[Mini Dev Update] Automated Tournament System

Hi, there.

(Apologies if this is misplaced, and should be in another forum. I checked the PvP-specific forums, but could not determine which would be the best placement. Naturally, mods should move if there is a better space. )

As you know, April has been set aside as the month for testing the Automated Tournament System. This means not only the stress testing that some of us are doing this week, but overall testing during the entire month on many areas that need to be appraised before we roll this out "for real," with prizes, recognition, and so forth. We want things to be as smooth, playable, and fun as possible.

We've noted the concern that some players are sharing with us about the hours on the preliminary schedule. One wrote to tell us that he feels there in only one night a week that is practical for GvG for his region. That's not our intention. We really want the entire ATS to offer you lots of good, solid choices, so that you have a lot of choices during the course of a week.

So as we said, this is a preliminary schedule, and the tournament coordinator is going to take a look at this and come up with some alternative times, to allow more to participate on a variety of days.

If you would like to provide feedback, you are invited to write [email protected]. Please know that we will read all suggestions concerning competitive play, but that not all will receive a response. That address is for the competitive system -- mostly now the ATS -- and not for general game suggestions, bug reports, or balance concerns. For matters directly related to the Automated Tournament System, though, this is a great place to write. You may also post in fan forums, for as you know, we read those daily.

We'll continue with tweaks to the schedule, testing, and system adjustments over the next weeks. We should be on track to start the system, as planned, in May.

/clap

Next up, Hard mode, baby!

Will ATS interfere with the upcoming builds (i.e. Skill Balance part 2 and Hard Mode)?

[And is there an ETA on the latter?]

Remove killcount from HA. It will take all of a few hours coding at max, and will make 90% of the population happy. Revert to the old HA and everyone is much happier.

Ok, how do you know that will take a few hours of coding? Do you work at ANet?

How do you know what 90% of the population wants? Did you take a poll from ALL the current players of HA?

Stop generalizing and make an argument supported with REAL evidence.

i agree, the killcount in HA is getting more annoying the more HA I play.

Gaile where do I write in with my PVE issues?

Notice how the last 4 comments have nothing to do with the ATS

looks pretty cool I can't wait to try it

I do indeed have some concerns with the ATS- Mainly because our guild is full of members that can't play every day. Currently, our main GvG nights are Wednesday and Sunday, with another possible day being Thursday. Currently, the only viable times are Friday, Saturday and Sunday. For EU, monday and tuesday are next to impossible, and Saturday and Sunday cut right through dinner time.

However, this has nothing to do with the system.

At least the ATS don't start at 4 gmt on wednesday.

It cuts right through YOUR dinner. It is perfectly fine for us (southern EU) most of the week. Hope they won't change them so much :/

My main concern is the fact that winning a tournament can take up to 4 hours. 4 hours is a lot of time, 3 hours would already be more acceptable. Basically, during weekdays the only time people can play tournaments will be in the evenings, after dinner, before bedtime. With a bit of luck you'll be able to fit it in just fine in between dinner and bedtime (I know some people can stay up late every evening, but very few can) but because of different timezones in guilds it doesn't work out (the english people have dinner and hour later than the dutch so the will need to start an hour after dinner instead of starting right at once.)

So reducing the amount of games played would do a lot I think.

I have no idea on the impact of the system, but perhaps one game less of swiss play could be done, and then let the teams ranked 1-4 fight for the first 4 spots and the teams 5-8 for the other 4 spots people earn points for.

Besides that, I'd also like Anet to keep an eye on summer/winter time. I know it's a bit early, but keep it in mind not the whole world changes these at the same time and that GMT isn't changed at all I think.

Cassandra, you have dinner at 10 CET?

I guess the most popular start times for euro people is 17, 18 and 19 GMT, that is 19, 20 and 21 CET as CET now has GMT+2. I think it would be best to have ATS start on these times EVERY DAY, all week.

One problem I see with this ATS is that (at least I remember) only 8 players from your guild can register for any given tournament. I think this greatly promotes elitism and makes it hard for casual guilds to have fun getting tournament experience. Most casual guilds (that still want to do well) may only have a 2-3 hour window of playtime for certain players. A good idea is to increase the amount to say, 8 people that first register, and up to 2-4 more that can act as substitutes should those first 8 have lives outside of guild wars. Everyone knows that things can happen in real life that someone can't avoid, so the game should know that and not be as strict.

are they're any plans to integrate the ATS into any other aspects of pvp or is it strictly for HvH?

GvG as well. 12 characters.

I like this, only problem with it is what was stated earlier already.

btw Make a decent post on soul reaping plz.

Sounds interesting. Based on about 50or so ingame pvpers Im finding killcount is not something most people enjoy. Then again its 50 so i won't say 90% of the population or something.

You need to have 6 people in every match from the first match you played, so you can have substitutes.