Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-25467429-20150402140331

If you had the chance to design a tournament from top to bottom for Infinity, what would it look like?



So, here are the rules of this little thought experiment;

You don’t have to specify prizes unless you really want to.

It has to be feasible for the game as is, with the exception of one little thing – you can add or change TWO rules of the game’s mechanics.



So here’s my first idea;

A four day weekend (Friday through Monday), co-op tournament with the following rules:

1. Limited to a certain set of planes (planes TBD)

2. Rank determined by best AVERAGE of scores obtained during the tournament. Ties will be determined by lowest standard deviation.

3. Must complete a MINIMUM of 30 sorties during the tournament (possibly more).

4. A narrow Matching Rate will be enforced.



I set rule 1 so that you get closer to the ideal I have of only those who want to participate actually do participate in a tournament. Still nowhere near perfect for that goal, but it’s as close I could think to get without using one of my two rule changes.



I set rule 2 as the first freebie game-mechanics rule change, changing how tournament ranks are decided. The idea here is that consistency is rewarded above sheer fuel spamming. Essentially this rules tries to rein in the “big-spender” aspect that currently dominates tournaments. The use of standard deviation to break ties is a little more complex than other options (like highest single score in a mission) but it keeps with the whole theme of this tournament setup. I know, I know, how F2P works and what not, but that’s not the point right here and now. We’re talking strictly about running a tournament in Infinity, not the business or economics side of the ledger.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Rule 3 is a fungible minimum number of sorties. It serves a few purposes. For one, similar to the intent in rule 2, it seeks to reward consistency by forcing participants to participate in a minimum number of sorties so one person doesn’t one-off a huge score (over 100,000 say) and then sit back with that as an abuse of rule 2. Scoring 100,000 points across one mission means someone has to beat 100,000 points over however many missions they participate in, which gets harder and harder to average the more missions that are done. It is also a concession of sorts regarding rule 2, as a good idea I think would be to make the minimum above the max number of supplied fuel that a player can get over the tournament period. I believe that technically speaking if done right a player could get 23 sorties in during a 4-day tournament using supplied fuel (assuming the start and end time is exactly four days, and recognizing that the 24th unit of fuel will not register in time to be used in the tournament). I set it at 30 as a rough buffer taking into account other free fuel opportunities likely to be encountered in that time (challenges and red/gold crates) so you would essentially “have” to use stocked fuel. Again, a minor consolation towards rule 2, not meant to be a full-throated fix to the definite revenue loss rule 2 will cause for PA and BN. But again, my focus was more on the mechanics of the tournament, not the financial implications. I don’t know if this really counts as a change of the game’s mechanics per se, but I’ll say it is just because they haven’t directly done this to date.

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<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, Rule 4 is done to further settle the issue I alluded to in rule 3, which is “seal clubbers”. They already sort of do this with the TDMs, but the idea is that since I used up my freebie rule changes, I have no other way of handling these sorts. By enforcing a strict MR matching, in addition to the preset batch of useable planes, you can diminish the ability of individuals to beat up on lower ranks. Unfortunately, I realize this doesn’t do a whole lot to address MR spoofers – those who intentionally deflate their MR by flying about doing nothing in missions, so their MR can take a hit and they can be matched to lower ranked rooms. The ability already exists for this to be done, it’s just a matter of actually doing it.

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<p class="MsoNormal">I have another idea for a tournament setup, one that focuses more on the issues raised in Rule 4, but I’ll wait to see if this discussion goes anywhere, or if someone comes up with the same idea. <ac_metadata title="If You Could Design An Infinity Tournament?"> </ac_metadata>