Results[]
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | Division 8 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 96 |
| Match Date | Saturday, November 28, 2015 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Mass Effect 2 - 54.32% 66 for - 18 against |
| GameFAQs Prediction |
Mass Effect 2 - 45.40% |
Before getting into anything else, let's get into some round 2 Stars and Turds! Last edition for the contest as a whole, since I don't think anything getting into round 3 and beyond can be classified as a turd. Even if something looked bad.
Star of the Round - Chrono Trigger, honorable mentions to Undertale and the Zelda series. I know Zelda looked off, but it was sporting a 10-0 contest record after round 2. That counts for something.
Turd of the Round - The Grand Theft Auto series, with honorable mentions to Final Fantasy X, the Fallout series, the Metal Gear Solid series, and Starcraft.
Speaking of Starcraft, let's talk about how utterly dumb this match was and how horrible a match this was for Starcraft. I named it a turd because watching Starcraft fail to show up in a rally vs rally match was just asinine. In 2004, Starcraft scored 56631 votes against Halo, 40698 votes against Kingdom Hearts, 41480 votes against Wind Waker, and 48548 votes against Melee. In 2009, Starcraft scored 33616 votes to get second place in its round 1 match, then 21854 votes to get third place and lose in round 2. For whatever reason, Starcraft didn't show up in that contest.
In this contest, it scored 24176 votes against Destiny in round 1, and then followed that up with this nonsense in round 2. 21228 for Starcraft in a 24 hour rally match, given how everyone used to be scared to death of this game being able to win any match at will, was unforgivable. I don't really blame Starcraft though, I blame Activi$ion for just ruining Blizzard beyond repair. I cannot even begin to tell you how awful Starcraft 2 is.
Can you believe that 11 years after that 2004 contest, Starcraft would be in a match that was entirely decided by whether or not its opponent allowed rally threads on Reddit? It seems ridiculous, but that's what happened. When I made my bracket, I picked Mass Effect 2 here out of pure, unapologetic fanboyism. There are logical reasons to be sure, but I wanted Activi$ion to lose. These contests are more fun when you just cheer for your favorites and root against what you hate. I also figured Mass Effect 2 would be exactly the kind of game Starcraft would have trouble rallying against, but this was no time for logic.
Early on in this match, Mass Effect 2 rode bracket votes to a very slim early lead. This match was 53-47 at the freeze, and everyone immediately assumed Starcraft would just rally and win because Starcraft does not lose close matches unless it cheats. Mass Effect 2 began to slowly build a lead over the next couple hours, which would peak at 340 at 2:30 am.
At this time, Starcraft began to rally. It was hardly a rally on the scale of Undertale, but it was enough to get the job done. Mass Effect's 340 vote lead disappeared before the sun came up, and Starcraft was easily able to blow on by Mass Effect and win the morning vote. There was some resistance by Mass Effect 2, but not enough to prevent Starcraft from trending upward and looking like it was well on its way to a comfortable win in the 52-48 range.
But then shortly after 10, the counter-rally started. It was pretty impressive in scale, too, because Mass Effect 2 was able to erase a 566 vote lead in all of 2½ hours. Against an opponent that was rallying in its own right, and that opponent was Starcraft of all things. But once Mass Effect 2 tied the match and started building a lead, things got really weird. The subreddit mods started disallowing rally threads there, which led to the match staying deadlocked for a few hours. But then around ASV time, the mods allowed rally threads, and the combined force of rallying plus the ASV buried Starcraft for good. This match was basically tied at 3 pm, but finished with Mass Effect 2 winning by 977. The lead actually peaked at 1110 at 10:30 before Starcraft made a last-ditch push for the last 90 minutes, but it did nothing more than make Mass Effect 2's final margin of victory a little bit smaller.
Props to Mass Effect 2 for winning here, but Starcraft shit the bed. I never thought I'd ever see the day where Starcraft lost a close match where both sides were rallying, but here we are. It's the twilight zone to think about the fact that this match was only decided by whether or not r/masseffect mods felt like allowing rally threads. One would assume Starcraft could out-rally anything, but then again Activi$ion ruined everything that used to be good about Blizzard and gamers have really noticed.
Then again I never thought I would see Samus 60-40 Mario in any realm, yet this contest gave us that too. This whole contest was awesome when it pertained to paradigm shifts, and we got a lot of those as things transpired.
Ctes' Analysis[]
This match ranks among the most exciting to watch in the whole contest. Most pre-contest discussion in this division was about whether or not Mass Effect 2 stood a chance against the Metal Gear Solid games. I don't think many people considered Starcraft making this the match of the round. Destroying Destiny was viewed mostly as the latter being weak as hell, but Starcraft showed today it was worth a lot. Of course, most of what made this match as great as it was can easily be contributed to rallying. Notably large outside rallies changing match results are usually not well-liked here, but today we had two games fighting with their rallies somewhat equally. This is also the match where Nick officially lost his call powers by abusing them attempting to win a testicle bet. To elaborate on this, Nick and Alec made a bet on the show on this match. Nick supported Starcraft and Alec supported Mass Effect 2. Nick was the one to put up a really succesful Starcraft rally on reddit and then made his trademark topic “When Mass Effect 2 got this all wrapped up… consider it CALLED. That's just not how it works!
Anyway, Mass Effect 2 started out building a small lead, showing that it was probably gonna win this match without any rallies, but it might very well just be bracket votes. When you consider that, things didn't look too great against the remaining Mass Effect game. It took only a bit more than two hours before Starcraft began cutting with the rally Nick had put up. It wasn't the strongest thing, but it got the job done. At the 5:25 mark, Starcraft successfully took the lead! This game here, 11 years later, could still pull its old tricks. At this point people already started worrying about a similar run! Starcraft was just at the right point of the bracket to make it. The Metal Gear Solid had looked horrible and the Division 7 winner wouldn't be a particularly strong game either. Due to spillover from this match, BioShock was making a joke out of Snake Eater. This was a major throwback to 2004. Even if its rally powers were weaker, it might still work. Mass Effect 2 was debated to pull some upsets in this division without them. Starcraft was currently beating that game!
Of course, it had to win today before another Cinderella run should actually be discussed. It was currently winning, but the lead building was somewhat bumpy. That said, when the match had been on for over 10 hours and the lead was above 500 votes, I think most people considered this a sealed deal. Well, apparently Mass Effect 2 can rally too! Now this is where the match gets truly exciting. I mean, it showed it could rally a very little bit previously but not much. Here Mass Effect 2 had its chance to prove what the series was truly capable of! And damn, was it capable of rallying, in just two hours Mass Effect 2 took the lead like those 500 votes were nothing. A combination of the rally it had itself and perhaps also Starcraft's rally slowing down a bit. Mass Effect 2 looked to have this match completely under control at this point.
Then Starcraft randomly fights back and this was the absolute best part of the match. Both games had showed incredible rally strength. Mass Effect 2 didn't even get above 100 votes before Starcraft turned it around down to the 14 hour mark where we get a tie! It was truly intense. Next thing that happens is that Mass Effect 2 leads by 5 votes, despite Starcraft just cutting almost 100 votes off with ease. Mass Effect 2 completely refused to let go of the lead again. The next couple of had Mass Effect 2 leading by 2 votes, then 4, then 16 and then 9. Starcraft would hold it close a little longer until its rally completely died and Mass Effect 2 was able to take off. At this point, it never truly looked back again. Starcraft cut a lot, and actually managed to take a +1100 vote lead blow 1000 in the end, but the match was over. Mass Effect 2 had put up a really impressive performance today!
Mass Effect 2 really looked like it could make the division finals at this point. The series has proved itself to be legit, the Metal Gear Solid series had disappointed match after match, Mass Effect 2 had even just shown noteworthy rally capabilities, and those seemed to be pretty brutal for Metal Gear Solid 3 today, when it wasn't even about that. Mass Effect 2 winning in round 3 should still be considered an upset, but people that picked it seemed to have great chances at getting points from that match.
It was a fantastic way to end the round. Much more exciting that the way round 1 ended. This is when rallies can actually be considered fun. I get the hype around a game winning unexpectedly due to a rally, but that's never really exciting. Rally matches usually mean boring matches. Sure the board goes crazy but the match itself tends to be boring. Today it was not, because both games had rallies seemingly equal, so they just meant we'd have a close match with quite the vote swings in more impressive numbers that we're used to these days.