Quote:
Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn
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 |
1) I'd be hesitant to say there's too much choice at this point. Our preferences might evolve over time as well. Just because I start out super stoked about Open Diamond- doesn't mean I can't get into Silver Historical 1940-1950 a week from now. In fact, having more things to explore later helps this to become more of a slow burn instead of a sugar high.
Rather, I think having lots of choices (maybe even more than we have now) with really powerful tools to sort them would be preferable. Being able to sample more tournaments per unit time instead of getting stuck in a Bo7 128-team tourney with 30-min sims ties in to this.
I also think perhaps renaming the tournaments or giving them nicknames might help us find what we're looking for easier, rather than constantly deciphering Q-Open-Bo7-DEL-ID9 or whatever. That is a barrier to entry although I am getting more used to navigating it.
2) Yes, quick tournaments should be...well...quick! Right now it seems like people are just sorting by what's closest to being full rather than what their preferred format is. Making more 8- and 16-team tourneys that can fill up
quickly, that people with odd work schedules, insomniacs, or people that live elsewhere than East Coast of the USA can pop into any time of day or night would be good. More quick ones means I can do more tourneys and sample more of the variety per unit time (ties into point 1 above).
3) I would also think of the "big" tourneys more as "grand slams" like in pro tennis. These types of tourneys should pay out more substantial rewards because they'd be harder to achieve. Something has to entice you to enter one of your three slots into something that will use up that spot for days. Maybe some of these could be even more rare and be on an invitation-only basis, based on some criterion/criteria related to how your teams have performed in previous tournaments.
4) Quicker sims would be preferable because we can get through more tourneys quicker. A potential drawback would be having less time to adjust between sims. With only 10 min, you really can't be too deliberate with making roster moves, changing strategies...leave the computer for the porcelain throne and you just might miss it. Overall, I'd be in favor of shorter sims though. You'd just have to be paying attention a little bit more.
Bonus #1) I strongly agree with the idea that a particular tournament should have a like series of rewards. All PP, all packs, all SE cards. Different tournaments can be different, but I don't want to hear a bunch of whining about how person A likes packs more and person B feels cheated because he would've rather had 2K PP to play with on the AH. First place gets 3K, second gets 1K, third gets 500 PP (or something) would completely solve that issue. First place gets 5 packs, second place gets 3 packs, third place gets 1 pack an so on.
Bonus #2) I think capping our entries at 3 is a very smart idea. I'm not tied to 3 exactly, but we should really have to deliberate over which tournaments to try without being able to saturate them all. This will prevent the Tournaments from getting manipulated in the same way the AH can be by a handful of tycoons controlling the economy. If you can't enter tons of tourneys at the same time, then you can't win all the awards either. Having a cap of 4 or 5 or 2 or [insert single-digit, non-zero positive integer here] works well and I'd be hesitant to change that.