The Lifestream ranks Final Fantasy songs

I sort of feel like running a new event relating to the Final Fantasy series, but having a "The Lifestream ranks Final Fantasy games" event would be boring because it's pretty obvious FFVII would win (this is, after all, an FFVII site). I guess I could just exclude FFVII from consideration to find out what people's second favourite game would be, but I don't feel like doing that either. So I think focusing on one of the best parts of the games, their soundtracks, would be a better idea.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do this yet, but I think we should have people nominate a set amount of songs each and then when people have gotten to a nice power of two I can start setting up brackets. I'm open to suggestions on what that set amount should be, though I think I'm probably going to go with 256 songs total for the contest all told. The brackets will probably be randomly generated so if "One-Winged Angel" faces off against "Dancing Mad" in the first round, that's just the way it will have to go.

Anyway, discuss the idea, make suggestions, etc. I'll probably open a nominations thread in a few days after people have had time to discuss it a bit.

Yes!!!!

It has been my plan for quite a while to have some sort of battle/contest in March - it's already on the event calendar. I was going to make a thread about it as soon as the Chrono Trigger playthrough was over, but you've beaten me to it.

I'd be happy for you to run it, though, and I like the topic you've chosen. Let me know if you need any help with it.

While the random bracket format can be exciting, it certainly doesn't produce a ranking (see thread title). The only guarantee would be that the #1 song would win. The #2 song might get eliminated in the first round.

I like the combination of a group stage and knockout stage that is used in lots of sporting events. The group stage reduces the risk of a favourite going out too early, as multiple teams (/songs) can qualify from each group, and the knockout stage adds excitement at the end.

256 songs would mean 255 match-ups in your system, which is a lot. Even if you decide to stick with it, I'd suggest halving the starting number to 128, which would need 127 threads. If you agree to use a hybrid system, 128 would allow 16 groups of 8, and if two qualify from each group, you'll only have to make a total of 16+31 = 47 threads.

I wasn't necessarily going to do one match-up for each pair of songs. I was thinking of starting out having four or eight entries per poll and then having maybe the top two (if it's eight) or one (if it's four) advance to the next round. But there could obviously be other ways of doing it, too.

Anyway, I like a lot of what else you've said. Do you have more information on how to run a group stage/knockout contest?

The Man said:

I wasn't necessarily going to do one match-up for each pair of songs. I was thinking of starting out having four or eight entries per poll and then having maybe the top two (if it's eight) or one (if it's four) advance to the next round. But there could obviously be other ways of doing it, too.

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In that case, your idea was basically the same as mine. Carry on.

Anyway, I like a lot of what else you've said. Do you have more information on how to run a group stage/knockout contest?

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I think the key is to keep things simple and understandable. As much as I'm always tempted to use a complicated voting system to get the fairest result possible, it's probably best to stick to one of vBulletin's built-in polls (either single or multiple choice). We want lots of people to participate, and it's surprising how many people are willing to choose an option and press "vote" but not actually write anything about their choice.

Yeah, I was pretty certain I was going to stick to what's possible with vBulletin's software. Having Australian balloting to pick the best song would be nice, but not really practical.

So anyway, seeing as it's March now, should I just go ahead and start a nomination thread? If so, should I place a limit on how many songs each person can nominate, or should I just allow people to keep nominating until we reach 256 (or whatever)?

I still think 256 songs is too many, but if you're set on that number, I won't stop you. It's just more work for you. Actually, I can help with the threads as well if you feel like it's too much for one person.

So yeah, open a nominations thread. It's probably best to have some kind of limit, otherwise someone could come in and say "the entire soundtracks of Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX" and then you'd have to close the nominations.

Yeah, I should specify at least that a person can't just nominate every single song from a game or something Idk. I'm sleepy. I'll try to set up something logistically sensible tomorrow.

We've ended up with 280 nominations. Here's how we'll proceed:

Every day from this Saturday, the 31st of October - when our Halloween contest closes - for 10 days (with a couple of rest days), I'll put up two multiple-choice polls of 14 songs each. You will be able to vote for up to four songs in each poll (vBulletin doesn't have the ability to enforce this, so you'll have to be careful). You can also pick one poll in which you can vote for more than four songs. The top four songs from each poll will go through to the next round, excluding ties. If that gives us less than 100 songs in total, the songs with the most votes that didn't make their group's top four will qualify. If there are ties, the songs with the best rank within their group will qualify. If there are still ties, I'll either include a few extra songs or run a play-off poll, depending on how many there are.

I just completed the random draw for the first round, which you can see here.

The second round will take another 10 days, approximately. I'll put up one poll of 10 songs each day. You'll be able to vote for three songs in each poll, and again, you'll be able to break that limit in one poll. The top three songs in each poll will make it through to the next round, excluding ties, with the remaining places being filled by the best runners-up. If there are ties, the songs with the best rank within their group will qualify. If there are still ties, the song with the better ranking in round 1 will qualify. If there are still ties after that, I'll have to flip a coin or something, because the limit of 32 songs won't be flexible, as it was in the first round.

Once we've got a top 32, we'll have the traditional head-to-head brackets to bring us down to 16, 8, 4, 2 and 1.

The polls in the first round will run for three days, and every other poll will run for two, giving us a whopping 61 polls (62 if we have a third-place play-off), taking us through to mid-December. Hopefully the TLS awards can wait until then to start, because I really don't want to compress this any more than it already is. The awards started on the 26th of December last year so it shouldn't be a problem.

It's going to be a bit of a slog to get through the first two rounds in particular, which is why I would have preferred to start with far fewer songs, but that was Aaron's decision and it would be wrong to ignore any of the nominated songs. I won't be asking people to explain their choices until we get to the second round, though they will be free to do so at any time, of course.

If there are any objections to this format, you've got until Sunday!

Edit: a quick word on the names of the songs. I'll be using the "official" names where possible, by which I mean the English-language names that Square Enix have used in their most recent soundtrack releases. That might be a bit jarring in some cases - "Anxiety" instead of "Anxious Heart", for instance - but it's just about the only way to be consistent, since there are so many variations of the Japanese translations.

My goodness, seems like we'll end up with a March Madness of music!

Anybody want to submit prediction brackets? (No honestly when we get down to like the top 50ish that might be kind of fun, lol)

Thanks for taking on such a behemoth of a task, Flint!

Perhaps when we get to the last 32.

Yessssss! Thanks big bro. I've been looking forward to this since the spring. It's going to be like choosing between lovers, but I can't wait to see how it pans out.

Looking at the groups, I can already foresee people struggling to pick as few as four songs in certain groups (*cough* nine). I want to try and get a top 100 that is as close as possible to our "true" top 100, but vB doesn't have anything like preferential voting, so we have to find workarounds. And here's what I thought up:

You can pick one group from the 20 in the first round and vote for as many songs in that group as you want.

Just make a post saying "I'm using my joker" in the corresponding thread. Posting a picture of Kefka is optional.

I also thought that it would be a good idea to have the first round's polls run for three days, since there are so many songs to choose from in each one. That will only add one day to the total (since the others overlap), so I thought I'd start on Saturday. That's when the Halloween contest poll closes so there won't be much overlap, if any.

All of the above sounds good. I imagine some people will be unaware of or ignore the "only vote for four except in your joker round" rule though.

I'll try my best to make it clear. There'll be an announcement up shortly.

Gah, group one is just so hard for me already. I can just about whittle it down to five from a shortlist of seven... But then I would be pained to see any of those five not go through.

I feel like using a joker just for one extra song is a bit pointless and if I choose more than five it might dilute the chances of those ones I truly love. Tough one.

I don't want to encourage tactical voting, but... you could vote tactically.

The announcement is now up. I'll put it here as well since it will only be visible until Monday. I'll get around to making a front page post as well.

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Hi everyone,

If you hadn't already noticed, we're about to have an enormous Final Fantasy music event here at The Lifestream. Thanks to your nominations, we've gathered 280 of the best songs from the series, and over the course of the next month and a half, we're going to compile a top 100 ranking.

The first round of the event starts tomorrow, Saturday the 31st of October. Here's how it will work:

· There are 20 groups of 14 songs each. These groups have already been randomly drawn - you'll find them here - so you can start thinking about your favourites in each group. There are also Youtube playlists here.

· I'll post the polls for two groups each day. The polls will be open for three days (72 hours).

· You will have four votes in each poll. Our forum software can't enforce this limit, so please count your votes! I'll check afterwards as well.

· Because there's bound to be a group that contains more than four of your best-loved songs, you have the chance to cast as many votes as you wish in one poll. Choose carefully - once you've used this "joker", you won't be able to change it to a different poll.

· You don't have to give explanations for your votes, though you are welcome to do so.

· The top four songs, excluding ties, in each poll will make it through to the next round. The remaining 20 places will be filled by the songs with the most votes which didn't make their group's top four. Songs will be seeded in the next round according to how many votes they receive in this round, so every vote matters!

If you have any questions, you can post them in the event's discussion thread. I hope lots of you take part, it's going to be a blast.

- Your Community Manager, Flintlock

Flintlock said:

· The top four songs in each poll will make it through to the next round. The remaining 20 places will be filled by the songs with the most votes which didn't make their group's top four. Songs will be seeded in the next round according to how many votes they receive in this round, so every vote matters!

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I'm very glad to see this. Looking at Group 9, there are far more than just four songs worthy of the top 100. I think I know when my joker's coming out to play.

Voted in the first two groups. Haven't used my "freebie" yet as I found this very easy to find my four favorites in these groups, but I'm sure that will change. Brilliant bit of separation and piecing it all together Flint, I can't wait to see what comes of this!

Already it's so difficult and yet so perfectly so. I'm gonna enjoy this so much, but I am not gonna sleep well at night. I'll be haunted by the dying sound of beautiful melodies reminding me why I should've voted for them

I am disproportionately excited about this!!! Lets face it, the music is at least half the reason we even play Final Fantasy.

Flintlock said:

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This picture makes me want to be where-ever that is so very much.http://thelifestream.net//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/

Monterosa said:

Flintlock said:

· The top four songs in each poll will make it through to the next round. The remaining 20 places will be filled by the songs with the most votes which didn't make their group's top four. Songs will be seeded in the next round according to how many votes they receive in this round, so every vote matters!

Click to expand...

I'm very glad to see this. Looking at Group 9, there are far more than just four songs worthy of the top 100. I think I know when my joker's coming out to play.

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I'm actually going to refine this slightly further: if there is a clear top 4 in a poll, with no ties, they'll all qualify automatically, but if there are songs tied for fourth place, they'll have to compete with the "best runners-up" on vote counts. Unless anybody objects to this change, that is.

I'm just a bit worried that a group with, say, three stand-out songs will finish with another three songs tied for fourth place with only a handful of votes. They shouldn't necessarily take priority over the fifth- or sixth-placed song in a group with six stand-out songs (and we definitely have a couple of those).

Edit: also, in case anyone's wondering about the spreadsheet, I've been writing the functions to automatically determine if a song will qualify from this stage of the event or not, so don't be surprised if you see partial or even completely fictitious data in there while I test it out.

Announcement: since we've reached the half-way point of the first round, I'm going to take a day off from posting new polls so we can all catch our breath. Keep yourself entertained by looking at the upcoming polls and all the nifty stats I've compiled in the event spreadsheet.