Results[]
Monday, November 23, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 75 |
| Match Date | Monday, November 23, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Undertale - 48.89% 47 for - 46 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Undertale - 6.83% |
There was a lot of hype for this match once Undertale beat Mass Effect 3 the way it did, because a lot of people were crying that our contest was once again ruined by outsiders. Never mind the fact that Undertale still had to go out and win matches, or that it was facing Fallout 3 on the heels of massive Fallout 4 hype. Let's not forget how strong Fallout 3 looked against Life is Strange pre-rally, with that match happening on the day of Fallout 4's release. There wasn't a whole lot of logic here though, just a question of whether or not Undertale could continue rallying past progressively stronger opposition and a ton of Nintendo games.
But before getting to all that, the hype seemed short-lived. Undertale absolutely got its ass whipped at the beginning of this poll by people looking to cut off the head of the snake early, to the tune of Fallout 3 having nearly 73% at the freeze. Undertale would bleed more than 10% overnight, but put forth no resistance whatsoever as Fallout continued building up this massive lead. On top of this, the rally points were all there. tumblr was firing, Reddit had their topics going, Facebook had their stuff going, and none of it seemed to matter at all. Fallout 4 hype seemed to be more than enough to end Undertale, even though bleeding all that percentage overnight was still impressive. Remember, we were very new to tumblr's affect on a contest during this match and didn't realize how backloaded they were with bringing votes in. So at the time, most people saw that the rally was on and was doing little more than a percentage bleed overnight. Then the morning vote hit, and the poll stayed at 61-39. There was a very minor loss in percentage as we crossed lunch, and all Fallout 3 had to do to win the match at this point was prevent Undertale from getting its second massive afternoon rally in a row.
A little after lunch, Undertale's rally started picking up as more and more people hopped on the bandwagon on social media. What was 80-90 vote updates were quickly turning into 130-140 vote updates, and the writing was beginning to show up on the wall of what was coming. Lady Hieress, a huge Dark Souls fan on tumblr, was credited with starting the topic that would turn this match around. At 1:10 pm, Fallout 3 had a lead of 6834 votes. It was the biggest lead Fallout 3 would have during the match.
We're going to pause here to bring something up that bothered me quite a lot when I saw it. As a result of this match, people went and caused this nonsense:
((I gotta be honest, I seeked the help of someone who had much more Undertale followers in their blog to help me spread it, but some people found their tumblr and started sending message threats of death and rape, so this time, I’ll have to ask my own followers to help me as a unit, so no one gets the shit end of the deal but me.))
I'm sure this was done by people like SvenGoolie and the like, but it's still completely ridiculous. Sending rape and death threats because of a video game popularity contest on GameFAQs. Very mature. This was the beginning of the end of Undertale's rally purely being done for good intentions. What started as "hey we have a great new game, hopefully it can do well and more people will play it!" turned into idiots sending threats online and fanning the flames of "lol look at these turbonerds getting all mad, make sure to vote Undertale to piss them off more". The trends for Undertale radically changed once the internet saw this crap, too. In Undertale's first two matches, the rally took forever to get going and it had to come back from 9252 and 6834 votes, respectively. You think it was going to pull something like that off against Mario World or Pokemon? Hell no. Good job whining and being the key to your own destruction, crybabies. This is the sort of thing that makes me support rallies so hard. If your life is so pathetic that a game losing a poll sets off your rage alarm, you 100% deserve to be on the ass end of rallies causing your favorite games to lose until you grow up. It's basic wrestling logic; if you no-sell something you hate, it gets depushed.
But if you act like absolute morons, like the typical NXT/WWE crowd does every time Eva Marie or John Cena comes out, what do you think will happen? The powers that be will go "hey we can make something happen with this" and make money off of your vitriol. So good job with all that whining about Undertale, Board 8. You brought this on yourself.
Back to the match. That 6834 vote lead? Once Hieress's post got reblogged everywhere and the rally really picked up steam, Undertale went completely nuts. It went from getting about 40% of the vote every update to getting anywhere between 65 and 80% of the vote every update. But the really impressive part was just looking at the total votes it was bringing in, and how they would keep going up. This thing started in the 150 range at the beginning, then the rally got going and we were seeing updates in the 250-300 range, compared to Fallout 3 doing nothing extra at all. This led to a hundred or more votes getting erased every update, and it only got worse as the lead kept shrinking. Before long Undertale was pulling in 350-450 vote updates, and the entire 6834 vote lead was just demolished in a matter of hours.
Remember how Fallout 3 had that peak lead at 1:10 pm? Yeah, Undertale took the lead at 5:25. Turning around 6834 votes in 4:15 is completely insane, and it didn't even slow down once taking the lead. It kept pulling in those massive 250-300 vote updates for almost the entirety of the rest of the match, and just left Fallout 3 in the dust. It would end up winning by 9381 votes, which is a total turnaround of 16215 votes, which is absolutely insane and was reminiscent of Draven's match against Ryu and Mega Man X in 2013. It wasn't quite the insane level of Draven during that match, but it was close enough to get crybaby brigade going.
Had people just not whined in the first place, Undertale would not have beaten Mario World. But people did whine, which led to everything getting quoted and immortalized on social media. It was then that the Undertale run took on a whole new meaning. Will people learn their lesson and not do the same exact thing next contest when Linkle goes on some massive run? I doubt it.
This would set up Undertale vs Super Mario World, which would be an ungodly mountain to climb under normal circumstances. Pre-whining I don't think Undertale would have stood a chance. Post-whining... well, we all know what happened. I for one support anything that puts crybabies in their place, especially when it's idiotic enough to make radical feminists look rational.
I'm putting a different Undertale theme into every writeup for this contest, and for this match we'll just go with Waterfall. Because once that rally started, the impending flood was inevitable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNTwYzoFzck
Ctes' Analysis[]
This was probably the most anticipated match of round 2 after round 1 ended. This match was supposed to be Fallout 3 easily taking of Mass Effect 3, but Undertale was the one game that came through with its rallying. Fallout 3 was obviously a much bigger challenge than Mass Effect 3, but now that the rally had gained momentum and some of out dear board regulars had acted as idiots, Undertale would be much stronger today. In a lot of people's eyes, we already had a contest winner in Undertale, nothing would be able to stop it. Others pointed to Ocarina of Time or RBY, while a fair share of people also believed it would end today. It didn't end up being the case, but there was some logic to it.
Fallout 3 is a much stronger game, yes. If Undertale took as long as last time to get going, then no, it wouldn't stand a chance today, but I don't think anyone doubted that things would go faster this time. First minutes into the match and it was clear from the votals that people were ready. The guy who started the rally last round had explained that he'd do the same again, and it's likely the big names that shared his posts on tumblr would be prepared today. The best argument for a Fallout 3 victory was probably the idea that Fallout 3 would be able to rally on its own, something Mass Effect 3 could probably never do with how disliked it is among the franchise's own fans and also because it's some years old now. Don't get me wrong, I love Mass Effect 3, but that's the truth. Fallout 3 is also some years old, but the contest came just when Fallout 4 released. The community is big and it's very active right now. If they cared enough, then yes, that might be enough to stop this rally.
Another thing was that people expected this rally to have a clear roof. There could only be so many people this could be shared to within tumblr that would care. At some point, the rallying would stop, and it would just take a game strong enough to withstand whatever amount of votes was the roof. I personally believe that it became clear today that this was not the case, but people kept this argument for rounds to come, in fact, I don't think it died completely until the semi-finals. Undertale was as strong as it needed to be. Sharing posts from the likes of Bracket_Entry, ExTha or MWC could easily provide Undertale with a good bunch of votes from anywhere, be it people that actually played it or not. It also helps that the rally spawned from people that just really liked the game, even if some hardcore supporters of the rally were huge jerks as well.
The match started with Fallout 3 being above 70%, which in any other match would mean it was over. Fallout 3 started building a good lead, but the votals were insane, it was clear that this match was way more anticipated than any other, so for the people that supported Fallout 3 here, there was no time to rest assured of its victory yet. Fallout 3 made some very impressive gains, often getting close to 200. In only half an hour it was more than 1000 votes ahead. It certainly had the board vote. Its gains started slowing down, but they were still good. Less than one and a half hour into the match, Fallout 3 had increased its lead to 2000 votes, looking pretty great. But at the same time, it bled percentage like crazy. At the same time it reached a 2000 vote lead, it also went below a doubling going from above 70%. Percentage is not as important as the actual vote difference, but despite how solid a 2000 vote lead would've looked in any contest ever, but especially this one with the votals being the way they are, we witnessed Undertale shredding a 9000 vote lead last round.
There were people arguing for the votals roof theory that means that Undertale had about the same strength as last time, only that all the votes were split more throughout the match. Had this been true, then things looked really great for Fallout 3 yes. At the same time, it was worth noting that none of the big names had shared the match yet. Fallout 3 was going great all things considered, it's a strong game, but it didn't look like it would win. Fallout 3 slowly but steadily extended its lead, but at the 3:35 mark, the vote difference remained the same, then at 3:45 Undertale made its first cut. A very small one, but still a cut. Overall, Fallout 3 still extended its lead during these hours, but Undertale was fighting back in the dead hours of the match. This would mean bad things when America awoke, and more specifically, the tumblr users. Fallout 3 managed to continue extending its lead throughout the morning, it was the ASV that was to be feared.
Fallout 3 would ultimately peak at the 13:10 mark with a lead of 6834 votes. Undertale made a few small cuts, which meant little at first, as it had done that before. Suddenly though, it started cutting almost 100 votes an update and very soon it started often cutting more than that. A +6000 vote lead is no joke, but this would be more than enough to make it in time. Undertale was able to shred 1000 votes of the lead in merely half an hour. It was doing rapidly fast. Now was definitely the time to panic and act for Fallout 3 fans.
Thing is, the situation is really unfortunate for a counter rally. A good rally is short and precise. Outside forces can't be expected to care about what is happening during the contest. You can't explain to a large group that Fallout 3 is likely to lose when it's 5000 votes ahead. People might vote, but then they'll think “Fallout 3 is winning no problem” and there'll be 0% chance of anyone further sharing it. None of these people will stay around to follow the match when it looks like it's over.
Another thing a good rally needs is momentum, which Undertale had the whole day to built. The rallying was going from the beginning of the match, but didn't become strong enough until over 13 hours into the match. It's interesting to note that if we still had 12 hour matches, Undertale wouldn't have won the first four of its matches. It wouldn't even have gotten to the point where it looked threatening in round 1. This new format which allows 24 hour matches in round 1 without the contest becoming too long and dull allowed Undertale to have just enough time.
Undertale would go crazy for a few hours before at the 17:25 mark taking the lead by force and never looking back. It took it 20 minutes to extend its lead above 1000 votes, there was no stopping it. In no time it was several thousand votes ahead. Now, this would be a good time to get a Fallout 3 rally going. You might be able to rally for it now, because it's behind, but it's very difficult. First of all, people had already “wasted” rallying at the best places to do it. You could post at them again, but people wouldn't care, they already went and saw how the match was going. Secondly, it's actually really difficult to rally for something that is losing so badly as Fallout 3 was here. That Undertale could do it was a miracle, it happens close to never. Finally, the momentum I talked about. It took Undertale over 13 hours to get rolling despite it having a previous match of rallying in the bank. With only six hours left, there was no way to get a Fallout 3 rally going in the first place, but particularly not when Undertale had one going to. The rally was to difficult to be countered.
At this point, Undertale looked pretty unstoppable. Next round it would face Super Mario World, which everyone knows is a stronger game than Fallout 3, but that's not important here. Super Mario World doesn't have anywhere to get rallied and besides, the same things applies to that match, as they do today, only that Fallout 4 just came out, while nothing Mario just did. Honestly, Undertale looked like it could win it all now, but there was one final challenge waiting in its way. At the same time of this match, RBY made a joke of Super Mario Bros. 3. This audience clearly loved Pokemon too and Pokemon is a very active community. With some potential rally backlash and getting the Pokemon community in on this, there might be a chance to stop Undertale from destroying all competition. Unfortunate for the people that wanted Undertale gone, RBY would not meet Undertale next round, but in two rounds, meaning that Undertale had another round where it could gain momentum.