Board 8 > The Show EP 6 - Winning the Official $500 Oracle Challenge, w/ Nick and TPLink!

(+) Yeah! (+)

The Oracle Challenge has been legitimized and now there's even big money on the line! There's only three people I trusted to break down all the action, and two of their names are Nick and ZeldaTPLink.Check this out:

http://board8.speedrunwiki.com/interviews/theshow/20200429-TheShowEP06.mp3

* delightful return of the Four Man Pod with Nick and TPLink!
* $500 on the line for B8's first OFFICIAL Oracle Challenge, how hyped are we?
* quick review of the last matches of Round Three (and super quick celebration of The Show on the leaderboard)
* TPLink takes a deep dive into the x-stats to help us make percentage-perfect Oracle picks for R4 and on
* SHOW EXCLUSIVE: Luster leaks the ideal tiebreaker choice to ensure your Official Oracle victory

A big thank you to @SBAllen for giving us a reason to record an additional episode of The Show! Hopefully everyone will enjoy this one; we had a blast.
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Past Episodes and All Show Info:
https://board8.fandom.com/wiki/The_Show


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Aw yeah tag for later
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UH OH, a possible chink in the armor for BotW! You can't afford to upset a key GameFAQs demographic like this, not on the eve of your most crucial matches...


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If anyone is interested, here is a copy of the spreadsheet I used, so feel free to tweak my numbers or follow them if you want. Or argue them in this thread. It also comes with an xstat calculator.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YlhVwDQDqkreWnSa4Lt9L5kov3eR8tAh/view

Tag

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Hype Level = As high as a BOTW blowout!

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NGamer, I never said all of that, as awesome as it sounds! All I said was that it was far easier for me to care about characters coz I kind of view it like pro wrestling, all the characters have their own personalities, etc.

I don't have the energy for a TEW thing with a contest twist, but I'm sure someone else would!

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Tag for slightly later in the day

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ExThaNemesis posted...

NGamer, I never said all of that, as awesome as it sounds! All I said was that it was far easier for me to care about characters coz I kind of view it like pro wrestling, all the characters have their own personalities, etc.

I don't have the energy for a TEW thing with a contest twist, but I'm sure someone else would!

boooooooooooooooooo

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Actually, I think I'm going to listen while I pack my stuff up, so no running commentary again this time!
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I remember someone organizing a fanfiction representation of the first few contests, but I don't recall which user it was.

I only recall MWE constantly asking for Sonic/Shadow yaoi every time Sonic or Shadow had a match
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I did the fanfiction with @Ashethan a few times, it was... bad

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3128374/1/GameFAQs-Fall-Contest-2006-Fanfiction
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5785522/1/Visio-Vestri-Character-Battle-VIII-Fanfiction
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3729820/1/GameFAQs-CBVI-Arx-Veneficus-Oraculum
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9381612/1/Character-Battle-IX-Labyrinth-of-the-Nine

I think I was like 15-18 when I wrote my bits and it shows, I refuse to look past the summaries, you guys feel free to read and enjoy

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as a disclaimer we did NOT write the fanfiction where Tommy Vercetti has Master Chief reprogram KOS-MOS to turn her into his sex slave

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yeah I don't do a lot of research into the Oracle and I never look at other people's picks or anything like that

that might sound strange for the guy who does the X-Stats but I don't care about winning that much

I might occasionally just do some X-Stat calculations for my picks though just to see how accurate they turn out to be
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There were plenty of fanfictions back in the day. I wrote for Vs. Mode, which was like the knock off. I can't remember what the main one was.

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I want to say it was MWIS because that sounds like the kind of thing he would do
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I was sad getting eliminated from the Guru on the last day before the break, and getting killed by Pokemon of all things was the ultimate indignity.
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I've gotten a handful of top 5 picks in the Oracle, but my only #1 pick so far is Awakening/Deus Ex.
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Huh, you think 39.4% is a good result for Galaxy 2? I mean, I feel like it was pretty much expected! 60% was the magic number most people thought Witcher 3 needed to hit.

although I guess it was a good result if you were overestimating Witcher 3!
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I think GoW is legit, and I think it'll hold up to Witcher 3 pretty well. It's hard for two entrants close in strength to SFF hard. You can point to Mario/Samus 2005, but Mario was only able to do that once!

Also, for my comments about Sonic Mania's wild unpredictability, I had a top 5 pick for Persona 5/Sonic Mania and I was flirting with a perfect pick for a while!
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hey now I've talked about Sonic Mania a lot too!

if you have any love for Genesis Sonic you should definitely play it
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We're going to have a very low number of non-B8ers entering the Second Chance bracket, but hey, that just makes it easier for us to win!

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yeah I was about to say that literally no one who is a Street Fighter fan would pick Street Fighter V to win more than one match

I tried telling everyone from day 1 that SFV would suck but apparently some people still didn't listen!
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I felt like 65% was the ceiling for Dark Souls

MGSV fans are diehard man (pun intended) so I can see it holding its strength reasonably well and it did better than I expected this year
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yeah I picked TLOU > Dark Souls assuming that TLOU2 hype would carry the day since it was supposed to be out within a couple weeks of the match

but I could see this match being even worse than I originally anticipated due to those spoiler leaks
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The Last of Us fanbase's reaction to the spoiler leaks makes me embarrassed to be among the people who love the game. Gamers are the worst.

With that said, it is a factor to consider. You can probably knock a percent or two off of the Last of Us' final score against Dark Souls.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Gamers are the worst.

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That's a pretty good Hulk Hogan impression, Nick.

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The FFP in 2003 and 2005 was great. A shame that neither finished, though 2003 made it up to Link vs Cloud!

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A couple things to note about Minecraft:

1. It was the clear beneficiary from the Shovel Knight/Octopath Traveler rally battle. Spider-Man probably finishes at 60-61% without that.

2. I've maintained that Minecraft might be a bit undervalued in the 2015 stats. I've said that Halo 1 really is the perfect match for FFVII to overperform against because it could cancel out the anti-votes.
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Also, I feel like you could pick 55/45 for every non-BOTW match and probably do pretty well!
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100% to the left. Got it. Persona 4 Golden is going to destroy Xenoblade!

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Now I have this image of Allen writing out a love letter with Oracle sliders on it, dabbing it with a touch of perfume, and uploading it to the site.

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Man, why we got to bring up Chrono Trigger's loss to Melee. Ugh. (I HAD CT PEGGED PERFECTLY THAT YEAR, WHEN OTHER PEOPLE THOUGH FF ECKS WOULD STAND A CHANCE)

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I'm not surprised Xenoblade was still an underdog in prediciton percentage, because it had Overwatch on its side of the bracket, and while every single solutary soul on Board 8 knew it was getting to Three Houses, the casuals didn't know better and I figure it had to be the overall favorite. Combine that with Three Houses being the overwhelming board pick, and that's how we get Xenoblade being such an underdog.

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I think if you just assume Sonic SFFed Super Meat Boy, everything Sonic Mania did makes sense. What it did to Ys was pretty much what happens when a low midcarder meets fodder, then it pulled cartoony platformer rank on the indie Meat Boy and made it look slightly worse than Ys, and then it ran into Persona 5 which is an actual strong game around here, and it got decimated like it should.

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So, best crack prediction on The Show so far? Sonic Mania > Persona 5, or Kingdom Hearts III > Street Fighter V (and also Witcher 3).

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1. I'm still skeptical of how strong Xenoblade is, since I think Xenoblade/Splatoon 2 and especially Xenoblade/Three Houses are just SFF matches and Witcher 3 has proven that against the right opponents, you can look absolutely godly. To me, RDR2 keeping it close to Portal 2 shows that RDR is still a respectable series on the site and I think Persona 4 Golden should be strong enough to keep it close to Xenoblade.
2. I feel like I'm the only one that's impressed by MGSV this contest and think that it didn't suffer a noticeable loss of strength since 2015:

• Yakuza 0 is way underrated contest strength-wise and is again, one of those games that is completely overshadowed in 2017 by so many other JRPGs like Persona 5 and Nier. Kazuma Kiryu did decent in the last character battle, finishing above Leon Kennedy, Joker and Commander Shephard in the xstats. Now part of that is because some characters like Leon Kennedy are probably undervalued due to SFF in the later rounds and Joker getting a terrible picture, but Kazuma Kiryu is the definition of a "generic Japanese McDude" that should normally punch well below his game's weight and I think his result shows that there is a legit Yakuza community on GameFAQs.
• The 72% MGSV put on Dead Cells is actually pretty good in my opinion, considering Dead Cells did well in a 2018 indies poll with Celeste: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7468-best-of-2018-indies. Sure, DC's probably not in the top tier of indies with the Knights and SD, but it shouldn't be in the bottom tier either. Considering Pokemon HGSS put up around 72% on Rayman/Celeste and is being hyped to beat Skyrim, I think there's a limit to how weak I can see MSGV.

As a result, I'm pretty impressed by Dark Soul's 63% over MGSV. I got Dark Souls over Skyrim in my main bracket and I'm doubling down on it in the second chance bracket.

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I am lowballing Breath of the Wild for its first match, due to the break. Last time we saw this break happen, we did lose a lot of momentum in our overall vote totals. It's hard to say if this will affect both entrants equally (and god help us with ME2 vs. RE2, because this could swing that result entirely, but again, I don't know in which direction), but I can see having less casual voters amplifying the voters that might throw a vote towards Dragon Quest because it doesn't have a prayer here. Also, this exact scenario in 2018 saw Ganondorf massively improving on his 2004 infamous SFF blowout, though that was probably going to happen anyway with a full voter base.

Either way, I do agree with Nick that this is a perfect time to pick against the grain one way or the other.

(and go figure Ngamer brings this up immediately after I post this)

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Secret Squirrel giving the good commentary here. The kind that praises me

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"Warcraft III not getting a big rally..."

"You did say something very insulting Yo, you called Witcher 3, Warcraft III"

I was on the other side of my apartment when I heard that and thought to myself that I had to have heard that wrong. Glad Ng confirmed it when I walked back in.

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_SecretSquirrel posted...

Also, this exact scenario in 2018 saw Ganondorf massively improving on his 2004 infamous SFF blowout, though that was probably going to happen anyway with a full voter base.

well this is largely because SFF isn't as potent as it once was, probably just because the voter base has shrunk so much
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I'm glad the Persona 5 vs Witcher 3 match is brought up, since so few people are even giving Persona 5 a chance here. I still think that Witcher 3 just looks better than Persona 5 by almost all metrics and should be the favorite, but with so few potential upset options in the second chance bracket, it's the most interesting one to consider as it's potentially 2 points.

Also, if Persona 5 somehow pulls it off against Witcher 3, it's got a ticket to the final since I can't see it losing to Dark Souls/Skyrim. A Persona 5 upset will shock board8 a la Majora's Mask 2010 and I see the board supporting it through rallies if the Dark Souls/Skyrim match even gets close. I mean can you imagine a Persona 5/Skyrim board vote?

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I went Witcher 3 > P5 with 53% in my Second Chance. P5 looks really good so far.

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squexa posted...

I mean can you imagine a Persona 5/Skyrim board vote?

You don't even have to go that far. The Persona 5 vs. Witcher 3 board vote is going to be pretty similar, since the Witcher/Skyrim trends are near identical. I do wonder how people are going to react when Persona 5 takes that initial advantage against Witcher, even if it eventually drops it like the general expectation has it.

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as odd as this is to say, I really do think the key to winning the Second Chance bracket will be getting close on BOTW's matches

I doubt most of us are going more than 60/40 on very many of the other matches, but there's such a wide range of percentages BOTW's matches can be.
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

You don't even have to go that far. The Persona 5 vs. Witcher 3 board vote is going to be pretty similar, since the Witcher/Skyrim trends are near identical. I do wonder how people are going to react when Persona 5 takes that initial advantage against Witcher, even if it eventually drops it like the general expectation has it.

Witcher 3 might get the second chance bracket votes, assuming most brackets are still alive, which could dilute Persona's early advantage like what happened with the P4G/GTAV match.

But yeah, if Persona 5 has the lead over Witcher 3 like 55-45 at the freeze, the board will explode and the Persona base will almost certainly rally for it like they did for P4G against RDR. Because Persona 5: Royal just came out a month ago, the Persona 5 subreddits are fairly active right now so it should be much easier to rally for P5 than P4G. That said, Witcher 3 is not an opponent you want in a rally war so we could end up having a hell of a match.

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#WRPGHierarchyFactorConfirmed

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I don't think I'll ever understand Sonic Mania.

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I guess I'm one of the rare people who still feels pretty good about Skyrim > Dark Souls!
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