LogFAQs > #914534791

Here's a few more thoughts I have on CBX's format, now that I've finished listening to that whole section:

I really wish Allen had structured the Losers bracket like any standard tournament losers bracket, with the loser of a winners bracket ejected to the opposite side of the losers bracket. I frankly don't think one runback and another near-runback was worth all the wasted matches that resulted from that missed opportunity. Like three-ways in 2013, I consider the Losers bracket something that was worth seeing once but really has no need to return. As for the Legends bracket, the only situation in which I would want to see it return is for greatone's idea of a sort of test trial of an all-fictional character battle (which I think is a worthwhile compromise between B8's two camps on this matter for the next character battle). This would contain eight all-fictional characters with special significance to video gaming as the "Legends" facing off against the eight divisional winners in round 1 of a single-elimination format.

Speaking of brackets and legends, I can't say I really get the grasping at straws to not retire Link from matches that actually matter, at least in any future 1 character v 1 character character battle besides a true all-fictional bracket. I would even venture that Link is so far ahead of the rest of the field at this point that nothing short of another all-encompassing rally will ever dethrone him, particularly when you consider his trajectory versus those of the other potential contenders. For any future character battles that aren't truly all-fictional, I would just stick Link in an unscored bonus match versus the actual winner and, if the winner's someone like Mario, have another bonus match with Link vs. Cloud or whatever.

Advo's 8-Link bracket idea is kinda funny, though, and certainly not in a bad way. It does give GameFAQs what we want, after all, which of course is more Link! Because I could, I quickly made an Advo-style mini-bracket with CBX's divisional winners versus eight different Links:

(4) Ganondorf vs. Dark Link
(7) Pikachu vs. CDi Link (needs to have a surprised Pikachu pic for extra quality)
(3) Alucard vs. Link (Zelda 1)
(4) Bowser vs. Toon Link
(4) Zelda vs. Link (Breath of the Wild)
(3) Auron vs. Young Link
(3) Tifa vs. Linkle
(1) Sephiroth vs. Fierce Deity Link

A couple of other minor points I wanted to make:

First, I do have a nit to pick about Allen's handling of the nomination form. While it was nice that he responded to early B8 trends by including various characters among the auto-suggest options, there was nought but radio silence on his end after the first 24 hours or so. The result was a bunch of notable snubs from the nomination form, including trending recent and popular B8 characters such as Cuphead, Papyrus, Max Caulfield, Metal Man, and Rosalina, as well as established characters such as Missile from previous character battles. As we've abundantly seen by now, the characters who aren't included on the nomination form have a very low chance of reaching the bracket - only something like a dozen CBX characters at most weren't included on the form, and none of them went above a 12-seed.

Second, I'll concede that my previous take on Allen's CBX pictures was probably a bit too critical, as most of the pics he chose do look quite good. I just would like all of them to look good. That being said, I tend to err on KP's side and say that Allen dumping the full list of characters in the next character battle on us beforehand and asking us to make pictures isn't a good idea. I absolutely agree with having B8 make the standardized pics for the matches; I just think those can afford to be different from the standardized pics when the bracket first goes up. Similarly, I like the teaser matches Allen gave us in 2015; that just shouldn't be the whole darn teaser list of names, at least in my opinion.
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Hail the reigning Guru champ, Advokaiser!
You proved yourself more statistically metal-minded than I ever have been - well done!