The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Tournaments and How to Fix Them

Push2Stops

The good is that it can be really fun to best teams set up by other players without the cool down of Arena or the crucial strategy of Galactic War, the bad is less than worthwhile prizes, and the ugly is the extremely time intensive demand of the ranking system. In the end we are left with something that is frustrating at best, and discouraging to most.
Dear Devs, Below I'll suggest a few different ways to limit play time, restructure the ranking system and refine the prizes to make the tournaments more enjoyable for players. Keep in mind these are different takes on similar ideas and it will take further effort to find which individual suggestions work best collectively.
Time Limits
Right now, the way to win is to win more than others by playing more than others. I think the idea was to make it so that one wins by having greater wins than others but by grouping players the way they have and letting contestants play infinitely players are essentially ranking based on time spent competing. Raising unit refresh costs was a step in the right direction but cutting the event down in days only trades one issue for another; yes, the time to play has been limited but also the chance to play is has been restricted. So players who watch Rogue One on Saturday have less chance to play the Rouge One event than those who don't watch it at all. My solution is more days to but maximum of play minutes available.

• The first suggestion is a 3 day tournament with a maximum of 2 hours of play. Contestants can then sit and play for over 2 hours straight, or they can use up minutes over the course of the 3 days.
• Alternatively the tournament could last 2 days and have 3 sessions to play. Entering a session allows unlimited play and each session ends after an hour with a ten minute cool down between sessions. This will allow some to participate 3 times over the 2 days while the more determined set time out from there days to maximize sessions.
• The simplest option is a tournament where players have 12 to 8 battles available to compete in over a 2 to 3 day period. This gives players, at most, six battles a day to try for the top, and at least a few days chance to earn a participation prize.

All of these limits will encourage the most strategic players to take in the lowest powered units against the toughest of foes without discouraging those who just don't have time or interest in playing for more than a couple of hours.
Prizes
There seems to be a disconnect in the rewards these tournament titles suggest and what's found under the prizes tab. If the rewards are to be this character or that, players expect to have a usable unit by the end of it if they've made a solid effort and did well. This might not result in the most useful of characters but someone to try out on the first few nodes of galactic war to determine whether or not to invest further. If tournaments are really are about getting a new character I'd suggest payouts much more like this:

• Character + Shards to 7 Star + lots of Credits + lots of Gear + Ability Mats + extra Creds and Gear
• Character + Shards to 7 Star + lots of Credits + lots of Gear + Ability Mats
• Character + Shards to 6 Star + extra Shards + less Credits + less Gear + Ability Mats
• Character + Shards to 5 Star + extra Shards + less Credits + less Gear + less Ability Mats
• Shards to unlock + Shards to 5 Star + less Credits + less Gear + less Ability Mats
• Shards to unlock + extra Shards + less Credits + less Gear + few Ability Mats
• Shards to unlock + less Credits + less Gear

The secondary prize details are vague because the point is the new unit and secondary prizes are exactly that, secondary. But perhaps new playable characters are not the point. Maybe these events are about getting extra creds and raid gear and the characters are just bonus shards but if that's so they should be labeled as such. If that's the case the tiers could look more like this:

• 5 M Credits + Tank Gear + Lots of Pit Gear + extra Pit Gear + Character + Shards to 6 Star
• 4 M Credits + Lots of Pit Gear + extra Pit Gear + Shards to unlock + Shards to 5
• 3.5 M Credits + Lots of Pit Gear + extra Pit Gear + Shards to unlock
• 3 M Credits + Pit Gear + extra Pit Gear + lots of shards
• 2.5 M Credits + Pit Gear + extra Pit Gear + less Shards
• 2 M Credits + Pit Gear + few Shards

This payout system would also work with farmable and chromium only characters as well making Tournaments possible every week or even twice a week.
Ranks
The problem with the ranking system is how top heavy the rewards are distributed providing a usable character to less than the top 1% resulting in discontent and frustration for a vast sea of players and discouraging many from doing more than enough to register as participated. This is due to the many tiered system and the large numbers of players per Tournament. I simple solution would be to cut the tiers in half and redistribute prizes like so:

• 1st
• 2nd
• 3rd
• 4th - 100th
• 101st - 500th
• 501st - 1,000th
• 1,001st - 2,500th
• 2.5k +

The medal rewards would be an improvement but ideally rankings would be shorter with less participants (one thousand per tournament) and more streamlined tiered prizes would be available. The time limits listed above make 1st place much more viable with so few participants so consider this champion focused payout system:

• Champion (1st place)
• Runner-up (2nd)
• Honorable Mention (3rd - 400th)
• Participation (401st - 900th)
• Entry (901st - 1,000th)

Some of these ideas work better together than others while some might not fit together especially well but hopefully the Devs will consider how extreme the changes need to be for Tournaments to be widely enjoyable.

Dear Players, what combinations do you see working? What other ideas might work better?

TLDR; Prizes need to be better and better distributed while time required to play needs to be limited without restricting players from participation.

Nack_Alfaghn

I think they should just scrap tournaments as there is so much wrong with them, I could go into detail but there are enough posts on all the things wrong with the tournaments.

If they are going to keep them, the rewards need to be based off how many points you score not how high on the table you finish.

SirDave314159

As an option building on what @Nack_Alfaghn said, there could be two awards trees easily enough: one is rank based, one is points based. The competitive tree would have some level of premium rewards weighted at the top, maybe gear or possibly even just credits. It's still worth doing and important for bragging rights, but not as critical to advancing your game. The threshold tree would have fixed point totals for fixed rewards, culminating in a full 7* unlock at the top at, say 2000 or 3000 points based on the current ranking scheme.