How To Repair TT Tournaments
We all know the issue. Win selling ruins the tournament. We need a new scoring system that incentivizes legit matches. Everyone says this, but nobody gives specifics.
I have the specifics.
The game already tracks the tournament records of all involved. This new system just requires some tweaking to what data is kept in this record (a few pointers), and some dynamic adjustment on the server's behalf.
I propose a 3-tiered score system.
Tier 1: Win Count. This is simply your number of wins. Draws count as 1/2 win. Winning is good, but it's not everything thanks to:
Tier 2: Value. This is the killer that will make win selling inefficient. Your value is equal to the total wins of every player you have beaten. (A player beaten multiple times counts for each win). Draws are worth half. Value also works to make NPCs a real part of the tournament, and a valuable resource for players to use. They need to have their records tracked just like a player, but the more people they beat, the more they are worth. To account for abnormal numbers of games from NPCs or players who fail to complete all of their matches, value is divided by the number of matches played, and multiplied by the maximum matches for the tournament. This also allows it to adjust on the fly, projecting an estimate so you can gauge the rough value of an opponent you are about to challenge.
Of course, if you go 9-1 in a 10-match tourney against a single player, each of you would have a value of 9 which is why we move on to:
Tier 3: Score Score is equal to the total values of everyone you have beaten (draws are worth half). In our 9-1 example, the player with 1 win ends with a score of 9, while the 9 gets a score of 81. 81 sounds high, but it's actually low as a penalty for picking on a weaker player. 2 even players each going 5-5 would earn a score of 125 each, and actually doing well against worthy opponents becomes worth much more than even that. NPCs do not need to calculate score, they can stop at value.
This system gives every player a score based on their actual performance, weighted appropriately based on the relative difficulty of their matches. Win selling would require an incredibly complex network of huge numbers of alts in order to touch the top slots. Meanwhile friendly win trading ends up giving fairly average scores for people who just want to play together and collect their typical participation reward.
The one thing about the score system is that score tends to increase exponentially with number of games, so calculations for MGP and platinum rewards would need to adjust dynamically based on the match limit of the current tournament.
So there you have it. A fair tournament system to counter win selling, give value to NPCs, and make TT tournaments fun and fair for all involved.