Board 8 > The Show EP 8 - Wrapping Up The Excellent GotD 2020 Contest, with Leon and KP!

(+) Yeah! (+)

ZenOfThunder posted...

in regards to undertale being the turd of the contest, I was pretty frequently checking there for rallies all contest thru their own search engine and google, I got nothing. zero. zip. nada. Not a single post, link or comment to any of our matches for the entire thing. pretty crazy how far they've fallen now post-porn

I mean. r/undertale flat out banned rallying right after the 2015 contest ended, so we knew they weren't going to be on board with round 2 of the drama that comes with being the best of the decade.

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squexa posted...

Great episode! Yeah, I've always thought that we as a community greatly underappreciate how much effort and love SBAllen has poured into these contests. It shows to me that Allen pours a LOT of thought into designing each contest and I'm going to use the Show topic to give him some major kudos:

Excellent summary! But you forgot my favorite SB invention of all, the Double Registered Votes.

Leonhart4 posted...

I dunno. Imagine an N64 pic that features Donkey Kong 64, Blast Corps, and Wave Race 64 instead of Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, and GoldenEye.

Yes, forgotten gems each and all, I can imagine the extra two percent boost!


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Imagine if the DK64 match pic was actually a photo of the original Donkey Kong section.

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boy this 10 minute stretch of ya'll talking about me coming up just short in everything is rough to relive lol

thanks for the shoutouts though! and great work as always with the show

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Actually put Pilotwings 64 in there so we can have the other N64 launch title.

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Has anyone checked how many of the 5000 second chance brackets picked perfectly?


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Ngamer64 posted...

Has anyone checked how many of the 5000 second chance brackets picked perfectly?

Is there a way to check?

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Not sure, let's get @LusterSoldier on it.


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Ngamer64 posted...

Has anyone checked how many of the 5000 second chance brackets picked perfectly?

As in predicted the right winner every time? There no way to tell. There are 27 brackets with at least 701 points. There are about 60 brackets within 50 points of the winner where are very likely to have the right winner in every match. Beyond that, you can't really tell.
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What's the absolute minimum score you could have and still have picked every match right? It would actually have to be pretty low considering the number of matches in the low-to-mid 50s.

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LeonhartFour posted...

What's the absolute minimum score you could have and still have picked every match right? It would actually have to be pretty low considering the number of matches in the low-to-mid 50s.

134
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squexa posted...

I imagine the series cap might apply for Game of the Century (so only MM and BotW, as absurd as it might sound), because otherwise Zelda might s*** over the entire contest barring a Melee rally.

Eh, I don't like that idea. It was one thing with GotD 2, where the snubbed games weren't really that strong, with none of them being serious top 10 contenders. It's a whole other ballgame when WW, TP, and BotW 2 will all almost certainly be in the top 10 of this hypothetical contest. I'd prefer just sticking all the Zeldas and Melee together in the first half of the bracket (assuming BotW gets the overall 1-seed), while the lower half can have the likes of FF7R, FFX, Witcher 3, SSBU, Mario Odyssey, and Metroid Prime.

Anyways, I've decided to split my concluding thoughts into two posts, one tonight and one tomorrow, as I have quite a bit to say about the last ~30 minutes. Now for the first set:

• Honestly, neither Witcher 3/Persona 5 nor Skyrim/Souls was very interesting to me, thanks to all four games' established match trends. It was anticlimactically obvious that both Witcher 3 and Skyrim would start rising to heaven once the Euro vote set in, and heck, Witcher 3 began its climb even before that. Dark Souls holding serve with the early night vote was novel, but it inevitably started collapsing as soon as North Americans went to bed. Of course, both matches were far more interesting from a spread betting perspective.
• Witcher 3 failing to shoot for 60 on Skyrim does seem surprising on the surface, with the WRPG hierarchy and especially the two games' specific relationship in mind. However, I think Skyrim's previous match against Dark Souls already confirmed that the aforementioned hierarchy breaks down on GameFAQs when voters are tasked with choosing between two similarly well-liked games. Indeed, both the Souls/Skyrim and Witcher/Skyrim margins looked pretty much exactly like what should have happened based on the three games' previous performances.
• I have to agree with Witcher 3 as the star of the contest, for reasons that have all pretty much been covered. I also like the Portal 2 shoutout, as it exceeded reasonable expectations time in and time out as the only game in this field to show strength despite having no intrinsic genre-based reason to do so. While we're on the subject of games I love, Dragon Quest XI was actually the first game to make BotW look mortal, and it had a great run beforehand, once again exceeding all reasonable expectations for a niche series. Perhaps those two would round out my top five, alongside BotW and Xenoblade.
• My turd award for this contest as a whole goes to the entire Fire Emblem series. Awakening dropped a match we favored it in 55-45 pre-rallies, in the process reversing the 2015 stats even though it arguably had as much reason to improve since then as Bloodborne. As for Three Houses, no matter how strong Xenoblade is, it's supremely embarrassing to not just drop a match you were strongly favored in, but outright get SFF'd by a barely accessible fellow Nintendo JRPG. I'm personally inclined to agree with KP that the Smash fanbase played the biggest role in these results - damn near everyone who had been following Smash Ultimate's hype cycle disliked Byleth's impressively ill-timed announcement, not just the tourneycrabs and hardcore nuts.
• I don't really have an opinion on the whole COVlD-19 prank; for me, it was pretty much just a thing that happened. However, I don't think said user violating the unspoken bond of honor by entering two of their accounts into the Guru should be allowed to stand unpunished. I feel denying them the chance to compete at all next contest would be a fitting punishment.

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I mean, just stack all the Zelda games in the same division and let them run the gauntlet against each other.

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Oh, right, I still have to see who COVlD was.

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MetalmindStats posted...

I don't really have an opinion on the whole COVlD-19 prank; for me, it was pretty much just a thing that happened. However, I don't think said user violating the unspoken bond of honor by entering two of their accounts into the Guru should be allowed to stand unpunished. I feel denying them the chance to compete at all next contest would be a fitting punishment.

I don't really care if Poly participates in the next one, but I would definitely like this to be the first and only prank of this nature in the Guru contest. I don't really care if you get some joke account on the leaderboard the whole contest, just don't involve the Guru going forward.

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If this were a plot to increase my odds in the guru, Id have chosen a less conspicuous name for my alt, lol. For what its worth, I was never going to attempt to stake a claim on the prize. I hear you though, in terms of not encouraging joke entries to become a regular thing in the future. I do feel guilty about doubling the work of our generous community members who take the time to enter the brackets into the guru site. Let me be the first to volunteer to help with that next contest as reward punishment!

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Advokaiser posted...

Hey, @LeonhartFour @Ngamer64 @CaptainOfCrush , kind of off-topic, but...

How was my English? Did I have any perceivable accent?

You probably won't ever get rid of your accent unless you spend like 10 years in an English speaking country.

Being fluent is more important than being accent-less, imo.

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_SecretSquirrel posted...

(Oh, and for Game of the 90s, DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. That eventual contest is my baby, and that bracket needs all the top series fully represented.)

This please.

If Allen tries to cap the number of Mario games in a 90s contest that contest is an automatic D for me.

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I'd say this contest is a B+ for me in enjoyment but an A- for Allen's work.

Allen doesn't go higher than A- because his decision of capping series caused the fodder nightmare we had in Round 1, and I didn't like that much. But otherwise, he did a superb work with everything else: keeping the systems from previous contests that worked, implementing the oracle thing, the match pictures, etc.

My enjoyment is a little lower because there's only so much I can care about a contest whose entries I barely played at all. But still had a blast overall, athough in a more stat-related way than because of the games themselves.

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MetalmindStats posted...

KP, you asked for an explanation of the opposition to an all-fictional character battle. As perhaps one of its most vocal opponents (even though I'm not vehemently opposed), I can condense my previous explanations. In short, you'd have yet another boring, predictable winner in the absence of the very real possibility of mass rallies hardly anyone wants to see, and there'd be issues with Allen having to add a few hundred characters to the nomination form. Plus, I think the idea in general is one whose time has passed, and now you're more likely to have casuals complaining about (ex.) Batman being in a video game character contest than being more interested because it has Batman in it. From a purely personal perspective, I'm pretty sure there would even be fewer characters I'd care about, and I'd care less about those characters.

You are using this "casuals would complain" argument a lot but I don't see that should everstop us from doing anything. Or heck, if it wouldn't be a good thing altogether.

If you let casuals decide how to make a bracket, they will split divisions by geenre.

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ZeldaTPLink posted...

Allen doesn't go higher than A- because his decision of capping series caused the fodder nightmare we had in Round 1, and I didn't like that much.

I mean, it still would've happened. Adding one more Zelda, Mario, or Pokemon game here or there wasn't going to completely stop that from happening.

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Another big star of the contest nobody mentioned is Mario Galaxy.

I mean, would you ever take it to end Top 10 in the xstats before the contest?

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LeonhartFour posted...

I mean, it still would've happened. Adding one more Zelda, Mario, or Pokemon game here or there wasn't going to completely stop that from happening.

No, but adding the maybe ~15 games that got snubbed would have lessened it.

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LeonhartFour posted...

I mean, it still would've happened. Adding one more Zelda, Mario, or Pokemon game here or there wasn't going to completely stop that from happening.

I kind of wish we had a better idea of what Allen had to work with in terms of nominations. I can honestly buy into Skyward Sword or Mario 3D World not really being that bit of hit in the nomination process, or the various Pokemon gens cannibalizing each other to the point where none of them made it.

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ZeldaTPLink posted...

Another big star of the contest nobody mentioned is Mario Galaxy.

I mean, would you ever take it to end Top 10 in the xstats before the contest?

It's not that surprising considering how diluted the field was. It was the 5th strongest game in the field that was in the 2015 contest.

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ZeldaTPLink posted...

No, but adding the maybe ~15 games that got snubbed would have lessened it.

I think the number of 'snubs' people say we missed out on are vastly overstated and overvalued. When Super Mario Maker - a game that got doubled by Awakening - is one of the most-requested snubs, then I think we did pretty good.

There's also no guarantee any of the games people keep mentioning actually got enough nominations. Friendly reminder that Brawl missed the last Games Contest entirely.

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If we were going to punish the covid guy, we should have disqualified him mid-contest, not retroactively fix it now.

I think a better idea is to make sure next time the guru contest actually predicts the possibility of disqualification if someone uses an alt and doesn't say what their main account is.

Poly found a gap in the rules and used that to make an hilarious meme. I'd say give him props for making it happen, and prevent it from happening again.

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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I kind of wish we had a better idea of what Allen had to work with in terms of nominations. I can honestly buy into Skyward Sword or Mario 3D World not really being that bit of hit in the nomination process, or the various Pokemon gens cannibalizing each other to the point where none of them made it.

Yeah, I'm still not even 100% convinced this cap was a real thing. None of the snubs people kept mentioning would have surprised me if they just plain didn't get that much support.

And I don't know if Skyward Sword going on a deep run in a weak field makes this contest better.

Actually, I feel pretty strongly that it doesn't.

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KamikazePotato posted...

I think the number of 'snubs' people say we missed out on are vastly overstated and overvalued. When Super Mario Maker - a game that got doubled by Awakening - is one of the most-requested snubs, then I think we did pretty good.

There's also no guarantee any of the games people keep mentioning actually got enough nominations. Friendly reminder that Brawl missed the last Games Contest entirely.

Awakening would triple most of those indie turbofodder we had in Round 1, though. And so would Mario Maker.


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ZeldaTPLink posted...

Awakening would triple most of those indie turbofodder we had in Round 1, though. And so would Mario Maker.

Sure, but you're not talking about having Mario Maker replace The Talos Principle.

You're just having Mario Maker blow out Slay the Spire instead of Super Meat Boy.

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Super Mario Maker as the lower seed in the match (which it would be) is an automatic Round 1 loss against anything except like...The Walking Dead. What exactly are you expecting its inclusion to change?

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KamikazePotato posted...

Super Mario Maker as the lower seed in the match (which it would be) is an automatic Round 1 loss against anything except like...The Walking Dead. What exactly are you expecting its inclusion to change?

At the very least, Skyward Sword or Smash 4 could probably brute force its way out of Round 1 as a low seed, but I can't imagine too many other snubs being able to do that in this bracket.

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KamikazePotato posted...

Super Mario Maker as the lower seed in the match (which it would be) is an automatic Round 1 loss against anything except like...The Walking Dead. What exactly are you expecting its inclusion to change?

SMM itself might not win any debatable matches, but its inclusion (and of all the other games) as entrants that get to Round 2 pushes stuff like Divinity and Journey down to being Round 1-only entrants, and with that we indirectly get more debated Round 1 matches. Stuff like Celeste vs Rayman, for example.

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Smash 4 did not have enough nominations to make the bracket on its own merits. I'm like 101% confident on that.

I don't see the difference between Super Mario Maker getting in Round 2 or Divinity getting in Round 2. They're probably about the same strength!

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ZeldaTPLink posted...

SMM itself might not win any debatable matches, but its inclusion (and of all the other games) as entrants that get to Round 2 pushes stuff like Divinity and Journey down to being Round 1-only entrants, and with that we indirectly get more debated Round 1 matches. Stuff like Celeste vs Rayman, for example.

so we get Super Mario Maker beating Journey and getting blown out by Skyrim in round 2 instead

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LeonhartFour posted...

so we get Super Mario Maker beating Journey and getting blown out by Skyrim in round 2 instead

Ok maybe that wasn't the best example. Maybe I'll need to write this bracket.

But the logic is that, for each turbofodder game you replace with a decent game, you increase the probability of two fodder line games or two decent games going against each other (or even decent against fodder line, which is not a huge blowout).

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MetalmindStats posted...

Eh, I don't like that idea. It was one thing with GotD 2, where the snubbed games weren't really that strong, with none of them being serious top 10 contenders. It's a whole other ballgame when WW, TP, and BotW 2 will all almost certainly be in the top 10 of this hypothetical contest. I'd prefer just sticking all the Zeldas and Melee together in the first half of the bracket (assuming BotW gets the overall 1-seed), while the lower half can have the likes of FF7R, FFX, Witcher 3, SSBU, Mario Odyssey, and Metroid Prime.

We've snubbed strong games before like Link's Awakening, which is probably top 20 on the site.

And is this really better though? An all-Zelda top half will frankly be pretty boring and WW vs TP might be the only inter Zelda match that's debatable (outside of BotW2 which isn't even out). If WW's only role is to blow out fodder and then bow out early to BotW/MM in an SFF match, it's not really that much better than not making the bracket in the first place.

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78700292

it is time for the real contest to start. this is the dawn of the era of female villain quotes

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Polycosm posted...

If this were a plot to increase my odds in the guru, Id have chosen a less conspicuous name for my alt, lol. For what its worth, I was never going to attempt to stake a claim on the prize.

Fair, and I should clarify I wasn't trying to accuse you of wanting better Guru odds. I just don't think entering the Guru with two of your accounts is appropriate whatsoever, even as a prank. Sorry if I'm being the anti-fun by saying that, but it's a line even Luster wouldn't cross, which I think is telling of how much we've all internalized it.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

If we were going to punish the covid guy, we should have disqualified him mid-contest, not retroactively fix it now.

I think a better idea is to make sure next time the guru contest actually predicts the possibility of disqualification if someone uses an alt and doesn't say what their main account is.

I agree that the final standings are final, and I wouldn't propose retroactively editing them outside of extraordinary circumstances such as an actual COVlD-19 win. I'll also concede that the common-sense anti-alt rule really ought to be explicitly mentioned next time, but I still don't think Poly should necessarily avoid consequences just because they exploited a technicality.

ZeldaTPLink posted...

If you let casuals decide how to make a bracket, they will split divisions by geenre.

You're misinterpreting my argument there. My point was that making these contests any more stressful for Allen than they already are isn't ideal. It's better to have casual voters only fitfully invested into their goings-on than say, sending Allen or other admins hateful PMs about Batman's presence in a video game character battle. Maybe (probably) I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but hey.

squexa posted...

And is this really better though? An all-Zelda top half will frankly be pretty boring and WW vs TP might be the only inter Zelda match that's debatable (outside of BotW2 which isn't even out). If WW's only role is to blow out fodder and then bow out early to BotW/MM in an SFF match, it's not really that much better than not making the bracket in the first place.

Maybe that's just an intrinsic flaw of this whole Game of the Century idea, considering the five Zeldas and Melee will most likely be the six strongest games in this hypothetical field. Perhaps you could argue Witcher 3, but it's a Western game that's pretty clearly at its peak in terms of relevance and probably overall strength right now, whereas Melee and the Zelda games are immortal on GameFAQs. Limiting the Zelda+Melee action to the first two divisions would help, but that would be a seriously skewed bracket.

Anyways, I know you all haven't been eagerly awaiting my parting thoughts, so here they are:

• First off, thank you for the leaderboard and spread betting shoutouts! I also want to give some shoutouts of my own for contest performance: obviously to azuarc for winning the whole thing, but also to JONA, Ng, and Yo for all having killer brackets (just consider how far ahead of the field they'd have finished if one or two more results broke their way), and to Moltar for really just excelling at everything contest-related. My final shoutout will be to the Cookie, which thrived in a largely predictable contest, but looks worse than it should because of the Witcher 3 upset's great value. To put things into perspective, going with the Cookie for all 126 other matches would have netted more points than all but 3 Gurus; increasing that risk count to all of 3 by taking Xenoblade out of its division too would have made for a contest-winning performance.
• I think I would grade this contest at a B- overall, and a B+ for Allen in particular. Its biggest problem for me was that Allen's bracketmaking gambit of segregating top-tier Nintendo from the bottom half simply didn't work out. The steep cost of ensuring a finals with only one Nintendo game (unnecessary even from a pre-contest perspective, imo) was 0/7 post-divisional matches and 1/8 divisional finals staying close the whole way through, which made for a dull contest where it mattered most. The side contests were great this year, but there's only so much they can do to compensate for the main event failing to deliver, to the point where the best match (RE2/Bloodborne) might not rank in my top 5 if superimposed into 2018. Of course, that all sounds pretty negative relative to my grade, but that's because I find most contests inherently fun (and also because I did well), so GotD 2 was a good time for me despite its shades of disappointment.
• Wow, what a perfect way to close off this last episode! Of course, I'm hoping that will only be it until Allen hosts the 25th anniversary Top 25 later this year, or at worst until next year. Regardless, though, I want to thank everyone who contributed this year from the bottom of my heart. Thank you to all the guests who contributed excellently with your knowledge and perspectives, to those of you who made your presence known in the Show topics, and most importantly to Ng and Yo for being killer co-hosts.

Whew, I guess that's it from me. Until next time, this is Metal, signing out! Yes, I had to.

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78700273

Here's a fun contest trivia topic by transience

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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78700292

a reminder that Best Female Villain Quote is a thing and that there will be a prize (which I haven't figured out yet, will most likely relate to the winning quote)

brackets due at 9:48PM EST

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I, too, will shill a brand new B8 project based on Show discussion:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78697674

Vote for your favorite game stories here!

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Oh, are we shilling projects in here now?

The glorious return of the Smash Ultimate Fighting League

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/78702827

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Leonhart4 posted...

I think I'd give the contest a solid B. I'd have a hard time ranking it near the top for the reasons yoblazer said. Plus, the low vote totals and diluted trends have killed big vote swings and day vote comebacks, which have created some of our all-time great matches.

Trends were already very diluted and the ASV pretty much non-existent even before we switched over to an 8:00 PM start time for matches. The trends that did exist were early vote trends and Geolocation trends, neither of which comes close to replacing the age-based trends that result in large ASV swings.
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Oh, this isn't a problem exclusive to this contest but it's still a problem.

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i never posted this but my girlfriend was in the room when we were recording the episode I was on and she made this status near the end of it

she never realized how deep into this i am

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Do your work voice and podcast voice sound different? Or is it just the content and timing?

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i do not often scream about dragon age inquisition at 11pm on work calls

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Need to find a better workplace where you can complain about DAI then

Like Bioware

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Could someone pm me when Tropical Freeze goes on sale in the Nintendo digital storefront? I also added it to my Amazon wishlist so I can remember, but I'd prefer not to buy it physically (BotW always stays in that slot for me).

ALTERNATIVELY if a Show superfan would prefer to gift yoblazer and I copies, so we'll be able to solve life's greatest mystery once and for all, that would also be fine! My Switch friend code is

SW-4710-3792-8124

In return we would do a dual playthrough topic for your entertainment.


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