Tournaments

Do you think it could be more by now if you had a FAF similar system at release?

Probably not as the playerbase was much lower than now, and people playing FA are used to play tournaments. So even without an integrated system, we've managed to host lot of them.

But I'm rather sure that if there is no tournament system integrated somehow in PA, it will be harder to make it successful as a competitive game.

Supcom2 had a nice playerbase at release, lot of competitive players from Supcom1, but no tournament system.
There was some organized by Gamereplay, but after some months, nothing.

So it looks like we have to give our best to do this ourself.

Maybe we can arrange some chat, everybody can visit if interested (if not possible to do otherwhise). It all depends on the playerbase.

Well one thing here could be: international ladder or so, only if a tournament uses the rules of the umbrella, their outcomes will be considered for this ladder/list.

But such a thing also could be talked after the first couple of tournaments.

Even if its not integrated into UberNet, I wonder how hard it would be to make up a basic PA styled tournament site in Drupal or something if we had a website.

Why re-invent the wheel ?

http://challonge.com.

Allow you to create an organization (ie. PA community) so multiple persons can host tournaments under the same roof.

It'd be great if I could embed a bracket into a forum post here.

There is an embed command, the forum has to support it.
ie.

Code:

<iframe src="http://ForgedAllianceForever.challonge.com/bhotemna/module" width="800" height="500" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" allowtransparency="true"></iframe>

Can be added to phpBB..

I've done some research. We might be able to run PayPal tournaments as long as Uber doesn't care because its skill based and not gambling. Its how sports betting sites are getting away with it because you pick players instead of teams.

If there's an interest in a reoccurring tournaments with entry fees, we might just get some competitive momentum going. The entry fee adds a nice context to it.

There's always figuring out how to handle the free events too. Since coming up with context for those besides bragging rights is more difficult.

We can bribe Uber with some bacon, should work nicely.

We would need to figure out what do people want besides money, what would make them be competitive in case it was a free event. Some prize must exist, we just need to figure out what is free, not available to everyone and wanted by PA players.

Free events are going to be a tougher nut to crack, but garat tells me they might have systems in place down the line to award achievement like stuff to players in game.

PayPal events could be fun, 8 man, best 2/3, pay back 4x, 2x, 1x, 1x the entry fee for top 4. If people have interest in that, I think it could get popular.

Sounds like Poker

Edit: That brings me an idea for free tournaments: Some kind of credits like poker sides do it.

We could have some sort of "season" where you earn credits/points into a big tournament at the end of it. More points for PayPal tournaments, less for the free ones.

If I were to run PayPal tournaments at a profit I could put it all back into that big one. (all assuming it flies by Uber, since that's EULA territory)

Uber should be the official organizer of all tournaments that include money prizes or we could form a PA tournament association and arrange with Uber to make official tournaments, I think that is the correct way of doing the paid tournaments.

Since Paypal is a worldwide service and they along with Uber have their own rules like you mentioned it would be very important to have everything legally settled before even starting with the organization.

The free ones can be used as a test in the beginning. :mrgreen:

Why not give out badges for the free tournaments? Wasn't someone thinking about implementing badges?

PayPal side is fine. Its the Uber EULA side which is the only variable. Uber won't run regular events. They don't have the budget nor the man power. But if the fans run regular events, PayPal or free, it creates a context in which people stay playing the game because there's a reason to. My PayPal tournament idea is something with an extremely limited scope to that of a local forum event that can work with more PA details and interest. I just don't know if the logistics work.

Yes, its planned AFAIK. But, I'm not convinced Uber has the budget or time to run community events themselves.

if you want eSports you need to carefully focus on the 1v1 part of this game... Just look what SC2 does for example...

DotA would disagree with you. Team play should not be ignored if the game caters towards it. The focus should be on what the game does best. For Starcraft, that's 1v1. For SupCom it was a mix between 1v1 and 3v3.

For PA... who knows yet. Lets wait until Alpha before just dismissing team play, okay?

Polynomial

I have helped out with Game Replays.org a little bit and they like to sponsor tourneys.

I will try to get involved when the time comes.

I used to do Demigod/SupCom2 stuff for them a long time ago.

However, my vision of this keeps the events proprietary to the first hand Uber community rather than GR's subset. I don't know how many people here really want to go make an account over there.