Tournament availability feedback please!
 

Hey guys,

I'd like to hear your feedback on available tournament types please. Are there too many? Which ones work well, which don't? Which are interesting and fun, which aren't? How about capped tournaments, which cap values are good etc?

So far my takeaway is:
1) Maybe too many tournaments are available, too much choice.
2) Quick tournaments should not be bigger than 32 teams.
3) The big tournaments (64+ ) should be Daily or Weekly tournaments, scattered throughout the day.
4) Sim interval after the first sim should be 10 minutes across the board, otherwise big tournaments take too long.

Thoughts?

Thanks for your feedback! So far we're very happy, and we're well on track to launch the feature (plus another required patch) on Monday! :)

Markus

My experience is with Silver (which ends up being very similar to historical silver). I think the biggest two things I'm looking for not mentioned above are:
A) A fix for the roster submission bug for multiple entries to the same kind of tournament. Also a fix to the "able to make a transaction from inactive->active even in the middle of a tournament" bug which I am sure has been reported. I know these fixes are in the pipeline, just worth mentioning, especially since I anticipate entering the same tournament format multiple times almost constantly.

B) A more careful examination of the reward structure within a tournament. I know this is beta and the rewards are mostly placeholders, but it's something worth repeating as an important priority. For example, you don't want the 2nd prize (e.g. 3k PP) being more desirable than the top prize (5 regular packs). I think the prizes should be strictly better as you go up: 3-4th get 1 pack, 2nd gets 2 packs and 500 PP, 1st gets 1k PP and 3 packs, etc. You don't want people tempted to tank in the finals.

Other general comments:
C) There should also be a proper scaling of prizes with card rarity. Gold tournaments should reward more PP/packs/cards than silvers, which should reward more than bronze, etc. Why would I enter a gold 16 player tourney with a 500 PP 1st prize when I can just enter into silver and make 2kPP instead? It's not going to happen.

D) The types of awards at each tier should match the type of player who is entering it.
--Diamond/open tournaments should be huge pools, in general, with chaser rewards. Maybe you can run some 16-size brackets for packs or PP or something as practice, but people at these levels are looking for cards or glory, not really meager amounts of PP
--Silver and below tournaments should be mostly PP or pack based. I personally value PP way above packs (and certainly most of the BFF league does also), but either of them are reasonable rewards for these kinds of tournaments. Maybe some more intermediate-style SE cards would work too.
--Gold is kind of intermediate; I suspect that if you want to attract the entire (active) community to a tournament and/or make a specific tournament mode the "competitive" one, this is probably the best one to use. Salary cap is all about figuring out the best way to squeeze 100 Cy or whatever into your roster (though there is some promise there), Diamond/Open are just big whale roster heavyweight bouts, and silver doesn't have enough depth (in my opinion). Gold is a great middle ground. Alternatively, Bronze seems relatively deep and the supply is there, so it makes a great and truly accessible competitive mode if that's the goal.

Finally, just as a general comment, I'll add that coming from other eSports like Magic, Hearthstone, and Madden, the most fun I ever had playing was in the "championship invitational"-style events where you earn a berth to an exclusive tournament (or points on a global ladder, etc.) by winning one or more qualifiers (possibly in different formats). It's awesome to play in a high-stakes event against other accomplished people for a shot at an insane award and/or glory. Tournaments can serve as a completely alternative way to play PT rather than as a supplement to the existing relegation ladder, and I think that's the most promising use-case available here.

As someone who spent weeks putting together a diamond roster, I hope that there are some real rewards for Diamond tournies instead of the 2K and under stuff right now.

As discussed, 10 minute rounds for every tourney. 15 minutes at worst.

I echo pretty much everything Quanta said, including the "championship invitational", or what are called satellites in poker. Although there is no cost for these tournies, a qualifier setup is fun. Might need to keep the final tournaments out of the 3 max or else people could be tied up for days at a time.

First, thanks for this format. I am having a blast with the tournament concept. I agree with all the original points except number one. I think you can never have too many choices. Perhaps the problem could be solved better by reducing the number of teams in the tourneys and/or allowing teams to sign up for more than 3 tournaments at a time. I suspect that the people like me who are enjoying this mode are clamoring for "more, please, give me more.'
As suggested elsewhere, I would like to see some small size tournaments that are restricted by the era of the card - like pre-ww2 cards or 50s through 90s card tourneys. I also would love to see a small tourney where you could only use cards from only one major league club.
If possible, I think it would be neat if all the championship winners of the previous week could enroll in a weekly tournament of champions for their level. I don't know how feasible any of these ideas are from a programming standpoint, but the possibilities for new tournament types are only restricted by imagination, programming time, and the bottleneck of 3 tourneys per team.
Thanks again for all you do to make this entertaining pastime.

I think continued improvements to sorting and identification of specific tournament types (including easier ways to identify joined tournaments before, during, and especially after their completion) could also help alleviate this issue to varying degrees. One of the reasons why the choice is overwhelming is that it is so hard to clearly identify the full true nature of the options we're presented.

Huh? In which world are 3k PP more worth than 5 packs, which cost 5k PP?


I disagree. Why should someone who most likely spent a lot of $$ have a far better reward output than one whop did not (and who has no chance of winning that particular tournament)? Tournament rewards should solely be based on length of tournament (which equals the chance of winning).

But then again, this is just my personal opinion. We will debate this internally :)

Qualifying tournaments are part of the system, we will add them (and the big events which you can qualify for) either later this year or in PT21.

I would gladly forego 2k points for more control in what cards those points turn into. Its the difference between being given 50 $1 lottery tickets versus being given 30 dollars.

Really? Interesting... I am not sure the 30$ comparison makes sense though, the things you can do with PP are quite limited... either buy packs or use it in the AH. I would always take the 5 packs.

But then again, that 3k should probably be 2k :)

I think the bigger takeaway I'm hoping people get from my point is that the conversion rate between packs and points is not always 1:1. For some people, it may be, for others, it may be that 3k points are just as good as 5 packs as in the example above, and for others like myself I'd go even lower. I'd gladly take 2k points over 5 packs.

The underlying issue is that 5k points can always be converted into 5 packs, but 5 packs cannot be consistently converted into any set amount of points. We're guaranteed at least 50 (5 irons, 1 bronze, all at quicksell values), and the upper limit is theoretically boundless, limited only by prospective buyers in the AH. But without a set conversion rate from packs to points, every individual will have an acceptable rate of conversion in their mind for value comparisons between the two.

not sure about 1) but I definitely agree on 2, 3 and 4.

About the rewards: there should't be mixed rewards like 5 packs for first, 3k PP for 2nd. Rewards should either be all packs or all PP. Just my opinion though.

I think these are perfect!

I would like to add tournaments based on current level/PL tittles... for example, get a tourney going for PL winners, or one for non-PL winners (as requirements to enter), and open requirements as far as what cards we can play....

That way we can get our dream Champions League going :)

I guess the core question is "If the rewards are the same, why should I bother with higher rarity tournaments since the investment to be competitive grows very quickly with rarity?" If you can come up with an answer to that question as a designer, then I am fully satisfied.

As a disclaimer, I of course love the shots at Ozzie in silver tournaments; I'm a fully FTP player with absolutely no chance at open, diamond, or even likely salary cap tourneys (or maybe even gold ones) if enough whales mobilize. But silver (and bronze)? I know that format and I have a puncher's chance at even some of the larger rewards. I like that accessibility. I just want to make sure that the higher rarity tournaments have some sort of purpose, since meaningless amounts of PP aren't going to cut it for teams worth 200-300k+ that are entering gold tournaments, for example.

I agree with all 4 of these. I never even look at the tournament format since I'm so focused on finding the card level/type that matches what I want to enter and is close to filling, so maybe the play is to always have a tournament of a certain type open and rotate between all the formats.

As mentioned already, scale the rewards to the type of tournament so that open/diamond are more attractive than bronze. All the reward stuff can be tinkered with but I honestly don't really look at it when entering anyway.

You are already aware of bugs overwriting rosters and going over the cap, but aside from that everything has been very very smooth for me. The work you guys put in is really showing and appreciated.

I also hope you keep the positional training as is. The more I play with it the more I enjoy it. Restrictions breed creativity, there is less challenge when you can just put anybody anywhere.

I remember reading that the SE prize is randomly determined when the tournament is generated, so Ozzie in that silver weekly was just a highroll.

I do think that case is a very extreme jump between winning the tournament (500K card) and finishing second (All-Star Grandal, 10K maybe?) when it's pretty much all luck.

Not enough tournaments. Too many live only. Fewer single eliminations and more best of 3 minimum. After round robin have best of 3. 16 team tournaments ideal.


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More tournaments need sims less than 30 mins or they take more than a whole day/night cycle. way too many open tournaments in comparison to limited ones.

This does seem reasonable.

At the end of the day if you are putting a 5 million point team in an open tournament the difference between a 2500 or 1000 PP first prize is pretty irrelevant.

Why would someone bother putting in the PP to put together a diamond tourney team when they can get the same rewards for a bronze tourney team at a much smaller investment meaning higher ROI?

Also there need to be more diamond pack rewards rather than SE cards to try to keep the AH filled, right now collections are basically stagnant b/c of bottleneck diamond cards that only show up on the AH once a month. If you just start giving away the SE cards, why would anyone bother doing the collections at all unless you happen to be pulling 500 packs regardless and get the cards you need by accident?

That's a valid point!

Maybe they want to have fun building a team and playing with diamond players against other teams of diamond players.

Not everything is about ROI. Tournament rewards are pretty small compared to what you just earn naturally. A typical 16 team quick Bo5 tournament gives out 2,000 points, that's an EV of 125 per player over a couple hours. Big deal.

I do agree that there should be more diamond packs as rewards. There are way too many unique diamond historicals out there so the availability of necessary ones is microscopic.