New gamemode proposal: PVP Tournaments

PVP Tournament

Gameplay:

  1. Players play 3 battles against each other, for every round of tournament.
  2. Each round consists of 2 days: On day 1 players set up 3 defence teams, on day 2, players fight against opponent teams.
  3. Both defence teams and offence teams are restricted to a subset of troops and weapons. Restrictions change every round (2 days).
  4. Players get score for fighting enemy team. Player with higher cumulative score from 3 battles wins duel.
  5. Using 12 unique troops each round gives a bonus to score gained. (or other words - using multiple copies of a troop on defence gives a penalty to score)
  6. Player who doesn’t set up their defence teams automatically loses the duel.
  7. If both payers don’t assign their defence teams, both lose.
  8. Battles are fought with all bonuses player has (kingdom levels, artifacts, guild stats etc.)

Organization, additional rules and other changes needed to implement it:

This is an idea to implement some kind of chess elo mechanism onto the game:

  1. Each player is given 100 Tournament Fame.
  2. Each duel (3 battles) two players fight result in one players losing and other player gaining Tournament Fame.
  3. Players are matched each rund with use of a swiss-system, with first round picks at random(or with use of Tournament Fame scores). 2 Players dont duel more than once on a single tournament. Matches are made with use of these metrics:
    3.1. Number of duels won in current tournament (players with same win-lose history are matched against each other as in every swiss-system)
    3.2. Total cumulative score of all battles and all rounds of tournament (players with highest scores are matched to play against each other)
    3.3. Tournament Fame (players with higest Tournament Fame are matched to play against each other)
  4. Number of rounds depends from number of competitors.
  5. After each round players are ranked by:
    5.1. Number of duel victories.
    5.2. Total cumulative score from battles.
  6. After last round, final ranking is determined. Players receive rewards based on their position in ranking.

Rewards,time spread, entry fee and other:

  1. Rewards are as following (a total of 2150 gems):
  • players ranked 100-51 recieve 5 gems
  • players ranked 50-21 recieve 10 gems
  • players ranked 20-11 recieve 20 gems
  • players ranked 10-6 receive 50 gems
  • players ranked 5-4 recive 100 gems
  • player ranked 3 receives 150 gems
  • player ranked 2 receives 300 gems
  • player ranked 1 receives 500 gems, and is honored with special title: Champion of Krystara. Whenever Champion of Krystara loggs onto the global channel, an annoucements is published on that channel: All hail to %player_name%, Champion of Krystara. Also Champion of Krystara name is surrounded by small green leafs - symbolising Wreath of Victory.
  1. Champion of Krystara keeps his/her title until next Tournament is finished and new Champion takes the title.
  2. Other than that, all players receive:
  • 1 glory key after each battle won
  • 10 glory for winning their duel match
  1. Tournament entry fee is 50 gems.
  2. Tournament once started runs until it’s finished. Other in-game events operate independently.
  3. Tournaments can be held after a campaign is finished - as a form of celebration of finishing campaign and saving up Krystara from danger.
  4. On top of that, there can be an additional carrot for some collectors → 3-4 achievements:
    7.1. for taking part in tournament
    7.2. for winning a duel in tournemanet
    7.3. for being ranked top 10
    7.4. for winning a tournament and becoming the Champion fo Krystara

I’ll leave it here, for people to comment. Have a good week everyone.

7 Likes

Some additional thoughts:

Tournament Fame

  1. All players entering tournament should have their fame set to: max(current_fame, 100)
    That way, all players will have at least 100 TF at start of tournament + those who earned fame in previous ones, will keep it.
  2. Tournament Fame can only be earned/lost by taking part in Tournament fights.
  3. Tournament Fame changes every time duel is complete. Winner wins points which are removed from losers TF.
  4. Ammount of TF gained depends from the differance between players TF levels. Base is set at 5 points for players, where TF differance is not more than 100. Each 100 points differance shifts the base by 1 point. Here’s an example:
player1 TF player2 TF differance in TF change in TF if P1 won change in TF if P2 won
100 100 0 5 5
120 20 100 4 6
200 250 -50 5 5
120 300 -180 6 4
0 0 0 5 5
100 400 -300 8 2
1000 500 500 0 10
231 321 -90 5 5
  1. TF cannot go into negatives. If one of the players has 0 TF and loses a duel their oponent gains TF, while they dont lose any.
  2. If both players dont set their defenses for the current round, they both lose 5 TF(with exception of #6 - TF cannot go into negatives) and are counted as losers.
  3. There should be a ladderboard for:
    Tournament - to track the current event.
    All time Tournament Fame - to see who is most successful in all previous tournaments.

Battle restrictions

More of a FAQ, why i suggest there should be restrictions forced on players teams and why they should change over the whole tournament.

  1. Why restricted fights?
    To brake the boredoom of current pvp modes. If def teams are unstrestricted, you could easily see another place where orbweaver/zuul/goblins/webspinner (put any other meta def here) teams would flatter the game mode. Now, if we limit def teams, attack teams should also be restricted as well.
  2. Why new restrictions every round?
    Same reason as #1. If restrtictions stay same for the whole tournament, players will eventualy fight same/similiar 3 teams for next… 15-20 rounds (30-40 days in a row). What’s the fun in that ?
  3. How restrictions should be constructed?
    Each restrition should consist of 2 factors → type of troops/weapons and colors.
    Troops - each time there is randomly chosen one troop type/kingdom (these should be on the same list, so it’s only chosen type or chosen kingdom, not both) and 2 colors. Troops that can be used for event must match type/kingdom and use at least 1 of picked colors.
    Weapons - each time there is randomly chosen one weapon type and 2 colors. Weapons that can be used for event must match weapon type and use at least 1 of picked colors.

I know, that such randomness could result in some Akward combinations, sometimes leading to a heroless teams, but that’s where the challenge is → can you make a better team than your opponents using these restrictions? Can you outperform them in battle ?

Def team bonuses

Picking up unique troops for your 3 def teams should award you a multiplier to your score. This shouldn’t be a flat bonus like in GW, but a multiplier.
Let’s say, each unique troop gives a 25% bonus score, with base multiplier being 0.
As such, players who dont set up their defense get a 0% multiplier which means, they will score 0 points.
Players that will use 4 unique troops will get 100% multiplier which mean, their score will be counted as usual.
Players that will use 8 unique troops will get 200% multiplier - their score will be double.
Players with 9 uqnie troops will get 225% mutliplier.
etc.

Final though

I see many people reading, but not a one sharing with their opinion. What do you guys think of it ?

1 Like

Interesting idea. Sorta like an individual guild war, so just a war?

Waiting for @Mithran to reply.

:yum:

“It be like that sometimes”. Sorry, an Xbox troll infiltrated my brain housing group for a second there.

I like your proposal. It just seems a bit complicated, and 505 doesn’t do well when things get complicated. Kinda like me and chewing gum, or oil and vinegar. Or is it oil and water that don’t mix well? Me and deep thinking…Carved and Watery…

Good work tho, and good luck to you.

4 Likes

I like the sound of a mini-guild Wars that’s optional three times a week, even if the rewards were way less generous than you’ve outlined.

Sounds fun. No idea if it’s possible to seed that many matches without gaps between tournaments — maybe every third day would have to be “entry fee” day, where people buy in and then are matched rather than a “buy in anytime” model? Dunno — all I know is bracket seeding seems hard to get right, and this system sounds like it would need some sort of bracket seeding (even if the matchups weren’t called “brackets”).

1 Like

There doesn’t seem to be any explanation how score is obtained, just how it can be multiplied through defense teams. This is important because:

may have an effect on rankings:

If your opponent fails to show up you should neither get rewarded nor penalized. There may be other extreme opportunities to game the system based on scoring details, especially since the score is the tie breaker for equal number of victories (which will be the same in almost all cases due to the way the AI plays). To give an example:

Intentionally blowing a tournament would get you matched against a bunch of losers the next tournament, almost guaranteeing you’ll end up in a top reward spot.

How many rounds are there? How do opponents get assigned?

A battle should never be set up in a way that one side has has nothing to gain, only to lose, the other side nothing to lose, only to gain.

If 10000 players participate, the top 100 players get a reward (amounting in a total payout of 2150 gems, for a total participation fee of 500.000 gems), the other 9900 players get nothing? Is there some kind of bracketing to encourage more than the 100 players likely to end up top to participate?

It needs to be fleshed out more, I’d like to see a detailed scoring mechanism that isn’t purely random and introduces enough spread, possibly skill based. I’m having some doubts one can be found, I’m always happy to get surprised though.

Originaly though of reusing/reimplementing Guild Wars score mechanics, with some changes:

  • no score multiplier for mono-colored teams, as teams will be troop/kingdom/color restricted
  • no score bonuses for colored teams from guild sentinels (as this is individual competition, not guild one)
  • score gets multiplied based on number of unique defenders

If your opponent wont show up, you will get a victory, but with 0 score for battles. That’s how its usualy solved in most of competitions using swiss-tournament.

Only in the first round/ few rounds, after which you’ll be matched against best performing players in the current tournament.[quote=“Fourdottwoone, post:6, topic:65202”]
How many rounds are there? How do opponents get assigned?
[/quote]
Number of rounds depends from number of participants.

If number of participants is Y, than numer of rounds is the lowest number that fitts equation

Y =< 2^X (two to the power of X)

so, for 32 players you get 5 rounds…
for 1024 players you get 10 rounds…
20 rounds would allow arround 1 milion 50 thousand players to participate…
I know it sound complicated, but that’s probably most effective way of implementing it.

As for oponent picking:
Every round at the begining:
players are sorted by their performance at the tournament:
number of duel victories (and order of victories)
total score from all battles
Tournament Fame

matching algorithm picks the top 2 players to fight against each other, but if they already fought in the current tournament, it picks another one from the top for player1, and so on, until he gets paried with player he didn’t fight
than it picks another 2 players from the top, which didn’t met in duel in current round, follows the same schema, and so on, until all players are matched

if there’s odd number of players, last player is given a victory and 0 score without fighting any battles

this whole matching mechanics is widely know as Swiss-system tournament Swiss-system tournament - Wikipedia
and is user all over the world for different type of competitions where there can be a lots of participants[quote=“Fourdottwoone, post:6, topic:65202”]
A battle should never be set up in a way that one side has has nothing to gain, only to lose, the other side nothing to lose, only to gain.
[/quote]
And the algorithm shouldn’t match such people, at least in few first tournaments. It can be changed, so that all players start with 1000 TF, base TF change from 5 to 10, and the jump in stats gained will be at 200 difference. That way, you would have to 2000 points in your favour to be matched against such opponent. You would basically need to win 200 times in a row, and be matched against a tournament newbie on the second round of newly tournament, which also shouldn’t happen to soon. Probably in years…[quote=“Fourdottwoone, post:6, topic:65202”]
If 10000 players participate, the top 100 players get a reward (amounting in a total payout of 2150 gems, for a total participation fee of 500.000 gems), the other 9900 players get nothing? Is there some kind of bracketing to encourage more than the 100 players likely to end up top to participate?
[/quote]

All players gain: glory keys and glory points for winning their battles/duels. Rewards are so low, because this is how “gem sink” is implemented for this event. Ofc, devs can implement additional tiers of rewards. (like extra 5 gems for winning every 5 duels in the tournament)

50 gems for participation isn’t a big beal for mid/endgame players, but it’s enough to stop people from “signing in” without any further participation. I didn’t want this to look like a GW wars in low-end brackets, where people just register and do nothing. There’s no reward for simply signing in. Only for active participation.

Almost all players will have the same number of wins, so score is the real deciding leaderboard factor. Which essentially means getting matched against a player who fails to set up defense teams voids any chance you have of placing on the leaderboard. Not a good game design, players should not get punished for (lack of) actions of their opponents. This concrete setup is particularly prone to griefing, for the low cost of 50 gems you could intentionally drag a dozen players down with you. A better design is to only match players who have defense teams set up.

This is essentially also ending the tournament for that player. By gaining 0 score they won’t ever be able to catch up again with the other players for the remainder of the tournament, you might as well remove them right away.

This is kind of odd. Those rules are usually used by elimination events, not score based events. Why do you want variable competition length, the event setup doesn’t require (or even encourage) it?

Personal opinion, won’t work out well at all. Guild Wars scoring provides a too low spread to make the overall outcome anything but mostly based on luck. If you want this to be a skill based tournament you need to set it up differently:

1.) Introduce brackets of fixed length that cluster players by strength. The account progress score is a somewhat good strength indicator, it can’t easily be gamed. Tournament brackets get created and populated with all registered players, in descending account progress score. Teams need to be set up as part of registering for the tournament.

2.) Switch to an elimination event, where 2 players duel each other, the winner moving on. Assuming a bracket size of 64, for each bracket there would be up to 32 duels on the first day, up to 16 duels on the second day, up to a final duel on the sixth day. Add one setup day to fit perfectly into a week. In case the number of participants within a bracket is odd, one random player is automatically considered to have won a duel without fighting.

3.) A duel means fighting your opponent team until you lose. Each win gets you a point and pits you once more against your opponent team, at significantly increased strength (so reasonably skilled players don’t have to play several hundred fights). The player with more points wins the duel and moves on, the player with less points get eliminated. If both players reach the same number of points (either because they play equally well or don’t play at all) they both drop out. Points have no effect on future duels, they may play part in determining reward rankings of players getting eliminated in the same round.

4.) Same reward for all brackets, based on final ranking within the bracket. Distribute 50% of the overall bracket participation cost as rewards to make this a gem sink.

Theory crafting only, unfortunately IP2 doesn’t ever implement community ideas due to legal considerations.

No they wont. Each rounds players are fighting 3 fights against their opponent teams. The one who scores the best score is decided as duel winner.
Only duel wins are counted to ladderboard. Not fights won.
After 1st round, only half of participatns should have 1 duel victory, while other will have 1 lost.
After 2nd round, only 1/4 of participatns will have 2 duel victories, same numbers will have 2 defeats, and 50% of playerbase will have 1:1 result.
And so on, each round… as you get closer to final rounds, there will be less and less players with lots of duel victories.

Not realy, if that happens on 1st round, they still have same chances of being #1, as other players who won their duel.
If that happens on any other round, than that means, they are ranked last (or almost last), so that 1 extra victory realy doesn’t matter in overall picture.

This isn’t a score based event. It’s “outperform your enemy” event. Score matters mainly for counting which of 2 players performed better. The better one, takes the win in duel.
You can run a strong opponent, you can score 2nd highest score in the round, but you might still lose the duel (if your opponent was the guy, who scored the highest). In the ladderboard, what matters is duel victories.

would be boring as hell to fight sam team X times in a row… like grinding explore/world events.
Cross me out from such event…

I prefere a 3 battles competition, where each battle is unique and better perfoming player takes the win. If you dont like GW scoring algorithm, then it can be even simplier score - number of rounds it took to eliminate the opponent team, number of moves… etc. final score is the sum of 3 fights, and the winner of duel is whoever won faster (less rounds/less moves)

Ok, 2 more thing came to my mind:

Battle system

  1. Each players set up 3 teams on slots 1 to 3.
  2. On day 2, players are forced to play battles against their opponents. Slot1 vs slot1, slot2 vs slot2 and slot3 vs slot3.
  3. Players gain points for each battle. Their score from the duel is sum on points gained each battle multiplied by number of unique troops in all 3 teams. (so, ofc you can go with 4x gobtruffle on all 3 slots, but that will give you only x1 multiplier, while player using 12 unique troops/weapons will have their score multiplied x12)
  4. Winner of duel is the player that earned more points after multipliers are applied.
  5. Player can battle enemy teams only once.

Example 1:
Both players used up 12 unique troops. P1 scored 241 total. P2 scored 180. P1 is the winner

Example 2:
Player 1 used same team 3x times. P2 used 12 unique troops. P1 scored 241 . P2 scored 84 points. P1 has 2414 = 964 points. P2 has 8412= 1008 points. P2 has won the duel.

Example 3:
Player 1 used 9 different troops and 3 times same weapon (x10 multiplier). P2 used 12 different troops/weapons (x12 multiplier). P1 scored 120 points. P2 scored 80 points.

P1 has 1200 points. P2 has 960 points. P1 has won the duel.

How are points being calculated

  1. Taking a fight earns you 20 points.
  2. You gain 10 points for killing enemy troop (including all summoned troops)
  3. You lose 1 point for each move you make (extra turn also count as -1)
  4. You lose 2 points for losing your troop
  5. Winning a fight gives you 50 points.
  6. Retreating from fight gives you 1 point. You cannot receive less than 1 point for losing a battle.

Example 1:
Player entered battle with fireblade hero, Zuul Goth and 2x empowered converters (20points). Lucky board allowed him to use his empowered converter to gain extra turn and fill Zuul goth (1 move total).
Player cast his Zuul Goth which resulted in skull cascade killing off enemy troops (2 moves total, 4 kills). Player has won (50 points).

Player receives: 20 points for playing the battle. 40 points for killing all enemy troops. 50 points for winning the battle. -2 points for making 2 moves. 108 points from battle.

Example 2:
Player entered the battle (+20 points). Player had unlucky board and couldn’t prevent enemy team from autolooping and killing him on round 1.
Player receives: 20 point for playing the battle. -8 points for loosing 4 of his troops. -1 point for making 1 move. 11 points from battle.

Example 3:
Player had a long fight vs orbweaver team. As a result he ended up with only his hero up. Battle took 200 moves, during which he kill 30 summoned spiders. Battle was won.
Player receives: 20 points for playing the battle. 50 points for victory. 340 points for killed troops (4 basic +30 summoned spiders). -220 points for moves made. -6 points for losing troops.
Player receives: 410 - 226 = 184 points from the battle.

Example 4:
Player was stuck in a never ending stalmate with his opponet. He decided to retreat. Player earns 1 point.

Example 5:
Fight was long (20+moves) and player wasn’t able to kill at least 1 unit. Player earns 1 point.