Board 8 > * The Show EP 1 - OMG 128 1v1s! Will a rally pick win you $1000? w/ yo and Zen *

(+) Yeah! (+)

I should point out that people were so into the just Monika meme that they literally nominated just Monika and no one else for the sake of the joke. I saw at least two in the nomination rally thread.
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okay time to give this a listen
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I should point out that people were so into the just Monika meme that they literally nominated just Monika and no one else for the sake of the joke. I saw at least two in the nomination rally thread.

Monika and the game she is from are both terrible.
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Oh god, expert bracket

I lost everything by getting greedy with the surprise oracle on an until then perfect run in Rivalry Rumble and then got like a little worse than top 50 instead of like top 10 in CB IX because I forgot to make a pick for Draven/Mewtwo/Sephiroth
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Man, Zen's voice doesn't match his face. Not that I really thought about what his voice would sound like. Yet you do sound exactly like the type of guy who would have a framed replica of the president's picture of Shadow and Sonic on his desk. What a weird conundrum.

Oh hey, thanks for the kind words, guys.

For the record, I knew Zen's pic of Rikku was fan art, but I didn't say anything until the match started because I knew it would help her win and I had her in my bracket. LEONHART APPROVED SABOTAGE

And yeah, I tried making match pics for CBVIII in 2010, and I used Zen's tutorials to help make mine. I even got a few accepted in round 1! Once the pictures got more complex and were more than just full body pics with a colored background, I dropped out though because I'm not good enough for that!

My story of discovering the contest is the same as yoblazer's, just a year later. I missed Link/AiAi in 2003 and got here for Fox/Pikachu.

Yeah, I agree with yoblazer about the absolute magic of the early years. We can't really recapture that because we're all older and it's harder to surprise us (without a rally) because we've seen so much. When I think about this, my mind always goes back to us just shouting BARRIERS for six Stats Topics during Kefka/Vercetti.

There's always been a sizable portion of the board that likes the Board 8 community but doesn't really care about the contest.

Breath of the Wild sold extremely well, Zen, especially for a Zelda game! Also yeah, Breath of the Wild is the first game that actually made me care about the series.

I think registered user votes counting double is a neat idea to experiment with. I don't have any strong feelings for or against it though.

I kinda like switching times just to mix things up. It's certainly better than going back to 3 A.M. start times!

I like giving the Noble Nine (sans Sephiroth) byes to the Double Elimination round because it does make things more unpredictable. It reminds me of SC2K5, where Clinkeroth was taken out. That was a great bracket on paper, even if some of the matches didn't live up to the hype. I'm sure some of these matches that look good on paper will wind up being duds, but there's also more likely to be wild and unexpected upsets if you take those guys out since they're not just racking up guaranteed wins every round.

So glad 12-hour matches are gone. I never liked them. Even as someone who will be on the Analysis Crew and will have to deal with four writeups a day, I'll take 24 hour matches all day every day. Zen nailed a lot of my thoughts on it, actually!

As a stats nerd (and X-Stat compiler), Double Eliminations is awesome. It'll make adjustments so much easier! Also, we get a chance for more matches with the heavy hitters (presumably it'll all be heavy hitters at that point in the contest), so yes, please. Theoretically, it's going to be the characters we care about the most at that point. But yeah, he should've reversed the order in the Losers Bracket so we don't have to worry about so many rematches. Theoretically, we can avoid rematches altogether until near the end if things play out right, but it's unlikely. But also, like yo, I'm kind of interested to see what a rematch would look like so close after the first match. The closest thing we ever saw to this was the Battle Royal in 2006, and observing the day to day numbers was pretty fascinating.
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I disagree with Zen that any rallied character will get far but get stopped by the NN. Some of them might get past round 1 normally because they have fodder opponents like Aloy, but the double gamefaqs vote is only going to be useful in squashing a rally before it gets out of hand. If a character has relied on rallies to get to round 5, that rally is unstoppable by gamefaqs users.
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tag
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Whiskey_Nick posted...

The six day gap is nice, breaks up rallies a little where there would normally be close matches

It does provide a "cooling off period", could that kill the momentum of a major rally? Hadn't considered that, but certainly possible...

Whiskey_Nick posted...

Hot Pocket t shirt

IT BURNS!

Christmas gifts get wild when Granny Ng is hosting.

Whiskey_Nick posted...

Zen the way you say analysis

It is a thing. It makes me chuckle each time

Yeaaaaah I loved it.

LeonhartFour posted...

I miss the days when I was the official analyst of The Show

and then everyone stole my gimmick

It was too sweet to copyright!


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Whiskey_Nick posted...

Yo's reaction to Doki Doki is fantastic

He scoffed at first, yes, but we did convince him to give it a try later in the evening. Excited to hear the results!

azuarc posted...

I think when you guys were talking about rules and protocols and changes, the one thing you significantly overlooked is that the Thanksgiving break has the potential to disrupt rallies.

I fully expect there to be rally that starts before the break, makes it to the top 16, and then fizzles on the return. This is, of course, contingent on the board not foaming at the mouth for that whole week and giving outsiders something to cackle gleefully over...so then again, this is obviously an absurd expectation, since we know that will never happen.

I agree, we should have commented on this. It could be an especially effective cooling off period because that's the one week per year young Americans are forced to leave the internet (biggest travel days while everyone flies home). Maybe when they get back online afterward they'll have forgotten what was soooooo funny about Waluigi beating Sonic (or whatnot).

Whiskey_Nick posted...

Remember Linkle? no

We have Zelda's ass. We don't need Linkle

We needed BOTH, darn it!

And the horse they rode in on!

azuarc posted...

Honestly, I think that line was crossed during RR when BJ/Adolf was in the contest. Hitler might not be a fictional character, but he's certainly a person of non-video game origins. I don't know what criteria Allen was using then that he allowed that, but I'm more okay with the idea of Geralt appearing than the boss of Wolfenstein episode 3. At least Geralt has presence in the video game. Hitler's in Wolfenstein for about 10 seconds until you kill him and move on to the second half of the game.

Good point, yes I wanted to mention Hitler during this section but I forgot after a minute and then we'd moved on. (Normally I'd love to discuss letting in the new characters at length but didn't want to dwell on it too long during a HYPE/positivity episode.)

ZenOfThunder posted...

Wait Catherine was in Rivals, seriously? It's unbelievable how little from that season managed to stick inside my brain.


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LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, I agree with yoblazer about the absolute magic of the early years. We can't really recapture that because we're all older and it's harder to surprise us (without a rally) because we've seen so much. When I think about this, my mind always goes back to us just shouting BARRIERS for six Stats Topics during Kefka/Vercetti.

On that note, stuff that really made some of those matches will never be seen again, because five/fifteen minute updates are a thing. We'll never see stuff like the last hour of Frog vs. Chief or the BARRIERS ever again.
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I'll jump into the convos here shortly, but right now I just want to say that I started Doki Doki today, and why some of the plot revelations themselves may not be shocking me, the presentation is incredible.
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Yeah, Kefka/Vercetti put an end to insta-updates for good, for better or worse.

I can't imagine following that match (or CT/LTTP) without insta-updates now.
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also I legitimately had to stop playing Doki Doki Literature Club at night at one point
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I should point out that people were so into the just Monika meme that they literally nominated just Monika and no one else for the sake of the joke. I saw at least two in the nomination rally thread.

Normally I'd speak out against throwing away 19 slots... but that's pretty funny.

LordoftheMorons posted...

Oh god, expert bracket

I lost everything by getting greedy with the surprise oracle on an until then perfect run in Rivalry Rumble and then got like a little worse than top 50 instead of like top 10 in CB IX because I forgot to make a pick for Draven/Mewtwo/Sephiroth

Yes everyone has their streak contest horror stories, it was wonderful!

LeonhartFour posted...

Yeah, I agree with yoblazer about the absolute magic of the early years. We can't really recapture that because we're all older and it's harder to surprise us (without a rally) because we've seen so much. When I think about this, my mind always goes back to us just shouting BARRIERS for six Stats Topics during Kefka/Vercetti.

Breath of the Wild sold extremely well, Zen, especially for a Zelda game! Also yeah, Breath of the Wild is the first game that actually made me care about the series.

I like giving the Noble Nine (sans Sephiroth) byes to the Double Elimination round because it does make things more unpredictable. It reminds me of SC2K5, where Clinkeroth was taken out. That was a great bracket on paper, even if some of the matches didn't live up to the hype. I'm sure some of these matches that look good on paper will wind up being duds, but there's also more likely to be wild and unexpected upsets if you take those guys out since they're not just racking up guaranteed wins every round.

As a stats nerd (and X-Stat compiler), Double Eliminations is awesome. It'll make adjustments so much easier! Also, we get a chance for more matches with the heavy hitters (presumably it'll all be heavy hitters at that point in the contest), so yes, please. Theoretically, it's going to be the characters we care about the most at that point. But yeah, he should've reversed the order in the Losers Bracket so we don't have to worry about so many rematches. Theoretically, we can avoid rematches altogether until near the end if things play out right, but it's unlikely. But also, like yo, I'm kind of interested to see what a rematch would look like so close after the first match. The closest thing we ever saw to this was the Battle Royal in 2006, and observing the day to day numbers was pretty fascinating.

There were plenty of more important or dramatic or unlikely days in Contest history, but that Kefka match might be my all time favorite day on B8 for the sheer entertainment value.

WOW a Zelda game to win over even Leon, mighty impressive!

For me 2005 was great on paper but maybe EVEN BETTER in reality, easily one of my favorite brackets ever. (Helped that it was coming on the heels of a dud in 2004 and a year where every result went against me in 2003. And an uninspiring Bad Guys Thing a few months previous.)

That's true, was certainly funny when Samus was removed from the options but Mario still managed to LOSE vote share the next day (as 10,000 Nintendo fans didn't realize this was a new match). If we get one repeat I'd be fine with it from a stat quirk perspective, but jeeeeez, sure hope we don't get stuck with four...


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Ngamer64 posted...

a year where every result went against me in 2003

SC2K3 was the best contest

Game of the Decade could've dethroned it but noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
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True story. I had Cloud over Sephiroth in my bracket in 2003 but switched to Link at the last moment.
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As of right now, I have just started listening to this episode of The Show.
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3 years since the last Character Battle? LOL Ngamer, the last Character Battle was 5 years ago.
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As for the total nominations for this contest, I put in an estimate of 27680 nominations based on the highest known total of 27667 from a few hours before the nomination form went down.
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I'm going to pick my main bracket without worrying about rallies. Then I'll use the Second Chance bracket to pick the rally character if one emerges as the clear favorite.

I want the Battle Challenge to come back. It was a lot of fun.

Jak was robbed!

"Heroic Mario just laid his seed in his pants" still the greatest topic title of all time.

Pokefear? Pfffffft. Mewtwo is a fraud.

Neku Sakuraba hype. That TWEWY Switch port gonna propel him over Ganondorf!

I'm the one who has held strong against Pokemon throughout the years! Star Ocean > Pokemon never forget (that was Heroic Mario not me), although a Pikachu Hot Pocket might actually get me to vote for him.

You know, you've just convinced me against registered votes counting double. MAN OF THE PEOPLE!

Man, Rivalry Rumble was the worst. Or it used to be the worst until Best Year in Gaming.

Fox had a fair match against Snake in 2010, and he got doubled, which is pretty solid.

yoblazer needs to take Jill > Fox to atone for voting Peach > Jill and Kairi > Claire in 2006.

yoblazer is totally correct. You're better off picking Link to win if you want to win prize money. Even if a rally does win, there will only be a few people who picked it with a prize entry bracket. I almost won prize money in 2007 with Cloud > Link in the finals! You don't necessarily need to be perfect. You just need to pick a handful of debated matches correctly (picking Ryu to escape his division with Cloud and taking Master Chief to the semis behind GAME FUEL in 2007 did it for me, more than likely).

Yeah, I beat Breath of the Wild, but there's still a ton I could go back and do. Maybe one day I will. That game is massive.

And yeah, I think beating Link twice will be next to impossible without an overwhelming rally. Although technically you don't have to beat him twice. The final is winner take all, even if Link hasn't lost up to that point.

I laughed out loud when I saw Waluigi/Aerith because I actually had to think about who would win that for more than two seconds for literally the only time in contest history.

Zen confirming that you need to lose a bunch of brain cells for Waluigi > Aerith to seem like the smart pick.

I can corroborate Zen's story of seeing lots of kids doing the Fortnite dances all the time.

if Chloe wins a match it could become the newest worst thing in contest history

SPIDER-MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN (</JJJ>) absolutely would not be a fraud

Of course SBAllen listens to The Show, Zen.

Hey now, I was a big proponent of expanding the contest, too!

I'm terrified of Monika (for many reasons) because the thing that helps rallies get off the ground is a weak character in round 1 because rallies are never ready right off the bat in round 1, and she's got one of the weakest fourpacks in the contest. Sans does, too.

Monika the perfect waifu? Don't mess with crazy.

My dream is to win the very last Guru so I'll be in everyone's sigs forever.

Also are we really going to go back and forth on calling it Character Battle 10 and Character Battle Ecks? Augh, I thought I'd be free from this curse since it's not a Games Contest!



Good Show, guys!
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Ngamer64 posted...

It does provide a "cooling off period", could that kill the momentum of a major rally? Hadn't considered that, but certainly possible...

Why would it? How many days passed between Undertale v Mass Effect 3 and Undertale v Fallout 4?
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12 hour matches were a good idea for a while. But with our vote totals having collapsed so much over the years, staying with 12 hour matches would reduce our already terrible vote totals even more. We probably wouldn't get above 10000 votes in a 12 hour match these days.
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Zen going off on the Pokemon Let's Go game. The lack of hype for this game is only for these games, but the true Gen 8 game coming out next year will have far more hype than Let's Go. But yeah, people aren't feeling the hype for Let's Go on this website, probably due to the game using the same mechanics used to catch Pokemon that are used in Pokemon Go. Let's Go will also not feature any new Pokemon besides a single new Pokemon called "Meltan". The first games of a new generation have a lot more hype than third versions, sequels, or remakes because they introduce a lot of new Pokemon which is the one aspect of the games that really get people interested in a new game.
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Great show, forgot how much I missed these.

Was hoping for more debating over first round matches but I guess the contest isn't starting for awhile so that can happen next time.
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thanks everyone for listening to my screaming

also @LeonhartFour weren't we in an episode of the show together once?? how do you not know my ridiculous new jersey half-asian voice
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Although it wasn't talked about during the episode, the tiebreaker question for your bracket entry will be rather interesting. It's the same question used in the last contest, but it specifically mentions that the registered user bonus will not count towards the final total. So that must be taken into account here.

In order to get an estimate of what kind of vote totals we are expected to get for this contest (minus the registered user bonus), I went back through all of the previous contests, calculated their average vote totals and then compared them to the non-contest vote totals around the time each contest started. For contests with 12 hour matches, they were adjusted based on what they would likely have received in a full 24 hours. Contests that featured a heavy amount of rallying had the rallied matches filtered out to obtain more accurate estimates of the average vote totals for the contest. For all practical purposes, I was not concerned with providing the exact percentages down to 2 decimal places, so the percentages listed below are all whole numbers.

The full list of every contest so far and how much higher the vote totals were compared to the non-contest vote totals:

Best Year in Gaming - 17%
Best Game Ever 2015 - 100%
Character Battle 2013 - 16%
Rivalry Rumble - 3%
Game of the Decade - 16%
Character Battle 2010 - 21%
Best Game Ever 2009 - 27%
Character Battle 2008 - 43%
Character Battle 2007 - 51%
Character Battle 2006 - 40%
Best Series Ever - 51%
Character Battle 2005 - 60%
Villains Contest - 37%
Character Battle 2004 - 63%
Best Game Ever 2004 - 47%
Character Batlte 2003 - 105%
Character Battle 2002 - 137%

For this contest specifically, we're not really expected to get a large boost in vote totals compared to our current non-contest vote totals. The vote totals in the 2013 Character Battle were only about 16% higher than the non-contest vote totals at the time, making it the worst Character Battle at bringing in votes (not counting the Draven matches).

Over the past 30 days, our non-contest polls have been averaging only 10718 votes. A 17% boost to that 10718 vote average would only bring us up to about 12500 votes. Realistically, I could see our contest matches averaging between 12500 and 17500 votes without factoring in the registered user bonus. With 150 matches in the contest, this means we can be expected to have between 1875000 and 2625000 total votes over the course of the entire contest. But I expect that the final total will be on the lower end of that range.
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The losers bracket should work like it does in the FGC. If you lose in match one you go to the bottom of the losers bracket.The loser of the last match goes to the top of the losers bracket.
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i want a RESET THE BRACKET moment if the winner of losers beats the winners of winners

i was gonna bring it up in this episode but i figured NG and yo wouldn't care as much as me and I'd just look crazy(er)
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zen talking about let's go pikachu is hilarious
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can confirm I'd be voting Monika over Link, and LoZ 1 is one of the first games I've ever played

CaptainOfCrush posted...

I'll jump into the convos here shortly, but right now I just want to say that I started Doki Doki today, and while some of the plot revelations themselves may not be shocking me, the presentation is incredible.

okay see by the end of THE SHOW I was looking for this. wasn't sure if you were going to do a playthrough topic but it's cool to see you've already played in the time between recording and how long it took me to listen to the podcast.
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Monika defo had some nomination topics going on here. I reckon she has the best shot at winning. She also has the benefit of being in a free to play game.
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Ya know, I just love The Show.

I forgot to give my traditional rating

9/10

High quality stuff.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

how do you not know my ridiculous new jersey half-asian voice

I mean I know I've heard it before but that was before I knew what you looked like and it's been forever since I heard it
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Great show guys! Excited to listen to these again.

LeonhartFour posted...

Breath of the Wild sold extremely well, Zen, especially for a Zelda game! Also yeah, Breath of the Wild is the first game that actually made me care about the series.

I think he was being sarcastic. You are right though, 11 million copies (Switch + Wii U) and still going, could even break 20 million which is insane.

Also Best Year in Gaming was totally fine. It was... fine.
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Oh no, all of my when-are-the-show-sign-ups topics have failed

Tag
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I think you guys might be seriously underestimating western characters on this one, specifically Geralt since we already know The Witcher 3 is strong here.

Also it's "GEH-ralt", not "JEH-ralt".
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It's GEH-fawkwas
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I never could get my head around western stuff on this site. You'd expect pretty much all of it to crash and burn. But some of it does alright.
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it's pronounced "gif" not "jif"

i refuse to put stock into western shit after how bad it looked in 2013
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ZenOfThunder posted...

it's pronounced "gif" not "jif"

Boycotting the show next time zen is on tbh
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http://howtoreallypronouncegif.com/
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Game-Fah-Kwahs
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I pronounce it with a hard G, but it's hard to not accept some legitimacy to the soft G when the guy who coined the term uses it and pretty adamantly swears that's what's correct.

It still annoys me when I hear it.
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ZenOfThunder posted...

http://howtoreallypronouncegif.com/

That website has no linguistic basis. Denied!

Anyway to get back on track thanks for doing this guys can't want for the next episode!
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Tag
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Was yoblazer the one that started the Epona nomination rally? For some reason I thought he was but it didn't come up even after ZenOfThunder's rant.
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Pretty sure it was HaRRich.
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Lightning Strikes posted...

Also Best Year in Gaming was totally fine. It was... fine.

what was fine about it

also yeah HaRRicH was behind the Epona rally
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Yeah, I think that's right actually.
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