Weekly Tournaments 2.0 – How to give less for more?

Hello there!

I’m Sgt_Zephyr, a long time commenter, most of the readers must have seen my honest – and sometimes douchbag level – opinions.  Recently I have been made a member of the TAP team, which also brought new things for me to do.

Let’s begin with an honest opinion about the changes WG has made to the Weekly Tournaments!

The weekly tournaments have been reworked, and the new formula has two goals:

  • Offer more variety in the competitions and the starting hours.

  • Spread the rewards accross a larger player base in the playoffs.

What does this mean to an everyday player? Under normal circumstances (i.e. not WG made decisions) this would mean a change for the better, more rewards, reworked format, more options, etc.

What does it actually mean?

If you look into the upcoming tournaments, you will find that the gold for the group stage has been removed.

This statement on itself is a rather revolting one, if I say so myself. Until these changes were made, any player who could gather a couple friends, or in some cases just go alone, could get several hundred golds weekly by just participating. Now this option is gone. Let’s see the explanation they give.

The reason is simple; from now on, the groups will be limited to four teams to faciliate advancement to the playoff stage. 

I might be wrong on this one, but if my memory does not deceive me, in the recent past a group had not four, but five teams. so they have decided to justify removing the gold reward from the group stage with the removal of an additional team.

Right.

But there must be a redeeming factor, right?

The playoffs will also be limited to a maximum of 256 teams, and several playoff brackets per tournament will be created when there are more participants. What it essentially means is that the rewards will appear to be less significant than usual. We are not increasing the amount of gold we are giving in the tournaments, but we are spreading it better, to reward more participants, in several playoff brackets, instead of only one winner in one playoff bracket. 

Oh. Less teams means more gold to the one team who wins. Isn’t that right.

donald-trump-wrong-meme-debate-wrong

The 486 series is gone for now, which means that players are forced to participate in a ‘regular’ tier VI 3v3 format. In it the gold reward for the first place is 1200 gold. 1600 is given for the tier VIII players in the same format, and 2000 for the players in tier X.

Beforehand the gold reward merely for getting into the playoffs stage in the 486 series meant 350 gold in the tier IV 3v3 format if you placed first, 200 if second and 100 if you placed third – with the third place not allowed to enter the playoffs!

If your team was lucky or skilled enough, the reward for the playoffs was 5000 gold for the first place, 2500 for second, 1250 for third and fourth, 750 for the teams placing fifth to eighth place and 500 for the teams on the ninth to sixteenth places.

Let’s do a little meth math.

In the old format the total amount of gold given out for the 3v3 playoffs was 17000, multiplied by the number of players = 51000 gold given out total for the playoffs. And I’m not including the group stage gold rewards, that’s another story.

In the new format, which also means no 486 series, the total gold reward for the lowest tier variant, which is tier VI, is a whopping 4200, multiplied by all the players getting a reward = 12600. No group stage gold earned either.

On tier X, the new highest tier tournament on the 3v3 format the total is 11800 in the aforementioned way, so the total amount of gold they pay is 35400.

In other words, in the old format’s 486 series the smallest tier was given more gold than the new format’s highest tier. One could argue, there is an explanation behind it, and sure, there is! They are spreading it out more!

To less players. On different, higher tiers, giving less gold to each.

To gain a different perspective, I’ll compare the old tier IV 3v3 to the new tier X 3v3 (remember, the higher the tier, the higher the rewards!) from the point of view of a 1st placing team.

Old format at tier IV: 5350 gold won, given to all three members, making a total of 16050 gold earned.

New format at tier X: 2000 gold won, given to all three members, making a total of 6000 gold earned.

See the difference?…

Well, I have an honest opinion about this.

WG wants everyone to play Ranked instead of playing tournaments for free gold. That is all.

Thank you for reading, Honest Douche Zeph is signing out.