Tiered gvg tournaments

Our guild participated in an automated daily tournament recently and it was disappointing to see some very high ranked as well as very low ranked guilds in the same tournament which obviously led to a very unbalanced competition and reducing the desire to participate in tournaments in the future.

I think the tournaments would be more interesting if they were tiered in such a way that guilds in a certain limited range of ranks could compete against each other rather than pitting the top teams against the bottom teams in the same tourny... The latter case is just farming for the top team and a lost cause for the lowest team.

I'd be much more inclined to compete in a gvg tournament if there was a system in place to allow more closely ranked guilds to compete against each other. Close ranked battles are the most enjoyable and feeling like you have a chance to even be competitive in a tourny is much more incentive to participate.

I would have to agree. Making a system that incorporated beginning, intermediate, and advanced teams would be cool. Giving everyone a way to experience the tournaments without putting your rank so far into the gutter that it takes the next year just to get ranked again. It seems as though there is no middle level teams anymore. Your either smoking everyone or your getting smoked. This isnt about screaming "your a noob!" either. I gvg alot and have found that there are many excellent teams, that just by luck of the draw are quickly sitting themselves in the gutter fast from high rated teams smashing them. I could go off for hours on gvg :P but thats a different story for a different time...I would have to agree the system needs tweeking to work a bit better. Who knows if it will ever happen. But you got my vote for different levels of play.

That system is called the regular ladder. Seriously, the ATS is designed only for high-end competitive PvPers that know how to play the game. If you're bad at GvG or not ready to go against high ranked games, then stick to regular ladder matches.

The "regular ladder" is one part of the problem. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if the regular ladder ranking was seperated from the tournaments. The net result of the tournament system on the ladder is that the ladder is getting "longer" with more guilds either way at the top or way at the bottom. Thus it really doesn't work well to search for a "good match" for regular ladder play.

The best battles are closely matched ones, where both sides have a good chance at victory instead of one side hopelessly outclassing the other. How is a new guild expected to work into "high-end competitive" GvG play when the current system keeps them pushed way down the ladder due to matching system that rarely ever finds a good competitive match?

Edit: I should know better than to post when not fully awake... After thinking about it, ranking the tournaments separately from the regular ladder would probably make it worse. The fundamental problem these days with the tournaments and regular ladder is that the matching system... doesn't. I've been frustrated enough with how ladder matches aren't well "matched" to wonder if Random Arenas does a better job of matching up teams evenly.

As far as the tournaments only being intended exclusively for high-end pvp play, why would ANET relax the entry requirements for the tournaments to allow more teams to play? I think ANET commented that much fewer gvg teams were able to compete in tournaments than they wanted. That doesn't sound too exclusive to me. So why can't there be a better system to allow high ranked tourneys as well as separate mid and low ranked tourneys? Scale the rewards based on the average ranks of the participating guilds to make the higher ranked tourneys more lucrative if that would make high end PvPers feel better about competing at that level. However, allowing low ranked guilds to end up in tourneys with much higher ranked guilds isn't very competitive.