Board 8 > How would they do in a contest? Day 502 ft Death Star, Hitmonchan, Micaiah

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This is a topic to rate the contest strength of potential newcomers in the current contest environment.

I will pick the characters to rate and discuss for each day from user nominations - whoever the 3 most nominated characters are at that time. If there are more than 3 I will pick randomly. You can nominate any number of characters at any time, but you cannot nominate the same character twice.

All characters who were present in the 2018 Character Battle will NOT be eligible. Otherwise you can nominate any character that has appeared in video games; even comic book characters. This will exclude real-life athletes who have only appeared in long running sports series, however I will accept those who have their own games such as Shaq. I will accept nominations for iconic gaming duos too, if there is a compelling reason for both characters to be linked (either co-starring in a game ala Banjo & Kazooie, or always appearing together like Callie & Marie from Splatoon).

Each day will have a separate topic, and nominations will carry over. As far as actually rating the character's contest strength; I ask that users rank a characters potential strength with one of the following qualifiers - LAW Fodder, Low Fodder, Mid Fodder, High Fodder, Fodder Line, Low Midcarder, Midcarder, High Midcarder, Near Elite, Elite, LAW Tier (capable of beating Link). I will average all the ratings given to a character to come up with their final ranking. I have included a highlighted entrant from Character Battle X on each tier of the strength rankings below, to provide a baseline for each.

Note that LAW Fodder is meant to be a tier reserved for the weakest possible characters to put into a contest. A character will only be placed there if at least 3/4ths of the voters for that day agree on the LAW Fodder rating, and no ratings above Low Fodder are given. If either of those conditions are not met, the character will not be eligible for the LAW Fodder tier.

Current Character Strength Rankings: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P1AIhHywBiLd6VAMZMNEGX-HW2td8u1D0Iw_tzHsORw/edit?usp=sharing

Nomination List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KnSBDzppzPK5Ug1zmx8_x0bG4tqFDMPPH2k8J3s8sk/edit?usp=sharing

If you feel that a character has been over or under-ranked, or if a new development has come up that would affect their contest strength, you may nominate them for a re-ranking. You may nominate one character per day for this, and 3 votes are needed to get them on the slate. One character with 3 votes will come up for re-ranking today.

Re-ranking Nomination List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1V6dx-tu-FD1rCxbX69eQwEzE7x1F6nNRNFochYHu1dc/edit?usp=sharing

Results from Day 501:

Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jurassic Park) is Low Fodder
Diglett (Pokemon) is Mid Fodder
Fi (Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword) is Low Fodder

Here is today's trio to rank:

Death Star (Star Wars)
Hitmonchan (Pokemon)
Micaiah (Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn)

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I don't how to really rank the freaking Death Star as a contest combatant. It's extremely recognizable but definitely not a character, and it doesn't have any sort of popular joke or meme to lean on - it's just the Death Star. I will say Low Fodder but note that it is probably at the high end based purely on recognizability.

Mid Fodder for Hitmonchan. I think it's a bit less popular than Lee, but its design stands out more so I think it will have similar strength.

Micaiah is close for me but I will go with Low Fodder. She will get some waifu votes, but I just don't think Radiant Dawn is a popular enough game here to elevate her, despite being a main protagonist. That said I'm surprised that RD seems to have gotten little attention on Gfaqs compared to PoR. It must be because its a Wii game.

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Guess I agree with halfsilver.

Radiant Dawn has a weird difficulty curve that can be particularly unfriendly on your first time when you don't really know what's coming who's necessarily going to turn out good and there are all of these switches to different parties. There are also some plot problems and while support conversations as they'd been implemented up to that point probably weren't ideal, what RD did with them was bad. So not surprising if people like PoR better. Probably wouldn't be hard to argue the core gameplay is better than PoR, though.

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Also agree with halfsilver, not that PoR is terribly popular here in the first place.

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Day 503 is up: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79075084

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