Board 8 > The Show EP 06 - 1998 Dominates, BYiG In Review, and What's Next!? (with Nick)

(+) Yeah! (+)

Not too big on a console contest though; I'd be fine with it if it didn't count towards our contest quota, but that seems unlikely.

And to further disappoint the hosts I'm not too big on all fictional either!
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This B8 Counsel idea reminds me of how the MIT Mystery Hunt is run: each year's competition is put together by the winning team from the previous year
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I think that participation in BYiG suffered for a few reasons:
1. low number of entries to begin with (possibly due to promotion)
2. small number of matches led to very quick eliminations with no way of catching up (as demonstrated by the guru contest)
3. no battle bracket to keep people engaged after their main bracket dies
4. very few close matches

I miss the huge character/game contests, for sure. But I also have to commend Allen for giving us a contest, period. BYiG is a creative idea for a contest, and the effort that went into running it should be plain to see by any fan. Also, the prizes were ludicrously generous.

I hope we can enjoy more contests in the same vein as BYiG, in between larger games/characters contests.
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Tag!
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LusterSoldier posted...

I want to see a mini-contest for the GotY polls, but I don't want see the contest limited to just 8 games. It should be at least 16 games and probably even 32 games instead.

Agreed. I think 16 entrants would be the perfect size for a mini-bracket. Even at 1v1, 24-hour matches, it would be done in 15 days, which is about the time it already takes us to get through GotY voting. I think it would be an improvement over the current format in every way.
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EMPTY HOUSE BB

nice intro yo
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Luvin' Nick's Canadian accent
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The Triforce has been reunited!

Who's which piece?

And Leon's the sphere grid, nice.
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Nice job show on getting on the leaderboard show hosts!

Also congrats BKSheikah! Why didn't you let them on the show? Doesn't the guru always make it on the final show of the contest?
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Pic factor mattered in 97 and 01. Not sure how much 97 would've won by though.
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I actually wouldn't mind a SB podcast about the contest.
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Well I guess I'll have to make sure I come up with a good tiebreaker answer from now on.
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Oh god that BKSheikah nomination...I looked it up and yea, it'd be very interesting if that showed up on the front page of gameFAQs
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Pokemon Snap would be an interesting choice, nostalgia factor could be pretty big there.
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Breath of the Wild beats Pokemon Snap, sorry Nick!
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Wait are you guys talking about Skyward Sword?

Oh, ok. I'd still take Zelda. Even if it's the weakest 3d console Zelda, it should still have decent strength. Pokemon Snap doesn't have the strength to topple that imo
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Aqua?

*looks up character*

Hmm, not sure about this one. She could probably win against fodder but that's it imo.

edit: though whenever a guru nom wins a battle it can always be considered a success imo, so I guess it's not that bad.
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Tetsuya Nomura on acid: what if everybody in Kingdom Hearts was Sora?

*makes clusterf*** of plot*
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Ng: Congrats Nick on your placement in the Oracle!

Nick: how many people did I finish ahead of that picked every day?

Ng: uhh, 3.
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Safe picks are key in the oracle, I'll keep that in mind for the next contest.
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Ng: Alright that covers all the results, let's talk about the actual results
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I had 91 > 94 in my bracket, I thought after round 1 that'd be the case but as we got closer to the match it became clearer 94 would win, so I picked it in the oracle. I'm not too upset over it because I don't think either year got screwed by pictures.
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Ahh 94 missed Mega Man X, that's unfortunate.
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I put my 97 prediction in before I saw the pics. GoldenEye should've definitely been there at least, though I do like Diddy Kong Racing got some love.
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I like Age of Empires :(

but yea at the very least the top games from each year should be there every round
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Allen thinks Full Throttle is as strong as Chrono Trigger
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yoblazer you mentioned DKR then forgot about it :(
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Here's my take on rallying: I want fun matches to watch. Rivalry Rumble was a bad contest overall but it at least gave us one amazing match (even if it didn't matter) in Trainers vs. Cloud/Seph. That match was close partially because of rallying, albeit the rallies were much smaller than UnderDraven. This contest, on the other hand, lacked a single good match. Not one. At least CB9 gave us a pretty intense match between Link and Draven. And watching Undertale make the comeback against Mass Effect 3 and not gaining the lead until the 11th hour was also entertaining to watch. So I believe that, even if rallying gives us wacky results, a contest with them will give us at least a few good matches. I'd much rather have that than this abysmal contest.
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I love how Allen trolled Luster with UnderDraven
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Like I said earlier, with no good matches this is my least favorite contest of all time. Here's my ranking:

GotD
CB8
BGE 2015
CB9
Rivals
Years

Anything before CB8 I wasn't around to follow.
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CaptainOfCrush posted...

Agreed. I think 16 entrants would be the perfect size for a mini-bracket. Even at 1v1, 24-hour matches, it would be done in 15 days, which is about the time it already takes us to get through GotY voting. I think it would be an improvement over the current format in every way.

We could do 32 games if we run multiple matches per day. With 4 matches per day in round 1, 2 matches per day in round 2, and 1 match per day after round 2, the GotY voting would take 15 days. If round 3 was also 2 matches per day, you could cut the length down to 13 days.

With 64 games, the quickest you could possibly finish the GotY voting with multiple matches per day is 18 days and that requires 4 matches per day in round 1/2/3/4, 2 matches per day in round 5, and 1 match per day for the final. I suspect 18 days would be too long for GotY voting, so you'd probably need some non-1v1 format to get through 64 games faster. Maybe 4-ways with 2 matches running at the same time, in which only one game moves on from each match.

I went through the 2016 GotY polls and a total of 67 different games appeared in those polls, with some games appearing in more than one poll. So a 64 game GotY bracket wouldn't be too crazy.
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I would definitely like a systems contest. SNES would probably win but I would like to see how well each of the systems perform.
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I agree with yo in that 2010 is one of the best years for contests. At the very least it's my favorite.
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"I want to see what's the best game of 98"

lol
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There's definitely LFF in that Zelda poll. I'm curious how Breath of the Wild would do in a contest setting. I feel like it could beat TP and WW, not sure about MM.
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I agree with yo, ps1, ps2, nes, and n64 facing each other would be very interesting.
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I think PC should get in if only because I'm wondering if the "depth" factor would apply to it despite gameFAQs not being big on PC gaming.
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A song contest would be interesting but copyright issues might be a problem. I don't know if CBS would allow that to happen.
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B8 running the contest would be interesting. I might forfeit my prize money to help in it but idk for sure.
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GotD: 2010s edition would be awesome. Breath of the Wild vs. Skyrim would be very interesting to watch imo.
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I like the new idea for Game of the Year. There should be some type of poll to determine what games get into the main bracket though.
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whatisurnameplz posted...

I think PC should get in if only because I'm wondering if the "depth" factor would apply to it despite gameFAQs not being big on PC gaming.

I think the PC should be divided into eras, maybe into decades.
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I ended up getting Persona 5 thanks to yoblazer
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And I'm not prize-elegible, so this was the best I could hope for.
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- yeah if SB anoints me head of the Contest Committee it'll be all handhelds plus Classic PC Gaming (start to 1999) and Modern PC Gaming (2000 to present) to fill out the 32 spots

- 64 and 32 strike me as a bit much for GotY because as I talked about on air I don't think the average GameFAQs user gets through as many new games in a year as they might have 15 years ago. to me 16 games would be ideal, but 8 would be the easiest sell to SB so I used that number for my example

- ranking Contests based on how many close/entertaining/come from behind matches they have is certainly fair, and I won't deny that outside rallies CAN result in more of those (as with FF7/trainers). the problem at least for me is that these days it's all or nothing- either an outside force really cares and it's just Contest Over because they have 100x our userbase (which makes all further results for that entrant NOT close/entertaining) or they don't care at all and GameFAQs continues to have its way. I can enjoy brackets that go in either direction; hopefully lots of people do care about 128 All Fictional and things get crazy, but I'm also cool with smaller things that GameFAQs would probably get to decide itself like years or systems or VG music

LordoftheMorons posted...

This B8 Counsel idea reminds me of how the MIT Mystery Hunt is run: each year's competition is put together by the winning team from the previous year

Yes it's a good idea, I have a few friends who compete in that hunt every year and they really like the format.

LordoftheMorons posted...

I'm not too big on all fictional either!

SHAME ON YOU
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Great choice, BK. Persona 5 is amazing, enjoy!

Also, great idea for the Oracle, yoblazer. You're right in that it was pretty much a cat and mouse game those last few matches, and in the Final I tried to wait until the very last moment so that you couldn't go within 2 points of my prediction but it ended up backfiring on me lol. Epic fail.
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LusterSoldier posted...

The 65.78% that OoT put on RBY in the first non-contest poll after the final was a bit of an overperformance here.

I think people might be more likely to vote OoT in that poll since that game is stronger and likely to play a bigger role in making 1998 the overall winner of the contest.

That's true, going with our "smart voters" theory would imply they took time to consider the question and vote for the game they assume GameFAQs loves the most rather than just their personal favorite, in which case of course Zelda gets a boost.

LusterSoldier posted...

Ngamer, with those stats I provided comparing the popularity of each contest to the regular polls, I specifically ignored matches with extreme levels of rallying (more than 20% of the total votes coming from outside GameFAQs).

Alright I missed the line about rallies before I brought up the subject on air. That's a sensible way to do it and it makes BYiG look way better; voters actually cared about it MORE than a recent (and very good as far as B8 was concerned) Character Contest, before outside voters got involved.

LeonhartFour posted...

Remember Groose when you try to argue Zelda can beat stuff simply because it's Zelda.

I vow to never remember Groose in any context.

whatisurnameplz posted...

Also congrats BKSheikah! Why didn't you let them on the show? Doesn't the guru always make it on the final show of the contest?

Normally yes but I'm a Wendys man, couldn't deal with spending hours at a time with such a dedicated Burger King lover.


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I'm not really sure how previous Oracle Challenges have handled trying to cover second place going into the final round. I've never been anywhere near to top during the last few rounds so I've never really paid much attention. I can definitely consider taking predicting in private for special cases if I'm running the contest next time.
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Ngamer64 posted...

- 64 and 32 strike me as a bit much for GotY because as I talked about on air I don't think the average GameFAQs user gets through as many new games in a year as they might have 15 years ago. to me 16 games would be ideal, but 8 would be the easiest sell to SB so I used that number for my example

I posted how we could do a 32 game or 64 game GotY contest:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/75382450/879792754
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Hi, just want to say thanks for the show this year, really enjoyed all the episodes as usual and it made my long bus rides so much more enjoyable!

The show is probably what I look forward to the most every contest season, glad to see it keeps coming back every time :)
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