Dear Yoshi & Team: About Current TT Tournament Model

[Madigari]

From casual TT player PoV

You sure told him. Nevermind the fact that people are actually selling wins, asking people who aren't interested to lose to them on purpose so they can get more points, etc. But yes, it's definitely those scrubs just complaining that people are better.

There's a person in my FC who whispered someone from the Triple Triad LS I'm in and asked them if they would be willing to take a dive for them, then begged them not to tell anyone after the person said no. Unfortunately, this is probably the least abhorrent thing she's done in FFXIV.

Not everyone is going to be a cheater who gets on the leaderboard. But there's definitely the potential for them to be, and that problem needs to be addressed.

[Yumi_umi]

Just make TT tourneys instanced and can only be joined via solo qeue.
This can allow possible potential for rating brackets in the future and will solve the "player gets to choose who they fight" problem.
Make the players name only visable at the end results to make it even harder for ppl to co ordinate win trading.

If they can do it for choco racing then i'm sure they can make one for TT tourneys.
But sadly TT tourneys have gotten a bad rep on its debut which is a shame.

[Curatio_Magus]

1. Tournament matches should be through a random roullette system and allow challenges across servers. There's no reason to create pockets of players when MMR is the only stat to measure players, and no server would have any advantage over another in skill or card availability

2. Players should gain/lose MMR from winning/losing matches against players (all starting with the same base reference MMR) and continue being matched with relative MMR's.

3. There would be a higher maximum of games played to ensure more accuracy in divvying prizes, rather than the luck based system currently in use.

4. You could have a minimum amount of games to gain a general average to start, usually coined 'placement' matches, usually starting at around 10-15 games.

5. With more matches in a tournament there's more of a battle for first, throughout the week.

[Zanarken]

Cancelling it now will probably cause an uproar. So hopefully SE learned from this and will make necessary adjustments for future tournaments.

The community is already up in arms. Rewarding those who cheated the system would be the worst thing SE could do at this point. Best possible outcome would be to reward all participants Lightning card & remove the MGP/other rewards for this tournament. Exploiting should not be tolerated.

[Legaia89]

I asked the in-game-GM-support. As of now, it is not against the ToS to offer wins for gil. So, why don't you join the money-train? gil... gil.. Gil.. GIL!!!

Are you serious? Like actually serious? Because if this was like any other tournament in the world or other games buying wins would not be tolerated. You're probably someone who did so. And IF the in-game-GM-support did in fact say that then this is absolutely no tournament what so ever.

[Curatio_Magus]

I'm torn.

I feel that yes, cheating and buying wins is rampant. Yes, cheaters are in the top 20 on every server. I also think the tournament is a shame purely based on its design... a mere 15 games...

Whether due to rampant cheating and exploits, or a seriously flawed 'tournament' design entirely, I do feel like the prizes should be taken off the table (as nobody has even won anything yet, and are likely to not even be the top 20 in the next 2-3 days), and replaced with a more acceptable prize (removal of a prized card) at least for the first botched tournament attempt.

Then after a review of the system and implementation of a new structure that removes the easily accessible corruption and statistically insignificant amount of trials, such serious prizes can be re-implemented.

As-is, I don't feel (personally) like maintaining the grand payouts in place right now serves the community well based on how they are being won.

[h0tNstilettos]

I decided to post a fleshed out solution that I think would solve all the issues. My original solution did not take into account many technical issues the team might run into. This is based on what I recommended as well as other players' solutions I've read in this thread. I'm describing the system step by step.

Step 1: Registration

Players speak to the tournament registration NPC, and she will show what the rules are for that week's tournament as well as the payout/reward. If the player chooses to enter the tournament, they will then be prompted to create a deck that they plan to use for that tournament. This tournament deck will be locked for the week, and will be the deck the tournament duty finder will automatically use for tournament matches. The reason for this is because no card game allows players to switch decks anytime they want during a tournament as part of the skill is both in your ability to make a good deck, and ability to play it.

Step 2: Playing the Tournament

After registering, anyone that registered will have access to the TT duty finder which is used for the TT tournaments. The duty finder will pair players based on their rating so far for that tournament. If it is their first match, the DF would try to pair the player with other players that are also queuing their first match of the tournament as they would not have a rating yet, or as close as possible depending on the other players queuing at the time. Basically it would be a modified swiss structure. Player names would be hidden until post match to prevent win selling. Or like chocobo racing, players could create their own TT name as a mask for their PC name. There should be some kind of elimination so that the 2 top players end up facing each other in the end, but I get the feeling there are too many complications for that to occur, like technical, so you guys would rather have a pool of players playing like you do now instead of narrowing it down like most tournaments. If so, then that part's fine.

Step 3: The Prize (more detail than my topic post)

As I mentioned in the topic, the reward should not include any affect on gameplay, thus making winners even stronger. Here is one scenario related to the reward card: The card is only available to tournament winners/top 3, BUT it is special card vanity of a card everyone has access to. Only the vanity part would be exclusive to the winners, like 2 different versions of the same card. I understand that you guys can't be expected to make new card art super frequently. This is why the winning card would be in cycle for a while, or have a few different reward card art released at the same time and all of them remain in cycle until the next patch or something. The main reward would be the MGP payout. An example of said cycle would be like week 1: Lightning, week 2: Cecil, week 3: Firion, week 4: Lightning, week 5: Cecil, week 6: Firion. This would continue until next patch, so this way the art team would not have to make new exclusive card art until each new patch. As for the regular, non-exclusive versions of those cards, you could have them sell for large amounts of MGP from the card trader, or implement them whatever way you decide as long as everyone can get them. Only the version for winning the tournament cannot be obtained by everyone. Both are the same card with same numbers in all 4 ranks, just a unique art version for winners. I hope this makes sense.

So basically there is a tournament version of a card and regular version, like most card games. This way the gameplay aspect stays fair and level, while the tournament winners get exclusive card art version they can show off, that only they have. So let's say Lightning could be bought for 1m at the card trader, or whatever way you include to get her, the version that has special art can only be obtained via winning it in tournaments.

[10TailBeast]

SE puts cheating NPCs in TT and now turns a blind eye to humans doing it. Fine game you have there, SE.

[Holyheal]

Just a quick note, The cheaters wouldn't have 15/15 wins. The best point ratio value in a trading scheme being utilized would put them around 8-10 wins with losses to boost opponents rank before beating them in a rematch scenario (it will net them more points overall). As noted by the guy who got 1920 or so points off 8 wins.

[RobinRethiel]

Triple Triad is for fun. All should have fun. Give ALL a good reward for participating and the best something more. Not 1k -> 140k and a priceless card. More like 2k -> 10k. People should have fun, not begin to hate each other over it...

It's too important whom you play than how. 15 games, over. "Oops, so I won my games (and with the plus rule, EVERY match is a risk), but got only (f.e.)1250 points, because I somehow played against the wrong people? And how should I know that? And why can't I do more games, fighting the stronger people, so I still get a chance? I didn't lose any - so why did I lose?!"

In addition, if you allow them to fight against stronger people (and maybe you could create a title, which displays their actual points for this week?) to climb up the ladder, the tournament will go on for the whole week. And when you give everyone a nice gift for participating and the winners just a bit more and not the big jackpot, this all will be handled much more civilized.