Warlight player Gargamel has bragged of hosting over 50 lottery tournaments. He has gained over FIVE MILLION points in the last 30 days and is at a level in the 50s.

A friend of mine was hooked on these for about a week or so, he rose 12 levels in that time.

There is no skill involved.

Unlike a real lottery where a wager is made, there is no risk, no taking of a chance. Some say it is a game of chance, but this is not what the casino folks call "taking a chance". Although, my friend did lose some self respect for his unearned leveling up and has now quit playing lotteries.

There is something like five clicks of the mouse involved when playing lottery games. You enter the game or tournament (1). You click accept when it becomes available (2). Then you click the game to initiate it (3). In the (so called) game you select the bonuses that have been allotted you (4). Then place them into your one territory (5). If it is more than your opponent (typically one player gets 6 the other 1,000) you win (10,000 points if it's your first win against a particular player). That is it (other than clicking through the commit sequence), that's all a person needs to do to rise 50 levels in a month. It takes no time to play, and if you play enough you become another Gargamel.

Warlight is for me a fun gaming community because it challenges me to develop strategies, to work cooperatively - and I love experimenting with the Game Creator feature. I'm trying to learn how to use Inkscape too so I can submit my own map ideas. In many ways Warlight is my favorite place, here I can share with people interested in gaming - and it's generally a safe and kind environment.

Lottery games blow it for me. They are a cheat, a means to falsify levels - levels become meaningless and pointless - a status symbol without merit.

I played one single lottery game and was damned glad I lost. I wrote my opponent one word immediately upon conclusion of the game, (not the usual friendly "gg" for a good game) I wrote what I felt like for having played, I wrote "lame". But no one read it I am sure.

You do not lottery for a sense of community. You do it to beat the system.

Lottery addicts just want points and levels. It's basically a "f*** you" to the Warlight community that are actually playing the best they can, winning the hard games, working together, challenging themselves.

To feel the way one does winning a tough game for the first time, lottery junkies will never feel that.

Lottery games are the fly in this otherwise delicious soup called Warlight.

Edited 2/15/2014 12:46:32

There is already so much bitching about lottery games, why didn't you just bump one of those threads?

I have only just begun utilizing the forums... Didn't see other posts about this.

So what about it - have you no opinion about lotteries?

learn to ignore ignore them

Lotteries.... useful for leveling up alts, otherwise I ignore them

REDUCING POINTS FOR A LOSS IS THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION.

somehow i get the strange impression, Fizzer wants it to stay as it is now, which is a retarded system promoting lotteries, and RUINING the overall quality of the game..

If you reduce pointsfor losing, then bad/ New players well be in like negative levels

So you scale it. Higher level players lose more points than lower level players. But in the end I mostly ignore levels anyway. Skill on warlight does not correlate to level.

What I really find interesting though is that Fizzer claimed that people cleating the system would be docked points. I don't see this happening.

Edited 2/16/2014 00:40:09

... I have never bragged about making anything. Do you mean I made that many and you don't like it? Please post where I brag about anything.

As for the point you sort of make.. my suggestion to Fizzer is to make games that are won in less than 5 turns be worth 50% points. This demotivates Lottery games, or at least makes them too complicated to be worth the effort, and also solves the annoying "beat your own alt over and over" cheat that I think some people do, even though that could never get you into any kind of impressive scoring.

Please do not accuse me of cheating or bragging though, I merely play by the rules of the game and effectively make short-order of leveling. I, also, am in favor of limiting lottery games in the form that I suggested- even if that's killing one of my own cash-cows. It would make for a better game, overall.

REDUCING POINTS FOR A LOSS IS THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION.

But then I'll never be able to change my name ever again :(

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Obviously lottery games aren't the only way to abuse points: Purposefully playing high-level, low-skill people also works. (Double points if you do it on the ladder!)

There is a problem with losing points for losing, however - how do we determine how much people lose in points?

We can't make it a fixed amount - lottery players are probably not that great at 1v1, and thus lotteries would likely still be more profitable for them.

We also can't make it based off of how much the winner gains - no one would ever play a (ranked) FFA ever again, and ladders/tournaments would become high-risk, high-reward games. Assuming people would care about points if we reduced points for a loss, then people would leave the ladder from the bottom in a vicious cycle, causing deflation on the ladder. Also, on this point, no high-leveled person would play a low-leveled person.

We can't do it based off of turns - There are easy ways to stretch out the turns, such as the Bracket 32 FFA "Race to the Top" which is a lottery in disguise. This would also encourage people to stall their surrenders.

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There is another way to prevent lottery games from being profitable, and that would be to lower points for unbalanced settings.

We have highlight. Warlight is able to recognize bonus changes, and how much they are changed. If Warlight lowered the bonus multiplier for changing bonuses, more depending on how far the bonus is from normal value, then lotteries would not be viable. The only problem would be purposefully unbalanced maps, which should not be accepted.

Also, the penalty for Offensive/Defensive killrate changing should be changed so the penalty depends on how far the killrates are from standard. I am a personal fan of 61%/70% w/ 17% SR, but I don't play that as much because the point rate is completely nuked for any changes :/

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"Deduct points for losing." Yes, that is part of the solution, but it doesn't solve the full question.
How do we make lottery games unprofitable in points whilst preserving the viability of all other games?

Edited 2/16/2014 04:35:50

What's the point of leveling up if you're already a member, cash-cow user/chess master of 8-11 year olds?

Sh*t! Riya posted that in less than 5 min? MEGA KILL! Ninja strikes again :P

Edited 2/16/2014 03:45:05

At this point you're getting ninja'd by me on purpose, aren't you?

(Yeah he's definitely doing it on purpose)

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As a sort of afterword to that huge post above...

I don't believe that Fizzer wants to keep the system as-is: after all, he lowered the amount of open games to curb lottery games. Endlessly repeating "Deduct points for losing" will NOT help. What will help is finding an actual solution - one that lottery games cannot get around effectively.

Edited 2/16/2014 04:06:59

Twice ningja'd in one thread within 3 minutes...I'm gonna have to off you Riya, you're becoming a threat...>.>

...won't even bother mentioning where the edit was...I'll respond to the pm when I'm...refreshed from sleep :D

Coincidence! All of it! Imbo!

Edited 2/16/2014 03:58:41

my suggestion to Fizzer is to make games that are won in less than 5 turns be worth 50% points.

Doesn't work. http://warlight.net/MultiPlayer?TemplateID=417795 and name it "RUN FOR THE STAR" or something like that.

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Before you start accusing me of being pro-lottery, you have to realize that some of these guys WILL be persistent and find loopholes around the terms you have set. In other words, if you can find a luck-based setup that gets around the rules, the lottery creators will also eventually find it, too. :/

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On other points in this topic...

If you reduce pointsfor losing, then bad/ New players well be in like negative levels

Make levels 1-10 (1-20?) a safe zone where you can't lose points, then.

But on that note, how do we solve players losing level? Do they lose benefits? Or do players not lose level at all, and stay at 0%? Or do players have to go further to get to the next level, being in negative percent to the next level?

somehow i get the strange impression, Fizzer wants it to stay as it is now, which is a retarded system promoting lotteries, and RUINING the overall quality of the game..

Honestly? Deducting points is a hard system to balance. Too much and newcomers won't stay, killing future income and ad revenue. Not deducting points is an easier system that allows newcomers to feel achieved while gaining points (Except through lottery games) AND not being punished for losing points due to inexperience.

Make sure to keep that in mind while creating a points deduction system.

Edited 2/16/2014 04:33:24

I took your advice and 'bragged', but I had never even made a post about it until people started treating it like celebrity gossip. My reign is over anyway, tomorrow (2/16/14) is when my points start scrolling off so my conquest is up, as I don't intend on competing with myself. Stamped the achievement in my bio and will not be opening any more games to prevent them from extending beyond my 30 day marker.

Apologies if my journey upset anyone.. but it also gave 10-35 levels to about 200 different players each, all willing participants in my lottos/tourns.

I'll still be around to play the Europe Map with friends and perhaps rejoin the ladder. I also plan on campaigning for Lottery Reform.

Cheers

Riyamitie - you are wrong. It's very easy to make a gradual system of reducing points based on the level of opponents in the game - very similar to how the system gives the winner less poins for beating lower level players, than beating higher levelled ones.. There is no need of a "safe" zone - you may as well make a system where if the winner is 20lvls above a player, then this player has no decrease in case he loses, however the high levelled player has more at stake..

the only problem that might come is that some high level players might be reluctant to play low level opponents.. but this actually is not bad at all.. it would discourage stat-pumping..

Great, we're actually getting somewhere instead of just yelling for points being lost. But lets see...

The first problem with that system happens in team games. Do I lose more points for having a low-leveled team, or do I lose less?

If I lose less, the answer is clear - start puppeting low-leveled people and alts.
If I lose more, then we're widening a gap that's already pretty wide - especially with Europe 3v3. Europe 3v3 is used in many events - but unlike 1v1 or 2v2, it's not clear to people at the start - there is no Auto-game, and many Europe players put high pre-reqs.
If it doesn't matter (which requires you to ignore partners in averaging), then most people will probably use the "lose more" argument, but certain people could still use alts.

The second problem is, if we're basing this off of average level, that irrelevant people come into play. If I lose a 20 FFA against an equally skilled level 54 player, why should I be punished for the level 1 people who were booted/surrendered way before I died? But if one of the level 1's won, I would be punished the exact same way. Warlight has no way to distinguish these two scenarios except for who won. For that matter, it has no way to distinguish whether I was playing a normal 20 FFA or a lottery 20 FFA.

The problem with any scenario that reduces points based on level is that Warlight has no way to determine if a game was a lottery game or a normal game. Any system that prevents lotteries like this also prevents huge FFA's and huge team games - and there are people who like to play those kinds of games, even if they aren't the most strategic.

Imo 10% (or 5%) points for games with altered bonuses (just like for games with changed kill rates) AND supervision over new maps would work just fine.
I mean if only "fair" maps were accepted (maps without default +1000 for 1 territory etc).

It won't happen anyway.

heres a solution. Kind of like the solution we use for game delayers on the ladder; reputation.

If you play lotteries, you get a bad reputation. Just like how Gnuffone is now Stallone. we could call Gargamel Lotteryamel ;)


Taking away points for losses is just a bad idea...
I believe Fizzer knows what he is doing

Edited 2/16/2014 19:29:05

Losing points is not the solution, that only will finish with some kind of games, like the ones with random starting points, for example. I sometimes play that kind of games just for fun or because they are the only ones available and I don't want to wait for another (or create it), but this kind of games are decided in turn 1 half the times, so you can lose to a low level player easily... You will create an escenario where people only play "standard settings against similar level players"...too boring.