What do you guys think about the idea of limiting the number of “tournament runs” a single player can make each week? Like setting a limit of 3 or 5. That might make the scores more meaningful–right now you don’t know if the score you are looking at is “best out of 5” or “best of out 37” and that does make a difference in how meaningful a score is. Alternately, publish the number of times the tournament was played next to the score.
Oh yeah, I forgot to reply to your previous comment about the number of coins spent each tournament. It’s not something I had thought about before and I dont even track it.
I think lising how many times you play might be a good idea, or perhaps even only letting people play once. (You could practice in a normal mission)
A bigger problem I think is that the same person seems to win each week. What do you think if were were to implement some kind of handycap system to make it harder for last weeks winner?
@Aran have any thoughts?
Only playing once would leave it up to the random gods a bit too much.
Given they are starting on hard quite often there will be a boss in play already.
If its an orc or gob and you get jester or purge then your ok, but coins or lies when make the game a lot harder. So if i get one of the latter at the start i will normally create new game.
Limit it to 5 tries would be fairer.
I admit I’m not shy at spending a few coins in game to draw extra cards, i generally focus on the cards being in my deck that allow a fast start and then if i need something else to use coins to get it.
Maybe setting a limits of only being able to buy a set number of cards in a tourney.
Or you are allowed to buy X cards in a game but they do not use your coins and you don’t get to keep the cards, that would stop the agreements that people can pay to win.
Or set a limit on 10 coins that can be used on games or buying cards, that might work as well
I don’t like the idea of giving the winner a handicap, tourneys work to the way i play, for as many to survive as possible.
One thing this question isn’t tagged as blight so i didn’t see it at first. 
Yes, the randomness of the bosses does require that you have at least three games to be able to get a decent chance. I’m not a premium player right now, so I’m typically spending a max of four coins (if any) on every tournament game. Sometimes I have to go play another non-tournament game to get a coin so that I can play a tournament game, so yes, it does seem like it would be fairer to limit the coin use during a tournament game.
This seems dangerous to me. In my mind, it would take away from the feeling of accomplishment of dethroning a frequent winner, and for that matter, disincentivise winning at all if winning one week could limit your chances of success the following week.
I think that issue will resolve itself naturally as the community grows and more people figure out what it takes to compete for the very top spots.
We actually have seen three different tournament winners over the last five weeks, so no one player is winning the tourneys even a majority of the time at the moment. So maybe it’s working itself out already.
Listing how many times people attempted the tournament would make sense to me (it could even be used as a tie breaker). Limiting attempts seems less valuable for reasons already pointed out.
Blocking coin purchases in tournaments would be a better first step in my opinion if you feel like the tournaments are becoming unbalanced, as coin purchases clearly provide a concrete advantage for “richer” players. If the top of the table feels stagnant, then other than a limited player pool, I would say that coin purchases are probably the most likely culprit.
So.
I started playing the tournament in July and at the time, I never thought of replaying a map .
What seemed obvious, as Jay mentioned, is to play (i.e. practice) the map on Hard in single-player mode. (Obviously, this is for most maps restricted to premium players; whether that is “unfair” to free players is a separate question.) Having figured out the control strategy for that map (meta), I played it just once in the tournament and came in 2nd. (Behind Aran, natch.)
This is how I continued to approach the tournament throughout July into August. And I consistently placed in the top 3. As Dr. Bwaa implies, this has more to do with the smaller player base. I doubt I would have such success in the future. If you scroll back through the tournament history, you’ll see that in some weeks as few as 5 players even
attempted it:
Then this happened:
At that point, I started really coveting that 1st place tournament badge, which is also when I started replaying tournaments—repeatedly—to get an ideal start. For the record, I re-started last week’s map 10 - 12 times. But let me be clear: I didn’t actually play the map 10 - 12 times. More importantly, my 10th attempt wasn’t much better than my fifth–which was decent. As Autobahn suggests, I simply had the coins to burn.
Now, I have no problems if Jay restricts the number of times a tournament map can be replayed, just so long as it’s not 1-and-done for the reasons Aran stated. Because in the end, strategy does win out. For example, consider the results from last week:
I’m sorry, but a 9% differential between 1st and second is not due to a lucky starting position, let alone a 23% differential between 1st and third. You can’t just buy that with coins.
That is, starting luck does play a part, but tournament success ultimately relies on strategy. It’s just a another reason this game is so good.
Each map has a meta. Once you figure it out, you’re likely to “place” even with an average starting position. Consider this grouping:
I’m fairly certain all three of us played essentially the same game/ strategy.
More importantly, I’m fairly certain you could replay this map a 100 times and spend 500 coins in the process and not get higher than 56%.
Honestly, my biggest worry is that once a sufficient number of players realize the meta, it won’t be three players essentially tied but dozens, with the ultimate winner determined by one poor orc soul.
Finally, a handicap system is a bad idea. This game is nowhere near pay-to-win. Yet another reason it’s so brilliant.If I can win the tournament, anyone can. People will figure out the game and step up.
PS: I rarely buy 2-coin extra cards in-game; I only do it when it’s a do-or-die/ turning-point situation.
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I admit i felt a little bad about scraping the win off you, i bet you called me names 
Im finding it harder to make the time to play so I’m generally limiting myself to one decent attempt and then leaving it.
So is there any consensus about blocking coin-spend during a tournament?
That’s a really great idea.
The Tournaments should focus on players’ abilities, instead on their dollars.
The 1st time to challenge Free.
The 2nd time to challenge need 1 coin.
The 3rd time to challenge need 2 coins.
Each challenge to increase a coin.
Reduce the number of challenges.
I’d be open to that idea. I’ll put it on the todo list and we’ll give it a try!
I like this idea.
Just had a thought as to an alternative with regards to coin spending to buy cards.
Unfortunately it is a bit more complex as it would need a bit of reprogramming.
Instead of using coins to buy cards you get a penalty to your final score.
First card gives 1 point penalty, the next a further 2 and so on (either 3,4,5,etc or 4,8,16,etc)
Cards bought this way would not be added to your collection.
Brilliant!
If the player pool gets big enough the tournaments solution becomes simple. Host multiple tournaments. Slot in 20 players each with 1 or 2 shots at a map, and payout as soon as that tournament clears.
That’s how many other games do it (RAW for example. Which is mildly successful).
I was a big NP2 player awhile back and am getting into Blight now. I’m making some notes on impressions and ideas, but what brought me back to the forums first and foremost is that I for one would very much like to see the tournaments not allow for card buying.
Being able to buy cards in the tournament is probably a decent business decision for Jay, but I think it ruins the tournament. It takes the fun and strategy out of making a deck. The best way to win a tournament now is to just pick the handful cards that you know you want to start your hand with and then buy cards the rest of game. As long as you do well, you’ll get coins back.
Having tournaments with this structure just bums me out. @JayKyburz – Pretty please at least add another weekly tournament that doesn’t allow card buying, or severely limits it. Ive spoken with a few of my ole NP2 buddies that have gotten into Blight with me and they agree. We were surprised to see a tournament structured as such.
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Penny and I had a chat about this today and I agree this is something we should do.
I personally don’t think buying cards mid game is a particular good strategy unless you are looking for commons. But I understand that this feels like cheating. (Paying to win?)
I’ll have to think about how to do it, but I think we just need to disable the tavern screen in tournaments. I dont think it will be too hard.
Thanks again for the feedback.
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Just a quick note to let everybody know that this is now implemented. You can no longer use the tavern in Tournament created games.
All other game types should be unaffected.
Thanks again everybody for the feedback!
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Hurray!
Is this still an open thread? How would people feel about a couple different tournaments? They would be one attempt, and they would NOT be random, but instead everyone only gets one, equal attempt at the map.
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I like these ideas. Often maps are still largely dictated by what boss draw (Master of Coin vs Jester King for example making a monumental difference). Current strategy still does somewhat dictate you to get the right start to win and I for one will start and quit a tourney game if I get an MoC vs a Jester. Not ashamed to say so, just makes sense with the rules as they are. No reason to put in the effort.
I’d also be keen to considering additional tournament(s) with other victory conditions like Aran had briefly mentioned. Something like fastest to win instead of living to dead ratio.
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