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I think this is a totally WHOOPE ASS idea! Although I am a little concerned about Blizzards rep. I think there should be a cap on how much you can spend each month, based on your 'achievements' rank or something.
This would do two things: one it would help to eliminate idiots who create a new account and then decide to thrash the shit out of other players (which is also why the cost to create a new account should be the same price as winning a tournament at the lowest 'achievement rank', so you can only spend and win the same amount you put in... i mean common, someone's gonna do it with the match making algorithms)
Secoundly: it would save people new to the game from themselves. Players who think they are hot shit further up in rank have a fair idea of whats going on, and therefore have a bigger monthly 'spend cap' than those who are on lower achievement levels.
Thirdly: it eliminates a HELL of alot of bad publicity (saving noobs from themselves, and keeps the game fun at a lower level, while you have the optunity to ramp up the anti at higher achivement levels)
This is defiantly a case of blizzard both protecting against account hacking AND protecting idiots from themselves. Or before we know it, we'll have some current affairs show about how some idiot maxed out both credit cards and the mortgage on SC2 (yes it IS that addictive). If he just an't good enough, don't give him the chance to shoot himself in the foot... Good players can bet more because they have a better feel for the game; if they loose shitloads it was because of their INFORMED idiocy. Blizzard can make more money (and happier players) by putting protective measures such as this in place, to keep the game fun AND competitive.
p.s. I think FrozenArbiter has seriously put some thought into this... and i suggest Blizzard should too... Much better idea than 'paying for bnet'
Edit: lol send the entire thread off too Blizzard as a question for this month
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Sydney2287 Posts
Wow I completely missed this thread.
Dealing only with money tournaments here, my first impression was "wow, that's awesome". Then after a while I realised it will be hard to get people to join the tournaments after the first few weeks as I can't imagine the prizes spreading in too many directions.
Then I did some thinking. For this to work you are going to need two things. Keep in mind this is assuming that these tournaments are being automatically generated and can run on top of each other (ie can have 10 16man tournaments running at the same time).
To start with, you need to reward a significant proportion of the players. So if there are 16 people, something like 1 2 3 4 need to get more than their entry fee returned. Maybe give 5 possibly 6 too a 'refund' so to speak. This way it seems a lot easier to break even. Which is the biggest thing imo, you need to make the players think that it is possible for them to at least break even.
Secondly, I think small tourneys will work better than large ones, in terms of popularity, as with smaller tourney size people will be less likely to come across the 'A' class players. Which will hopefully add to the perception that it is possible to break even or win. Because without believing that you can get your money back / increase your money, players aren't going to continue playing these after their first few losses. I don't think it's fair to use the TLTs etc as examples of this as the TLTs are almost one off events with lots of hype, whereas these will theoretically be running nonstop.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On the other side of that coin, the bigger (in terms of players) the tournament, the bigger the prize money, and the smaller the entry fee will seem in comparision. But yes, I think the smaller the better for the regular ones, since otherwise they will take too long to fill.
Maybe you could run some bigger ones on the weekends 
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I think ideally it should be like poker sites where you have many different levels of tournaments. There could be tournaments with entrance//prize profit of: $1//$15, $2//$30 and $5//$75. You'd be at least less likely to get smurfed on the $1 version. I mean of course there will be some pros playing $1 ones but if you have many simultaneous tournaments going on I'm sure some B, maybe even some C players could win some here and there.
But most importantly. Even if only A and B players are winning. I'm 100% sure that these tournaments are going to become a HUGE incentive for C and D players to actually practice to become A, B players themselves so they can win some.
And of course you must never forget. There will always be some D noobs like myself and many of the ppl I know who would gladly pay $1 or $2 from time to time just to get pwned hard for fun ^^
Also, there is some luck on BW. Any of you who played ICCUP extensively know how it can be a cheese fest at times. I'm 100% sure some C players would try their luck on money tournaments with the mentality of "hey, maybe if I proxy every game I can actually win some cash!"
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If we have the wc3 model we could allow everyone who got past the preliminary round to get their money back and then add a bit for every win they get in the elimination tournament.
That way there is a luck component to it since you do not need to face the better players to get past the prelims since you get random matches even if they try to sort you together with others of similar stats.
And if there is just a 1$ fee you would get a lot of people testing how much they have improved there since 1$ is really nothing at all. Everything gets a lot more exiting when you have invested/can win money in it.
And to get it to work you only need ~40 people signing up and they could start lightly with one per day at prime time with only 1$ buy ins, most of the best players on the servers would proably play in these and as such you could pay just to play with them etc.
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I think if people are making money off of this they may ditch work/school/etc as they feel they might make more playing starcraft that day than they would at work.
And with the economy as bad as it is, people might feel they can't get a job and stick with starcraft.
"I gotta family to feed."
Not that any of this is wrong, it is just my take of it.
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The problem with this is, that if a game lasts 5 mins for you, but the other players play for 1 hour, you'll have to sit around and wait for 55 minutes. You can't start a new game (since they'll have to wait for you then), and tournaments like these (lets say a 32 player tournament) lasts for hours, just to play 3/4 games. (like clan wars).
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On October 23 2008 02:31 TehKris wrote:
The problem with this is, that if a game lasts 5 mins for you, but the other players play for 1 hour, you'll have to sit around and wait for 55 minutes. You can't start a new game (since they'll have to wait for you then), and tournaments like these (lets say a 32 player tournament) lasts for hours, just to play 3/4 games. (like clan wars).
Well sure, but that's true of any tournament in anything. If you get involved in a tournament, you know you're investing your time.
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So anyways; does anybody think Blizzard will actually do this? Or are they gonna get cold feet and back out because 'its gambling'. I don't think anybody who has seen this thread thinks its a bad idea (lol and we pretty much have some of the harshest critics here... even the mindlessly harsh). So right now, the only thing i can see standing in the way of 'doing it' is that whole 'gambling perception' (and perhaps some licensing issues)
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On October 23 2008 06:36 Tyraz wrote:So anyways; does anybody think Blizzard will actually do this? Or are they gonna get cold feet and back out because 'its gambling'. I don't think anybody who has seen this thread thinks its a bad idea (lol and we pretty much have some of the harshest critics here... even the mindlessly harsh ). So right now, the only thing i can see standing in the way of 'doing it' is that whole 'gambling perception' (and perhaps some licensing issues)
I honestly don't think Blizzard has the balls to attempt something like this. I wish they did. I would certainly participate in this type of thing.
The sort of incentive that this sort of system would provide for a mediocre to above average player to improve would just be amazing. I know I fall into that category and I would practice my ass off just to play in $3 10-45 man tournies with something like a 20-25% pay out scale similar to most online poker tournies. With the blizzard store setup and accounts linked to that you can easily reduce smurfing and set up money accounts.
It really comes down to whether or not Blizzard wants to put in this work for the risk that they might catch some negative bullshit about gambling.
I can't see it alienating the casual-ladder players. If anything it would cause top tier players to play ladder games less, because they're playing tournies for money. This would help the casual player could possibly get a higher rank and feel better about playing, regardless of whether or not the rank is inflated. And Truly casual players are prolly going to stop playing ladder after a few months anyway. That's what DotA 10k in space is for?
I love this idea, and when it doesn't happen, hopefully some site or service will provide something similar.I was actually thinking about how awesome this would be a few nights ago, glad someone bumped this one.
EDIT: And really It doesn't have to be direct money play. Look at something like Magic the gathering online. If you wanted to say, draft online for money. You would buy 3 packs of cards and then when you win the tourney you win several packs of cards. Which you then turn around and sell for money. Maybe it's just because MTGO isn't huge... or maybe this sort of system just tricks the dumb people? But I've never seen any comment about MTGO being online gambling and ect. haha
Blizzard could even do somethig similar, like.... With the purchase of the game you get like 5 points (or everyone gets 2pts/month ect ect). You can buy other points from players on the blizzard store w/ money. And when you when the tourny get the points to cost.. 20% payout.... On the blizzard store you could also spend points on merchandise... There are even some advertising/promotional incentives in this with places like.... amazon.com or something silly where you can trade points for X dollars at Y site... Or even something where you can trade wow time for SC points and vice versa
Just a spin off idea not nearly as good as just straight money... at this point though any system with real incentives for competitive play would be better than just WC3 tourney system (which is not bad compared to no system lol)
Ideally though -- It would be just like online poker... but I'll take what I can get, no doubt.
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On October 23 2008 06:36 Tyraz wrote:
So anyways; does anybody think Blizzard will actually do this? Or are they gonna get cold feet and back out because 'its gambling'.
Its not gambling. I work in a club and the only reason we can have poker games with a buy-in is because you are 'paying to enter a competition'. That's how the government see's it.
If SC2 follows the same principles of Terms and Conditions as World of Warcraft then only the account holder and one sibling can use the account, and accounts may only be made by people over 18. So with a little 'parental controls' inclusion which restricts use of credit-cards or of entering paid competition their is no reason blizzard would not include by-ins from a legal perspective.
WoW Terms of use for reference
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On October 23 2008 06:36 Tyraz wrote:
So anyways; does anybody think Blizzard will actually do this? Or are they gonna get cold feet and back out because 'its gambling'.
It's a nice pipe dream, but realistically pay to play tournaments will need to be community driven for now. We've heard Pardo say some Battle.net features could be "monetized." I could see Blizzard building some tournament director tools. If we put on our tournament director hats, are there things Blizzard could do to help us handle the monetary component outside of Battle.net?
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We don't really need blizzard if we really want this ourselves 
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Canada2277 Posts
i wouldn't mind paying $0.01 and have a small chance of winning $2.56
also read over the edited OP. sounds good to me.
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EPT
