Results[]
Saturday, November 7, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 2 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 11 |
| Match Date | Saturday, November 7, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 56.70% 102 for - 7 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 71.86% |
There was a decent denate pre-contest about this match, and for good reason. KOTOR's strength is nothing insane, but it is respectable. 40% on Vice City in 2004 is alright, because that's back when GameFAQs didn't give a toss about western RPGs. The 2009 round 1 loss where it got third place was just random bad luck. Any of those four games could have gotten anything between 1st and 4th place, and it was one of the closest things we'll ever see to 25/25/25/25 in a fourway poll. Then in 2010, it got to round 3 and put up 47% on Final Fantasy 9. Again nothing nuts, but respectable.
But Xenogears had never been in a fair poll. The GSC match in 2004 was back during the Pokemon anti-vote days and had to be run twice because of a glitch on day 1 where only registered users could vote (side note, the vote totals that way were trash and the people who want a registered-only contest to combat rallies are out of their minds, you would literally see every poll get like 10k votes). In round 2, it faced Final Fantasy 7, aka the literal worst opponent Xenogears could ever have. In 2009, it got the lite version and had Final Fantasy 8 in round 1.
The case could be made for Xenogears having hidden strength all these years, and I don't think those people were wrong even though Xenogears lost. KOTOR took an early lead, but then bled some percentage all day as Xenogears made various small cuts and stalls. The percentage bleed wasn't anything nuts, but 3% in the 50s is a lot different than bleeding only 3% when the higher game is in the 80s or 90s. It tells me that if the seedings were reversed here, Xenogears might have won.
Maybe one day, it'll actually get to win a fair match! We all know the GSC 2004 nonsense doesn't really count.
Ctes's Analysis[]
There were some Xenogears defenders around here, but overall KOTOR was the major favorite going into this match, both for gurus and casuals alike. My Last Man Standing contest can't by used to judge too much because two thirds of the contestants eliminated themselves on Persona 3, but because I put up four days at the time, they all picked in this, and it was like 80% choosing KOTOR. A few people picked in the previous match, but KOTOR was too big a favorite. I'm honestly surprised Xenogears wasn't supported a little bit more, but I guess KOTOR having the much higher seed and having Star Wars in the title helps out a bit. I think if bracket votes were removed, we'd have quite a match here actually!
But we didn't really have a match. A bunch of people not realizing that bleeding percentage doesn't mean anything as long as the lead increases thought we had one, but it was never really interesting to look at. We had at this point already learned that trends were basically non-existing. The only match that even had a lead change after the freeze was DQVIII/Persona 3 and we're talking a 28 vote lead being flipped there. Xenogears was out of this match from the start.
The interesting thing about this match is how it goes against the rule system for picking winners that was true for almost all non-Undertale matches this contests. Parts of this system was always picking Nintendo and Square titles above non Nintendo and Square titles and always picking JRPG games above non JRPG games. KOTOR might be a RPG, but it's still Western. Most importantly, always go with the older game. Using this logic to pick your bracket, you'd probably be on the leaderboard for most of the contest, we just hadn't realized before it began, but this match defies all those things completely. To think that a Bioware WRPG for the original Xbox could beat a Sqaure JRPG for the original Playstation. It didn't look that weird at the time, because we had yet to notice this pattern, but after the contest it looks really weird. It's not like Xenogears is terrible and KOTOR is near elite either. I mean in cases like Skyrim vs. Phoenix Wright, no one would apply this rule system, because Skyrim is the strongest new title and one of the strongest non Nintendo and Square titles, but if this match were to happen tomorrow here after our contest ended, I think a much higher percentage would've picked Xenogears after all we've seen. At least not as many people should feel safe about it.
But KOTOR is simply one of the few WRPG games with contest strength. They're not common, but we have a good bunch of them out there.