Soulcalibur VI Roster/DLC - Did the Popularity Poll determine the roster?

ColColton

[10] Knight
We all remember the 2015 Facebook Popularity Poll held for the Soul series. Some speculated it meant nothing while others thought it might actually determine the roster for the next installment (Soulcalibur VI).

Now that the game has been out for a while and we know the roster, as well as the supposed leaked DLC (Cassandra and Amy) let's take a look back at the pool and see if that did determine anything.

Here are the final standings of the poll:

  1. Talim - 862
  2. Taki - 720
  3. Mitsurugi - 594
  4. Ivy - 536
  5. Kilik - 536
  6. Siegfried - 500
  7. Nightmare - 498
  8. Zasalamel - 471
  9. Yoshimitsu - 454
  10. Tira - 438
  11. Sophitia - 378
  12. Cassandra - 339
  13. Amy - 311
  14. Yun-seong - 295
  15. Seong Mi-na - 291
  16. Cervantes - 268
  17. Voldo - 259
  18. Xianghua - 257
  19. Raphael - 254
  20. Setsuka - 214
  21. Viola - 201
  22. Maxi - 199
  23. Hwang - 193
  24. Hilde - 154
  25. Astaroth - 142
  26. Z.W.E.I. - 113
  27. Natsu - 100
  28. Pyrrha - 98
  29. Xiba - 81
  30. Lizardman - 76
  31. Rock - 71
  32. Li Long - 65
  33. Algol - 59
  34. Dampierre - 54
  35. Aeon - 52
  36. Pyrrha Omega - 45
  37. Patroklos - 32
  38. Alpha Patroklos - 30
  39. Soul Edge - 30
  40. Leixia - 28
  41. Abyss - 27
  42. Charade - 27
  43. Olcadan - 26
  44. Elysium - 23
  45. Edge Master - 15

Now, all the characters in bold are playble characters in the base roster. The first 10 characters on the poll being on the game, the rest are more mixed throughout the poll but are mostly staples and/or expected to be in a retelling of Soulcalibur I.

Here's the interesting part, all the characters that are bold and in italics are DLC/supposed leaked DLC. Now take a closer look... Through data mining we know that the DLC characters are listed as so (ignoring the new "leak" with codenames):

Tira (DLC 1)
2B (2B)
Cassandra (DLC 2)
Amy (DLC 3)

Now look at the poll again, Tira, Cassandra and Amy are listed in that order on the poll, their DLC files being listed in the exact same order. Now of course, this could be a huge coincidence, or could the poll have actually determined the roster and/or the DLC? The fact that the DLC is listed in the exact same order is something to think about.

I'm aware this could be stretch but I just noticed it and thought I'd point it out! All in good fun :)
 
Wouldn’t this be better served as a post in here instead of making another thread? This also may have been covered before somewhere in that thread or the main one (someone please correct me if I’m wrong about that).
 
Wouldn’t this be better served as a post in here instead of making another thread? This also may have been covered before somewhere in that thread or the main one (someone please correct me if I’m wrong about that).
That thread is more about what we will get as DLC and not specifically tied to characters or to this poll. Kinda.

Though to get into topic is that yes it did determine most of the roster. Tira got hit hard, but she is still in.

Shame that Hilde didn't get a lot of votes.
 
We all remember the 2015 Facebook Popularity Poll held for the Soul series. Some speculated it meant nothing while others thought it might actually determine the roster for the next installment (Soulcalibur VI).

Now that the game has been out for a while and we know the roster, as well as the supposed leaked DLC (Cassandra and Amy) let's take a look back at the pool and see if that did determine anything.

Here are the final standings of the poll:

  1. Talim - 862
  2. Taki - 720
  3. Mitsurugi - 594
  4. Ivy - 536
  5. Kilik - 536
  6. Siegfried - 500
  7. Nightmare - 498
  8. Zasalamel - 471
  9. Yoshimitsu - 454
  10. Tira - 438
  11. Sophitia - 378
  12. Cassandra - 339
  13. Amy - 311
  14. Yun-seong - 295
  15. Seong Mi-na - 291
  16. Cervantes - 268
  17. Voldo - 259
  18. Xianghua - 257
  19. Raphael - 254
  20. Setsuka - 214
  21. Viola - 201
  22. Maxi - 199
  23. Hwang - 193
  24. Hilde - 154
  25. Astaroth - 142
  26. Z.W.E.I. - 113
  27. Natsu - 100
  28. Pyrrha - 98
  29. Xiba - 81
  30. Lizardman - 76
  31. Rock - 71
  32. Li Long - 65
  33. Algol - 59
  34. Dampierre - 54
  35. Aeon - 52
  36. Pyrrha Omega - 45
  37. Patroklos - 32
  38. Alpha Patroklos - 30
  39. Soul Edge - 30
  40. Leixia - 28
  41. Abyss - 27
  42. Charade - 27
  43. Olcadan - 26
  44. Elysium - 23
  45. Edge Master - 15
Now, all the characters in bold are playble characters in the base roster. The first 10 characters on the poll being on the game, the rest are more mixed throughout the poll but are mostly staples and/or expected to be in a retelling of Soulcalibur I.

Here's the interesting part, all the characters that are bold and in italics are DLC/supposed leaked DLC. Now take a closer look... Through data mining we know that the DLC characters are listed as so (ignoring the new "leak" with codenames):

Tira (DLC 1)
2B (2B)
Cassandra (DLC 2)
Amy (DLC 3)

Now look at the poll again, Tira, Cassandra and Amy are listed in that order on the poll, their DLC files being listed in the exact same order. Now of course, this could be a huge coincidence, or could the poll have actually determined the roster and/or the DLC? The fact that the DLC is listed in the exact same order is something to think about.

I'm aware this could be stretch but I just noticed it and thought I'd point it out! All in good fun :)

I doubt the poll was ever used or intended for that purpose, whatsoever. The number of people participating in that poll is beyond statistically insignificant when compared against the number of people who bought the last game (or indeed, any of its predecessors). Namco is a major publisher and a modern corporation: it is an absolute guaruntee that they have more substantial and reliable sources of market research to help them puzzle out such questions. Furthermore, the design priorities for this game, being a reboot which has been handled by the devs in a very particular manner that attempts to be ultra-faithful to the original plot, also constrains the choices considerably. Considering all evidence, it's pretty clear to me that the poll was never meant to serve as a barometer of actual popularity of characters--they knew, afterall, that it would reach only a small handful of players.

Rather, I think it was (like many of the character "data leaks" recently, which are entirely implausible as actual leaks when you look at how they came into the public view) just a bit of viral marketing. You drop a little bit of debate into the online communities via various forms of social media, you get the more hardcore members debating, and voila (not Viola, voila ;) instant self-perpetuating hype train, at virtually zero cost to the internal marketing team. The dropped that poll as soon as they were greenlit for initial design discussions for SCVI, I would wager. I'm sure they paid attention to it, but I'm equally certain it was a drop of water in a lake for all of the absolute influence it exerted over their ultimate decisions, which would have been driven more by their design philosophy and objectives for the new game and (to the extent marketing research did inform upon any decisions) more reliable sources of information which they have accrued over time.

Incidentally, while I personal see no problem with this thread, if you look through the afore-mentioned thread, you will find that all of this has indeed been discussed ad nauseum there. I doubt anybody is going to do more but reiterate their previous perspectives in that respect.

Edit: As a sidenote, it's still entirely possible that the poll did roughly correlate to broader trends in the overall popularity of characters, trends Namco would have as a clear an understanding of as anybody, and that therefor, while not predictive in its own right, it still maps closely to information Namco could have utilized if they chose to. However, the individual popularity of given characters is only one factor among many that will govern what a roster ends up looking like.
 
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I made a post about this some pages back in the general thread, with regards to season two, and it seems like they did, but then again, I extremely doubt that it was their only metric. At some point, all the data would come to some kind of consensus, even considering the spectrum of different opinions from veterans, newcomers, hardcore, and casual players all alike. It’s most likely a more complex situation than any of us actually can imagine, unless their end goal is just to bring everyone back, and keep them all this time, to avoid the SoulCalibur V controversy again.
 
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