EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

This is an online game about spaceships, and it's very serious business.

People get into it to earn virtual glory or money or power or altogether and they do not hesitate any possible ways to do that.

Eve is real, just like everyone else. People bring their behaviors into the game. That's shouldn't be a surprise at all.

Number 13 is unlucky, ATXIII did fully absorb that point. (last prize ships are the worst joke after sov).

Okay, stop, no. Lets sit down and talk.

First off, thank you wildcat for being honest enough to say these things. We have had our differences in the past, but regardless, I honestly think we both want to see the tournament flourish, and it was very painful for me to watch, last year, but this year especially when I was involved in the team.

Everyone suspected it was going on. I knew it was going on. You need to have a very good understanding of the meta to understand why, you need to have captained at teams during practice and real matches to be able to know for sure.

Everyone knew this was going on. We called it. I called it. I also said they played it very well, I stand by that. I sent CCP logibro a mail halfway through the tournament outlining what I thought was going on. I'm pretty sure it was accurate on every count. I'm not saying this to be smug, im saying this because its important to understand it wasn't just me who was upset, frustrated, and rendered apathetic by the performance camels of the deep put forward, especially in the finals. Things like this will ruin the tournament. I mean that sincerely. Here is what I suggest CCP does for next year to try and rectify this.

First off, dont take their prizes away, I suspect you will if you get concrete proof. I don't think this is fair. Why? If it wasn't for one of their team members outing it, they would have gotten away with it. It was the honesty and sportsmanship of one of their pilots that brought it to light. I suggest, if you have to penalize them in any way, redistribute the prizes more evenly. Give 1st and 2nd place the equivalent of what third place would get. Then distribute the remaining ships throughout the other teams who came third fourth and fifth. Don't ban them from the tournament, it won't do any good, youve tried that before and they'll just come back. They don't deserve to be blacklisted for playing a dangerous game, which you, CCP, are involved in too; they almost outplayed you like they did the other teams.

Second, the rules need to change for next year. I really don't think you have another option. I told logibro this in the email I sent you via your forum link. It will be difficult, practising may be harder, and certain alliances (pl included) may have to sacrifice something. I say it will be worth it. Why? Right now, the tournament is a profit machine. All it takes is for more than hydra to bend the rules in this way, and you have the higher tier teams winning every year. Wildcards who are sportsmanlike have no chance of winning. bringing the same setup every round, and bringing two teams who have all the same intel and meta chain, almost doubles your chances of winning. Having more than one team doing this (others have already started down the road), is absolutely disasterous, as it takes away all of the charachter of having seperate alliances at all. Also, every team who fields an 'alt' alliance, pushes another smaller team out. Some of those teams have good captains, smart pilots, and deserve to place well if they are given the chance and the experience to learn. We need a fix.

Third, dont do this alone. You have some of the best theorycrafting minds working for you, but there are people equally as talented in the eve community, you know that, use them. I suggest you do something which kills several birds with one stone.

Appoint a CSM rep whose job it is to represent the tournament, and do jobs which can help take work off of your shoulders. Again, I mentioned this in my mail to logibro. A CSM can help weigh up everyone's opinions on rule changes, and suggest what would be the best solution to the problem we had this year. I spoke to manny about this, he thinks it is a good idea. I would put my name forward too for this job, tholugh I feel there are better candidates (GreyGal comes to mind right away).

The tourney CSM can also aggregate concerns and requests to the devs. This is really important. We had dozens of people this year asking the same questions 'can you spawn polarized weapons in?' 'when are we getting our tournament bubbles?' 'can you spawn me x item in on the test server?' An impartial CSM, who can take these concerns, help where they can (like for instance spawning items in on the test server), would save the small dev team who works on the tournament a LOT of time. It would help with communication between the devs and the playerbase, something which we had problems with this year, and it would make the tournament a more fair place for everyone.

Everyone is mad about this, you shouldn't be, you should learn from it, move on, and try and help improve things where you can. Just because I dont like what certain people on the hydra team did, and wouldn't trust them, doesnt mean they dont know exactly what they are doing. Bitching and moaning about this will get us nowhere. Solutions will. I would start proposing some.

Read the statement we issued around the first weekend of the tournament

https://www.eve-bet.com/LatestNews.aspx
https://twitter.com/evebet_eve/status/636489479251820544

oh comedy ensues.

Still it ain't their job to investigate the tournament.

Payments already went out, there is no "go get it back" move.

somebody being honest in EVE 0.0

banning hasnt and never will work for the tournament. People just use alts and there's no way to prove they are. Besides, I dont think they deserve to get banned. They played a game with CCP and they lost. they deserve some recognition for almost getting away with it. They were very clever about it.

Unfortunately for them, this is not how Eve works.

They weren't clever? Everyone was openly trolling CCP the entire tournament every time one would come up in a match. They had to post before the tournament saying don't do this? I would think clever is flying under the radar completely. This wasn't clever. It wasn't even original.

so, the message you want CCP send to AT community is "feel free to cheat, worst thing what can happen is you getting caught and your prizes seized"??
This would invalidate the tournament completely and turn it into a joke as everyone would try to cheat and some for sure get away with it. Who the hell would want to watch a cheater tournament, seriously?

Stuff like this is why we need tournaments year round. #content