Tournaments: Does It Have To Be All Or Nothing?

"Q. Will there be another WvW Tournament?A:The old tournament format encouraged extensive play that resulted in a lot of burnout across the player base and a permanent drop off in WvW players. This had a negative impact on the format, and in order to keep WvW healthy, we currently do not have plans to bring back WvW tournaments."

The tournaments we had several years ago were lengthy and came with quite significant rewards attached. The "burnout" that was experienced must surely have been in large part due to the way the design of those tournaments drew in people who would normally have played WvW only casually and kept them playing the mode for longer than they were comfortable with in order to get those rewards. It also led the most active and committed WvW players, particularly Commanders, to play even more hours than normal over a prolonged period because of the competitive nature of the event.

Rather than remove the entire concept of tournament play on the evidence and experience of this flawed model, wouldn't it be better to design and implement an improved Tournament format that didn't suffer from the same negative impacts on both casual and committed players? For example, couldn't there be Tournaments lasting no longer than a week - or even Tournaments that started and finished on the same day? With the Skirmish system rounds could even be tallied in two-hour blocks with a reset and change of opponents at the finish of each Skirmish.

Even if such a rapid changeover isn't technically feasible, it can't be impossible to design some kind of short, sharp Tournament that has the positive effects of making players excited and eager to play yet doesn't last so long that they reach the point where they wish they'd never gotteninvolved in the first place. The current League Table seems to be generally regarded by most players as unsatisfying at best, with many considering it meaningless. Tournament play does at least have the virtue of focusing attention on the ostensible reason for the game mode: competing with other servers for a victory condition. With neither meaningful League competition nor any prospect of Tournament play the whole mode becomes something far less than it could be - and than it once was.

Is it possible? yes.

we have to accept, there can be only one winner. but everyobe can work hard to get it.

2 day tourn. Weekends. 5 day casual wvw or prep time.

OP, the real reason they won't have another one is it might take a dev some time to implement it. That dev could instead be doing something useful, like making sure the right texture is on that new cliff on the latest living World map....

They could split fights into 24 hour matches, give bonuses and penalties to winners/losers. But most of all it's probably time to call time on the server system and bring in three sided match ups with maybe 3 sets of maps, where you can choose to join a side for a month at a time and there is a system to encourage players to join a less populated map (loot bonuses, stat bonus, wexp bonuses, whatever it takes).

I was on SoR for all 3 tournaments. I saw the burnout, I felt the burnout. I watched players leave the server, WvW, and the game. I stopped playing WvW for months each time. The time for tournaments is done and in the past, no need to relive it.

When Anet hosts some version of a tournament... the forums will explode with these types of threads...

“Fix the damn lag, it’s been 6 years!”

“Match up qq!”

“Rewards suck!”

“Why these crappy forced links, we are doomed to lose now!”

“BG qq!”

“Anet sucks because of tournament something something!”

"Servers buying guilds to PPT all night while we sleep! Unfair!"

... Seriously, just no to tournaments... Enjoy your skirmishes and current set of rewards until Anet overhauls wvw.

@"Swagger.1459" said:When Anet hosts some version of a tournament... the forums will explode with these types of threads...

“Fix the kitten lag, it’s been 6 years!”

“Match up qq!”

“Rewards suck!”

“Why these crappy forced links, we are doomed to lose now!”

“BG qq!”

“Anet sucks because of tournament something something!”

"Servers buying guilds to PPT all night while we sleep! Unfair!"

... Seriously, just no to tournaments... Enjoy your skirmishes and current set of rewards until Anet overhauls wvw.

Uhm, this might sound sarcastic, but really... how is that any different from normal ? That sounds like the usual weekly round-about of WvW threads.

Though I agree, no tournaments. Certainly not the way they used to work.

There were three different types of tournaments. The two tourneys lasted nine weeks each; the third one was only 4 weeks long. The first required constant participation; the final didn't. It's hard to imagine a shorter tournament that comes anything close to feeling epic and worth the time it would take to set up.

Further, the OP glosses over the reasons for burn out & frustration:

• Some of it starts well before the tourney begins, as guilds flock to specific worlds and tank matches to manipulate their 'league' standing.
• Some of it is because there's nearly always one world per league that dominates, which makes everyone else feel like there's no real competition.
• If the other worlds team up to change that, there's even more frustration: maintaining alliance solidarity, holding back from good fights, and bad feelings on the part of the dominating world, who finds the new status quo unfair.
• During the tourney, regardless of the above, some people still work like crazy to win fights and skirmishes and build scores up and get frustrated by the lack of enthusiasm or cooperation of the rest of us. That's not all that different from Reset night in a lot of ways; it's just a lot more intense.

Now, in some ways, all of the above is great: it is part of epic competition to position your team strategically, to find allies, to work hard, to figure out how to build score. It's normal during competition for there to be hurt feelings and hopelessness from those who aren't on a dominating team. That's all part of the human condition and part of what makes a tourney more fun for some of us: the stakes are higher.

But that's exactly what leads to people leaving the game mode and not return.

tl;dr the very thing that makes tourneys epic fun also leads to burn out. It's not realistic to have intense competition without huge passions getting in the way for a sizeable fraction of the community.

The main and only problem with any WvW tournament is that for the one server that everyone knows will win, there are between 5 and 8 others that know that they have zero chance of winning.

The rewards didn't matter, they were garbage.The length did matter because longer tournaments prolonged the agony of the 5-8 losing servers.The time it took to qualify for the rewards did matter because the maps were filled with PvE players (aka rallybots) who were only out for the rewards, leaving some of the regular WvW players waiting in a queue or playing on a map away from their guild.Prior to every tournament guilds jumped servers which created chaos for those that happened to be on the server losing the guilds.

And afterwards there was the post-tournament burnout that left the overall WvW population lower than before the tournament started.

If you could fix all of the above I'd vote for a tournament, otherwise, no thanks.

@Tiny Doom.4380 said:Tournament play does at least have the virtue of focusing attention on the ostensible reason for the game mode: competing with other servers for a victory condition. With neither meaningful League competition nor any prospect of Tournament play the whole mode becomes something far less than it could be - and than it once was.

Tournaments are just as meaningless as where a server is in the rankings, for exactly the same reason - that as a competitive gamemode WvW is an absolute joke.

Tournament wouldn’t really do much as we already know which servers would win their tiers unless there was match manipulation.

Really pointless imo, and instead we should have GvG features in say a large arena type instance like pvp and make guild wars actually make sense for guilds... But that's not going to happen loll

@Ayrilana.1396 said:Tournament wouldn’t really do much as we already know which servers would win their tiers unless there was match manipulation.

100% this. Why even bother if they don't create a new system for tournaments.

wanted. players who try.

sincerely,

wvw.

:/

tournament will actually kill the game mode faster, i all in for tournament.

@Sovereign.1093 said:wanted. players who try.

sincerely,

wvw.

---

:/

You are 4 years late for that. That ship already sailed.

@"Swagger.1459" said:When Anet hosts some version of a tournament... the forums will explode with these types of threads...

“Fix the kitten lag, it’s been 6 years!”

“Match up qq!”

“Rewards suck!”

“Why these crappy forced links, we are doomed to lose now!”

“BG qq!”

“Anet sucks because of tournament something something!”

"Servers buying guilds to PPT all night while we sleep! Unfair!"

... Seriously, just no to tournaments... Enjoy your skirmishes and current set of rewards until Anet overhauls wvw.

This pretty much plus a few others I could think of. It really wouldn't be fair there just simply isn't enough players to get a real competition going. Thinking of tourneys,. remember when it was a big deal if the zerg didn't keep itself in a tight ball.. I mean, it was serious business back in the day commanders would roll over in there pixel graves if they saw the tails hanging off zergs today. :) I also remember a 4 hour 3 way battle over RQ during season 1, supply was serious business back den. :)

@"Crazy.6029" said:remember when it was a big deal if the zerg didn't keep itself in a tight ball.. I mean, it was serious business back in the day commanders would roll over in there pixel graves if they saw the tails hanging off zergs today. :)

I don't want to digress this thread, but... I feel like there's an entire line (ahem) of humor that remark can inspire:e.g. That tail was so long... ("how long was it?")... it was so long that...

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Crazy.6029" said:remember when it was a big deal if the zerg didn't keep itself in a tight ball.. I mean, it was serious business back in the day commanders would roll over in there pixel graves if they saw the tails hanging off zergs today. :)

:skull:

id play the tourny. someone has to man up. =)

Summary of tournament hours played if it lasts 1 week.Players will play 12 hours a day average on main.Others - 6 hours a day minimum on alt accounts sabotaging every other server cause that's the type of people we still have playing.

I mean seriously, they are still doing this today (no tournament) even in T3 and T4. NO Thanks to another tournament.

you guess too much and gave up before there's even a chance for something good to happen to wvw.

all these excuses.

@Sovereign.1093 said:id play the tourny. someone has to man up. =)

I'd play it, too. That doesn't mean adding a new one is best for the game or the mode or the community. Heck, tons of people played in each of the three tourneys and, as it turned out, a lot of people left WvW (and sometimes all of GW2) afterward.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:id play the tourny. someone has to man up. =)

tons of ppl left wvw for various reason before during and after tourneys.

players could win but not keep it up because the player coverage were limitted. to compensate two servers made alliance to prop each other to win. servers bought players and guilds for wvw man power. back then it was apparent that two many servers cant keep up the pace but merging would.

labeling then came to be. bandwaggoner, ppt, blobbers, because the enemy could not handle it. in short, mindgames destroyed that portion of gw2.

ppl also left because devs were interfering in game about how ppl are playing the game. like intervening in gvgs since back then the game was stale because wvw had no new content.

if i am to sum it. devs and players should seek a compromise. beta test is the best way to go about it. then listen to feedback. this way you have a sample size before committing to the big change.

still despite all the yakitiyakyak, if i ignore what ppl say and base it all on what i feel. gw2 is good.

just need to keep things clear.

Meh, at this point in the games life cycle I don't think it would really matter. Let it happen and watch the boredom.