LogFAQs > #939248625

Great episode! Yeah, I've always thought that we as a community greatly underappreciate how much effort and love SBAllen has poured into these contests. It shows to me that Allen pours a LOT of thought into designing each contest and I'm going to use the Show topic to give him some major kudos:

GotD1/CBVIII - After so much complaints about 4-ways, Allen listened to the board and gave us the 1 v 1 contest that people have been pushing for. Probably the most interesting thing he came up with is the night/day match which helped with the flow of the contest, by making boring 70-30 matches more tolerable to watch.

Rivalry - I recall SBAllen had a poll of what contest we wanted next and "tag team" ended up winning. On paper, the idea of a "Rivalry" contest was interesting because the winner was not immediately obvious. While most people went with Link vs Ganondorf, there were people that believed that adding Sepihroth to Cloud helped him more than adding Ganondorf to Link and there were a decent number of Cloud vs Sephiroth supporters. The contest ended up being a huge flop.

CBIX - This entire contest felt like a love letter to Board8 with the Noble Nine, Character Battle Nine and the 3 ways allowing for a debated final. Can Snake take advantage of Link/Mario LFF and win a championship? Unfortunately, this contest also got derailed and got the most toxic board we've possibly ever had.

BGE3 - Allen listed to our complaints about the "division by era" and gave us the contest that the board has been pushing for years. I believe this is also the first contest that gave us the 4 matches at the same time, which significantly helped with the flow of the contest. Of course, this one got derailed too, by Undertale.

Years - When Draven derailed the contest, that was probably the lowest in terms of B8's relationship with Allen. There were people openly lambasting Allen in the topics with some even accusing him of rigging the contest in favor of Draven. Allen was clearly hurt and I specifically remember he sent an ominous message saying that 2013 might be the last contest, but that he had one final idea that was "rally-proof". At that time, I remember speculating that the only possible idea that's rally-proof is Years. So when Years was announced after 2 contests derailed by rallies, it was no surprise to me. Ultimately, that one also was a flop since making a contest nobody cared enough to rally means it was a contest nobody cared about at all.

CBX - Coming into CBX, I think Allen faced a monumental challenge. He had to deliver a contest people cared about but still prevent it from being taken over by rallies and I think he came up with an ingenious solution with the second chance brackets. At the cost of reducing contest momentum, the second chance bracket allowed people with their brackets busted by rallies or other means (and have otherwise tuned out of the contest) a second chance, as well as possibly let the trolls who invade B8 to dunk on us a chance to settle down and participate in the contest. Obviously, this is not a full proof but I do think that this is a creative solution that does mitigate some of the damage a rally will do.

GotD2 - I'll be honest. I don't think this contest was that great, especially compared to CBX, but I do give SBAllen an A for his effort. if Skyrim and Witcher 3 swapped places, for example, Persona 5 vs Skyrim might have been an all-timer. Coming into this bracket, people expected the 2 possibly 3 best games in this bracket to be Nintendo, meaning it was incredibly difficult to design a well rounded bracket with this field. Allen ended up chose to put all the Western games in the bottom half to prevent an all Nintendo final and I do respect him for that and he designed the bracket as well as he could given his circumstances.

Future - I think any future contest is going to a challenge to make, in part because the voter base has become static (think our votals probably won't drop much further) and increasingly ossified in our taste. Link/Zelda/LoZ has now achieved near absolute dominance on this site and it will take multiple future LoZ titles bombing before I can see anything challenging that. People in general are too optimistic about their future contest ideas and I can see tons of ways each of them presented can a disaster. Remember that we've had 4 contests (Villains/Series/Rivalry/Years) that weren't Games/GotD/Characters and I don't think any of them are remembered that fondly with the latter 3 being seen as the 3 worst contests we've ever had, so it'll be an uphill battle.

Consoles sounds like another Years contest to me, with massive full day blowouts (with 32 entries, each match will be a day), lots of picture controversy and only a couple close matches. Villains and Series both will both be blowout city, judging from the first iterations. The irony is that I personally liked Rivalry and Years, so I'd be down for any of these (I really want a Best Video Game Duo contest), but I'm anticipating the board will hate it and go full "why the hell did we get this boring contest?".

As for all-fictional, I'm gotten more tired about debating this topic than debating whether rallies are good or bad since there are lots of people with an extremely strong opinion on this matter and I doubt anyone would change their minds at this point. I will just say that I can understand why SBAllen would not want to go with this idea, especially full Pandora's box because I think being the admin of GameFAQs, he's a purist in the same way that Masahiro Sakurai is a purist. Would Link vs Batman in Smash be fun to see? Probably, but I do understand why Sakurai would want to keep Batman at arms length from Smash and I think it's a similar reason why SBAllen feels the same as well.

That's all I will say on this matter.

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congrats to azuarc, our GotD2 guru!