Last month, I posted an article critiquing the latest round of Splinterlands tournaments (that we had for January and February 2021):
@byzantinist/splinterlands-suggested-improvements-to-the-tournament-system
This initiated a dialogue where @aggroed said he would be open to proposals that the community (especially Mavericks) voted on and resulted in the creation of the public tournament-planning channel on the Splinterlands Discord server. After about a month of discussion, many members of the community voted on a variety of proposals and these are the results, which will need to be implemented by aggroed and @yabapmatt.
Note that none of these are necessarily permanent changes. Fine tuning tournaments is going to be an iterative process with some trial and error. Also note that due to small sample size, the votes that were cast mainly reflect those most passionate or most vocal about the tournament system.
Special thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion and helped in the process, especially @davemccoy.
The first three proposals passed by large margins. The last two proposals passed by narrow margins so we'll try them on a trial basis for one month and definitely re-evaluate and re-vote for the next cycle.
1. Entry Fees for Regular Tournaments
A. Novice tournaments are only cheap for Novice and Bronze league (not Silver league).
B. Diamond tournaments are only cheap for Diamond league (not Champion league).
2. Entry Fees for Gold Foil Tournaments
Cheap entry fees (10 DEC) for all Gold Foil tournaments regardless of the player's league. Collection Power is the only requirement for entering Gold Foil tournaments, not league status.
3. Gold Alpha Tournaments
A. Are once a week.
B. Rotate between Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Diamond leagues.
4. Season End Rating Reset
Adjust the season end reset so accounts above the maximum for their league get reset to the bottom of their league:
Silver 1 with 1900+ rating gets reset to 1000 (Silver 3)
Gold 1 with 2800+ rating gets reset to 1900 (Gold 3)
Diamond 1 with 3700+ rating gets reset to 2800 (Diamond 3)
All Champion 1 (4700+ rating) gets reset to 3700 (Champion 3)
This was the proposal as originally voted by the community. But @yabapmatt has suggested an alternative system change that addresses the tournament fee exploit without changing the season resets. He has mentioned that it may be possible to have tournaments check your league at the start of the event and if your current league would pay a higher entry fee than when you signed up, you would have to pay the difference or get booted out of the tournament.
5. Untamed/Dice Tournaments
A. Bronze and Silver Gold Foil events and Regular Silver league events should be Untamed/Dice (not Untamed only).
B. For Silver, Gold, Diamond, and Champion leagues, have 25% Untamed/Dice and 75% All Edition events. Right now it is 1 Untamed/Dice + 1 All Edition event every week (so 2 Untamed/Dice + 2 All Edition events for every two week block). For the next month, every two week block will instead have 1 Untamed/Dice + 3 All Edition tournaments.
C. Novice and Bronze leagues retain their current Untamed only tournament structure and ratios.
Explanations
1. Entry Fees for Regular Tournaments
A. This is to try to keep Novice tournaments for newer players.
B. Diamond league is positioned awkwardly since it has the same summoner level limits as Champion. Aggroed said that one of the intentions of Diamond league is to provide a safer refuge for players to build up their decks until they reach maximum level. Since Diamond tournaments are dominated by Champion players, they don't seem to achieve that objective. Diamond tournaments are still new so we can tweak them. Also note that this change just affects cheaper entry fees. Champion league players can still enter Diamond tournaments if they pay the higher entry fee.
2. Entry Fees for Gold Foil Tournaments
An alternative option would be to keep the system of higher entry fees and then charge higher fees for Diamond and Champion accounts entering Bronze Gold Foil events and charge higher fees for Champion accounts entering Silver Gold Foil events. But it might be worthwhile seeing if doing away with the league-based entry fees is preferable.
3. Gold Alpha Tournaments
Right now the status quo is two Gold Alpha tournaments every week which rotate between Silver, Gold, and Diamond leagues (but no Bronze league event).
4. Season End Rating Reset
This is one of the more controversial proposals.
With the proposed change, every account in Champion 1 (4700+) will be reset to 3700 (Champion 3). For future iterations, we could change the threshold to 3750+ or 3800+.
We should collect feedback and re-vote on this for the next cycle. Important data points to collect include:
I. How many people actually wanted to drop down to a lower league and stay there for the duration of the season.
II. Whether the Champion league players have longer or shorter wait times to get Ranked matches.
After discussing the issue with Yabapmatt, he has mentioned a possible system change to tournaments where it checks your current league at the start of the tournament. This could very well be a better implementation since the main purpose of this is to address the exploit whereby players use the season end rating reset to get access to cheaper tournaments from lower leagues.
5. Untamed/Dice Tournaments
This is the other controversial proposal.
For the next month of tournaments, for each league, 2 Untamed/Dice events will instead be All Edition formats.
We should collect feedback and re-vote on this for the next cycle. We can also break this up into smaller sub-proposals since some people might agree that Bronze and Silver Gold Foil and Regular Silver events should be Untamed/Dice (rather than Untamed only) but be opposed to a 25%/75% split of Untamed/Dice vs All Edition and prefer 50%/50%.