Daily Tournaments - Q&A - Post your questions here!

CLRG: Hello guys,   First of all thank you for posting your questions and feedback here. In particular thank you Aubury for your detailed post.   I regret that I was not able to communicate more on this thread the past few weeks, this is mostly due to a busy schedule with multiple projects and clan events to organise (Soldiers of Fortune, showmatches and other yet unannounced competitions). I have also made changes to the daily tournaments schedule and settings but found no time to actively communicate about them, so here I will attempt to correct this and be as transparent as I can.     The disruptions to some of the tournaments this week were due to a new rotation I am in the process of implementing. To be blunt, I simply wasn’t able to create all of the tournaments of Wednesday and Thursday in time. There is a reason for this. As you may know, I have often stated here that I wanted to organise more weekend tournaments. So I am happy to say that there will now be at least 6 high tier tournaments every Saturday and Sunday, starting this weekend. Indeed, the tournaments started 10 minutes earlier than the indicated time this week. This was not expected but is due to a change I made in the settings after an update of our tournament management system. It is likely to remain this way at least for the time being. There is, again, an upside to this, which is that we should not experience some of the tournament failures and incidents that were reported here since January. I am considering either changing the settings or simply updating the rules to make the players aware of this and get ready 10 minutes before.   Tier IV tournaments were not in the rotation this week, but they will be back soon, most likely at 15:00 CET, Mondays to Fridays. It has also been a little while there were 5v5 tournaments. The main reason for this is that there were not enough participants in the last editions. However, by setting these series up on weekend days I hope to stir more interest to justify a permanent presence in the rotation. My current plan is to have 5v5 competitions set every Saturday and Sunday at 15:00 CET, starting at some point in April.   Regarding the number of absent players, the concerns are valid. There is simply no way for me to enforce a fair penalty for the players who register but do not play. One possible action to reduce/prevent this situation, which is being tried at the moment, is to shorten the registration period to 2 days. It is not a great solution by any means, but a player is more likely to be available for the tournament he just signed up for, than for a tournament he registered to five or six days ago. Shortening the registration also has the additional benefit of keeping the tournament section on the portal “clean” from finished or upcoming tournaments, as only the open registrations are shown. While on the topic of this tournament section on the portal, I have recently requested a refresh of the tournament visuals – logos and layouts. In the meantime, please bear with the ugly blue logos.    Several players have mentioned that they would prefer for the group stage to disappear. I hear you, but the straight up, easy answer is no, unfortunately, the group stage will not disappear anytime soon. There are a couple of internal reasons why, but mainly, to keep the competitive eco system balanced. What I can say however is that the player experience is a core concern to us, so we will work towards making these group stages more competitive and more enjoyable.   Concerning overlapping battles, the concerns are valid, although this logically will only affect a few people. Our answer to this has always been the same – we do not intend for every player to be able to play every single tournament, especially as we offer more and more of them. We jumped from 9 tournaments / week in 2018 to 21 tournaments per week at the moment, and it will likely be 28 or more soon. So yes, sometimes it will overlap if you reach the final stages, but on the other hand you will have more and more opportunities to play. Another answer to this is that we have already shortened the duration to the best of our capability, technically speaking. Shortening the delays more than this makes the system less reliable, meaning more technical incidents, which is ultimately a no go. We may attempt to offer more varied starting times or have earlier and later tournaments in the future. Currently, 2v2 Tier X are set to start at 20:00 instead of 19:00. I will check how that later start affects participation. So this all is in my mind but not a current priority. Also, somewhere down the line, I would like to mix the Tiers and format completely (for example, not having 3v3 Tier X at the same hour on the same specific days, etc).   Now, the capture time question is a real problem. Playing for a draw is obviously not the spirit of a competition. It is something I have wanted to address and already started working towards a resolution since January. You can expect March to retain the same times. As for April and later, the topic is currently on the table. Not much for me to add on this topic just yet.   I believe this addresses the current points you all recently brought up. There are always improvements to be made to the tournament scene, and there will, no doubt, be other issues and points of discussion in the future, but no matter what, I assure you it is taken seriously over here. Personally I believe the feedback of the community is essential and this is why I once again thank you for taking some valuable time to write your queries and complaints here.   Best of luck on the field!