What do you want to see? A tournament pay to play low entry cost but big player limits. A lower player limit higher cost to enter with huge winnings to one victorious commander. A free to play donation based winnings? Let me know! Tell me why? And I'll make your tournament into reality
I'd love to see some high level pay to enter tournaments. I've wanted to host some of those ever since I started PA Matches. However, I don't think we can really have those types of tournaments until 1.0 – which is right around the corner!
Personally, all of the above! I'm definitely not against a small entry fee type deal (as that funds the prize). Donations for tourney prizes are great, but on the other hand I don't think we can expect people to do that all the time. I also rather like the tiered events (e.g. series of qualifiers culminating in a grand final of all the winners). If all the qualifiers had a small entry fee, a portion of the proceeds from each could be saved to form the prize fund for the grand final... If you ran a series like this, the winners would have to be precluded from entering other qualifiers as they can't take more than one spot.... Edit: an example of a tournament structure: 4 x 16 player 1 v 1. Top 2 from each go in for an 8 player grand final (could be FFA or standard). If each player pays $4, and 50% goes to grand final fund, each qualifier would have first prize of $32 with $128 available for the final (which would probably be split between first, second and third)....
definitively pay to play either with 16 or 32 players .... while i am not a competitive player myself i would say players have aside from having fun a proper goal to win and not just bragging rights .... other than that from a pure spectative side i would vote all of them...
I like the idea of having larger tournaments and regular, the entry fee can be really minimal then like $1 or $2. Whatever you do though make the payment system accept foreign currencies without additional charges as you get stung on small foreign currency payments online if you don't do it right. Anything that can give us non top-10 players a chance to cause a few upsets would be good
I always liked a model I saw during several StarCraft tournaments: Multiple weekly qualifiers leading up to a final round of 8/16/32 at the end of the month. Prize money for the final three players, decently split - third place should still be rewarded. Money comes from donations during the qualifiers & final round and (later, that is) potential sponsors - Uber / individual players / hardware manufacturers etc.. Important: No entry fees! As this will quickly give it the air of a "behind closed doors" event. A free tournament will often lead to spectators signing up for future qualifiers after they've gotten a taste while watching. And there's always the hassle with payment methods: Not everyone has PayPal, most european players won't have a credit card ... etc.
That's an interesting statement....? What do you base this on???? I'm from Europe (UK) and I have one, and most people I know have them (good for your credit store + more protection on purchases)....
In Germany, direct debit is a very popular payment method and credit cards aren't as widespread as elsewhere. And judging from my experience with french, danish and polish friends / acquaintances, CC usage isn't as widespread as for example in the US.
went big, this game aint about small, but smaller obviously has practical benefits. bigger tournies have player turn-out problems. But big means more money, so people will pay attention. As Brian said 1.0 will be required for this. I often see the same people in the tournies (understandably), who are much better than me, so a few ideas below to encourage others to join in. maybe coming last gets you free entry next time - would encourage those who think it would be a waste of money that they get a second chance if do terribly rather than give money for 2nd and third places how about a prize for best tactical manoeuvre, biggest blunder, most amusing moment etc - so even a looser like me might have a moment of brilliance and win some money. make reserves pay a small fee so that they too are incentivised to show up and cover for any drop-outs. give free places to randomly selected viewers to encourage a greater live turn-out rather than watching as a replay - also covers the drop-out problem.
I voted for both of the free to plays because: I'm cheap and have no interest in paying to play, I'd rather win nothing but bragging rights. We still get a fairly decent amount of donations to run off of, though it varies widely. I don't think that the game is stable enough or balanced enough to have people start paying to get into competitive tournaments, not to mention that the competitive scene is kind of small. Edit: Not only am I cheap, but I also have no money to spare currently.
I'm going to try and come up with a format and a way to make a pay to play work that will also allow players in tight money issues to still play
In an effort to entice participation, I'd say make the payouts smaller and spread it out to a larger percentage of the participants. Something more akin to a poker tourney payout schedule rather than just the top 3. In this scenario, a 64 player $x tourney would pay out something like: 1st - 25x 2nd - 12x 3rd - 9x 4th - 8th - 2x 9th - 16th - 1x This would give players a break-even tier at round 3, leave most of the prize pool in the top 3 places while giving the less capable players a realistic goal to shoot for.
