LogFAQs > #936910083

Match 34: Mass Effect 3 vs. StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty

ME3 14466
SC2 9392

Oh, hey, sequel fight.

https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/(7)Starcraft_vs_(2)Mass_Effect_2_2015

That was a hotly contested battle, and the general consensus was that neither of these games were as popular as those games, even if the adjusted X-Stats say ME3 > ME2--I have no idea how they came up with that, though, because I think the match against ME3 was the only one where we got to see what Undertale's unrallied strength looked like? Obviously the raw X-Stats have ME3 behind only Undertale, but that'd just be silly.

...Hm. Well that's disturbing. It turns out I remembered wrong, and we did get to see unrallied Undertale for quite a bit of the match against Fallout 3 in Round 2 (in fact, Fallout 3's peak lead came more than 13 hours in, which is especially scary given that it fell more than 2500 short of Undertale's winning margin). And of course, it's fun to note how even though Undertale was continuing to win updates by large raw amounts right up until the end, the total votes in the late updates aren't really any higher than in a lot of the early updates where FO3 was winning (though given how the updates usually get quite a bit smaller, the fact that they're of similar size is still the rallies' fault). Kind of lends some credence to what Allen said about the Link-Draven match, that people could always come back and vote later. But what's disturbing is that there, uh...was kind of a blip in that poll, too. Nothing prolonged like what happened in Link-Draven, but if you look at the updater, there's a single update where Fallout 3 won 4-0. For a second I thought that the updater had accidentally taken a double, since the seconds on the two updates are different, but it's actually the later update that has the earlier seconds reading--they're 4:59 apart, not 5:01.

...Or maybe not. It took a second update a mere minute later and that showed a more normal amount of votes. But then why did it show any change in votes at all? Strange. Must've just been a hiccup in the counting software.

But back on topic. Presumably based on the pre-rallying ME3-UT and FO3-UT values, ME3 was in fact supposed to get 51.92% on ME2 based on 2015. ME2, in turn, got 51.12% on StarCraft in a match where both sides were rallying. So this was a fairly obvious result and I feel silly for thinking it could be close even though I got it right.

Match 35: Stardew Valley vs. Destiny

Stardew Valley 16979
Destiny 6879

Another match that everyone seemed to know the winner, but no one really felt comfortable about it. Stardew Valley was yet another indie game, and even though it is technically an RPG, the game series it's most commonly compared to is Harvest Moon. Actual Harvest Moon, not its RPG spinoff Rune Factory. Destiny, however, is neither Japanese nor an RPG. It is in fact made by Bungie, best known for notorious contest disappointment Halo. Destiny had been in a contest before, in 2015, where it lost in Round 1 getting 25.51% on...StarCraft. (Oracle expectation: 39.85%) Well, that certainly provides a good comparison for Round 3! Based on the 2015 X-Stats, however they were calculated, ME3 would be expected to get 76.02% on Destiny. Stardew Valley got 71.17%. So that comes out to...Stardew Valley being worth 48.35% on ME3? That seems awfully strange, but okay!

(Far more likely that Destiny has fallen off a lot more than ME3 has; I wouldn't even really be surprised if ME3 had been vindicated by time somewhat, either because those who didn't get it right away only know the revised version or because the even more hated Mass Effect: Andromeda has lessened the hatred towards 3.)

Match 36: Super Mario Galaxy 2 vs. Return of the Obra Dinn

SMG2 20816
RotOD 3043

Just when you thought the vote totals couldn't get any worse...

I'm fairly certain that that's a record low for votes in a 1v1 Games or Characters contest, even with the registered voter bonus. The Years Contest had a lot of first-round blowouts where even the raw figures for Return of the Obra Dinn were higher than the loser's vote total, but it's certainly worse than anything else this year or from 2018, including Draven getting hatestomped. Though at least the unregistered voters alone gave it more votes than Chester got in 2013. Honestly once you add in the registered vote bonus this isn't all that far off Chester's total for the end-of-round-1 "Worst of the Worst" bonus match.

It's impossible not to look at the raw totals for this match and not think of the Years Contest, though, because Return of the Obra Dinn literally got 1998 votes before adding in the registered voter bonus.

So now we were left to determine whether 87.25% on Return of the Obra Dinn was as impressive as 84.07% on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey. It doesn't seem like it should be, even if it was the biggest blowout of the contest so far by percentage. The biggest by total votes, though, was Super Mario Odyssey, so Galaxy 2 doing this as well...well, it was easy to think that Mario was just going to be a beast this contest. Hopefully Round 2 would give us a better handle on what to expect for the big SMG2-W3 matchup.

Or, wait, is that even right? That was the foregone conclusion, but I can't help feeling that there's something in the way... After all, SMG2 narrowly lost to Mass Effect 1 in 2015. If The Witcher 3-Super Mario Galaxy 2 is supposed to be a close match, shouldn't Witcher 3 have trouble with ME3?

...Huh. The Witcher 3 did better in defeat than I remembered. Still, it does seem odd that The Witcher 3 is a unanimous Guru pick to reach R3 when the 2015 X-Stats say that it's only expected to beat Mass Effect 3 with 51.74%. What's SMG2's expected percentage against ME3?

...51.58%. Holy crap. The X-Stats have The Witcher 3 winning with just 50.16% of the vote against Super Mario Galaxy 2. There are so many things that can change in five years. And yet Witcher 3 is more than a 5-to-1 favorite on the Guru (along with a sole Guru taking Stardew Valley to upset both of them--one of only three to even take Stardew Valley to upset SMG2.)

Bring it on.

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Also known as Cyberchao X.