Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1276

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm rather surprised at the results of today's poll:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6838-

People are more optimistic for today's games that I would have expected considering that today's games are a lot weaker than those from the early 2000s and 1990s, possibly leading to people thinking today's games suck if they can't hold up to the greats of the early 2000s and 1990s.


Advokaiser posted...

An astonishing 93% playrate poll. Luster may have something to say about this.

I'll treat that poll as a playrate poll since the playrate is very similar to past playrate polls for Mario 1. The result from that poll will be added to the Board 8 wiki page on playrate.
---

Bump
---

As time's passing by I'm becoming more and more clueless about character and video games' strength. Good thing I guess, should create surprises when the contest actually happens.

Oh and the next contest is a characters contest, I told Allen to do so.
---

Another age poll today.

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6841-

Still too early to make any comparison to previous age polls for our average age.
---

I've moved up four spots on that poll since I started coming here

man I need to get a life
---

I thought the great majority were in the 25-28 range, but clearly I was wrong!
---

nah many people here are like me

been here since 16 and still here somehow
---

Plus most younger users probably won't use the home page or the forums anyway. They're more likely to use Youtube, reddit, Wikis, and just Google Search in general, plus if they do come across GameFAQs it's probably directly to the game's page anyway.
---

@red_sox_777

Yesterday's age poll has come to a close and the site's average age just increased by 504 days over the past 317 days (the length of time between the 2016 age poll and 2017 age poll). This caused the average age to increase from 28.44 to 29.82. The average date of birth went backwards by 187 days from June 5, 1988 to December 1, 1987. The last time we had an average date of birth before 1988 was the 2007 age poll where the average date of birth was July 30, 1987.

The Board 8 wiki page for average age has been updated:

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/GameFAQs_Average_Age


As for the vote totals, this is the first age poll since 2000 to finish with less than 20000 votes (final total of 19578). In terms of how much better this age poll did relative to our average vote totals right now, the 2017 age poll did 46.66% better than average. This projects the 2017 age poll at 133627 votes in terms of 2008 level vote totals.
---

That's wonderful news, if only we had enough votals to make these demographics count. I guess CT will have to be content with ruling over the ashes.
---

Today's poll also has some interesting results:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6842-

Almost half of the site has no plans to change what kind of games they will continue playing as they get older. That's good for Nintendo continuing to remain dominant on this site.
---

Today's poll has some potential for interesting trends, so I'll track this poll.
---

bump
---

Poll updates and trend charts for the poll that happened 2 days ago:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O7WK9gFlIZUqX86I5UhoIknM0fJj2DQIvCBN40j3SN8/pub?gid=242169270

Autumn starts off the poll with a terrible board vote and Power Hour. It gradually gains strength over the course of the night vote, reaching its maximum strength between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM. When the morning vote kicks in, Autumn begins dropping off from its excellent night vote and remains fairly consistent from 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM after which it begins to drop off even more. The SNV is the worst time period for Autumn. In this poll, Autumn reaching its peak strength between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM is a bit odd given that most options that perform well in Europe (and weak in North America) usually perform best from 4:00 AM to 7:00 AM. Since Autumn gets its strength from other countries in addition to Europe, that contributes to Autumn reaching its peak strength earlier than would be expected among options that are weak in North America. During this poll, Autumn reaches its lowest percentage of 9.32% at 12:10 AM. It gains a total of 11.34% to reach its maximum percentage of 20.66% at 7:20 AM, before it later goes on to lose a total of 2.83% to finish the poll with 17.83%.

In terms of Geolocation results, Autumn basically gets all of its strength from countries outside the US/Canada. Even though this essentially turns the poll into US/Canada vs. The World, Autumn doesn't completely dominate Fall during the night vote when voting from North America is at its lowest point. This can be explained by Autumn not winning by ridiculous margins over Fall in most countries. With the exception of countries like Ireland, the UK, and a few countries in Europe where Autumn had over 75%, most countries with Autumn as its most popular option only gave around 50% or less to Autumn. Then there's a few other countries which supported Spring since they were in the southern hemisphere, which also dragged Autumn down a bit.

''Usually autumn, sometimes fall'' has fairly consistent trends over the course of the poll, although it does perform slightly better during the night vote compared to all other time periods in this poll.

''Both, with no real preference'' performs best during the the board vote, Power Hour, and night vote. While this option does have fairly consistent trends overall, it does perform better during the first 6 hours of this poll compared to the last 18 hours of the poll.

''Usually fall, sometimes autumn'' has a good board vote, Power Hour, ASV, and SNV. It performs worst during the night vote and morning vote. Even though Autumn had no chance to take the lead over Fall in this poll, this poll still featured a lead change (2 lead changes, actually). During the poll, ''Usually fall, sometimes autumn'' reached its maximum lead of 178 over Autumn at 2:00 AM. It took almost 3 hours for Autumn to completely wipe out this lead, and the lead change happened at 4:55 AM. Autumn went on to reach its maximum of 165 over ''Usually fall, sometimes autumn'' at 7:55 AM. The comeback attempt by ''Usually fall, sometimes autumn'' was extremely slow and it took a total of 12 hours, 15 minutes to complete the comeback (lead change at 8:10 PM). As a result of Autumn falling apart during the last few hours of the poll, ''Usually fall, sometimes autumn'' was able to finish the poll with a 140 vote lead over Autumn.
---

Fall performs best during the board vote, Power Hour, ASV, and SNV. It performs worst during the night vote and is fairly average during the morning vote. Fall actually lost a single hour to Autumn during this poll, which was the 4:00-5:00 AM hour. During this poll, Fall managed to build up a maximum lead of 906 over Autumn at 3:25 AM. For the next 60 minutes after maxing out its lead, Autumn was basically stalling out Fall before finally making a serious attempt to cut into Fall's lead. Autumn only managed to cut a total of 38 votes off the lead, bringing Fall's lead down to 686 at 5:30 AM. Autumn won a total of 15 updates over Fall in this poll and it never won a single update after 6:20 AM (last time it won an update).

Fall had its maximum percentage of 49.79% at 12:50 AM, after which it would later lose a total of 10.19% to reach its lowest percentage of 39.60% at 6:35 AM. Then it gains a total of 3.77% for the rest of the poll to finish with a final percentage of 43.37%.

Spring performed worst during the board vote, Power Hour, and ASV. It performed best during the night vote and early morning vote, while the SNV was fairly average as a whole.
---

Bump
---

Another Mario 64 playrate poll.

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6848-

We had a Mario 64 playrate poll last year, but today's poll is showing an even higher playrate (which I expect will drop overnight).
---

Link 2002 = Link 2003
---

Link 2003 > Link 2002
---

It feels so bad knowing I started SM64 in January 2016 and left it unfinished until now. I'll also obviously need to start from scratch since I've lost the vibe, feel and flow of the game.
---

I'm surprised at least 10% has gotten all 150 stars in the DS version. I couldn't get used to the controls until 75 or so stars in.
---

Super Mario 64's playrate has increased to 88.80% (it was 88.42% in last year's poll). This new playrate result has been added to this page:

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Have_You_Played
---

Interesting results for the restroom poll today... Over the last two years, a lot more people have experienced a "gotta hold it in for a little longer" situation.
---

Interesting poll today:

https://www.gamefaqs.com/poll/6850-

I didn't expect "Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One" to win today's poll due to PS4 having a much larger library as a result of being nearly 4 years old, but this is an impressive performance for the Switch considering it's only been out for about 7 months now.

Based on the freeze so far, here are the current results for first place and last place for each console:

PS4 first place - 56.41%
Switch first place - 36.92%
Xbox One first place - 6.67%

PS4 last place - 6.67%
Switch last place - 12.31%
Xbox One last place - 81.02%

lol Xbox One
---

With the final results from yesterday's poll locked in place, here were the first place and last place results for each console:

PS4 first place - 64.78%
Switch first place - 28.24%
Xbox One first place - 6.97%

PS4 last place - 6.56%
Switch last place - 18.42%
Xbox One last place - 75.01%

Switch was basically all board vote and Power Hour, as it dropped pretty hard after that. Almost all of the Switch's collapse after the board vote went to the PS4, while Xbox One only slightly improved itself after the board vote.

Despite Switch looking very good early on, it ends up being more than doubled by the PS4 in the final results. And for good reason, since the PS4's game library is 4 years deep right now while the Switch has only been out for about 7 months.
---

Is the Xbox One really that bad?
---

The E3 reveal and the various controversies surrounding it pretty much killed the goodwill Microsoft got from the 360, and the PS4 has much better exclusives overall. The One doesn't really look like it has anything good exclusive-wise coming for it either, so it probably won't even recover from its slow start like the PS3 eventually did.
---

Oh god, a first half poll for October's games. I guess Allen felt October was too stacked to the point where a single poll of 12 games wasn't enough for October. The decision to split October into 2 polls (based on today's poll) could result in today's poll getting under 10000 votes, considering the known vote total penalty associated with a poll happening on a Saturday.
---

2017 in general has been stacked as fuck for video games.
---

LusterSoldier posted...

Oh god, a first half poll for October's games. I guess Allen felt October was too stacked to the point where a single poll of 12 games wasn't enough for October. The decision to split October into 2 polls (based on today's poll) could result in today's poll getting under 10000 votes, considering the known vote total penalty associated with a poll happening on a Saturday.

Looks like the vote totals are pretty bad indeed. It's already after 8:00 AM and the poll isn't even at 4000 votes yet. Looks like this poll gets under 10000 votes for sure.
---

GameFAQs was down for roughly 4 hours, 18 minutes today. Not that it mattered since today's poll was on pace for less than 10000 votes before the site downtime happened. All the downtime did was possibly make the already terrible vote totals even worse.
---

Not_Wylvane posted...

The E3 reveal and the various controversies surrounding it pretty much killed the goodwill Microsoft got from the 360, and the PS4 has much better exclusives overall. The One doesn't really look like it has anything good exclusive-wise coming for it either, so it probably won't even recover from its slow start like the PS3 eventually did.

What were the controversies exactly? No backwards compatibility or something? It's been already way too long since it launched and it's like the company gave them the finger somehow and never apologized, because the hate has been standing strong.

And really, what difference is there between the One and the PS4? Both of them have a heck of a lot of multiplatform titles (like no other past Gen has had before), and both have really weak exclusives (Uncharted is apparently no longer what it used to be, and hyped games like Titanfall, Sunset Overdrive and Halo 5 have been doing great at sales, but are barely popular).
---

The biggest one was (and I can't remember if it was just rumors or much more substantiated), that they were gonna kill the second hand market by tying your physical games to your console

I remember Sony made a big deal about "here's how you let your friend borrow your game" with someone simply handing it to someone else to huge applause.
---

Xbox was making a lot of changes people didn't care for. No backwards compatibility was one of the lesser problems (more successful systems had this problem too). The system wasn't going to work if it wasn't online and the Kinect was being required at a time Microsoft was catching major shit for the NSA, so that narrative loomed heavy over them. Games were going digital only which has its pros and cons -- see Steam -- but consoles were uncharted territory there so that scared people. Microsoft was also talking down on gamers and tried to win over the Fantasy Football crowd while being the most expensive console on the market.

They lost so much of their goodwill from the 360 and loyalty from people who made their first online accounts with them. They really could have retained so much of their fanbase just because of what Xbox Live brought to consoles and how many gamers and their friends were built around that, but instead the PS4 picked up a lot of what they left on the table.

I'm not sure how many worse PR bungles have been made in the gaming industry than Microsoft with the Xbox One, but there can't be many and Sony absolutely played their cards right along the way too so the damage was magnified. Halo's no longer top dog in the FPS genre and there aren't other exclusives to save them from this mess they made, so...they'll be mad about this for a long time. Good.
---

Even after Microsoft dealt with most of the initial problems, they still didn't really have anything to win people back. They had weak exclusives and slightly worse performance across the board on multiplatform titles. Being about close to equal doesn't really give people reason to come back once they have left.
---

Yesterday's poll probably got around 500 less votes as a result of the downtime. It had been on pace to surpass 9000 votes, but finished with only 8629 votes.

Today's poll is performing better, with 1068 votes at the end of the first hour. This is enough to put this poll on pace to surpass 10000 votes.

HaRRicH posted...

Games were going digital only which has its pros and cons -- see Steam -- but consoles were uncharted territory there so that scared people.

This wasn't an issue limited exclusively to Microsoft. It applies to Sony and Nintendo as well.
---

Poor Microsoft... At least they're still in the market.
---

Predict this contest match: Legend of Dragoon vs. Grand Theft Auto III
---

GTA III based on GotD stats, San Andreas and Vice City losing respectably to much-bigger name PS1 JRPGs in 2015, and my impression of Dragoon's popularity (or lackthereof).

That's not a match that could realistically happen at this point though, because we probably won't be seeing either game in a match ever again. Neither made it into the 2015 contest and Legend of Dragoon had to survive a vote-in to even make it into GotD.
---

GotD 2 is gonna be our next contest isn't it
---

pjbasis posted...

GotD 2 is gonna be our next contest isn't it

Character Battle X - The current Overwatch meme lord vs Draven finals.
---

I hope the reason we're not getting contests is more than just being scared of rallies
---

Well, they don't generate the interest they used to, so I guess there's no point in having one annually anymore.
---

The BGE 2015 contest generated a lot of interest prior to Undertale happening.
---

Please, let's do GotD2.

Just with the decade being the 90s.
---

3.39% of GameFAQs poll voters had an NES Classic the day it was released.

13.49% of voters had an SNES Classic the day it was released.

That's a 300% improvement. I expected numbers to be higher, but not THAT much higher....

Oh, yeah, and 5.9% of those who had an SNES Classic planned to scalp it, as opposed to 14.5% of NES Classic owners. I didn't expect a drop that big... maybe the purchasing limits online really did cause the number of scalpers to drop. Perhaps scalpers didn't want to go through the trouble to pre-order one SNES Classic at each store, as opposed to when they could purchase like ten of them per store with the NES Classic?

Edit: Actually, it makes sense that the scalping % is lower, because a much larger percentage of sales September 29th and earlier were at brick-and-mortar stores.
---

Haste_2 posted...

Edit: Actually, it makes sense that the scalping % is lower, because a much larger percentage of sales September 29th and earlier were at brick-and-mortar stores.

Although there was a slight increase in the percentage of scalpers for the SNES Classic poll, it was greatly offset by the massive increase in people on GameFAQs who were able to get an SNES Classic on launch day. So the overall percentage of scalpers among those who got an SNES Classic was much lower compared to the NES Classic.
---

I had a weird dream that Allen just decided to host a Character Battle on April Fools Day, for that day only

Every 10 minutes the matches would change until a winner was crowned (it was Luigi) and then Allen hosted another one immediately after, which randomly threw users that posted on board 8.

Man that would be incredible but probably unlikely to ever happen
---

That sounds like a fun dream.
---

B8 essentially deciding everything would be fun

Pokemon winning every match it's in would not be
---