Elements PvP Tournament - Suggestions and Feedback

[Sir Valimont]

Thanks Rastafla, your comments are really helpful and give some good perspective.

I just want to respond to this quickly:

PS I also feel your main problem with all this is that you feel you've been treated unfairly which you have not, its the same for everyone and you have 2 new chances each week. So my advise is to play in more tournaments.

When I first wrote my comments I specifically didn't mention my case because I am absolutely NOT immature enough to extrapolate rules based on how I feel I've been treated. The experience was informative, yes, but my commentary is not all about how I've been cheated; it's about the flaws inherent in the system that could potentially allow such a thing in the first place. I think the arguments I've made are valid completely independently of any particular instance one way or another.

Indeed I am ready for next week again.

[Rastafla]

I believe you want the best for the community.

I agree that your argument is valid but I disagree in that we need to address desyncs more and make more rules around it. We treat everyone equally as truthful players until proven otherwise, any other approach would be worse. For me there currently is no tournament gamebreaking flaw.

Besides people with weird attitudes and those with shifty behavior won't last long (either due to boredom and not getting the attention they wanted). It always adds up. Staff in charge will deal with them swiftly.

Are those special rules tournaments supposed to be weekly?

Yes, as much as possible. If you want to play with any deck of your liking you may do PvP1-2 or if you want to compete for prizes do either one of the Championship League or Beginners League. Good luck.

[icecoldbro]

Thanks Rastafla, your comments are really helpful and give some good perspective.

I just want to respond to this quickly:

PS I also feel your main problem with all this is that you feel you've been treated unfairly which you have not, its the same for everyone and you have 2 new chances each week. So my advise is to play in more tournaments.

When I first wrote my comments I specifically didn't mention my case because I am absolutely NOT immature enough to extrapolate rules based on how I feel I've been treated. The experience was informative, yes, but my commentary is not all about how I've been cheated; it's about the flaws inherent in the system that could potentially allow such a thing in the first place. I think the arguments I've made are valid completely independently of any particular instance one way or another.

Indeed I am ready for next week again.

we do not need more rules regarding desyncs what we need is the players old or new should respect the rules(im not saying they dont right now) and advise when a desync occured also always take screenies if u feel the desync was unfair and it would have been ur win no matter what u considered would happen, plz if u are a newer player to tournaments plz read rules first also if u still have doubts PM me or any other vet (we are normally helpful specially to newer players)

Well im out for now keep tourneying
~icecoldbro

[jmizzle7]

I have no doubt everything you said is accurate, but I never advocated sweeping measures for desyncs the way your post implies. This is not a witch hunt, and not an accusation of cheating against anyone. What this is is a simple recognition that the actual RULES of the tournament need to cut out an important loophole. You simply can't hope to fix the problem by "catching every way to force a desync."

Actually, if you had played Elements before v1.15, you would have been exponentially more frustrated with desyncs, because there were many, many more triggers (e.g. using Hourglass's Hasten skill). Zanz has since fixed many of these problematic triggers, and I personally can count on one hand the number of times I have desynced in the past several months. So yes, I would say hunting for potential desync triggers is not only beneficial, but absolutely essential in order to improve the quality of the PvP experience.

You guys have much more experience with this community and with this game than I do. I would wager that I have much more experience in community management and product design than you guys do. That's not meant to be an invitation to one-upmanship; but there really is a central design concept here that I feel is being overlooked. When there's a potential flaw in the system, you don't patch it up on a case-by-case basis, stepping through each way to exploit the flaw and specifically countering it. At least you don't do that first. What you do first is change your system so that the flaw doesn't matter at all. THAT is good design. THAT is what I'm advocating.

You are assuming that we are applying Band-Aids on a major wound. I respect your opinion, but I most definitely disagree. If you look at my Desync thread, EvaRia has done some great scouting work to identify a major potential culprit of the very problem you are mentioning ("time out" desync). If Zanz can fix the problem, you will never have to worry about timeouts caused by desync ever again.

Frankly, even if someone is not cheating at all, if desyncs happen in such a way that they favor one player just by sheer luck, that's still completely unfair, regrettable and should be avoided. And I haven't really seen any reason in this entire thread why it would be so difficult to improve rules to that end. The disconnect seems to be that many of you talk about these things as if they are completely random, and divorced from any pattern of occurrence. In reality though there are two "types" of desyncs, at least in the way they occur: some are completely random, seemingly; others are closely tied to certain players. The latter group need to be addressed, and not excused because of the former. It's really not hard to tell the two groups apart, yet that seems to be the only argument people raise against doing something at all.

If there is ever a pattern of suspicious connection issues with a player, that player will receive a warning (see above). However, warnings are entirely at the discretion of tournament staff on a case-by-case basis. As it is practically impossible to tell whether a "time out" desync is forced or not (I have had several happen to me even in test matches, where neither player stood to gain from such a thing), one must understand that all precautionary measures are being taken to preserve the integrity of every PvP experience, from new player to war-tested veteran.

[Sir Valimont]

Sounds good jmizzle. I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all your responses. I've probably just had bad luck with desyncs compared to the average player ... either way I'm glad the system is being improved because it is not perfect as of yet.

[Demagog]

Suggestion: If both players agree, they can use upgraded cards in their match. This way players without upgraded cards are not disadvantaged, and those of us with upgraded cards will be able to use them.

[Dragoon1140]

Suggestion: If both players agree, they can use upgraded cards in their match. This way players without upgraded cards are not disadvantaged, and those of us with upgraded cards will be able to use them.

This, I support it.  Not only will it allow newbs to still use unupped cards, it also means that a tournament needs to be unupped or upped anymore, since rich folk will still have their upgraded duels with each other.

[~Napalm]

Hmmm... I kinda like that idea too ^_^. I foresee one small problem though, Good players not allowing other good players to use upped cards in fear of losing. Although I don't know how much this would happen, perhapz those with like 100k score vsing those with 200k score idk.

[kev]

There's a lot of negative feedback up in this.  Here's some positive: For the most part tourneys are being run very well and the tourney ideas as of late have been very good.  A month ago the only tourney restriction was no upped cards, and it's hard to be both creative and competitive when designing decks under such a broad ruleset.  Since then deckbuilding has been a lot of fun.  Nice work, TOs. 

I've compiled a list of questions that seem to be asked every week if they're not addressed in the opening post.  I'm not against using the tourney threads as a spot to discuss potential abuse of the special rules but some questions, especially by newer players, are just a drain on your time.

Using some of these as a template may head off unnecessary questions:

• Are upped cards allowed?
• Can any mark be used?
• Are "Other" cards allowed?
• Can mark cards be used?
• In an upped tourney, are SoGs allowed?
• Are any specific cards disallowed? (This requires TOs to predict whether the special rules will result in one decktype dominating.)

Hope this helps!

[TheonlyrealBeef]

I would like there to come something that ensures players they read the rules, seriously, I get annoyed by people not knowing the rules, not just that they break the rules, but also accuse you of breaking the rules while not doing so.

Too many people don't even know the rules of the tourney they are participating in, rules shouldn't have to be explained in chat, they are posted, so people should try reading it for once

[Jangoo]

Tourney-organization seems to work great in spite of many people, not really knowing what is going on, asking questions all the time, getting confused about rules/procedures ... thanks.

One thing I didn't really know about, and which should be improved asap, is "Deckbuilding rules".
Reading the tourney-OP and the general tourney-rules did absolutely not clarify what "Only the elements XYZ are legal. Your mark must be one of those elements." actually means.
In this writing it kind of suggests that the mark defines the element for this tourney.

Now I know that there has been a thread about this a while ago, stating that the element of the actual cards defines the deck-composition, which is now used for the deck-boards to decide whether its a duo, trio, rainbow etc.  ... I think this thread should be clearly linked in the tourney-rules, if it is to apply, or the specific meaning of "legal" etc. should be put down shortly in the tourney rules and/or tourney description again.

[Higurashi]

You're right. We got another player who made the same mistake, so while it's a difficult habit to change, I know I will try to, at least. Not everyone knows the rules around deck composition, and I remember making some basic mistakes of my own when I first started joining tournaments. Now I'm just so used to what defines a deck's elements that I didn't even consider it could be confusing. Thanks for the feedback, and I'm sorry you had to suffer for it.