EDITED AS OF 1/8/2012

Hey all!

I came up with this a few months back during March Madness season and threw it up on Ponychan, but there weren't really any takers. Now that i'm in a place that people actively check and what have you, I bring it up again.

I created a bracket for the 26 episodes of Season 1 and matched them up randomly. It's a way to have the fans vote on episodes and bracket it down to see which is (on average) the most popular episode. There are clearly a few contenders for the title, but what if your two favorites end up going head to head? Which do you choose?

I'll post the two brackets I drew up. Keep in mind that if we did this, there's be a deadline to get your own brackets to me and then i'd probably run a new poll each day for each of the matches. Maybe every two days just to give people the chance to log in and cast their vote.

Anyway...here's the Manehattan Division:



...and the Salt Lick City Division:



I'm more than happy to run this starting this week if people are interested. Let me know what you think!

~D

This looks like fun. I love bracket competitions and comparisons, when I have to decided between two favorites it really gets me thinking. I'm all for it if you want to run the voting. I'm sure you could just editing the OP with a poll, and change it when it is time for something new. You could always do a running record or something as well.

Fillydelphia Division and Canterlot Division.

Also, how was the bracketing done?

Chewbacabra wrote:

Also, how was the bracketing done?

I just used a random number generator and put the episodes in order from top to bottom, West to East. I figured it was the fairest way, as trying to seed them would be a nightmare. Maybe if we do this, we can get a seed order for the next time it's done. That would be interesting...base it on number of votes or something like that.

I'm more than excited to do this. I'll give it a few days to see what others have to say and then maybe this weekend i'll make an official thread. There can even be a prize (Steam game for $10 or under perhaps) for the top scorer. I'm poor, but could probably afford that.

I'd have people mail me their brackets in the first week and then we'd get started. I have an email address already set up for it and everything.

~D

So we'll be deciding which episode wins each contest by voting, but we'll also be filling out brackets to try and predict how the overall vote will go?

It's an intriguing idea, but I'm not sure we have the population to do the voting. It still seems like less than ten ponies here, plus there's that thread where we all revealed our favorite episodes. That might bias the brackets somewhat.

You do bring up a good point about the voting. There really aren't too many of us and yeah...we've posted in the Episode thread already. I'd still like to do this or something similar to it. We could just have a vote each day and go through the bracket. A lot of people only mentioned 3 or 4 episodes in their posts, so all of the other ones could still be interesting to see.

Maybe just do a vote for now or just hold off til we get more people in the guild (aka nearer the release date)?

~D

Closer to the release date wouldn't be a bad idea. More people should be floating around here by then.

I support this idea. though I would suggest holding off until we've got more forum/guild members. This is mainly because it'd be more interesting if we got a large ammount of people voting on the Pony Pickoff (That sounds lame... needs a cooler name than that XP)

The Episode that wins could also be the patron episode of the forum, until next season. Whatever lesson of Friendship that episode is would be our patron lesson, with the exception of the Pilot in which case we'd have a patron lesson of always count on your friends.

It's been over three months since this topic was active, but now that Season 2 is in full swing and the release date of the game is tantalizingly close perhaps it's time to reexamine it.

You can read what's been posted already and give your input. I'm looking forward to running this and I hope that you'll all be looking forward to submitting your brackets.

~D

Rarity wrote:

Whatever lesson of Friendship that episode is would be our patron lesson, with the exception of the Pilot in which case we'd have a patron lesson of always count on your friends.

Dear Princess Celestia,

Today I learned something wonderful about friendship. As Magical as friendship already is, when focus, concentrated, and weaponized, it can be the most destructive force in the galaxy.

Your Faithful Student,
Twilight Sparkle

I've updated the original post slightly, so feel free to check it out and let me know what you think!

~D

Well, I haven't gotten any replies to this yet, so maybe i'll just start a new post in a day or two with my new plan. It's mostly the same as this, except it'll be a poll that will stay up for a day or so and i'll just post the updated bracket each day.

I'm curious as to what's going to win...I have a few episodes in mind, but some may surprise me.

~D

P.S. I'll probably redo the bracket. The winner of Season 1 will have to face off against the winner of Season 2 once it's over and done with.

Doombah wrote:

Well, I haven't gotten any replies to this yet, so maybe i'll just start a new post in a day or two with my new plan. It's mostly the same as this, except it'll be a poll that will stay up for a day or so and i'll just post the updated bracket each day.

I'm curious as to what's going to win...I have a few episodes in mind, but some may surprise me.

~D

P.S. I'll probably redo the bracket. The winner of Season 1 will have to face off against the winner of Season 2 once it's over and done with.

There's no contest when Luna Eclipsed is involved

crazyBE wrote:

There's no contest when Luna Eclipsed is involved

I don't know...i'm just not a Luna fan. I'm glad they brought her back, but that episode wasn't all that great, especially compared to quite a few since. Lesson Zero is proof of that! How will Luna Eclipsed stack up against say, Party of One? Those seem to be (generally) among the most chosen as "best" episodes by people that i've seen. We shall see!

~D

Doombah wrote:

crazyBE wrote:

There's no contest when Luna Eclipsed is involved

I don't know...i'm just not a Luna fan. I'm glad they brought her back, but that episode wasn't all that great, especially compared to quite a few since. Lesson Zero is proof of that! How will Luna Eclipsed stack up against say, Party of One? Those seem to be (generally) among the most chosen as "best" episodes by people that i've seen. We shall see!

~D

Lesson Zero was terrible imo though. Not a fan of cute Twi going insane
What was awesome about Luna Eclipsed was that they did the exact opposite of fanon Luna yet made nearly all Luna fans still love her