A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

Going with the incentives for helping newbies presented in this thread, here's an idea that can be added onto the galaxy system presented there, or it can be used with the current system without adjustment.

Allow people to bet on a planet achieving a certain rank or better. Call it the universal development fund or something. You can place a bet by paying the planet's current score in resources. A bet takes the form of:

I bet x:y:z will reach rank 500.

If x:y:z reaches rank 500, you get paid their new score in each resource.

Limits would be that you can't bet on your own planet, and you can only place a bet on a planet that is for a higher rank than the last one was for. If x:y:z has reached rank 490, and then dropped back to 550, you can't bet 510, or 500, you'd have to bet 499 or better.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

I suggested somewhere of an in-game casino type thing where players could play roulette (for example) using resources, just to keep entertainment up between ticks and also to get people to actually 'play' this game more (as opposed to logging in and doing stuff for 10 mins, then every tick afterwards check gal status for 2 mins etc). Appoco never got back to me whether this would constitute 'proper' gambling on the internet, and associated legal issues with regards to that (and minors, etc). Thus, i dont know whether providing an online gambling service is legal, but if it was, it might be worth expanding on the idea?

More specifically with your proposal, i am unsure as to how exactly this will help newbies, however i'll go off and read your other thread now.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

This has very little to do with an ingame gambling facility, but for the record that would be legal so long as it doesn't involve any real money (afaik).

If I help my new galmate reach rank X, I can earn resources. It's incentive.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

So you are able to only bet on players in your galaxy? You didnt mention that - i was thinking of universal application, ie you were just betting on some random planet to move 1 more rank higher than it was right at that tick, and odds are fairly good that you would be able to farm their score in resources in a universe-wide fashion. If done actively, i would imagine that gambling on planets in this fashion could completely replace roiding as a source of income (but not XP, i presume) which is prolly a bad thing (though generally i am in favour of different paths to winning a round).

But if its your galaxy only, that would be better.

Curious, what are the odds? is it time based? (ie, in 1 day the planet must gain 1 more rank? is there a multiplier on the proposed winnings if you set ambitious [and thus more risky] targets, such as 200 or 500 places higher in x time?).

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

[10:23:56] <Arfy|afk> Hey everyone in 1up! I've calced my attack and I'm going to move up 250 places! Everyone bet on me reaching t100!

I suppose dynamic odds like real bookmakers use could be brought in, but I honestly don't see the gains from this idea other than intra-ally 'gambling farms'.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

If I didn't mention that, why do you assume it is so?

No time limit, no odds. Just straight up current score in resources to buy, new score in resources payout. No constraints, because it's premature to add them.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

So you can bet on anyone in your galaxy to move up any amount of ranks?
This won't help new players...

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

I never said I wanted this to be limited to galmates.
1. Buy cheap
2. help them grow
3. profit!

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

What bonus is there?

You know someone is going to land on roids. you bet on them to go up a few ranks.
You seem to have a remarkably "free" system of betting on anyone.

The best way I could see of rewarding is something like:

((rank when bet-rank achieved)/(ticks taken to achieve)^(1/2) )*resources/xp/etc

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

Because of the colossal amount of abuse that would happen with a universe full of potential gains.

It is likely that most players would rise by 1 rank within a few days, ceteris paribus. Thus, all you need to do is troll through the galaxies and place a bet that their rank will increase by one, and you would gain such a massively disproportionate amount of cash it wouldnt be funny. There isnt really an incentive to get players to grow when; 1) there is no "risk premium" offered, 2) the universe is your footstool, 3) you can bet on any rank (not just in blocks of 50/100 or whatever if you are dealing with lowly ranked players).

As the liklihood of a player gaining 1 more rank is exceptionally high, the payoff should be very small - ie, risk = reward. similarly, if you have a player who gets into the top 50 from rank 1000, then the likelihood of that is small, and thus the reward for getting them there should be much larger. Otherwise, betting systems collapse completely if 'everyone's a winner' etc.

I like the idea that you have given. It think its exceptionally original, and if applied to players within your galaxy only it; 1) allows you to focus on a select number of players and train them up well, 2) limits the number of players that you can bet on, and thus increase the long-term importance of getting them ranked well, 3) severely reduces the liklihood of universal wide trolling for betting.

All three of those reasons mean that the system is more likely to actually help the players whom you are betting on.


(btw, thanks for editing and finishing the sentence - you left me hanging for a while... ;)).

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

The built in limitation is that you can't bet on the same outcome twice. You can't bet someone will get into the top100 two times, you'd have to bet 100, then 99. It would probably be better to either to limit it to 'higher than current highest rank'. So if I've been up to rank 2 (after protection, I guess), the 'worst' anyone could bet on for me would be rank 1. Another way to limit it would be to make brackets. Top100, top200, top500 etc.

Congratulations on missing the point. Your formula means that very quick, sharp rises (such as my rise of ~2k ranks in a day last round) are very well rewarded. This directly favoritizes the alliance 'farming' stuff you complained about earlier.

My system means that the largest gains are from the slowest rank climbers. If I pay 100k for a newbie to get into the top500, and he does it 500 ticks from now, I get a return ~3 million (going by last round).

The return would be very small.

I dislike the idea that I'm unable to help someone just because they're not in my galaxy. That's just me though.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

This approach is much better than what you initially said, as it removes the immediate score/resources gain that anyone who places a bet can achieve, and actually makes the system worthwhile.

iirc, you said that the 'gain' (as in the resource gain, not the potential increase in playerbase gain) was the player's score. Whilst you said that was an example, what i was mostly worried about was people going around placing (for example) 50 bets on 50 different newbies to raise in rank by 1. Whilst their score might be small, 50 * 100k score of resources per tick is significant, and much more so if it could be maintained over a long time (though, granted, the proportion of an increase this would have over time would fall, it would still be substantial).

Having said all that, your earlier comment (quoted above) effectively reduces the instances of that happening significantly.


Ah, but people like you and me have been helping others throughout the rounds - indeed most of the people we help arent in our galaxy! You do it through hosting/contributing to the PA Wiki and actively participating on these boards, whilst i try to write help guides and so on and get them as widely distributed as possible. Just because we dont receive a direct finanical reward because of it doesnt mean we cant keep doing it...

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

It does need some sort of limitation, these aren't bad.

It was an idea for a reward system. It's much easier for low ranking players to gain ranks than high ranking players. Therefore, it'd be more worthwhile to bet on small planets and help them rise through the ranks via donations and helping them attack than betting on alliance mates in the top 200 who might rise 50 ranks with a few good attacks.
The time modifier wasn't essential, but there to reward some sort of speed in achieving your goal.

fair enough
so why is anyone going to use it?

There's a difference between helping them and betting on them. You can help them in any galaxy. Going by the current system, if you just exile small planets but keep in contact and help them 'remotely' then you can a) continue the search for a decent galaxy and b) get rewards from bets on small planets. making it galaxy based - i.e. "you only get the reward if they're in your galaxy and stay in your galaxy" means that you're more likely to help the galaxy.

Re: A betting system to encourage helping newbies (and alliance/galmates!)
 

The necessary investment would be very high though. Remember that you'd need to pay resources = current score to make the bet.
Fair enough. I still think that using score as cost and payout balances this without the need for some weird formula.
Context! I said that the payout on small planets rising 1 rank would be very small, not that all the payouts would be small.

Yes, but now you're falling back into that mindset that the current system helps. It doesn't. The bet makes an deliberate connection between the helper and the helpee. The galaxy just makes an incidental connection. You might as well just use lottery tickets to match people up.