Board 8 > The Show EP 1 - The Glorious Return of GotD! Breaking down the bracket w/ Leon

(+) Yeah! (+)

Day Three Reactions

* I'm afraid. VERY afraid. my strategy this year was to disregard seedings entirely, but I couldn't allow myself to pick against Mass Effect, not after it earned that seed on the back(side) of my very own asses! granted, some of this underperformance might be due to the Resident Evil name having more punch than we expected... but if so, I've got some bad news about the division finals!
* first though ME2 is going to make it there, and maaaaaan... there's only so weak I can imagine VVVVV being in the light of all this Indie Fear running through my veins right now. plus it's got the wild name, an eye catching match pic, we're talking Sore Thumb Factor out the wazoo. only upside is, I backed out of my Dark Souls 2 > New Vegas upset at the last minute
* that being said, I don't worry about ME2's chances against Horizon (should it get there), despite today's crazy blowout. don't get me wrong, I'm sure Horizon is a legit entrant, but I'm chalking up 85% of this blowout to The Draven Factor


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Ngamer64 posted...

* first though ME2 is going to make it there, and maaaaaan... there's only so weak I can imagine VVVVV being in the light of all this Indie Fear running through my veins right now.

i think people are kind of overreacting about indie games supposedly being super strong now. hollow knight - tales of berseria was always a hard match. i picked berseria but hollow knight beating it wasn't that surprising (the entire contest analysis crew picked hollow knight!). bastion beating the walking dead was surprising, sure, but it didn't exactly win by a large amount. the fact that VVVVVV got beaten badly just makes me go "yeah, maybe hollow knight and bastion aren't actually indicating that there's a trend happening."

like, half of stats topic 1329 was people arguing "is cuphead going to beat GTAV?!?" which uh... no, not gonna happen. let's not get carried away here.

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Yeah, this is just the difference between an actually popular game vs. Walking Dead and Tales of Berseria.

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I misplayed Hollow Knight, but I was 50/50 on Bastion (in a match that wound up pretty 50/50) and clearly overrated Life is Strange (is that even an indie?). I feel like people expected some indies to be formidable from the very beginning, and we haven't seen any indications that we've horribly underrated them yet.

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Day Four Thoughts

* tranman looked over these matchups yesterday and said "jeez, this really should have been a 64 entrant bracket." I didn't agree at the time, but YIKES at these percentages- got to admit he has a point!
* okay, so apparently my Indie Fever was a bit premature. even so... let's be realistic here, there's got to be a limit to how weak Inside could be! no one thought it was a glass ceiling smasher but it was well received, had some good buzz, etc- unfortunately today it appears to have run into an absolute buzzsaw. maybe we didn't give Doom Eternal enough credit as a game-changer in terms of recency?
* speaking of which, funny to see RE2 dominating nearly as hard on the day the RE3 site takeover arrives. looks like we're in for an epic R2, I'm glad we took the time to discuss that one live!
* and honestly I don't even count out Fire Emblem, despite being the only thing not looking like Link Junior today on the results page. this is going to be a heck of a 4 pack all the way through!


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There are indies and then there are indies. Cuphead and Celeste have nothing to worry about INSIDE getting crushed. It does mean Baba is You and Obra Dinn will get trashed though.

Off course, I do think DOOM is strong. How far below Edith Finch and Trails can INSIDE be?

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Lightning Strikes posted...

There are indies and then there are indies. Cuphead and Celeste have nothing to worry about INSIDE getting crushed. It does mean Baba is You and Obra Dinn will get trashed though.

Off course, I do think DOOM is strong. How far below Edith Finch and Trails can INSIDE be?

I mean, DOOM will have to be pretty darn strong for INSIDE not to finish dead last at this rate. Draven was dead last by a country mile in 2018.

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I still think it would be better if Allen just didn't try to limit Nintendo/Square games and had more of those instead of 50 indies. Would have made for more interesting Round 1 matches.

What's a inside? Seriously, I don't think any of these results surprise me.

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Ok those first quadruplings were fun but I'm ready to have some close matches now.

Five Days Of Thoughts

* holy heckballs @ Bayonetta! Link Between Worlds is two tiers below BotW, sure, but this is still a remarkable performance in the light of how well Nintendo has been doing, as Ultimate is currently showing. (...or, obviously, in the light of how well anything related to Link has done in the last 18 years.) at this point I'd call it a major upset if something was able to unseat Bayonetta for the title of Most Disappointing Bracket Placement of 2020
* clearly Minecraft is no Fortnite on this site, but I still hesitate to award it a full measure of respect since Dota's a fantastic Fortnite/Draven Effect stand in itself
* loving this performance from Spider-Man. it's just straight up legit entrant in this environment, which is sweet redemption for his 2018 snub!

@LusterSoldier could we have an update on how votals are trending now versus 2018, if registered users are still accounting for ~5% more votes, and what new tiebreaker we're on track for?


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I mean, I'd say Bayonetta's opponent has a bigger argument for most disappointing bracket placement!

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Out of curiosity, and I apologize if this is answered elsewhere, but why is the guru topic locked?

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Ngamer64 posted...

@LusterSoldier could we have an update on how votals are trending now versus 2018, if registered users are still accounting for ~5% more votes, and what new tiebreaker we're on track for?

We're currently averaging 14917 votes per match, although yesterday's matches were a good sign with the best vote totals of the contest at roughly 15500 votes. If we get more days like that, we'll definitely average 15000 votes per match for the entire contest, which puts our tiebreaker question on track for about 1900000 total votes.

Registered users are currently averaging about 8200 votes per match, which is a drop off from 2018's average of 9428 registered user votes per match. Anonymous users are averaging about 6700 votes per match, which is way down from 2018's average of 10314. Even with both drop offs, the anonymous users had a much more severe drop off which means we're averaging about 55% of our votes coming from registered users.

You can see all of the advanced data right here - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kFS3SfH6sAhPdS85H7BpuFIkr9SayeF7AhMw-wrEBng/pub
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azuarc posted...

Out of curiosity, and I apologize if this is answered elsewhere, but why is the guru topic locked?

That was the Guru Entry topic, entries are now closed so we've moved over to the Discussion topic which is here:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78525056


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dammit coronavirus why did I up my tiebreaker

not that I will need it

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I hate it when people only come out of the woodwork to brag once their Upset Special comes true, so I wanted to say in advance why I ended up changing my mind since our recording and picking against Undertale tomorrow.

Everyone says it's got a higher base strength on this site than Draven/League, and that it didn't rub us the wrong way as much as the other rally did, and I do agree. However...

* I think Octopath is slightly more than "Not UT"- being on the Switch has been a big indicator of success this year, and it came out during that sweet spot when everyone had their new console, had finished the Must Haves, and was looking to pick up something new. I personally have three non-GameFAQs friends who bought the game and were very excited about it for the first week. (now granted, only one of them ended up finishing the game, but still! at least it's got some Awareness Factor)

* I finished Undertale last month, and I'm now in the middle of a second playthrough where I'm going for the best ending. (I wanted to bring this up on the last episode but we'd already gone way way too long by that point!) it's actually a better game than I expected, with a better story than I thought it would have. and Sans is a lovable goof who steals some of the biggest scenes; it's easy to see why he became the breakout star. and that's the problem- there's no way thousands of GameFAQs regulars gave the game a try, were won over by it, then unanimously decided "you know what, Sans was great and all, but I gotta have me some PAC-MAN!"

* normally I put zero stock in games versus characters results, but that one just reeked of anti-voting to me. and if I'm right, the math is starting to look bleak for Undertale. as Luster explained, casual voters have been turned off by the fourway forced voting, resulting in veteran GameFAQs users casting 5% more of the votes than in 2018. and remember, each of those votes counts double, so actually they have 10% more impact. what if for every one GameFAQs vet who decided to give UT a try and enjoyed it, there are two or three who are still bitter about the Chrono Trigger or Ocarina or Melee results and sitewide takeover- as the Pac-Man result seems to indicate? the Fortnite kids who saw the result yesterday called us Bitter Boomers, and maybe tomorrow is going to prove them right!


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Octopath Traveler is probably extremely similar in strength to Bravely Default. Maybe a bit stronger? Basically it comes down to if you think Bravely Default's inherent strength + Undertale anti-votes is enough to tip the scales.

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Ngamer64 posted...

* normally I put zero stock in games versus characters results, but that one just reeked of anti-voting to me. and if I'm right, the math is starting to look bleak for Undertale. as Luster explained, casual voters have been turned off by the fourway forced voting, resulting in veteran GameFAQs users casting 5% more of the votes than in 2018.

It is unknown as to what will happen to the anonymous voters once we get past round 1 and a good portion of the fodder has been eliminated. I think once we're in round 2, we may see more anonymous voters getting involved in the contest as the forced voting becomes less of a turn off. Currently, a lot of anonymous users are skipping the round 1 matches as there are too many matches where they don't care about either game. This may be far less of an issue in round 2, and especially in round 3 and beyond.
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LusterSoldier posted...

It is unknown as to what will happen to the anonymous voters once we get past round 1 and a good portion of the fodder has been eliminated. I think once we're in round 2, we may see more anonymous voters getting involved in the contest as the forced voting becomes less of a turn off. Currently, a lot of anonymous users are skipping the round 1 matches as there are too many matches where they don't care about either game. This may be far less of an issue in round 2, and especially in round 3 and beyond.

i feel like that's why yesterday's lineup has the best votals of the bunch so far. Each match had a really strong or well-known entrant with name value, so the fact that the opponents were weak really didn't matter so long as there is something familiar in each match.

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My one doubt about Octopath is that it seems to have an extremely high burnout rate.

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Leonhart4 posted...

My one doubt about Octopath is that it seems to have an extremely high burnout rate.

I definitely get that feeling, reading posts about the game on these boards. Personally, I love Octopath but I don't think it's widely respected. It's not as polarizing as Undertale though, so I think this match is essentially a measure of how GameFAQs feels about Undertale. Not an easy one to call.

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HarshRapDebater posted...

(the entire contest analysis crew picked hollow knight!).

correction on this one: only 3/5 crew people picked hollow knight. still means it was the favorite to win, though!


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To your first two points NG, Undertale is also on the Switch. And yeah, it is an incredible game that only got hate because of the rallies, which in turn would not have gotten nearly as bad a reaction if Draven never happened. And to that point...

Polycosm posted...

I definitely get that feeling, reading posts about the game on these boards. Personally, I love Octopath but I don't think it's widely respected. It's not as polarizing as Undertale though, so I think this match is essentially a measure of how GameFAQs feels about Undertale. Not an easy one to call.

Undertale isnt polarising. It has a 93 on Metacritic and high user scores. It does, however, have a reasonable percentage who will never play it but hate it purely because of the rallies.

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From your lips to God's ears, NG! Or rather, from your fingertips to God's eyes!

I didn't have the courage to pick Octopath in my bracket, though I strongly considered it many times (which means absolutely nothing; we all consider a lot of things). But I pulled the trigger in my Oracle, and although I tend to be an inveterate coward, I'm gonna stick with it this time.

In the words of William Daniels' John Adams, "I have crossed the Rubicon, let every bridge be burned behind me, come what may, come what may!"

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I knew I should have kept Shovel Knight in round 2.

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You can play UT on Switch now, sure, but the game was such a 2015 phenomenon. If the Switch had been around then, and it had been ported to the console at the height of its power when everyone was curious what all the buzz was about, then the sky would be the limit. Instead GameFAQs as a whole wasn't introduced to the game until it started killing our brackets by winning matches with outside help, and by then the well was poisoned and many of us were never going to give it a real chance. Compare that to Octopath hitting the system at exactly the right time, and it's clear where the Nintendo vote was going to go (which as we've seen is a huge deal in 2020).

But getting back to these results... holy smokes! This is the craziest night of the season so far IMO.

* I'd forgotten how good it feels to call your shot in advance and have a big upset play out just the way you'd predicted. huzzah for Contest season! this one is especially nice because it'll be a three point swing for my bracket, barring something very strange happening next round. (and yes I fully realize a UT rally could develop tomorrow to steal those three points away, but that's okay, my theory didn't take outside voting into account so I'm considering it proven)

* ...blowing The Show's Lock of the Night, however, doesn't feel quite so great. boooo for Contest season! losing a tight one would be one thing but I'm actually stunned at the percentage DMC is putting up here, considering what's happening in the match below it

* OMG Odyssey! I was one of only a few people to pick it as the biggest threat to BotW in my pre-GotD poll 8 months ago, and now I wish I'd stuck to my guns. because sure, we're all Boomer Gamers who haven't touched non-Smash fighting games since the 90s, but still, this is Mortal Kombat- there's a limit to how weak I could ever see that series being. maybe Mario's overperforming a little off that great match pic or being the comfortable option no one dislikes (Pac-Man Factor) out of 8 options, but I'm putting my money on it being an actual beast when not held back by BotW; look out Ultimate, you're going to get tested after all!


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Whoa, high votals! @LusterSoldier (or anyone), do we know if any successful rallies happened today to raise this number?


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I doubt any of the rallies were all that successful!

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Ngamer64 posted...

Whoa, high votals! @LusterSoldier (or anyone), do we know if any successful rallies happened today to raise this number?

I'll report back on that later once we have the full registered/anonymous user stats for today's matches. If the percentage of registered users is similar to the previous matches in the contest, we can say that the rallies had almost no effect on the vote totals.
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Looking at the stats for those matches, I see no evidence of any rallies. We got 55.06% registered users in the previous set of matches, which is similar to the percentage of registered users we have gotten so far in this contest.

Yesterday's matches saw an increase in the total number of votes from both registered users and anonymous users. All 4 matches from yesterday had exactly 9188 registered user votes, which makes it the first day where we got more registered user votes than total bracket entries. The previous high in registered user votes was Bloodborne/CoD which 8521 registered users in that match, so yesterday's matches easily destroyed that total.

We also saw an increase in the total number of votes from anonymous users, with yesterday's matches averaging 7500 anonymous votes. That total surpasses the previous high of 6990 anonymous votes in both RE2/Danganronpa 2 and Bloodborne/CoD.

Based on this, I can safely rule out any rallies as a potential source for our unusually high vote totals yesterday.
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I can't wait for my "The Show" invitation, for being the front runner of "The Guru"

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We're back with episode two!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78534703


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