New age of Tournaments?

yeah, i really loved the tournament, all the matches, all the people, everybodys hands were shacking... I cant wait for more tournaments and i think the PA-Tournament thing is going big i would love it.
And whats about an Clan-Tournament if we have the clans and the people in the clans for it?...
And 1000 * thank you to @cwarner7264 for the idea and the organisation

I think 1v1 is the most competitive environment and I strongly advocate for it. 3v3's and other types of team games are cool but I'd say balancing those is basically impossible. They are good for "for fun" games, but leave tourneys for competitive 1v1. Also length of 1v1 games is much favourable for tournaments and they are less laggy

The problem with 2v2 tournaments is the select few strong players team together and you have a couple very strong teams and a whole lot of weaker ones. As soon as the brackets get posted you can predict the final very accurately. This is partly exacerbated by the lack of good players and a competitive scene.

And here is the thing. Bringing strong Teams into official tournaments will ultimately boost the skills to work in team - for everyone. It seems obvious to me.

You say the most of the people fails to understand the meaning of a Team Match. So, let's prove that there is more than merely controlling your *own* army in a Team Match. Let's show'em what an efficient Team can do.

The more you make me think, the more it seems a good idea to me

I would definitely be up for that, and I know some fellow prometheans would be too.

However, at the moment, the clan scene is frankly still completely dominated by The Realm. They simply have far far more players. My clan could field 1 or 2 strong 3 player teams, the realm could probably manage what... 5? 6? More? I don't know. Plus the benefit of having so many members on is that they always have clan members online to play with and are therefore probably far more practised playing team games with each other.

Until we get a greater mass of good players joining clans, inter-clan tourneys are fundamentally impossible.

You cannot do true team tournaments until alliance mode comes out because as gunshin has said that its just one color vs one color atm and u dont need teamwork if u just have raw skill of each teammate and they know what there set objectives are.

Setting all that aside, what im planning on is a Season of tournaments that are not bracket tournaments but tournaments with 5 rounds and that have points earned each round and you try and just have the most points at the end to win. also there will be a championship at the end of the season that all the tourney winners automatically get in and then the rest of the top 25 or so players in the world.

Clan Matches atm are impossible like you said because of us at the realm. we sometimes have over 35 playing PA at once and have practiced 5v5's with just interclan games alot. The realm when it comes to clan matches is almost doing them between ourselves with the North American group vs the Europeans.

I vote no more 1v1 tournaments. It just doesn't make sense for this game about large scale. At least 4 player FFA heats using kills for a point system (or something)

I think there is a desire to do 1v1 and team v team touraments. But I get the impression that reptarking isn't going to be the one to organising team v team.

FFAs at the moment are far FAR more likely to have highly imbalanced spawns than 1v1s, and 1v1s are by no means perfect.

Also what do you mean 1v1s 'don't make sense'? People play them, and enjoy them, they're engaging to watch and a good gauge of individual player skill. They make perfect 'sense' as far as I'm concerned.

I can say the same about FFA. Not perfect, but still a great judge of individual skill. I just takes different skills to rise to the top of an FFA than it does for a 1v1. In fact, I believe it takes more skill. I say it doesn't make sense because 1v1s end up being very small scale (2 planets 1 moon) games as far as PA is concerned.

Besides, in a FFA all players can play everyone. In 1v1 tournys the winner of the tournament only beat like 4 other people. I think the winner should beat everyone to rise to the top. So what if circumstance made it more difficult? The ability to adapt successfully to adversity should be rewarded.

And best of all, FFAs allow underdogs to steal the win. Everyone loves an underdog!

I'd love a random or maybe a kind of seeded 2v2 tournament. Give teams a couple of days to mess about before the tourny starts and it would work fine.

Interesting that people don't say the same thing about other sports - it's fun having one side of the pitch muddy and slippy and the other not, the disadvantaged should just adapt successfully! To say 'so what' is ridiculous; how can a tournament be a gauge of skill if the games aren't fair?

I still don't see how playing on small scale systems 'doesn't make sense'. Just because it's a game that CAN be scaled up, it doesn't mean you have to scale it up in order to have a good game, nor is it out of the spirit of PA to play in small systems (which is what you seem to be implying).

And while I agree FFAs are fun, you still haven't explained how to combat the unfairness of unequal spawns. Unless you genuinely believe that games dictated by random factors beyond player control are fun, in which case good for you, but I think most players would disagree.

I didn't because you don't combat that, even in 1v1s. In both my matches in the last tournament I spawned within holkins range of the enemy on 800 radius planets. You haven't explained why 1v1s are inherently more fair. They aren't from my experience...

There is nothing symmetrical about randomly generated maps no matter how many players. Everyone is at the same disadvantages, so in your example the whole field is muddy and if your team didn't prepare for that condition in their training they deserve to lose. It's like a poker tournament. You can be the best player in the world, but if the deal gives you a **** hand and you don't work with it you will lose. Cry all night about it but no one will feel sorry for you because they all had to shut up and deal with the hand they were dealt.

Your ideology comes from the world of starcraft where everything is symmetrical and over-balanced until choice is simply an illusion. With randomly generated spherical maps, I stand by my statement that 1v1 SC2 style tournaments arn't Pa's style, you just try to force it to be that way. People who try to find any "unfairness" in a tournament and blame their failure on that are simply pathetic and shouldn't be pandered to. People who do that are simply poor sports and it's them who need to change and grow, tournaments should not be forced to accommodate their whining and facilitate their bad sportsmanship.

That's a good point, I didn't explain my reasoning.

My reasoning for saying FFAs are less fair is because it is very easy, I would even say normal, for one player to be surrounded by 2 or even 3 other players. Now this goes far far beyond spawn imbalance found in 1v1s, even an excellent player will struggle to make a win when surrounded. Furthermore, it is also very common to have one player isolated from all the other (ie one spawns on one side of the planet, the others all spawn on the opposite side). This player has a huge territory advantage, and is also far more protected against early raiding.

Your example of poker is a good one but has one crucial difference which is simply the probabilities involved. In poker you might get one very bad hand. You might get 2 in a row, or even 3. Over the long run however, the probabilities balance. In PA FFAs there is almost always one player with a significant disadvantage or advantage; the probabilities don't balance especially in a tournament with only a few games.

Finally, not that it should have any bearing on my argument, but I played TA long before I ever played original starcraft, and I have far more hours clocked on TA than I do on Starcraft 1 and 2 combined. I haven't played SC2 in over a year. I find it dull.

Also don't be so rude.

EDIT: Just want to clarify/add a little.
On the poker analogy again - a 'bad hand' in a 1v1 is a poor spawn (and there's a reason we rehost 'till they're fairly fair), in a FFA a 'bad hand' can spell practically certain loss.

EDIT 2: further clarification

In PA the map is spherical. Technically everyone is surrounded...

The solution is to add more players. In an 8 player match I guarantee there is no one who is isolated unless they made room for themselves using strategy and tactics

You are right, it has no bearing. I was attacking that way of thinking, one that was championed by starcraft players and that you seem to subscribe to, not you.

Sorry if you took it personally, but I attack ideas not people. I stand by everything I said. Sometimes observations hurt, especially when they hit close to home, but facts must be faced and the truth can only be brought to light by honest unreserved conversation and constructive critisim.

My constructive criticism is that focusing on "fairness" in a tournament is a deflection tactic for those who wish to save face instead of owning up to a loss like a good sport and the correct way to deal with that is not to bend the tournament to the poor sport, but to instead try and develop that person into a good sport (and part of that is not accommodating their bad habbits just because they are noisy).

"Everyone is surrounded" is a ridiculous counter and you very well know it, you come across as intelligent and reasonable so don't use such silly counter arguments. It's quite clear that's not what I meant.

To the contrary in an 8 player match, it is even more likely for one player to be severely disadvantaged by being surrounded (unless on a much larger planet, see below), especially as we have multiple spawns and often players try to get as close as possible to the same patches of metal density. It does solve, or at least reduce, the problem of having one player with twice as much distance between him/her and the others, but not that of having players in between 2 or more others.

I reiterate: I understand there is a random element to PA. This is unavoidable and, in my opinion, desirable. Random spawns favour adaptability and strategic thinking as you said. HOWEVER, there is an astronomical difference in unfairness between a player having a spawn with less mass and/or a terrain disadvantage and a player starting the game sandwiched between 3 others. This circumstance can lead to a guaranteed loss for that player. That is not fun. No game should ever be decided by factors out of the hands of the player before the match even starts, especially in a competitive tournament.

One factor that would prevent this is simply playing on much larger planets as it prevents players getting cut off in the early game. This is all well and good, but makes for slow games and not great e-sports viewing (not everyone has time to watch an hour+ long game). To conclude, unless some mechanic forcing a minimum distance between spawns is put in place (and if one is in place, it needs to be bigger) FFAs do NOT make for appropriate tournament games.

Also your comments on people being "pathetic" and "whining" sounded like a personal attack. If I misinterpreted that I apologise, but your phrasing was unclear.

Oh, it's possible. It could not work in Starcraft due to its faction system. The 3 factions were explicitly tuned to work in a 1v1 setting with a certain type of map. Combining 2 or more players per team created circumstances that are basically impossible to predict or understand.

But PA has a single faction. Everyone is at parity with each other, regardless of how many there are. The only issue is if the map itself is unfair, and symmetry helps with that.

Unfortunately,

is probably the biggest killer right now. While good tuning is possible(passable would be a good start), it's impossible to do great tuning without great players.

Would like to point out "normal" sports game like tennis, football, rugby, etc, take more than an hour to play. They can also be slow when teams or players are equally matched.
So there are people out there who would watch these kind of games.

Hmm, good point. I suppose a better example would be a slow and more uninteresting early game (focussing more on expansion and economy than raiding) than the length of the game itself.

Still, you may well be right, larger planets may offer a solution to multi player tournament games without discouraging people from watching.

I really didn't intend for that to be silly. All players are legitimately surrounded (to a degree) in 4+ player games. To what degree can vary, and 1 player having 3 others spawn really close by does suck, but I think those scenarios are few and far between and definitely not exclusive to FFA (as I mentioned it happened twice in the tournament for me, just check the replays). I regularly play 10 player games on a 800 radius starting planet and got surrounded by others early all of 0 out of 10(ish) times. That said, i had to move my commander in the beginning 1 or 2 times, but only because I lost the early fight for that area of the planet. A larger starting planet seems to fix all your issues with FFA though.

Every spawn, no matter what, comes with the same metal density. Any metal clumps that aren't part of a spawn are rightfully up for grabs by anyone... If that starting metal clump isn't enough remember orbital is now tech 1 and astreus is cheaper!

At the end of the day I don't think "fairness" is a variable that should be considered in a tournament of PA. Maps are random, Faction doesn't matter (there is only 1) and even your start position is left to a choice by the player. If that player chose a start spot close to where 2 other player chose their start spot they all got crappier than average "hands" (<-- poker reference) which none of them can blame on anyone or anything else and the 1 of them who comes up on top made the best of it and deserves to come out on top.

Anyway, in a FFA tournament kills would probably be the better determination of a victory, because even if they got surrounded and died if they killed more than anyone else they are still the winner IMO since they did the most "work". If they got eliminated early, however, it could give survivors a chance to catch up!