LFF
From Board 8 Wiki
LFF, aka the Leach Fanbase Factor, is to 3-or-more way polls what SFF is to 1v1 polls in terms of impact. The basic idea is that whereas in a one on one situation between two characters sharing a fanbase the stronger character will make his weaker counterpart look bad, in a four way poll both characters sharing a fanbase will make each other look worse.
Here is a real-life example using two characters we know plenty about: Link and Cloud. In a 1v1 setting the result between these two the result would be
- Link - 54%, Cloud - 46%
Now let's add four more characters into the poll: Ganondorf, Zelda, Tingle, and Midna. The result would be something like this:
- Cloud - 42%, Link - 41%, Ganon - 7%, Zelda - 7%, Tingle - 2%, Midna - 2%
Even though he was given four opponents he can SFF nearly to death, the small amount of support from the Zelda fanbase that those four alternatives received "leached" enough strength away from Link to make up the sizeable gap between himself and Cloud, resulting in his second place finish.
The argument against LFF is basically, "but including non-Zelda characters would hurt Link way more!" While this is true, the point is that these new characters would also hurt Cloud way more, resulting in a win of comparable size to the original 1v1 matchup. Let's run an example using four new characters who don't share a fanbase with Link or Cloud: Snake, Dante, Ryu, and Kerrigan. That 6-way would end with this result:
- Link - 26%, Cloud - 23%, Snake - 18%, Dante - 15%, Ryu - 13%, Kerrigan - 5%
Yes, not being able to SFF his opponents hurt Link badly, costing him 15 percentage points off his old total. But having to compete against something other than the Zelda fanbase hurt Cloud far worse, as he lost a full 19 percentage points, well more than enough to cost him the victory.
[edit]LFF in the 2007 Character Battle
- New Square competition from Vaan (9.54%) holds Rikku (27.14%) back from advancing ahead of Knuckles (27.84%)
- Diablo (15.42%) and Arthas (15.67%) leach the Blizzard/PC vote from one another, allowing KOS-MOS (18.43%) to advance ahead of them
- Ryu (36.30%) blows past Bowser (28.62%), who was heavily Nintendo-leached by the surprisingly strong Mewtwo (24.95%) and also Toad (10.14%)
- in the following round Ryu topped Bowser again (26.16% to 24.07%), proving himself to be stronger in this format, but regardless, LFF made the R1 result more lopsided than it should have been
- Mario (57.91%) SFFs fellow old-school icon Pac-Man (10.11%) into the ground, but their shared fanbase allows Big Boss (23.00%) to look fantastic in comparison
- Donkey Kong (27.66%) gets pounded by Kratos (40.13%) after he and Marth (20.65%) hurt each other
- Ryu Hayabusa (45.80%) destroys Riku (27.24%), who was being leached by Roxas (17.67%)
- though no amount of LFF can explain why Ryu H outscored Riku and Roxas combined
- Squall (35.33%) and Aeris (25.48%) hold each other back, allowing Akuma (23.05%) to sneak up and finish closer to second than most expected
Round Two
- Sephiroth (57.11%) takes full advantage of there being three Nintendo characters (Fox 19.74%, Meta-Knight 13.19%, Wario 9.97%) LFFing each other to score an otherwise astounding R2 percentage
- Vincent (27.75) sort of takes advantage of likewise facing three Nintendo opponents, but Bidoof (13.27%) refuses to crumble and Link (51.19%) remains untouchable, limiting the LFF damage
- Vergil (15.86%) uses triple Nintendo SFF (Ganondorf 31.06%, Luigi 28.11%, Mudkip 24.97%) to look slightly less pathetic than he deserved
- Ada (19.41%) gets Capcom-SFFed (maybe?) by Dante (43.41%), allowing Amaterasu (20.83%) to slip by for second place
- Vivi (21.73%) and Tidus (20.82%) ruin each others chances of stopping Pikachu (24.14%) from advancing to Round Three
- Donkey Kong (14.39%) looks awful, but nevertheless manages to leach enough strength from Kirby (24.81%) to allow L-Block (28.33%) to move on to Round Three
- With Roxas out of the picture, Riku (19.43%) takes full advantage of the lack of Square/RPG character to leach his strength, making up the entire distance between himself and Ryu Hayabusa (18.91%)
- Square SFF stomps a mudhole in Aeris (19.15%), to the tune of Squall (33.56%), Sora (29.92%); this also allows Lara Croft (17.37%) to look much better than she deserved