Elements PvP Tournament - Suggestions and Feedback

[Jangoo]

It really doesn't have to be a hard thing to remember to do in the future:

Tourney-OPs state to read the RULES and if the rules state, that (unless tourney rules state
otherwise) deck composition follows the same guidelines used for posting a deck in the deck-section (LINK), then the whole thing should be just fine.

The only thing to remember would be to avoid unfortunate combinations like the mentioned
sentences "Only elements XYZ are legal. Your mark ... ". Posting this e.g. with hyphens would
avoid the perception that one sentence refers to the other.

Thanks for hearing me out. Looking forward to join the next tourney ... with a deck-list that
actually features legal decks. 

[Higurashi]

Not so much about memory as it is about habit. Habits are hard to change when you go by what defines a deck, since it's the easiest method. When you make and help with a lot of decks, everyone involved have to know the basics, and so we never use any other terms. I could, however, make a template for what needs to be extremely clearly defined when we post tournaments.
For instance:

Only cards of these Elements are allowed:
Only these marks are allowed:
You must change decks every duel.

In this, everyone have to know what a duel is. That info is in the rules, but a lot of people still don't know it. So, while you can post infinite amounts of info, everyone are not going to get it unless they have the habit trained. Nonetheless, I can minimise the impact by having a template that we can apply to most tournaments.

[kobisjeruk]

so will there be any tourney this coming weekend? (06/11/2010)

[Dragoon1140]

so will there be any tourney this coming weekend? (06/11/2010)

There is still a lot of time for a new tournament to be posted.  Give the Tournament Organizers time, they do a lot for us at the moment anyway.   

[kev]

What makes tourneys fun imo is constrained deckbuilding.  Creating something different than your League decks or PVP grinder, and seeing how it fares against similarly constrained opponents.  And there are quite a few really good ways to constrain deckbuilding in the Tourney Ideas thread.

I'm of the opinion tourney rules should never allow players to build, for instance, a PVP Graboid Rainbow.  This week's tourney rules essentially allowed exactly that, and in a field of over 50 players, three of the final four were using a variant.

The PVP Graboid Rainbow can be countered.  Easily.  I'm not arguing that one specific deck should be outlawed.  But the ruleset should allow players to be both creative and competitive, and I don't think this week's rules did that.

While I'm in this thread I'll mention a couple other things:
1. I'd be on board if the TOs permanently banned SoGs from all tourneys.
2. An idea nobody will like: Tourney and PVP Event in-game rewards should be related to number of participants.

[Jangoo]

I'm of the opinion tourney rules should never allow players to build, for instance, a PVP Graboid Rainbow.  This week's tourney rules essentially allowed exactly that, and in a field of over 50 players, three of the final four were using a variant.

The PVP Graboid Rainbow can be countered.  Easily.  I'm not arguing that one specific deck should be outlawed.  But the ruleset should allow players to be both creative and competitive, and I don't think this week's rules did that.

Hmm ... I don't know. Maybe that's just your perspective because you have been playing the
tourneys for a long time now, so you yearn for something "special"?

Personally, I just now found some time to play a few tourneys in all that time I have been playing
Elements. The last couple weeks I was looking at the tourney-rules thinking something like
"Interesting, however: Goddamnit, can't I just use a regular deck for once?"

Since I don't have an unupped decklist, my options to prepare for it were kind of limited.
Well knowing that pillarless PvP decks would probably dominate, I went for a pretty straight
darkness-stall ... and got pawned right away.   
The plan was to come back for the second tourney and go the countering way but something got in the way.

My point is that all this was still very exciting even though I believe to know the meta-game
quite well. I played the doubleedged mono-dark way and lost. So my question is:

What exactly is your reasoning?
Are "standard" PvP decks OP? Boring? Not ambitious enough? ... ?

[kev]

What exactly is your reasoning?
Are "standard" PvP decks OP? Boring? Not ambitious enough? ... ?

Two weeks ago the tourney the rules were unupped, only creatures and pillars/pendulums allowed, no re-using an element against an opponent.  PHENOMENAL.  Each player is forced to create three decks.  He could copy paste three from the forum, but he's just guessing at how each deck will perform.

This week's tourney rules were not as restrictive, and consequently many people used a deck that is already established as a phenomenal PVP deck.  Again, there are counters to this and every other "best" deck.  But the proof is in the pudding: three of the top four players from a field of 54 all used a variant of one deck.  Thus, as a player you're forced to decide.  Should you:
a) Create a deck that is just flat out less likely to win?  Problem: losing isn't as fun as winning.
b) Use a deck somebody else created?  Problem: winning isn't as fun when you use somebody else's cookie cutter.

Shouldn't the tourney reward go to the player who succeeded in both deck construction and execution?  Imo neither option is as fun as the tourney was two weeks ago.

[Jangoo]

I see exactly what you mean and still there remains the meta-game that goes beyond all this
to be considered:

c) If countering these decks is so easy,
why not just use a counter-deck and pawn those guys?

Since I was expecting those rush-type decks to be predominant, I would have guessed that there
are quite a few people who readied themselves for them. Then you may have the problem that
you lose that one match against the guy who isn't using a grab-rush, ok. A destructive fire-deck
however, will stand a decent chance against many other decks.
The reason I chose neither rush nor counter was because I was expecting the meta-game to
have evolved to a point where rush-decks are so often countered that they are not even that
popular anymore ... I was totally wrong about that. 

It could be that such a mechanism would only be established if the weekly tourneys were to
feature no special rules at all over and over again. People would adapt and everything would
somehow balance out again. The way it is now, I suppose you will have plenty new players
fielding their rush and those who aren't new will seize any opportunity to play a straight rush
for once ...

I am still wondering if "banning" the standard decks is the right way to force people into
creativity. Once again, if the standard rush is indeed the standard, then why was nobody
creative enough to bash it into oblivion?

[Demut]

Game Theory explains that. It is due simply to the limitation of a rock/paper/scissors metagame.

Basically like this.

Okay, in actual rock/paper/scissors rock is the most common strategy taken. Literally being chosen twice as much as either one of papers or scissors.

And here is why.

Everyone thinks you are going to go rock, so you know they are going to go paper, so you decide to go scissors but then you realize that they know that you know that they know, so you think they are going to go rock to defeat your scissors so you decide to go paper, but then you think, what if they predict that or what if you are completely wrong, if they know that you know that they know that you know then they would instead go scissors so instead you should go rock, but what if you are wrong and they would instead be going paper like you predicted just assuming you were going to go with rock!? Then you are sunk!

So the logic continues in an endless loop because in reality there is no logical reason one should be chosen over the other. So without a decision capable of being made, when the game starts they just go with their first impulse which is almost always rock because rock is said first.

Likewise in this case a rush is the first impulse, so it is our "Rock".

The counter is our "Paper"

and the counter to the counter is our "Scissors"

And the same logic train above, applies to this. Which is, is the absence of additional information first impulse will be six times out of ten chosen simply because there is no deductive or inductive reason to choose any of the others above the first impulse.

Even knowing this, the element of chance is still dominant, which is why strategy should have a soft mesh rather then a series of hard counters.

[kev]

Blerg.  I've obviously tripped over my tongue.  I could get into why it might be mathematically prudent, given the previous tourney's ruleset and assuming no knowledge of your opponent's deck, to use a proven PVP winner.  But that's a digression.  Here's what I mean to say:

• Without special rules adequately constraining deckbuilding, many players opt for tried-and-true PVP decks.
• Tournaments (to me and I've been told by others) are the most fun when both my opponent and I use something other than tried-and-true PVP decks.

To those who want to play unconstrained there's the option to join a league.

[chum3]

Some suggestions:

- Perhaps have the tournament organizer reserve the second post in the tournament thread and use it as a space to put answers to questions people have asked. (You might not even need the second post and want to keep everything in the first post, but this would keep the first post from becoming too long/cluttered.)
- To add onto the above, maybe post in the questions-answered section some example decks that are legal & illegal for the given tournament (just to show what can & can't be used). It might make it easier for people to understand tournaments where the rules are more complex.

[Belthazar666]

Some suggestions:

- Perhaps have the tournament organizer reserve the second post in the tournament thread and use it as a space to put answers to questions people have asked. (You might not even need the second post and want to keep everything in the first post, but this would keep the first post from becoming too long/cluttered.)
- To add onto the above, maybe post in the questions-answered section some example decks that are legal & illegal for the given tournament (just to show what can & can't be used). It might make it easier for people to understand tournaments where the rules are more complex.

I agree with this, great ideas.