I don't know whose idea it is. But this would be to further encourage the hosting of less popular formats.

yas nice idea

very cool idea
"lil" thoughts:

what if said format becomes popular from the b00n drop? does one then increase the price?

also, maybe im dumb, but i feel like certain formats (minus allgear and wildchip) tend to sorta phase in and out of hosting
you can have a month of tons of modxxk, the next, you dont see it in weeks.

also also, how would one determine what is a "popular format"
besides the 2 afformentioned formats (and some others), whether you think a format is popular can vary from person 2 person (though that might just be my lack of braincells speaking)
for example, ym2151

lowering prices to get certain formats hosted would sorta work
(but like, there's a reason certain formats are used less.
more difficult / less flexible format = less chances of being hosted )

artifically trying to make those formats more hosted might make someone go "ooh this cheap, lemme host" and b00nloss because they didnt realise there wasnt interest (you should 100% ask for interest in chat, but, still)

(wait i havent even talked about price, uh... would all less popular formats share a common lowered price, or would they vary per format?)

anyway uhhh hope you enjoyed my mid talk

Yeah, I enjoy it when you offer your thoughts.

The criteria used in Very Rare Formats were formats with the lowest entry count. Maybe that helps?

So if a format increases its entry count well enough, the price just becomes regular.

We could have it explained in the beghast page why the format is cheaper.

The least popular formats sharing a common price could work well enough.

I don't make huge claims to have the definitive answers for all these questions, though. Would be interesting if more people give their input.

lowest total entry count sounds fine as a measurement to me

i think # of entries over some recent time period such as for the past year would be sensible. There are formats that have had straight-up loads of entries over the years while being more neglected recently. Basing it on all-time would also heavily bias towards newer formats, some of which are already suddenly very common

How much cheaper would the cheapest format (gbstudio) be?
15% less than the usual? 20%? 25%? A good highest discount possible should be decided so it doesn't devalue the normal hosting prices for popular formats.

gb studio would be really cheap were it not for the fact that its lack of entries is because of how recent and strenuous it would be outside of a major.

while i totally agree with Tex’s sentiment here i think more criteria needs to be put into place for this. some formats aren’t popular because they’re very archaic or difficult to use these days (looking at you, AHX). either way, i’m not opposed to this. maybe i can finally cop the lunar magic badge!

this is great haha finally supply and demand comes to batba

back when we were talking about 2hb and 4hb costs, sean proposed an interesting related idea - a "market" whereby less popular formats cost fewer boons to host and popular ones cost more, but then they skew in the other direction as they become more common (or rarer).

I personally think this would be a difficult system to actually implement, and I know puke's time is very limited, so this would be at best a long term project idea. but I do also think it'd be a fun way to add an extra layer of game-ification to the battle, and to potentially diversify the hosting landscape.

🧐 how about the bottom 56 formats get a 56% discount? there are 101 if i recall correctly.

i think this is an interesting idea

an easy way to implement this imo is to make xhbs for which you dont have a badge for yet cheaper to host by a slight amount. it'd encourage branching out to other formats i reckon (while those who want to go with comfortable stuff just pay the same prices of 725b for 1hb etc), and it also encourages folks to host these themselves "while theyre cheap" ig (by the point where one amassess a lot of badges i think you may have enough boons to just host normal prices? idk)

it'd also mean it wont get abused as to even do that you need either lvl 27, which is hard to get, or 7 badges & lvl 17, which is less hard to get but also not Very Easy either so it prevents abuse either way imo

not sure how that'd interact with plated badges (bronzor/argentor/goldened) though... i think it might be ok to just leave those and the base badge be at the same value

wondering what others think about this arrangement bc yes its unusual, but it'd sidestep the entire issue of having to have percentages or markets or w/e which would be hard to get a right balance for considering that some formats arent popular bc of their tools, and some are bc theyre easy to enter quickly, etc

alternatively cap formats for a given time period. E.G., once there have been X allgear battles in a week, lights off >:)

I like this idea! I would love to see more variety of formats of battles.

I can see a counter argument being that the boon deposit system exists to try to prevent battles with not enough participants and this would undermine that, and that hosts should try to get more interest in a format first if they want to host without fear of boonloss.

However, my counter counter argument to that is, it's pretty hard to start garnering interest in those formats in the first place if nobody ever hosts them! Whereas if battles for rare formats started happening more often, I think people would also start to show more interest in them too. Personally I think the benefit of seeing a greater variety of formats outweighs the cost of having more boonloss battles.

It kinda reminds me of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. An unregulated market might sound good in theory but in practice it leads to companies only doing what is profitable (hosting popular formats) and not what's good for society but unprofitable (hosting rare formats). We need government subsidies for rare formats!!

Reminds me of the Very Rare Formats battles we had here