Board 8 > ~*Ultimaterializer's Post-Contest Analysis!! Part 2*~

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean, people can like games that other people don't like
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Whiskey_Nick posted...

people can like games that other people don't like

Too unrealistic
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Division 1 Quarterfinal: (1)Dante vs (9)Lightning

(1)Dante - 18682 [65.62%]
(9)Lightning - 9787 [34.38%]
Total Votes - 28469
Prediction Percentage - 67.84%

Feels good to be able to say "quarterfinal". Round 1 in these things takes so long now.

Final Fantasy 13 ate a lot of crap from people, and I legitimately believe it was unfair criticism. A good example to point to is Pat's review from SMPS: http://socksmakepeoplesexy.net/index.php?a=ff13

The game has issues, but it isn't close to being as bad as that review makes it seem. I still remember Albion making dumb topic after dumb topic to trash the game while quoting one dumb review after another. I have a long standing belief that word of the mouth is the only thing worth listening to and that professional reviewers are a bunch of paid off idiots with a bias to push. As a fantastic example, look at any site who defended Blizzard after their Diablo Immortal gaffe this year. Stuff like that is how you know who is or is not honest. Independent reviewers with no bias is the way to go here.

FF13 tried to embrace its linearity, it was a mixed bag, and the game is fantastic once you hit Gran Pulse. Only Hope is truly abominable as a character. Sazh is a bit boring. Everyone else is good to great. The optional content is fantastic. The plot is a bit weird, fighting giant turtles is also a bit weird, and the optional superboss being some metal butterfly palette swap you can just poison to death even weirder, but hey! I had fun, which is all that matters.

I bring this up because Lightning suffers in our contests for two reasons, with this match being a fantastic contrast of why. Lightning comes from a mixed bag video game (I haven't played the sequels, maybe Robazoid can offer more context on how those are), and though her character is one that tries to be cool, she comes off to a lot of people as trying way too hard. She randomly punches party members in the mouth for no real reason, and it seems awkward a lot of the time. I like her a lot as a character, but randomly trying to break Fang's face without ever getting a receipt just comes off as trying way too hard to be a badass.

Compare that with Dante. This dude was in Devil May Cry 2 and DmC: dee em shee devil may cryz LOL, two of the worst games ever made. He was decent in 4, but Nero was legitimately cooler than him in that game. He has scenes that are so hilariously over the top in his games where I should feel like they try too hard, yet somehow it never really feels that way and a scene like this can make sense:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DReUg3OY2Us" data-time="

Sure let's jump off a building, run down while changing momentum, throw a sword straight down and then shoot it to kill a bunch of bats, then somehow increase speed running to catch the sword, jump off, and get eaten by a flying leviathan monster. Just a regular Tuesday afternoon for Dante. Had Lightning been given a scene like that it would have been laughed at. That's essentially why Dante won this match, even though I personally think Lightning summoning Odin is just as awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzhyF482Jlc" data-time="

There's just nothing like a high strung, highly educated alpha female that does badassed stuff while retaining a feminine look. It's a shame people hate her game unfairly.
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@Robazoid

Any chance I could get a small blurb about the two FF13 sequels for the wiki for that match?
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Logience posted...

ColZach posted...

Im literally nobodys alt

>user since April 2018
Sure you arent.

Rephrase.

What was your first account before it was banned?
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Division 1 Quarterfinal: (12)Chun-Li vs (4)Ganondorf

(12)Chun-Li - 11699 [41.09%]
(4)Ganondorf - 16773 [58.91%]
Total Votes - 28472
Prediction Percentage - 67.1%

I know these writeups are done post contest and we have the power of Jon Gruden's 50-50 hindsight, but what the hell happened to Ganon in this match? He was supposed to break 60% and look like a division champion. He went out and laid a complete egg here, which looked extra bad compared to Vivi just utterly demolishing his round 2 opponent. This was supposed to be a debate between Ganon and Vivi, but when this match happened there were people seriously wondering if Dante had a shot to beat this guy. But because we know Ganon would eventually win, this is a forgotten match.

Make no mistake, this was a garbage performance and it's one of the reasons people who complained about his sprite picture for weeks on end looked like complete idiots. Ganon looked very odd this contest, and I can't put my finger on why. Do people just not like the guy? Are people unimpressed with his Breath of the Wild performance? Are his Smash appearances unimpressive? I legitimately don't get it, and I don't see how Chun-Li could have boosted much. She's a popular character and all, but winning updates against Ganondorf on ZeldaFAQs when you are clearly weaker than him is another thing entirely.

Ultimately, this wouldn't mean much, like Mario/Shadow or that one random Sonic/Vincent snafu. Weird match, but a speed bump at the end of the day. People often talk about round 1 being the most boring. I honestly think it's round 2. This is where we get all the low mid tier or lucky fodder getting blown out by clear favorites. Round 1 is us being happy to be here. Round 3 and on is where all the good matches are. 2 is a lot of.... yeah. Moving on.
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Logience posted...

ColZach posted...

Im literally nobodys alt

>user since April 2018
Sure you arent.

Look at absolute ignorance here

Im not anyones alt and thats a fact.

My first account was RoboZygo and I closed it because I lost an account bet and unlike 99% of gamefaqs Im actually a man of my word.

Do DMC and DmC Dante even count as the same character?
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Anagram posted...

Do DMC and DmC Dante even count as the same character?

In contests? yeah I guess they are
I bet you can also give Dante a Donte pic...although it will be very...sabotage-y
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Division 1 Quarterfinal: (3)Vivi vs (11)Aya Brea

(3)Vivi - 21489 [75.45%]
(11)Aya Brea - 6993 [24.55%]
Total Votes - 28482
Prediction Percentage - 65.96%

In every NCAA tournament a low seed wins a game or two and people completely lose their shit. Remember when Florida Gulf Coast shocked the world, dunked all over Georgetown and San Diego State, and Andy Enfield was able to lie to USC and convince them he can actually coach? There was a massive reality check waiting for them after a week of interviews and getting smoke blown up their asses; it was called "Florida", and they got utterly destroyed when an actual good team decided to show up. It's very rare to get a George Mason or a Loyola Chicago, and even those teams eventually got blown out of the gym. Almost always, the underdogs eventually eliminate each other or run into a good team late and get destroyed. The NCAAs have had a few close calls where underdogs almost win the tournament, so let's not act like our version of a mid major can't win anything, but they aren't called miracle runs for a reason. The mid major teams that actually threaten every year (Gonzaga these days, but back in the 80s it was a bunch of teams getting ready to join power conferences) usually end up recruiting like a power conference or just outright joining one. Louisville was a mid major in 1986 when a mid major last won the tournament, but does anyone actually consider them a mid major college? Not really.

To translate this into GameFAQs terms instead of making this about college basketball, our mid majors need to catch rallies to win. That's their version of a Cinderella run, with Undertale or L-Block being the ultimate example of one paying off. Usually, you get what happened to Aya Brea here. Yeah your win was cute, but one win means very little. Vivi is playing big boy basketball and just annihilated Aya for this entire match. He did so while Ganondorf was busy choking himself, which got people in a frenzy that everyone's favorite Final Fantasy underdog could win this division even in the face of Breath of the Wild.

There was also one other hilarious result going on during all of this, which we'll get into in a second.

Side note. Someone asked how I can still write so much. My favorite sporting event is the NCAA men's basketball tournament (even above the Superb Owl) and my favorite hobby is video games, plus I love math. These contests combine all those worlds, and I could stare at these numbers all day while trying to explain them in an entertaining way. I also bottle up a bunch of writing energy and let it loose come PCA time. It's lame as fuck I'm sure, but I don't care.
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Nanis23 posted...

Anagram posted...

Do DMC and DmC Dante even count as the same character?

In contests? yeah I guess they are
I bet you can also give Dante a Donte pic...although it will be very...sabotage-y

Which was a picture no one used because we don't sabotage, but don't tell that to the crybabies.
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ColZach posted...

Logience posted...

ColZach posted...

Im literally nobodys alt

>user since April 2018
Sure you arent.

Look at absolute ignorance here

Im not anyones alt and thats a fact.

My first account was RoboZygo and I closed it because I lost an account bet and unlike 99% of gamefaqs Im actually a man of my word.

Much better answer. I was using "alt" in a sense that also encompassed "dupe".
Checked your account, and it's a July 2006 creation.
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Division 1 Quarterfinal: (10)Donkey Kong vs (2)Leon Kennedy

(10)Donkey Kong - 15859 [55.67%]
(2)Leon Kennedy - 12629 [44.33%]
Total Votes - 28488
Prediction Percentage - 38.05%

Of the 161 gurus this year, nine picked Donkey Kong to win this match. Of the 67 people who played the oracle for this match, only six picked Donkey Kong to win it. To put some perspective on this, more people picked Tidus to win in this spot than Donkey Kong. Fucking Tidus!

In retrospect, we should have seen this coming, but people are blinded by the old 'games =/= characters' routine. Resident Evil 4 looked like shit for every single match it was in during the 2015 games contest. It got 59% on Paper Mario, 58% on Fallout New Vegas, and 54% on Metal Gear Solid 2 leading up to the Super Mario RPG match. Want to see something eerie? Look at the percentages for Leon/DK here and then look at what happened when Resident Evil 4 got upset.

Super Mario RPG - 27502 [55.53%]
Resident Evil 4 - 22027 [44.47%]

"But Ulti, Donkey Kong is not in Super Mario RPG!" you explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-y45gF6UQg" data-time="

Even more eerie is how dominant RE4 looked in Game of the Decade in 2010 compared to 2015. The Resident Evil series decline is real, and Leon Kennedy and Resident Evil 4 can't carry that franchise forever. That game came out in 2005, and Capcom is so desperate to regain lost magic from a decade plus of dumb bullshit that Resident Evil 4 has been released 27 times on every major system since. I wouldn't be surprised if a freemium phone game existed for RE4 at this point. When your parent company completely blows and loses the confidence of consumers, you go back to old habits instead of looking in a mirror and telling yourself to stop being a moron. I feel bad that Leon Kennedy has the sins of Capcom crawling all over his back, but here we are. Here the bleep we are. Shout out to Jim Rome.

I feel like if another Nintendo character on DK's level were in his place, more people would have picked that slot to win twice. Let's just hypothetically say Knuckles or Peach were here instead. More people would have picked it. But this is DK, so you get the anti-clutch factor. DK had two obstacles pre-contest. One, he's known for being a choke artist. Two, he drew Tidus in round one in a highly debated match. That's a lot to overcome, and shout out to the 9 people who picked this upset. After the freeze, this match was never even a match. Donkey Kong just went out there and beat Leon Kennedy's ass. Even the trends looked identical to the RE4 upset.

This would set up, of all things, Donkey Kong vs Vivi. Again. Could DK, boosted by finally being clutch, some great recent Country games, and Smash good will finally take down his nemesis?

lol no

As for where Resident Evil goes from here, who the hell knows. Capcom has sabotaged all of their own brands and it will take a long time to recover. The match pic crybabies should look at Capcom or Konami's business practices if they want to know what actual sabotage looks like, just for the record.
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Division 2 Quarterfinal: (1)Zero vs (9)Knuckles the Echidna

(1)Zero - 16811 [56.15%]
(9)Knuckles - 13128 [43.85%]
Total Votes - 29939
Prediction Percentage - 56.68%

We knew this after round one, but this match confirmed it. Knuckles is freaking legit, and it's a crime he's never made it into round 3 in one of these contests. The dude has an 8-1 record in round one, and the worst luck on the planet in who he gets for round 2. Check out this ridiculous list, in order.

-Solid Snake
-Solid Snake
-Solid Snake again
-Squall
-Yoshi, Mega Man, and KOS-MOS
-Fei Fong Wong, Mario, and Zelda
-Sonic the Hedgehog
-Samus
-Zero

I mean seriously, look at this damn list. There wasn't one year in there where he could draw Aya Brea, Serious Sam, Aqua, or Sandbag in round two? I honestly blame CJayC for this because of his dumb idea to feed Knuckles to Snake three years in a row. Two years in a row I can understand, but by 2004 he couldn't have just swapped places with Jill Valentine or something? Dumb. The closest he came was against Squall in 2005, where he had a small bandwagon behind him after upsetting Magus. He got 46% in that match. We got Tails into round 3. My new crusade is getting Knuckles in there. Dude deserves it for being awesome for 25 years.

As for Zero, he did what he always does. He's always around 20-25 in the LOL x stats, never really moves, and is remarkably consistent year to year. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about the guy and love him for all the same reasons I love Knuckles. He's a stone cold badass when I don't have to hear a terrible voice actor doing terrible voice actor things. I just wish Knux could catch a damn break one of these years. ONE round 3 run. It's all I ask.
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I'm kind of surprised Tails and Knuckles have the strength they have.
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I'm not. Sonic is awesome.
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The real question: why did Tails and Knuckles boost so much off Mania while Sonic just embarrassed himself?
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RE4 managed to beat New Vegas? Why do I feel surprise over that turn of events, given just how landmark RE4 is for a lot of people?
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Hbthebattle posted...

The real question: why did Tails and Knuckles boost so much off Mania while Sonic just embarrassed himself?

I think it was bracket luck more than a boost.
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Hey, Ulti? Weve kinda got a problem:

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Samus_vs_Crono_vs_Vincent_vs_Pikachu_2008
Theres no writeup from you for this match.
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I'm not sure Knuckles and Tails really boosted much. Tails is an unknown because he beat two characters who could have both fallen off cliffs and then faced Luigi, where he either shit the bed or got SFFed a mystery amount, and Knuckles did pretty much what he should have on Zero (based on very very lol 2010 x-stats).

Both of them kinda just did what they should have, just like Sonic did, which was be a good bit weaker than Snake, and be a good bit weaker than a character equal to Snake.
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

I'm not sure Knuckles and Tails really boosted much. Tails is an unknown because he beat two characters who could have both fallen off cliffs and then faced Luigi, where he either shit the bed or got SFFed a mystery amount, and Knuckles did pretty much what he should have on Zero (based on very very lol 2010 x-stats).

Both of them kinda just did what they should have, just like Sonic did, which was be a good bit weaker than Snake, and be a good bit weaker than a character equal to Snake.

Sonic absolutely did not do 'what he should have'. Pre-contest and especially after what we had seen from Tails and Knuckles, no one expected him to be so weak he could have lost to the likes of Luigi.
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Logience posted...

Hey, Ulti? Weve kinda got a problem:

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Samus_vs_Crono_vs_Vincent_vs_Pikachu_2008
Theres no writeup from you for this match.

Ulti has not done a PCA for that contest. Someone else did it that year but they never uploaded the writeups to the last 15 or so matches to the wiki so multiple users had to fill in the blanks.No one made a writeup to Vincent/Crono/Samus/Pikachu for whatever reason.
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Division 2 Quarterfinal: (12)Master Hand vs (13)Wario

(12)Master Hand - 11686 [39.03%]
(13)Wario - 18257 [60.97%]
Total Votes - 29943
Prediction Percentage - 40.85%

I had some hope that Master Hand could pull this upset, because I am an insane Smash Bros fanboy. Well, partially insane. I've toned it down a lot since spending some time with the series pros, and I outright refuse to act like any of those idiots. Every Smash group has a few noticeable "guys" in it. Yahtzee joked about it. Well I'm the chill as fuck turtle who everyone hates playing against because I have the most annoying play style on the planet, but because I'm so nice to everyone while also supplying the house for play space and the food for you parasites to mooch off of, you can all piss off =p. Trust me, there are far worse "guys" out there in the Smash community and I go out of my way not to be like them. I will never forget Inui getting kicked out of my play group within a month for being an arrogant douche to people, then whining on Smashboards about it. Some of you hardcores might remember Inui being last on the tier list once because the entire community hated him so much. You're welcome. That was due to a few incidents, one of which involved my group. It's a very small claim to internet fame for me. Fuck that guy and fuck everyone who acts like him.

For the unaware, he showed up just before Brawl came out (there's a big Smash community here in NJ and a lot of us used to play at Mercer County Community College or Rutgers, so we all get around quick) and started acting like Smash people are prone to act, and my group likes to play 4-man Melees with all items off except final smash balls. Top 2 stay in, bottom 2 rotate out, winner picks the level. None of that 24/7 tournament practice bullshit, because some of us are still capable of seeing Smash Bros as a video game instead of a job.

Well Inui did nothing but whine and act like only he knows tech strategies and blah blah blah and we should be practicing 2v2s and etc. So what we would do any time that idiot showed up is gang up on him 3 on 1 so he would have to rotate out. He would occasionally throw a fit, but it was nothing we didn't just laugh off because the guy is a harmless idiot. Well one day he shows up acting extra dumb, so we finally decided in Brawl to pick Mario Bros as a stage and just gang up on him first in every match he was in. You all know the stage.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/wii/images/e/ee/MBBrawl.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20080504173310

So he throws this gigantic manic fit of rage (I legitimately had to punch him in the mouth at one point because he was clearly about to try getting violent, which is hilarious because I am twice his size) about how Sakurai is an idiot and that level should not be in and blah blah blah. The usual idiocy among Smash pros, you've all seen it I'm sure. So after I punch him and he finally shuts the hell up, he drives home, gets his own Wii, comes back, and hooks it up to the TV 10 feet from us. No one interacted with him or played with him all day. I could get into a very deep conversation here about how bullying and peer pressure in certain situations is actually a good thing because it's part of the normal social structure in getting people to not grow up to act like Inui, but I'm pretty far off the point already. With Ultimate coming out recently, just remember that liking Smash is fine. Acting like Inui or Mew2King is not, and frankly either their parents or their peers should have showed them ages ago that acting like they do is in no way socially acceptable.
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These are the tangents I go on for predictable round 2 blowouts. This was never going to actually be a match, because for both characters their entire job was knocking off larger seeds. Wario was meant to stop Monika's rally, and Master Hand was meant to embarrass Final Fantasy again. The only thing about the follow-up act of any interest was the match pictures side by side made it look like Wario was actually wearing Master Hand as a glove. I don't ask for much but someone PLEASE put that on the wiki for me. I beg it of you :D

On a total side note, I love matches or NCAA games with gigantic seeds facing each other like this. It makes me smile.
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Hbthebattle posted...

The real question: why did Tails and Knuckles boost so much off Mania while Sonic just embarrassed himself?

I've been trying to figure this out and I've gotten nowhere. Sonic's matches against Snake and Zelda are one of the handful of completely nonsensical results this contest. If Sonic gets 48% on Snake/Zelda, a lot of other things start making a lot more sense.
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MetalmindStats posted...

WarThaNemesis2 posted...

I'm not sure Knuckles and Tails really boosted much. Tails is an unknown because he beat two characters who could have both fallen off cliffs and then faced Luigi, where he either shit the bed or got SFFed a mystery amount, and Knuckles did pretty much what he should have on Zero (based on very very lol 2010 x-stats).

Both of them kinda just did what they should have, just like Sonic did, which was be a good bit weaker than Snake, and be a good bit weaker than a character equal to Snake.

Sonic absolutely did not do 'what he should have'. Pre-contest and especially after what we had seen from Tails and Knuckles, no one expected him to be so weak he could have lost to the likes of Luigi.

Is that through Snake/Samus, not only a match that was weird this year, but the only other time they faced 1v1 was also a really weird result?

Snake's Smash fans fold to Samus. Snake/Samus happened like a day after a Smash game that could get people hyped for Daisy came out.

Looking for should haves or could haves through Snake/Samus is a disaster.
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Ulti could have had a Daisy reaction video as the entire PCA and ended it there.
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Sonic folds to Nintendo, just like Snake does. Zelda blowing him out makes sense. I would guess the Nintendo fans just sided with Snake because he's a cooler character.

Snake gets random blowouts on lower NN characters sometimes. Means nothing.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2557-tournament-quarterfinal-solid-snake-vs-mega-man
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I suppose Smash SFF in Samus/Sonic, Snake/Sonic and Samus/Snake clears things up a bit. Man, SFF is so confusing these days, with 3/4 of the bracket being in Smash.
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Yeah but he also blew out Sonic in '06

And he beat him even worse this time, by a nontrivial margin

So something happened, and it being a stronger Snake is unlikely. So it's a Sonic drop or a very large amount of random variance.
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garetha200 posted...

Yeah but he also blew out Sonic in '06

And he beat him even worse this time, by a nontrivial margin

So something happened, and it being a stronger Snake is unlikely. So it's a Sonic drop or a very large amount of random variance.

12 years is a long time man.

Also I'll get around to 2008 eventually. Didn't do a PCA that year out of disgust for fourways. I fucking hate them.

Division 2 Quarterfinal: (3)Yoshi vs (6)Velvet Crowe

(3)Yoshi - 21148 [70.63%]
(6)Velvet Crowe - 8796 [29.37%]
Total Votes - 29944
Prediction Percentage - 77.57%

Yoshi wins a match and gets Velvet Crowe for a round 2 opponent. Knuckles goes 8-1 in round 1 over the years and gets nothing but noble niners and near elites. I don't get it. And no, I am never letting this go until Knuckles wins one in round 2. Thanks for asking. I'm looking at some of these round 2 beatdowns these year just shaking my head.

In the 2015 games contest, I made a list of 1v1 matches in round 2 or later where the winner broke 80%. It can be found here: https://board8.wikia.com/wiki/(1)Chrono_Trigger_vs_(8)Dragon_Quest_VIII:_Journey_of_the_Cursed_King_2015

I really don't feel like doing that level of research with 70% as the threshold instead of 80, but I can't imagine it would be a much bigger list. These contests naturally have closer margins as you get later. It's just the normal way of things. For a character or game to break 70%, you need two things to happen unless we're talking about weird SFF stuff. One, you need an elite, near-elite, or upper midcarder in the winner's spot. Yoshi qualifies. And two, you need the other half of your fourpack to be abject garbage. I should note that Velvet got 61% in her round 1 match.

So yeah this was just a forgettable beatdown en route to Yoshi getting back to where he always goes, and I love him for it. I'm one of those knuckleheads who always votes for Yoshi in those favorite Mario character polls. Love the dude. Always have.
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So happy.
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Division 2 Quarterfinal: (7)Pikachu vs (2)Kratos

(7)Pikachu - 18987 [63.41%]
(2)Kratos - 10957 [36.59%]
Total Votes - 29944
Prediction Percentage - 56.97%

I like Pikachu and Pokemon, so I'm okay with Pikachu winning here even though Kratos might be my favorite character in gaming at this point. Something about the guy being a bloodraged maniac maturing somewhat as he ages resonates with me, I dunno. I've always adored Kratos and love his games. God of War is one of the best series I've ever played, but there was no chance in hell Kratos was going to win this match even with God of War 2018 getting set to mop up 1398 Game of the Year awards.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/191627-god-of-war/reviews/166896

Even if Kratos had a prayer of winning, I have access to some metrics non-contributors don't. That review won me Review of the Month. As you can tell by reading it and by my platinum trophy, I love the game to death. It was an incredible experience.

I don't post the review link to brag. I post it because at the time the bracket came out, that review had less than 30 hits. For a comparison, my Brawl review has almost 50,000. Part of that is GameFAQs being dead, but part of it is because for whatever reason, Kratos and God of War games are just not what resonates on this site. And even then, I did not think this beatdown would be as bad as it was. God of War sold like a bajillion copies and Pokemon fans were mixed at best on that Pikachu Let's Go game. Even with all that, Pikachu damn near doubled the poor guy. It wasn't a surprise Pikachu won, but winning this hard given all the Kratos hype was really something to see. Pikachu was super legit this year and was primed to kick ass well beyond the main bracket. This all but ended any hope of anyone other than him winning this division, too.
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Really the only thing that's changed for them since then is Sonic getting announced for Brawl and Sonic Mania coming out

No MGS game since then matters in 2018, and Snake missing 4 also doesn't matter but if it did it would negatively impact him now

So I don't see why Snake would beat him by more unless the current voters simply like Snake more, which seems unlikely based on how much they hate all other MGS characters, or like Sonic less, which feels more possible.

Either that or there's something else weird going on here. But I feel like the most likely hypothesis right now is that Sonic isn't as strong as he used to be.
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garetha200 posted...

Really the only thing that's changed for them since then is Sonic getting announced for Brawl and Sonic Mania coming out

No MGS game since then matters in 2018, and Snake missing 4 also doesn't matter but if it did it would negatively impact him now

So I don't see why Snake would beat him by more unless the current voters simply like Snake more, which seems unlikely based on how much they hate all other MGS characters, or like Sonic less, which feels more possible.

Either that or there's something else weird going on here. But I feel like the most likely hypothesis right now is that Sonic isn't as strong as he used to be.

Literally no one cared about Sonic being in Smash Ultimate.

Grown men were CRYING for "Everyone Is Here!".
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With that I'm taking a break until Wednesday. I love you guys but I'm not writing PCA stuff for Christmas.

Merry Christmas!!!!!
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Ulti_PCA posted...

garetha200 posted...

Really the only thing that's changed for them since then is Sonic getting announced for Brawl and Sonic Mania coming out

No MGS game since then matters in 2018, and Snake missing 4 also doesn't matter but if it did it would negatively impact him now

So I don't see why Snake would beat him by more unless the current voters simply like Snake more, which seems unlikely based on how much they hate all other MGS characters, or like Sonic less, which feels more possible.

Either that or there's something else weird going on here. But I feel like the most likely hypothesis right now is that Sonic isn't as strong as he used to be.

Literally no one cared about Sonic being in Smash Ultimate.

Grown men were CRYING for "Everyone Is Here!".

And nobody caring about someone causes a decrease in contest strength!
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WarThaNemesis2 posted...

Is that through Snake/Samus, not only a match that was weird this year, but the only other time they faced 1v1 was also a really weird result?

Snake's Smash fans fold to Samus. Snake/Samus happened like a day after a Smash game that could get people hyped for Daisy came out.

Looking for should haves or could haves through Snake/Samus is a disaster.

For the sake of assumption, let's say that there was so much weirdness in Snake/Samus that Snake should have gone even with Samus. Let's also assume that Samus/Tifa was legit, because in a scenario where Snake is even with Samus indirectly, I can't see Tifa having overperformed in that match. In this very favorable scenario for Sonic relative to Luigi, Sonic scores about 52.5% on Luigi.
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Damn seeing Knuckles get the BS so many years in a row is actually pretty annoying. 3 years in a row to snake? Thats fucking stupid.

Luigi ~ Sonic isn't crazy.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3842-hyrule-division-final-link-vs-luigi
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3850-final-rounds-quarterfinal-link-vs-sonic
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Name ONE good Sonic result besides his win over Chrono and close match with Samus, all before 2003
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Sonic > Crono was in 2006.
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@Ulti_PCA I have played FF 13-2 and FF 13-3. So here I go.

FF 13-2 had only 2 characters that you control in combat and a good villain so you could focus on only 3 characters meaning you understand why they did what they did. Also with the Time Travel thing you could see how the world either went ahead or got destroyed in various timelines. Multiple endings too. But the most important part is that the 3rd party member in the battle was a monster you control! So yeah monster catching! I LOVE games with monster catching!

FF 13-3 had only 1 member on the party. Lightnining and that was it. You didn't care for the other characters though. I mean you fight some main characters from the previous games for stupid reasons! However the battle system was good. With only 1 member you needn't care for the other party members and the job system was nice. BUT it had a Time Limit on the whole game! I HATE Time Limits! It is one of the few games where I played on Easy because you had more Time to do stuff! Nobody likes to rush things anyways! We all prefer to do things in our leisure.
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Nanis23 posted...

Name ONE good Sonic result besides his win over Chrono and close match with Samus, all before 2003

Maybe him beating Ganon and Kirby in 2010, when people were fearing he'd break the Noble Nine? In fact, Sonic might not be the strongest, but he's consistent (aside from 3\4-ways, which screw him on a whole other level). In 1-on-1s, aside from the two I've listed, Sonic has beat Zero, Aeris, Ryu, Dante, Tifa, Luigi, and Auron (plus Vincent during his peak years), and only yielded to non-N9 when Zelda boosted to hell and back came through this year. Even if the rest of the Nine outmuscle Sonic, the only ones to break 60% on him are Cloud and Link.
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garetha200 posted...

Yeah but he also blew out Sonic in '06

And he beat him even worse this time, by a nontrivial margin

So something happened, and it being a stronger Snake is unlikely. So it's a Sonic drop or a very large amount of random variance.

Again though, a Sonic drop just brings up further questions that need to be answered, such as:

- If Sonic dropped, why did Knuckles boost?
- DItto for Tails
- If those other Sonic matches are legit, and Sonic dropped like a rock, how do you explain his performance on Auron, and by proxy, Vincent? That entire division just looks like absolute shit if this was a random, unexplained Sonic drop.

I'm a firm believer in Occam's Razor, and the way to explain these results with the least amount of assumptions is by writing off those results because of Smash SFF, and pegging Sonic closer to 47-48% on Snake, and giving Snake a couple percentage points against Samus
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Samus vs. Snake went about the way I would have expected, taking into account that Metal Gear is dead while Metroid is not.
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Also I know you stop for a bit but when you can upload the matches on Board 8 wiki too.
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@Ulti_PCA Since you asked, here is basically FF13-2 and FF13-3 in one sentence each.

FF13-2: Tries to be Chrono Trigger and fails.

FF13-3: Solo Lightning in Majora's Mask without the Song of Time.
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