Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest Topic 4 -- Results and Discussion

(+) Yeah! (+)

Results, end of round 1:
Final Boss Theme < Memories Rushing By, 21-26
Discovery < Rave On, 21-25
Servants of the Scourge < Battle!!, 17-28

Aliens Go Home Run lost because it didn't have the tek.
Kaze no Notam lost because nobody found it.
Terraria Calamity Mod lost because it was subservient.

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I'm totally blindsided by this result

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I definitely did not expect AGHR to lose R1.

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ouch, ending round 1 on a sour note huh. at least I can start compiling some interesting stats now that we've finished a round and heard every song once!

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Now that Round 1 is done, it's time for a poll!

What were the best matchups of Round 1?

I would say....
Beyond the Darkness vs. Hinagiku (9.5 average rating)
IDOLA The Strange Fruits vs. RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against- (9.25)
Moonstruck Blossom vs. CLASS::CIEL_NOSURGE; (9.25)

Worst matchup:
FEEL the POWER in YOUR SOUL vs. Central Park (4.0 average rating)


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Haste_2 posted...

Worst matchup:
FEEL the POWER in YOUR SOUL vs. Central Park (4.0 average rating)

This was very nearly the best match-up in round 1.

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Round 1 is over? Man it's been fun.

I'm happy Another Winter is still alive

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Haste_2 posted...

What were the best matchups of Round 1?

By a longshot:

Don't Speak her Name vs Mechalullaby
EXEC_PAJA/.#Orica Extracting vs Chant This Charm
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I was irate over Onboro v Apex of the World and already the anger rises once more in recalling it.

so i'll just say it was that without checking the bracket to be sure

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There were quite a few round 1 matches that were very strong, but my brain immediately jumps to Lake vs. Merciless Savior as the strongest round 1 match.

Final Boss Theme? More like OWNED Boss Theme!
Discovery? More like DiscOWNED (very)!
Servants of the Scourge? More like How Regrettable It Is That The Greatest Song In Either Contest Has Fallen. Alas....

ROLF

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Servants of the OWNed

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I'm still mad about Thermosphere/Midnight Lady so I guess that was the "best" one

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Thermosphere/Midnight Lady was the best R1 match by a lot
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Results, intermission wild card test:
43 What am I Fighting for
31 Duality
28 Nilin the Memory Hunter
26 Oh No! WASPS!!
25 too much funky
25 In This World
22 Chani's Eyes
19 Come And Get It
14 Marnie Final Battle

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So now I need your feedback.

1) In general, do you think this was an acceptable way to run the wildcard? (Whether or not you like WAIFF.)
2) Do you feel any tweaks are needed?
3) Do I need to be more clear about the rules and/or the intentions of the match?
4) Is 9 songs too much to listen to in one day, even with a playlist?
5) How soon after a division wraps up R2 do you want to see the wild card match? (Remember, we have 16 of these!)
6) Is this looking like a mistake or are you still excited to know your pet favorites have a ghost of a chance to claw back in...or at least get heard one more time?


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oh right now that round 1's done, here was my full ranking (sorry if it's hard to look at, i have weird preferences when it comes to fonts/colors/etc):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18x7tN7aC9gtIpkxHjghY9xLZ6IKYbKnqEZdGYQxDto8/edit?usp=sharing

i'd definitely move some of this stuff around now, but not as much as usual. really the main difference is I liked discovery a lot more the more times I listened to it so it's somewhere mid-purple zone now. probably like 50th place at least. probably fear not this night as well and a couple others in the high 7.x zone.
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azuarc posted...

6) Is this looking like a mistake or are you still excited to know your pet favorites have a ghost of a chance to claw back in...or at least get heard one more time?

absolutely

i walked into that test run topic and immediately turned around lol >_>

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Wildcard seems fine to me. Would just recommend not doing 16 in a row, I don't want to see what that'd do to the vote totals.

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xp1337 posted...

i walked into that test run topic and immediately turned around lol >_>

Because? Overwhelmed? Didn't like the format?

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1) Honestly, I don't think so. I think a way that involves sending in votes privately would make the purpose of the wildcard choice much easier to actually realize, and saying "please don't look at other votes" might not help much. Not that I don't trust people, but you never know.

2) Requiring using all 6 votes if votes are kept public.

3) If it's changed to be more private, then obviously yeah. Otherwise I don't think so!

4) Yeah probably, but if things are done privately I would imagine it to be manageable to have them run multiple days while other divisions continue on.

5) As soon as the division is over. Thinking about what I said above, have a division's wild card voting open for the entire couple days where the next division over is going through Round 2 may help people find time to make decisions and relisten to stuff to make decisions and whatnot.

6) Yes but that's what makes VGMC so good!! (and why i cry at night)

I enjoyed the test round.

I'm still not entirely sure why we don't just PM the votes since we're not supposed to look at them, but it's not really an issue.
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azuarc posted...

4) Is 9 songs too much to listen to in one day, even with a playlist?

I feel like most people won't be listening to all the songs, since they'll already know them from hearing them earlier in the contest?
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Let me make sure everyone understands the intent.

I don't care if you look at other votes. Go right ahead.

I care if you tailor your votes based on what you see other people voting for.

This isn't a major issue with only two entrants in a match. However, it's very easy to divert your votes to pick between the two songs that are getting the most votes because you kinda like one and hate the other, if you're looking at the match trends. Whereas if you didn't look, you might have "wasted" your votes by not supporting either of them. I simply don't want people gaming the system.

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azuarc posted...

1) In general, do you think this was an acceptable way to run the wildcard? (Whether or not you like WAIFF.)

The way it's set up now, this is about the best we can do, although since it's Top 1 to get in (rather than like, top 2 or top 3, not saying there's really a way to change that now), I feel like people are gonna try and game the system and only support their one favorite. I will say I like that we have a way to gauge strong supports in some fashion, rather than just the standard incremental preferences. (e.g. that one song that always tops the nomination count, but does poorly in the bracket)

azuarc posted...

2) Do you feel any tweaks are needed?

I shall once again float my idea of leaving the votes private until the winner is decided, then revealing them after.

azuarc posted...

3) Do I need to be more clear about the rules and/or the intentions of the match?

Maybe bold the changes respective to the standard rules, I almost read right over them ;>_>

azuarc posted...

4) Is 9 songs too much to listen to in one day, even with a playlist?

9 songs in one day is a bit much, this one was fine, but I can see busy schedules getting in the day.

azuarc posted...

5) How soon after a division wraps up R2 do you want to see the wild card match? (Remember, we have 16 of these!)

It doesn't really matter for me.

azuarc posted...

6) Is this looking like a mistake or are you still excited to know your pet favorites have a ghost of a chance to claw back in...or at least get heard one more time?

Every year my pet noms get slaughtered in the first round. What better way to rub it in, then watch them get crushed again!!!

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A division takes 1 and a half days, so maybe have wildcards running concurrently to Round 2 but have a 48hr period would make sense
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azuarc posted...

Because? Overwhelmed? Didn't like the format?

Both, kinda. The fact that most of us have listened to all the songs during R1 voting aside walking into 9 songs like that I was like "no thanks." I trust most of us can keep to the honor system of not gaming this out too but the fact that it's vulnerable to that isn't great either.

I think we absolutely should run with it for this (I don't even think changing it at this stage is even on the table, but even if it were I'd say stay the course) but my immediate inclination was "Okay, yeah, let's not bring this back next year." I feel like this is the kind of idea where I was cool with it in the theory phase but when seeing it actually executed I was like "oh. mistakes were made."

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azuarc posted...

1) In general, do you think this was an acceptable way to run the wildcard? (Whether or not you like WAIFF.)
2) Do you feel any tweaks are needed?
3) Do I need to be more clear about the rules and/or the intentions of the match?
4) Is 9 songs too much to listen to in one day, even with a playlist?
5) How soon after a division wraps up R2 do you want to see the wild card match? (Remember, we have 16 of these!)
6) Is this looking like a mistake or are you still excited to know your pet favorites have a ghost of a chance to claw back in...or at least get heard one more time?

1) Not if you don't want people trying to game the system, even unintentionally. For example, I skimmed the topic before voting because I wanted to see if anybody had any comments on the format or anything else worth reading, and I "accidently" noticed that WAIFF was getting a lot of votes. I tried ignoring that fact when casting my vote but it was hard. So I would disagree with even being allowed to read the topic before voting.

2) PM to vote or allow system gaming.

3) I wasn't sure how many advanced but now I see that it's one.

4) Ordinarily I'd say yes but I have more time on my hands with the pandemic going on (most of us do probably).

5) As soon as possible, even before the division ends.

6) I don't mind trying something new.

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4) Is 9 songs too much to listen to in one day, even with a playlist?
Nine songs in one day is no big deal, since most of us are familiar with all the music, anyway.

5) How soon after a division wraps up R2 do you want to see the wild card match? (Remember, we have 16 of these!)
It couldn't hurt to do each wild card match as soon as the R2 matches for that quadrant are over. Maybe we could dedicate a day to each of the wild card matches exclusively, rather than trying to run them at the same time as regular matches? That would add 16 days to R2, of course.

Is this looking like a mistake or are you still excited to know your pet favorites have a ghost of a chance to claw back in...or at least get heard one more time?
I actually liked the test wildcard match! I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes with the real thing!

My other opinions are the same as before!

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i'm concerned at the possibility that voters will definitely not listen to all of the songs and come in with the intent of only voting for one or two songs of a set, especially with the real songs that have already been heard at this point. and i feel like this will apply even more if votes are going to be limited further to pms, thus not only skewing it more in favour of the songs that get the +3s and nothing else out of 9 songs because it will be presumably from a smaller pool of votes, but also enabling people to approach it that way when, you know, pms are a lot more private and you don't exactly have nearly as much of an incentive to back up your picks among your peers with writeups on the songs or anything like that*. that said, irrespective of whether or not that's an issue which it may well not be, it's meant to be an ultimately fairly minor thing either way so perhaps that's actually more than fine enough for the intents of this bracket. if anything, my actual biggest complaint is that it's being approached as a really big ordeal and not a more informal thing like say... a strawpoll being left open for a few days or something until the day of the match (not that i'd call that exact example ideal considering this had a pretty dynamic voting system of its own, but you know, something along those lines) on the side rather than a big major thing interrupting the flow of the contest on a regular basis that also probably shouldn't be just a thing to only spend 1 day on.

also if you don't do that (or still switch to pms, maybe) i'd make sure the counting order note is in a more clear place in the post than just the bottom of the extra rules, like ideally in the same place as the easy vote form with all the sample votes just to make sure that it's actually actually clear. i don't think too many people missed it or forgot about it by the time they voted this time thankfully but i figured an extra reminder never hurts

apologies i did not address any of the questions that directly but yeah that's my critique, overall i think probably whatever people think is fine is fine, the current system included if people say so because i personally didn't have any issues with voting here, i just saw ways it could be smoother

*yes this is probably a biased viewpoint

WAIFF really cleaned up the votes! It felt so official I thought it was actually getting saved...I think these results turned out well with one clear winner, but it's when the top spot is closely contested that people might have liked to see a tally and re-distributed their votes.

The format won't be a lot of extra work for me since I already have a good idea of which songs I wanna save, and was just gonna skim the songs to check that I remember them correctly...if you do enforce listening to all 9 in full, I'd be more confirming my existing beliefs than trying to appreciate them in a new light, unfortunately.

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Regarding whether we should have to listen to all the music all the way through in wildcard matches....

One way to handle it is to require users to listen to all music that they are not familiar with. A second way to handle it is to allow only regular voters to participate, without requiring them to listen to all the music. I'm actually fond of the second idea. I mean, it would kind of make sense to allow wildcard matches to be a privilege for those of us who consistently participate.

pyresword posted...

EXEC_PAJA/.#Orica Extracting vs Chant This Charm

loweffortmemes posted...

Lake vs. Merciless Savior

I agree that both of these are also excellent matches!

Time for some R1 stats! Just simple stuff. I guess I'll leave it to P0 for the more complex stats. Let's look at how people are doing with their nominations so far this contest!

Best user performances based on nominations:
kaonashi1 - 4 wins out of 4 (4/4)
Toxtricity - 6/7
Haste_2 - 5/6
cakophon - 5/6
xp1337 - 6/8
banshiryuu - 5/7

HM's: Kikoman589, Mac Arrowny, and DragonImps all are two for two. sergiocornaga and Prody Parrot succeeded with three out of four.

I love how I was the one who ruined Mycro's perfect R1 performance. >:) Meanwhile, Mycro ruined it for cako. And rwlh, though not as successful overall, pwned me.

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reaaaly do not like the idea of limiting only those who vote regularly to participate. creates a really unwanted dichotomy that's exclusionary to those who may not have had the availability/interest/etc to consistently follow even if they'd like their voice heard in that context. and it's hard to know where to draw the line too

also wow I did not even realize my noms did that well. I'm so used to the near decade of being always near last- years I've gone 0/1, or 1/10, and things. this is pretty surreal even if i knew the noms i got in this time around were more widely palatable than what i usually nominate (and board tastes have shifted to be a bit more in favor of what i like), still didn't expect /that/ level of consistent performance. most of their matches were pretty close though! (is pretending isoleucine doesn't exist)
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Haste you should post who did the worst :)

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the ones that come to mind are Place and Zigzagoon going 0/2 and 0/4 : (

and UF8 going 0/0 because of somehow getting 0 things in
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Results, day 49:
One Final Effort < LastPandemic, 18-24
Rude Buster > Love You Love You Love, 29-13
Luna Ascension EX (aka OST 7) > New World Order, 23-20

Halo 3 lost because the other side's votes got flooded.
Mighty Switch Force! lost because it got anagrammed. Or rather, because it didn't.
Granblue Fantasy lost because the moon rose over the new world order.

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Toxtricity posted...

the ones that come to mind are Place and Zigzagoon going 0/2 and 0/4 : (

and UF8 going 0/0 because of somehow getting 0 things in

this is just my fate now

I may have been mistaken in voting for "R1 was okay, but I expect things to improve"

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Nah, I didn't want to draw attention to those who did poorly this round. I definitely want to pay extra attention to UF8's nominations next year, because I feel bad. :/

Hey, Luna Ascension won again! =O

Oh, yeah, I guess I'll talk a little more. It's cool that I have >70% compatibility with three people at this point! Mycro, kao, and Place, not a bad group! =D Last year around this time my highest compatibility was like 61%. I think the main reason things are different this year is because, unlike last year, I've familiarized myself with all the music BEFORE the matches occurred. But yeah, the high compatibility with Place is surprising considering last year our compatibility was only 52%.

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Zigzagoon posted...

Haste you should post who did the worst :)

I'm 0/3 this year after having 2/3 advance last year :(
Though, I believe my nominations got a good amount of interest in the wildcard polls, so they might get a lot of points even if they don't win the wildcard matches.

On the subject of compatibility, I think overall, they're a bit lower for me than last year at the end of round 1 because I remember having 2 people above 70% last year, whereas I only have 1 above 70% this year with a couple people under 40%. That said, I think it's cool that my highest compatibility right now, Team Rocket Elite, is as high as 76%. I don't think I ever held onto a compatibility that high at this point in the contest and beyond, last year.

Halo - One Final Effort? More like HalOWNED - One Final OWNAGE!
Love You Love You Love? More like OWNED You OWNED You OWNED!
New World Order? More like New WOWNED Order!

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Toxtricity posted...

oh right now that round 1's done, here was my full ranking (sorry if it's hard to look at, i have weird preferences when it comes to fonts/colors/etc):
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18x7tN7aC9gtIpkxHjghY9xLZ6IKYbKnqEZdGYQxDto8/edit?usp=sharing

Your list is easier to read this time around. I find it very interesting that your average score for VGMC XIV is quite a bit higher than the average score for the ToC participants! Also, wow, you've given nearly 1/5 the field a 9 rating or higher this year! Crazy, that's a lot more than you had last year. As for myself, my ratings are a bit rough, only rounded to the nearest .5, but I gave a 9 rating or higher to 31 tracks. I initially thought I was maybe too lenient on my scoring, but I suppose not! I'm curious to see how many tracks we both have a 9+ score for.... turns out there are sixteen of them. Also, I just realized you gave Beyond the Darkness a higher score than Scene Shifts There by .1 points, I didn't expect that, yay!!! Thanks for sharing.

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First compatibility analysis post after round 1! The graphs have been updated up to day 48 here: https://p0p0p0p.github.io/graphs/vgmc14/bracket.html


Since I've been focusing on very broad relationships up to this point, I thought I'd try delving a bit deeper into just one area this time. But first, congrats to Haste, sergio, kaonashi, and Prody for being the only ones to survive the round with a 70% winrate! (*out of those who have 75% participation)

Okay, so I've decided to look into this tight cluster seen above which has stayed strong for pretty much all of round 1. What's incredibly impressive (and I did not expect coming into the contest) is that Tox-cako-kao-sergio-Place and Tox-cako-kao-sergio-JONA both form complete networks of size 5, where everyone has at least a 70% rating with every other person in the network! In fact, Tox-cako-kao-sergio-Place-JONA would be a complete network of size 6 if only Place-JONA was just a bit higher than 68.47%!

If you've been following the topics, I think you have a rough idea of how this cluster tends to vote, so I wanted to see what makes each person unique instead - when was there a single holdout who voted against the rest of the group? Out of 140 matches, I'm left with 102 where all 6 people voted, and 27/102 where 5 of them voted for one song and the remaining person went against them. Here they are for each member!

cakophon
RE:UNION -Duo Blade Against- > IDOLA The Strange Fruits
Zenith > Face of Fact
ChRoNiClESeVeN > Infinite Dungeon 2
The Best Is Yet To Come > Celestial Resort (Good Karma Mix)
Onboro > The Apex of the World (Rain)

JONALEON1
In Circles > Megaraph Fleet
Midnight Lady > Thermosphere
Chant This Charm > EXEC_PAJA/.#Orica extracting.
Two Dragons > Mysterious Trap
Butterfly Girl (VS Narmaya) > Apollo Justice ~ A New Chapter of Trials! 2016
Rave On > Discovery

kaonashi1
Ar-ciel Ar-manaf > Credits (maimai MiLK)
Hopes and Dreams > Konran shoujo Soflan-chan!!

Place
Meaning of Birth > Flash Frost
Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke > Sound of the Wind
Thermal Base 1 > Confronting Myself
CLASS::CIEL_NOSURGE; > Moonstruck Blossom
Skyclad Observer > Last Surprise
Preserved Valkyria > Flying Clouds, Drifting Haze

sergiocornaga
Miracle Matter > Class::EXPAJA
Luna Ascension EX (aka OST 7) > Endless Nine
Sand Canyon 3 > The Filthy Mind (Theme of the Hive Mind)
Battle YAS 2 > Time for a Great Turnabout
ASGORE > Revenger
Don't speak her name! > Mechalullaby
Pressure Cooker > Solitude
Megalovania > Chocolate Missile

Toxtricity
Well, I wouldn't have done all this work without a punchline at the end...Mycro was never once the sole dissenter among the group! There wasn't a single song with something that only he specifically latched onto; someone else always defected as well! Matches where he had a single supporter:
system0 > ASGORE (with cako)
Fear Not This Night > -[Deoxyribose]- (with cako)
New World Order > steelchambers2 (with JONA)

Finally, for fun, there were some matches that tried to "destroy" the cluster, where the group just couldn't agree on a consensus, so 3 of them voted for one song and 3 voted for the other:
Kaine ~ Salvation vs. Level 5: Main Theme
Mirror Temple (Mirror Magic Mix) vs. Chasing Daybreak (Rain)
Second Dark Matter Battle vs. Blind Justice ~Torn Souls, Hurt Faiths~
goldenslaughterer vs. Strike the Earth
Distorted Happiness vs. Redial
Silence in the Sunlight Filtering Through Trees vs. Epic Epileptic Apocalypse
Flying Clouds, Drifting Haze vs. Revenger

So, that was a fun attempt at a more in-depth analysis of a few specific voters. I'll be back next time with a good old broad overview of everyone else, specifically using the 60%/75% graph.

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Something tells me I should let Piayer_0 manage the total stats sheet.

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team prog distinctions from each other apparently:
cako: defender of anime
jona: defender of energetic rock and edm
kao: defender of "pretty music"
place: defender of music that sounds like it is fake
sergiocornaga: defender of retro/chiptunes
toxtricity: defender of dramatic vocals
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Haste_2 posted...

What were the best matchups of Round 1?

Best in terms of overall quality even though I hated that they were put against each other so early:
Battle Tower vs. Final Destination
Sky Tower vs. Faint Dream ~ Inanimate Dream

HMs to:
EXEC_Z/. vs. Flightless
Flotage vs. Desert
Jena Anderson vs. Giratina
YO-Kai Disco vs. Who Am I?

wow that's a lot more than I thought

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Haste_2 posted...

What were the best matchups of Round 1?

i guess i'll think about this too now

OFE/Ink Long Dry
FAUNA/Imbrium
EXPAJA/Miracle Matter
Sky Tower/Faint Dream
Beyond The Darkness/Hinagiku
half of the matches in B2
Moonstruck Blossom/Ciel Nosurge
Midnight Lady/Thermosphere
EXEX_PAJA/CTC
smash megalovania/speed star kanade
Lake/Merciless Savior
Isoleucine/Snowman
infinite dungeon/chronicleseven
You're Not Here/Massive X
to some degree SDMB/Blind Justice
day 2 of bracket D
day 4 of bracket D
wyrm/thrashard
and Scrap IO/Desire Below Flow
... were all the ones where i liked both songs a good amount

Results, day 50:
Id ~ Purpose < Scars of FAUNA, 15-27
Scourge of the Universe > Tonitrus, 27-15
Dark Legacy > Douwa Kairou, 23-18

Fire Emblem: Awakening lost because id had no sense of purpose.
Gahkthun of the Golden Light lost because it had been scourged.
GITADORA OverDrive lost because it didn't realize it was in second gear.

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Id ~ Purpose? More like OWNED ~ Purpose!
Gahkthun of the Golden Light? More like Gahkthun of the Golden OWNED!
Douwa Kairou? More like Douwa KairOWNED!

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Match results aren't getting any closer in round 2, huh...

I don't really have a strong preference for the A1 wildcard, but it'll be some subset of Title, Brain Power, OFE, LYLYL, and Id. Here's all the options ordered by their ratio of the vote in their loss:
Ink Long Dry 27-35 One Final Effort
One Final Effort 18-24 LastPandemic
Silver Star Crysta Kaleido 25-35 Love You Love You Love
Imbrium 22-33 Scars of FAUNA
LoZ Title 23-38 LastPandemic
Id ~ Purpose 15-27 Scars of FAUNA
Fax Factory 18-38 Id ~ Purpose
Love You Love You Love 13-29 Rude Buster
Brain Power 15-44 Rude Buster

So, OFE seems like my pick if I want something that's likely to be supported by other people. Id is probably the song I like the most, but not by much. Brain Power is my next favourite and seems like a fun "wild card," but got stomped in its loss.

In the end, I'll probably just vote based on songs I like, because you never know how wildcard voting might differ from the bracket votals. Maybe Rude Buster is just really strong and people like Brain Power too! So, maybe +3 Id and Brain Power?

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Thanks for the info, Player_0. Hmm, Brain Power is the only song I care about in there, but it doesn't seem like other people like it. Maybe I just won't bother voting?

azuarc, with regard to voting in the main contest - you could always keep three matches a day, finish the ToC early, and then still do 3 matches a day for the main bracket to make sure it doesn't take forever to finish.
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