Matches 41-48 are up. Not as dynamic as the last batch, but still some interesting clashes. The one I’ll link to is the one I regard as the most up in the air: #47, with Dragon Racer and the erstwhile underdog The Aether, one of the few short titles that has performed well in the last, uh, decade. Also has one of my favorites (and a former Hidden Gem titleholder) My Day Off Work, but that’s not likely to be competitive. Reddit - Dive into anything
Be sure to check out all the matches!
Here’s the full list of participants in this batch.
New matches are up. Easy choice for which one to link as the marquee contest out of this batch: Tin Star vs. Wayhaven Book One. Wayhaven’s had a rough path in round 1, getting Parenting Simulator and Evertree Inn as opponents, and this could be the toughest challenger yet. Reddit - Dive into anything
For all you Formorian War fans, it is actually beating Relics and closing in on Samurai of Hyuga 2. Miracles can happen, although sometimes they probably shouldn’t.
The end of round 1 is (finally) in sight! Last batch of 8 matches is up. The one to link is the last one of all: Fernweh Saga 1 vs. Totem Force. Should be pretty close.
There’s also Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven vs. Evertree, but that likely won’t be close, because Evertree ended up with arguably the worst luck of all in round 1. The first one was already stomped by a Wayhaven, and the other two ended up in the same match against the ZExy one, which will assuredly split the vote out of competitive status.
In news from the ones recently ended, Wayhaven did not get a clean sweep through round 1, as Tin Star squeaked out a win. Formorian War also lost, though it overperformed with 55 votes and ended up outscoring Relics.
I can give you the first 14 matches of round 2 now. Obviously the last two we won’t know for a week. Match 9 in particular should be very interesting indeed. I also think #6 has 4 contenders that all have at least a decent chance.
My guesses for the final four are ITFO, FH2, ZESH, and a wild card (since I am not sure if any of the ones in matches 5 to 8 are especially popular. Maybe a Hyuga? Or AMR?).
It looks exciting! I’m curious what the results would have been if all the series had had one entry each rather than one per title - might have had a different-looking spread.
True. But then I would have still had too many for a 128-entry match and way too few for 256. Plus, then the ration of entrants people mostly know and like to the more obscure stuff would have been even more askew.
I am personally expecting at least one Infinity game to make it to the Final Four.
It may be that a story exists that can be a legitimate threat to a FH. But I’m not sure match 14 has one. If anything, it’s more likely FH would fall in a match with only one other notable title. Here, all the ones who don’t want to vote for Hallen Fero will split and make the defeat even more lopsided. Or at least that’s my best guess.
Here’s my picks for who I expect to win each one next round (so far). I don’t know why the first row of them is always bolded but I can’t fix it so just let it be; in that one I pick War for the West.
While, I do, all things taken into consideration, agree with your decision to let all entries in a series be included, I do think it would have been much better if you found a way to ensure that entries that belong in the same series don’t end up in the same matches.
This will, though to what extent will vary, split the votes between the different entries in a series, which will in turn mean that their votes will be significantly lower than they otherwise would be, which can really hurt their chances when they’re up against entries from a series with a reasonably big fanbase, which can in turn leading to both/all of them being knocked out of the competiton in one fell swoop. I’m aware that there will be and should be an element of chance to a competiton such as this, if nothing else, to ensure that the results don’t become too predictable. But this just seems both unfair to the series unlucky enough to end up with two or more entries competing with one another and will give you a result much less representative when it comes to how many people like that entry and series than if you only had one entry from each series in each match.
I’m aware that for the most popular series, there will be a good chance that their entries will eventually end up in the same matches, but it would have been nice if this could have been held off until later in the competion. I won’t deny that entries from my two favorite HG series, The Lost Heir series and the Evertree Saga, both ending up in this situation, have made me both particularly aware of this problem and really frustrated with its consequences, but I do think that the principle in itself is important. So, I am asking you, is there any way to change the matchup, either before they’re originally made or after they’re originally made, to ensure that we don’t see entries from the same series in the same match until there are so few HGs left that it’s impossible to avoid? Because if there are, I do think you should do that, since that would be much fairer to the different series. Of course, when a match is already in progress, as is the case with the match where both Sordwin and Lux-book one ended up, it’s in practice too late to do anything about it in any case. But for matches where that isn’ the case, as with the second round match where two out of the three The Lost Heir entries ended up, if it’s possible for you technically to ensure that entries from the same series don’t end up in the same match this early in the competion, it would be nice and also much fairer if you ensured that they don’t and change the matchups for the next round a bit to account for that.
Maybe I misunderstood you, but it does sound as if you’re basically arguing “that’s the way things have always been and that makes it okay”. Don’t take this personally, but I’ve always found that to be a really bad and weak line of argument. I’m aware that change for change’s sake has its own issues and isn’t something to strive for either, but when things have been done a certain way for a long, long time and that has created, and keeps on creating, a lot of issues, I’d say that’s an argument for changing things, not for keeping them the same.
If it’s impossible to change things technically so that matches including two entries from the same series are avoided until late in the competition or that it would take more time and energy to fix than what’s available to @hustlertwo, I will of course fully understand if nothing gets done about it. And, as I wrote earlier, I am fully aware that it’s probably too late to do anything about the match with two Evertree Saga entries, since that was already well underway even before I made my comment.
But if it’s possible, and without this being too much of a drain on time and energy, to change things around so that we’ll get no more matches with two or more entries from the same series until the latest rounds and from round two and onwards, I think this should at least be given some serious consideration and not just be brushed off or ignored as a solution to what seems to be a clear issue.
One of the round one matches has two of the ever tree games against each other, so that’s already happened. I’m not too bothered by this, this is generally how most knockout competitions of any format go, you’re going to get weird results just because of sheer bad luck
