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Sweden33719 Posts
EDIT: oops I clicked post before I was done, working on finishing up the post.
EDIT2: Finished.
Since the WWI questions thread went a little off-topic (hm can't help but feel I contributed to that) and was closed, I decided to start a new thread.
The basic idea
Basically, I want automated tournaments in SC2. Nonstop, around the clock tournaments that start as soon as they fill up (be they 16, 32, 64 or 256 man tournaments).
That is, a sit'n'go, as described here:
sit and go
A poker tournament with no scheduled starting time that starts whenever the necessary players have put up their money. Single-table sit-and-goes, with nine or ten players, are the norm, but multi-table games are common as well. Also called sit n' gos and a variety of other similar spellings.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit_and_go#sit_and_go
Now, I would ideally have these be both free to play and pay to play, blizzard could run tournaments in different buyin-fee brackets, say 5$ or 10$, take a small % in rake (hey they need some incentive for this kind of stuff don't they?), perhaps 5%, and have the rest go towards the prize pool.
In addition they could host bigger tournaments (say with a 50$ buyin, just as an example) and run qualifiers to it (free ones or really cheap ones) to pad out the roster/prize money (ie everyone qualifying gets their entrance fee paid for by blizz, going to the prize pool). Something like a monthly event (or even weekly, akin to the Sunday Million in poker).
Criticism
Then the money stream goes away from the players. You cannibalize your own player base.
Well, if money was a finite resource then you'd have a point. But it isn't, as long as people enjoy playing the game/new players come in/people don't get so addicted to SC2 that they stop going to work/school, it's going to work fine.
You can find small tournaments ran in basements that have any structure / fee / payout you'd like, but they don't represent the sport. TLTour was a failure and a one time thing, using it to support your argument is ridiculous. You should be using the Korean leagues because they're what represent StarCraft, and they're what's successful.
Korean leagues, if we're talking the big ones - IE OGN, MBC - are corporate sponsored, offline and broadcasted. There is no incentive for sponsors to sponsor non-stop, anonymous tournaments, nor is there any comparision or overlap between this type of tournament and huge live tournaments spanning weeks or even months.
Korean amateur, online leagues DO frequently have an entrance fee.
Oh and TLTour (and WGTour speed ladder, which used a pay to play structure as well) was a success.
If you win other people's money because of pay in fee then what are you going to do?
You are going to try to play tournaments with weak opponents that are stupid enough to enter a pay tournament in which they are outclassed.
People are going to be sandbagging. People are only going to play for money.
The strongest people should play vs each other and they should win the money from a third party.
There is going to be so much abuse. The top players are going to form a cartel. They enter one at a time into one of those tournaments so they have a free win and don't steal money from each other. Stuff like that.
Simple solution: do not show a list of players that have registered for a tournament until it starts.
Besides, there are going to be a LOT of good players, most who won't know or have any contact with eachother whatsoever.
Also we're talking competitive players here, I'm fairly certain people will let ego get in the way of greed the majority of the time.. It's not like first prize is gonna be 20 000$.
If you offer good enough tournament payout structures, and maybe some qualifiers to the bigger tournaments, I'm pretty sure lots of people will play them. The pros to make money, practice and for prestige, people like me (current me, maybe I'll like SC2 enough to give it a serious go at being a pro) will play because hey, it's 10$ and competition is fun.
It's so obvious. Do you want Starcraft 2 to be a sport or not? It's not entertainment which you pay for. It's not supposed to be gambling either.
But it IS entertainment which you pay for, unless you download the game.. WoW has a monthly fee, this isn't even like that - this is an optional fee that you can choose to pay. Even if you don't want to pay, free tournaments can easily run around the clock, simultaneously with the pay-to-play ones.
Do you want it to be like Formula 1 where people have to buy a seat in a car?
Otherwise, it's not just a zero sum game. You mention a rake. People are going to lose money overall from playing Starcraft 2. That's bad. There should be money to be won. Not money to be lost.
People are going to lose money overall from playing SC2 no matter what you do, short of making the game free.
People lose money from WoW overall.
People lose money from having an internet connection overall.
Esports should copy chess, not poker.
Chess tournaments frequently have entrance fees.
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Various thoughts
It's obvious some people find the idea of paying to play in tournaments to be unappealing, but I have to ask; what system do you, then, propose? What other feasible way is there of running automated tournaments around the clock?
Sponsors are not possible/unlikely to be possible simply because the coverage is non-existant, especially in terms of live coverage.
Sponsors work better for big, scheduled tournaments with plenty of coverage - something we could easily have alongside these pay to play tournaments.
The image issue. That is, to some this is going to be percieved as gambling which is bad (I don't think gambling is bad, but I think blizzard wouldn't like being percieved as supporters of gambling).
I don't actually think it is gambling, as it's a skill game. If you offered 1on1's for money I COULD see the point, but in this case it's just paying to play in a tournament, which happens all the time at LANs.
As somebody mentioned, having this work is going to be huge when it comes to advancing the skill of players around the world, as well as the viability of being a professional at this game. Someone mentioned Magic: The Gathering having had these types of tournaments run for a long time online, which is a good example.
Another thing I want is the ability to - within the BNet interfac - host your own tournaments; private and public. I'm unsure if you should be able to host p2p (privately hosted) tournaments directly through BNet (I'm not sure it would be feasible) but that's no big deal since as long as the infrastructure for hosting a tournament is there you can deal with payments privately (ie over neteller, paypal or other e-wallets).
Ok I think that's what I wanted to cover in this, I'll give it a read through to make sure I didn't miss anything.
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I wouldn't do it because I hate paying for things, but it sounds like a fine idea.
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I support this idea. As I said in the other thread, if SC had 10% of the infra-structure that poker has, then it could beat soccer in popularity ^^
But why wait for Blizzard to do it in SC2? Can't we just do it ourselves today using ICCup + Paypal?
I mean if we talk to ICCup programmers they could use their existing tournament system. Write a script to create tournaments one after the other, entry would link to paypal and would confirm it after the script gets the receipt from Paypal. No?
edit: or even better, you buy "iccup credits" from paypal. Then you just use those credits to enter tournaments and later you check out trading your earned credits for money in paypal. That's how most poker sites do right?
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On June 28 2008 17:41 d.arkive wrote:
I wouldn't do it because I hate paying for things, but it sounds like a fine idea. I don't know how things work on your socialist anarchism country. But myself, on the other hand, am a D- noob who would definetly pay 5 bucks once in a while to have some fun getting owned by pro players ^^
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Sweden33719 Posts
Hm wow, I had honestly been trying to think of a way to do this but private servers didn't cross my mind (my main obstacle was finding a way to have the games report automatically). Not a bad idea 
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I wouldn't wouldn't play in them myself until either I was a lot better or I had a lot more money, but I love the idea.
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I feel like this would give players more of an incentive to hack. If they could play random public online tournaments for money, what is stopping people from hacking? Imagine how pissed you would be if you found someone hacking and you just lost money because of it. Hacking does indeed happen in online qualifiers nowadays for money tournaments, but if tournaments were on such a large scale as you are describing, hackers could be under the radar. Even if intense anti hacks are around, people will always figure out a way around them.
I suppose if you suspected people of hacking then you could review the replays. But if so many tournaments were going on constantly would necessairly it be easy to report them and get the money back / refunded?
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On June 28 2008 17:53 FrozenArbiter wrote:Hm wow, I had honestly been trying to think of a way to do this but private servers didn't cross my mind (my main obstacle was finding a way to have the games report automatically). Not a bad idea I'm sure ICCup programmers have access to those. And gaining a small share of the tournament earnings would be big enough of an incentive for them to get working ^^
Think all we need to do is get enough people to support the idea 
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By the way, let the normal around the clock tournaments cost 1 dollar entrance, 5 would alienate too many for it to be feasible.
Then have a few with higher buyins etc, just like poker, and even free tournies.
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Yeah you'd obviously need really good anti-hack to make this work. But if poker sites can remain hack free I'm sure blizzard can too.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Well, they could have several tournaments starting simultaneously, or have them start in order (1$ tournament fills up, the 5$ tournament opens registration and then the 10$ tournament, repeat).
Maybe based on how big the tournament is, ie 1$ tournaments could be, say, 64 man and 5$ 32 man etc.
Details like this can be worked out at a later stage I suppose :O
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On June 28 2008 18:05 Luddite wrote:
Yeah you'd obviously need really good anti-hack to make this work. But if poker sites can remain hack free I'm sure blizzard can too.
Because everything is simple and server-side, unlike in SC, they aren't even comparable. Not to mention even server based online games rely a lot on the client to save a lot of processing time and bandwidth(which could make them unfeasible otherwise).
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On June 28 2008 18:05 Luddite wrote:
Yeah you'd obviously need really good anti-hack to make this work. You know what. Technically it is possible to make games 100% map hack free, but at the expense of lag (intermediate referee instead of p2p connection). But with money on the line I'm sure most players wouldn't mind some extra lag to make sure your opponent isn't cheating.
I'm not sure how viable would that be for sc1 because of syncing. But Blizzard has all the tools to do it for sc2.
But if poker sites can remain hack free I'm sure blizzard can too. Does there exists such thing as poker hacks?
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Sweden33719 Posts
Not hacks but there are illegal tools, such as online databases on players (with detailed statistics etc I suppose). You can gather this kind of data yourself (lots of legal tools for it), and most serious players do, but it has to come from your own play or it's considered cheating.
There have also been a couple of insider scandals sort of recently, Absolute Poker had one and I *think* Ultimatebet did too. The Absolute one was pretty big, it's going to be on 60 minutes/has already been on 60 minutes (not sure which). Basically it was some inside job and the guy could see the other players holecards, pretty sick.
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A part of me feels like the gambling aspect will encourage hackers, reward hackers, and bring a lot of controversy around cheating, balance (Since the game won't be balanced immediately,) and have I mentioned hackers? =)
Also, you already know how angry people can be when they lose, especially to like a 4pool. Imagine how much angrier they'd be if they also lost money along with it?
And finally, the whole concept just feels "messy" and has many potential issues involved. Also, would there be a lot of extra legal work for Blizzard to do? I'm not sure so someone will have to enlighten me.
Now, on the pro-side. I'm one of the people who plan to play extremely hardcore, and wanna be one of the top players, so I feel like I'd have a good chance to actually make money from this. If these tournaments were completely optional and extra, and didn't have it's own ladder or ranking system that would somehow prioritize or rank-above non-betting players, then I can see some interesting potential in this.
I can imagine a players profile, with a ladder ranking, race statistics, and a list of bet-tourny's they've won. Maybe even a grand total of money won in bet tourny's.. It really is an interesting idea.. I just don't know if it's worth the possible complications.
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On June 28 2008 18:16 lololol wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2008 18:05 Luddite wrote:
Yeah you'd obviously need really good anti-hack to make this work. But if poker sites can remain hack free I'm sure blizzard can too. Because everything is simple and server-side, unlike in SC, they aren't even comparable. Not to mention even server based online games rely a lot on the client to save a lot of processing time and bandwidth(which could make them unfeasible otherwise).
I have no idea how it could be done, I'm just using poker to illustrate that I think it CAN be done, provided the company is willing to put enough time/money into the matter. Heck, ICCUP has been hack free for what, a year now? And that's just from volunteers! If blizard hired a full time team of experts to stop hacking (which they could easily afford from the rake they'd get), they could do it.
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You realize online gambling in the US has been made illegal. Although it is very loosely enforced given how well known blizzard is I don't think they want to piss anyone off.
I'm all down for free round the clock tournaments but buy-in is never going to happen.
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Sweden33719 Posts
This isn't gambling, starcraft cannot possibly be defined as anything but a game of skill. So legally I don't see why this would be a problem.
The UIGEA is the most retarded piece of legislation ever tho. Bans poker but horse betting is fine. So logical.
Hopefully it will be repealed soon because it's just retarded -.-
Anyway, they allow Fantasy Sports too, which, as I understand, works very similarily to what I described. IE players buyin, then the winner/s take the majority of the money.
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Hungary11289 Posts
What would the problem be with automated tournaments that are held by battle.net without spending money for the buyin? Currently Warcraft III i.e. has a system that gives you special icons and statistics for wins in tournaments. If they would set up something like a personal record page, with tournament wins / statistics / etc, it would be motivating enough for me. There could be special tournaments with entry requirements, such as a solo level of 40+ (assuming the cap is at 50) and similar things.
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
FA the principle concern i have about such a system is that you may get a division between those willing to pay to play in tournaments and those that just play casually
I would never pay to play in a tournament, i simply dont have the skill nor the $$ to do that. However lots of players may only chose to play in that style; effectively isolating them from me..
Im also sure people could rig up the tournament into a 2 man tournament for betgames..
There are pros and cons to this idea.. but on the whole i'm in favor of it; i just hope it doesn't divide the community
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On June 28 2008 21:48 FrozenArbiter wrote:
This isn't gambling, starcraft cannot possibly be defined as anything but a game of skill. So legally I don't see why this would be a problem.
The UIGEA is the most retarded piece of legislation ever tho. Bans poker but horse betting is fine. So logical.
Hopefully it will be repealed soon because it's just retarded -.-
Anyway, they allow Fantasy Sports too, which, as I understand, works very similarily to what I described. IE players buyin, then the winner/s take the majority of the money. Oh I know it is and I don't see it lasting very long either, the trouble is how are you going to convince an 80 year old judge that there is such a thing as a game of skill
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Luddite, the point is that poker is so fundamentally different in terms of how it works that you cannot use it as an example. It's like saying, "We know how to keep bugs off of crops: pesticides. We can use pesticides to prevent bugs in programs, then." Obviously that's a little more extreme, but it's not too different in terms of how poker is run vs how SC2 will (presumably) be run.
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Good idea!
But it should either be free and Blizzard will get money from sc2 sales and adds. Or there should be a maximum cap on how much rake you can pay per month.
And there should mostly be micro level tournaments. People with gambling addiction tendencies should not be able to loose to much money.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 28 2008 22:07 Plexa wrote:
FA the principle concern i have about such a system is that you may get a division between those willing to pay to play in tournaments and those that just play casually
I would never pay to play in a tournament, i simply dont have the skill nor the $$ to do that. However lots of players may only chose to play in that style; effectively isolating them from me..
Im also sure people could rig up the tournament into a 2 man tournament for betgames..
There are pros and cons to this idea.. but on the whole i'm in favor of it; i just hope it doesn't divide the community
Which is why there can be free qualifiers to some of the $ tournaments!
And I'm pretty sure the $ touranaments, while they can probably work, wont fill nearly as quickly as the free ones so I think there'll be some overlap in the player pool.
On June 28 2008 22:28 parkin wrote:
Good idea!
But it should either be free and Blizzard will get money from sc2 sales and adds. Or there should be a maximum cap on how much rake you can pay per month.
And there should mostly be micro level tournaments. People with gambling addiction tendencies should not be able to loose to much money.
I think the majority of tournaments should be microstakes simply because this is a computer game and not poker - poker players throw money around like candy, I don't think poor (comparatively) gamers will do that I wouldn't be too worried about gambling addicts choosing SC as their outlet.
Don't see the point of max-rake, what would blizzard gain from that? Maybe they can do it like Pokerstars does, give you bonus points based on how much you rake. These points can then be used in their online store / to buy into bigger tournaments / get tickets to events such as blizzcon or WWI.
On June 28 2008 22:16 Zanno wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2008 21:48 FrozenArbiter wrote:
This isn't gambling, starcraft cannot possibly be defined as anything but a game of skill. So legally I don't see why this would be a problem.
The UIGEA is the most retarded piece of legislation ever tho. Bans poker but horse betting is fine. So logical.
Hopefully it will be repealed soon because it's just retarded -.-
Anyway, they allow Fantasy Sports too, which, as I understand, works very similarily to what I described. IE players buyin, then the winner/s take the majority of the money. Oh I know it is and I don't see it lasting very long either, the trouble is how are you going to convince an 80 year old judge that there is such a thing as a game of skill
Well, seeing as how they allow fantasy sports it would seem they are willing to make some kind of distinction between games.
Would be interesting to hear more about how MTG handles this, forget who posted it but that might be a good precedent.
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Unless bnet requires you to be age 18 or over (which they won't) this won't happen in the form you're discussing.
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On June 28 2008 22:50 SoleSteeler wrote:
Unless bnet requires you to be age 18 or over (which they won't) this won't happen in the form you're discussing.
This is optional...
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On June 28 2008 23:15 Klockan3 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2008 22:50 SoleSteeler wrote:
Unless bnet requires you to be age 18 or over (which they won't) this won't happen in the form you're discussing.
This is optional...
I know, but unless there's a way to authenticate that you're 18 or older, this cannot happen.
(For the record, I'd love for something like this to be implemented, so don't think I'm against this idea at all)
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Why do you guys keep talking about legal issues? Poker is being played for money online all around the world by people of all ages as we speak.
Starcraft is exactly the same.
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You need to be over 18 to play online poker for money. In North America, at least.
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Sweden33719 Posts
As long as they ostensible age checks it will probably be fine. It also depends on how SC2 bnet accounts will work, ie how much personal info you'll have to submit.. I dunno, but there has to be a way to solve it.
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Must require a credit card is the usual way to do that.
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I've thought about this before, it's just a something extra for the players willing to play. Players not willing to obviously don't have to, they don't have the right to complain and say no.
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On June 29 2008 00:42 MiniRoman wrote:
I've thought about this before, it's just a something extra for the players willing to play. Players not willing to obviously don't have to, they don't have the right to complain and say no.
It's not an issue about complaining, it's the legal issues of having minors paying money for something online. You need a credit card to be able to do so. You need to have a way to make sure some 12 year old isn't wasting all his money on tournaments. While most of us would agree it should be ultimately up to the parents, we know that's not the way the world works. People are prone to making mistakes.
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While a great idea in theory, I very much doubt money tournies would work. There are just too many problems that can arise. Such as a player using a hack. Also, the only people a money tourne would serve would be the best of the best. Theres no way in hell I would be putting money on the line knowing that Im not one of the best players in the world. In poker its different because there is enough of a luck element involved so people can enter and win even if they suck.
Sit and go tournes would be great, but without something on the line, you will get people abusing the system and just being royal jackasses. Your going to get a 32 player tournie that most games will result in a forfeit.
I think an automated toune that a player can setup would be best. Player chooses tourne style (double elimination etc) and number of entrants allowed in. He then invites participants who wish to join. There would be no reward but glory. But it would be a great system to have in place.
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Sweden33719 Posts
I think blizzard already runs automated tournaments in WC3 that work fine :C
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FA: WC3 tourneys aren't fine. Take a look at WCReplays and you will find the overwhelming concerns of:
1. A mostly dead casual ladder/tourney system
2. Rampant hacking - there have been tourneys where the two finalist got there by tiehacking the whole way.
Having tourneys ALL the time dilutes the value and excitement of tourneys. Top players don't have infinite amounts of time - neither do casual players. If we had TSL all year round, I'm sure we would see the quality go down. The experience is what matters, and IMO it's more important to preserve the experience than offer everything.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Ok, fine - that can be fixed. I haven't played the WC3 tournaments in many years so all I had to go by was them working perfectly when I played, heh.
Is the hacking a problem in ladder too or only in these tournaments?
Your 2nd point is just.. I don't mean any offense but I find this, and some other points made in this thread, to be mind boggling >_<
These tournaments aren't like OSL, MSL; primeleague, they aren't meant to be followed by tonnes of people - they are meant to for the players. For anyone.
Being able to just play a tounament whenever you want is HUGE, I don't understand how anyone could not see this. Top players don't have time to play in every one of these tournaments - obviously not, but there'll always be players who want to play, regardless of what time of the day.
And you know what, these tournaments aren't even on scheduled times, they just start when X players have registered.
The excitement you talk about doesn't even really belong in these tournaments, that happens when you have big tournaments, with big prizes and these will still happen.
As a player I don't understand why you wouldn't want to have tournaments available for you to play whenever you want. The big, exciting, prestigious tournaments will still be there, on a scheduled time. That's the ones you make time for, these other tournaments you just play whenever you feel like.
I'll use poker as an example: there are THOUSANDS of sit n gos going every single day. Yet when the big events come around (WSOP, WPT, EPT or the big online tournaments like the weekly Sunday Million) people are still interested. In fact, this is the only type of interest that attracts interest (in the form of observers, mass interest etc), the sit n gos are just for the ones playing.
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On June 29 2008 02:04 architecture wrote:
FA: WC3 tourneys aren't fine. Take a look at WCReplays and you will find the overwhelming concerns of:
1. A mostly dead casual ladder/tourney system
2. Rampant hacking - there have been tourneys where the two finalist got there by tiehacking the whole way.
Having tourneys ALL the time dilutes the value and excitement of tourneys. Top players don't have infinite amounts of time - neither do casual players. If we had TSL all year round, I'm sure we would see the quality go down. The experience is what matters, and IMO it's more important to preserve the experience than offer everything.
The War3 tournaments aren't like that because they are flawed, the ENTIRE ladder is like that. After 1.14, when the new AMM was released and WoW came out, all the "good" players left the realm and abandoned the ladder in favor of Europe or the eventual GG-Client. Every single player in the top 20 was not capable of top 100 on Azeroth back in the golden years.
Tournaments used to mean something when non-pros were able to win it, but you are right that now they are dead and anyone is capable if winning, even those who aren't good enough to compete in leagues or don't know how to play (tiehackers). The tournament system in place is fine, Blizzard abandoning WC3 is the problem. If they took the current AMM or tournament system and implemented it in SCII with slight modifications, it would work (improvements would be swell). Having tournies all the time is simply so normal people can achieve the icons. TSL provides money, War3 tournaments are for icons, and Blizzard's yearly "seasonal" tournaments provide money and are not daily events and are more comparable to TSL.
And as for FrozenArbitier's idea. I think it's a waste of bandwidth and I don't think enough people will want to do it to warrant implementing it. Just think how many more people will play free tournaments versus p2p tournaments.
I believe MLG offers a similar system for Xbox 360 games online but that is of course 3rd party and I can't comment further on it because I don't know how it works.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Who cares if more people play the free ones if they generate 0 income but use the same infrastructure as the P2P ones? It's like, if you want to implement the free ones and don't have any moral objections towards P2P tournaments you might as well implement both.
Maybe 4 free tournaments will start for every P2P one but that's fine :O
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Its not entirely unplausable that Blizzard wouldnt impliment this kind of thing as they ran a pay-in arena tournament for World of Warcraft.
If this was a Bi-annual ladder with a one time entry of under a tenner this would be ok I guess. I would be worried that it would split the community. For example would a win in a pay in tournament be more prestigous than a free tourney?
On a more personal note I feel that although adding loads of pay in tournaments may make the game more competitive it would probably be at the cost of fun.
I would much rather the rewards of the best players come from Sponsors than the average Joe.
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Sweden33719 Posts
f this was a Bi-annual ladder with a one time entry of under a tenner this would be I guess. I would be worried that it would split the community. For example would a win in a pay in tournament be more prestigous than a free tourney?
Eh, prestige from/for who? Yeah a good record in $ tournaments is probably gonna look better, dunno what the problem is. Having a good ladder record already looks better than a poor one.
I a more personal note I feel that although adding loads of pay in tournaments may make the game more competitive it would probably be at the cost of fun.
Whose fun..? I think prize money makes it more fun.
I would much rather the rewards of the best players come from Sponsors than the average Joe.
Sponsoring is not plausible for small, every day tournaments..
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The biggest obstacle towards buy-in SnG tournaments is hacking. Whether we like it or not, people will find a way to exploit the game using in-game glitches, map hacks, etc. There's also a whole shit-load of legal issues that Blizzard would have to deal with.
I do like the idea of having the ability to create mini-tournaments whenever you want though, kind of like having Battlereports.com built into BNet.
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I would do it if it was like five bucks to join. If a lot of the money went into anti-hacks and making servers better I think it would be a good idea.
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is awesome32274 Posts
Take money away, give something else to the players, icon upgrades on battle.net a badge or more "EXP" in bnet for icons or whatever. Maybe their replays of the games uploaded in the Battle.net site.
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Spending money to play it automatically excludes a lot of potential players. I, for example, don't have a paypal account or credit card, so I don't have any quick way of putting up money for a tournament like this. Also, for me (and many others) the entrance fee is basically losing money unless I actually have a fighting chance (which I wouldn't in an open tournament).
So, I see a couple solutions to this.
1) Not a money tournament, like IntoTheWow suggested. More ladder points, icons, whatever are a reward large enough to entice players (as long as the tournaments aren't too inconvenient). Also, with nothing to be lost, the problem of people weary to gamble on their success is avoided.
2) Leveled money tournaments. If I know I'm playing against only other shitty players, then I would be more willing to put up some cash. There are some big problems with this though. First, Smurfing could be an issue, but I believe Blizzard could find a solution. Second, it would increase the time for a tournament to fill up because the properly ranked players would have to be found. Third, there's still the issue of people who are unable to easily put up money.
I think non monetary online tournaments would be best. If there was no loss penalty (in terms of rank) and a substantial reward in ranking for the winners, I believe such a tournament could easily entice players. If ladder rankings were tied into placing to monetary tournaments, there would even be the cash prize as an incentive to play.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Can someone explain why there shouldn't be a $ tournament just becausee you can't/don't want to play in them?
It's like saying "Well, I don't play FFA, so could you please not include FFA in the AMM? I don't want that gametype to steal players away from the game modes I want to play".
There will still be free tournaments, and if you give these tournaments decent rewards (tickets to bigger tournaments, ladder points, icons) they will still attract good players if that's what you are worried about (they will attract players regardless).
Hell you could even have some kind of point reward system for "achievments" (those seem to be all the rage these days) in the ladder/in free tournaments, that you can then trade in for, say, products in the blizzard store or, perhaps, entries into $ tournaments.
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is awesome32274 Posts
On June 29 2008 06:09 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Can someone explain why there shouldn't be a $ tournament just becausee you can't/don't want to play in them?
It's like saying "Well, I don't play FFA, so could you please not include FFA in the AMM? I don't want that gametype to steal players away from the game modes I want to play".
No it's not like that.
Some people are below 18 and can't get money to play on tournaments even though they are good.
Imagine By.BaBy on battle.net? Or anybody like him wanting to play, even though hes great. It takes something away from the TOURNAMENT not from US.
You are restricting the player based not because of people liking or not liking tournaments but for an impossibility to play.
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is awesome32274 Posts
Even though you could do what you said (winning tickets to bigger tournies but winning free ones, you are basically doing what shitty mmorpgs do, give an advantage to the player willing to play cash.
What you are saying would be like an iccup tourney were only B+ players can't enter. But hey, if you are D- and want to pay 10$, we will let you in.
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Good point. What I should have said was that I wasn't sure about the interest in monetary tournaments. They would work incredibly well on poker software because there is a large player base and the entire player base is in it to gamble. For online SC2, unless there is a large enough competitive player base that is willing to gamble money (and varying levels of skill unless the lesser players would be wary of playing), automated money tournaments wouldn't be possible.
If there is enough players to keep an automated money tournament system going I don't think there is any real worry about free tournaments losing too many players because the online player base would have to be very large to support the money tournaments. There will always be players not willing or wanting to gamble money, and as such there will always be a base for non money tournaments.
I don't think there will be a large enough player base for automated money tournaments, and that is why I don't think it will work well. Weekly money tournaments, hell, possibly even daily money tournaments would work out much better, imo.
-edit- This post it to FrozenArbiter's most recent post, and I'm loving the automated links for "poker"
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Sweden33719 Posts
@Intothewow
It's nothing like that -.-
It's like an ICCUP tourney where anyone can enter.
As long as they want to pay 10$.
I played in TLTour.
I was what? 15? 14?
Of course the 15 year olds without credit cards are gonna have a hard time playing in these things but so what, if they really want to they can get their parents/siblings to help them out. In the case of someone like By.Baby he'd have no trouble getting his team to sponsor him.
There's a minimum age for going to blizzcon (IIRC).
There's a minimum age for buying SC.
There are tournaments going on in korea all the time that you can't join because you don't speak the language, because they use some korean web-room service to pay for the entrance fees (iirc so called dotori betgames were paid in 'points' on some website which you can convert into $? not sure, just what I seem to remember hearing a few years back), because it's the wrong time of day, because it's in the wrong part of the world.
There's a minimum age or other forms of restrictions for a lot of things, I don't think it's unfair - it's just the way the cookie crumbles. You can't have everything be accessible to everyone, and you shouldn't limit what you can do just because some people can't do it. They'll find a way to play eventually, be that through sponsorship (from getting good) or because they finally turned 18.
In the meantime they can play free tournaments.
I guess our logic is just totally different, the way I see it, the only way for non-stop running $ tournaments to exist is with a buyin fee, so who cares if that restricts the playerbase somewhat? Without the buyin fee they wouldn't even exist. If there was no alternative for them I could understand it, if I was talking about making the main ladder pay to play I'd agree with you. But this is nothing like that, it's an option. It's an alternative. It's an alternative that has a free alternative-alternative.
I'm probably done with this argument for today, I'm feeling extremely grumpy and annoyed and I'm not sure why. Probably frustration from wanting to watch SC/hear something new about SC2 but getting served WoW instead. Damn WWI -.-
On June 29 2008 06:25 Kwidowmaker wrote:
Good point. What I should have said was that I wasn't sure about the interest in monetary tournaments. They would work incredibly well on poker software because there is a large player base and the entire player base is in it to gamble. For online SC2, unless there is a large enough competitive player base that is willing to gamble money (and varying levels of skill unless the lesser players would be wary of playing), automated money tournaments wouldn't be possible.
If there is enough players to keep an automated money tournament system going I don't think there is any real worry about free tournaments losing too many players because the online player base would have to be very large to support the money tournaments. There will always be players not willing or wanting to gamble money, and as such there will always be a base for non money tournaments.
I don't think there will be a large enough player base for automated money tournaments, and that is why I don't think it will work well. Weekly money tournaments, hell, possibly even daily money tournaments would work out much better, imo.
The way I want it to work, this would sort itself out on its own..
Say we have a tournament tab in battle.net, you click it and you get to a list of available tournaments (as well as filters such as buyin levels, registering/running/finished, free or $).
Everytime one tournament fills up (ie say they are 16 man tournaments), a new one pops up. This way player interest will regulate the amount of tournaments on its own.
Maybe there's only enough interest to run one or two tournaments a day ($ ones), but that's fine.
![[image loading]](http://img515.imageshack.us/img515/7226/sitngoxs9.jpg)
Everyone one tournament fills, a new one is created. I don't expect it to be like poker where you can have a new 4$ 180 man tournament starting every 15 minutes, but that's not needed.
The free tournaments could be like that tho, and I fully expect them to outnumber the $ tournaments by a lot.
How often do you think the 5000$ sit n gos fill? Probably not very often, but they are still there, and it's fine.
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is awesome32274 Posts
The example I was giving of By.Baby is because of his age and skill not because he's a semi pro. Of course his team is going to pay for him. Don't compare the age of buying Starcraft please, no one follows that kind of rules. I am not putting to question the mature age of someone to view a tourney but the skill and money involved in these tournaments.
Blizzard can't physically change timezones or languages of different parts of the world. It's not within their power, so that argument is way out of place here.
First of all, I don't think Blizzard is going to let money be in movement in the middle. How are you exactly going to handle prizes to the winners? Where is money going to be collected? The only place where you pay for something in Blizzard is for WoW subscriptions (Which you can't get anywhere) or for a game at Blizzard store. I don't see Blizzard putting a system to make money go around like that.
Going back to the reduced player base for tournaments:
It's nothing like that -.-
It's like an ICCUP tourney where anyone can enter.
As long as they want to pay 10$.
It's like that. Explain why it isn't?
A D- player wants to play in a sit n' go tournament, he pays 10$ and he's in.
A B+ player who is 14 and can't get a credit card because his parent don't let him wants in, he has to win another free tournament (which will probably get more filled than the ones with admission fee) to be able to play.
I just don't see the point of adding money in the middle? You can give players other kind of stuff, from "fame" in the battle.net site (like Blizzard did back when Starcraft didn't have replays) or icons and things on battle.net (like they do in W3). Hey, even give them maybe a bigger profile? colors in nickname? Whatever. It works.
If you want to make a profession out of Starcraft then get good and go play tourneys, you can travel in between. I don't get why people want to mix poker with Starcraft :S. Starcraft its not made for everyone to win money in. Of course a reduced number of people can, progamers.
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Sweden33719 Posts
It's like that. Explain why it isn't?
A D- player wants to play in a sit n' go tournament, he pays 10$ and he's in.
A B+ player who is 14 and can't get a credit card because his parent don't let him wants in, he has to win another free tournament (which will probably get more filled than the ones with admission fee) to be able to play.
No, you said:
What you are saying would be like an iccup tourney were only B+ players can't enter. But hey, if you are D- and want to pay 10$, we will let you in.
I'm assuming can't enter = can enter since otherwise it doesn't make sense.
The tournament is open to anyone who wants to pay, it doesn't matter what skill level. Saying this is bad is as ridiculous as saying a tournament that's only open to B+ or C+ is bad.
If the 14 year old with no credit card wants to play he can either go play in some of the free ones and try to qualify or get someone to pay for him. Also, have you ever considered that maybe it's not such a bad thing to prevent/make it a little bit harder for a 14 year old to blow through a bunch of money?
Somehow all the 14 year olds in the world manage to get their parents to pay for their WoW subscriptions tho so I don't see a big issue.
I just don't see the point of adding money in the middle? You can give players other kind of stuff, from "fame" in the battle.net site (like Blizzard did back when Starcraft didn't have replays) or icons and things on battle.net (like they do in W3). Hey, even give them maybe a bigger profile? colors in nickname? Whatever. It works.
Add that to the free tournaments then, there'll no doubt be more of these anyway. Many more probably.
Money means incentive. Incentive means competition and growth, if there's enough growth a viable way for the semi-pros to make some sort of living might arise. I see this as good.
But beyond all of that, playing for money is fun. That plain and simple. Playing to win a prize is fucking awesome.
If you want to make a profession out of Starcraft then get good and go play tourneys, you can travel in between. I don't get why people want to mix poker with Starcraft :S. Starcraft its not made for everyone to win money in. Of course a reduced number of people can, progamers.
And I don't get why you don't want to mix the two, as it doesn't affect you :C
If you don't want to play in the $ tournaments then don't, but why stop others from doing so?
I obviously play poker and maybe I've been doing that for too long now because some of the objections in this thread are completely alien to me in their logic.
Btw I apoligize if I come off rude anywhere, I'm extremely irritable today -.-
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I feel your pain FA. I feel your pain. +_+
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I don't know if people were saying $10 just to put out an amount, but $10 is too much in my opinion. $5 is much more reasonable.
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is awesome32274 Posts
On June 29 2008 07:20 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +It's like that. Explain why it isn't?
A D- player wants to play in a sit n' go tournament, he pays 10$ and he's in.
A B+ player who is 14 and can't get a credit card because his parent don't let him wants in, he has to win another free tournament (which will probably get more filled than the ones with admission fee) to be able to play.
No, you said: Show nested quote +What you are saying would be like an iccup tourney were only B+ players can't enter. But hey, if you are D- and want to pay 10$, we will let you in. I'm assuming can't enter = can enter since otherwise it doesn't make sense. The tournament is open to anyone who wants to pay, it doesn't matter what skill level. Saying this is bad is as ridiculous as saying a tournament that's only open to B+ or C+ is bad. If the 14 year old with no credit card wants to play he can either go play in some of the free ones and try to qualify or get someone to pay for him. Also, have you ever considered that maybe it's not such a bad thing to prevent/make it a little bit harder for a 14 year old to blow through a bunch of money? Somehow all the 14 year olds in the world manage to get their parents to pay for their WoW subscriptions tho so I don't see a big issue. Show nested quote +I just don't see the point of adding money in the middle? You can give players other kind of stuff, from "fame" in the battle.net site (like Blizzard did back when Starcraft didn't have replays) or icons and things on battle.net (like they do in W3). Hey, even give them maybe a bigger profile? colors in nickname? Whatever. It works. Add that to the free tournaments then, there'll no doubt be more of these anyway. Many more probably. Money means incentive. Incentive means competition and growth, if there's enough growth a viable way for the semi-pros to make some sort of living might arise. I see this as good. But beyond all of that, playing for money is fun. That plain and simple. Playing to win a prize is fucking awesome. Show nested quote +If you want to make a profession out of Starcraft then get good and go play tourneys, you can travel in between. I don't get why people want to mix poker with Starcraft :S. Starcraft its not made for everyone to win money in. Of course a reduced number of people can, progamers. And I don't get why you don't want to mix the two, as it doesn't affect you :C If you don't want to play in the $ tournaments then don't, but why stop others from doing so? I obviously play poker and maybe I've been doing that for too long now because some of the objections in this thread are completely alien to me in their logic. Btw I apoligize if I come off rude anywhere, I'm extremely irritable today -.-
Yeah I phrased the first quote badly, I didn't mean that.
I don't mean to sound insulting but I just don't see the incentive it generates, or what good things can come from it. There's little good things from it and LOTS of problems imo.
You got TLTour for example. TLTour did good, people gave good feedback about it. But having money sit n go tournaments incorporated to battle.net is a totally different thing.
First of all you need an active anti-hack team to check all the replays and make a fair gaming environment. Of course this people have to be from Blizzard, since Blizzard is running the whole thing. Will Blizzard pay an anti-hack team to keep tournaments clean? The current state of hacking on battle.net tells otherwise. Once money is put in between hackers are going to have much more incentive to ruin this for you too. Also if the winner takes the money, one the tournament is done, if the winner is a hacker he can just 'run away' with his money and it will worth for him even if they ban his cdkey (50$ game or much less as you can see from BW today vs money from a 16 tournament. 16 x 10$ = 160$ to make an example.
Second you need to get this whole thing diagrammed, which maps can be played? the need a Blizz symbol, since maps can be abused too (hi lastshadow). What about methods to pay for it? You will be stuck with paypal?
Third: continuity. TLTour was great but it was only a couple of times and not continuously. Do you think you can get people to pay 15$ or 10$ all day to keep this tournaments filled? The current BW player base is huge, but take away all umsers, fastest players, moneymaps players. You get like the number of Iccup players or PGTour or whatever that are willing to play competitive. Now ask how many of those can or are willing to pay daily or weekly for money tournaments? I don't see money tournaments getting filled to play like "Sit n go" style.
Fourth: divides the player base. Some people get into tournaments for fun because they are free. Even though they are going to lose, they play because they get the chance to play with someone better or because its fun. Check the BW section, every weekend it gets new threads of new tournaments being announced here. If you divide the player base you are taking that away from those players, and divide the community of [UMS - Money - competitive] into [UMS - money - competitive - more competitive].
I think the problems are way bigger than the good things that can come from it (make some extra money from playing a game). If the game is good and people like it, you will get good players playing each anyway. Money prize tournaments will be held up anyway and with bigger cash prizes. You will get replays of good players playing each other (or vods) too.
I think its better to leave this to community sites + sponsors.
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This sounds like a good idea. Maybe (gasp) the WoW community could even help us because i'm guessing they would try out sc2 and unlike our community they are actually willing to pay a few bucks for an optimized experience.
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On June 29 2008 06:56 IntoTheWow wrote:
First of all, I don't think Blizzard is going to let money be in movement in the middle. How are you exactly going to handle prizes to the winners? Where is money going to be collected? The only place where you pay for something in Blizzard is for WoW subscriptions (Which you can't get anywhere) or for a game at Blizzard store. I don't see Blizzard putting a system to make money go around like that. Generally, with new games, companies gain the ability to integrate new features and services into their business model. This means that looking at the current abilities of Blizzard to take in and dole out money aren't really applicable at all to this discussion. They could very easily develop a system to hold money until a tournament ends and then pass it on to the winner(s).
On June 29 2008 06:56 IntoTheWow wrote:Going back to the reduced player base for tournaments: Show nested quote +
It's nothing like that -.-
It's like an ICCUP tourney where anyone can enter.
As long as they want to pay 10$.
It's like that. Explain why it isn't? A D- player wants to play in a sit n' go tournament, he pays 10$ and he's in. A B+ player who is 14 and can't get a credit card because his parent don't let him wants in, he has to win another free tournament (which will probably get more filled than the ones with admission fee) to be able to play.
Listen, the skill of a 14 year old player in this case is completely irrelevant. If the service is only availible to 18+, it doesn't matter how skilled they are, they must still meet the minimum requirements. As an easy example, let's look at online poker: If you aren't 18, it doesn't matter how great at poker you are, you aren't allowed to deposit money and play. So by your logic, no poker games should be played for money online because certain people don't meet the minimum requirements.
Its great people under the age of 18 can become quite skilled at the game. But they're still under 18, and they'd have to wait to play for money. Tough shit. Lots of things have minimum requirements in this world, and if you don't meet those, you can't do them. That doesn't mean they aren't good endeavors for the people who *do* meet those requirements and it certainly doesn't mean they should be done away with.
On June 29 2008 06:56 IntoTheWow wrote:
I just don't see the point of adding money in the middle? You can give players other kind of stuff, from "fame" in the battle.net site (like Blizzard did back when Starcraft didn't have replays) or icons and things on battle.net (like they do in W3). Hey, even give them maybe a bigger profile? colors in nickname? Whatever. It works.
If you want to make a profession out of Starcraft then get good and go play tourneys, you can travel in between. I don't get why people want to mix poker with Starcraft :S. Starcraft its not made for everyone to win money in. Of course a reduced number of people can, progamers.
The reason for money in the middle is for added incentives. Added incentives can make things more fun, and I completely agree with FA that putting money on the line would make tournaments more fun. I also believe it would make the game more competitive and increase the overall skill, which is a good thing. If you don't find fun in risking money to play, then don't risk the money, simple as that. I personally couldn't care less about things like icons, profiles, colors, etc. You're also not really risking anything of value to win those, so there's no real feeling of 'danger' involved that can make it a lot more exciting. So no, those don't work as well as money.
No one was trying to make progaming a career option for everyone with this idea. Its just a way to increase the fun, competitiveness, and skill of the game for people who wish to partake in it. Its not mixing Starcraft with poker, its taking an underlying concept that online poker sites developed that has virtually *nothing* to do with poker. The underlying concept is this: provide people a way to easily find X other people to play with, hold their money, and dole it out fairly to the winners at the end. That concept could be for anything remotely competitive, from rock-paper-scissors to... Starcraft (  ). So yes, poker sites have perfected it, but its not an idea native only to poker.
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is awesome32274 Posts
You missed my last post i already answer lots of the things you say.
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Just gonna throw it out there that pretty much every competitive community I've been a part of or heard of has had pay-to-play tournaments and people don't mind.
90% of the people I've met and played against at fighting game tournaments know they have no chance, or think they have a chance and then play some casuals and realize they have no chance, and they shell out $5-10 and enter anyways.
And the people who don't show up to tournaments because they don't think they're good enough? I've met plenty of those kinds of guys, too, and they won't show up for free tournaments either.
I seriously doubt that people are going to make a living playing in $5 online tournaments... especially since the payout structure is unlikely to be crazy generous and there's lots of transaction fees and such; it'd just a nice incentive for people to take it to the next level, but if people were REALLY into making money online they'd be learning how to play poker.
Also the only winner-takes-all tournaments with entry fees I've ever seen were all like 5-6 people and the winner-takes-all payout was decided by everybody there. Tournaments typically either charge a venue fee or take a percentage of the pot to cover costs; since there's probably no "venue fee" for an online tournament, but Blizzard needs some good reason to run this, the payout would probably be around 60% of the pot, at best. If you win a 16 man $5 entry tournament, you make something ~$56 from the pot, -$5 for entry and then transaction fees from PayPal or whatever and you're really only making like $40 AT BEST, which doesn't even cover the cost of the CD.
Sure, people will hack but if people report that crap and there's harsh penalties for it, it shouldn't be too hard to crack down on it.
Personally I like the idea of being able to enter a tournament of random players where I know most of the players aren't going to be 14 year olds.
-edit-
Blizzard can keep track of PayPal accounts and ban hackers who pay/get paid through those accounts? I dunno, not a perfect system but it's something. That way you can skip the whole "what if someone hacks and wins enough to just keep buying more copies of SC2" which is a lot of work for someone who obviously isn't into doing a lot of work.
And there shouldn't be big prizes for automated tournaments anyhow, again it's just an incentive to play and it adds an element of risk.
Big prizes should be left to community sites, sponsors, whatever, sure.
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On June 29 2008 10:54 IntoTheWow wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2008 07:20 FrozenArbiter wrote:It's like that. Explain why it isn't?
A D- player wants to play in a sit n' go tournament, he pays 10$ and he's in.
A B+ player who is 14 and can't get a credit card because his parent don't let him wants in, he has to win another free tournament (which will probably get more filled than the ones with admission fee) to be able to play.
No, you said: What you are saying would be like an iccup tourney were only B+ players can't enter. But hey, if you are D- and want to pay 10$, we will let you in. I'm assuming can't enter = can enter since otherwise it doesn't make sense. The tournament is open to anyone who wants to pay, it doesn't matter what skill level. Saying this is bad is as ridiculous as saying a tournament that's only open to B+ or C+ is bad. If the 14 year old with no credit card wants to play he can either go play in some of the free ones and try to qualify or get someone to pay for him. Also, have you ever considered that maybe it's not such a bad thing to prevent/make it a little bit harder for a 14 year old to blow through a bunch of money? Somehow all the 14 year olds in the world manage to get their parents to pay for their WoW subscriptions tho so I don't see a big issue. I just don't see the point of adding money in the middle? You can give players other kind of stuff, from "fame" in the battle.net site (like Blizzard did back when Starcraft didn't have replays) or icons and things on battle.net (like they do in W3). Hey, even give them maybe a bigger profile? colors in nickname? Whatever. It works. Add that to the free tournaments then, there'll no doubt be more of these anyway. Many more probably. Money means incentive. Incentive means competition and growth, if there's enough growth a viable way for the semi-pros to make some sort of living might arise. I see this as good. But beyond all of that, playing for money is fun. That plain and simple. Playing to win a prize is fucking awesome. If you want to make a profession out of Starcraft then get good and go play tourneys, you can travel in between. I don't get why people want to mix poker with Starcraft :S. Starcraft its not made for everyone to win money in. Of course a reduced number of people can, progamers. And I don't get why you don't want to mix the two, as it doesn't affect you :C If you don't want to play in the $ tournaments then don't, but why stop others from doing so? I obviously play poker and maybe I've been doing that for too long now because some of the objections in this thread are completely alien to me in their logic. Btw I apoligize if I come off rude anywhere, I'm extremely irritable today -.- Yeah I phrased the first quote badly, I didn't mean that. I don't mean to sound insulting but I just don't see the incentive it generates, or what good things can come from it. There's little good things from it and LOTS of problems imo. You got TLTour for example. TLTour did good, people gave good feedback about it. But having money sit n go tournaments incorporated to battle.net is a totally different thing. First of all you need an active anti-hack team to check all the replays and make a fair gaming environment. Of course this people have to be from Blizzard, since Blizzard is running the whole thing. Will Blizzard pay an anti-hack team to keep tournaments clean? The current state of hacking on battle.net tells otherwise. Once money is put in between hackers are going to have much more incentive to ruin this for you too. Also if the winner takes the money, one the tournament is done, if the winner is a hacker he can just 'run away' with his money and it will worth for him even if they ban his cdkey (50$ game or much less as you can see from BW today vs money from a 16 tournament. 16 x 10$ = 160$ to make an example. Second you need to get this whole thing diagrammed, which maps can be played? the need a Blizz symbol, since maps can be abused too (hi lastshadow). What about methods to pay for it? You will be stuck with paypal? Third: continuity. TLTour was great but it was only a couple of times and not continuously. Do you think you can get people to pay 15$ or 10$ all day to keep this tournaments filled? The current BW player base is huge, but take away all umsers, fastest players, moneymaps players. You get like the number of Iccup players or PGTour or whatever that are willing to play competitive. Now ask how many of those can or are willing to pay daily or weekly for money tournaments? I don't see money tournaments getting filled to play like "Sit n go" style. Fourth: divides the player base. Some people get into tournaments for fun because they are free. Even though they are going to lose, they play because they get the chance to play with someone better or because its fun. Check the BW section, every weekend it gets new threads of new tournaments being announced here. If you divide the player base you are taking that away from those players, and divide the community of [UMS - Money - competitive] into [UMS - money - competitive - more competitive]. I think the problems are way bigger than the good things that can come from it (make some extra money from playing a game). If the game is good and people like it, you will get good players playing each anyway. Money prize tournaments will be held up anyway and with bigger cash prizes. You will get replays of good players playing each other (or vods) too. I think its better to leave this to community sites + sponsors.
You list these 4 problems like they're some sort of huge, insurmountable problem. They're actually pretty trivial.
1)Yes hire an anti-hack team, using the money they get from rake. Don't pay out the money until the team has checked the game replays.
2)That same team could (gasp) pick out the maps to be used. And they could set up a paypal account, or use one of the other 1000 sites that poker sites use.
3)I'm sure there will be a lot more SC2 players than there are BW players now. And if you can't do it "sit n go" style just arrange it so it's like 1 per week or whatever.
4)The money tournaments would still have the same rules as the non money tournaments, it's just that the players would be a little better. Tournaments are already divided like that naturally, some are tougher than others.
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I'm just posting to say I support the idea. The implementation, do continue to discuss it out. I'm not that verse on these format system things and have no time to read up on them at the moment. Good luck.
edit: minor correction with my way with words. damn, must've been pretty late last night.
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I think this is an absolutely genius and essential idea.
Sure, there may be issues at first, but they're worth it. With proper tweaking and attention this could make SC2 the next true step for e-sports.
I'm a huge fan of this idea... I can't say it enough!
EDIT: I think the biggest issue that could arise with this would be the legal issues of payment options and all that credit card and of age nonsense... Shouldn't be too difficult as long as some jerks don't call it gambling
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I really like the idea EXCEPT it would run rampant with hackers.
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Sweden33719 Posts
First of all you need an active anti-hack team to check all the replays and make a fair gaming environment. Of course this people have to be from Blizzard, since Blizzard is running the whole thing. Will Blizzard pay an anti-hack team to keep tournaments clean? The current state of hacking on battle.net tells otherwise. Once money is put in between hackers are going to have much more incentive to ruin this for you too. Also if the winner takes the money, one the tournament is done, if the winner is a hacker he can just 'run away' with his money and it will worth for him even if they ban his cdkey (50$ game or much less as you can see from BW today vs money from a 16 tournament. 16 x 10$ = 160$ to make an example.
Hacking is a problem but we'll see what blizzard comes up with for SC2.. They have said, and yes it might just be words, that they have a team dedicated to fighting hacks. IF this works they'll generate income which would mean they could justify some more dedicated support.
Second you need to get this whole thing diagrammed, which maps can be played? the need a Blizz symbol, since maps can be abused too (hi lastshadow). What about methods to pay for it? You will be stuck with paypal?
Maps are obviously not an issue, that's like a super trivial thing as you wouldn't even let the players create the game themselves - they'd click a button and be taken to their assigned game.
The money issue I can see a few different ways.. One, they could enable you to deposit $ into your bnet account sort of like pokersites do (but probably keep a much smaller limit, ie there's no point in having people deposit 300 000$ into this :D) then just give you the money that way (and they'd also have to confirm cashouts, so in the case of potential abuse they could freeze the money).
There's a few different cashout methods available; neteller, moneybookers (was used for the first TLTour if I remember correctly), paypal, maybe even a bankwire.
Third: continuity. TLTour was great but it was only a couple of times and not continuously. Do you think you can get people to pay 15$ or 10$ all day to keep this tournaments filled? The current BW player base is huge, but take away all umsers, fastest players, moneymaps players. You get like the number of Iccup players or PGTour or whatever that are willing to play competitive. Now ask how many of those can or are willing to pay daily or weekly for money tournaments? I don't see money tournaments getting filled to play like "Sit n go" style.
Short answer: no, but that's fine.
Long answer: First of all, it's SC2 - I expect a gigantic influx of players. 2nd, the tournaments don't need to constantly fill up, maybe there'll only be one going everyday but that's fine because those X players will be quite happy to be able to play.
I think we could fill a reasonable amount tho, Koreans seem to like betgames, and while this isn't a betgame per se it does mean they are willing to pay money for their games. I think we could do ok.
Fourth: divides the player base. Some people get into tournaments for fun because they are free. Even though they are going to lose, they play because they get the chance to play with someone better or because its fun. Check the BW section, every weekend it gets new threads of new tournaments being announced here. If you divide the player base you are taking that away from those players, and divide the community of [UMS - Money - competitive] into [UMS - money - competitive - more competitive].
The SC2 player base is going to be wtfhuge. But as you said, these money tournaments will not fill up that fast, this means all the [more competitive] players will go play the free ones. I'm not worried about this tbh..
Do you think it's a problem that tournaments are divided into ranks on iccup?
I think the problems are way bigger than the good things that can come from it (make some extra money from playing a game). If the game is good and people like it, you will get good players playing each anyway. Money prize tournaments will be held up anyway and with bigger cash prizes. You will get replays of good players playing each other (or vods) too.
I think its better to leave this to community sites + sponsors.
Only problem being that it is quite impossible to host automated prizemoney tournaments for anyone but blizzard without doing quite a lot of work. IE would need a private server (a la iccup) or a looooot of work creating a website, system for handling transactions, system for automating the games etc.
Bigger tournaments with sponsors should still be there. They still are in poker.
Also something I haven't mentioned is that sit n go's are generally not winner take all, but pay out top X. Not a big point tho.
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paying to play in a tournament is just rude, think of the childrens who like to attend who cant and I mean it's nothing wrong with money tournaments but the problem is many people stay out of tournaments who are probably better then those who are in them. All that comes up in my mind if this idea comes through it's probably be like WoW in the end and I tell you thats not so brilliant. The idea is great of one reason, you motivate people to become better and try to earn more cash!
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If these hypothetical children and poor people who can't pay to enter a $5-10 money tournament but are so gosu and deserve to play in every tournament ever want to make money playing in tournaments, they should track down any number of LAN places that will almost definitely be throwing SC2 tournaments for a while.
I fail to see what's wrong with making it harder for random hypothetical 14 year olds to play in an online tournament with money on the line.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 29 2008 18:07 svenneburner wrote:
paying to play in a tournament is just rude, think of the childrens who like to attend who cant and I mean it's nothing wrong with money tournaments but the problem is many people stay out of tournaments who are probably better then those who are in them. All that comes up in my mind if this idea comes through it's probably be like WoW in the end and I tell you thats not so brilliant. The idea is great of one reason, you motivate people to become better and try to earn more cash!
Tough shit?
Too harsh?
I mean seriously, everyone doesn't have to be able to do everything. The skill issue will be offset by the fact that money will increase skill level.
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On June 29 2008 19:49 FrozenArbiter wrote:
The skill issue will be offset by the fact that money will increase skill level.
Exactly. People will up their game to make that money. Case in point, Korean pro Starcraft. Progaming in general, really. They're professional because they get paid, they get paid because they're good, they get good because they want to get paid.
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I like all your ideas but these games are aimed at kids and teens mostly. Parents aren't gonna want their kids using their credit cards to play in tournaments and shit. Blizzard probably doesn't wanna deal with the stigma/bad publicity like you said.
If they game was 18+ and released as MA or whatever then maybe it would work.
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At first, you used rethorics from poker, and that's not what I want from my gaming experience, but as you said, it's skill based, and people should be able to play in tournaments. So, yeah.
I really do think observers should be able to tap in though, or else it creates nothing for anyone but the people paying and playing, and I guess that's where it resembles gambling: If you can't watch, it doesn't create anything, and there is no real economy to it, only trading dollars.
I'm not really sure if I put it presicely. A bit tired :-)
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Sweden33719 Posts
I'd be fine with allowing observers into the game (that can't chat or whisper, or perhaps just automatically block all messages to the players in the game - problem is.. things like cellphones still exist, having some asshole have his friend join the game as an observer... yuck).
I guess having replays or a delayed feed could work.
I don't think small tournaments such as these have to be for anyone but the ones playing (but bigger ones kinda do), but I don't think it would do any harm.
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Introducing gambling into a game marketed towards teenagers seems unethical. Also how do you suggest an American based company can host a gambling service when there are laws against hosting regular gambling sites? I think it would be very bad to try to make SC2 into a community of gambling addicts and skilled players who prey on them like poker is. Also putting money on the line in online RTS games is not smart considering there is always potential for hacks.
Of course, all you poker people can day dream about these features.
Edit: Wrote this before reading through the thread, and after reading, I just want to reiterate the relevance of hacking. Because the game dynamics are calculated client side, the hacker has access to all the game information and ability to automate actions. Not to mention how would the system react to lag or disconnect. In an online environment there is no way to guard against these things, and a determined hacker can cause these things for the opponent or himself. Without a staffed tourney administration, these things will go unchecked. And having an anti hack crew working to catch the cheaters will not catch offenders immediately and many will probably go undetected over time. And once an offender is caught, money has already traded hands. The cheater can disappear and make a new account with a newly bought game. Is Blizzard responsible for the losses of the people who got cheated? If not, the people playing will have to legally agree to take financial losses due to illegal means.
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They might be able to deal with hacking if they forced entrants to ID themselves and have employees scan through games daily. Cheating people out of money usually has serious legal consequences in real life. Few people would risk ruining their lives to win win a starcraft tournament. They can also make a more secure client by dynamically encrypting fog, invisible units, only letting a neutral server host the game, etc. Theres a lot of technology out there they could use.
I guess some people might see this as gambling, but legally, if the prize is announced before a tournament, rather than the entry fee determining the prize, is not considered gambling (at least thats what they told us when we tried to host a tournament at school). Also, gambling is more luck whereas starcraft is about skill and getting better. Of course, there is may be some skill in gambling and some luck in starcraft, but the design and player intent is usually different. Its also fun to play starcaft competitively to get better. Even when you loose you may have gained something. In contrast, gambling is more like a thrill that stupid people who do not understand statistics enjoy.
I probably wont have enough time to invest on this because of school, but it sounds like an interesting feature to have.
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This could be a lot of fun and a great incentive to increase the general skill level of the online community as long as they can work out a decent system. MTG Online handles payout by giving away virtual product aka booster packs of cards. The players make money by selling these digital cards through places like ebay. This doesn't really transfer very well for sc, as tho blizzard could hand out pretty icons or like player points, I doubt people are going to want to pay money to have a shiny picture next to their name. I'm unsure about gambling laws though, so this indirect form of payout may not be necessary. Also, a nice way to discourage smurfing would be limiting people to only one account used for tournament play. Make them give blizz all their info, payment mode, etc, plus perhaps a small one time fee when they register to discourage abusing the system and making multiple accounts. Plus, if you force the tournaments entrants to be anonymous players would have a lot harder time abusing.
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Blizzard will certainly add some form of tournament feature, maybe with some more bells and whistles. But what Oakhill said is right - it's all dead because Blizzard stopped supporting it. Blizzard simply can't support a game properly, because they will never be as agile against hacks, against abuse and other issues. What they can do, and they have done is leave it to the community.
WE made SC into what it is today. WE made the private ladders and leagues that keep amateur SC alive. What Blizzard needs to do is to give the framework for us to make our own tournaments, leagues, etc. They can have their own - I'm all up for that, but it certainly will die the same way support/ladders for every game (Blizzard or not) has died. Only if they give us the ability to support the game will SC2 be alive in 10 years.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On June 30 2008 08:05 stenole wrote:
Introducing gambling into a game marketed towards teenagers seems unethical. Also how do you suggest an American based company can host a gambling service when there are laws against hosting regular gambling sites? I think it would be very bad to try to make SC2 into a community of gambling addicts and skilled players who prey on them like poker is. Also putting money on the line in online RTS games is not smart considering there is always potential for hacks.
Of course, all you poker people can day dream about these features.
Sigh.. How is this gambling? Maybe in the most literal definition of the word (ie "gambling: playing a game for money"), but if that's the case then chess tournaments = gambling, bw LANs = gambling, in fact almost any pay to play LAN = gambling.
Secondly, as I've mentioned in the thread, I'm fairly certain IF it was considered gambling, it would fall under the same category as, say, Fantasy Sports - which is permissable. It's a skill game and not a game of chance after all -.- I somehow don't see people going broke from playing 5$ tournaments, sorry.
As for hacks.. Blizzard said they have a dedicated anti-hack team these days, if something like this worked it would be generating income meaning they could afford to put some more effort into it. Hacking and image are probably the hardest things to overcome, especially seeing how even a lot of people on here seem to think paying to play in a tournament = gambling._.
I used poker terms because 1) I play poker 2) it's the only online system I'm familiar with that has non-stop automated tournaments. If I had known MTG hosted online pay2play tournaments I'd have used that ok?!
Edit: Wrote this before reading through the thread, and after reading, I just want to reiterate the relevance of hacking. Because the game dynamics are calculated client side, the hacker has access to all the game information and ability to automate actions. Not to mention how would the system react to lag or disconnect. In an online environment there is no way to guard against these things, and a determined hacker can cause these things for the opponent or himself. Without a staffed tourney administration, these things will go unchecked. And having an anti hack crew working to catch the cheaters will not catch offenders immediately and many will probably go undetected over time. And once an offender is caught, money has already traded hands. The cheater can disappear and make a new account with a newly bought game. Is Blizzard responsible for the losses of the people who got cheated? If not, the people playing will have to legally agree to take financial losses due to illegal means.
Simple: Do not transfer money until any complaints from the tournament have been reviewed.
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Its a good idea, first and foremost no one is forcing you to play for money, so if you don't like it, sit out of it
Having these money based tournaments motivates blizzard and the players. Blizzard will spend more effort making the game hackfree because they'll be constantly making money as long as these tournaments are going on, and players will up their game because they get to win money
CharlieMurphy June 30 2008 04:19
I like all your ideas but these games are aimed at kids and teens mostly. Parents aren't gonna want their kids using their credit cards to play in tournaments and shit. Blizzard probably doesn't wanna deal with the stigma/bad publicity like you said.
If they game was 18+ and released as MA or whatever then maybe it would work.
Where do you see that?
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-05-12-gamer-demographics_x.htm
age of average gamer: 29
age of average buyer: 36
Anyways to propose an idea to prevent "pros" constantly raking in, you could have different divisions, based on whatever system SC2 is going to use to rank players on the AMM. Maybe only players within 5 ranks of each other can be in any tournament. I think it should be a requirement that a player's account should have a minimum required number of games played before being allowed to enter, preventing smurf accounts.
However if break into different divisions, this raises the problem of pros smurfing on their friends' lower division account. There would probably have to be a board of review at blizzard that would compare the tournament games to the players previous games (possibly blizzard saves one replay from a player every 10th game as a record, or a term of use of entering a tournament is to keep a record of all your games)
I mean its definitely possible, it just needs proper checks and regulations, but it also needs to be simple enough for people to use it
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I'm not sure this should be implemented into the standard game. If this is going to be done at all it should be by third parties like TL and not in SC client or B.net. Although I admire you for thinking of new ways to lose your money.
It would probably magnify everything that is wrong up up to a whole new level.
I would predict unprecedented hacking, smurfing, unfair play, think of poker rings, manner would disappear altogether. When I played warcraft ladder you would often face people begging you to let them win at the end of the match to curse that they hope you die of cancer and other charming sentiments. I hate to think how they will behave if money if thrown into the equation.
It would also divide the userbase to those those with and without credit cards (or at least those with the common sense not to enter the tournament at all) and foster a feeling of those that don't play for cash are second class citizens of b.net, while the kids look resentfully at the button that takes them into the exclusive area that they are forbidden from.
If you think back to when starcraft was crazy big I remember reading endless threads of kids who were failing exams because they were addicted to SC. Now imagine it wasn't just study time but all their money too..
Professionalism may "improve" skill level to a certain degree, but it ruins sportsmanship. Just look at professional football player taking a dive. That doesn't happen on my Saturday morning games, because we are all playing for the LOVE OF THE GAME.
edit.. if you have to have a financial incentive to play a game there is probably something wrong with it. It is not a very good game.
There is a small bit of fun to be had from playing poker with matchsticks, but it is not fun for long. Poker is not a card game it is a money game. Do you want SC to be a RTS or a Real-time-money-pit?
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Sweden33719 Posts
I wouldn't be overly interested in SC if it didn't have a huge competitive scene in Korea, the same goes for a lot of people (directly or indirectly). A scene that's there because of the money.
I don't really appreciate your condescending attitude ("or at least those with the common sense not to enter the tournament at all" <- wtf?
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hmm, sorry that does seem rude.
What i mean is that if you are entering the tournament with the intention of winning money you are going to be disappointed. I think a lot of people think that if they buy-in then somehow that elevates their status, like "hey I'm a pro now too!" The reality is they have just ripped up $5 for the same experience they could get in a standard match.
$5 doesn;t sound like much, but when have you ever sat down and just played one match. If these are going to be tournaments on demand I can see a lot of people losing a lot of money.
My other point is that the fun of starcraft is able to carry its own weight while playing for money is a separate game in itself.
Nearly all games that successfully operate on the transaction of money are usually considerably easier to play than sc and have lot more to do with chance than skill. hence why card-counters are removed from black jack tables because they turned it into a game of skill.
If it is a game of skill you would have to be insane to enter any games other than you are certain to win. I assume it would put a lot of people off. The same way no one wanted to play Stu Ungar at Gin Rummy. (This could also possibly explain the demise of gin rummy too if people considered it a game of skill and not luck, but I don't really know much about casino trends.)
Of course no one ever lost money overestimating human gullibility...
edit.
I wouldn't object to tournaments with prize money provided by sponsors or whatever. I am only concerned with implementing a scheme where ordinary battle.net player put their own money at risk on a regular basis. But, hey, if enough of you want it.
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Doesn't gambling = investing money in luck trying to make even more money? That's how I always understood the word. Which is why poker is considered gambling, no matter how good you are you can always lose to a lucky newcomer. That's why things like lottery and horse races are considered gambling. Because luck is the biggest thing that is gonna tell if your invested money is getting earnings back or not.
How does starcraft qualifies as gambling? As much as there is some luck involved in it, it still doesn't come as close as the amount of skill that implies in the final result.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Ironically, horse betting is not banned in the US under the UIGEA..
It's hilariously corrupt =]
Btw under the dictionary definition of gambling you could consider any game played for money to be gambling, including chess tournaments.
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I like the idea, but it can easily be ruin by hacking. With money involved, it would be an even greater problem.
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FA is right about that, at any rate, it seems to me the word luck was sortof made up, as if that explains away mathematical probabilities.
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On June 30 2008 19:26 caution.slip wrote:Its a good idea, first and foremost no one is forcing you to play for money, so if you don't like it, sit out of it Having these money based tournaments motivates blizzard and the players. Blizzard will spend more effort making the game hackfree because they'll be constantly making money as long as these tournaments are going on, and players will up their game because they get to win money Show nested quote +CharlieMurphy June 30 2008 04:19
I like all your ideas but these games are aimed at kids and teens mostly. Parents aren't gonna want their kids using their credit cards to play in tournaments and shit. Blizzard probably doesn't wanna deal with the stigma/bad publicity like you said.
If they game was 18+ and released as MA or whatever then maybe it would work. Where do you see that? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-05-12-gamer-demographics_x.htmage of average gamer: 29 age of average buyer: 36 Anyways to propose an idea to prevent "pros" constantly raking in, you could have different divisions, based on whatever system SC2 is going to use to rank players on the AMM. Maybe only players within 5 ranks of each other can be in any tournament. I think it should be a requirement that a player's account should have a minimum required number of games played before being allowed to enter, preventing smurf accounts. However if break into different divisions, this raises the problem of pros smurfing on their friends' lower division account. There would probably have to be a board of review at blizzard that would compare the tournament games to the players previous games (possibly blizzard saves one replay from a player every 10th game as a record, or a term of use of entering a tournament is to keep a record of all your games) I mean its definitely possible, it just needs proper checks and regulations, but it also needs to be simple enough for people to use it
Obviously those statistics are wrong (or at least for this type of game) Do you honestly think around 50% of the people on this forum are 29 or older?
I would venture a guess that the average SC/BW player is somewhere around 17.
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On July 01 2008 07:15 [X]Ken_D wrote:
I like the idea, but it can easily be ruin by hacking. With money involved, it would be an even greater problem. I don't get why people keep saying this. The TSL had a $10,000 cash pool, was it ruined by hackers?
And TL admins were doing only a voluntary job. If we had automated tournaments like FA propose, you could have a small % of the money to hire admins to search for hackers. The more tournaments played, the more dedicated admins. So it could have even better anti-hacking than the TSL.
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Starcraft would most likely fall under gambling if it had SNG payment. Horse betting is an extreme example rather than the norm. Government isn't going to bend just for Starcraft. Online poker is banned in the US yet those that play poker knows how much skill is involved. At least poker has its data on the server side to prevent hacking. Starcraft is peer to peer which opens the door for hackers to exploit.
VIB. You aren't seeing how big the scope is if tournaments are automated. Tournaments are so frequent, that hackers can win tournament. With so many games, there won't be enough admins.
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On July 01 2008 11:31 [X]Ken_D wrote:
Starcraft would most likely fall under gambling if it had SNG payment. Horse betting is an extreme example rather than the norm. Government isn't going to bend just for Starcraft. Online poker is banned in the US yet those that play poker knows how much skill is involved. At least poker has its data on the server side to prevent hacking. Starcraft is peer to peer which opens the door for hackers to exploit.
VIB. You aren't seeing how big the scope is if tournaments are automated. Tournaments are so frequent, that hackers can win tournament.
but with good amount of paid admins as VIB wrote they can be banned and in hardcore situations some parts of tournaments redone, especially if they would be extended over time more...
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Yea, more tournaments -> more hackers. But also more tournaments -> more paid admins.
Hack vs anti-hack has always, since the dawn of times being a battle of persistence. Whoever is more dedicated to keep their hacks/anti-hacks updated wins. Usually hackers wins because there are just much more kids with free time than there are paid programmers. But with pay2play tournaments the balance actually shifts in favor of anti-hack. Because no matter how good your map hack is, a freelance programmer with 100 apm will never beat a progamer in a paid tournament, so they don't have much extra incentive to keep updating hacks as they already do today. But on the other had now you have many new admins and programmers getting paid to build anti-hacks and search replays for suspicious actions.
So all-in-all at the end I think hacking can be handled adequately.
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And like frozenarbiter said. We could just start slowly. Making like a tournament a week or something. Just to slowly adapt to the change of pace, get admins trained, bugs fixed, get feedback from players etc. Once we're confident with the format, that we can start allow it go faster and faster. But don't let it go too fast that it's out of control. If it starts getting to hard to manage everything and get handle hackers, then just slow down and make sure we can support it.
I mean it doesn't necessarily has to be an infinite amount of games that start as soon as they fill up. You could limit the number of tournaments, at least at the initial phase to make sure we can control it.
If TSL and Iccup can deal hackers with voluntary admins. Then I'm sure pay2play tournaments with paid admins could as well.
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Korean progamer can stomp 100apm hackers no problem. Progamers, again are the the extreme rather than the norm. There are so many games that not all tournaments are won by players like Nada. There are so many games on poker sites, I had never encounter a pro especially at the lower buyins.
With hacks and money incentive, it's just overwelming to handle and will give Starcraft & Blizzard brand a bad name  . At best money related, I can see paying for virtual items being use in games like decorations, LOL.
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Read what I said man. Tournaments -> more hackers. But also more tournaments -> more paid admins.
Plus you can slow down or start at a slower pace to make sure you can catch up with hackers.
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On July 01 2008 10:02 CharlieMurphy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 30 2008 19:26 caution.slip wrote:Its a good idea, first and foremost no one is forcing you to play for money, so if you don't like it, sit out of it Having these money based tournaments motivates blizzard and the players. Blizzard will spend more effort making the game hackfree because they'll be constantly making money as long as these tournaments are going on, and players will up their game because they get to win money CharlieMurphy June 30 2008 04:19
I like all your ideas but these games are aimed at kids and teens mostly. Parents aren't gonna want their kids using their credit cards to play in tournaments and shit. Blizzard probably doesn't wanna deal with the stigma/bad publicity like you said.
If they game was 18+ and released as MA or whatever then maybe it would work. Where do you see that? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-05-12-gamer-demographics_x.htmage of average gamer: 29 age of average buyer: 36 Anyways to propose an idea to prevent "pros" constantly raking in, you could have different divisions, based on whatever system SC2 is going to use to rank players on the AMM. Maybe only players within 5 ranks of each other can be in any tournament. I think it should be a requirement that a player's account should have a minimum required number of games played before being allowed to enter, preventing smurf accounts. However if break into different divisions, this raises the problem of pros smurfing on their friends' lower division account. There would probably have to be a board of review at blizzard that would compare the tournament games to the players previous games (possibly blizzard saves one replay from a player every 10th game as a record, or a term of use of entering a tournament is to keep a record of all your games) I mean its definitely possible, it just needs proper checks and regulations, but it also needs to be simple enough for people to use it Obviously those statistics are wrong (or at least for this type of game) Do you honestly think around 50% of the people on this forum are 29 or older? I would venture a guess that the average SC/BW player is somewhere around 17.
The highly unique pool of individuals that consist of TeamLiquid is hardly a fair representative of the entire SC crowd (when people think of TL they think of "hard core"), let alone the entire crowd of people who play, has played, or will consider playing RTS games.
that begets the question, what is the average age of a TL member? You could enter your birthdate at registration right? Is like a TL.net useless statistics page? cause those really tickle my fancy
Anyways the biggest problem by far is hackers, SC2 being hosted by bnet servers would help, but even in WC3 there are hacks for ladder right? (they're just private, or really hard to find).
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This sounds like a great idea to me. Blizzard could then have B.net be free, but offer other, more-expensive features for people who want to pay to play. The question for me is whether or not basic internet speeds could handle the whole system.
Though this kind of appeal to pro gamers would definitely make me want Blizzard to offer an additional default area for StarCraft gaming (apart from normal matchmaking and custom games): Casual Games. The Casual area would function much like the current b.net matchmaking for melee/FFA games, but it wouldn't keep track of wins/losses (just games played) and have the game speed at normal (instead of fastest) to give players like myself a fun place to remain newbish.
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there is no way you play SC at normal speed, its agonizingly slow...i couldn't even touch "fast" when it was on bnet ladder years ago
actually i was playing AoE3 and i thought to myself "damn the unit reponse is so bad" but then i put the speed on fast and everything felt better, although AoE3 on fast is ridiculous
I'm pretty sure bnet won't be P2P...no way...
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Sweden33719 Posts
On July 01 2008 11:59 [X]Ken_D wrote:Korean progamer can stomp 100apm hackers no problem. Progamers, again are the the extreme rather than the norm. There are so many games that not all tournaments are won by players like Nada. There are so many games on poker sites, I had never encounter a pro especially at the lower buyins. With hacks and money incentive, it's just overwelming to handle and will give Starcraft & Blizzard brand a bad name . At best money related, I can see paying for virtual items being use in games like decorations, LOL.
I think you are vastly overestimating how many people would be willing to pay to play in these tournaments on a regulra basis if you think it's going to be anything like poker. Everyone there is there for the explicit purpose of playing poker for money while the majority of BNetters won't be interested/capable/want to.
I think it will be much smaller scale, but still great.
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On July 01 2008 15:21 caution.slip wrote:
there is no way you play SC at normal speed, its agonizingly slow...i couldn't even touch "fast" when it was on bnet ladder years ago
actually i was playing AoE3 and i thought to myself "damn the unit reponse is so bad" but then i put the speed on fast and everything felt better, although AoE3 on fast is ridiculous
I was assuming that blizzard was planning on increasing the speed of the game by quite a bit (so fastest would be even faster in SC2). If so, normal shouldn't be too boring for casual players (assuming the gameplay itself isn't too slow from things like MBS). Plus, it doesn't hurt new players to learn at a slightly slower speed and this way I could get my friends to join in more often. Other than that, I do agree with what you're saying. I wouldn't want to play a game that I simply stare at for much of the time.
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Some comments:
1) Where does Blizzard supervision come into play? At casinos, they only allow you to lose so much before they cut you off. What about the guy who just gets addicted to online tournaments and keeps losing and losing and losing and losing back to back to back. What's to stop someone with a problem (gambling addiction is real according to people who make up this stuff) from burning $1000 in a couple days on tournament losses? Does Blizzard want to be responsible for this? In a way, they are ruining someone's life if they abuse the system to the point where they go bankrupt.
2) You've mentioned that it wouldn't be very large scale or popular. However setting up the game to handle secure storage of payment info would be a rather huge code modification and risk. Why would this be worth it to appease a small percentage of players?
Sit and go freebies (or ladder ratings) yeah, sounds fun. Blizzard sponsered regular tournaments? Again, cool idea. Having a cash game sit and go completely untouched by Blizzard? This is just asking for trouble.
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Not going to happen, the game has to be perfectly balanced to a level that not even Starcraft has reached yet.
Besides how are you going to handle disconnects?
The Map pool?
A guy plays 2 games, wins them. and all of a sudden he gets called in to handle a project before the 3rd, so he is penalized for that? In the poker realm, a guy can "sit out" and still have a chance to come back in the end, sure the blinds eat away at his stash but he can still rejoin the action. you can't do that in SC.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On July 04 2008 03:42 draeger wrote:
Some comments:
1) Where does Blizzard supervision come into play? At casinos, they only allow you to lose so much before they cut you off. What about the guy who just gets addicted to online tournaments and keeps losing and losing and losing and losing back to back to back. What's to stop someone with a problem (gambling addiction is real according to people who make up this stuff) from burning $1000 in a couple days on tournament losses? Does Blizzard want to be responsible for this? In a way, they are ruining someone's life if they abuse the system to the point where they go bankrupt.
If you manage to go bankrupt playing 5$ tournaments - that probably still take a couple of hours and will probably not insta fill up - you've got bigger problems than gambling ;p Casinos cut you off? Eh, maybe, but that's after you've lost millions. Online sites don't cut you off as far as I'm aware.
2) You've mentioned that it wouldn't be very large scale or popular. However setting up the game to handle secure storage of payment info would be a rather huge code modification and risk. Why would this be worth it to appease a small percentage of players?
Sit and go freebies (or ladder ratings) yeah, sounds fun. Blizzard sponsered regular tournaments? Again, cool idea. Having a cash game sit and go completely untouched by Blizzard? This is just asking for trouble.
I dunno how different it would be from how they handle WoW payments o_O;
You could even sell "gamecards" with tokens for playing in these tournaments or however WoW handles it.
On July 04 2008 04:05 Tiamat wrote:
Not going to happen, the game has to be perfectly balanced to a level that not even Starcraft has reached yet.
What? Explanation please cause I don't see the relevance. If the game is good enough to play for thousands of dollars - and we still see an even racial distribution - then it's good enough to play for 5$.
Besides how are you going to handle disconnects?
If this works out they can easily have a team dealing with this stuff.
The Map pool?
........ I'm fine with people disagreeing but please don't bring up totally silly reasons. The map pool!? Oh my, I don't know, maybe use the ladder map pool and have it updated every now and then?
A guy plays 2 games, wins them. and all of a sudden he gets called in to handle a project before the 3rd, so he is penalized for that? In the poker realm, a guy can "sit out" and still have a chance to come back in the end, sure the blinds eat away at his stash but he can still rejoin the action. you can't do that in SC.
If you sit out after winning 2 games, the poker equivalent being sitting out when the blinds are high, you are effectively forfeiting. This is an even dumber reason than the map pool -.- I'm fine with the other two but wtf, if you don't like the idea that's fine but I really hope you aren't really worried about THIS?
I mean.. if you forfeit you forfeit, it's up to you.
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On July 04 2008 04:27 FrozenArbiter wrote:
If you manage to go bankrupt playing 5$ tournaments - that probably still take a couple of hours and will probably not insta fill up - you've got bigger problems than gambling ;p Casinos cut you off? Eh, maybe, but that's after you've lost millions. Online sites don't cut you off as far as I'm aware.
Remember that games target young kids. A 17 year old kid is going to have tons of disposable income, yet those are the players who are most likely going to be suckered into losing the most.
Casinos in the US will flag you if you've lost more than a few thousand dollars in an evening. At that point you either have to prove you can stake it or come back another night.
I don't know much about online sites, I stopped following that scene years ago.
I dunno how different it would be from how they handle WoW payments o_O;
You could even sell "gamecards" with tokens for playing in these tournaments or however WoW handles it.
Software can't just magically be transplanted from 1 game to another. I'm sure it would require a very lofty upgrade to the current battle.net code to allow for secure, real money transactions to take place.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On July 04 2008 06:50 draeger wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2008 04:27 FrozenArbiter wrote:
If you manage to go bankrupt playing 5$ tournaments - that probably still take a couple of hours and will probably not insta fill up - you've got bigger problems than gambling ;p Casinos cut you off? Eh, maybe, but that's after you've lost millions. Online sites don't cut you off as far as I'm aware.
Remember that games target young kids. A 17 year old kid is going to have tons of disposable income, yet those are the players who are most likely going to be suckered into losing the most. And again - if you manage to lose a relevant amount of money (that wouldnt have been "lost" paying for games, booze, whatever other entertainment) on these tournaments, I'd be pretty impressed.
I don't know, can 17 year olds get credit cards? If not, they can't legally play anyway.
Casinos in the US will flag you if you've lost more than a few thousand dollars in an evening. At that point you either have to prove you can stake it or come back another night.
I don't know much about online sites, I stopped following that scene years ago.
Well, online sites don't.
Show nested quote +
I dunno how different it would be from how they handle WoW payments o_O;
You could even sell "gamecards" with tokens for playing in these tournaments or however WoW handles it.
Software can't just magically be transplanted from 1 game to another. I'm sure it would require a very lofty upgrade to the current battle.net code to allow for secure, real money transactions to take place.
Seeing as how they are rebuilding battle.net anyway it's not like they'd have to tear everything up just to implement this one thing.
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On July 04 2008 07:30 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2008 06:50 draeger wrote:On July 04 2008 04:27 FrozenArbiter wrote:
If you manage to go bankrupt playing 5$ tournaments - that probably still take a couple of hours and will probably not insta fill up - you've got bigger problems than gambling ;p Casinos cut you off? Eh, maybe, but that's after you've lost millions. Online sites don't cut you off as far as I'm aware.
Remember that games target young kids. A 17 year old kid is going to have tons of disposable income, yet those are the players who are most likely going to be suckered into losing the most. And again - if you manage to lose a relevant amount of money (that wouldnt have been "lost" paying for games, booze, whatever other entertainment) on these tournaments, I'd be pretty impressed. I don't know, can 17 year olds get credit cards? If not, they can't legally play anyway.
They can, but they need parental permission, I'm fairly certain. And I'd venture a guess that most parents watch their kids spending on credit/debit cards when they're still under 18 (at least mine did). So its not *too* much of an issue (and even if it were, how exactly is that Blizzard's responsibility? If they make a rule saying 'You must be over 18 to play', you can't fault them for people breaking said rule).
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On June 28 2008 17:41 d.arkive wrote:
I wouldn't do it because I hate paying for things, but it sounds like a fine idea.
I honestly have to agree with this. Money is not meant to be spent... It is meant to be saved and kept to maintain your feeling of having the money. Not to mention if you get 2-0 cheesed like Bisu, then it must not feel too good, especially when you lose $5.
EDIT: I have an idea, free tournaments with no incentive other than a way to competitively play a few games.
Idea: Also you could have the prices each have a "rank" tournament.
Free would be D Rank tourney, $1, would be C, #5 would be B, and $10 would be A. Or something of that sort. You could have these show in the records where a guy won 15 A tournaments, etc. etc.
There should also be skill filtered tournaments, so players can't abuse their skill and ruin games for lesser players.
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On July 04 2008 10:15 DeathTray wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2008 17:41 d.arkive wrote:
I wouldn't do it because I hate paying for things, but it sounds like a fine idea. I honestly have to agree with this. Money is not meant to be spent... It is meant to be saved and kept to maintain your feeling of having the money. Not to mention if you get 2-0 cheesed like Bisu, then it must not feel too good, especially when you lose $5. EDIT: I have an idea, free tournaments with no incentive other than a way to competitively play a few games. Idea: Also you could have the prices each have a "rank" tournament. Free would be D Rank tourney, $1, would be C, #5 would be B, and $10 would be A. Or something of that sort. You could have these show in the records where a guy won 15 A tournaments, etc. etc. There should also be skill filtered tournaments, so players can't abuse their skill and ruin games for lesser players.
Or maybe divisions, not ranks? Ranks shouldn't be based on amount of cash paid because it would insult players' skill. Some guy winning free tournament can be better than even B or A
+ it would widen skill gap of tournaments to fit somewhere better without adding + and -
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Sweden33719 Posts
On July 04 2008 10:15 DeathTray wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2008 17:41 d.arkive wrote:
I wouldn't do it because I hate paying for things, but it sounds like a fine idea. I honestly have to agree with this. Money is not meant to be spent... It is meant to be saved and kept to maintain your feeling of having the money. Not to mention if you get 2-0 cheesed like Bisu, then it must not feel too good, especially when you lose $5. EDIT: I have an idea, free tournaments with no incentive other than a way to competitively play a few games. Idea: Also you could have the prices each have a "rank" tournament. Free would be D Rank tourney, $1, would be C, #5 would be B, and $10 would be A. Or something of that sort. You could have these show in the records where a guy won 15 A tournaments, etc. etc. There should also be skill filtered tournaments, so players can't abuse their skill and ruin games for lesser players.
What's the point of having money if you don't use it... Can't really tell if that was sarcasm.
I don't think having ranks based on buyin fee is a great idea. Can an A rank not join D rank tournaments? That's bad cause I think most tournaments will be free.
It's also bad if he can't join the lower buyin fees simply because I don't think the others will run nearly often enough. It will just lead to people creating new accounts so they can actually play.
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On July 04 2008 17:28 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2008 10:15 DeathTray wrote:On June 28 2008 17:41 d.arkive wrote:
I wouldn't do it because I hate paying for things, but it sounds like a fine idea. I honestly have to agree with this. Money is not meant to be spent... It is meant to be saved and kept to maintain your feeling of having the money. Not to mention if you get 2-0 cheesed like Bisu, then it must not feel too good, especially when you lose $5. EDIT: I have an idea, free tournaments with no incentive other than a way to competitively play a few games. Idea: Also you could have the prices each have a "rank" tournament. Free would be D Rank tourney, $1, would be C, #5 would be B, and $10 would be A. Or something of that sort. You could have these show in the records where a guy won 15 A tournaments, etc. etc. There should also be skill filtered tournaments, so players can't abuse their skill and ruin games for lesser players. + Show Spoiler +What's the point of having money if you don't use it... Can't really tell if that was sarcasm.
I don't think having ranks based on buyin fee is a great idea. Can an A rank not join D rank tournaments? That's bad cause I think most tournaments will be free.
It's also bad if he can't join the lower buyin fees simply because I don't think the others will run nearly often enough. It will just lead to people creating new accounts so they can actually play.
+ making more tournaments based on not only skill but fee too*, on the other hand blocking higher fee ones not to let rash for starter, only to call it poker later, could be another way to go...
(* called like Division 1 for 5$ and for 10$; Division 2 for 5$ and for 10$ etc?)
edit: to avoid shorter and longer qualifiers system to sum bigger prizes
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On July 04 2008 04:05 Tiamat wrote:
A guy plays 2 games, wins them. and all of a sudden he gets called in to handle a project before the 3rd, so he is penalized for that? In the poker realm, a guy can "sit out" and still have a chance to come back in the end, sure the blinds eat away at his stash but he can still rejoin the action. you can't do that in SC.
I actually think that this would be one of the best functions of the pay tournament. The reason is that every time i have played a non-official tournament people has dropped off in hordes. Atleast this gives them some reason to stay.
And about people being extremly rude the soulution is very simple. Allow replays to record what the people are writing. Then you can just send the replay to blizzard and then will ban the guy from the tournament.
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United Arab Emirates492 Posts
Hello, my 1st post here.
Great idea by op, and I am sorry in advance to bump a old thread (I can't create a new thread at the moment).
I just want to suggest few ideas myself for Battle.net v2.0
1) Able to join multiple chat rooms and being able to toggle between them instantly (similar to irc), and It would be great if the rooms are still able run in background even if you are in a game.
2) Along with the four usual servers / realms (ie. useast/useast/asia/europe), blizzard should make one central server which acts as an a hub.
*All the battle.net features (chat rooms, friend list functions, advertisement, clan functions and etc) could be hosted on this central server excluding games which should be hosted on there respected realms.
Benefits:
1)This would allow bandwidth of the sub realms (useast, etc) to be used only for gaming and this would decrease latency.
2)This would allow all the players connected to starcraft2 to communicate in 1 central hub, meaning a bigger and better community which is not divided by four usual realms.
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Sweden33719 Posts
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I like it. I will get sharked and loose all my money. But I like it.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Since this thread has been bumped anyway..
- Instead of having live streams for these games (since that'd lead to a loooot of cheating, no doubt), you could simply have all replays go up (might not be popular with some players..)
- Someone (teacake I think) said something like "people aren't gonna want to play 5$ just to get knocked out in 1 game".. Well, from what I remember, the WC3 automated tournaments let you play far more than 1 game, I don't remember/know how they worked exactly tho.. Swiss style? Round robin? I know there was a X hour period or so where you just got to play play play then at the end of that I assume the top X advanced into brackets? I duno.
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I'm still not aware of a mainstream internet chess server that has people playing for money.
Just have general pay to play. Then you can also do some prize money and they can hire Artosis to do commentary. Poker isn't a sport because of the money.
Also fixes the whole paying for 3 single players games you don't want to keep your multiplayer game up to date.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Poker wouldn't even be a shadow of its current self if it wasn't for money. Is it a fun game? Yeah, but a large part of the appeal is watching people win and lose HUGE amounts of money (and making huge bluffs/calls) while doing so.
There's no fucking way poker would have ever gotten as big as it is now if it wasn't for the money, and even today the prizepools of the big tournaments are made up from the entrance fees.
As for wanting pay to play online over having pay to play tournaments... *sigh*
Your hatred the expansions is getting a bit silly I would pay to play, but many people wouldn't + I DO want to play the single player and hence I'll now pay for both.
Paying to play COULD be acceptable with the proper futures, but I hope you realize that for the vast majorit, the game would now be a fuckload more expensive (I think most people want to play single player as well as multi).
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I just want to say that this idea is incredibly cool and exciting, as a poker player myself, I think this would truly make SC2 more than a game, but the competitive esport/phenomenon I dream it can be. I don't know that it will ever happen (because of "online gambling" issues), but I would sign any petition or do anything else to have Blizzard implement this. I hope they read this thread, see the responses, and really think about doing this!
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I like the idea of around the clock online tournaments, but the monetary component will need to be handled outside of Battle.net. Overcoming some of the pitfalls mentioned in this thread is not a trivial task. Blizzard will not be opening this can of worms. The best we can hope for is a framework that allows communities to do this kind of thing outside of Battle.net. A productive discussion topic would center around tools in Battle.net 2.0 that would help make this happen.
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On October 21 2008 23:50 FrozenArbiter wrote:
- Someone (teacake I think) said something like "people aren't gonna want to play 5$ just to get knocked out in 1 game".. Well, from what I remember, the WC3 automated tournaments let you play far more than 1 game, I don't remember/know how they worked exactly tho.. Swiss style? Round robin? I know there was a X hour period or so where you just got to play play play then at the end of that I assume the top X advanced into brackets? I duno.
WC3 tournaments had a 30 min signup period. A 3 hour period of time where you would play as many games as possible and then the top 16 would enter a single elimination bo3 event to get the victor.
These tournaments would have thousands of people playing in it. However if they had a buyin fee, there would be very few. If you know your not going to win, why would you pay money to enter? I think a money system would only have gosus playing in it and noobs who give it a try wouldnt be very fast to try it again.
Poker is at the stage that it is because there is a large luck component to it. I'm not the best poker player in the world. However thats not going to deter me from entering a 5 dollar buyin tournament, because I know that even if im playing against phil ivey, there is a chance I will win due to pure luck. Against boxer, no amount of luck is going to save me.
The problem is that this system will just destroy the weakest player, who will be detered from playing again. This in turn creates a new weakest player, who will be destroyed and wont return. The cycle continues until the system collapses on itself.
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A main weakness in the poker analogy is that poker has a large random element in it. It is very uncommon for weak players to know they are losers - this is the reason good players can make good money playing poker.
On the other side of the spectrum is a game like chess - a game with relatively little money to be made (which is why some top chess players switched to poker, a la Dan Harrington). The reason there is little money to be made in chess and there is no betting on games between players is because it is painfully obvious who the better chess player is - he will usually always beat the lesser player, unlike poker, where in the course of only one session luck plays a very large role in who is a winner in such a short time.
Starcraft is much closer to chess than it is to poker... it is usually pretty obvious who the superior player is after just a couple games (and it usually takes just one). Assuming that most players won't put money up if they are confident they will lose (a fair assumption most of the time, I think) then that leaves only the top of the elite willing to put up money...A very small number of players.
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It sounds like a great idea, I would love to see a larger selection of automated tourneys(like what's being done for Wc3 but more often and taking less time), as well as player created tournament options. It would be nice for popular clans or just groups of people to be able to make a tournament and have it be automated by BNET.
As far as 'money' tournaments go, that's a great idea, but I would prefer to have maybe 1 or 2 a week, possibly 1 a night. SC shouldn't be made into a game based around money, 1 a week would be ideal in my opinion. I'd also love from something like the Zotac Cup to be around for Sc2, but that would have to be sponsored by a third party.
It would be cool to have a once a month tourney and only players that had won previous tournaments would be allowed to participate. These could be bracket based and they could end up being a lot of fun. In general, tournaments are a lot of fun, but you don't want to make them 'boring'. If you constantly have tournaments running, then they're not going to be any fun. They need to be something special, where you have the opportunity to play in a 1v1 or 2v2 tournament twice a day, a money tournament once a week, and then a larger tournament once a month.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On October 22 2008 11:16 Fen wrote:Show nested quote +On October 21 2008 23:50 FrozenArbiter wrote:
- Someone (teacake I think) said something like "people aren't gonna want to play 5$ just to get knocked out in 1 game".. Well, from what I remember, the WC3 automated tournaments let you play far more than 1 game, I don't remember/know how they worked exactly tho.. Swiss style? Round robin? I know there was a X hour period or so where you just got to play play play then at the end of that I assume the top X advanced into brackets? I duno. WC3 tournaments had a 30 min signup period. A 3 hour period of time where you would play as many games as possible and then the top 16 would enter a single elimination bo3 event to get the victor. These tournaments would have thousands of people playing in it. However if they had a buyin fee, there would be very few. If you know your not going to win, why would you pay money to enter? I think a money system would only have gosus playing in it and noobs who give it a try wouldnt be very fast to try it again. Poker is at the stage that it is because there is a large luck component to it. I'm not the best poker player in the world. However thats not going to deter me from entering a 5 dollar buyin tournament, because I know that even if im playing against phil ivey, there is a chance I will win due to pure luck. Against boxer, no amount of luck is going to save me. The problem is that this system will just destroy the weakest player, who will be detered from playing again. This in turn creates a new weakest player, who will be destroyed and wont return. The cycle continues until the system collapses on itself.
I think there are enough people like myself who would gladly pay 5$ to play in a tournament with some decent players, regardless of my chances to win. Maybe I'm wrong about how people think, but there were plenty of bad players who signed up for things like TLTour.
On October 22 2008 13:33 vsrooks wrote:
It sounds like a great idea, I would love to see a larger selection of automated tourneys(like what's being done for Wc3 but more often and taking less time), as well as player created tournament options. It would be nice for popular clans or just groups of people to be able to make a tournament and have it be automated by BNET.
As far as 'money' tournaments go, that's a great idea, but I would prefer to have maybe 1 or 2 a week, possibly 1 a night. SC shouldn't be made into a game based around money, 1 a week would be ideal in my opinion. I'd also love from something like the Zotac Cup to be around for Sc2, but that would have to be sponsored by a third party.
It would be cool to have a once a month tourney and only players that had won previous tournaments would be allowed to participate. These could be bracket based and they could end up being a lot of fun. In general, tournaments are a lot of fun, but you don't want to make them 'boring'. If you constantly have tournaments running, then they're not going to be any fun. They need to be something special, where you have the opportunity to play in a 1v1 or 2v2 tournament twice a day, a money tournament once a week, and then a larger tournament once a month.
Small tournaments can run all the time, big tournaments can run infrequently and be the special ones.
On October 22 2008 13:24 ploy wrote:
A main weakness in the poker analogy is that poker has a large random element in it. It is very uncommon for weak players to know they are losers - this is the reason good players can make good money playing poker.
On the other side of the spectrum is a game like chess - a game with relatively little money to be made (which is why some top chess players switched to poker, a la Dan Harrington). The reason there is little money to be made in chess and there is no betting on games between players is because it is painfully obvious who the better chess player is - he will usually always beat the lesser player, unlike poker, where in the course of only one session luck plays a very large role in who is a winner in such a short time.
Starcraft is much closer to chess than it is to poker... it is usually pretty obvious who the superior player is after just a couple games (and it usually takes just one). Assuming that most players won't put money up if they are confident they will lose (a fair assumption most of the time, I think) then that leaves only the top of the elite willing to put up money...A very small number of players.
There is some degree of luck in SC + people have egos + a $ or 5 isn't that much money.
And if they implement features you have to pay for, they could use some of that money to run guaranteed prize money tournaments etc.
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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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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
