Hi @Ka-pi96 Your bet was  so close and honestly the logic behind it was really good. Unfortunately for you, the DS had a lucky break that allowed it to be #1. It is incredible because the DS sold 5.8M during its streak while the PSV sold .8M during the 10 weeks. 

If you are up to it, I would enjoy going back and forth on some ideas for the Betting System, this way we could analyze if there is a need of a proposal at all. But I feel that there could be some things to suggest. The best way is for us to discuss it and form a good proposal for them to review. Obviously every change is very time consuming so it would have to be worth it. Obviously anyone that read this is more than invited to join the discussion, as it would certainly help us get to better ideas.

I like your scenario and this are some of the positive things I see about it.

1) Discourage large Bets: The first thing that comes to mind, is that this betting system is more for fun, being able to win a little money here and there is good, I don't want anyone to go bankrupt by playing these challenges. So a system like I mentioned would really discourage large amounts because people would realize that the risk is not as good as the reward. So having everyone do smaller bets could be a positive thing.

2) Reward based on probability: In your scenario lets assume that the person bet 1000 because it seems like a sure bet, while the person that bet 10 was a bit optimistic. Let's say  the bet was who is going to sell more in 2021. Someone would easily bet 1000, while anyone betting on XS would feel like they are very likely going to lose their money. In this case, it is better to reward the Bold and crazy bets. If someone is willing to bet 10 on XS then it makes sense that the reward is high. Basically it rewards based on odds of winning. Just like in roulette, if you bet on color you get only double your money, but if you bet on a number you get 36 times what you bet. On the other hand, someone winning 500 from a sure bet doesn't seem so appropriate.

3) No extra money is created: With the current system, one bet can pay out more than what it took from all the bets, so the system basically creates new money in order to pay. If you simply split the pot, you will have a stable system that will recycle all the bets. This increases the odds of people not being able to Game the system by creating easy bets and always gaining 500. Not that anyone is trying to do that, but it just makes the game more stable.

These are just some of my first thoughts. What do you think? do you see any extra flaws in doing it this way?

Also some features that could be useful would be:

a) dynamic countdown of how many hours left in the bet. Right now if I chose that the bet closes on a certain day, it seems like as soon as it is that day eastern time it closes it. But I am not that sure if that is true. So instead of saying the end date, it could be a countdown that says how many days and hours are left.

b) Add the option to hide answers, this could help the people from simply copying what most people are saying.

c) In the case of my proposal, being able to see how are the odds of each bet (this contradicts a bit with the previous point). But it could be an option to encourage people to make bold predictions.

d) A table of most money earned each month could encourage people to make more bets.

These are just some random thoughts that I would appreciate anyone giving some feedback on. The more perspectives, the better.

Thanks everyone for playing these challenges, I am still trying to figure out what types of questions are more fun to ask. Right now it seems like the Monkey Island idea didn't work out so well, but I think that these number related challenges are more attractive.

Hi @Ka-pi96 thank you for your reply it has helped me view it from a different perspective. Here are some thoughts that come to mind with each answer:

1) Win more money: This really got me thinking that there are probably two reasons why the max $1000 limit is in place. To protect people from losing everything and to prevent people from winning too much with easy bets. The first one I thought it was important, but in the end, there will be more opportunities for people to earn VG$ from increasing their gamrPoints, so there is always a chance for them. The second one is one that I think that the Bet Pot system could help solve.

If people only win what is in the pot, then there is probably no reason to put any limit on how much you can bet. This opens up the possibility of much more money being in the pot and thus, the ability to earn a lot more VG$ from a single bet.

Not to mention that if you bet on the underdog you would win a lot more money, so whether you have a lot of $ or not, you can still win a lot more than the $500 max that is currently set.

2) Traditional Betting system in Horses: My proposal of doing it this way, is the way that Horses and games like Jai-Alai handle their bets. Odds are calculated in real time based on popularity, that is why the experts are able to see the situation and make value bets of items they feel are paying more than what they should. Having people be able to set the odds would open the door for an individual to be able to try and manipulate the system to win a lot of money. In my example, someone could say that the switch winning 2021 gives 1000 times what you bet, that would lead everyone to win a lot on a very simple bet.

3)Let people go broke: You made me change my mind on this one, there is really no need to babysit people from losing all their play money, it is just a game, so if they lose everything and feel bad, then the next VG$ they get, they will probably take more care of it. This would help the idea of removing the maximum bet.

4)I agree with you, once the bets are done, being able to see exactly how much was bet on each one is a good thing. This and the timer seem to be two solid ideas for the proposal.

5) I just wanted to throw another idea here about being able to add Badges based on the Betting system, some that come to mind are:

-Won your first Bet

-Lost when betting on the most popular answer

-Won when betting on the least popular answer

-Won more than double what you bet.

Awesome ideas @Ka-pi96 Thank you.

1) This first point it is important to discuss because I feel I haven't explained it yet. if two people bet on the same thing, and one bet $1 and the other $100 they would get back different amounts of money. Just like there is right now, there would be a multiplier. The only difference with my proposal is that the multiplier is dynamic. Instead of always being 1.5x it would be based on how much money was on the pot vs how much was bet on the winning answer.

Here is an example from a bet from @Mnementh :

Let's say that the correct answer is 15-17.5M. This means that 3 people won.

The multiplier would be calculated like this (totalPot/WinningBet) (7,914.69/1,446) = 5.47.

This means that if one of the three winners bet $100, then they would get payed $547

While if someone else placed only a $10 bet, they would win $54.7.

So the programming is basically just making the multiplier adjust based on who won, the rest of the system would stay exactly the same.

2) What I enjoy about the horse racing system is that the house doesn't care who wins. Like I mentioned before, in horse racing, the winners divide the total Pot (minus the house cut). The way the house makes money is that they take a percentage of the pot, lets say they take 10% of the pot and then distribute  the rest amongst the winners by using the Dynamic multiplier. So in this system the house is only motivated by trying to have more people bet, they don't care who wins the money. odds of each horse is calculated the same way I showed the dynamic multiplier. That is why when you go to a race you will see the odds changing every few seconds.

3) You mentioned the raffle system, I think this is another type of system we can think about and maybe it could be the best proposal. What I like about it is that it would prevent people from gaming the system. It will also pay better for people that make bold predictions rather than the safe bets. The only difference really with my proposal is that there would probably be a lot less money in the pot, thus making it harder for someone to make a lot of money. The good thing about the open amounts is that someone like you could beef up the pot for everyone else. Making it a lot more attractive for others to join.

Thank you very much for the discussion, it is great to organize ideas and compare thoughts.

The above discussion contains some good ideas, so I want to inform the tech team of the ongoing exchange of ideas. I think @Machina and @Ryuu96 are the ones organizing the feature wishlist for the site (sorry to ping you two if I remembered wrong and you weren't the ones).

I want to add some thoughts.

1.) Splitting the whole pot among the winners can be gamed, as people might create new users just to improve the pot by betting their signup bonus in these bets. Also I don't think the devs have the problem if bets generate more VG$ over time, but if users can game the system to gain a lot VG$ in a short time.

2.) I like @Bofferbrauer2 idea of making regular bet threads a site thing, like poll of the week. @dmillos does great work in presenting regularly interesting bet challenges and present it on the front page might help to popularize this feature.

3.) Discouraging large bets is somehow implemented already. I think the current limit is VG$1000. This may be a large sum for some users and a small one for prediction league participants or regular GameDB-updaters. I currently own VG$8,800, which allows me to place big bets if I want. But it might be interesting to have a bet maximum that moves between 10 and 1000 as 10% of the VG$ the user owns overall. That way I currently could only bet VG$880. And users couldn't bankrupt themselfs in one bet except they are already basically bankrupt.

4.) Rewards based on probability is probably difficult to create. Because the actual probability is hard to guess. But I think the reward percentage could change between bets with 2 options and bets with 10 options (and scaling in between). With 10 options you have a much higher chance to pick a bad choice.

5.) I love the idea of showing a countdown how long the bet is still open. Maybe even implement a subsite that shows all open bet threads with the ones closest to end at the top.

6.) Similarly I like the idea of a leaderboard showing the most successful recent betters, similarly to the leaderboard of the prediction league.

7.) And I love the idea to creating betting badges. The badges in detail partly rely on other changes (won double the amount would need a change of the system first).

Wow, thank you for such an awesome response, This is what I like the most about sharing these ideas, that we get different perspectives that help mold better ideas. 

Here are my thoughts on your thoughts of my thoughts:

1) Right off the bat, you mention something that it is really important. Just like dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, Gamers will always find a way to game a system. So it was foolish of me in the previous post to assume that my proposal could be cheat proof. What you mention is certainly a way to cheat, it is different from  the current way, but it is still a problem. The current limit helps make the max cheating topped at $500 with my proposal, there is really no ceiling, although it does become linearly more time consuming as you want to make more $. A little relief is that if you cheat with the Pool system, then anyone else who bets on the winning answer will take away some of the $ the cheater farmed.

This is then definitely an issue that can be double checked when doing the payouts or eventually I think people would get tired of making users just to make a little VG$. But to be honest, right now someone can basically make $500 in one day (this is extremely high compared to how long it takes to make the same amount from leveling up).

2)Thank you for saying this, It would definitely increase the amount of views the puzzles would get. Like I mentioned, I think the last one failed a bit, so It is nice to do different tests to see what is more fun for everyone, because in the end, that is the only goal, to have something fun that people enjoy logging in to the site to play.

3) I like this idea of a percentage max, that way people with a lot of VG$ can risk more in order to build up their wealth. I think that at a certain point increasing by $500 is just too slow. 

4) I think probability is the wrong word, I meant more of Rewards based on public opinion, basically if more people think something will happen then that pays less than something only you think will happen. This is really easy to do by just divding the total pot by the bets of the winning answer. (I showed the example on the other post).

5) I think the countdown could be a good general idea that everyone seems to like. The subsite that you mention is a great idea, It requires a lot more programming so maybe it might be too much for now, but I had to go page by page trying to find any bet threads, it would be nice to at least be able to filter by a post having a bet or a poll.

6) This idea of the leaderboards could help the gamers inside of us to create and participate in more bet threads.

7)Awesome, I like the Badges as well, so it is fun to think of cool challenges people could do to win some Bet related ones.

Thank you very much for your wonderful feedback. Thank you for taking the time to provide me with some cool ideas. I will keep trying to make interesting, fun and challenging puzzles for everyone to enjoy.

Thank you for sharing it!

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