Hi, Plarium.

I would like to suggest an idea to improve how tournament heats are managed. (This is not related to matchmaking, for which there are ongoing conversations in other topics.)

Currently tournament heats are dominated by a combination of heavy hitters (high damage), SP droppers and players willing to play hundreds of games. These players almost always take the top 6 spots in each heat group, leaving scraps for other players. I thought a bit about how to group players in a heat in a more intelligent way instead of grouping them on the basis of when they play their first match of the heat.

Some ideas I thought about and discarded are grouping by other means, such as inventory power, highest unlocked tier or highest damage in the player stats. Another discarded idea, which comes from the ongoing matchmaking test, is to limit the number of games that can be played in a heat. All of these ideas are imperfect since each will leave some significant percentage of players unhappy.

There's another game I played recently which approaches tournaments a different way, and while that isn't perfect either, I think some kind of combined approach may work. Here is that combined approach:

1. Week 1 - All players start at novice tournament level.
2. All players play at novice level for every heat in the tournament week.
3. The players with highest scores advance to the next level. Middle scores remain at the current level. At higher levels, the lowest scoring players are demoted to the previous level.
4. Week 2 and beyond - All players play at their new tournament level.
5. As with the current model, heats at higher levels yield higher rewards. The difference is that the levels change after a tournament week finishes, not after each heat in a tournament.

This way, after the initial few weeks, the high scorers advance and earn huge rewards, but lower scoring and more casual players are grouped with each other and therefore have a chance to earn some reasonable rewards.

Thoughts?

By the way, there is a much simpler idea that would probably address most dissatisfied users, as long as you're willing to consider it - Include acoin rewards beyond the top 6 in each heat. Any thoughts on that as well?