Saltybet

[tegan]

http://saltybet.com/'>Saltybet is a game in which you bet fake money on pro-level fighting games.

THE TWIST: the only game being played is one of those hilariously broken user-created fighting games like M.U.G.E.N.

 

 

Helpful tips:

-if it looks like it was drawn by a newgrounds kid in MSPaint, bet on it
-if it's a Hanna Barbera character or Popeye, bet on it. Nothing can stop Captain Caveman
-if it has "dark," "evil" or "rare" as a prefix in its name, bet on it
-if it's a character from whatever the fuck Melty Blood is, bet on it
-if it's a DBZ character, you should probably bet on it. if it's a DBZ character that speaks portuguese during its opening quote, bet on it.
-if it's a Marvel character it's probably a safe bet, doubly so if its idle sprite is moving abnormally fast.
-avoid betting on: Jojo characters, Tetsuo from KoF, DC characters, OS-tans, the fucking Megazord that cost me all my money

 

Best matches I've watched so far were some DBZ character vs The Blob (a dull metallic sphere) and Lex Luthor vs somebody's Ryu sprite edit self-insert character.

 

[melmer]

Omega Tom Hanks destroys all!

[Sno]

It's also worth pointing out that nobody is actually playing, they're pitting against eachother whatever custom AI scripting these crappy, random MUGEN characters have, and they're often just totally, hilariously broken. (Tip: Short characters are often a safe bet because most of the AI's can't deal with the small hitbox.)

It's amazing.

Even if you don't want join in on the metagame, the twitch stream is hilarious.

[derskusmacher]

If you plan to at least check this out, it's addicting as hell. Even more so if you and a friend(s) are watching and betting at the same time while on mumble or something.

[SecretAsianMan]

It's also worth pointing out that nobody is actually playing, they're pitting against eachother whatever custom AI scripting these crappy, random MUGEN characters have, and they're often just totally, hilariously broken. (Tip: Short characters are often a safe bet because most of the AI's can't deal with the small hitbox.)

 

I'm glad you mentioned that.  I just saw a match where they spent 15 seconds facing away from each other attacking the air.  I would have been really confused if I didn't remember this.

[malkav11]

I tried it and evidently got in on a match where neither character actually had AI at all so they just stood there. It was not really the best intro.

[Murdoc]

I remember looking at this the first time Gertsman mentioned it and was like "great now people are betting on street fighter"

 

Then he was talking about it more recently and I looked at it and was like "Oh, its fake money? Great, flippin nerds."

 

Then he talked about it some more and showed some off today. I had no idea it was AI vs AI and part of this weird freakin game of homebrew characters.

 

Now that is something I am down with... for some reason.

[Twig]

I tried it and evidently got in on a match where neither character actually had AI at all so they just stood there. It was not really the best intro.

Sounds like the most appropriate intro to me.

 

Saltybet is cool until you have a bunch of friends talking about it for like three days straight in Mumble at which point you kind of want to murder anyone who brings it up.

 

No offense.

 

GOTTA GET OUTTA THE MINES!!!!

[juv3nal]

holy crap. it is so hard for me to stop watching that. I'm lucky they stopped to update with some new characters otherwise I might be stuck there forever. I wasn't even playing/betting.

[juv3nal]

oh btw lavos spawn is ridiculous. he doesn't move, I have no idea where his hit box is and his attacks just wreck shop all over the field.

[voxn]

all my streamwatching time has been devoured by the International, but the bit of this I watched the other day lived up to expectations. The most legit match was, hilariously, a low rez leela vs winnie the pooh that went down to the final round (winnie choked) 

 

twitch chat is also 100% hilarious which is practically unprecidented

[juv3nal]

-if it's a character from whatever the fuck Melty Blood is, bet on it

If it's a magical girl/maid and/or chat is screaming 'loli waifu' it is probably either a Tohou character or a Melty Blood one. MB characters are less chibi stule than the tohou and seem to have smoother (possibly more frames) idle animation. Tohou characters are also good by the way. Not sure how they stack up against each other.

If a character has "arrange" before their name they they are usually pretty good.

Metroid Queen is pretty good too.

Also completely ignore when people in chat say a character is "real" or "fake" The *could* be right/know what they talking about, but it's just as likely they're trying to swing betting odds in their favour.

[Gormongous]

My experience playing this has been betting chump change because I blew my load way too quick, then laughing uproariously as the chat freaks out. The other people really are what makes the game. My neighbors must think I'm crazy, but Vulture-Man vs. Dark Chun-Li had me on the floor in tears, literally.

[Yasawas]

I have this on in the background while I play Animal Crossing.

 

The first time I saw this a palette-swapped Hugo from Third Strike utterly ruined Winnie the Pooh and nothing has been as good since. The fights with the MS Paint guys are always enjoyable though and the time that Leonardo from TMNT pulled an amazing timer scam by flying off the top of the screen and remaining out of sight once he had a life lead was pretty sick.

[juv3nal]

As a result of watching way too many matches, I can say that:

Touhou are definitely stronger than Melty Blood on average.

Darkstalkers and Puzzle Fighters are solid.

There are A LOT of fake Ashes (from Evil Dead). The one that arrives in a car in the intro is more likely to be "real" but I wouldn't say it's guanteed. The reallest one (and some of the fake ones can be competent) will bust out that klaatu barada nikto special which I don't think the other ones do.

 

Oh, also don't fuck with Ronald McDonald. He's the reallest.

 

btw mini-sized DBZ characters are often awful, I mean some of them are still good, but on average, if you don't know which ones, the normal sprite sized ones are generally a safer bet.

[darthbator]

Maybe it's because I'm not generally compelled to gamble but I don't really see the appeal outside of how ridiculous this is...

[juv3nal]

Maybe it's because I'm not generally compelled to gamble but I don't really see the appeal outside of how ridiculous this is...

I don't think it's that, because I never bet with real $ and if the saltybet betting were for real money, I would have been all "fuck THAT"

The fact that it's fake money lets me have a virtual stake in the outcome that just watching the fights does not.

[juv3nal]

I will say that part of the appeal is a game of intuiting "rules" with imperfect knowledge, like Mao.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_(card_game)

There are too many characters to memorize all the matchups (and you can't necessarily do it by name or sprite because there are a bunch of identically named characters with identical sprites, but vastly different AI), but you can guess at a character's origin as characters can tend to be (somewhat) reasonably matched against other characters from the same creator.

Also chat lies to you constantly about which character is better (except when they're not), so it becomes a game about reading the temperature of a room that's spewing 'ALL IN ON LOLI WAIFU TOO STRONK 4 MEXIBEAM' at about ten messages a second.

Which is hilarious.

[Gormongous]

Also chat lies to you constantly about which character is better (except when they're not), so it becomes a game about reading the temperature of a room that's spewing 'ALL IN ON LOLI WAIFU TOO STRONK 4 MEXIBEAM' at about ten messages a second.

Which is hilarious.

 

And then the chat is there with you during the whole fight, congratulating you on your entirely accidental discernment or ridiculing you for your foolish show of trust. It just wouldn't be the same game without ten thousand gibbering idiots on the sidelines.

[Faegbeard]

there is nothing better than winning a 1:250 bet because of terrible hitboxes

 

out of the mines I go

[posh_somme]

i got super deep into it a few weeks ago, i would have one of my monitors showing the stream and my macbook displaying the stats of each character. i wrote up a bad spreadsheet that would approximate the percentage of salty bucks to bet based on each character's win loss ratio. i've given up now though, went all in with $20000 and decided if I lost I'd stop doing it. for my health

[Dosed]

I tried to go on Saltybet because it sounded right up my street but then you had to sign up and I didn't fancy it all of a sudden. I have just been reading a pretty interesting piece on Polygon about a fake wrestling league created in WWE's Create a Wrestler mode where there's no human control and the matches play out randomly. Saltybet + that thing sounds amazing. It's stuff like this that makes me realise that gaming is fucking bonkers.

[eot]

i got super deep into it a few weeks ago, i would have one of my monitors showing the stream and my macbook displaying the stats of each character. i wrote up a bad spreadsheet that would approximate the percentage of salty bucks to bet based on each character's win loss ratio. i've given up now though, went all in with $20000 and decided if I lost I'd stop doing it. for my health

Same, sort of.

I bet on 1500+ matches over the course of a few days. It was kind of scary how addicted to it I got. The money is fake but the gambling is most real. When the site went down for half a day I finally broke out of it and I'm glad I did.