Hi all,
Those of you who are/were involved in the AoE3 community may know me from there, I go by the nickname Goodspeed. I've been playing the AoE series for about 15 years. Mostly, and somewhat regrettably, AoE3. It's a great game but the player base has been dwindling, and the more AoE2 I play the more I realize that it is the better RTS.
I have been quite involved in the AoE3 community from being one of the founders of its current community website to leading an effort to rebalance the game with the ESOC patch, and, perhaps relevant to you, hosting frequent betting events alongside tournaments to "up the stakes" a little . They have been successful even with the small community we had to work with, and very fun and rewarding to run, and now that I've fleshed out the platform and improved it over the years it has become fairly straightforward to apply it to other games.
Since I've been playing AoE2 more recently, and watching a lot of youtube content (quickly turning @Nili_AoE fan) it struck me that I could run the same kind of event for AoE2.
I have not at all been involved in this community, so perhaps some version of this already exists, but here's an overview of what it would look like:
There is a separate betting event per tournament. Sign ups (per event) would run in a forum thread. Each betting account would be tied to a forum account to discourage smurfing.
Everyone starts with an equal number of "points". There is no buy-in, entry is free, but there is a small prize pool per event of about $100 to make it interesting, but not too interesting.
During the event participants are able to bet on matches in a tournament, for example TheViper vs TaToH; You can choose between betting on one of the players winning with lower risk but also lower payouts, or on a specific result (2-0, 2-1, 4-2, etc) with typically higher payouts.
When someone runs out of points it's possible to donate to them.
There is artificial inflation to encourage participation.
Here's an example of what the platform looks like:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...19hrzTkOp6ajZJ4PWMbaB8xV2g/edit#gid=557307683
(Notice there are multiple tabs on the bottom)
And a player sheet looks like this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BQnMjkl5FjBibnPpYOTLdhvUUM6_KHf0t13pjMOfKM0/edit#gid=0
The odds are not fixed, rather they are based on what everyone bet on and they change real-time. If a lot of people bet on Viper, payouts for TaToH winning will be high, etc. So you are betting against everyone else, not against a bookie.
Per round or about once a week I would write updates on what happened in the betting event (who won a lot, who lost a lot, if any records were broken, etc), and there will be a discussion thread. If there is enough interest, I might start a discord for it.
With this thread, I mostly want to know how much interest there is in such a thing, and whether perhaps something similar already exists in the AoE2 community. So let me know if you would be interested or think the community as a whole would be interested!
Suggestions on how to improve the platform to work better with AoE2 are certainly welcome too.
Those of you who are/were involved in the AoE3 community may know me from there, I go by the nickname Goodspeed. I've been playing the AoE series for about 15 years. Mostly, and somewhat regrettably, AoE3. It's a great game but the player base has been dwindling, and the more AoE2 I play the more I realize that it is the better RTS.
I have been quite involved in the AoE3 community from being one of the founders of its current community website to leading an effort to rebalance the game with the ESOC patch, and, perhaps relevant to you, hosting frequent betting events alongside tournaments to "up the stakes" a little . They have been successful even with the small community we had to work with, and very fun and rewarding to run, and now that I've fleshed out the platform and improved it over the years it has become fairly straightforward to apply it to other games.
Since I've been playing AoE2 more recently, and watching a lot of youtube content (quickly turning @Nili_AoE fan) it struck me that I could run the same kind of event for AoE2.
I have not at all been involved in this community, so perhaps some version of this already exists, but here's an overview of what it would look like:
There is a separate betting event per tournament. Sign ups (per event) would run in a forum thread. Each betting account would be tied to a forum account to discourage smurfing.
Everyone starts with an equal number of "points". There is no buy-in, entry is free, but there is a small prize pool per event of about $100 to make it interesting, but not too interesting.
During the event participants are able to bet on matches in a tournament, for example TheViper vs TaToH; You can choose between betting on one of the players winning with lower risk but also lower payouts, or on a specific result (2-0, 2-1, 4-2, etc) with typically higher payouts.
When someone runs out of points it's possible to donate to them.
There is artificial inflation to encourage participation.
Here's an example of what the platform looks like:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...19hrzTkOp6ajZJ4PWMbaB8xV2g/edit#gid=557307683
(Notice there are multiple tabs on the bottom)
And a player sheet looks like this:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BQnMjkl5FjBibnPpYOTLdhvUUM6_KHf0t13pjMOfKM0/edit#gid=0
The odds are not fixed, rather they are based on what everyone bet on and they change real-time. If a lot of people bet on Viper, payouts for TaToH winning will be high, etc. So you are betting against everyone else, not against a bookie.
Per round or about once a week I would write updates on what happened in the betting event (who won a lot, who lost a lot, if any records were broken, etc), and there will be a discussion thread. If there is enough interest, I might start a discord for it.
With this thread, I mostly want to know how much interest there is in such a thing, and whether perhaps something similar already exists in the AoE2 community. So let me know if you would be interested or think the community as a whole would be interested!
Suggestions on how to improve the platform to work better with AoE2 are certainly welcome too.