8 years ago

Why Discontinue Tournaments MEGATHREAD

"CG_TopHat;93104" wrote:
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

feedback

3muaddib3
8 years ago
First off, I just want to say thank you to the Devs for this post:
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.
STORMYstorming
8 years ago
Really enjoyed using my roster to the fullest, but the rewards did seem to be "too good" at the top. By taking 1st, I felt like I was receiving a minimum of $1000 USD content, based on related value.

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.
Malgrin
8 years ago

Even more alarming, we saw a significant drop off in Tournament participation, Tournament over Tournament.

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.
MYearwoo
8 years ago
Why scrap the whole thing if you could have just tweaked and frequency of the tournaments and monitored/reacted to cheating quicker.

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.
MYearwoo
8 years ago
#ilikestormysideatoo
DarthOlethros
8 years ago
The amount of time required to play for a rank 50-100 was too much. I did enjoy the overall format, but after fighting mostly the same teams for hours it wasn't as enjoyable.

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.
DarthOlethros
8 years ago
Reducing the grind is what I agree with. Ally points were a start to helping ease FTP and P2W tensions, but opened a whole new can of who can play the longest.

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.
Nikoms565
8 years ago
Fixing the tournaments wouldn't really be that difficult. Make the prize structure less top heavy and the refreshes capped at a set number. There have also be countless suggestions in the forums that would have had a better structure than the tournaments as they were released - even dropping the shard rewards all together and simply having it be for credits, gear and ship materials.
3muaddib3
8 years ago
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.

+1 -GVG would be fun!

Perhaps a chance to use a character for only five times each would benefit deep rosters.

+1
Neo2551
8 years ago
Just make 2 hours tourney beginning at given schedule every week and put gear as reward with a set amount of refeshes. The entry cost could be ally point and the higher the tier the more expensive. Against game terrorist you just have to design defense point such that weak team/roster culd not hold.