In the event that we decide to use a poll off-site, does anyone know a good free poll service that allows voters to comment on the poll? Ideally, we would like people be able share why they think one character would win over the other.
Also, as an update, I do want to wait to see what the mods – and Brigby in particular – are comfortable with before I dump an unholy mess somewhere into the forums. And since they’ve been gone for three days, I want to wait until they have time to come to grips with this idea before plunging forward.
Thanks to everyone for your comments and your patience. 
I had the same thought. What should really be done is break them up into 4 divisions (just 4 groups of 16 by release date), then rank those 1-16 based on release date. Then match them up based on where that ranking would be in the NCAA bracket. So whoever was 1st in that bracket would face whoever was last in the same bracket. This would limit the amount of similar leveled characters being faced up in the first round and make the later rounds better.
If you can’t get a quick enough response one alternative would be to plan this for a after the next 2 4*s launch and take Dino and Duck out of rankings since their limited. This would give you more time so to set this up appropriately but still have your 64 number.
Make a main thread in general and add links to invidiual matchups hosted on character pages. Individual character match up discussions can go there
You really want 63 threads for this in The character sub forum? I don’t.
I am in discussions with the mods about the possibility of getting this tournament a subforum in the character discussion forum. In that event, 63 threads isn’t that big of a deal.
Otherwise, I’m hopeful that they are okay with 17 different threads in that forum over the course of a month (4 matches per thread through the Elite 8, with the Final 4 and Championship each getting their own thread).
Not sure how 4 matches per thread would work, seems like that would be difficult to manage/maintain.
Subforum would be OK if they were willing to do that.
I’m excited to see what you come up with for the seeding!!! Anything that has Kraven higher than last, I would take issue with.
I have reset the brackets.
I seeded the characters from 1-64, trying to get everybody within a general range of where I thought they should be, then got some feedback from my alliance and made some tweaks. Next I tried sorting them into regions of 16. It turned out that it took very little rearranging to make a nice Mutants region, so I continued sorting by theme. This worked out fairly well, though there are some oddballs that I either couldn’t find a region for or just didn’t fit in their natural region at that seed. But this is also similar to the NCAA tournament, as mentioned earlier, where regions are more of an idea than a rule.
The result is 4 regions, each with seeds of 1-16. And they are:
Cosmic
- Captain Marvel
- Medusa
- Nova
- Cloak & Dagger
- Star-Lord
- Gamora
- Rocket & Groot
- Yondu
- Agent Venom
- The Thing
- Miles Morales
- Spider-Gwen
- Drax
- Invisible Woman
- Mr. Fantastic
- Lockjaw
(Clearly Cloak & Dagger don’t really belong here. Nor do Miles and Gwen. But if we consider the Fantastic Four cosmic, it otherwise seems to work.)
SHIELD/Avengers
- Peggy Carter
- Riri Williams
- Mockingbird
- Agent Coulson
- Iron Man
- Kate Bishop
- Luke Cage
- Wasp
- Quake
- Black Panther
- Spider-Woman
- Nick Fury
- Ant-Man
- War Machine
- Sam Wilson
- The Hulk (Main Event)
(Riri doesn’t fit here (I think?), and MEH probably doesn’t, either, but otherwise sound.)
Mutants
- Iceman
- Rogue
- Jean Grey
- Cyclops
- Iron Fist
- X-23
- Nightcrawler
- Deadpool
- Professor X
- Shuri
- Gwenpool
- The Hulk (Totally Awesome)
- Wolverine
- Elektra
- Devil Dinosaur
- Howard the Duck
(This one starts of strong – if you ignore Iron Fist – and then sort of becomes a bit of a jumble at the bottom. There are some “sort of” links: Deadpool → Gwenpool → Howard the Duck and Wolverine → Elektra, but Chulk is tossed in and Shuri is just there, and at that seed, due to uncertainty.)
Villains/Supernatural
- Vulture
- America Chavez
- Red Hulk
- Blade
- Thor
- Mordo
- Moon Knight
- The Punisher
- Carnage
- Kingpin
- Ghost Rider
- Winter Soldier
- Nico Minoru
- Venom
- Sandman
- Kraven the Hunter
(This region held up pretty well, once I lumped the supernatural characters in, though obviously America doesn’t really belong.)
I’m still waiting on word from Brigby about where exactly to put the match threads, but hopefully we will get started soon.
I think you’re seeding is swell.
When voting starts for each match-up, we should note whether we are just picking the more powerful toon in general, or take into account the “match up”. For example, if Quake ended up facing Jean Grey, I’d think she’d win straight up 95% of the time. But I don’t think anyone would disagree that Jean Grey is the more powerful toon in general.
I agree. I intended to put a disclaimer to that effect with each match, indicating this is not meant to be a 1-on-1 “Crash of the Titans” style comparison, or even necessarily a “how well does this character stand on his or her own?”, but an overall power rating when functioning within the context of a team.
While I understand the sentiment, I think trying to rate a character in terms of their overall utility within a context of a team is quite problematic and perhaps even a bit counter-intuitive considering you are only using 4* characters in the tournament. For example, Agent Coulson and America Chavez both partner well with strong 5* characters. Are voters supposed to take this into account when they are matched up against say HulkBuster Iron Man who has a better skill set in terms of 1-on-1 combat and partners better with a 3* Iron Fist but that pairing doesn’t stand a chance against an Agent Coulson-5* Hawkeye team up? I am just worried that if you go that route, Charlie and his angels will run away with the tournament barring him encountering Jean Grey. lol
That goes both ways. There are characters that are pretty OP in a group that are pretty useless 1 on 1. Either way chosen will help some characters and hurt others.
Since most rankings and most gameplay involves teams vs 1 on 1, I think it should be based on general utility/usefulness in normal gameplay aka team setting.
That’s my 2 cents.
You are right that whichever perspective we take will have a dramatic impact on the outcome but I argue that since we already have a strong idea who the best 4* characters in the game are it would be much more interesting to see how they stand on their own, more as a mental exercise than for any practical purpose. Additionally, things get tricky if you try to consider things from a team perspective. I am willing to bet 4meta players are going to rank 4 Rocket and Groot higher than 4* America Chavez while 5* meta players who have a viable Thor would rank 4* Chavez higher based simply on their play experience.
I guess the point I was trying to drive at is how do you determine the value of a character if you go by team setting? By that logic, any 4* that can produce a “winfinite” effect should have a significant advantage over those that can’t even though “winfinite” teams are not generally considered the best to use in PvP or PvE.
I just think since most of us are already pretty familiar with who the top ten 4* characters in the game are, it would make things both simpler and more interesting if you focus on it being one-on-one. Yes, it handicaps certain characters but it also produces surprises and underdogs.
What if the instructions were to consider the character as part of a team with 2 other 4s, make it locked down to just the 4 tier. I think that’s a fairer playing field as in a perfect world everything on that tier should have some semblance of balance.
Actually I think considering each toon from EVERYONE’s perspective is the right way to go. If 4* players prefer R&G over Chavez, so be it. The results would wash out over the span of the poll. In fact, I think toons which are valuable at both levels will come out on top and SHOULD come out on top. Toons more popular among 4* players will probably come out on top over toons popular among 5* players because the playerbase is larger… but shouldn’t it then? If more people are at a particular level and are preferring a particular character, that toon should probably win. At the 5* tier, Medusa is basically garbage and there’s little she can do to the Gambit meta. But she’s very popular and considered very strong among 4* players.
I lean more toward @broll’s perspective on this than @fight4thedream’s. While it is an interesting mental exercise to consider who would perform best in Crash-style, that seems quite attenuated from what a “normal” PVP or PVE event is like.
To my mind, the strongest characters are those that don’t need support from anybody else (see, Gambit). Those who have weaker bombs or powers with larger AP costs and are therefore slower I value less. Those who shine best when in the company of other characters are less valuable to me. And those who simply put out shields or trigger bouts of healing but are otherwise weak on offense are the least valuable of all.
To me.
Maybe be a better way to phrase the question would be: Which character is more valuable?
Or even Which character are you more likely to use?
My only comment will be this: lots are going to vote without reading any guidelines that you put forward, it’s just what ppl do. In most brackets, pairings usually indicate head to head matchups and you should consider this going forward.