#lyss analyzes

[dodgebolts]

hello dtblr here's part two of the promised general survey to see things like who has the most mains, the general attitude on valorant, and if we're all 15 year old girls obsessed with gnf, and if that's changed at all since october!

It'll be open for about a week, and I'll be closing it next weekend, around Sunday, May 7th at midnight EST! It should take about 5-10 minutes to fill out :]

[dodgebolts]

Can Dream keep his status as the undisputed king of Parkour Warrior?

As promised, with Dream's newfound vigor for beating the Parkour Warrior record, an updated analysis of his best possible time given the splits shown on his most recent (11/3/23) stream!

With new course run optimizations courtesy of fruitberries and SandwichLord, Dream has improved on his previous time massively, cutting his optimized best time down nearly 30 seconds from the last time I did this. In fact, though he posited it may be possible to get a 4:20.00 last year, he's absolutely blown that prediction (and the optimized time in my previous analysis) out of the water this fall. If he manages to match this optimized time, he'll be cutting down another 22.49 seconds from his current time, which is not only an insane merit on his own, but also more than 4 seconds under the time that SandwichLord has put forward as the world record.

More details under the cut!

For those curious, this is the side-by-side, as well as the differences from the last analysis I did (from his May 29, 2022 stream) to this most recent one!

As we can see, he's improved, even if slightly, on every single level of the course. Additionally, it's an interesting trend to see that he's made the most progress/cuts on the latter half of the course, most dramatically level 5-3, The Wall Clinger, where he cut on ladder climbing time, as well as level 8-2, The Chain Pipes.

Also of note are the improvements in time on 5-1 (The Fish Bones) and 6-3 (The Bending Barrys), both sections where Dream has identified massive time sinks in the past!

As a note: the change in "One-Run Bests" just means the difference between his previous long-standing best time and the record he just set this evening.

And for those who are really interested in the raw data, here is a screenshot of the raw data taken straight from his stream and processed minimally :)

[dodgebolts]

the moment that absolutely no one has been waiting for... here are the results of the dtblr survey that went out last week! Thank you to the 650 people who responded, easily eclipsing the 598 responses that were submitted in September :]

Open the read more to see the results!

Starting out, we have a newcomer to our top 8, welcome Awesamdude, who stole a spot from Quackity (20.7% -> 3.1%). Since the last survey, more people say they main all 3 Dream Team members and less people are maining their friends, most of them slipping under 10% of respondents saying they mained them save for the lovely Foolish Gamers.

Next, there was an increase in people who came for and still are here for the Dream Team—with a decrease in the proportion of respondents for nearly every other category. Dream team forever!

While most people (85%) have been around before 2022, we have a greater proportion of newer people around now! In the last survey, that number was even greater at 93%. So don't feel bad for being new, it's actually way more likely than you think, and a very warm welcome to the 5% of people who joined after the face reveal/meetup <3

Next is a question that I think is really interesting: has watching the Dream team influenced how people play Minecraft? More people now don't play as much, which tracks considering that they play Minecraft a lot less than they used to.

Now for a rather sore subject for a lot of people, since there's been quite a shift in who plays in MCC since the last time. In the last poll, 60.8% of people said they watched Dream. Now, those viewers have dispersed across creators or just stopped watching altogether, with both George and Sapnap gaining 10% from their numbers in the fall. However, 25% of people said that they don't watch anymore, a huge jump from the 4.5% in the fall. RIP MCC Dream, you're missed severely by the community <3

Next up, Trust Issues has managed to nearly catch up to some of Dream's released music, gaining 8 percentage points from the last survey. Dream if you're out there your fans want it really badly. Release it just for us?

Since the fall, we've seen the official end of the DSMP, so this is more of a legacy question, which is reflected pretty well in the statistics shifting towards people who either don't watch or are very casual about it, our lorehead population shrinking by 4 percentage points from the first survey.

These statistics haven't moved too much since the first one, the trends going pretty much as predicted with following decreasing from main -> alt -> priv (with the exception of Dream whose alt is often confused for his main) and with George and Sapnap having fewer people following them than Dream.

The statistics shift from this question is really interesting, especially given all the shit that's gone down on Twitter since the first survey. The percentage of dtblr who joined the fandom on there increased 7.7%, a gain that knocked down nearly every other platform's percentages. AO3 also makes its debut in the top 6, tying with Reddit exactly.

Much like the twitter following question, these statistics didn't shift too much, with the YouTube algorithm and word of mouth from other people/creators doing most of the heavy lifting of marketing for the Dream Team. Shoutout to the people who found out through either Heat Waves or MrBeast, you guys are on like 2 ends of a horrific spectrum y'all are strong as hell LOL

Now for some shared fandom trauma, these results also didn't change too much from the first survey. However, for this iteration I added Supernatural, as I probably should've done the first time considering this IS the SPN website after all. I managed to grab a few more people than last time out of the 'none of the above' category with its inclusion, so hi all my former and current SPN bloggers o/ <- has never seen the show before

A vast majority of us have watched gaming content in some form before, and fewer people this time have never watched gaming content before. From those who specified which games they'd watched, the titles ranged far and wide, so it's really cool to see all of us under the dtblr umbrella :)

Once again, this question showcases how lurkers truly carry the community on their backs—there's a small decrease in lurkers from last time and an increase in blogging answers, so it seems like some of our lurkers started posting which is awesome :D

Over half of us don't really watch any other MC servers, but there's still a ton of people who like watching them! From the last time I ran the survey, most of the servers—save for Empires and Karmaland—now have fewer dtblr watchers. The QSMP makes a strong debut on the board though, eclipsing half of the other options.

This was a really interesting question, though it seems like the vast majority of people either continued posting on the same blog or took a break and just jumped back into the fray! Also a late welcome to the ~15% of people who either weren't here or started posting after <3

The answers to this question showed some of the most interesting shifts from last fall's data. Fewer people seem to be listening regularly, and the proportion of people who responded no is nearly doubled from the fall's 21%.

These data points were also really interesting to see shift from the fall! Of note, fewer people like and tolerate Jackbox, and more people seem to have warmed up to FPS games—Fortnite, CS:GO, and Valorant all have fewer people in the "don't like & won't watch" category. Still, Valorant is easily the most hated game of the 6 while Geoguessr is still almost universally loved/tolerated.

As expected in the shipping category, DNF dominates any other ships, with Karlnap easily taking the second place. The proportion of Toosh enjoyers has doubled since the fall, up from 14.7%, while the number of non-shippers has halved. Additionally, the proportion of Karlnapity enjoyers has plummeted from 25.4% to less than 10%. Otherwise, most ships have stayed within 3-4 percentage points of their fall numbers!

Once again, Dream seems to have forced the hands of nearly half of us, turning non-RPF shippers into the RPF fandom we are today. Interestingly, the number of "yes" respondents has nearly doubled from the fall, while fewer people responded that they still don't ship RPF. As would make Dream happy probably, the pie chart is colored blue and green.

Now onto some of the demographic questions, we've continued to be very heavily biased towards North America and Europe, with nearly 85% of us coming from those two continents. Compared to the fall, we've gotten proportionally more South American and Oceanian rep. Hey to the Asians/Australians who are probably going to see this when it's first posted! o/

Once again, the majority of us seem to be around the same age as our streamers, with 80% of us falling between the ages of 18 and 30. Don't fret, though! From the fall, the proportion of respondents in both the <18 and >30 age brackets have increased. All in all, nothing too surprising.

The pride parade is still running from last fall, with approximately the same percentage of people identifying as LGBTQIA+ or unsure. Just in time for pride month in a day or so!

I'm not sure if I was just miscounting but I could not for the life of me get all of these little squares into a proper rectangle, so just bear with my weird organization here. Regardless, the majority of us rep the blue and green as our favorite colors, with multiple people specifying the hex code of George's minecraft shirt or a classic teal.

It's been about a month since this has been out, and we still unfortunately haven't gotten It Takes Two back. We're still in the phase 42% of people believe that we're going to stay in for a while, getting bounced back and forth between Dream and George hoping that they can get the other wrangled for it. #I_BELIEVE!

This was kind of a cruel question for most of us, but to the 11 people who answered that have met any of them, know that you're in a very select group of users. I'm jealous!

Now to answer the age-old question of the dtblr 1%, it constitutes those of you with around or over 5,000 followers, while a majority of people have less than 50 followers or just no blog at all. As with most other follower polls I've seen floating around, the responses were heavier towards the bottom, but as is the common advice/adage, follower count means very little here—just start chatting and posting!

For the final question, I thought it'd be interesting to see what dtblr's academic interests are, and also to reaffirm or break my belief that George is like a flame to the moths of CS/Engineering-focused people, which was at least initially supported by the data from the fall. We've got people from all across the diversity of academic fields, with the most people indicating that they're interested in the arts and humanities.

As for my hypothesis: among non-George mains, the proportion of CS/Engineering people is about 5.5%, whereas 18.3% of George mains indicated that they're interested in CS/Engineering. In fact, I took a closer look at all the people who noted their interest in CS/Engineering, and nearly 70% of them said that they mained George. Like I said, moths to a flame. or something. I'm right there with y'all 🫡

That's all! Thanks so much to everyone for responding and waiting for me to get through all of this data, it's always a big task but I love seeing the results. Until next time!

[dodgebolts]

tbh this is kind of pointless but I've spent like 20 hours learning html for this so here's a website where you can see the relationship between video length and view count for all of Dream's and MrBeast's videos!

unfortunately, because this includes ALL available videos on both channels, Jimmy's 10 hour long old videos are stretching the x-axis with 3 23-hour videos, so to zoom in, click, drag, and release over the area you'd like, as seen in the gif below. To see the whole graph again, double click anywhere in the gray graph area!

you can toggle them both on and off if you're only interested in seeing one of the two, and hovering over any data point will show you the title, the video length, and the number of views circa 3 hours ago :>

you can find the website HERE!

as for findings, it's pretty difficult to really tell what works especially on Jimmy's end because he has so many videos, but for him and Dream, it looks like there's a positive relationship between the length of a video and view count. For Dream, there seems to be a sweet spot of around 30-50 minutes, whereas Jimmy's looks like around 15 minutes is the sweet spot for his videos' performance. But, just looking at what seems to be pretty tight regulation around keeping his videos between 10 and 20 minutes, I can imagine that's getting skewed a little yk

[sandsofdteam-moved]

I haven't finished going through the survey yet because I'm slow as shit but for relevancy's sake here's some sneak peeks:

nearly half of the people who responded have been here since early 2021, and 42.14% of people have been here for 2 years to the date (Oct 2020). To the 23 of you who've been here since 2019, godspeed to ya it's been quite the wait o7

We also collectively had no faith in dnf to stream before the meetup, and it looks like we were right, with 95.2% of people having no faith in them! At least George managed to get out so he could book and catch his flight 🙏

It's been so fun going through all the answers and it's been an honor to serve next to you on this wild ride dtblr. Until next time <3

[sandsofdteam-moved]

hey people of tumblr here’s an updated top 10 of mcc players dodgebolt skill rating, for players who have played at least 2 dodgebolts!

some fun observations

- the Dream team’s extensive db practice that they rarely used during s1 seems to have paid off— they’re the top 3 active players by a long shot

- all of the top 5 active players are currently or are confined to be roommates in the future! 50% of the players on this chart are going to be living in only 2 households. proximity power at its best!

- despite a 5-event absence in canon, technoblade still holds strong in his legacy of og dodgebolt master. Taking my techno crumbs </3

- all of the top 6 players have killed Dream in a video posted to one of his YouTube channels, including Dream himself

- in the post that inspired this one, neither Sapnap nor Illumina were in the board. They knocked out both Scott and Quig to place themselves squarely in the top 5.

hope you enjoyed! if you have the time please drop an upvote on the post from which I got the skill rating equation and the inspiration to do this!

[sandsofdteam-moved]

ok found the source of the george plot armor discussion (the new all things mcc video) and honestly it's not a bad video and as much as I hate the 'plot armor' argument I can't say it doesn't rack up views and the title is good for engagements for their channel, which is a primary focus so godspeed to them, they have really great content!

That being said it always feels reductive to consider George's Sands moments primarily based on luck because pretty much every clip in that video is partially luck and partially skill—any of us here on dtblr can confidently say that George is an extremely skilled player. He fucks around a LOT in game but if you watch him while he's in his minecraft element (see: PKW George, Hypixel Parkour George, his most recent Manhunt style video, him and Dream playing Hypixel Bridges, the axolotl video where he survives on half a heart for a while, etc.) or just listen to Dream ramble praises of him, it'd be easy to see that he is way above average in movement and combat skills, as well as game sense and quick reactivity. They SHINE in his "close call" Sands plays, so bc I'm bored here's a lil blurb for each clip in the video about why George shouldn't be boiled down to just a lucky dude :]

MCC 16 TNT Room (00:45)

I mean this clip has probably been thrown around a hundred times by now but his risk assessment is pretty clear: he asks if anyone knows how it works, when he falls into the pit he immediately starts torching, when he gets to the top of the ladders he glances to see if the spiders were following him up, and then he very deliberately hides behind the pillars since explosion damage is mitigated through blocks (like when you're using beds to kill the dragon or netherite mine, you put a block in between you and the explosion) and gets out scot-free and 90 (unmultiplied) coins richer!

MCC 16 Creeper Stairs (01:22)

I think this clip is more luck than the first one and the health differential reflects that, but again you can see him very clearly juking the explosions and backing up once he gets hits off on the creepers. It's really no different to the creeper bombing that everyone does in Sands and Skybattle, dealing some damage to creepers, setting them off, and then backing up so their damage can kill other entities. The first set of creepers he's golden, only taking half a heart of damage, which would probably reflect that the strategy works here.

The only reason this clip is even considered a "lucky play" is because of the second set of creepers, which creates a cool freakazoid creeper cannon because George only deals the damage to one of the creepers and it falls behind the other, so the first creeper doesn't kill the second. The situation itself was bad luck because of the creeper lineup but he still reacts incredibly fast when he tries to hit it in midair. He doesn't take as much time to recover as I would've liked, but you can see him repeat the strategy a third time and deliberately DOES hit both creepers this time, meaning that the explosion of one of them deals enough damage to kill the other and clear the path, and he again makes it out with about half of his health and adds 30 coins to his team total.

MCC 17 Zombies (01:43)

This one doesn't really need any explanation tbh like he's just fighting zombies and trying to use the default sword sweeping edge, he gets mobbed, smartly uses his healing potion when he gets low, and when the sweeping edge doesn't work a second time, does what works best for him as a PVPer and crits them out. It takes a little more time, maybe, but he recovers pretty damn quickly and you can see how playing into his skillset almost immediately puts him in a better position, instead of using the sweeping edge that I rarely ever see him use outside of Sands!

MCC 16 Creeper/Spider Pits (02:00)

I have my critiques here on what he could've done better (finished killing the spiders before turning to the creeper pit and waited to heal more), but I also think that it's a fair assumption that the other pit would release spiders as well, which he could kill pretty easily. Again, I think most of the luck came from the creeper damage not killing him, but just like the last clip, once he registers he's in danger, you can see his instinctual skill take over—he runs out of the danger zone, splash pot heals himself, and then stands on the rim of the pit and calculates his plan of action before going in once he sees another creeper spawn.

MCC 18 Zombie Room (02:23)

I think this is pretty similar to the other zombie fighting clip in that it's again just George clearing mobs out, but this one demonstrates his amazing quick thinking and movement skills even more! At the onset of the clip, he's already lit up the spawner and is in the ladder area—where the zombies can't reach him—killing them. He gets rid of the spawner and tries running out of the room with the sand, but when it's clear he can't do that, he reevaluates and runs to the other side of the room, giving him space to both heal and start critting the zombies out, and you can see his micro-jukes and pvp skills shine through in the way he weaves through and picks off the zombies one-by-one, focusing one at a time so he's not left with 5 zombies on half health rather than 2 on full that he can again divide and conquer. He picks up around 45 coins here and a sand, which is huge!

MCC 18 Ceiling Skeletons (02:48)

Ok definitely starting to sound a little repetitive here, but George's ability to react quickly and his decision-making skills are on full display here: he sees the skeleton on the section he'd cleared and moves on, when he hears it fall he turns around to kill it, and when he hears the second one do the same, you can see him get another hit on the skeleton he was already focusing on, puts the second in his line of sight, and does the same "finish one before moving on to the other" strategy he employed in the last clip. He looks up at another hole in the sky, sees another skeleton waiting in the wings, and immediately reacts since he knows what it's going to do, and weaves pretty well, missing his first crit, hitting his second, and then knowingly just going in for the last hit he knows will kill it before canvassing the rest of the ceiling to see if there are any other skeletons, finishing the room up, and grabbing the coins! Again, this was NOT plot armor, it was a demonstration of some of George's best skills all coming together to help him show off with a bit of flair (read: heart-attack inducing SOT runs)

MCC 18 Mob of Mobs and Skeletons (03:12)

He starts off clearing out the horde of zombies and husks really efficiently, again using the micro-jukes and singling out tactic I've already mentioned tons of times in this post! Sure the skeletons shooting him is partially based on luck but anyone with eyes could see the way he assessed the scene, ran through the skeletons to close the door to limit the number of mobs to deal with to two, and then expertly dodged and weaved so that the skeletons were more likely to miss than hit, and then once he was out of their range, stopped to see where they were and systematically killed both of the skeletons systematically.

Brief Intermission about George Barely Making it Out of the Arena

ok this isn't part of the plot armor thing I don't think but also these two clips are very swooner to me because he's confident and extremely efficient in both of them—in the first one, he knows he has the time and the sand to get at least one cubby, and when he realizes he has enough time and enough sand, he beelines it for the second cubby and then takes the most efficient route back to the portal (all while his team is screaming at him) and I'm not entirely sure, but it also looks like he's mouthing the number of seconds right after he fills the timer to keep track. It really is easy, apparently, bringing in enough coins for his team to snag the FIRST INDIVIDUAL spot for the game, over the next person (Pete, inarguably one of the best Sands players) by 100 coins!

The second clip can't really be argued for anything tbh, it's just George having enough sand and making his efficient beeline for the timer—his movement skill shines through with him moving through the upwards parkour like it's nothing and then getting to the timer, but otherwise it was just him being good and using his team's comms (well. screams) to their fullest potential!

MCCAS Pit AKA the SOT play to end all SOT plays (4:57)

Well I'm going to be totally honest and say that he definitely did get a shit ton of luck going into the pit, but a lot of other players would've had that same luck and still died, considering just how many mobs there were. It's a tough ass situation to be in, but he manages it really well! He starts off making a beeline for the spawners, which in this situation HAS to be priority #1. Minimizing the number of monsters you have to face is important, and as he's shown in clips before, he's acutely aware of this.

Then, he tries getting out of the pit after picking up a few coins, knowing that he's in a risky position. When he gets shot away from the ladders, he makes the crucial decision to keep running. I'd bet that quite a few other players (myself included) would have tried that jump again as a last-ditch attempt to get out, but George recognizes that without fail, he dies getting out of the pit. Instead, he pulls out a strat that we the repercussions of in dodgebolt and runs along the circumference of the pit, dodging and weaving as he does. He torches where he can, again assesses the potion strat I've mentioned twice (unfortunately, it's a damage pot and not a healing one, so it's good reason to panic), and then continues running. He gets stuck in a cobweb, and I'll give luck the edge on the fact that the stray doesn't shoot him again while he's stuck. He doubles back, makes his way around the pit towards a ladder, but he recognizes that the skeletons are all focused on a zombie so he takes the opportunity to light the area up once more to ensure that no more spawning happens, picking up any coins he can (all while still using his micro-jukes like a god), and for good reason, starts screaming that he's the best because well, he is after that god-tier play.

OVERALL

Well if you managed to make it through this monster of a post, you'd see that George's performance in Sands, even the ones that we'd consider to be the result of luck, it's pretty clear that a majority of his crazy plays are because he has clear skills in every aspect that the game tests. He has strategies he uses time and time again, and he's fucking great at them. To call all of that luck is completely disregarding his skill. Not to repeat what tons of people have already said, but just because he's the "worst of the dream team" at MCC does NOT mean that he's bad at the game. Sapnap is by far the top player of S2 and Dream is, for the most part, revered as one of the best Sands of Time players and leaders in the event as a whole. Hell, George has been incredibly consistent overall, having a S2 individual placement average of 13, and without the disaster that was MCC14 for dnf, averages right outside of the top 10. Don't sleep on George y'all, like Dream said, he's a force to be reckoned with when he wants to be.

[sandsofdteam-moved]

updated dodgebolt statistics!

you can see my first post here, from before mcc19 and all-stars! this has updated stats, as well as some more specific breakdowns that I think are interesting to see. some commentary under the graphics in the cut!

some interesting notes:

from before mcc18 to now, Ryguyrocky has shot up the rankings, due to a great performance in mcc19 that put him into the 2-timers club and his dominant performance in his first dodgebolt (MCC2, 58% accuracy with a 100% dodge rate). this knocked dave krtzyy out of the overall rankings from the last time I did this!

in light of recent news, it's possible that the top 3 dodgebolt players in competitive events (ie after team balancing in mcc6) are all going to be out for the rest of the season. it'll be interesting to see who can try and overtake dnf and techno as the dominant dodgebolt forces.

peeking at the post-balancing rankings, Grian and Cub are climbing up the ranking, excited to see where s2 takes them, especially as they're steadily improving overall as players :>

There are only 8 people that have shown up in the 6 dodgebolts of S2 multiple times, Sapnap leading with 4 appearances (14, 15, 18, 19), with Fruit, CPK, and Scott having 3 appearances and the rest having the baseline 2. Combined, they have showed up 21 times in those 6 rounds.

Martyn InTheLittleWood also shows up in the non-canon rankings, having only 1 canon appearance (MCC6), whilst getting to dodgebolt in both of his non-canon appearances (Jingle Jam & Pride)!

OTHER FUN FACTS

In canon, the S-tiers (Sapnap, Pete, Fruit, Dream, Illumina, Punz, Techno, and Quig) have made it to dodgebolt a collective 38 times. This means that on average, there are have been 2 S-tiers per dodgebolt.

There are only 5 players who have made it to Dodgebolt more than once in both seasons— Scott, Seapeekay, Fruit, Dream, and Sapnap

10 players have had the potential to be 5-time winners, being in dodgebolt at least 5 times (including non-canon): Pete, Quig, HBomb, Phil, Scott, Shubble, Seapeekay, Fruit, Dream, and Sapnap.

I ran t-tests on the accuracy, dodge rate, and KDR of all dodgebolt players vs. those who had been counted as having at least 2 under my criteria for each category. None came back significant except the difference in accuracy between all dodgebolt players in all canon events and those who have been to at least 2 canon dodgebolts.