Why Discontinue Tournaments ***MEGATHREAD***
February 16, 2017 8:16PM
edited February 2017
Hello holotable, heroes!
I know that there will be some out in the community that are curious as to why now? What finally broke the wampa’s back?
When we launched Tournaments, we had some key experience beats we wanted to land with the feature:
- We wanted our players to feel rewarded for being strategic and for the effort they’d put into their rosters.
- We wanted players to have an experience of “heroic” struggle; that you would engage in pitched PVP combat and that experience would be enjoyable as you swapped ranks and vied for dominance.
Ultimately, we wanted Tournaments to be a new way to compete with other players that would be a fun addition to the game and would also provide a new way to introduce new characters into the game.
As you all are aware, we’ve gone through a number of iterations from the initial design of our Tournament structure in an effort to reach this vision. We’ve monitored the forums over the course of Tournaments and we’ve heard the feedback loud and clear. However, we’re a pretty disciplined and data-oriented team so we wanted to try a few more iterations to see if we could steer the ship to the place we wanted it and you guys would enjoy.
Where we structurally landed is Ally Points refresh, 24 hours length, and a steep Ally Point refresh ramp. Behaviorally, we saw some players engaging for 14 hours and still getting knocked out of “good” rewards. Even more alarming, we saw a significant drop off in Tournament participation, Tournament over Tournament. In sum, where we landed with Tournaments was off target from where we had envisioned we would end up.
So, after reviewing the data from our latest iteration, stitched together with the qualitative feedback from the forums, we internally agreed that the Tournament structure needed to be retired for now. And to expand that further, it needed to be retired because the bones of the system would likely never get to where we needed it to be for you to have a great experience.
That’s how we’ve got to here, now. So what’s up for the future? Immediately, we are cancelling all Tournaments for the foreseeable future and removing some changes we made in the game to support Tournaments. Specifically, this means removing the ally point inflow from completing the Daily Activities and from Galactic War shipments.
This should come as no surprise: no Tournaments, means less need for Ally Points. Ally Points were made much more plentiful to make participating in Tournaments easier for everyone. Now that Tournaments are being paused, you can choose to spend them on Bronziums or hold off in the event they get used for a different purpose down the road. At this point we have no plans to do so, but in the coming months that may change.
In the longer term, we’re doing a deeper review internally on what would we need to design, engineer, and implement to get Tournaments to a “good” place. Think of this like a Volkswagen Bus up in the mechanics shop being transformed to an Aston Martin DB9. And as we work on this transformation we may discover that it can’t be salvaged and that PVP Tournaments may not have a place in the Galaxy of Heroes.
That sort of work and change doesn’t happen overnight. We ask that you be patient with us as we see if we can bring Tournaments up to snuff. When there is something to report on Tournaments, you’ll hear from me as soon as I can safely tell you about it.
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/93104/why-discontinue-tournaments
Post edited by Kozispoon on
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Howdy, Stranger!
Replies
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/93104/why-discontinue-tournaments#latest
@ CG_TopHat
@EA_Jesse
It's always appreciated when you come out and say what's going on with game features and why it's being done.
A lot of people straight up hated tourneys for various reasons. Many people liked them for various reasons. Now that we've acknowledged there are many passionate points of view, I'd love to share/hear some thoughts on the future of tourneys. Bits welcome! Trolls less so.
The biggest complaint I heard was in regards to the payouts. To even unlock the toon/ship was difficult for most, unless you somehow lucked out on the shard you were randomly placed in. Making them 24 hours helped. Switching to Ally points helped. But, they were still brutal to get a thing unlocked.
Being a resource game essentially, as a whale, there are no limits. For (even mostly) ftp, you either work on roster depth to compete across all the game play types, or deep dive on 5-10 toons max to place high in Arena. Tourney seemed like the perfect place to reward players for toon depth, but it turned into a game of "who has the most ally points?" Fine. But not "fun." It just turned into a grind where, if you weren't playing heavily (and winning) in the last hour or two, you'd get bumped.
Many have suggested widening the pool of players who earn the unlocked toon/ship. Maybe the top 200? Or adding more player shards so there's more opportunity. Or segregating shards by people who place in top 10 in arena, then top 50, then top 100, etc so that most people are competing against similar strength players.
I for one, would like to see tourney's come back in some form. What I'd love, is until you sort out what you want to do with the tourney format: Bring back old tourney's now. Tweak them as testing, but let us play for those toons/ships. Many of us are just staring at 30/50 shard locked toons with no real way to progress on those toons.
One suggestion is moving tournaments into a Guild vs Guild design. Guilds can opt into a tournament, and be pitted up with another Guild. Each Rank is worth a certain amount of points, and at the end, the ranks are tallied, and High Score wins. This would force guilds to min/max their AP to have enough to do well in the next event. If a guild didn't feel prepared, they could simply not opt into the matchmaking queue.
I'm sure there are already GvG ideas laid out, but I thought it could be interesting to voice this idea, and see how others responded to it.
Looking forward to a return of global Player vs Player.
I assumed this was because competing against hackers just isn't worth it, especially when you know you won't get compensated after those hackers get banned.
Honestly, I loved the tournaments. I would literally take a day off just to play. They were too frequent, 1 a month would be ideal to give people a break and let them replenish their stock.
As far as the cheating, I'm no IT guy but aren't there programs to monitor odd behavior. If the tournament is only 1 day long then it shouldnt be too hard to quickly identify and boot those players.
Perhaps a chance to use a character for only five times each would benefit deep rosters.
As a father of three and a busy guy, doing the usual daily with raids and guild involvement does not leave much time to do a tournament for hours and hours on end just to get rank 100-200.
Perhaps limiting the amount of times you may use a character to 5-10 may reduce the "grind" and reward a deep roster.
Good thoughts.
In game guild: TNR Uprising
I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
*This space left intentionally blank*
+1
Personally I thought the main issue wasn't the tourney itself (the 24 hours, higher cost changes were great imho)...
The big issue as I saw was all surrounding characters/stars earned (and huge variance in resources needed from shard to shard).
I thought other than stars, the rewards were pretty awesome.
The fact that earning additional stars afterwards was a complete mystery to me was the big issue. You save up ally points and dedicate tons of time and maybe got shafted with a 4-5* and no known way to farm or get the rest of the way. Why should I take that risk and still have a useless character for 3-4 months?
I don't agree with the tourney to be a "exclusive" release mechanic, tournies should have just been a fun way to get gear, cash and some stars.
The character release schedule is really what was needed and to implement at the same time. You could spend money OR do well in the tourney etc.
At the end of the day the gear requirements is the big bottle neck anyways. I am so far behind in gearing my toons getting new ones is almost pointless.
I really like the team working on this game. They listen to the forums, to the players. Tournaments were a disaster, only viable for people willing to pay tons of cash. It was ridiculous. It was not about strategy or being a real tournament at all. Good riddance.
I know we had a problem with cheating, and literally having to not have a job or kids or anything like that to be able to play 14 hours a day to place high. But I'll miss the concept of 4v4 and 3v3 events. It added a different level of strategy.
I think a good idea to add freshness to the game could be some kind of tournament/event, or a new holotable even, that allowed for this kind of play.
I think more specifically it would be interesting to have a new holotable where the Leader did not actively participate, only his bonus applied, sort of like ship commanders. Maybe a 3v3 format with one reinforcement. This would not be for ships, just toons.
I also think a LS//DS or cantina style ship missions would be a nice addition.
This problem has a very easy solution: Award the shards at various point thresholds. Everyone who reaches 1000 points gets 5 shards. At 1500 points, you get 10 more and so on. The shards needed to get to 7* would be awarded for a fairly high point total but one that most people with 10+ maxed toons should be able to attain with moderate effort.
All the other prizes, such as credits and materials, can continue to be awarded based on final rank since people don't care as much as about these. I mean, some people do and this is a way to reward those that push to be the best but I don't think anyone is going to be bummed about finishing in 201st place as long as they get the shards they wanted.
This prize structure would likely call for some tweaks to refreshes and how points are awarded but that's something EA can probably figure out on their own. The most important thing is that everyone has an equal chance to get the new character/ship and promote it to whatever level they want without having to worry about whether all their effort will be wasted.
This also dramatically lessens the impact of cheaters. Sure, hackers may still take the top 100 places and screw everyone out of the good credit and mat prizes but they won't be able to prevent anyone from getting the main prize, which is what the majority of people care about.
I'd love that option. Have like a ten pack bronzium so you're not hitting buy again so many times
I really like the idea of Guild vs Guild combat - less keen to see tournaments back. Like I suspect many of us here (and one poster has stated it already) I'm a busy person, I work and have a family. So this game is fun, absorbing and engaging for me - but it absolutely can't require me to sit there for hours on end, glued to a mobile device - which is what tournaments became for me (and is the reason I refused to compete in them).
I hope some good ideas come out of this thread (@Stormy already posted a good one) and to go back to the original point of my post - thanks for the transparency and the communication, and for listening to your players on this subject.
the solution to tourneys is one simple fix. make the reward bands based on the points you score. so like top tier (7* toon) = 4,000 points, 2nd tier = 3,500 points, 3rd tier 3,000 points, or some variation like that. keep everything else the same but add in a +/- figure for your defense team (so you lose points if you put in a powder puff defense). problem solved @CG_TopHat @Mageduckey
Who knows, they might actually do one of those 2 things, when have they ever steered us wrong with AC.
Not only that, it was a terrible way to introduce toons. If you don't have tons of ally points saved and end up on a whale shard, there's no point of attempting for the top 100.
If tournaments return:
Rewards:
•Give top 50 the toon 7*
•Give top 150 the toon 6*
•Give top 250 the toon 5*
•Give top 350 the toon 4*
•Give top 500 the toon 3*
Time it lasts:
•Tournaments last only an hour (out of the 24 hours is goes on for, you can start it up any time in that time frame but only participate for an hour)
Refreshing:
•Use GW tokens to refresh points instead of ally points as everyone will have over 1 million saved