Hey Everyone,
For the record, I love the tournaments. They are basically one of my favourite parts of the game right now so kudos to the developers for implementing it. It is nice for a new player to sometimes feel competitive in a game where time is the most valuable currency and break into the upper tiers on 3 and sometimes even 4 star tournaments.
My Idea to improve on this concept would be to add a new token than can be gained as a tournament reward. The token would basically act like a free atlantis summon when you get 100 atlantis coins. You can use a token for a free continue in a tournament rather than spending 75 gems.
To begin with I want to state that I understand the continue fee and feel that it is justified and shouldn’t be removed. People that pay to play are the reason there is a game to play in the first place and I really like the game so am fully OK with a pay to win element if that means I can continue to play.
Here is my reasoning behind the continue token. Right now the top 1% of the tournament is mainly reserved for people that pay to play the game. Their heroes are better, they laugh at the 75 gems continue fee and gain more points due to the matchmaking that is used. Again I don’t really see an issue with increased chances to win for people that pay, I see it as a necessary evil. The issue is that for a game to remain popular and succesful it needs to have an active user base. To achieve this it is important to have F2P or C2P players as much as it is to have cashcows that spend hundreds each month. The key, in my humble opinion, to motivate and keep these players is for them to be able to be competitive at the game by spending enough time playing rather than money. Paying should increase your chances of “winning” sure, but not paying shouldn’t make it almost impossible to be competitive and that is kind of where I feel the tournaments are at right now.
I believe that an elegant solution would be a continue token that can be earned as a tournament reward. If you are a F2P or C2P player and you take part in the tournament they could give you a small chance to get one of these tokens so that you can use it in a future tournament and you can make a push for that top 1%. The chance shouldn’t even be extremely high, just enough so that every now and again you can mix it with the big guns as a F2P or C2P player. Top 75% should have like at most a 0.5% chance. Top 50% like 1%, Top 25 could go toward 2.5%, Top 10% and above has maybe a 5% chance to get one. Just enough so that if you play a tournament consistenly you can actually try and compete every now and again without spending gems.
As things stand I feel that many f2P or C2P players feel disgruntled that they can’t compete in these tournaments. They join, get knocked out on day 3 and gather some mediocre rewards. There is no excitement, no motivation… It has turned in to one of those chores that might even be worth not doing. If the reward for a F2P isn’t worth the effort then the feature has failed in my opinion.
So to recap. Add a small chance for a free continue token to the tournament rewards so that F2P and C2P players can , every now and again, feel like they can compete so that even if you only muster a top 50% you feel like it is worth trying for that token that may push you in to those higher tiers next time around that grant better rewards.
Thanks for your consideration.
Grts
Imp