Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest Nomination Topic 3 -- Discussion Overflow

(+) Yeah! (+)

I think I'm pretty much neutral on the idea of locking. I definitely didn't have problems with it, at least, but overall it didn't really feel too different to me.
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I liked locking a ton, honestly.
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I'm also pretty neutral on locking. I have some theoretical concerns still but they didn't really materialize here so I can't say I have any strong feelings against it.

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I loved the new system and would prefer using it again next year. That being said, with a contest this massive and difficult to run, I support whoever the Host is doing whatever they personally want. Supporting their choice of rules is literally the least I could do to thank them for their work.
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rwlh posted...

New links for:
Deltarune - Rude Buster (loops properly, with fadeout)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k0qYU29K0U

Final Fantasy IV - Fight 2
This link is better quality than the supplied one, but it doesn't loop (the OST doesn't loop, so it's likely to be a rip from that):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cJe5v5lLKk

Alternately, this is probably as high quality as you can get for SNES and it loops, but there's no fadeout - it ends abruptly:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnP7JCDExDg

Metal Gear Solid 3 - Snake Eater (better quality)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVPaaiL_iLw

Pokemon Platinum - Battle! Giratina (loops properly)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfFqkIsn88U

Pokemon Sword/Shield - Battle Tower (loops once)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJz38uxBN1U

Ratchet & Clank - Metropolis ~ Kerwan (better quality)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvb-0ODln14

Naming stuff:
- Atelier Ayesha is listed two different ways, once with the subtitle (The Alchemist of Dusk) and once without.
- Mr. Driller should be Mr. Driller: Drill Land.
- Some of the Pokemon games have "and"s, some have slashes. (Black 2 and White 2 vs. Diamond/Pearl/Platinum)
- Pretty sure The Legend of Zelda - Main Theme is called Title.

Adjustments made in my secret bracket-making document, except I kept Sword and Shield as such just because it sounds better.

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I think locking is great. The idea of "first 192 songs to 5" mentioned by Player 0 is interesting too.
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Raetsel_Lapin posted...

I loved the new system and would prefer using it again next year. That being said, with a contest this massive and difficult to run, I support whoever the Host is doing whatever they personally want. Supporting their choice of rules is literally the least I could do to thank them for their work.

This, of course, is the most important factor. Whenever designing a system, simplicity and transparency are the most important details. Anything confusing or labor-intensive is less than ideal. But any method does involve work. I'll be grateful to whatever patsy individual steps up to shoulder that load.

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I feel like we need a cutoff date or a way to inject new nominations into the system if we did that, since something like that depends on enough people participating to get 192 songs that high. (Obviously we got there this time, but I don't think we should have a system that relies on that to function)
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Mac Arrowny posted...

I think locking is great. The idea of "first 192 songs to 5" mentioned by Player 0 is interesting too.

As long as there's a provision for what happens when not enough songs are getting to 5. The deadline is the kick in the pants that makes things move. I don't believe activity ramped up on Thursday and Friday just because it was the natural progression of time.

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I said it before, but I'm glad the locking system was there. I don't have any strong opinions on whether the locking period should end early or not, but I'd love for it to return next contest in any form.

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Basically how it was this year but keep the locking mechanism in place until the end instead of ending it early.

azuarc posted...

As long as there's a provision for what happens when not enough songs are getting to 5. The deadline is the kick in the pants that makes things move. I don't believe activity ramped up on Thursday and Friday just because it was the natural progression of time.

Then you can ad-hoc reduce the bracket size and don't have to host the contest for as long! :D

Well, at that point it might be good to give everyone a package of vgmc-bucks welfare and stimulate some activity. I think just going from two deadlines to one is already a big improvement by itself, though!

I do think the host should wait until after the first day to declare a lock threshold, so they can assess how many people are participating that year. Going with 5 this time worked well since we remained pretty consistent from last year, but it could always go up or down from here.

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I'm not sure you would want the lock threshold to go down from 5 unless we started to re-enter the dark ages... and even maybe then. If you make it 4 then you open it up to 4/2 which I'm not sure I'm comfortable with.

and given how dead a site we are i'm not sure there'll ever be a need to move it up either >_>

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Just need more outreach.

We need to take the vgm communities from across the internet and funnel all of them into a dead gaming forum from the early 2000's.
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Also gonna share the final version of who supported each song in the field of 192, since it's been getting discussion in Discord: https://p0p0p0p.github.io/graph14bracket.html

As before, you should give it a minute to settle so you have the same starting point as everyone else. This will give you some general regions of common taste, which you can confirm or falsify by picking a node and dragging it around. This first lets you see which links are influenced by it, and you can then try moving it to a vastly different location to see if it gets forced back where it started, or if that location was just by coincidence. Everything is simulated by springs which try to conform to some ideal length based on forces/energy. Here's some interesting regions I found:

To the northeast, some B8 veterans (loweffortmemes is an honorary B8'er):

To the northwest, more preference for rock and exciting orchestra:

And to the southeast, our younger folks big on the more electronic sounds of the 1990s-2000s:


Of course, these are pretty rough approximations, based on a sample of 20 songs or fewer for each person. Once the bracket starts, I'll work on a proper compatibility graph, which will include up to 191 match results! I guess the idea with the bracket seeding is to avoid having songs from same region face each other (please don't make my supports face off in round 1 guys).

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PIayer_0 posted...

please don't make my supports face off in round 1 guys

glances at invitation flower autumn vs marion
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If you don't want two of your supports to face each other, then only support 20 of the same type of song. The only promise I make is that I try not to make two songs that have similar qualities pair off. Trying to determine who supported what is an exercise in frustration for bracketmaking.

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azuarc posted...

The only promise I make is that I try not to make two songs that have similar qualities pair off.

and yet you're able to say "that is the most xp set of nominations i've ever seen" and yet you set me up for tragedy this way every year =(

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azuarc posted...

If you don't want two of your supports to face each other, then only support 20 of the same type of song. The only promise I make is that I try not to make two songs that have similar qualities pair off. Trying to determine who supported what is an exercise in frustration for bracketmaking.

deo already made a spreadsheet of original nominators which I'm planning to use during the bracketmaking phase as maybe even first priority of how to split things apart

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If two of my supports fight each other then I might have something make R2!

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Zigzagoon posted...

If two of my supports fight each other then I might have something make R2!

That's how I look at it!
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Zigzagoon posted...

If two of my supports fight each other then I might have something make R2!

I love how that's "might," as if somehow that, too, could be taken from you.

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Double DQ after both sides caught cheating.
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Zigzagoon posted...

If two of my supports fight each other then I might have something make R2!

You don't sound very sure. =p

The main reason I like the locking is that you don't have to worry about locked 5/3 nominations getting cut off! On another note, there were 620 tracks nominated this year. Last year there were 627. It's pretty crazy how much more efficient people were with nominations this year. (partly because locking increases efficiency, of course). Last year only a few 4/3's were cut.

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PIayer_0 posted...

Also gonna share the final version of who supported each song in the field of 192, since it's been getting discussion in Discord: https://p0p0p0p.github.io/graph14bracket.html

As before, you should give it a minute to settle so you have the same starting point as everyone else. This will give you some general regions of common taste, which you can confirm or falsify by picking a node and dragging it around. This first lets you see which links are influenced by it, and you can then try moving it to a vastly different location to see if it gets forced back where it started, or if that location was just by coincidence. Everything is simulated by springs which try to conform to some ideal length based on forces/energy. Here's some interesting regions I found:

To the northeast, some B8 veterans (loweffortmemes is an honorary B8'er):

To the northwest, more preference for rock and exciting orchestra:

And to the southeast, our younger folks big on the more electronic sounds of the 1990s-2000s:


Of course, these are pretty rough approximations, based on a sample of 20 songs or fewer for each person. Once the bracket starts, I'll work on a proper compatibility graph, which will include up to 191 match results! I guess the idea with the bracket seeding is to avoid having songs from same region face each other (please don't make my supports face off in round 1 guys).

awesome chart

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PIayer_0 posted...

(loweffortmemes is an honorary B8'er)

Hooray!

I liked locking more than the mad rush and support the idea of trying to get 192 tracks by locking at a leisurely pace if possible. I do worry that having the locking deadline match the final deadline could lead to votes that accidentally violate rules though, so perhaps the way it was structured this time was close to ideal?

I just realized I can change my forum settings to show links again. Ugh.

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Of course I have more stats, what else am I gonna do with my free time this month?

Although I couldn't keep up with the spreadsheet updates at the very end, here's how things played out overall:

Friday (Post 778): 20 at 4+, 303 used votes outside top 60, 276 unused supports, 111 unused doubles
Saturday (Post 857): 31 at 4+, 333 used votes outside top 60, 263 unused supports, 107 unused doubles
3:05 (Post 920): 36 at 4+, 367 used votes outside top 60, 257 unused supports, 96 unused doubles
17:20 (Post 945): 46 at 4+, 360 used votes outside top 60, 272 unused supports, 101 unused doubles
19:00 (Post 960): 50 at 4+, 357 used votes outside top 60, 269 unused supports, 99 unused doubles
20:25 (Post 988): 50 at 4+, 363 used votes outside top 60, 269 unused supports, 99 unused doubles
20:50 (Post 1000): 57 at 4+, 351 used votes outside top 60, 272 unused supports, 92 unused doubles
21:12 (Post 1031): 62 at 4+, 349 used votes outside top 60, 288 unused supports, 94 unused doubles
21:35 (Post 1050): 73 at 4+, 339 used votes outside top 60, 291 unused supports, 88 unused doubles
22:00 (Post 1156): 84 at 4+, 341 used votes outside top 60, 258 unused supports, 64 unused doubles

Unlike the locking deadline where most of the final rush came from doubles, here we actually had a lot of people who were sitting on unused supports dump them on songs they still felt had a shot. 4/x remained safe until around one hour before the deadline, when the cutoff began steadily making its way up before settling at 5/3 by a hair's breadth. The fact that we had 4 new people join after locks certainly helped pushed the cutoff higher!

In the end, we reached a 59.8% vote efficiency, where 987 out of an available 1650 votes were used on songs that made the bracket. This is up a bit from last year's 56.3% figure, and it makes sense that the locking deadline helped people work together to coordinate their votes more efficiently. In terms of only the votes available post-lock, last year would have had around a 23.8% efficiency assuming that they spent the same proportion of votes on locks, while we ended with a significantly higher 33.0%. Even after the locking deadline, all the 4/x and 3/x songs that were created as a result went on to become attractive targets for consolidation in the final two days!

Anyway, all that's over now, so let's focus on the actual field instead! Here are the biggest series we have in the final bracket:

9 songs - Pokemon (3 last year)
7 songs - Ar/Ciel tonelico/nosurge aka Exa Pico (2 last year, one of which was EXSPHERE_NOSURGE)
6 songs - Kirby (1 last year)
5 songs - Final Fantasy (2 last year)
5 songs - Fire Emblem (3 last year)

Pokemon definitely looking to make some waves this year with exciting newcomers like Fire Island Volcano, Colress Battle, Battle Tower, Infinite Dungeon 2 (Gates to Infinity's first appearance!), and Giratina Battle! Not only does the undeniably ubiquitous series have zero retirees across 40 - yes, 40 - songs that have tried over the years, it's struggled to even make round 4! The only successful attempt at doing so being...Learn With Pokemon: Typing Adventure - Boss Battle! Will this finally be Pokemon's year...

Another fun fact - the bracket has four songs composed by Toby Fox, each from a different game!

Haste_2 posted...

All this time player_0's name was not player_0, but piayer_0. (found out only because of ctrl+F) "haha oh no" suddenly feels more relevant.

I don't know what you mean, my name has always been like this

Yep...recent contest performances definitely influenced Pokemon/Gust/Kirby nominations! I don't expect most of the Pokemon reps to do very well, though. Oh, and I am proud to have gotten in the one "popular Final Fantasy" track in this contest!

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Actually, here's a crazy stat to put the power of the top 5 series in perspective: They combine to make 32 out of the entire field of 192, which means on average, a song from Pokemon/Exa Pico/Kirby/Final Fantasy/Fire Emblem will appear once every three matches.

Haste_2 posted...

Yep...recent contest performances definitely influenced Pokemon/Gust/Kirby nominations!

How do you mean? Pokemon hasn't performed well in recent contests.
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i think he is talking about BOST, where it did very well

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and rwlh's ranking, where each of the top five songs were Pokmon
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NFUN posted...

and rwlh's ranking, where each of the top five songs were Pokmon

big if true

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Hi folks. I've got one important question to ask you...

WHERE BRACKET!?!

And the good news is that I have the answer. It's right here.

http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=473292

But before you click that link...

I wanted to thank everyone for all their enthusiasm, their interest, their dedication, and their patience. This especially extends to the people who have contributed to getting VGMC14 up and running, both in explicit and more subtle ways.

I'd also like to say that this is perhaps the most interesting, most dynamic field we've had and that designing the bracket for it gave Mycro and I a lot of trouble. I won't reveal the seeding openly, but we had to give some very good songs some staggeringly low placements. In the end we ultimately tried to generally make interesting matches with a balance of style and nominator representation. I hope we succeeded, but more importantly I hope you enjoy listening to all 192 tracks. I've got the playlist here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1REnVI_W6yELaDP6Zac8b0Wq

And if you've already clicked the bracketmaker link, then you've noticed that I have a little extra surprise for you.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RE-TQMj19D0k5nm-0zeH12J

Oops.

We'll start the contest on Sunday. You have until then to get your predictions in.

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Hey I don't have any first-round matchups that make me feel terrible, that's pretty good! Scourge/Waterworks and Jena/Giratina hurt a little bit, I guess. Also Rude Buster/Brain Power on day 2 is a hilarious matchup.

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Whoa

Come to think of it, not even the side bracket is looking too bad considering how its field was chosen! Flying Clouds/Dead Neon, Infestation/Rivers, and New World/Amusement will be tough, though. My ignorance of contests before 13 is truly a blessing!

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Sorry for only really being here to support a small few songs.

Looks on bracket
The two songs you supported that made the bracket are literally in the same quadrant of the same bracket

Heck.

I sometimes get exhausted by just voting on matches, so the fact that you guys works on brackets and spreadsheets is kinda amazing to me. So thanks for running things, these contests are so rad!

Chasing Daybreak vs Mirror Temple is going to make me die, but itll be interesting to see them directly compared.

Should we fill out the ToC bracket after Bracket A? I assume ToC deadline will be earlier than Bracket B deadline.
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Since this year I recurred to procrastinate nominations (as I pretty much always do) and turned out relatively bad for me (as it almost always happens), I'm going to do on this contest what I did with the last one: Listen to every match daily to see what kind of surprise I get every day (since I also didn't listen to any songs to support, other than the ones I already knew beforehand, like Another Winter, Scrap I/O and Rustling Throb ~Cloche~).

I'll also try to do my write-ups and rankings each day as I did last year, but only if I'm being sure people are reading them, as they require a bit of effort to do. Giving my first impressions on each song is nice when I haven't heard any, so I can introduce myself to the field more openly.

I'm not the kind of guy that makes favorite's brackets before the contest starts because that requires WAYYY too much work (a daily ranking of 6 songs is already difficult enough), so if my rankings aren't popular, I may just discard them over time.

Also, seeing as how I went in blind for EVERY match last contest (yes, all the way to the Finals), I'm just going to go in blind for Round 1. That way I can get excited again while watching everything unfold before my eyes, instead of being purely surprised by whatever I'm going to listen to next. In other words, last contest I abstained from looking at the bracket entirely; this year, though, I'll look at it anytime and keep track of which songs got what competition like any normal person does (huh).

Anyway, I hope next year I can post my first 5 songs in Day 1 of nominations, having well-planned my other 15 nom slots, while actively participating in that crucial phase to support other songs by listening to them beforehand.

...Like any normal person does! XD

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I'm glad I wasn't involved with seeding. I start getting irritated (exhausted) when I listen to music for hours, particularly when I'm trying to judge it! I didn't even get through all the music during nominations (I had to prioritize) and even that was kind of overdoing it. Hats off to you guys for getting the bracket out so fast! I'm looking forward to the ToC bracket, too! (Oh, man, if Autumn loses to Six Feet Thunder, that would be so TERRIBLE to me!)


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After hastily filling out my favourites brackets, I'm giving an initial assessment of C > B = D > A. Infinite Dungeon, Taliyah, Queen Bee, and Zeal all in C3 is crazy!

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I'm not sure which one scares me more--the relative absence of songs from series I've historically liked in Bracket A, making it likely that something I find terrible will retire, or the absolute mess of stuff I like in Bracket B along with a few strategically placed songs from series that have generally done well but I've often disliked (e.g. Exa Pico, sometimes Atelier--honestly it's mostly just Ayesha/Shallie that I've disliked; the rest has been fine).

Looking over Bracket B...officially, it's 6 of my nominations, which is not ideal, but I got 17 out of 20 in so I'm going to be averaging 4.25. Only problem is, there's also a song that I'd supported but pulled back on because it was getting enough support without me (Giratina), one that I would've supported but the post that first introduced it to me was the one that locked it up (Time for a Great Turnabout), and one song that I never even have to spend one of my own supports on because it'll always get in anyway (RFTMIS).

It does look like there's a fairly decent chance I'll get a retiree, even if not necessarily on one of my official supports. The bottom-left corner of Bracket B is pretty stacked with them.

*stares at bottom-right corner of Bracket C* Oh now that's just cruel. Officially a battle of two of my noms in R1, with one that, again, was already locked by the time I noticed it was even getting support but I would've definitely supported as a potential R2 opponent.

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Advokaiser posted...

I'll also try to do my write-ups and rankings each day as I did last year, but only if I'm being sure people are reading them, as they require a bit of effort to do. Giving my first impressions on each song is nice when I haven't heard any, so I can introduce myself to the field more openly.

I'll definitely be reading!! I always read everyone's thought on everything haha, I like seeing what other people think of songs a lot cause a lot of the time there's nice things to be said about the song you really want to lose lol. And this year I have a completed ranking already as well so I'll be doing an overall Mycro-like ranking myself~~ (now that I finished Sonic rank lol)

also Move Me vs Ocean Palace and Battle 2 vs BT Dutch are evil evil evil matchups and the day those come up you bet i'll be crying the entire time this bracket and this year's field are so good jesus christ

banshiryuu posted...

I'll definitely be reading!! I always read everyone's thought on everything haha,

Seconding this.

Aw yeah TOC3. Go Ricordando and Memories of You.
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Gogo Ricordando and Chocolate Missile :)

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