What would you like to be set in place, if there were Planetside 2 Tournaments.

[ZoranTheBear]

I have been working on a setup to host and run tournaments for various outfits on different servers. With the upcoming Battle Islands, I think it would be very neat if we could have
community ran tournaments. Either done by me or others in our community.

I have a few questions though on what YOU the people want to see in a tournament type setting.

1. Would you like 2 people commentating? Who are knowledgeable about the game and it's various aspects? Or 1 person to fill the roll of informant and entertainer.

2. What would you believe would be right to ban? For example, no maxes, no rocket pods, no mass amounts of one class (Such as mass infiltrators).

3. What scale would you like to see these tournaments? Platoon vs Platoon, or squad vs squad?

4. What objectives should the contestants go for? Should it be to capture a base and hold it for a certain amount of time? Should it be a deathmatch? Should it be Destroy the enemy sunderers and whoever gets 3 enemy sunderer kills wins the match?

5. Should each faction ONLY use NS weapons? Or only their default weapons, with a few alterations to match faction specific weapons? Such as the NC's bolt driver compared to the VS/TR's default sniper rifles.

6. Should contestants pay upfront a 5 dollar or so minimum to a. Prevent random people from signing up to troll and b. Help pay for the costs of prizes/shipping if it's not a game code. Or should it be completely free with a lower reward?

7. Do you prefer these tournaments to be live streamed and then published via VOD format. Or recorded and made into a higher quality VOD?


I am mainly asking all of this due to my plans to host and run tournaments for you guys. For either SC prices or much more prizes in the future. Obviously the problem with that are the cost of prizes for an entire platoon if it's that large of a scale.
The list above demonstrates my concern for how tournaments should be held in Planetside 2. And I would like to hear your guys opinion on what should be set in place for tournaments.

[GeoGnome]

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

1. Would you like 2 people commentating? Who are knowledgeable about the game and it's various aspects? Or 1 person to fill the roll of informant and entertainer.

Might need more than 2, depending on where you do the events. From what I have heard on the matter, 2 is the bare minimum, but in order to best cover the action, you'd likely need more.

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

2. What would you believe would be right to ban? For example, no maxes, no rocket pods, no mass amounts of one class (Such as mass infiltrators).

I think you should allow everything. Every weapon has a roll, and since most fights are supposed to be more interior, there should be places to get away from everything.

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

3. What scale would you like to see these tournaments? Platoon vs Platoon, or squad vs squad?

Both would be nice.

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

4. What objectives should the contestants go for? Should it be to capture a base and hold it for a certain amount of time? Should it be a deathmatch? Should it be Destroy the enemy sunderers and whoever gets 3 enemy sunderer kills wins the match?

Base capture and holding makes the most sense. Taking out sunderers is just way too simple, and deathmatch... that would be over way too quick.

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

5. Should each faction ONLY use NS weapons? Or only their default weapons, with a few alterations to match faction specific weapons? Such as the NC's bolt driver compared to the VS/TR's default sniper rifles.

Defaults with some cleared equivalents. This would be a bigger question with Maxes.

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

6. Should contestants pay upfront a 5 dollar or so minimum to a. Prevent random people from signing up to troll and b. Help pay for the costs of prizes/shipping if it's not a game code. Or should it be completely free with a lower reward?

I'd make it more. Maybe say: Each participating group must have A.) The correct amount of people. B.) Pay 30 for a platoon, and 10 for a squad. C.) The hosting group who is streaming will take 10-20% of the amount paid in, with the remaining 80-90% going to the winner. I'd say straight case reward instead of buying cards... let the platoon leads divy out the rewards.

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

7. Do you prefer these tournaments to be live streamed and then published via VOD format. Or recorded and made into a higher quality VOD?

I would say a 5-10 minute delay on stream, but stream it.

[Calisai]

Just a few thoughts. Haven't really thought a bunch about it. I've been involved in a few paintball tournaments (both running and participating in) and I imagine it would be very similar. A tournament with prizes can be soured by non-equal terrain or weapon choices. Even things like camo choice can become a bitching point.

1. Would you like 2 people commentating? Who are knowledgeable about the game and it's various aspects? Or 1 person to fill the roll of informant and entertainer.

I would imagine a whole crew would be needed, 2 commentators, but 3-4 field reporters would be needed, focusing on particular aspects and reporting in to the commentators. Imagine it like football game coverage (including director, camera operators and the like)

I'm sure less could be done with... especially for smaller squad v squad, etc.

2. What would you believe would be right to ban? For example, no maxes, no rocket pods, no mass amounts of one class (Such as mass infiltrators).

Meh, I think it might be better to set all players to 750 resources across the board with no/limited regen. (also wipe resource prior to match and restore after match. That way everything is open to use, but you have to be careful and choose wisely.

3. What scale would you like to see these tournaments? Platoon vs Platoon, or squad vs squad?

The logistics of getting full platoons together for a ladder tournament would be rough. Just getting enough people online at the same time, etc. It would be awesome to do, but I think 12-man or 24-man would be easier.

4. What objectives should the contestants go for? Should it be to capture a base and hold it for a certain amount of time? Should it be a deathmatch? Should it be Destroy the enemy sunderers and whoever gets 3 enemy sunderer kills wins the match?

Probably nothing out of the ordinary. Easiest to do to start with would be a timed attack / defend. Team A attacks first (with ?? min limit) then Team B attacks (with ?? min limit) Whoever gains capture first (or holds the point(s) longest combined time) wins.

5. Should each faction ONLY use NS weapons? Or only their default weapons, with a few alterations to match faction specific weapons? Such as the NC's bolt driver compared to the VS/TR's default sniper rifles.

Hmm... That would be a tough one. Some people (like me) have never touched the NS variants and if you start picking available weapons you open yourself up to "this faction is stacked against the other faction due to the rules". Would be a tough one no matter what and someone will not be happy no matter how it fleshes out.

6. Should contestants pay upfront a 5 dollar or so minimum to a. Prevent random people from signing up to troll and b. Help pay for the costs of prizes/shipping if it's not a game code. Or should it be completely free with a lower reward?

Probably a per team cost (split the total amount of entry fee into the prize)... if you have individual costs, then it is even harder to field full teams and you have to worry about substitutions and the like.

7. Do you prefer these tournaments to be live streamed and then published via VOD format. Or recorded and made into a higher quality VOD?

I would stay away from live-streamed as it opens the door for having cheaters watching and giving advice based on footage. Also, having it recorded will help out on the production value and cost (Can use commentators to tape game footage as well)

[Rolfski]

Just make sure you are the commentator Zoran and you'll be fine.

On a more serious note: I would advise not to screw up with the current game play too much. The more outfits have to adapt to tournament rules, the less they are willing to put some effort in it.

[Ellipson]

Originally Posted by ZoranTheBear

I have been working on a setup to host and run tournaments for various outfits on different servers. With the upcoming Battle Islands, I think it would be very neat if we could have
community ran tournaments. Either done by me or others in our community.

I have a few questions though on what YOU the people want to see in a tournament type setting.

Definitely have some thoughts after the Reachcast event I participated in; we had a lot of fun, but it highlighted some things I'd like to see happen in the future.

1. Would you like 2 people commentating? Who are knowledgeable about the game and it's various aspects? Or 1 person to fill the roll of informant and entertainer.

For 12v12, 2 seems sufficient (it would take one really skilled/charismatic person to do it), but I don't think that'll be enough as we scale up to 48v48.

Depending on the number of lattice "lanes" on the battle island, I'd suggest having two overall commentators with individual "field reporters," as people have suggested, for each "lane." The can inform the main commentating team that something cool is happening in their section and give a little context when the main team switches over.

2. What would you believe would be right to ban? For example, no maxes, no rocket pods, no mass amounts of one class (Such as mass infiltrators).

I don't think there's enough data to call for across the board nerfs yet from a competitive play standpoint. Each faction has a strength to play to right now: NC has Jackhammers/Scatmaxes for complete domination on a lot of cap points, TR has Strikers/Vulcans (though the nerfs to these need to play out) for great vehicle denial, VS has ZOE. Banning anything might result in removing someone's faction advantage, or the ability for a faction to counteract that advantage or weakness.

Resource limitations of some sort would be ideal, but out of the scope of what a caster can accomplish.

3. What scale would you like to see these tournaments? Platoon vs Platoon, or squad vs squad?

Squad vs. Squad for now. I don't think we have the teams for platoon vs. platoon gameplay. 24v24 might be interesting, though...

4. What objectives should the contestants go for? Should it be to capture a base and hold it for a certain amount of time? Should it be a deathmatch? Should it be Destroy the enemy sunderers and whoever gets 3 enemy sunderer kills wins the match?

Capturing/Defending a base. Deathmatch would be over too quickly, boring for the viewers, too unrelated to general PS2 gameplay, and *~*revive grenades*~* would make it a a pretty cheesy/chaotic affair.

5. Should each faction ONLY use NS weapons? Or only their default weapons, with a few alterations to match faction specific weapons? Such as the NC's bolt driver compared to the VS/TR's default sniper rifles.

All weapons should be available or it should be NS weapons only; if you're going for balancing the infantry weapons, go all the way. Otherwise leave the flavor in so existing players can relate and the match can be a showcase for new players.

EDIT: To clarify... it depends on what you're going for. If you want to build a super competitive, no doubt who's the best, perfectly balanced environment, a lot of weapon/vehicle/MAX bans are probably needed. If you want to build this as a showcase of what PS2 can be, I wouldn't ban anything (yet). I would prefer the latter personally.

6. Should contestants pay upfront a 5 dollar or so minimum to a. Prevent random people from signing up to troll and b. Help pay for the costs of prizes/shipping if it's not a game code. Or should it be completely free with a lower reward?

Some sort of minimum cost, no real thoughts on this one though.

7. Do you prefer these tournaments to be live streamed and then published via VOD format. Or recorded and made into a higher quality VOD?

If you're doing this on the live servers, I don't think livestreaming is an option. Reachcast did it with a 15 minute delay, and that still allowed people to figure out where the fight was so they could disrupt it.

Now, if you'd do it on the test server...

I know some of the balance/weapons would be off, but after playing in a match, I would have rather dealt with the test server bugs than the interference. Might be something to try.

Other notes: I've watched both the War Report matches and the Reachcast match now, and the Reachcast match was a lot more enjoyable to me simply because they had a much better idea what was going on in the match. The knowledge of the casters was a night and day difference and really improved the experience from my perspective. Given the choice, when you're looking for people to help you commentate, I'd pull PS2 players and teach them how rather than pulling good commentators and teaching them PS2.

Just my .02. Good luck, hopefully I'll get a chance to jump in a match you're running!

[Phantom Pain]

1) I'd prefer two commentators per faction and that the faction can only hear their own commentators, so that a commentator doesn't leak important info to the other faction (ex, a commentator accidentally says the battle plan that one faction has to the other faction.

2)No rocket pods (One round of rocket pods can almost wipe out an entire squad). I think for battle islands rocket pods are a bit too much firepower.

3)Platoon v Platoon sounds fun.

4)The objective should be hold the most influence in the island within a given time (60-90 min, kinda like an alert). At least that's what I'd like to see, but deathmatch sounds fine too.

5) Not neccesarily NS weapons (since there aren't many NS at the moment) but each faction should only be allowed to use similar weapons (ex. can't use vs weapons that charge up for extra damage)

6) As for paying, I don't like paying to participate, but trolls are an issue(plus I like big prizes ). I'd like to see a mix between free and pay to play tournaments.

7) Not really sure on my position on live streaming

[kubacheski]

Why would anyone want a PS2 tournament? I mean the selling point of an MMOFPS is that there are thousands of people on. Isn't the game one big tournament? Why make the game smaller?

Tournament rules:
1) use every available option to do everything you can to eliminate the enemy and push them off of every controlable landmass in the game.
2) refer to rule 1.