In Magic Online, they have 8-person tournaments that are usually single elimination, you have to own 3 packs and two event tickets to enter, the packs get opened and distributed by drafting them and the winner usually get's anywhere from 4 to 8 packs as prizes, with some of the runners up getting less, depending on that tourny's prescribed payout structure.
What if CoT had a PVP arena system where you could pay a Star or two to enter an 8-person (1v1 matches) single-elimination PVP tournament, and the winner wins, say, 4-6 Stars, with the game keeping the other 2-4.
There could be various different types of tourny, like weight classes, but more along the lines of level cap and classes/specs allowed.
I think this would be good, assuming PVP exists, for a number of reasons:
1. People are more emotionally invested in winning when there's a prize.
2. It gives PVPers a reason to want Stars, either from their monthly sub or by acquiring them from other players.
3. It drives the game economy in a number of ways, creating ongoing demand for all manner of things like Insps, IOs, and Stars, and it even make people want to get a particular new toon leveled and ready for PVP as soon as possible, making whatever XP sources are available more valuable to them.
4. Competitive people like recognition and rewards for success. There could be various forms of glory doled out to the winners, like having winners announced over the "Victory Channel" in PVP chat, which would let the winners take screenies for posterity, etc. There could even be Trophies for winning, whatever that means (works like a badge, or maybe you can display it in your lair/SG base, etc).
5. It gives even the most staunch non-PVPer something to do with any spare Stars they might have lying around without forcing the game devs to make some new thing to buy with them. It is a "Star sink" in that sense, and not a one and done kind like making a new type of wings, but rather one that keeps running and pulling starts out of the economy every day, one hopes.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
i get ideal pve tournaments where u and team must defend against 20 or more increasingly difficult waves of enemies. 5 waves will be a Randomly boss show up ( i.e 10 15 20 waves boss) if u team survival u will win stars?
whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster and when you look into the abyss, the abyss also look into you, -Friedrich
[img]http://i294.photobucket.com/albums/mm106/hinata1032/Kitsune.jpg[/img]
What I'm talking about is more like this:
8 people pay 1 Star each to enter a tournament. The ONE play who eventually wins that tournament get's awarded, say, 5 Stars as a prize for winning. The developers keep the other 3. Something like that.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Something like this would resemble the Eve Online Alliance Tournament.
Spots in the tournament are bid on by alliances by using PLEX, which someone somewhere had to buy with real money, though most of the major alliances purchase their PLEX through the market.
I would suggest doing the same thing with Supergroups. The supergroup enters the tournament by bidding on the available slots, with a cutoff to when a member had to be a part of the SG to be eligible to participate, and then the SG leadership selects who will be participating in each match-up they're up against.
In return, the eligible members of the SuperGroup of get access to special badges, costume pieces, extra costume slots, butt-loads of in-game currency and that sort of thing for winning.
MWM sets the rules, referees, and controls the brackets and streaming.
The reason for the cutoff for eligible members is to reduce dream-teaming or the SG that's likely to win from just flooding their ranks with people who want the rewards.
There can naturally be some tweaking of this for the specifics of what's available in the game, but that's what I would imagine would work.
If anything is unclear, I'm modeling this version of the idea directly from the EvE Online Alliance Tournament.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
The idea is not bad. I would not gamble stars in such a tournament, because I am a bit reluctant for PVP and therefore I see my chances of winning rather low. But I might try it out if there were to be a variant which uses ingame currency. (Are we still looking for currency sinks...?)
I'm not a PVPer at all, but the competitive people I know who do play games generally like to play for something tangible to make it interesting, or so I've noticed. I can see playing for in-game prizes like Influence or a random recipe drop for the winner(s), or something, sure. Again though, I'd like to see the entry fee paid in real money or Stars which are"backed" by real money in the PLEX-ish sense. I don't know how good of an in-game reward you'd need to have to make that happen, probably because I'm not a PVPer at heart. You'd certainly need to be able to win something better than what you could just BUY with those Stars outright, becasue you're taking a risk that you might lose. I'm not against some form of consolation prizes (again, Influence or other in-game stuff) for the losers either.
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Nothing against that at all. All I want to propose is an amateur league with lesser rewards, but more accessible for the casual PVP players.
Amateur leagues should be organized by the community/Supergroups, IMO.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Amateur leagues, sure. There should CERTAINLY still be "no buy-in" PVP tournaments even, I'm just proposing the option of having some that are "buy-in, win prizes"
R.S.O. of Phoenix Rising
Sand_Trout, I agree, this would be a good thing, too. But I still had the demands for currency sinks in mind and thought 'hey, this whole idea would be perfect for that!' You might even just implement a tool to set up tournaments this way. The creator could set up the entry fee and the winner gets... lets say 75% of that and the rest is drained. I would explain it with maintenance costs for the arena. It has to be a lot of work repairing the collateral damage superpowered fighters can inflict.
And Radiac, in that case I have no more doubts that this is a good idea. I would like to see it happen.