TITANS 1v1 Ranked Ladder Season 2

That's what he said And I agree. It's incredibly inconsistent.

He’s asking for PA Inc to fix the issue where locusts sometimes don’t trigger landlines even when going straight through a minefield due to their tiny hit box.

Yup, it's a very easy tweak in the unit file given PA Inc warrants the change.

That would make them easier to hit in all situations, right?

Well yes but there should be a point where they die to mines as they should and still have a low enough value where a change in other interactions are not noticeable.

Gotta say the new leaderboard and point system is a lot more accurate than before. Timezones aside I feel its close to a true leaderboard.

I also believe that tournaments are the best approach if cash prizes are involved.

• Tournaments are in general much more exciting than ranked. Ranked is not particularly interesting to watch from a viewer stand point. It's the same maps over and over again and close games are few and far between. Tournaments, however have great variety in maps, have many close games in the later rounds as players are closer in skill level, and are streamed/casted live which is, in my opinion, exciting (and suspenseful in later rounds). Live events should also help to draw more players into the competitive scene.
• Tournaments are much more resistant to abuse than 1v1 ranked. Regardless of how many blocks PA Inc tries to put in, players will find ways to abuse the current system when money is involved. Dodging players is no longer an issue because you know who you have to play and to stay in the tournament you must play them. There is no rule against multi-accounting at this time (unless to get out of a ban) so that is a very easy way to get something like the 'most games' prizes. Although it is possible to smurf in a tournament, it's relatively involved and a lot harder than smurfing in ranked.
• Tournaments force players to be more diverse in their skillset. At the moment, to be good at ranked, you have to just be good at 15 maps but that's about it. Tournaments have much larger variety in maps and blind tournaments have entirely new maps. Players will have to be able to adapt quickly to different maps and change up their playstyle which is something I think is underrated in the current ranked system.

However, there are some issues with tournaments over ranked:

• Time zones: Most tournaments are hosted in the EU evening. This is fine for most American, European and Middle Eastern players but is quite problematic for Asian or Oceanian players.
• Player availability: Players may not be available for certain tournaments so they may miss out on their chance to win a cash prize.
• Good players being eliminated because they fluff up one game; I think that this can be solved by using tournament formats like double elimination and Swiss (surprisingly takes a lot less time than DE) in addition to BO3 for the finals/semi finals.

In my opinion, the best fix to these issues is more frequent tournaments. Instead of a tournament for $3000 every 3 months, a tournament for $1000 every month allows tournaments to be run in more time zones and on more days so more players have opportunities to play and win prizes.

I think that the prize pool should be left as is and money that would have gone into ranked should instead go in to tournaments run either by PA Inc or the community. Furthermore, some prizes like commanders from PA Inc for casual, community run tournaments would be very nice!

You've just introduced a bunch of additional cost:

a) formats to be reviewed and one chosen
b) time to organise ahead of the tournament
c) time to organise on the day
d) caster salary

Is this coming out of the prize pool? I think once you account for per-hour costs there wouldn't be much of a prize pool left.

How does generating activity periodically provide a better experience for players than something which generates activity 24x7? In what way does a lot of top players engaging in private 1v1 practice improve the health of the wider community? Can you point to any tournaments linked to increases in player numbers or overall public games?

The tournament preference seems to be based on some people preferring a tournament format. I don't see any compelling arguments that it would improve the health of PA, where as I can say there has been a distinct improvement in ladder activity of late. As a counterpoint let us review the health of Grey Goo following its $75,000 tournament...

I strongly agree with @flubbateios This game does need more tournaments and that would add lots of excitement to the game. There used to be tournaments run pretty regularly but they have died down and we need to bring them back as a community. Of course if we had the support of PA Inc. running tournaments or helping create them it would be great too.

a. There's not that many formats to review and we've already had plenty of community tournaments in various formats. I imagine that the main thing to review would be distribution of prizes (including casters). There are many tournaments for other games that can be used as data for this. Once again, this seems like a one off and it can be improved over time (just like the ranked 1v1 ladder system).

b. From my experience, this is largely write-ups and artwork. The writeups don't have to be particularly long or unique after the first one if this hypothetical tournament is a series. As such I don't imagine that it would take an enormous amount of time. If you look at eXodus esports writeups, the writeup is rarely more than two or three paragraphs. The rest is some technical info that is appended to all tournaments. Artwork again doesn't have to be entirely unique if it's a series (I don't know anything about art pricing so I can't comment on this further). A lot of the infrastructure is already WIP with PANet for sign up forms and other social integration.

c. On the day, before the tournament starts, the only thing that really needs to be handled by the organisers is check ins and ensuring that the caster has all the data/artwork. When the tournament has started, it's largely automated both for tournaments hosted in Discord and PA Chat. Even if PA Inc wants their own system to run tournaments, it's again a one off engineering project (compared to the multi threading updates and all those other engine changes this is a lot smaller). I don't know how PA Inc is structured and whether people are employed full time so I don't think I can say anything more here with respect to compensation.

d. Casters should be compensated out of the prize pool because they provide an important 'service' to the competitive scene. All esports that I've watched reward players for more than just being good at the game. The talent is super important for any tournament in my opinion.

Ultimately, the main cost increase is probably casting and this has the upside of generating lots of content for PA which players can watch. For me at least, watching Bad Bot Buddies (and subsequently playing in a Clopsey) was what sparked my interest to improve at the game and play competitively. I can't say that this will hold true for everyone but it's certainly not a waste. I don't think that the things I've proposed have to be implemented to the letter. These are just my thoughts on what I'd like to see and what I think is the fairest way to distribute prizes.

'private' 1v1 practice replays can still be watched/casted by anyone (Super Stats also facilitates this by providing lobby ids for any reported game as well as advanced search tools) and given that only the most recent 1v1 ranked replay can be watched for any given player (and it's usually a stomp for top players who play lots of games), I don't think there's much of a difference here. I wouldn't discount it as activity just because it isn't in ranked.

The player graphs (SteamDB) don't really correlate much with anything other than sales as far as I can tell (2018 was fairly eventful but see 2017 graphs). The image below is stretched horribly to illustrate the jumps better. I hope I caught most of the big events. Looking at Valve games, 'Majors' definitely do increase player numbers although those are wildly different genres and with completely different player base sizes.

Since Season 2 there are absolutely more player numbers but we're yet to find out whether this is just due to sales or the actual ranked season. Zooming in shows that Season 2 didn't really cause a spike larger than that of a sale. There are 264 active ranked players which, if I remember correctly, is lower than ranked player count last year even during lows and we're more than 2 weeks into season 2 (inactivity period).

Season 1.5 didn't really change player numbers at all it seems.

Most of the esports I follow/watch use tournaments instead of ranked (in game prizes instead of cash for ranked) to distribute prizes so I don't think this a serious concern. I don't follow SCII but I don't believe it has any prizes for ranked.

Ranked is usually where people practice for tournaments. I like the idea of seasons but not many are in with a chance to win. Possible 3 this season have a chance, another 3 maybe can. And the rest havnt a hope.

For me swiss with semi and finals is best format. Players that play a lot of games are still rewarded with most games. And should be the most in form for the tournaments.

But it's something to look into. I for one really appreciate the direction we are going so have faith.

Fun chart!

The chart misses the mark tho. I don't think PA Inc is trying to increase their sales by offering awards. IMO, PA Inc is trying to create a larger pool of competitive players. This is why they are offering awards based on activity and not solely on being the top rank player. The basic idea is for players to play more rank matches and to onboard players who would normally only play single player to venture into rank and hopefully custom matches.

The only way to judge the success of the awards is to know the number of players playing rank and the number of games they play versus last season or past years.

I would like to see a play-off. Maybe the community can organize it for this season. I would keep it small to start. Maybe only the top 4 ubers. Next season increase it and have playoffs for other leagues as well.

I'm not sure you understand how a business goes about tackling such things.

The first step would be someone generating a business case for this. The various tournament formats would be laid out, pros, cons, etc. There'd be some recommendation, along with supporting criteria. This then needs review and approval by someone else. There also needs to be a mapping of success criteria, so not only why are we doing this but how are we measuring it generated revenue to justify itself?

Just this stage alone is probably costing you a few hundred dollars in employee time. I know from my time with eXodus that working on messaging, format, theme, etc. took a significant period of time.

Then the organisation can't be anything like the community tournaments, which can best be described as "slap dash". And that's fine for a community tournament, because when it falls through someone throws a cancellation message on Discord. But if you're a business it makes you look incomponent, so you're going to have a much firmer hand on the reins. This means registering players, ensuring you're GDPR compliant with storing their details, maintaining communication, having someone who is responsible for answering questions, etc. You'll also need a number of people on the day, all of whom are an added cost.

Then we get to other details like the rules. Who's writing them? What happens if there's a crash? You don't want controversy, so ideally you have firmly mapped criteria around what is called for one side versus what is a remake. Is it a 100K metal difference? Is it 50K? Does it scale over time? Do you use something else? How are you ensuring it isn't abused by someone who looks like they're losing and so fakes a crash to score a remake?

You need casting, which adds to your organisation burden. What happens if the caster doesn't show or is sick? So one caster isn't going to cut it, you'll need at least two. How much is being set aside for payment? You'll need to draw up contracts for that, so how much is legal costing you? Whose channel are you using and who owns the video and monetisation rights?

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

So If The Nosebreaker understands you correctly Quitch what your asking for is the return of ICy Calm and his tournies???
That is kinda big Good to see some support for the clan wars he ran they were epic.. Only tourney to ever result in the creation of a clan If remembered correctly...

Flubb The Nosebreaker thinks that perhaps the seasons might be a little quick if judging by the last one. perhaps lengething them may bring in more players.
you could have halve the reward of the most active award and go half reward to a rando in each catagory of rank..... that way people will aim to get to the rank with the least to take home the dollery doos so two chances per rank for half the doos or a free commander random to each rank per season one handed out amoungts each of the ranks ....
All these ideas are epic of coarse......

Perhaps when an uber player plays a silvery doo player that uber player would get a thirty second time lock on they com .... as a kinda golfing handicap... you remember golf ?? They have some good ideas.....

also how can The Nosebreaker dodge Nik now that you made it undogeable........ seriously bad form

Nosebreaker's going to get his nose broken if he keeps up that nonsense.

I agree a combination of both is probably the ideal situation. The ranked seasons do provide a natural point to hold the events (i.e. season finals) and would be fairly infrequent

@Quitch I can see your points, I think the cost implications mean regular events (e.g. Weekly or even monthly) wouldn't be feasible, however that needn't rule them out entirely. I think a lot of the questions you pose have already been worked out (either by the community or in past events under uber). With all that said, the current direction PA Inc are taking is looking very promising.

I seem to be banned from ranked. Is there someone I can contact to understand why and how to get unbanned?