The Lifestream ranks Final Fantasy songs

Sorry I haven't put the new poll up yet. I've just in bed all day, feeling crap. It'll go up tomorrow instead.

^Aw, hope you get better soon! Don't worry about the poll, your health comes first.

Heads up: Kuroto will be posting today's poll because I'm away this weekend and it's too fiddly to do on my phone. I'll put tomorrow's poll up myself but it might be a bit later than usual.

And today's poll is going to be a bit earlier than usual, becaue I have somewhere to be this evening. Keep that in mind if you are thinking of voting in the last hours.

Voter match is back! Our leading couple as of right now (including the partial results from group 8) is Phoenix Wright and Commander Vimes. Major Zero and Airling have been spotted shooting jealous glances their way.

Edit: I thought I should explain the tie-breaking criteria for this round, since I don't think I've done so before. Overall rank is determined in the following order:

1. Greater number of votes
2. Higher rank within group
3. Greater number of songs in group *
4. Higher overall rank in round 1
5. Earlier nomination / play-off poll **
6. Random selection

* Groups 3, 7 and 10 have 11 songs each, while the other seven groups only have 10, so it's slightly more difficult for a song to pick up votes in those groups. I originally planned to make this the fourth criterion, but I decided to give priority to the results of this round over the previous one, since the voter base has changed somewhat.

** In the event that the composition of the final 32 will be affected by this criterion, I'll run a play-off poll. If it's just to decide which of two songs finishes 87th and which one 88th, I'll use the nomination order, since it's not so important.

I'm going to start sounding like a stuck record here, but man, Flint, you are doing an amazing job with this! Thank you!

Flintlock said:

Our leading couple as of right now Phoenix Wright and Commander Vimes

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Oh ho HOOOooooOOoooooo I'm shipping it. Watch out Airling!

The Lifestream ranks Final Fantasy songs: end of round 2 report

The votes have now been finalised, and we now have a final 32 - almost.

Every song that made it into its group's top three, excluding ties, secured qualification automatically. That includes Opening - Bombing Mission (from Final Fantasy VII), which would otherwise have finished in 37th place. The remaining places were taken by the songs with the most votes overall, but since one song from outside the top 32 has made it in, one song from inside the top 32 has to miss out.

Final Battle (X) is in 32nd place, but it also qualified as part of its group's top three, so we have to look further up the list. Cid's Theme (VII) and The Decisive Battle (VI) finished in a tie for 30th place: they both picked up 10 votes, they both finished fifth in their respective groups, neither of them was in a group with an extra/11th song, and they even had the same ranking in the first round. That means it's time for a playoff! I'll be putting up a new poll for the pair of them shortly.

Here's the top 32 in full:

1. Liberi Fatali
2. Fight On!
3. J-E-N-O-V-A
4. Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII
5. Aerith's Theme
6. Dancing Mad
7. Not Alone
8. One-Winged Angel
9. Blinded by Light
10. Cosmo Canyon
11. Melodies of Life ~ FINAL FANTASY
12. Zanarkand
13. Words Drowned by Fireworks
14. Prelude
15. Vamo Alla Flamenco
16. The Darkness of Eternity
17. Birth of a God
18. The Great Warrior
19. Battle at the Big Bridge
20. Terra
21. The Man with the Machine Gun
22. A Fleeting Dream
23. Don't Be Afraid
24. Roses of May
25. Main Theme of FINAL FANTASY IV
26. Jenova Complete
27. Terra's Theme
28. Battle with an Esper
29. Anxiety
30. Cid's Theme / The Decisive Battle
31. Final Battle
32. Opening - Bombing Mission

The rest of the contest will proceed as a standard knock-out bracket with seedings, so in the first round, song 1 will go against song 32, 2 will go against 31, and so on. In general, a song with a seeding of n will face the song with a seeding of 33-n.

Polls will be open for two days again, and I'll either be posting two or four polls per day - I haven't quite decided yet. If you know you're not going to be around for the duration of a given poll, you can PM me your vote in advance. That's vote, singular: you'll be picking one song from two in each poll, and there are no more jokers! In the event of a tie, the song with the higher seeding will progress to the next round.

Here are my observations from the round 2 spreadsheet:

• I have to remark on the Final Fantasy VII bias again, unfortunately: 13 songs in the top 33 (31 + Cid's Theme and The Decisive Battle) are from VII, and the next best-represented game is Final Fantasy IX, with just six songs - fewer than half. Only nine games are represented at all; seven others were completely eliminated at this stage. And of the 31 people to vote in this round, 21 of them gave most, or joint most, votes to songs from VII.

• Final Fantasy VIII's songs received the second most votes on average, after VII, but only three of them made it into the top 33. That's partly down to many songs from VIII narrowly missing out - Maybe I'm a Lion, Compression of Time, The landing, Premonition and Find Your Way were all within two votes of making it - and partly because Liberi Fatali picked up more votes than any other song, which brought their average up considerably.

• Looking at the songs by generation, there is no NES representation in the final 33 at all, there are four songs from the SNES era, a whopping 22 from the PS1 era (that's two thirds!), another four from the PS2 era, and just one song from the post-PS2 era.

• There was quite a discrepancy in the number of voters in each group. Group 1 only had 21 voters, while groups 7, 8 and 9 had 28 each. That wasn't automatically a guarantee of getting more songs into the top 33, however - groups 1 and 7 both managed only two each. Group 10 saw five of its songs make it, probably because six people decided to use their jokers in that group. I would guess that whichever group was last would have benefited from that effect, which is a shame, because it has distorted the results somewhat. Nobody at all used their joker in the first four groups.

• Among people who cast at least 10 votes, Chloe Frazer had the highest percentage of the songs she voted for progress to the next round at 61.11%. Close behind were Starling (60.87%) and vaderSW1 (58.06%). On the other end of the spectrum were Kuroto (26.67%), Fangu (34.29%) and RedFFWolf (36.67%). These percentages will change slightly when the playoff has been completed.

• The people who distributed their votes most evenly - based on standard deviation - were Airling (6.67 percentage points), myself (6.95 PP) and Fangu (7.24 PP). The people who distributed their votes least evenly, typically those who voted for songs from only a few games, among those who cast at least 10 votes were Starling (14.97 PP), Ruby Rose (14.33 PP) and Chloe Frazer (14.18 PP). It seems that the more you spread your votes around, the less of your songs will get through... Airling, Kuroto and I were the only people to vote for songs from 13 games - nobody voted for 14 or more. The three of us also voted for songs from the greatest number of games in the first round - all I had to do was replace 19 with 13 and 20 with 14 in that sentence.

• The "biggest fangirl" award of this round goes to Kuroto, who voted for 81.82% of the songs from Final Fantasy X (9 of 11). Following her were Flare (72.73%, also Final Fantasy X) and Cali (78.57%, Final Fantasy VIII). I'm not counting games which had fewer than 5 songs in this round, but Fangu gets an honourable mention for voting for 100% of the songs from Final Fantasy XII (4 of 4).

• The highest (combined) voter match score was between Phoenix Wright and Commander Vimes, at 35.42%. They weren't one of the top three matches in the first round, but CV was part of the top match with Airling and PW was part of the second match with Major Zero, who is in second place again this time with Doc Brown (33.18%). Third place goes to Lex and ForceStealer (29.03%)

Spotted anything interesting that I missed? Share it here!

^Thanked your post for unnecessary but satisfyingly pompous use of mathematical terms, you know how happy that makes me <3 <3 <3

Also me and Forcie music match, yaaay <3

Flintlock said:

• The highest (combined) voter match score was between Phoenix Wright and Commander Vimes, at 35.42%. They weren't one of the top three matches in the first round, but CV was part of the top match with Airling and PW was part of the second match with Major Zero, who is in second place again this time with Doc Brown (33.18%). Third place goes to Lex and ForceStealer (29.03%)

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Yeah, That's right Phoenix Wright, I've moved on! I don't need you anymore. Maybe we weren't meant to be soulmates after all. My days of waiting for you to come back to me are over. *cries profusely.*

Lex said:

^Thanked your post for unnecessary but satisfyingly pompous use of mathematical terms, you know how happy that makes me <3 <3 <3

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I can only assume you're referring to standard deviation, which is more like Statistics 101 than a pompous mathematical term if you ask me.

Anyway, the spreadsheet now contains a tab called "Final 32 preview". If you want an editable copy of the bracket so you can either make predictions or pick your favourite songs, let me know, either by posting in this thread (if you don't mind your choices being made public) or by sending me a PM (if you want to keep them to yourself). I encourage you to share them, though. I'll start sending out the copies tomorrow evening once the Decisive Battle vs Cid's Theme playoff has closed.

Ooh, ooh, I want one pls! I started making picks in my head (cba to write them down) but I wanna do it right and see how well I know my fellow TLS-ers!

Thanks

Ditto. We gotta make this a thing and award a perfect bracket some way.

Lex said:

Also me and Forcie music match, yaaay <3

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I noticed this the other day

I'll be PMing the people who have shown an interest in making predictions / picking their favourites, because I realised I need their Google-linked email addresses to give them editing access to the spreadsheet (the published version of which can be found here). In the meantime, here are some instructions:

Step 1: Find your tab at the bottom of the page.




Step 2: Decide whether you're making predictions or picking favourites in the top-right corner. This is just for cosmetic purposes. If you want a second bracket, so you can make both types, I'd be happy to give you another.




Step 3: Start making your picks. You should see little arrows in some of the cells - click them to choose a song from the drop-down list. After you've picked something, it will be highlighted in the previous round.




Step 4: The final round works a bit differently. You don't need to touch the cells which have an exclamation mark (!) next to them - they'll be filled in automatically based on your other choices. Instead, just pick the two finalists, then the first- and third-placed songs.




Step 5 (optional): If you want to start over, click the reset button in the menu and then choose "Clear all selections". You'll need to give the spreadsheet additional permissions, but don't worry, it's a harmless script, which you can view here.




That's all there is to it. I have noticed a bit of weirdness when making the copies of the brackets, so let me know if something doesn't work for you. I'll put up the first polls of the round of 32 shortly!

Edit: just for informational purposes, I'll be posting four polls a day in the round of 32, two polls a day in the round of 16 and the quarter-finals, then one poll a day in the semi-finals and one every two days in the finals.

I went with my gut feelings when determining my bracket. I realize my taste might be different in many ways from your alls but I'd be interested to see how close we get.

That said:

Looking at the brackets, I think I went a little more liberal and hopeful then my fellow forumers.

^ If that's a prediction, you should consider that One-Winged Angel and Aerith's Theme can only meet at the semi-final stage, so at least one of them must finish outside of the top two. Same goes for Jenova and Not Alone; they can't finish third and fourth. Do you want to try making a bracket?

Do they? I might have my brackets wrong then. I doodled it on paper and thought I had the match ups right. Yes please.

I just don't want One Winged Angel or Aerith's Theme to be number one. I don't feel like either of them are anywhere near the best and they're constantly over-represented. I understand that they're iconic and that music is subjective, but even from the most objective standpoint I can muster I can think of at least a few from VII alone that beat them to the top spot. If you widen that to other games, they fall quite far down the list.

I put up a new front page article. I always litter my articles with encouragements to sign up to our forum but I don't know if they ever work.

Does anyone want to record a podcast "minisode" about the final 32 later today? We'd just run down the match-ups, discussing our predictions and personal preferences. The edited version should only be 20 minutes or so. I only need 1-3 people to join me, but everyone is welcome, even if you don't normally appear on the podcast. I'm going to appear on the actual podcast to mention it as well, but that probably won't be published until the weekend, by which point most of this round's polls will already have closed.

Sounds fun. What time would you be recording?

Dunno, whenever is good for people. I should be home for the rest of the day.