Was wondering who I could talk to within the staff about perhaps expanding the competitive side of Risk & if people are even interested in the expansion of it? I know plenty of tournaments already exist, but this would be a different, more sport like approach. More consistent than tournaments & a gap filler for people that enjoy the competitive side & feel the need for more. I have most of the deas for format, scheduling, participation, etc planned out pretty well. If any staff are interested in hearing more, I'd be happy to share. I'd just like to be a part of it creatively in someway if possible if it becomes a possibility. If this seems vague, it's meant to be without specifically talking to people that can help. Think Champions League for football/soccer but for Risk if you want a broad base of what I'm getting at.
#Risk League
dusty salmon
whole grove
It sounds like you want to do something like what the PRT (Professional Risk Takers) has done. They charge a small yearly membership for participation and have constant tournaments (usually multiple at a time going). They have broadcasters and an official Twitch/Youtube as well as sponsorships.
But I don’t think you fully understand how many tournaments there are. Earlier this year I was in 8 tournaments at the same time. So I was having to schedule and play 8 matches a week. You could probably keep that up if you really wanted to…there’s about 5 tournaments going on right now I wish I could join but just don’t have the time for. So there’s not really a demand on the player side for more tournaments.
But if you really wanted to start your own “league” you could. Players would probably join.
dusty salmon
Not tournament based. Season based scoring with a "playoff" format tournament at the end. No payment to join. Just maybe a special yearly tournament to "win" entry into league. And I don't have the clout to probably start on my own lol
dusty salmon
I'll post full details of the idea after work
whole grove
Sure. I could at least point you in the right direction of who to talk to if I have a better idea of what you want to do
dusty salmon
Okay, so the basic framework of what I'm suggesting would be:
A 12 Week League with 1 or 2 games a week. (Most likely 1 since you said there's already a lot of tournaments)
Player Pool would initially consist of invite-only, high level or influencial members of the Risk Community
Depending on intial player pool (maybe like 188 as a rough number?), Players would be divided into "Groups" or "Divisions" and Games would be determined at random amongst said divisions of players
Scoring would be basic tournament format for each game (placement and bounty) to incentivize high and fast level play
Scores would accumulate thru 12 weeks, when at the end of 12 weeks, the top 24 players from each "Group" with the highest scores would advance to the playoffs (if the initial number were 188)
At the end of the "season" the top 24 from each group (96 in this example) would advance to a playoff format tournament
The "Playoff" would consist of 1 game-1 week matches (4 weeks) progressing down by half each round based off points until The Round of 24 where the winners of each of the 4 remaining groups would make up the Final
The Final would be a 1 game-winner take all scenario to crown the Risk League Champion for that season
At the end of the season there would be an open tournament to anyone looking to join Risk league where a top % of players would qualify to take part in the next season's League (obviously would depend on amount of sign-ups)
Games would geared more towards fast paced styles as opposed to grinding meta type pace to encourage a quicker experience to not tie players in for too long
I know it's far fetched for just a small nobody like myself and some might think it doesn't align with the "integrity" of high level Risk.
But I think it could be a fun opportunity to provide a different type of outlet for the part of the community that enjoys competitive Risk and wants more of it, but isn't necessarily on the level yet to continously get their fill out of simple tournaments.
Like I said, big pipedream, and obviously alone, not doable with someone of my platform and reach's size. That's why I wanted to reach out here for input, suggestions, help, anything.
Obviously there'd be things like tiebreakers and stuff to sort out, which already have an idea of incentivizing wins/bounties throughout the season as such, but like I said at this time, just an outline
I've also considered starting bonus points heading into the playoffs for regular season standings to incentivize the importance of finishing high within your group during the season, but I'd have to work that number out fairly, obviously, when the actual number of participants is determined
whole grove
Hmmm ok. Some initial thoughts:
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188 players is A LOT. There’s MAYBE 100 regular tournament players. Probably closer to 30-40 that actively join the smaller tournaments and not just the bigger ones. So 188 “high level and influential” players just don’t exist. Again you’re looking at less than 50 that would fit that criteria. To put it into context the World Championships here in this server get less than 500 total participants. The KPO gets the most because of Pete and the giant prize pool. The next largest after those 2 is probably the GM tournament with 96 people usually.
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For a league/tournament to be successful you need a “draw”. You need something to keep people motivated to do well. Because 16 weeks is a loooonnggg time. Most risk competitions last a total of 6-7 weeks with most players being eliminated by week 4. So if you don’t have some sort of prize money or viewership thing then it’s going to be really hard to get players/staff on board.
I could see this working with some tweaks. If I were you I would probably talk to Gary the Bear 28 and MitchOnRisk. Gary attempted to set up a league called “Major League Risk” a while back. It had some success but I haven’t seen him around in a while. And Mitch is the founder of the PRT (really the only successful Risk professional league at this point). I might even talk to Pete since he runs a much longer tournament (13-14 weeks? Idk. It’s long). They would be able to give you more and better advice than anyone else really. Anyone else is probably just guessing at what works and what doesn’t
smoky canopy
The main problem: Someone just has to do it, but nobody doesn't.🤔
In sim-racing there is a fascinating example of how one Sim (ACC) did not offer decent ranked daily online races.
It took 3 years until an unknown streamer put together a website (LFM) to offer just that.
It took another year to get to 5000 users (simply by word of mouth)
Now the count is at 150k.
There are also "Series" and "Seasons" etc. In the Pro series there is a price pool of 5k from sponsored products...
I once won a rug, that was a highlight😆
whole grove
The main problem: Someone just has to do it, but nobody doesn't.🤔
In sim-raci...
Actually I slightly disagree. There’s plenty of people trying. I mean there’s 17 risk discord servers each with their own flavor and taste of competitive risk.
The real problem is how do you make money off of it. Unlike with Sims there’s no real world fan base for this game. This isn’t a new game (it’s been out since 2016 I think?), and it’s never been all that popular. Only 1 streamer has managed to get enough views to make it their full time job. So the real problem IMO is how do you make the hundreds to thousands of hours it would take to make something like this successful, worth it?
foggy oriole
I don't really have thoughts on tournament format etc (I like tournaments and that's about it 😄)
On the how do you make the hundreds to thousands of hours it would take to make something like this successful, worth it? part - automation.
Especially with discord, the best route for doing this is designing a custom-made discord bot (or trying one of the verified bots that are designed for this, downside being customisation - they're designed to be widespread, not RISK specifics)
You simplify sign-up process, automate group creation and automate "fill-ins" and "missing players" handling, automate reminders & providing game results form to fill out etc. - along with a very extensive faq and easy to use "search faq" functions to enable players to pretty much set up games and record results themselves.
A couple of servers have tried this, but it's difficult to gauge the time cost & scale of work required to do it, alongside it basically being too custom-designed to be sharable/used across other community servers too.
If I ever get enough free time I'd maybe be able to design something that's RISK-focused while being heavily customisable - but it's such a small % of servers and participants that it would just be at a deficit, so it then comes down to passionate enough developers & tournament organisers to be willing to work together on creating something that's customisable enough for anyone to adjust however they'd like, while still requiring some sort of payment model / subscription for it to be self-sustainable.
Difficult to price things like that too as an event with 10 people will cost vastly less in server costs than an event with 1k people (100x more reminders, command use, and so on)
dusty salmon
I think I could handle some of the logistics fine. I'm not looking to host a website other than maybe a spreadsheet or have a paid group like PRT or anything. At least not right away. Just basically a different form of "tournament" model that's crafted more as a season/playoff format as opposed to straight tournament. And the 188 number was 1) just optimism and 2) just an example to make the numbers make sense for what I was trying to explain.
I guess I made it sound more complicated than what I was really trying to get at 🤣 Basically just a fun, slightly more laid back version of competitive tournament play to fill the void some players may feel that don't consistently make it to Round 8s, 9s or 10s of these big tournaments.
whole grove
I guess I made it sound more complicated than what I was really trying to get at...
I would really look at what Major League Risk did. I thought it was a great idea and it sounds similar to what you want to do. It was a weekly match always at the same time. There were teams of 3 so you didn't have to play every week and players with different skills and experiences could play what suited them
tepid matrix
In my opinion Risk need to change the leaderboard and seasons to a design more like Fortnite or FIFA, whereby there are divisions (Bronze, silver, gold etc) that you work your way up in and only play against players of your level during FFA matches. You could then possible expand it to have separate ones for different game modes e.g. zombies. I feel what they currently have is trying to be this but its just not there yet. It dosent feel organic or clear how to progress up the ladder.