i find the breaking down of a game with statistics like this fascinating, keep it up

I feel this is going to an awful lot of trouble to describe exactly how bad the GB staff (and Will) are at video games. Or at least the video games that expect the nigh impossible from players. If only one of them had the foresight to record that super long GoW 3 Horde playthrough that they later redeemed themselves with.

Imagine the graphs you could make with that amount of raw data. Why, it'd be graph madness.

I don't know why I'm so fascinated with charts and numbers, but thank you for posting these.

@PsEG: Fuck, you're the best.

This was really interesting to read. Hopefully the staff make use of it.

This was really fun to read. Thank you for putting it all together!

@pat4327 said:

You are a crazy person, and I love you for it.

Like recognizes like :)

You get an immense amount of points for not shooting your own brains out while compiling all this data.

You are a crazy person, and I love you for it.

Having one with all the power-ups is never good. That's proof positive that sharing is caring. Great stuff as usual, thanks for doing the dirty work for me. :D

You may recall that I posted a few statistics last week on how Brad, Will, Patrick, and Ryan performed during their attempt to earn two achievements in Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet's Lantern Run mode. Here's the link to that blog, if you're curious.

I received a few requests for additional stats (and a venn diagram, which you can see above), and I was curious about a few things myself. With that said, let's roll a bit further in depth, shall we?

First: A Recap

Here's the main stats from last blog. Just for reference.

Just so you can easily look at all these fancy numbers for the stats below.

The Distribution of Power(-Ups)

Sparklykiss was curious as to whether certain players were hogging power-ups more than others. I watched the video over again, counting every time a message popped up for a power-up pickup. Here's the data table:

That pretty much tells us that Brad took the most power-ups, with Will in second. Given they're the most adept players, that makes sense!

Take a look at this, though:

I'm sure someone with color blindness is going to have issues with this graph, and I'm sorry for that. Never mind that, though! Remember that run #7 was the team's best run, and notice how, despite being much longer than any of the other runs, the distribution of power-ups appears far more equal.

Curious, that. Perhaps that FAQ-suggested strategy of letting one person have everything isn't always the best plan.

The Game of Death

I was personally curious if the number of deaths of each team member influenced the success or failure of each run. Here's the data table for that.

...in short, there's too few deaths overall for us to learn much here. They're pretty evenly split, too! Well, except for Brad. He does a better job of staying alive. Imagine that. Imagine that.

Anyways, I began to consider why the team fails, and for the most part, death isn't the end of the run. Save for the very first death, which will almost always cost the team a lantern, any subsequent death can be recovered from, provided another teammate can take a lantern and continue flying right.

That leads to this question: Where do the lanterns die, and what causes them to be snuffed the most often? This lead to yet more data.

To Kill a Lantern

I noted where every lantern was snuffed in every run, and put together this chart illustrating the percentage of total lanterns that survive to each point in the run.

...that might be a bit small. Here's where a table might just come in handy.

One interesting tidbit to pull out of this data: 34.4% of all lanterns are snuffed in the second tunnel, more than twice than of any other area (tunnel 3 snuffs out 15.6% of lanterns). That's relatively early to lose lanterns, all things considered.

What also doesn't help is when a team member dies first, losing that first lantern and starting a downward spiral towards the end. Who fucks up first the most? The answer to this is a little more complicated. You see, in five out of eight runs, multiple lanterns/teammates die at once. Patrick leads off (or causes) most of these multi-lantern deaths, including his error of dropping a lantern in the way of the whole team during the first run, which lead to the death of two lanterns.

When it comes to solo first deaths/fuckups, though, Brad is always the first to die. He died in the first tunnel, arena 2, and the third tunnel in the runs where he made the first mistake alone. The first two of those deaths are a bit early. The third was during the team's best run.

Conclusion

Here's what I'm gleaning from this blog's data:

• Power-ups are best shared amongst the team, with preference given to Brad and Will when there is no dire need of shields or health.
• The team, if they attempt more runs, would be wise to try and memorize some of the earlier possible tunnels, so as to keep all the lanterns alive until the more difficult/bullshit areas. This should help in regards to score, at the very least.
• The first lantern death is certainly not the end of the world, but Patrick's early deaths seem to either come at moments where the whole team fucks up. Whether this is a coincidence or otherwise, I'm not sure.
• Brad needs to show a little more caution early on in the lantern runs. The longer he survives, the better everyone does.
• ...well, unless something kills Patrick and starts a chain reaction.

I don't know if anyone finds this interesting or useful, nor do I have any clue if the staff will even attempt another lantern run on camera. If they do, you can bet I'll post more stats regarding their successes and failures. Until then, thanks for reading!