I know there are a lot of players out there scrambling for a new tournament mode in hearthstone, I've given this some thought and honestly can't see the point.
First off, I want to rid anyone of the idea that a true tournament could work outside of friends organising their own, something that is entirely possible right now anyway. Whether it's a full knockout style or point scoring leading up to that stage, it would essentially require the 8 or 16 players sticking around for all the games to play out, those who finish within the opening turns having to wait for games that go into fatigue to end before everyone can move on.
So we are necessarily looking at a matchmaking system that pits players against anyone in the mode at the same stage. Given that ties are incredibly rare in a game, a point system would be very straight forward (as opposed to say soccer, where a league may award 3,1 or 0 points). So maybe a player would enter a tournament, get a certain win-loss ratio to move into a knockout bracket, from where any loss ends their run.
An alternative way to structure this would be to allow a player to select 3 (or more) decks from their collection, each time they lose with a deck it is eliminated from their options for subsequent games. However, considering that they won't be able to know what deck they're going up against, there's no metagame in what deck one chooses at any point. Unless winners have to keep playing with that deck, while losers get to choose one of their remaining decks to play against a locked-in winner. Whether this is actually feasible I don't know but seems to be the best way to go about this.
But how is anything like this that different to arena or duels? Is it really what players want? Maybe a way to better organise games between friends, with a special page to show progress but then we just go back to the problem of people waiting around for other's games to finish.
I always see people clamoring for a tournament mode in any discussion of what players want from the game but have never seen a realistic suggestion for how it would work or be implemented. Curious to here any interesting takes on the subject!
A couple times each year, we get the Brawliseum TB - it's effectively a single-deck Swiss tournament mode. Presumably, it wouldn't be too difficult to morph Brawliseum mode into a permanent Tournament mode -
add functionality that allows players to choose three or four decks, instead of one.
allow players to see their opponents' classes, and ban one prior to the first game.
play a best-of-three or best-of-five match against opponents, instead of best-of-one.
As you say - this would feel a lot like Arena or Duels, since it's just an expanded Brawliseum.
What would be more useful would be adding functionality that allowed tournament organisers to register an event with Blizzard - they would receive a code, give the code to their tournament participants, just like FSG events currently work (prior to the Lockdown, at any rate.) Then the client does all the work . . .
All of this would appeal to all the competitive folks, and very few casual players - but the game can easily support devoting some of Blizzard's resources to developing a mode for "hard-core" players.
I get the class banning option but I don't think it would work unless going into a tournament a player just bans a class outright, never encountering it in a run. Preferable to this, I think, would be banning a specific class card. This could mitigate the considerably large matchmaking problem banning a whole class would bring up.
Anything that implements an arena-like system I feel would be redundant, there's nothing new in such a mode, may as well play ranked.
As for official clients, I still fail to see what part of that isn't possible without any input from blizzard. Hell, if people want that so much, why doesn't hearthpwn organise a page?
What I really want is the way to play a tournament without having to communicate with friends or third party sites. Something like Runeterra made (monthly 2-day tournament with swiss+playoff) would be ok. I don't know how good it is, because I don't play Runeterra, but it's clearly better than nothing. The format doesn't really matter, but it should be supported fully in-game, that's the main thing. It's not have to be constructed btw, why not make a battlegrounds tournament mode? Waiting times issue would be much smaller at BGs, because duration of games have like 10-15 minutes difference at worst.
Lux I see where you're coming from but I think you'd be in the minority. Blizz won't implement anything at all if a large part of the player base won't be interested in it, or at least be new and different enough to entice a separate kind of player. You also have to take into consideration matchmaking and no matter how much anyone thinks it may be worth it, no one is waiting around in the menu for a few minutes just to get a game. Any kind of mode has to have the standard "jump in, jump out" format of games.
That's kinda my point here, anything that sounds like a typical tournament format will never work in hearthstone, so it would have to be something a bit more creative. Best I can see is the multi-deck knockout style, even then it might not be all that different to just playing ranked
We never know unless they try it. I mean, MTT format is not less popular in poker if we compare it to "jump in, jump out" SNG or cash, perhaps it's even more attractive for recreational players, so in theory it could work for "wizard poker" as well.
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English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
I get the class banning option but I don't think it would work unless going into a tournament a player just bans a class outright, never encountering it in a run. Preferable to this, I think, would be banning a specific class card. This could mitigate the considerably large matchmaking problem banning a whole class would bring up.
Anything that implements an arena-like system I feel would be redundant, there's nothing new in such a mode, may as well play ranked.
As for official clients, I still fail to see what part of that isn't possible without any input from blizzard. Hell, if people want that so much, why doesn't hearthpwn organise a page?
???
"...there's nothing new in such a mode, may as well play ranked..."
"...why doesn't Hearthpwn organise a page . . ."
As to the first point - there is an unambiguous difference between playing a a game of baseball, and participating in a baseball tournament. With respect to HS, folks that appreciate the difference play the Brawliseum whenever it launches, and folks that don't appreciate that difference (apparently including yourself) don't. Same with Tournament mode, presumably.
As to the second point - there are already plenty of resources available outside the client which are of assistance to tournament organisers. I've used a bunch of them. That's the problem - it's a lot of work that the game is clearly capable of doing. There would be many more tournaments being held if it wasn't so much work for organizers.
I'm not too excited about the prospect tournament mode myself, but it's definitely possible. The Pokémon TCG online client has a tournament mode which works basically how you'd expect: You're matched up with 7 (I think - been a while since I played) other players, people play each other 1v1, winner moves on to the next round, and the loser gets put into a loser's match. You then get some pretty generous rewards based on what place you came in (I doubt this would be the case in Hearthstone). The only annoying thing is having to wait between rounds, but that comes with any tournament format you'll ever implement - if anyone DCs, it works like any other DC: their opponent gets a free win and is happy. It's a good amount of fun and definitely something that could work with Hearthstone too (especially since I'm pretty sure Hearthstone matches are shorter than Pokémon ones on average). Whether we'll ever see it or not I'm not sure - I thought it was likely coming soon after Battlegrounds proved matchmaking with more than 2 people was doable in Hearthstone.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
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I know there are a lot of players out there scrambling for a new tournament mode in hearthstone, I've given this some thought and honestly can't see the point.
First off, I want to rid anyone of the idea that a true tournament could work outside of friends organising their own, something that is entirely possible right now anyway. Whether it's a full knockout style or point scoring leading up to that stage, it would essentially require the 8 or 16 players sticking around for all the games to play out, those who finish within the opening turns having to wait for games that go into fatigue to end before everyone can move on.
So we are necessarily looking at a matchmaking system that pits players against anyone in the mode at the same stage. Given that ties are incredibly rare in a game, a point system would be very straight forward (as opposed to say soccer, where a league may award 3,1 or 0 points). So maybe a player would enter a tournament, get a certain win-loss ratio to move into a knockout bracket, from where any loss ends their run.
An alternative way to structure this would be to allow a player to select 3 (or more) decks from their collection, each time they lose with a deck it is eliminated from their options for subsequent games. However, considering that they won't be able to know what deck they're going up against, there's no metagame in what deck one chooses at any point. Unless winners have to keep playing with that deck, while losers get to choose one of their remaining decks to play against a locked-in winner. Whether this is actually feasible I don't know but seems to be the best way to go about this.
But how is anything like this that different to arena or duels? Is it really what players want? Maybe a way to better organise games between friends, with a special page to show progress but then we just go back to the problem of people waiting around for other's games to finish.
I always see people clamoring for a tournament mode in any discussion of what players want from the game but have never seen a realistic suggestion for how it would work or be implemented. Curious to here any interesting takes on the subject!
A couple times each year, we get the Brawliseum TB - it's effectively a single-deck Swiss tournament mode. Presumably, it wouldn't be too difficult to morph Brawliseum mode into a permanent Tournament mode -
As you say - this would feel a lot like Arena or Duels, since it's just an expanded Brawliseum.
What would be more useful would be adding functionality that allowed tournament organisers to register an event with Blizzard - they would receive a code, give the code to their tournament participants, just like FSG events currently work (prior to the Lockdown, at any rate.) Then the client does all the work . . .
All of this would appeal to all the competitive folks, and very few casual players - but the game can easily support devoting some of Blizzard's resources to developing a mode for "hard-core" players.
I get the class banning option but I don't think it would work unless going into a tournament a player just bans a class outright, never encountering it in a run. Preferable to this, I think, would be banning a specific class card. This could mitigate the considerably large matchmaking problem banning a whole class would bring up.
Anything that implements an arena-like system I feel would be redundant, there's nothing new in such a mode, may as well play ranked.
As for official clients, I still fail to see what part of that isn't possible without any input from blizzard. Hell, if people want that so much, why doesn't hearthpwn organise a page?
small chinese company
What I really want is the way to play a tournament without having to communicate with friends or third party sites. Something like Runeterra made (monthly 2-day tournament with swiss+playoff) would be ok. I don't know how good it is, because I don't play Runeterra, but it's clearly better than nothing. The format doesn't really matter, but it should be supported fully in-game, that's the main thing. It's not have to be constructed btw, why not make a battlegrounds tournament mode? Waiting times issue would be much smaller at BGs, because duration of games have like 10-15 minutes difference at worst.
English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
Lux I see where you're coming from but I think you'd be in the minority. Blizz won't implement anything at all if a large part of the player base won't be interested in it, or at least be new and different enough to entice a separate kind of player. You also have to take into consideration matchmaking and no matter how much anyone thinks it may be worth it, no one is waiting around in the menu for a few minutes just to get a game. Any kind of mode has to have the standard "jump in, jump out" format of games.
That's kinda my point here, anything that sounds like a typical tournament format will never work in hearthstone, so it would have to be something a bit more creative. Best I can see is the multi-deck knockout style, even then it might not be all that different to just playing ranked
We never know unless they try it. I mean, MTT format is not less popular in poker if we compare it to "jump in, jump out" SNG or cash, perhaps it's even more attractive for recreational players, so in theory it could work for "wizard poker" as well.
English is not my native language, so, with a high probability, mistakes were made.
???
"...there's nothing new in such a mode, may as well play ranked..."
"...why doesn't Hearthpwn organise a page . . ."
As to the first point - there is an unambiguous difference between playing a a game of baseball, and participating in a baseball tournament. With respect to HS, folks that appreciate the difference play the Brawliseum whenever it launches, and folks that don't appreciate that difference (apparently including yourself) don't. Same with Tournament mode, presumably.
As to the second point - there are already plenty of resources available outside the client which are of assistance to tournament organisers. I've used a bunch of them. That's the problem - it's a lot of work that the game is clearly capable of doing. There would be many more tournaments being held if it wasn't so much work for organizers.
I'm not too excited about the prospect tournament mode myself, but it's definitely possible. The Pokémon TCG online client has a tournament mode which works basically how you'd expect: You're matched up with 7 (I think - been a while since I played) other players, people play each other 1v1, winner moves on to the next round, and the loser gets put into a loser's match. You then get some pretty generous rewards based on what place you came in (I doubt this would be the case in Hearthstone). The only annoying thing is having to wait between rounds, but that comes with any tournament format you'll ever implement - if anyone DCs, it works like any other DC: their opponent gets a free win and is happy. It's a good amount of fun and definitely something that could work with Hearthstone too (especially since I'm pretty sure Hearthstone matches are shorter than Pokémon ones on average). Whether we'll ever see it or not I'm not sure - I thought it was likely coming soon after Battlegrounds proved matchmaking with more than 2 people was doable in Hearthstone.