Don Artie going through MarineLords base with a dozen elephants, bombards and scholars each: "I'm exploring", "You're nervous for no reason"

This was so hard to keep watching…and I am 100% an Outback Octagon enjoyer.

I think the real problem in this game is that Don and puppypaw both know they are safe in this match, while simultaneously having no incentive to do well. It meant Don can goof off for the entire match, and puppy can babysit with no downsides. While this match really did drag, I feel like this game had unique factors that created a perfect storm due to points. This game really spooked you for the Grand Finals, and overloaded players with rules. It was still a very fun series to watch, but I'm looking forward to refined rules for Outback Octogon 2: Mongol Boogaloo.

I've been enjoying this series, but this game was hard to watch. Rules against alliances are vague and unenforceable. But to discourage alliances, aggression must be rewarded instead of survival. Only give out points for kills (with earlier kills being worth more), not placement.

I have watched every single outback octagon videos lol despite them being hours long. And I normally cant even properly complete a tv series or a movie.

I have a suggestion for a new point structure to incentivize attacks: 6 for killing other players 5 for first blood 5 for winner 2 for winner for each opponent alive when they get wonder victory 1 for player with most military kills 1 for player with most building kills 5 points to winner if game ends in 45 minutes, decreasing by 1 every 10 minutes 0 for placing 0 for being alive when opponent gets wonder victory -2 for hiding landmark in opponents base (could be a strategy to hide in allies base to increase likelihood of getting points by killing someone else). Exception is placing an offensive landmark as part of an attack

Fix Idea: if an enemy player builds a landmark in your base, after a defined time threshold, you take a points penalty. That way it incentivizes players to destroy any enemy landmarks near them in fear of taking a penalty, and could incentivize aggro landmarks which could be interesting

56:36 Don: Instructions unclear - losing army hahaha

The ending was so ... anticlimactic.. Matiz could've destroyed his wonder and stopped the countdown...and place another wonder if really wanted the extra points

Why not do a regressive point system where early kills are worth more and you get fewer points for kills as the game progresses. 1st kill 7 points, 2nd kill 6pts,….last kill is 1-2 pts. Encourages early aggression. You can still have winner points and blood bath points.

A potential solution to deter alliances could be giving the most points to the players who kill the 1st (8th place) 2nd (7th place) 3rd (6 th place) and 4th (5th place) players. For example 15, 12, 9, and idk 8 points respectively. Then give few to no points for killing a player after that. BUT give a ton of points (20 or 25) after the 5th place player is eliminated for winning with sacred sites or a wonder. Hopefully this would disincentivize players from allying in the early game (because they want to kill other players early to get a lot of points) AND disincentivize players from allying in the late game (because they want to win with a wonder or sacred sites to get the most points). This isn’t perfect and could definitely use some tweaking but I think the basic idea is a good start.

Hey Drongo instead of awarding points equally for landmark snipe . It'll be interesting if the points are awarded based number of landmarks sniped by the player. If 3 landmarks sniped by a player grand him 75% of the point

x3 to points you get the first 30min, x2 to the points between 30min and an hour. (check past game stadistics and check how fast they usually get into fighting, and adjust the times) Getting first blood fast can give you a lot more points, getting a few between the first hour may be more points

If Don is already qualified for the finals his slot should be given to someone else. Which might made this an interesting game

@Aussie_Drongo you could influence tournament by linking points to the time, i.e. player who killed in first 10min gets 5 points, kill in 20min gets 4, kill in 30min gets 3 etc.This could be spiced up for age - if you eliminate someone while being in lower age you get 1.5x more points or something. You would be looking to promote faster kills and more early action. To balance it out wonder/sacred site victory should count for more so those who want longer gameplay have an option.

Make forming an alliance cost something, and the more people, bigger the cost. Each alliance you form costs you 1 (or more, you decide) point/s at the end of game. Doubling plus 1 with each additional member over 2. EG: 2 people, both lose 2 points.. 3 all lose 7.. 4 all lose 9. This makes large alliances inviable. If you choose to form a 4 player alliance, you could walk away losing points if you don't get kills. Make points based more on unit kills than final landmark tap, encourage engagement. Could have bonus points not just for first blood. Big points first blood, mid points second blood, few points third. Bonuses to the point where wonders start to become viable.

To help deter alliances you could penalize points for building their landmarks in some else`s base.

The chat is fun but without chat it's more psycho for the players and they can't team up. Teams have cool moments but slow the game down

Loving the series, it's been really fun to watch. A few changes I think could potentially discourage alliances: - Very few points are won for staying alive, and almost all points are won for aggression? This would encourage players to attack instead of sitting out fights. - Instead of the last hit winning all the points, if multiple players are involved in taking out a player, the points are divvied up. This would encourage players to try and solo and not team up on someone. - Instead of just giving out 3 or 6 points for taking out another player, perhaps a decreasing number of points? First player taken out is worth 6, second is worth 5, third is worth 4, fourth through seventh are worth 3?

Make it so: killing nearest neighbours scales points, killing further away players decreases points exponentially

I do think something needs to be done about the teams, though I am not sure what....

To improve the game you should not ban anything but create more objective so player will pursue different goals to success. More objective mean more conflict. My suggestion rules: Let assume we are doing the brackets to decide 16 players advance to the final, total 8 matches: - rule 1 (win or nothing): 8 winner from 8 matches will qualify for the final directly, who won the slot will not play the next game because they have no goal which is a stalemate. The empty slot will be filled with wildcard players maybe from the chat, or high rank players, or whatever u can decide. Rules from here will exclude all 8 qualifiers from rule 1. - rule 2 (mad dog): most kill under 20 mins will advance to the final. It will enhance early fighting. - rule 3: most kill of landmarks will advance to final. This will enhance sniping. - rule 4: longest sacred point occupation will advance to the final. This will create tons of conflict. - rule 5: most eliminations will advance to the final. - rule 6: most points from placements will advance to the final. Which will encourage cockroach. - rule 7: most favorite player will advance to the final. Voted by viewers. - rule 8: most epic betrayal will advance to the final. So they can’t really trust their alliance. Voted by the viewers. These rules combine 16 players advance to the final. This will enhance fighting, more goals, more objective, more conflict. Stalemate Alliance is not a good choice in this mode because 2nd and 3rd are meaningless. We have no points for them. This will encourage more diplomacy involvement into the game which is all about FFA.

Points for successful wonder constructs (no deleting wonders) , points for killing players, points for sacred timer beginning, first blood player kill bonus points.

Actually bounty system is quite interesting, if the ones who call bounties are channel subscribers (in a poll).

Also not just first blood. Award kill points progressively more points for first, second kill and so on and least points for last kill.

Ill bet i can watch more outback octagon games than u can make lol Hooked on them

I think you simply should put a timer on the games, it's okay of they are teaming but the annoying thing is when nothing happening Honestly this game was very boring from 30 minutes to 1 hour 30 ... Put 1h30 timer and the players remaining after that gets no point (maybe except top killer or soemthing)

Ultimately I think the problem was there wasn't any incentive to fight as he already was pretty much guaranteed a spot in the final. Making an incentive for high point players to go for more would have been nice. The wise elephant and bombard army early on could have done some serious damage. In future tourneys like this rewarding highest point players at the end before finals with maybe choice of civ for final or a small cash prize would incentivize players like Don to do something. I feel like limiting the first blood reward to say 20 minutes and making second and third kill blood a thing would encourage more aggressiveness. Likely we wouldn't have seen such an inactive game or such large teams with so many players getting knocked out. Blocking people from teaming will never work but rewarding people more for being active likely will.

That Don Exploration was fucking fantastic. Don's Mansa Musa rp. Making a pilgrimage to the east and fucking up the eco by mistake lol.

I would say the only suggestion id have to help alliances is disable the chat. If they can’t talk to eachother they can’t make alliances, it would be going in blind and much more interesting

an option could be to make it so that placment points are for the bottom three (6th, 7th, 8th) and for the top 5 making the points based off of thier kill count so who ever has the most kills gets the highest reward

Introducing additional points for players destroying alliances might help incentivise continuous action while allowing players still form alliances in the early stages of the game

My only recommendation to tweaking the rules is to get ride of the survival bonus and maybe scale down the victory order points, e.g. 5 pts for 1st, 3 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd, 0 for the rest. The thing to keep in mind with points is how reliable they are. Sure 5 points for first blood is nice, but odds are you're not going to get it. Surviving to the end by playing Switzerland is very likely.

One suggestion may be to use the timer as incentive to go for kills - basically make the early game kills worth much more than a late game kill. Especially when players sit still for 30+ minutes not attacking each other. Maybe every 10 minutes costs you a point per one kill, starting from 10 points per kill to 1 point at or after 100 minutes. This might limit the wonder building play, or you could incentivize a wonder with extra points? A lot of games were over in the first hour, even hour and a half..?

Another suggestion, once game hits 1hour mark, overall points gained gets -25%, then 1:30hrs -50% and so on

Haven’t played aoe in over 10 years but I love watching these😂

imagine two allied one produces troops and the other makes some monks start wololo to go over the population limit, it worked in AoE2, not sure on this one.

Imma be honest I was very hyped for this format of gameplay and will absolutely love team gameplay tournaments because at least the exchange between players would be fair but in these FFAs when multiple players team up like this it gets really boring because of how passive the gameplay gets or how despite playing better you get beaten. On a side note it would be interesting to see who emerges on top in a competitive team tournament I presume the guys at the top of the 1v1 ladder do not have the best practice playing cooperatively. Also to tack on to that I don't know if these matches can have custom mods in them where if your teammate gets eliminated you get all their resources and their pop space to keep the match from ending right there.

Drongo - introduce negative points to discourage teaming.

I watch u for about 3 weeks, total view time like 45minutes a week but still i recognize the ‚wam is trading‘ jokes😂

the solution is a timer. if no one has died or no progress has been made or no one has lost units in x time start deducting points.

Heyho just an Idear, I think rewarding player kills in succession. Would be a good way to work against teaming but still would make it an option in small scale. So 1st kill gives 3 Points 2nd one 5 and so on. It would also increase the target on the back of people that have a succession in kills.

My suggestions for rules: 1 pt for last person to kill each landmark (edit just heard u talk about landmarks in bases ans idk i just think the problem is giving all the points to the person the playwr cockroaches to. I think womders in otber bases is fine so long as that player has the eco to fight the other players like the enemy of my enemy is my friend has to be legal imo) and maybe like 1for whoever kills a wonder. 1 pt for every player eliminated before you. 10 pts for victory. Doubled if wonder victory with 4 or more players remaining. Maybe give 2 pts to anyone who builds a wonder. So like even if you build one and lose its Still a win if you were gonna go out next anyway. Especially if they destroy your landmarks but not your wonder (with rule 1 haha)

Hey man just a suggestion here for this outback octagon UI. I've never played this game before but i like watching ur casted games. as a spectator i sometime lost track of which player is on which civ its hard to recognize them. atleast i do. is it possible to put the name of the civ on the player statistic board?

So, here's an idea: points for kills but the earlier you get a kill the more points you get, for example, a kill before 20 minutes is 5p, a kill before 30 min is 4p etc etc. It would force players to stop losing time. These matches need a common enemy, equal and playing against everyone : time. People would still create alliances but the way everything would unfold would be completely different. If a team want to make the game go 1h30. Ok. But you only get 1p for a kill at this point in the game. Was the teaming really worth it?

A super big map full of islands would be cool, naval wars

So make each kill worth more points first kill bloodbath second kill 4 third kill five. And so forth then with each player eliminated the next one out is worth more points

Split the map up into quadrants and only allow the contestants to build within their own quadrant? Would to some extent solve the issue with spreading landmarks out in other bases and is easy for the players to see whether or not they are within their area.

"He who controls the spice controls the universe"

Make it like Poker: first 30 mins the lowest score player is knocked out. And every ten minutes after that each player is knocked out.

Drongo i just won a 2v2v2v2 where my team mate got smacked out very early. My first mongol game All thankz to your teachings lol

Thought on the building of landmarks in other players bases. Players can only build structures that are in another building, they own, vision.

I like the alliances, politics, long games and a the strange evolving meta.

Yoooo congratulations on baby!

Maybe play with wincondition "King" it is harder to team up becouse sniping is really easy. You also putting down landmarks in other bases dont is helping you and bringing you king into another base lets you open for backstepping. It will not bring a solution to the teamup but it will help a bit. For more action, i would say aging up is only allowed if one players goes out. So only if one player left the game you can go to age 2 and only if 2 player in total left the game you can go up to castle and so on. Maybe we skip the kill in dark age but than you need to have 2 for castle. It brings in more early aggresion. You can also give extra points for this specific kill. So 3 points for a normal kill but 5 for the kill that allowes to age up ore somethink like this.

i really liked how dinky king played lol

I don't think the issue is alliances, the issue is lack of action/entertainment in the mid game. There was a recent FFA game between Beasty, MarineLord and Leenock on Waring Islands that was time capped and scored on kills if there wasn't a victor at time. The time pressure in that game influenced the late game strategy and forced the action to happen. To keep the first F in FFA "free" - I'd advocate to minimise micro rules on in-game actions and focus on macro rules that influence in-game strategy.

Unless its in person (random account names, can't see each other aka a booth, no phones, and no in game chat.) But, a way to fix this online tournament is maybe Have Aussie Drongo draft win conditions (like a game of risk (board game)...i.e take out this person for extra points or obtain x amount of resources or establish a trade route of 30 traders... what ever Aussie Drongo determines to be difficult for these high level payers) then either: A)submit them to the other players just before the match or B) keep them in a "vault" to be revealed at the end.... that way the players do no know who will win (unless they get first) the second place and down will not be predetermined and they will need to fight for these unknown variables. Meaning hey, let's team up...but oh dam i need to kill him for points..... well shucks buddy looks like i need to take you out.... creates in game distrust... like don and his exploration in ML base.

What if you reverse scale the knockout points? start with 10 points for a sub 10 min knockout then decrease them as time goes on.

Im sorry but I totally love the way players played this ! :D

this is a mutch better hud i have to say, less intrusive and lets me enjoy the game more

a potential fix vs teaming and 8man booming: 1st kill: 10 points 2nd kill: 9 points 3rd kill: 8 points 4th kill: 6 points 5th kill: 4 points 6th/7th kill: 3 points bc when somone gets first blood the others dont want to get into a vulnerabel position for "only" 3 points.

Alright, coming back from the finals to see the Aliance of the Horde

Total Player kill numbers should determine place?

The worst part about watching this video was listening to Drongo complaining. All he has to do was cast. The aggression was fine considering two players didn’t even need to participate to get into the finals

Tbh ... this was annyoing to watch - despite the awesome casting as usual - lets hope for a better final then THAT ...

lol i commented in the last ep , as alliances there was wild too and i thought couldn't get worst , oh god i was so wrong this is nuts. Hopefully next games will be exciting to see , i don't like this type of games with alliances unless is 2vs2 official not FFA , kills the excitement to watch this AOE4 matches if they all just go alliances , i bet i'm not the one feeling this way.

1:04:14 Neutrality Pact

give points based on time.

You know what, what if to avoid these alliances, the next game, they are blind to the opponent's name. Player name only available to viewers but not the the players themselves?

A couple of years late to this but just for posterity, its really funny how salty drongo got about this game. Kinda hard carrying that pressure needing every game to be amazing. Its just like sports some games are amazing, some are stinkers. Im gonna go watch the finals now but i hope they didnt tinker too much with the formula cause it also produced amazing matches

i think for every 5 minutes that there is an enemy landmard in your base you lose point would prevent teaming

Remove any points for just surviving to the end of the game. Survial points incentivises being more passive and making alliances, just to survive to the end.

Outback octagon 2.0. Round 1 just like normal round 1. Round 2 just like Round 1 but no extra points for kills instead with points stealing. If you kill some one you take 50% of there current points. If it looks like 2 people might of got the kill. The person who gets steals points is the longest remaining in the game. Continue same system for the rest of the rounds maybe drop down the points you can steal in each round

That game was so hard and boring to watch. I'm impressed that you managed to cast it and not fall asleep Drongo...

56:37 buyed time? bought time y mean? xd

Maybe set a game time limit of 1:30h and then the game finishes. Placements awarded for most kills?

This has so far been the only hard game to watch and i think its bcuz people were worried about points. Grand finals should be great yall trip when people team its hilarious

First blood= 12 points Kills in first 30 min= 6 points Kills in first hour = 4 points All kills after an hour = 3 points Would incentivize earlier agression

exploretion army say don🤣🤣

i really dont understand why dinkey never rewalled his base....after so many raids

Honestly, dinkey should not be awarded first blood points when he has half the map available to support him. I fear this specific match soured a lot of the future of this event. Even if you ban teaming now, everyone watching may automatically assume players were teamed up anyways which takes a chunk out of the authenticity. I really hope this game serves as a learning experience for the players, because crackedy got screwed and dinkey got into the finals because of it and that just feels wrong knowing he had multiple alliances.

Just increase the points alot for killing a player like, 10p for One kil and if u kill another one u get 20p for that and 30p for third kill, a total of 60p just for 3kills, that Will really push ppl to go for that next kill and maybe betray an ally since now it Will be worth it for that easy kill

Ultimately, I believe you need to officially limit teams to 2 or 3 max. Also, you need to announce Alliances publicly, and you must be able to place a landmark within an allies base before you can officially be considered allies but the Landmark needs to be placed near the Front of the allies base (at time of building). This makes every teammate vulnerable to their allies, and everyone knows where most of the Landmarks need to be.

The uneven alliances are not fun to watch, maybe you could limit teams up to 2 players?

what wrong with no point awarded for placement?

Just reduce alliances to one person as a compromise for now and see if it helps.

Maybe do negative points for certain things. Like if game lasts over an hour players still alive lose 1 point every 10 minutes. So it gives an incentive to win quickly and not to prolong the game.

This alliance bull shit has ruined the tournament, you could clearly just punish obvious alliances and it'll make the game much better already, no need for total alliance fix.

watching this after 3 or 4 months, really enjoyed this series but this episode did feel like a drag!!!! i understand alliance cannot be avoided but atleast there should be a rule of negative marking for refuging it should be respective players job to keep watch over their base and clear out any refugee sneaking into there base within five minutes.

This was a realistic game.

Pffff, finally watched this monster of a video.

I feel like dinky got robbed .

there is no strong alliance. its just 1 player goofying around. the other 3 putzing around. the 5th has no units and dead except for 1 well placed building. and the other 2 trying to kil the others but being really derpy about it.

Alliances are fun tbh and 5 people alliances are as you said rare. Not a big issue here. Perhaps you could have not included the 2 players that had already earned their seats thus eliminating the tom foolery they did.

2 hours!!! damn this gonna be fun and exciting... !!

Forbid players from hiding landmarks in their allies bases?

Alliances? OK! But 5 Guys....?? 😩

Every 2 minutes give knocked out players another point. Everyone still in the game will fight faster

Why did mathis not destroy his own wonder to get 6 points?