49. solarshadow's Contest Stats and Discussion: I've been a part of a few subgroups on B8, and the stats topic has been one of the most unfriendly of the lot. I've never been the best with stats, and I remember people (especially the 'legendary' creativename) flat-out insulting me when I asked noobish questions. That obviously doesn't reflect on everyone: a lot of the regulars are quite welcoming, but I got severely turned off by that experience. Apart from that, it seems like the stats topic is prone to overexaggeration (see people calling a match within the first 15 minutes) and heavy reliance on numbers (see the entire 'lol xstats' meme). It deserves a fair bit of credit for being probably the longest-running, most successful thing in B8 history.
I'm sorry to hear that we were unfriendly. I think the topic is usually quite nice outside of debates like Mario/Samus and Melee/Brawl, where the debates were centered on "common sense" instead of stats and past contest results. The nice thing about numbers is that no one is going to proclaim a match obvious based on the numbers unless it truly is obvious, whereas with "common sense," people will disagree and mock the other side as stupid for missing something they claim was patently obvious.
I think the overexaggeration/calling matches early thing is a bit of a joke now, or at least I hope it is. Then again, now that I think about it.....probably it's not for half the people posting in the topic.
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90s games > 00s games