Machina-AX said:
Main suggestion:
Make it more rewarding for users to take part in terms of VG$. Your stats in the OP show that on average people actually lose money by taking part, which is a bit perverse if the idea is to encourage participation.
I think this is the main reason for lack of participation - there needs to be a level of reward on a par with posting or game database contributions. If on average the league 'takes', for example, $10,000, it should give out a minimum of $11,000 (or whatever ratio is deemed appropriate).
People need to be able to see that the prediction league is a way of making VG$ and at the moment, with the exception of the few high earners at the top of your charts, they don't.
Another reason is the long gap between making your prediction and getting your winnings back. I'm not sure whether this can be helped though as the numbers are regularly adjusted after they are put up and I assume that's why it takes so long.
I think the 3rd major reason is that often there is a very small window between being able to submit your predictions and the round being closed. Often it's 2-3 days. Perhaps an extra day would give people more chance to submit their predictions, but again as with my 2nd reason I'm not sure how practical this is.
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For the payout issue, the big earners tend to bet on everything, while the people who lose slightly is because they enter 0's for lots of fields. The biggest losers just bet plain wrong all over the place. There supposedly is a slight payout, but only ioi knows how it really works. I sometimes wonder if the payout is messed up because of all the 0's left in fields. If you don't feel like betting on something, you should just put the average in, as you'll make your $5 back.
As for your second reason, only ioi can fix that. It was supposed to be they update 1 week after the numbers come in, but sometimes they don't update.
3rd reason, I agree and is easily fixable, but it might be a few weeks before that happens. I've talked to ioi, and I may be actually working on the prediction league, but we'll have to wait and see. If that happens, then I plan on opening the rounds on Friday/Saturday so you'll have ~4-5 days to look over the numberes and make a bet. Also, if you submit games that you think should be on the current weeks rounds (especially Japan) it would make it easier for whoever is making the round that week.
