Results[]
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 3 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 102 |
| Match Date | Tuesday, December 1, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Undertale - 53.24% 73 for - 11 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Undertale - 3.73% |
"Looks like free exp."
This was the match where Undertale showed us its true strategy. It basically sits there and plays dead at the beginning of the poll, then does the spider dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WDFUcjWARU
By the time its opponent actually knows what's going on, it's already dead. Mario World made the fatal mistake of not buying Spider Donuts and contributing to the unification of all spiderkind. Never forget that Muffet was the true hero. She had the most noble goal of anyone!
Although to wind it back for a moment, Mario World was well above 70% at the start of this poll and looked to be in decent shape. But much like Fallout 3, Mario World began bleeding an insane amount of percentage overnight. But unlike Fallout 3, there was no illusion of Mario World actually being able to win this match. Don't forget that despite Fallout's percentage bleed, it built up a 6800 vote lead.
Mario World barely tried half as hard. It built up a 2400 vote lead a couple hours in, and Undertale starting firing off rallies right then and there. It got the lead down to 2000 overnight before Mario World stabilized and recovered overnight, but the damage was already done. Undertale had found a new form where the bandwagon was getting started earlier and earlier in its matches, to where even though Mario World was building up a lead after Undertale cut 400, we all knew what was coming once everyone woke up later on.
Mario World would ultimately peak at 3224 at 7:30 am, and from there the slow downward spiral began. Undertale usually doesn't peak this early and wasn't used to actually making cuts during the morning vote, so it had to get its 8 legs under it during this match and start practicing!
These two would stay relatively even for the next couple hours, but around 9:30 it just all fell apart for Mario. The rallies started kicking into high gear, and by this point in the contest everyone knew what was coming. Those 150 vote updates and Mario World's struggle turned into a complete burial, with Undertale quickly pulling in 250 vote updates and getting upwards of 60% of the vote.
The scary thing with this match is Undertale took the lead before its best time kicked in. The lead change happened at 2 in the afternoon, which is usually when Undertale takes off. And true to form, Undertale went completely berserk during this time and started pulling in regular updates with 65-70% of the vote. A once-promising match turned into a very comfortable 55-45 win, with a final margin of 9559. Mario World fought valiantly for a little while, but ultimately it got buried like the rest. I think a big reason for this is even though everyone knows Mario, it's very difficult to rally for the guy. So while Undertale got going rather early in this match, Mario wasn't able to counter very well and put up perhaps the weakest effort of any of Undertale's opponents to this point.
You can imagine how bad the whining got here, too. Mass Effect 3 was mostly a "whatever" response, since many felt the game deserved it. Fallout 3 got the whining and idiotic threats going, because people are dumb, but even then it was just a Western RPG losing. But Nintendo is sacred on this site, and when Mario World lost and it looked like Undertale might bandwagon and win the contest, people went far enough to give it 0 ratings both on this site and Metacritic. Past that, the whole narrative of "Undertale is ruining matches we wanted to see!" started up, which is beyond idiotic to me. If you look at this bracket in the same way you look at sports (which I kind of do!), that logic makes no sense. You can't get excited about a tournament based on games that might happen; you get excited based on "anyone can win" and rooting for your favorites. Kentucky losing their undefeated season before the final game in the NCAAs last year didn't ruin anything, the Panthers losing their undefeated season today didn't ruin the NFL season, the Cardinals routinely choking in the baseball playoffs after having the best regular season record doesn't ruin the baseball season, the San Jose Sharks regularly choking in the hockey playoffs after having the best regular season record doesn't ruin the hockey season, and Undertale's run in this contest sure as fuck didn't ruin anything. Getting bummed out because of not seeing a potential event is always going to leave you disappointed, but if you just take things as they come you'll generally lead a pretty satisfied life.
This would set up a titan vs titan showdown for the division, and everyone felt it would decide the contest one way or another. Pokemon is the game on tumblr, so at least one of Undertale's rally points would potentially be compromised. We saw a lot of evidence for this with how Pokemon exploded along with This is also why the phrase of the Fall 2015 Contest was "backfire rate". I personally think that theory is a bunch of made-up shit that people threw out there to convince themselves Undertale could be out-ralled, so I'll let someone else explain it. The reason why I think it's dumb is because when you ask people to rally, the result is almost always one of two things: a vote for what you asked for, or no vote. A large enough group of people voting against what you ask is a very dubious, negligible stat at best. But some people believe in it, so hey, good for them.
Either way, Pokemon vs Undertale was shaping up to be a legendary match.
After the match, thanks to an ungodly amount of whining and cheating accusations (some idiot on twitter put out a fake script image to suggest cheating in Undertale's favor), Allen was nice enough to step in and shut it down with a hilarious troll topic.
"Turns out that a bot did indeed manipulate the vote."
The only problem is that it's just the Twitter account @undertale_bot
The account tweeted the following at 9:53am pst: https://twitter.com/undertale_bot/status/671748885757472769
Before this tweet, reddit was providing the most referral traffic that was voting for Undertale. Almost immediately after this tweet, the referrals coming in from Twitter jumped significantly and we saw the first huge spike in votes. You can confirm this yourself if you check Votes Over Time in the poll results (look between 12 and 14).
I know a lot of people feel like this rally is done out of spite, but it seems unlikely that anybody could get that many people in on a single effort just to troll us. It's just people who like the game finding out about the poll and coming over to vote.
I can assure you that we're very closely monitoring votes. Even ramping up our anti-stuffing code to a ridiculous degree had no impact on the results. It's just fans. This contest wasn't designed to be just for b8, or even just for GameFAQs, but for anyone who wants to participate.
There is still plenty of time to try to drum up a rally for SMW if you're interested. Or perhaps you can look ahead to the next battle and plan it out from there. Social media isn't a tool exclusively for Undertale, afterall.
SBAllen posted...
It's literally in the rules that rallies are okay.
"The games have been seeded by a combination of user nominations, popularity on GameFAQs, and critical and user game ratings, but don't forget: This is not a contest to see which game is your favorite, or even which one is the best rated. It's all a big popularity contest, and visitors who have never visited GameFAQs before will be sure to stop in and vote."
Allen: Even ramping up our anti-stuffing code to a ridiculous degree had no impact on the results.
RyusekiV2: You just can't admit that the code is garbage? Why defend this piece of S game.
Allen: You know if botting is so easy that people who never even use GameFAQs can get past our countermeasures that they don't know exist, why aren't all of you guys botting votes for SMW? I mean clearly if our countermeasures are garbage, there's nothing to stop you, right? Right?
Generally speaking, crybaby idiots should never get what they want, much like how the radical left should be laughed at at all times. For this reason, Draven winning two years ago was great, and Undertale continuing to win in this contest was even better. Keep those pacifier companies recession-proof, geniuses.
Ctes' Analysis[]
I don't know if anyone besides Heroic Mario actually doubted the outcome of this match. Undertale had clearly showed itself able to outrally the core votebase and a SNES game was not going to be able to fight back there. Year of SNES only applies on GameFAQs not outside of it, in fact, I think outside of GameFAQs SNES games might do a bit worse because games that are fresh and hot will have the most support. Hence why Undertale won this contest. This one was particularly painful for me though. First of all, in the so called Mario Gauntlet, none of the Mario games would now run into each other, but also because Super Mario World is a top 5 game to me and the game I have the most nostalgia associated with on top of that. This was the first game I beat at the age of 2 or 3 and I played it all the time. I had All-Stars for the SNES too, but preferred this above the NES Mario games.
Super Mario World did of course have the lead early on, just like Mass Effect 3 and Fallout 3 before it. However, it was less convincing when it came to percentage. After half an hour, Undertale avoided the doubling already. Super Mario World would extend its lead significantly every update, but it was clear it wouldn't hold up when the rallies actually went rolling. The votals were also sky high straight out of the match. The outside really cared now. Two hours into the match, Undertale cut already and was cutting for about an hour, something it hadn't done in previous matches. It was clear as the day that Undertale few stronger every single round by large margins. However, three hours into the match, Super Mario World stopped it and started gaining again. Not fast and not without cuts now and then, but it gained. All those tumblr users did have school the next day after all.
Super Mario World did continue to gain for a while, slowly and steadily building a lead that went over 3000 votes. However, at this point it was clearly not just the passionate teenage users of tumblr caring about this. It was a whole lot more. People still kept going on about that though. Defending the rallies by saying it was just passionate gamers. And while those were obviously still there and we're cool with those, there were also people doing this just to mess with us by now, and I mean a lot of them. Parts of the GameFAQs userbase also jumped on every round, but not too many, it was mostly just more outsiders seeing it. Users like BracketEntry, MWC and ExTha had given us all the bad reputation we needed to have for people to have an even easier time rallying for Undertale. It was also not just tumblr at this point, I think twitter was the biggest source of the rally at this point, and we saw posts there where they were clearly mocking us and shoving it in our face that they controlled our contest. Really sad that such users got to be the face of not only our board, but the site in general.
3224 votes would be the highest lead Super Mario World got. I just explained that the tumblr teenagers wasn't the only force anymore, but this match they made the difference. As soon as they woke, Undertale started cutting. It wasn't going fast at first but it was however a lot sooner than the previous rounds. We knew when Undertale's power hours was and it was clear as the day that it was just a matter of time before Undertale took the lead. While it started slow, it quickly became major cuts. Super Mario World actually looked really impressive doing this time. Occasionally, Undertale barely cut, but it was never going to be enough. It's a shame Super Mario World had to be fed to Undertale this year when SNES games were as strong as they were. I'd really love to see it face some elite games without rallying and show itself. Hopefully next time.
As Undertale approached the lead change, a twitter profile named Undertalebot claimed to have rigged the votes. This was obviously just bait, but board 8 actually took it. It caused big commotion on the board with our beloved users being stupid, as they just provided more reason for outsiders to get Undertale to win. Sometimes, we're too easy. SBAllen then made a hilarious topic, but it was unfortunately served as more reason for board 8 to moan and outsiders to user against us. The topic title said that the bot did indeed manipulate the vote, but then the opening post explained that a large source of the votes were coming from twitter, thus it being legit rallying. Nice trolling, but I really wished he hadn't made out stupid users even more angry. We really didn't need that. Though I respect him for actually answering to the case, I don't think anybody changed their minds because of it. If someone believed they rigged the votes before, they still would. SBAllen added that you could just counterrally for Super Mario World, a comment that actually annoyed me a bit, because no, you definitely couldn't.
Less than 14 hours in, Undertale had already taken the lead. From that point forward it was just slaughtering. It took the lead faster than last time once again. Still though, it was more than 12 hours. That's three out of three matches that Undertale would've lost in the format we had since Character Battle VIII and until this contest. Just interesting to point out. The rest of the match was just chaos and board 8 looking like morons. It might just be the thing that annoys me the most about all this. A majority of us that care about contests are just following them, accepting what happens and not being babies about it, but a few users completely ruin the reputation of the board, and most outsiders aren't smart enough to think that far. It's a darn shame.
After the Fallout 3 match, it was pretty clear Undertale was not to be counterrallied. Especially not when it got stronger each round. Still, RBY seemed like the perfect counter to it. First of all, Undertale fans had greatly supported RBY too, creating some insane blowouts in its favor the past two rounds. But the Pokemon fanbase is also really passionate about their games, so if you could actually make them aware of the upcoming match, it might just be what was needed to stop Undertale. Undertale went into the match as the favorite yes, but people claiming that it was over before it began were definitely wrong.