Results[]
Monday, April 27, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 8 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 111 |
| Match Date | Monday, April 27, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Skyrim - 63.46% 49 for - 0 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Skyrim - 69.25% |
| User Votes |
Skyrim - 5773 Mario Kart 8 - 3710 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Skyrim - 5054 Mario Kart 8 - 3243 |
A few matches ago, we had a funny first five minutes between Witcher 3 and Mario Galaxy 2, where Galaxy famously had Witcher 3 tied at the freeze before getting buried. If ever there was a time for Skyrim to prove it still could make the final, this was it.
Instead, we got a repeat performance. If you take the Witcher 3 vs Galaxy 2 match trends and put it up next to Skyrim vs Mario Kart 8, you get practically the exact same match. It's cute and funny to look at and such, but it also meant more confirmation of the obvious -- Witcher 3 was a cut above Skyrim for this entire contest. If only we knew that going in, huh? For the first five minutes of this poll, Mario Kart 8 made a match of it. For the final 23 hours and 55 minutes, Skyrim buried Mario Kart 8 to survive and advance. I'm happy Mario Kart 8 booted the MMORPG trash out of this contest, but it doesn't mean I enjoy any of the Mario Kart games. I just hate them less than I do MMOs. To that end, it was nice seeing Mario Kart 8 gets its teeth kicked in. Screw all of those games for life.
The one and only thing that sucked about Mario Kart finally leaving this contest was our last high seed making its exit. I'm a huge fan of underdog runs in the NCAAs and seeing these tiny midmajor schools make deep runs, so when a high seed starts going off and making runs in our contests I tend to enjoy it. With Mario Kart 8's loss, it meant these seedings for the division finals:
-1 vs 2
-1 vs 3
-1 vs 2
-5 vs 3
-1 vs 2
-1 vs 3
-1 vs 2
-1 vs 3
Had GTA5 not dropped the ball, it would have been all 1 seeds versus 2s and 3s. Allen did a great job with seeding this year, clearly, but it was almost too good.
The reason we knew Skyrim was screwed is because in a hypothetical Galaxy 2 versus Mario Kart 8 match, 100% of gurus would pick Galaxy 2. As they should. This wasn't like the entertaining Tekken 7 versus Mortal Kombat 11 debate that popped up after round one because of what was going on with Smash Ultimate and Mario Odyssey; everyone and their mother knew Skyrim was done for.
Ctes's Analysis[]
This is the match that truly made Skyrim a big target and had people thinking it would be the weakest division winner in this half of the bracket, with a very few even thinking it could lose the next round. A group of us were defending Skyrim’s performance against Journey, but there certainly weren’t many people left defending Skyrim after today. I only remember myself and Lightning Strikes stepping up for Skyrim, though I’m not saying there couldn’t be more. People really couldn’t find the reasons to believe Skyrim would still be in the elite.
Let’s first put some numbers on the table. The 2015 x-stats project Skyrim to get 76% in this match. Over 15% more than it got today. Mario Kart 8 was behind Super Mario 64 SFF back then, but they lost to the same game. Despite many thinking Skyrim disappointed against Journey in the previous contest, oracles overestimated it be roughly 2.5%. Skyrim did the same against Mario Kart 8 as The Witcher 3 did to Super Mario Galaxy 2, further darkening Skyrim’s chances of making the final. The 2015 stats also show Metal Gear Solid V well above Mario Kart 8 as well, so Skyrim looked a good deal worse than Dark Souls in the eyes of many too.
Now, it’s time to pull out the Skyrim defense force again. First of all, Mario Kart 8 is near the bottom of the x-stats because we didn’t adjust for Mario Kart 8 at all. It drew Super Mario 64 and nothing was done about it. I think that’s largely forgotten. They’re both Mario games, that match is loaded with SFF. It could be 65-35 without it and it wouldn’t surprise me. Against something completely different Mario Kart 8 gets its appreciation but against perhaps the most respected game in the franchise and the biggest 3D Mario by a good margin, the fanbase has a favorite.
That’s before we even consider how Mario Kart 8 has all the reason to boost significantly. We’ve talked about before how I believe Mario’s strength is determined partly by the current status of Nintendo. In 2015, Mario Kart 8 was a Wii U exclusive and that contest took place well after the peak of the Wii U. Do you know how low the peak of the Wii U was? Since then, Nintendo is perhaps bigger than they’ve been since the N64 or at the very least since the early DS/Wii years. Furthermore, Mario Kart 8 was released on Switch. People like to use Tropical Freeze and Bayonetta 2 as examples of why that might not matter too much, but those are different stories. Mario Kart 8 wasn’t just released on the Switch, it also sold significantly more copies than any Switch game and is one of the very best selling games of all time. Everyone appreciates Mario Kart 8 and Skyrim is the perfect opponent for it to show that against. The spin-off franchise is huge, and Mario Kart 8 is widely regarded as the best one. At least it is if we remove our nostalgia goggles when looking at Super Mario 64.
People also tend to forget that after the initial board vote, Skyrim rises to the sky after the board vote, perhaps even to the outer rim. But Skyrim was behind for more than a minute and it was barely ahead at the freeze. It rose to heaven from there, but that embarrassment had already hit it, and people rarely look much at the match after it’s over. I’m sure a good bunch of people thought Skyrim looked worse because it was at 55-56% when they looked despite it ending above 60%.
I don’t actually need to defend Skyrim on the other side of the contest, because it went on to prove that it was still quite strong, even though The Witcher 3 was stronger. Mario Kart 8 therefore also ends up being a lot stronger than what the general consensus was and what its seeding indicated. It’s the most underseeded game of the bracket, getting a #14 seed when it should have easily been a #3 seed at the least.
Mario Kart games have been in contests before, but they literally always run into other Nintendo games. That has happened every single time until now. Mario Kart Wii beating Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is the only match the series has had without other Nintendo games and that was the Wii edition facing a DS game after the Wii stopped being too popular here. It really is a shame Super Mario Kart didn’t get to participate in the year of SNES appreciation 2015 because if really was on par with Super Metroid it would have looked beastly that year. I have believed Mario Kart had always had a bit more to show than it got the chance too, and as everyone knows I also believed Uncharted 4 was better than most people thought it would.
Safer777's Analysis[]
Okay this match was strange. Not because we didn't knew who would win, I mean Skyrim is in Top 5 Contest games for power of course. And almost everyone has it reaching the semifinal match and a lot have it reaching the final match. So yeah no worries there. The problem was what percentage it should have to be considered the favorite to reach the final match. But in my opinion no matter how Skyrim would win here, it would be considered bad except if won with like 70. So yeah don't know what to say.
So for the match. Okay obviously Skyrim won, duh. The Crew had it around 65 BUT the Oracle had it around 60. So does that mean this is bad? I am not sure. I think it is okay. Not good but not bad either. Tough to judge. The game is almost 9 years old by now. When it came out oh man the MEMES! And the sales too. And the critical reception too. All amazing. Plus it has been ported to everything. If something is capable of playing Skyrim it is in that system. Yeah some kind of ported record. This is why they don't want to make another game. Even on this site it is always in Top 3 and even in Steam is in Top 10 after all these years. So yeah people still play this thing. A lot of them it seems. As for MK 8 I don't know anything, but it seems to be really good. The game came out in 2014 but had an updated version at 2017. Why they didn't make a new game I am not sure. So as I say again I consider it an okay result myself. The prediction percentage was huge too. 2nd highest of Round 3 actually. So yeah people still think this game is legit. And well it is actually, but how it stacks to other games here? Especially Witcher 3
So Witcher 3 scored 60 against Mario Galaxy 2 and Skyrim scored 60 against Mario Kart 8. What you consider better? Yeah I think we all know the answer. Plus something else. ALL division finals were 1 seed vs 2/3 seeds EXCEPT one division which we had a 5 seed instead who barely won too. You know in the previous contest we had in 2018 how many 1 and 2 and 3 seeds reach the division finals? 10 out of 16. In this contest it was 15 out 16. Do you know how many 1 and 2 seeds won the division in 2018? 1! Just one! How many 1 seeds won their division in this contest? 7! A record! 2018 contest was the worst seeded contest ever! And 2020 contest was the best seeded contest ever!
Tsunami's Analysis[]
Hey, remember back in Round 1 where someone suggested that voters would only view "Mario Kart 8" as being the Wii U game instead of including the Switch's "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" and that as such, it might not even get past Uncharted 4? I really hope that one got archived in Zen's topic. I don't think it did. That's some quality wrongness right there. I mean, ignoring the fact that this site has always been pro-Nintendo and as such, a Wii U exclusive vs. a PS4 exclusive probably favors the former...voters aren't stupid. I guess maybe the fact that there were remakes in the bracket might have colored that person's judgment? I guess it's a fair point. There had long been arguments that "Mega Man" represented all iterations of Mega Man, not just Mega Man Classic, until X was finally allowed in as a separate entrant. I can even understand the logic that CJayC used for excluding X; it's a slippery slope, since technically most Links are different entities. Just at the time of the first Character Battle, you already had Zelda/Zelda II Link, ALttP/LA/Oracle Link, and OoT/MM Link, and by Character Battle II, they'd already been joined by WW/PH Link and Four Swords Link.
And Mario Kart is surprisingly strong here. We'd seen it before with Super Mario Kart going toe to toe with Super Metroid twice in 2009, and that was SFF. This performance feels kind of bad for Skyrim, but it honestly isn't really.
At 69.25%, Skyrim's R3 prediction percentage was second only to Breath of the Wild's...84.65%. Which means the percentage that picked against it was 30.75% to 15.35%, a little more than twice as many. Yikes! BotW was looking to be one of the most predictable winners ever.