Board 8 > Contest Stats and Discussion - Part 1278

(+) Yeah! (+)

If Rivarly Rumble is any indication, Ganondorf still beats Sephiroth to this day. Cloud vs. Sephiroth was that good of a rivalry that many (including me) picked it winning, but FFVII's been losing steam overall since at least 2009.
---

Advokaiser posted...

If Rivarly Rumble is any indication

It isn't.
---

rivalry rumble gave Bartz a contest win, its very legit
---

Smart money's on Kefka -- he essentially beat Cloud in our last Character Battle!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5178-character-battle-ix-division-4-round-1-kefka-vs-zack-vs-ryu
---

It also gave Waluigi a win. Fuck the Rivalry Rumble.
---

HaRRicH posted...

It also gave Waluigi a win. Fuck the Rivalry Rumble.

Waa!
---

that Waluigi win maintained FFIV's shutout in Character Battles so I'll allow it
---

HaRRicH posted...

It also gave Waluigi a win. Fuck the Rivalry Rumble.

You're lousy!
---

Contest Kefka is still fucking amazing, the ultimate wild card.
---

LeonhartFour posted...

Actually, I guess Mewtwo would maybe have a worthwhile shot at it, assuming he counts as a villain here.

Mewtwo is not a villain in the games, so he would not be eligible.

I'd be curious to see if Giovanni could get above the fodder line, though.
---

It depends what you consider a villain. Mewtwo has been a boss character in side games like Pokemon Stadium.
---

charmander6000 posted...

It depends what you consider a villain. Mewtwo has been a boss character in side games like Pokemon Stadium.

Boss character of a side game feels too flimsy to make it into a villains bracket. Technically Mario is a villain in a "side" game but he wasn't in Villains 2005 and I doubt he'd be in a new Villains contest.

I guess you could call Mewtwo a "secret boss" in that he's the most powerful encounter in Cerulean Cave, but other than his power and rarity, his encounter is identical to that of any wild Pokemon battle.
---

His in-game backstory involves being a science project cloned of the ultimate lifeform that breaks out. That's a villain backstory if I ever heard one!

Plus he was the villain in the movie, and he's associated with Giovanni these days too.
---

pjbasis posted...

His in-game backstory involves being a science project cloned of the ultimate lifeform that breaks out. That's a villain backstory if I ever heard one!

Plus he was the villain in the movie, and he's associated with Giovanni these days too.

Sounds more like the backstory of a tragic figure. The scientists are the true villains there.

The movie is non-canon as far as the games are concerned - we shouldn't have video game contests with anime entrants. Save Mewtwo for the all-fictional villains contest.
---

Pretty sure Mewtwo was in one of those villain event things in smash Bros.
---

I think we could be looking at some INSANE contest prize money if this is any indication:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/6-gamefaqs-announcements/76374552

The most expensive FAQ Bounty listed is for Kingdom Hearts III, valued at $3000. It wouldn't surprise me if the grand prize for the next GameFAQs Contest exceeded $5000 considering the most expensive grand prize was a $2000 gaming bundle from the last Games Contest and that happened before the GameFAQs subdomain switch.
---

They should be giving away money for Top 10 lists... It would be a good incentive to finally write down a few.
---

Man, I knew KH3 would be popular, but $3,000 worth?

Also I could argue this means the contest prizes will actually be devalued, because all of the money is going into the FAQs.
---

I would prefer if the contest prizes weren't increased in value and maintained at the current value that we've seen in previous major contests. Increasing the value of the contest prizes might come at the cost of getting contests like every 2 to 3 years when this board really wants to see contests every year again.
---

god damn

Maybe I should switch careers into FAQ writing.
---

LusterSoldier posted...

I would prefer if the contest prizes weren't increased in value and maintained at the current value that we've seen in previous major contests. Increasing the value of the contest prizes might come at the cost of getting contests like every 2 to 3 years when this board really wants to see contests every year again.

We're already only getting contests every 2 to 3 years! By this logic, the prize pool should be reduced.

Although from what Allen has said in the past, I think the current gap between contests has a lot to do with legal issues.
---

What could those legal issues be?
---

There's a lot of legal red tape involved when you're giving away prizes. But I'm suspecting that the reason for multi-year gaps in contests is that contests don't bring in the kind of traffic that they used to, since they're on the home page and most GameFAQs visitors are not going to the home page these days. So why go through the legal red tape every year if you're not getting enough benefit for it?

Ultimately, these questions can only be answered by SBAllen himself.
---

Sephiroth, Bowser, and Ganondorf are probably all weaker now than they were in the villains contest, but they're still too strong for the rest of the field to make it interesting.
---

bump

Bump
---

If we have to wait till 2019 for another contest I'll consider the gap to have been of four years, not two.
---

SB said there would be one this summer.

Predicting Character Battle X.
---

#hype
---

So... Tifa vs. Sephiroth... would you dare take Tifa in a contest match?
---

no
---

That would just be stupid..

http://board8.wikia.com/wiki/Sephiroth_vs_Tifa_Lockheart_vs_Kratos_vs_Jill_Valentine_2008
---

I mean Tifa did much better two years later

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3849-jenova-division-final-sephiroth-vs-tifa-lockheart

but I think it's hard to overturn a hierarchy within a game or within a series (although it does occasionally happen)
---

Even taking TJF into account, Tifa barely gets 40% on Sephiroth nowadays.
---

Tifa looked like she had deteriorated the least of the FFVII characters in 2013, although that doesn't really mean much five years later.
---

Brawl playrate poll today:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/7012-
---

Okay...let me adjust the question...could Tifa have beaten Sephiroth in 2013?

The whole point of that question stemmed from the fact that Cloud and Sephiroth both dropped like crazy between 2010 and 2013 (Vincent, too... and most likely Aeris)...

Now you might say that Tifa MUST have dropped a bunch if the others did.... however, if you look at Tifa has performed between 2005 and 2010... she didn't' drop. Cloud and Sephiroth did during the span of time. Tifa improved monumentally against Sephiroth, too... it's true that one match was four ways and the other was not, but the improvement was HUGE.... What I'm trying to say is that the momentum of popularity change favored Tifa over the other characters.....whether it's due to TJF, I really can't say.

Let's move on to 20013 matches.

Tifa definitely looked stronger than Sephiroth then... 45% on Samus. Sephiroth got 42% on Mewtwo. Mewtwo is a monster these days, but stronger than Samus? Nah.

Perhaps Sephiroth underperformed in the Draven match due to Mewtwo stealing the Draven anti-votes or something, and L-Block does seem to have a little overlap with Nintendo characters?

Sadly, those performances are also consistent with the earlier rounds.... Tifa got 64% on Yuna and 70% on Chun Li, while Sephiroth got 53% on Kirby, 57% on Big Boss, and 66% on Morrigan. Come on now... It doesn't look like Tifa deteriorated at ALL... but I like Aeris so much more than Tifa, so the data had BETTER be wrong....grrrrrrrr, Tifa.....how dare you be so strong...

Finally, hierarchy changes indeed happen.... we saw Bowser beat Yoshi with 56%. Yoshi beat Luigi the next year. In 2009, Luigi goes and beats Bowser.

Guess what other match was a 56/44 result in 2010? Sephiroth vs. Tifa!

Come on, you've got to give Tifa a 1% shot against Sephiroth, at least!
---

78.84% playrate for Brawl at the freeze. Expect this to drop off overnight from the Asia/Europe vote. Still too early to say where the playrate will end up at, except that it should at least finish over 70% based on the early results so far.

This result would imply that Melee's playrate should be just as good as Brawl's playrate, if not even better due to being an older game.
---

You can't trust that Draven/Mewtwo/Sephiroth match even a tiny bit. Pokemon and Draven were both way out of wack that year.

also Tifa has always been stronger than Aerith
---

You're no fun, Leonhart. You could at least point out that something that is compelling instead of nitpick one thing. And I'm not asking you to believe or even consider Tifa > Sephiroth!

You can take Pokemon and Draven out of the equation and Tifa still looks better than Sephiroth multiple times. I never said Aerith was ever stronger than Tifa... just that I'm angry that Tifa is stronger than Aerith!
---

you are in fact asking me to consider it or you wouldn't have brought it up

I don't trust much of anything we saw in 2013 one way or the other regardless
---

Yes because like hell I'm going against TJF.
---

Nobody's going to deny that Tifa has had some impressive results over the years but there are good reasons to be suspicious of a lot of them and Tifa > Sephiroth goes wildly against common sense so yeah, not necessarily gonna be a lot of backing on that one!
---

Tifa > Sephiroth just feels wrong.
---

I will go over weaknesses of my argument, as well... later.
---

I consider the three-way character contest to have more reliable results than the four-way contests, as least...

It seems nobody in the topic likes to discuss major upsets and not even entertain the thought on them. But people have been positive about match results and missed them, anyway... which is the entire reason I like to discuss "impossible" contest results.

But I'll finish the opposite side of the argument, anyway.

First off, all of Tifa's good results can be called into question. First of all, Tifa/Samus/L-Block in the last contest. Now recall that Tifa overperformed against Samus in the female character contest. While the picture was obviously a big factor in that, could it be that Tifa just has a tendency to overperform against Samus regardless? Samus' strength could be called in question based on Snake/Samus/Draven, too. She clearly underperformed, but how close is she to Snake, really?

Secondly, Tifa's other good performances were against female characters... she could have SFF'd Yuna. And maybe she overperformed against Chun Li, too. Finally, Tifa's performance on Dragonborn...yikes, that doesn't look good. Dragonborn failed to 60/40 Tom Nook, of all characters.

Also, in Sephiroth's favor is that he put in a similar situation as Samus, in that Sephiroth was the 3rd place character in a Draven match. Thus, it's very likely Sephiroth underperformed in that match and is closer to Mewtwo in true strength than the match suggests.

Finally, it's been five years now, and I think FF7 anti-voting is starting to decrease...maybe... I honestly don't know.... But if that's the case, I'm sure Sephiroth will have gained ground Tifa. Regardless, I feel way worse about taking Tifa over Sephiroth today than back in 2013.
---

Haste_2 posted...

I consider the three-way character contest to have more reliable results than the four-way contests, as least...

not the 2013 contest

it was riddled with LFF and rallies so it's utterly useless
---

Tifa and Sephiroth weren't affected by rallies or LFF that much. Mewtwo benefitted from the general Pokemon rallying, true.
---

I mean Sephiroth was directly affected by a double rally in that Draven/Mewtwo match you keep mentioning

but regardless the CBIX X-Stats predict 65/35 for Sephiroth

boom
---

Would anyone take Sonic > Sephiroth in a fair 1-on-1?
---