. Any bets on how long until they begin pretending that the judge has been a Democrat in disguise all along?

Yeah the whole fiasco of Flynn claiming that he was deliberately misled into lying is hilarious when the FBI interview showed the agents interviewing him were literally trying to coax him into the RIGHT answers and he still chose to lie.

I think this is as good a time as any to bring up that this is a real incongruity in our justice system. If anyone but a prosecutor was coaxing witnesses into giving answers they want in exchange for something of value (like not going to prison), it would be considered witness tampering.

And I thought Blagojevich was prosecuted in federal court? Trump can start by pardoning him. Might as well issue a blanket pardon for all offenses related to campaign finance law, under the grounds that the president believes the law is unconstitutional. Andrew Johnson issued a blanket pardon for everyone who fought against the US in the Civil War, so it can be done.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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LordoftheMorons posted...

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1074401228224950272

Now he's implying that Rod Blagojevich was the victim of an overzealous criminal justice system?

I guess they both did have things that were fucking golden...

Trump can pardon him! Start with a Democrat and call it fair and balanced.
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Logience posted...

_Dog_ posted...

@HaRRicH posted...

Can't wait for us to get to the eligibility of religious figures.

I could see the internet rally for Pope Francis!

Nah, get John Paul II. I'd love to see Poland be the deciding factor in a poll.

Heck, maybe we could start a really big DDOS attack by putting him up against Geralt.

The conservative Catholics will rally for Link to stop Pope Francis.
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Just wait until we get a few more activist justices on the Supreme Court to legislate from the bench. We will have mandatory church attendance on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If you don't go you will have to pay a nonattendance tax that will make your Obamacare premiums look cheap.
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MalcolmMasher posted...

Next we can offer to cut the top marginal tax rate to 35% in exchange for Republicans acknowledging that global warming is anthropogenic and taking concrete steps to fight it! 34% to reform the prison-industrial complex!! 33% to impeach and remove Trump!!!!

Or we can acknowledge that congressional campaigns receive donations from corporations, and therefore that it is unreasonable to expect Congress to pass a bill about health insurance without at least the tepid approval of insurance companies. Obamacare got there through compromise: they had to accept pre-existing conditions, but also everyone had to buy health insurance. You're offering nothing.

34% marginal rate to fix healthcare, climate change, and criminal justice? Sign me up! If I'm a Democrat in Congress and that's the offer, I'm taking it, and screw you to any health insurance companies that gave me donations.
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And if you're worried about Republicans wanting their pound of flesh, I'm sure cutting the top tax rate from 37% to 36% will provide enough sweetener to get it done.
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LordoftheMorons posted...

Obamacare is way better than the old system where you could be totally fucked if you has a preexisting condition

Also Medicare for All is not getting 60 votes in the Senate anytime in the near future, so I guess all of the people who get screwed in the next decade or so can just suck it up?

(Though in reality I think this ruling is almost certainly overturned as far as totally killing the ACA goes, and is *probably* overturned in totality, including the preexisting condition stuff. But if Im wrong, it will be *really* bad for millions of Americans).

So repeal Obamacare, and then bring up a bill in Congress immediately reinstating the provision about preexisting conditions. It will be wildly popular, and will pass. We can worry about paying for it later. Once preexisting condition bill is passed, the insurance industry will be first in line to suffer, and they'll have more motivation than anyone to get a long term solution in place.
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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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LordoftheMorons posted...

It was ruled constitutional but then the GOP zeroed out the tax

A sane judge would have, at most, ruled that that part of the law was unconstitutional, and not the whole thing (my understanding is that most experts think this ruling will be overturned on appeal).

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Good.

Medicare for all time

What the fuck, I expected cheers from redsox et al but burn everything to the ground fucking over a ton of people in the process to get to the system I think is better is a really gross attitude to have.

If you don't have someone with the guts to say it, we'll never get a better system. Give in, and it will only get worse, and worse, and worse.
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Simple economics:

How much would you pay for health insurance policy A if there were no penalty for not having health insurance? Let's call this amount N.

How much would you pay for health insurance policy A if there were a penalty of M for refusing to buy policy A? Answer: N+M.

Obviously, the real world is more complicated that this, but this model essentially captures what's driving prices here. Anyone can tell that N+M > N.

Obamacare is insanity. And if Democrats could admit it, like Bill Clinton did, they would do a lot better in elections.
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But yeah, good riddance. Hopefully this will get upheld in higher courts and Democrats can come to the table on fixing healthcare instead of trying to defend their ridiculous project that provides health "insurance" that insures nothing and is outrageously expensive.
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Ah. This argument. The Supreme Court said the Individual Mandate is only constitutional as a tax and Congress repealed the tax, so the rest of Obamacare has to go with it.

I mean, the real problem here is with Roberts' ruling in the first place. No one thought it was a tax before he tried to shoehorn it into a tax to save the law - and if it is a tax it is fairly obviously a "direct tax" on individuals which is not allowed by the Constitution. Just because the only things that have gotten called out as direct taxes in the past are land taxes and literal taxes on existing, shouldn't mean that there can't be anything else that's a direct tax, and the Individual Mandate is very very close to a tax on existing.
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Vader has been around since 1977 though. He's had 20 years longer than Sephiroth for his style appeal to burn away.
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creativename posted...

red sox 777 posted...

Batman and Darth Vader are going to have the same issue Crono and Megaman have, that of being much weaker in the rest of the world than in the Americas.

Good point actually. Wouldnt be as extreme though. And theyd be absolute powerhouses in the US.

Nanis23 posted...

>Darth Vader being considered strong
He would be the Sephiroth of GameFAQs Character Battles if we had him from the beginning
Cool to like in the past, too edgy to like now

Yeah, no.

The main reason Rogue One was a hit is Vaders presence and the thing people remember most about it is 90 seconds of Vader kicking ass. Maybe less than 90 seconds.

I love Sephiroth, but hes all style.

Vader has one of the most epic character arcs in cinema history.

If anything would hurt him it would be Ani. Not being edgy. His character is dark and depressing, not edgy, and his story is now pretty much *the* archetype of a fallen hero.

Its never not going to be cool to like Vader, thats just not going to happen.

I can already envision the pic sabotage Vader will get. Technically he is Darth Vader before he gets put into the suit, after all.
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I really like this. Imagine how many anti-votes Link will be getting by the final if he's dispatched 63 characters in a row. Everyone will have watched their favorite character fall in turn to Link.
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Batman and Darth Vader are going to have the same issue Crono and Megaman have, that of being much weaker in the rest of the world than in the Americas.
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Instead of having GOTD 2, can we just have another full games contest? There are so many interesting matchups there.
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What I want is more games contests. We've had 10 character contests, and only 4 games contests. We haven't had a repeat champion in a games contest yet.
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I've never really felt that excited about a fictional character contest. I'm just not that excited about Link vs. Batman. Not really sure why, probably because I can't see myself getting emotionally invested in the non-gaming characters. And I'm only emotionally invested in the gaming characters because of the contest history.

Back when we were clearing 100k votes per day, this site had a lot of cachet as a place with stable character strengths and high votals. These contests used to be very hard to influence - Bidoof had a rally that brought in probably somewhere around 3000 votes - enough to swing a 55-45 match nowadays - and all it got him was going 50/50 with Vincent for one hour before getting doubled, in a 4-way where Link took up more than half the total votes.

I don't know, maybe what I'm really saying is the only way to generate more excitement for these contests is to have the votals somehow go back up.
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Cloud looked doomed when he barely broke 60% on Alucard and Sephiroth got smoked almost as badly by Mario. In the end, he comes away with the silver, once again.
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That 44-1 is unreal. That's how 7 characters out of 9 can have losing records, because Link is hogging all the wins.
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