Results[]
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 8 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 62 |
| Match Date | Saturday, April 11, 2020 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Rayman Legends - 42.39% 7 for - 52 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Rayman Legends - 37.78% |
| User Votes |
Celeste - 4335 Rayman Legends - 4271 |
| Anonymous Votes |
Celeste - 3373 Rayman Legends - 3726 |
Figures the best match of round one would be a one point affair between indie fodder versus mainstream fodder, but them's the breaks! This match was anyone's guess, and though Rayman had made contests before, he always performed like a total bottom-feeder. Celeste has almost no past polling to draw from, and she performed horribly in the few polls she was in. We all knew she would be weak, but we picked her because it's very difficult to be weaker than Rayman -- kind of like a Celeste winning by default kind of a deal. It was a measly one point match either way, so even though the match was awesome, it didn't really matter at the end of the day.
"But Ulti, Azuarc only beat JONALEON1 by one point you scrub!"
JONA got this match right. Azuarc did not. I rest my case. Azuarc won this contest because he picked Dark Souls to beat The Last of Us. JONA did not. That was the main difference. Don't worry, we'll get to it.
A few times in this PCA, I've mentioned the indie match trend, where they start off hot and then fall off a cliff as the match progresses. It came to an ugly head in this match. After Celeste took the early bracket votes, Rayman evened it up with the first update.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Uw97lOOlk
It was a sign of things to come, though Celeste was able to rebound from the bad start. Despite Rayman's best efforts at stalling, Celeste was able to build up a lead of 200 after two hours. Rayman fought back rather valiantly and stalled her out for a few hours, but not before Celeste built up a 300 vote lead by midnight. It's like we were back in the F5 days!
Overnight, however, is when Rayman made his move. He did a wonderful job stalling things out for a few hours before making his comeback move, largely with the help of Europe. Before getting into the rest of the commentary, there's a small thing I'd like to mention here. As far as I can tell, Europe really doesn't like indie gaming. The entire reason these games fall off after hot starts is because Europe never votes for them. I don't know the reason for this, but maybe one of our friends from across the pond can enlighten us.
Once the European vote kicked in (and it was the European Board 8 users cheering hard for Rayman, so I guess he has a following over there), Rayman started coming back hard. That 300 vote lead Celeste had was below 100 in a couple hours overnight, and it looked as if Rayman would run away with this thing. When the sun began to rise on America and the morning vote kicked in, it was.... Celeste who started going up. So it looked like Celeste, who won North America going away, would be able to hold Rayman off and win this match.
NOT SO FAST, MY FRIEND!!
It was a short-lived bump for Celeste, who was never able to stretch a lead out past 100. Rayman recovered nicely, despite not having support from North America at all. Europe was carrying this dude hard. Rayman was able to get the match down to even around 8 am, and after one final push where Celeste desperately tried to shake this guy off the mountain, it was not to be. Rayman kept the match tied all morning, and finally started making his move after lunch time. He got the lead, but it stayed under 50 votes for hours and hours. Once it got over 50, it stayed in the 50-100 range all the way until the evening.
That's when the avalanche knocked Celeste, not Rayman, off the mountain. He would ultimately win the match by 200 votes, which was a very sad, yet fitting end for Celeste in this contest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDVM9KED46Q
She never could find that golden strawberry. Sucks, too, because I really wanted her to win. Rayman was never my thing, but I harbor no ill will at all toward his fanbase. I know you guys have been waiting for a match like this for your boy for awhile, and it's frankly very impressive that Rayman won entirely on the back of Europe carrying him over the finish line.
Typically after going through a barn-burner like this I have a big writeup on what does this mean and where do we go from here. Sadly, this match meant nothing beyond a cute one point upset. Congrats Rayman, you finally made it into round 2, and your reward is one a one way ticket to getting your ass whooped by Pokemon.
"Also noted is that this match caused the last zero bracket to fail, as it got a point for picking Celeste to lose." -Nintendogs
Ctes's Analysis[]
After a mostly boring round 1 with lots of blowouts, the final day of the round gave us the best match of the contest so far and got us all hyped again for round 2. It was almost out of the blue. We weren’t particularly hyped for the match before it came. No one was expecting it to deliver this much. Celeste was already the favorite by a pretty big amount and the first round hadn’t really done anything to change that, the contrary if anything. Celeste is everything that we up until this point had agreed was good to be as an indie.
Rayman Legends marks the first appearance of a Rayman game in any of our contests. We also only got the character into two contests. First time when expanding the field 2007 where he jobbed hard to Snake, Nightmare and Vyse. No point in getting him back in then, until 2013 expanding the field as insanely much as it did. From that point forward, he might be able to win the right match as being a mascot or well known character is better now than it used to be. Unfortunately for Rayman, he drew Squall in 2013 and missed the field completely in 2018. Perhaps if he gets into Smash Bros, we might care to nominate him again. Otherwise it’s a long shot. That’s a huge part of the reason people had little faith in Rayman Legends. It’s not even considered to be the best of what a series capable of doing nothing had to offer.
The match was exciting almost right away. Celeste won the board vote by quite a bit. It’s not too surprising, we love games that. A lot of indies have had similar trends, and I’ve seen people talk a lot about Celeste and never about Rayman. On top of that we have the bracket votes, but Rayman didn’t really allow Celeste to get away. It held the lead during the freeze, going up and down a little bit, before being ahead by 21 at the freeze. Given what trends we’ve seen similar games to Celeste have, and given that Celeste probably had the board vote and the bracket vote, this sure didn’t look very good for it.
True enough, Celeste’s lead dropped to only 6 in the next update despite bracket votes and the like still being in its favor. At that point, you could be really happy having Rayman in your bracket, because things were looking really good for it. Then the match randomly turned. Celeste won the next update by 3 votes, which isn’t much, but everyone expected a lead change. Celeste extended that to 20 votes the following update and go slightly up from there for a few more updates, before Rayman made a small cut. With a small lead of 36, perhaps it was still the power hour in effect. There was hope for a Rayman supporter, right?
The next update would have Celeste bursting up to 88 and the one after that up to 144. That was a very quick shift that certainly looked like Celeste had this one in the bag. The next while would have them go a big back and forth at times, but overall, Celeste was going upward. Suddenly, it looked like Rayman had actually won the board vote. Five hours into the match, Celeste was up by 300 votes. It was looking like it was over, but that it would just end up being a lot closer than we thought it would.
The 5-hour mark is interesting, because it’s when Celeste stopped going up. Two updates later it was ahead by 333 votes, which is the highest lead any of them had the whole match. Rayman did a pretty big cut then, but no one was paying too much attention yet. An hour later Celeste would be at the same spot. In other words, they were stalling for an hour. Then Rayman began working at making the match interesting from that point forward, as the US went to sleep and Europe began waking up. Rayman was winning in most of Europe, while Celeste held the lead in NA.
Rayman began winning the hours from that point forward. It was a pretty slow progression at first and most of the board were asleep, but we began noticing slowly that the Rayman was putting together something. It had the time, but would it be enough when Celeste was winning in NA? Rayman certainly made the attempt. While the match was almost even for the two following hours after the biggest lead, Rayman cut off 100 votes the next hour. At this point, every awake had taken notice. Rayman continued to cut the lead of at a a good pace having broken the 100-vote lead nine hours into the match.
Rayman began slowing down at that point. It continued to cut for a few more updates, but then Celeste began to stall. It would appear Rayman’s best hours were over despite Europe still waking up and NA still being asleep. The thing is, it was probably just close enough anywhere, so perhaps there was more to this match than geography. The match would stand completely still for a few hours and I don’t think there’s really any trends to use there, it just did. Votals are low enough for such to happen. Celeste attempted to get some of its lead back, but it wasn’t really allowed to get away.
Eleven hours into the match would be when Rayman would begin the final strike. Right before NA would supposedly wake up and save Celeste. Rayman could the lead slowly and a bit more than hour later, Celeste managed a 2 vote lead before the change finally happened. Rayman was ahead. Slowly it began to build a lead that was over 60 by the time we entered the thirteenth hour.
Then Celeste cut big time. NA had seemingly finally woken up and things could go Celeste’s way. It made sense that the morning vote began a bit later because the match was on a weekend after all. Celeste slowly got that away before we got into the best hours of the match. Celeste took the lead with a single vote. Then Rayman took it back only for Celeste to lead with a single vote again. Next update by 2 votes. It looked like anyone’s game. Celeste wasn’t able to run away with it. It had a lead in the 10s for a while, until Rayman swapped that around and did the same. At exactly 14 hours into the match, we’d get a tie.
Celeste took the lead again after the tie. That would be the final time Celeste had the lead, but it was exciting for a while yet. Next update, it was Rayman’s turn to lead by a single vote. Then for a couple of hours Rayman would lead with about 20 to 30 votes. Rayman then attempted to build a lead bigger than that, but Celeste kept putting it back down to that point for a while. They would continue to make push each of them for the rest of the match, but Rayman’s pushes were just a bit better and so it ultimately won with about 200 votes.
The upset ended up happening. Board 8 didn’t expect it and casuals didn’t expect it. No one cared much though. The winner would not make a real attempt at Pokemon HGSS, everyone knew that. It was just great to follow a match like that again. Two matches in round 1 so far, The Walking Dead vs. Bastion and Rocket League vs. Dragon Ball FighterZ had been exciting for a little while, but this was the first time the match was worth following almost the full day. It gave us some much-needed excitement.
North America never really helped Celeste much, even though it won there. It looks like it needed to win bigger there to depend on it. Trends are a bit weird today and we have less of them, which makes it harder for a game to complete comebacks. There’s the power hour and there’s the time of the match where Europe dominates the vote. Those are the things we have today. Geography and our own taste. Rayman just seemed a little bit better overall. Perhaps it got the win on its more recognizable name that the character hasn’t gotten a chance to yet.
Round 1 was notable for having indies exceed expectations. This match served as a nice foreshadowing for most of round 2 when it comes to indies. They usually underperformed relative to expectations. This match did a good job highlighting that a group of indies simply had gotten perfect matches to look better than they were, but it was mostly due to the other games. That was a sign of things to come.
Safer777's Analysis[]
Best match of Round 1! Yeah strange to say that, but it was. We had an indie game vs a non indie game. I don't know Celeste but it is a platform game with good story actually and people seem to like it. As for RL it is another platform game too so we have a fair match? Rayman was the mascot and the focus of Ubisoft before they became big with the Assassin's Creed series and they shifted focus there. Oh and also Rayman gave us Rabbids! You know the characters that EVERYONE loves?
So for the match. As you can see the match was EXTREMELY close. Celeste was around 52.4 after the first 5 minutes and after 4 hours it was around 51.7. But no problem since it was winning in USA a lot. But it kept losing percentage and after about 13.5 hours RL got the lead. But then Celeste got it back. The games kept goint like that for a while and we had even a few ties. But then RL got the lead and we all say well USA is waking up and Celeste there wins by 53 so it would be over. But a curious thing happened. Even though the match ended and RL won Celeste's percentage in USA stayed at 53! So why this matters? Because most of the people that come on this site are Americans so the game/character that wins in USA wins the match. Sure we had a few cases where something won in USA and eventually lost the match but the percentage on USA was lower, like 51. Not 53 like here. I can't explain it. I guess RL won in the States that have the most people or something? Anyways very good match. Oh and also the whole Crew got the match wrong as most of the site it seems. And it made sense. Even though RL is from a series that most have heard, Ubisoft doesn't care for that anymore. So we all backed Celeste. Eh still at least we got a good match so that is fine.
Tsunami's Analysis[]
FINALLY! FINALLY! FINALLY!
Yes, it really needs that many finally's. A lot of trends were broken in this match, saving Round 1 from being complete and utter monotony.
Celeste jumped out of the gate on fire; the earliest update on our vote tracker had it receiving 16 of the first 18 votes. Of course, there are a bunch of registered users who make a contest of getting the first vote, so it's probably fewer votes than that. It was a bit wobbly after that until Celeste spiked back-to-back update wins of 52 and 56 near the end of the first hour. From there, though neither side could put together more than 5 straight update wins (and Celeste had managed that feat before it hit the two big ones, all of which amounted to a smaller lead than either of those two updates alone), Celeste slowly built up a lead, peaking at 333 at 1:10 AM, about five hours in.
At 3:30 AM, however, it was Rayman Legends that broke that trend, winning its sixth consecutive update and pushing the deficit under 200. Celeste promptly won the next update, but then Rayman rattled off a string of seven, then a string of five shortly thereafter. By 5:10, the lead had dwindled all the way to 65 votes--but then Celeste reversed the trend. At 6:20, Celeste was coming off its sixth straight update win and had climbed back to 123 votes ahead (hey, we're still talking about this contest's crappy vote totals; large swings in updates late in matches just don't happen, except sometimes in the big blowouts where the leader can still put up decent net positives). The next update was a stall...and then Rayman started chipping away again. At 7:15, however, chipping was no longer enough; Rayman spiked a 29-vote swing to cut its deficit to 66. At 8:20, Rayman took its first lead of the match.
It was short-lived. Celeste retook the lead a mere 10 minutes later as part of winning 6 of the next 7 updates after falling behind.
At 9:35, the poll read 50%-50%, with Celeste clinging to a 1-vote lead. And again at 9:45, after it responded to Rayman's +9 with a +9 of its own, constituting two more lead changes. It then got a bunch more little wins to pad its lead all the way up to...18. At 10:25, however, Rayman spiked another +22, flipping a double-digit deficit into a double-digit lead. And again Celeste fought back, bringing it to a dead tie at 11:00 AM and winning the next update by 11. So of course Rayman Legends wins the next update by 12. Lead changes 6 and 7 in rapid succession.
And that was all the lead changes we had, though it took until the final four hours or so for Rayman to really start breaking away. In the end, it was a 217-vote margin and a percentage of 50.45%-49.55%. The Gurus were really tripped up by this, with a correct percentage of 27.46%, but at 37.67% the casuals weren't much better. And in addition to this being our first match that was honestly intriguing for quite some time, it marked the first match where the registered and unregistered voters disagreed. Celeste polled at 50.37% with registered voters and 47.51% with unregistered voters. Oh, hey, that means the unregistered voters actually flipped a match! Bravo for them, I guess. It's a 1-point match anyway as neither of these games stood a chance against HGSS.
I honestly thought this was the first appearance by anything Rayman in any of the contests. Courtesy of the wiki, however, I learned that Rayman the character has in fact been in two contests, though one of them was the bloated 2013 contest and his seeding was below the line where he'd have made a 128-character bracket (yes, even when you account for the 8-seeds being taken up by Board 8 rallies without regard to where they ought to have been seeded.) He didn't make it to Round 2 in either, though he at least managed to beat out Commander Video in 2013. Honestly I'm not surprised; even among forgotten platformer stars, Rayman feels irrelevant. What an amazing match though! I normally try to do the entirety of a day's matches at the same time, but my hands are already getting sore (admittedly, I'd already spent quite a bit of time on the computer today before writing these) so I'd probably end up half-assing the next two matches' write-ups if I tried to do them now. Let that be a testament to how good, and how necessary, this match was! We were just one day away from the highlight of Round 1 being a troll claiming he was going to start a rally before a match even started and votals for the day in question being down from the previous two while the game in question actually trailed after an hour but still won. Most matches could be called right at the freeze; only a couple of others even had any lead changes at all but that had been the only one where it took over an hour for the winner to take the lead for good. A match that stayed inside of 51-49 for the final 16 hours and 45 minutes was a godsend.