So the new tournament changes are.... Well I would put it lightly and say 'not good', but let's be blunt - even with my positive outlook - these changes are terrible!

I will admit that the first season of the tournament definitely had too many rewards. In the first day I netted about 400 acoins, making the weekly tasks look like a total joke. While that did drop off to about 250 per day, once the matchmaking settled, it still wasn't bad.

How many acoins did I get in the first day of the second season?

60. I got 60.

Which is PITIFUL, when compared to previous amount and only barely better than the weekly tasks..

In the announcement, it was claimed that the rewards are still *several times* that of the old system.. 

Well, I actually bothered doing the maths. On average I would net about 70 acoins per day from old system, given I could generally place decently high with an hour or so of play; I have a good hangar especially for FFA.

60, is a SMALLER NUMBER than 70, needless to say, let alone double or even "several times".

Part of the issue stems from how the rewards are given now. There are three factors - and I will discuss each together with my opinions and own ideas - that have reduced the average daily acoin income, from this 'improved' tourney system.

1. The general acoins reduction.

As I previously mentioned, certainly in my experience, the previous values were a little overtuned. I would've expected to see maybe a 20% or 30%, at most 40% reduction to the prize pools, but instead we got more than a 50% reduction in some reward pools - because yes it's not even the same across all the ranks - the lower ranks got it worse, and the top grandmaster rank ended up with... Even more?! Yall mentioned the values were too high and you wanted to stabilise the in-game economy, and then you add MORE to the pool that actually contributes the MOST to that problem?

Personally, if the reduction had been the same across the board, even a 50% reduction I could've lived with and not decide to write a post like this, though that given everything else NOT changing..

I think maybe a significant reduction - even the one we got on average - could've been helped by to buffs to other reward amounts, namely credits. Like why can't we see 10k, 20k or maybe even 30k credit pools instead the measly like.. 2k and 3k we have.

Additionally, if you wanted to make grandmaster more rewarding - without being hypocritical and adding MORE ACOINS - you should've maybe added a different premium currency, like pilot marks or elite mod parts, or maybe specific crates etc.

2. The victory based rewards.

This was my initial concern when I saw the announcement. Why? Shouldn't players be incentivised to do well in battles?

Well. For a few reasons really. 

First off, doing poorly and losing are DIFFERENT THINGS.

You can have a really close round - and in the first season it happened to me frequently enough to mention it here - but even said close round or game, if lost by a hair - will get you literally equal to if you had done nothing and instead sat in the corner complaining about the new tournament system on the forums (wait wait hang on-)

Not to mention bot carries, where maybe you did super poorly but your bots picked up all the slack - I've lost a game with 21 kills, the other player having half that, because of bot-related maddness - which will definitely be even more common with the bot changes that were also made, you still get rewarded as if you won flawlessly - except not really anymore but I'll get to that, you know it's coming.

Also, the ability to get acoins - and still a decent amount - from losing massively helped mitigate frustration. If you got a bad match, which is yet ANOTHER problem victory based rewards exemplifies, then oh well you don't get as much, but you still get something for your time. 

But now, if you lose, say either to something stupid happening, a bad matchup or just a close game, you get ZERO acoins from it, the game basically spitting in your face for what can often not feel controllable. 

This frustration is likely to create a problem, that hangar showdown has because of LITERALLY the same issue (except HSD somehow has it BETTER, technically anyway), where people get frustrated - especially when combined with the tiny rewards in general - and start not bothering to play the mode at all - which causes the matchmaking to get more stretched, causing more unfair battles, causing more people to leave, then into a death spiral.

Also also, now that rewards only go to the winning team, tanking is going to be way more relevant. The devs are trying to stop tanking, which the original system did decently well. But now that losing, even by a hair, means you get nothing (in the terms of acoins, which is what actually matters) there is now much more a reason to tank - and people will find a way. Trust me, they will. 

Tanking has survived thus far and is sort of just inevitable. There's a certain joke about software design but I can't quite remember it...

And the matchmaking is seemingly much worse than before, and much sooner than before. It's day 2. I've already, with a team of randoms, been pit against a full meta team and lost within 2 minutes.

And, yet another problem: people will leave. Like a lot.

Not only are matches on average now more frustrating, but now abandoning your team once it looks like you're losing has no penalty - again talking acoins - in season 1, even when you were eliminated (as in killed 5 times), you still would want to sit around until the end of the game, just so you could get paid still. But now that's gone. And people will leave. And they do. A lot.

And that can cause a snowball, making you lose a game you otherwise could've won, making YOU pay for THEM leaving.

There is yet another problem that I've suddenly forgotten, I will edit it here if I remember it later.

As I mentioned I don't think there should be a penalty for losing that acts regardless of how close it was.

I think the approach here should be to still give rewards to those on the losing team, but only those who really clearly did the most for their team, or rather the top 2 or 3 losers. That'd be the best compromise, the other option potentially being basing the reward of individuals scoring, which has its own problems.

3. Aggressive (very) reward skew.

Now this is the thing to top it all off. Previously, each position down would cost you 10% of your final reward. Pretty good tho imo not perfect, I personally think first place losing should actually get more than last place winning - given 1st place on each team are probably more comparable to each other.

But now? Omg now... 

Each position HALVES the amount you get, on the WINNING TEAM. Which means, winning, in grandmaster 1, in last place, gets you 4 ACOINS. FOR WINNING. IN GRANDMASTER 1.

This is so much of a problem because now, you end up fighting your own team MORE than the opponents, which, very obviously, COMPLETELY KILLS team play, especially with larger teams.

You end up not caring about being a good teammate and making sure the team wins, but instead being the s**tiest tm8, taking all the easy kills, captures, halfway throwing the game and just hoping that you win. Because if you actually try to win, and don't end up placing first or at the very least second, you get so little you might've well have lost!

Honestly I'm not sure which of the two latter changes were worse, but I know this much- they're both terrible.

Personally, I'd suggest a semi-aggressive LINEAR gradient, or at the VERY LEAST one with a less harsh exponent (say 1.5 instead of 2).

Something like:

Winning: Losing:

100% 60%

75% 30%

50% 0%

25% 0%

0% 0%

At the very harshest! (those values would include acoins, specifically even (not even like numbers tho))

And FFA would probably just follow the pattern of the winning team.

Anyway I think that's about the end of my rant now... There's even more I could talk about but I think everyone who actually bothered to read... all that.. probably gets what I'm saying :3