Assembly Hall

If you really want to have new players involved, the best way is probably to set up leagues. You could have an entry league where ships and fits were announced and publicized well in advance, so that new players who wanted to participate would have training goals. (And, obviously, there would be no bans, because as tactically interesting as they are, they disproportionately hurt new players.) Have them as seasons with schedules, like any sport would. Then, have a championship round once a year. Or, take a cue from American college football and have "bowl" (bubble?) games hosted by the various empires (NPC or capsuleer?), vying with each other for prestige.

I will second the request to have deployables available that facilitate the construction of games. Not "arena-in-a-box" do-everything deployables, but special bubbles, anchors, timers--single-purpose "raw material" items that can be assembled into games by the players. That way, it may be possible for a player-created sport to become popular, even popular enough to eventually become something like the SCL.

Sub-warp racing is my favourite eve-sport. It's fun for both viewers and participants, it can be streamed, and it takes little investment to be able to compete.
What would be really helpful to make it easier to host races is a deployable like one I suggested here.

I'm bored at work, seen this thread and I remembered an idea that I pitched to CCP Fozzie at a bar. And this is prolly the wrong place to put this. But I see "Ideas" and "Tournaments" so I decided to shove this here.

I'll just reiterate here...

During matches, you have 2 commentators. As Fozzie told me one trys to describe what mechanics is going on and how they work. This is usually between breaths of the other guy commentating on the actual fight. And I really mean yelling at the top of his lungs when a shot is fired.

Usually a lot of stuff is missed on the actual fight. And viewers are confused to all hell. I usually watch tournaments with IRL non-EVE players. Most of my time is spent explaining what exactly is going on and not getting drunk!

So my idea/suggestion is this:

In other sports, I'll use NASCAR as a horrible example. (Note, I don't watch NASCAR except when I visit my redneck relatives.) What they do is before/after commercials or during points when stuff is not on fire. They have little 20-30 second segments/animations describing how things work. Drafting/cornering/tire wear, etc etc. And they usually do a good job of it.

To help ease the commentators during fights and the vast majority of the audience...ESP nonEVE players...is to do similar. Quick 20-30 second videos on how tracking works, scan res, the various E-war stuffs. There's a lot of dead air during the tournament to do this. (Jita cam for example!)

Just an idea...

I think you've gone a long way to reducing the gap in the recent years with 3% implants only. I think the current cost to entry is fairly decent. A lot of the winning setups last year cost under 2 billion isk which I think is an acceptable price tag for a new team competing in the tournament. (And you can easily do 6 BC/6 Cruiser Rush or whatever if you are struggling to find the cash to compete.) I think maybe refunding the plex entry cost to teams who make it past the group stages could make things more attractive for smaller teams.



I would like to see more trading cards in the game like the NEO cards you handed out. Perhaps even have Player cards for competing teams (like baseball cards) for players who have taken part in x amount of matches and have their ship history listed in the tournament. Having yourself added as a permanent part of the game's history on an in-game collectible really excites me as a player. You could also then have in-game booster packs that contain so many of these cards given out to people who compete in the tournament, at holiday events, and for sales promotions like a free booster pack for every PLEX you buy etc. They would be relatively low effort to implement would just require someone to do research and type it up onto an in-game item description.

I also think that the prize distribution in the tournament should be changed, currently there is a massive payout for 1st place and 2nd place, 3rd place gets 100x less and 4th place is worthless. I think this creates a less meaningful final series, as essentially, whether win or lose in the final you are guaranteed almost the same prize as the 1st place winner, and there is everything to play for in the 2nd Vs 3rd place match, but 3rd vs 4th place is a complete booby prize fighting for a small amount of isk and a bronze medal. If you redistributed the 50 unique frigate hulls and the 50 unique cruiser hulls to the following I think it would create more interest in the semi final set of matches and also encourage more teams to be competitive because you don't have to make it to the finals to get a prize.

1st: 30 Unique Cruiser Hulls & 30 Unique Frigate Hulls
2nd: 15 Unique Cruiser Hulls & 15 Unique Frigate Hulls
3rd: 5 Unique Cruiser Hulls & 5 Unique Frigate Hulls
4th: Some Plex Prize

Perhaps have smaller plex prizes like refunded entrance fee for teams who make it past the group stages.



Again, by spreading the wealth of victory slightly more outside of the finals and into more places I think more teams will think they have a shot of winning, and getting yourself on a in-game item and being part of history even if you end up going 0-2 in the tournament is attractive to some players.



Prehaps you could have a 'little cup' or 'newbies cup' or something that only allows X year old accounts to compete and players who have never competed in a tournament before Obviously this may involve having to look at IPs & Hardware IDs to try and prevent smurfs. And a lesser prize such as pirate faction rookie ships etc. at the end.

You could also just have a tournament that only allows ships which are in easy reach of newer players like "t1 Cruisers, t2/t1 Destroyers and t2/t1 Frigates only".

Your idea includes the criterion that everyone has access to the same tools, both in terms of prizes and location. That makes sense to me.

I'm still concerned about the integrity of the sandbox. I see a minor issue with introducing a feature or tool which is result-oriented rather than process-oriented.

To illustrate the difference between a tool that enables a process versus a tool that enables a result:

Old probes were a process-oriented tool. Drop a probe in a specific location. Hit "scan". The probe gives you coordinates of the signals it finds, no matter how accurate or inaccurate.

If you want to pinpoint the signal, you normally warp to the scanned location, drop a more accurate (but lower range) probe, and scan again. This gives you a more accurate signal that you can warp to.

You can repeat this until you get a signal that is accurate enough to place you within sub-warp distance of the target (generally on the same grid, or in some circumstances a neighboring grid, for example if you're probing for a nano ship that is moving fast, which means it won't be where you scanned it when you get there).

These probes were just a feature of the game that did specific things within the game engine. They would return warpable spots on your map which corresponded to (coordinates of some scannable object) + (some random offset to emulate inaccuracy). There was no purpose, or suggested use built into the mechanism of the probes. There was only the mechanism of how the probes worked, the process for how to use the tool.

This meant that, yes, if you wanted to, you could use the probes to do the thing they were intended to do (find objects). But you could also use the mechanisms to create different results. For example, you could intentionally use a large probe to produce an inaccurate signal, which would give you a warpable location on your map that did not correspond to any celestial or line between two celestials. An instant safespot. Thus, ships that would fit probe launchers had some potential additional tactical abilities which happened to suit them very well. You could use probes to find hidden pilots, and also use them to hide yourself. Now that's what I call brilliant game design.

On the other hand, new probes are the opposite. Drop 8 probes in a pre-suggested formation (which happens to be the optimal formation for blanketing a system), hit scan, and the probes generate non-warpable locations which represent the location of the scanned objects plus some inaccuracy.

Next, arrange the probes into a pinpointing formation (there is a button which arranges the probes for you, and it happens to arrange them into the optimal formation), and keep scanning, moving, and scaling down the probes until you have a 100% signal. Only then do you get a warpable location, which corresponds to exactly where the object was scanned, with no deviation.

These probes are not just a tool that you can use however you like. There is no "flip-side" or alternate process you can use to produce different results. They are just the prescribed way to find hidden objects, and they don't do anything else. That, in my opinion, goes against the grain of the concept of the sandbox. A result-oriented game mechanic as rigid as a mini-game. To put it mildly, I'd call this trashy game design that has no place in this sandbox game.

To put this in the context of your arena idea; I think that the over-arching concept of having a separate place, unconnected to the universe outside, where sterile, pre-arranged fights can take place... it kind of defeats the whole point of EVE. One of the fundamental principles of EVE is that in order to play the game, you must hit the "undock" button to throw yourself out into the wonderful, dangerous, unpredictable galaxy, and subject yourself to the lingering possibility of disaster. You could get suicide ganked. You could have your mining picnic ruined by bumpers. You could have your mission item stolen by a ninja.

You have to incorporate the presence of everyone else into your gameplay considerations.

Running a successful event in the events business demands that you take these things into account. If you're going to have many participants or spectators in one place, you need to figure out how to minimize the risk. You need to get people to spread out to discourage smartbombing. You need to have a contingency in place to deal with potential suicide gankers taking out your contestants. You have to think about where to host your event, who is going to show up, whether you need to accommodate negative sec status pirates, or negative faction standing militia members. You need to know what to tell someone when they inform you that they are at war with another participant.

I think if you had such an arena as you describe, it might sterilize a lot of what makes EVE into EVE. And if EVE is not EVE, then it is just another hotkey MMO, albeit with wonky inputs and complicated damage formulae.

Yes, we agree on this.

CCP is abusing their powers to monopolise the tournament market.

No, I don't think the solution to one problem (abuse of power) is creating a different problem - you be unable to wedding-crash a tournament because the contestants just keep their tournament-fit ships in the station and (if they want to be safe) simply clone-jump there when it's time to participate.

In my opinion these are both equally important aspects of EVE; you have to take risk, and you have access to the same tools as everyone else. Moving the offending aspect of the game (alliance tournament) from one to the other isn't as good a solution as simply removing the problem by having the event abide by the game mechanics that already exist.

Another reason why your solution, the PVP arena, is not adequate, is that it only caters to one type of event; arranged PVP tournaments. Every other type of event that competes for viewers and participants with the offending events is going to be at a new disadvantage. Warp racing, for example - which takes place in space, and over a large number of solar systems, since the goal is to warp and jump from system to system, plan your route carefully to avoid potential hazards, and get to a destination as quickly as possible - would not benefit from the secure environment of the arena, because it would still have to happen in space, and still be subject to all the risks and dangers of undocking.

Same with pretty much any other type of in-space event. If you held a probing competition, you couldn't really do it in the arena. If you did one of those "I'm hiding somewhere in low sec, first person to find me and pod me gets a prize" type things, that would also not be suited for your arena.

The inherent danger of undocking is such a fundamental part of EVE that you can't just push it to the side. You would be turning EVE into a different game.

So...as I continue to read this thread over.

CCP wants more tournament style gameplay. Readily available for anyone?

Well, this is an option I've thought of...

Why not do arena based PVP..........let me explain this concept!

Make a REALLY big station /somewhere/ where exactly, I don't know. And when I mean big, I mean several hundred kilometres. Its a station, but inside the station is an arena, a really big one!

Make the Arena the only "instanced" place in EVE.

People formup, make teams in a fleet. They randomly get pared up against another fleet. Either Frigs/Cruisers/BCs only or mixed fleets. Killmails work the same, but location is shown up as in the arena. Killboards will more the likely poke their sites to show statistics.

Every weekend/other weekend. Have mini tournaments setup through twitchtv.

Also, have players host events/fights on CCPs TwitchTV channel. (Obviously trusted players)

More gameplay, tournament style fighting readily available for everyone!

Ah, I see. Your position is that you disapprove of tournaments entirely, and want them to not happen. Given that this is a thread about suggesting possible improvements to the tournament system, "Stop having tournaments" is not really a constructive or helpful suggestion.

That's not to say that your point is completely unreasonable... but given that CCP had a CSM session specifically about tournaments, and this thread was specifically framed around brainstorming things like "Ways to increase interest in tournaments", "Ways to encourage new teams to participate in tournaments", and "Ways to provide the community with the proper tools to host their own tournaments", it's pretty much a given that tournaments are here to stay, and that CCP is open to the idea of giving players tournament-hosting tools. Indeed, it's quite likely that they've already started coding improvements to the tournament system, and are looking for feedback on how open those tools should be made.

That's why I suggested what I did; given that tournaments are going to continue happening, the tournament tools used to support that should be open to all players, to the point where people can engage in casual 1v1 'dueling'-style arena PvP using the same system. After all, it's the same dev time that'll be going into the system anyways, and there's certainly people who'd appreciate the use of those systems outside major sponsored tournament-type events, so why not give them the use of that?

"Because I don't like fair fights, I don't want people who like fair fights to be able to enjoy fair fights" is definitely an answer to my question, but it's not enough of a reason to cause CCP to shrug and stop doing tournaments. In all seriousness, I get your point... but you haven't answered my question. What can happen, in an arena into which undocking is guaranteed to result in either a kill or a shiploss, which is less dangerous than undocking anywhere else? If you undock into normal space, your ship may be destroyed at any time. If you undock into an arena, your ship may be destroyed if you fail to destroy your opponent's ship. What makes the arena less of a risk? What is the arena player not risking that any other player is?

"Because I don't want to involve myself in using a proposed new system, I stand to lose competitive advantage against other people who would do so" is also an answer to my question, and it's an even worse answer. CCP will implement new systems which they feel will generate interest and subscriptions for the game. Making PvP more accessible to new players is something which is likely to contribute to that.

I shrug. Every time anyone suggests anything that will make EVE more accessible, there's always people who argue against it, purely because they don't want EVE to be more accessible. To be sure, a good part of EVE's appeal is its unforgiving nature... but at the same time, EVE won't grow if it doesn't let new players in. There needs to be a balance, and I really, really don't think the existence of optional PvP arenas in hisec is something that will totally ruin the game forever. That said, there will always be people who feel that any arbitrary change 'x' is something that will totally ruin the game forever, so if you remain unconvinced, that's your prerogative. It seems rather likely that some kind of tournament system will be showing up before too long, so now's your chance to lay out your own view of how you'd like the tournament system to be implemented. Continuing to object to the existing system will not cause it to be removed from the game, so if you really think that this is a problem, you need to reconsider your approach.

I would like to think that this is still available. This could be an awesome concept and would really work with modern mobile items.

Have all players start at a beacon say 50 km from the cornucopia. At the cornucopia, there would be various cargo containers full of misc items as well as mobile depots. Along the radius of the cornucopia, say 15 km away, there would be several smaller containers with less items in them. Players would have to scoop and refit there, or scoop and make a run for it. There would be other beacons or celestial that they could warp to, perhaps another outpost with loot. Or maybe they could warp to an asteroid belt and kill the npcs there, which could drop t2 loot, for the user to put on his/her ship if desired.

I am not sure how sponsors would work but I am sure something could be figured out. Maybe a CCP member gives said player a gift from his/her sponsor. Maybe they could "redeem item to cargohold".

Some restrictions would be, no cloaking devices allowed, period. You would have to also have a system wide effect that prevents users from creating bookmarks. This would prevent people from hiding, or if you do allow bookmarks, maybe after 5-10 mins of staying out of the fight, npcs police or rogue drones would come and attack to encourage you to warp away.

Anyways, I think it would be a neat idea. It could be done as a Free For All or in teams of two.

-LT

Put gankers in the tournament since they are a legit game mechanic, oh wait they cant handle being shot at