Mythic Plus Tournament

[Lemonbunnie]

Let's do a Mythic Dungeon Invitational style tournament.

I edited this post with how I think things should be organized in this tournament, all rules are either inspired by or downright identical to the MDI rules


Rules and Conditions:


Items:

1. Non-legendary items will be fixed at 910 ilvl
2. Artifact relics will be fixed at 910 ilvl
3. Legendary items will be 940 ilvl
4. Items can only be sourced from Nighthold Mythic and from dungeons that support mythic + in the current patch, meaning items from Return to Kharzan, Emerald Nightmare, Trial of Valor and World bosses would be banned.
5. No PvP gear is allowed.

Players & Classes

1. Players are allowed to play in only one team in the tournament, meaning one player cannot be in 2 different teams in the same tournament.
2. One team cannot have more than 5 players. No back-up players or substitutions.
3. When entering the tournament, every player will pick a class, that class cannot be changed for the duration of the tournament, but spec changing is allowed (ex: John can pick Death Knight and he is allowed to play either Frost or Blood, but he isn't allowed to change to a Warrior)
4. Toxic behaviour between players will result in expulsion from tournament.
5. Any kind of exploiting or bug abuse will result in expulsion from tournament.
6. If you have a tactic which you don't know how "legal" it is, you should talk with an organizer and see if said tactic is allowed.

Competition

1. Preliminary round in the Competition will be a Time Trial: A random +15 dungeon with random affixes (picked by the organizers) will be used by all the teams. The purpose of the Time Trial round is to figure out the Brackets (which team will go against which team: 1st team will go vs 2nd and so on)
*Teams are not allowed to "play bad" as to get a worse time which would allow them to get drafted vs a weaker team. If a team is found to do this, they will be removed from the tournament.
2. Once the Brackets are established, each new "step" in the competition will mark an increase in the mythic + level:
First round will mark a +1 increase= keys will be +16
Round of 16 will mark a +1 increase= keys will be +17
Quarterfinals will mark a +2 increase= keys will be +19
Semifinals will mark a +2 increase= keys will be +21
Finals will mark a +4 increase= Keys will be +25
3. From the First round up to the Quarterfinals, each match will be a best of 3, a team requiring 2 wins against their opponent in order to advance to the next stage. Semifinals and Finals will be best of 5, a team requiring 3 wins against their opponent in order to advance to the next stage/win.
4. First dungeon of the match will be decided by the organizers and each subsequent dungeon after that will be decided by the losing team.
ex: Team A vs Team B: first game of the match is on Court of Stars (decided by organizers), Team A wins. Next dungeons is Arcway (decided by Team B)

5.Affixes
In order to promote the spirit of competition and to make things interesting, affixes like Overflowing will not be used and neither will easy combinations of affixes (like Teeming-Skittish-Fortified), instead affixes shall always have a strange pairing, like Sanguine-Necrotic-Fortified; Bolstering-Skittish-Tyrannical or if it's possible combinations such as Sanguine-Volcanic-Skittsh, etc.


So, with these rules in my mind, I think all that would be needed are two GM's who can watch each team in their respective dungeon and/or stream, the making of an island with 910 gear vendors and some way to make keys with custom affixes.

[Churp]

+1

[Elvenking]

Yeah would be awesome.

I suggested similar thing some months ago with no respronse of higher staff yet:
https://forum.wow-freakz.com/Mythic-making-high-keys-more-competitive-Tournament-t518988.html

[Lemonbunnie]

Well your ideas sound rather horrible. I mean the reason blizz has a set ilvl for MDI is that no one has an "unfair" advantage.

If they were to go with your ideea, the only people who would be on the top would be donated players.

[Lemonbunnie]

I edited my original post with my ideas for how the Tournament should be structured.

[geknnt]

should ban fire mages... kind of too op

[Elvenking]

Lemonbunnie wrote:

Well your ideas sound rather horrible. I mean the reason blizz has a set ilvl for MDI is that no one has an "unfair" advantage. If they were to go with your ideea, the only people who would be on the top would be donated players.

Did you properly read what i wrote?
First of all this was written before mythic+ dmg fix, so entry key req could probably be 23-25 now.

I made an idea with multiple open suggestions, for example under tournament is also a fairness subject.
There I said we could either provide chars with an certain ilvl for example 929 (or anything else we agree on) or copy/paste live chars to tournament realm.
You have to think about the effort behind this.
Devs are working on more important stuff rn, so only a handful of GMs would work on this.
If it's too much work to create all this custom geared chars the copy/paste solution was just for that case (doesn't mean I would like this).

MDI entry rules work nearly the same as I wrote:

source: https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_entry_media/ns/NS6UJKDG7EDY1519830372127.pdf
Such an entry rule like complete 5 different keys >23 would perfectly filter out the best 100-200 people.
I just want to have high keys more appealing and not a dead entry in the armory, everyone with 900+ ilvl can easily meet such requirements.

But this is just a suggestion, your idea is totaly fine too, let everyone on the server join the preliminary round and out of 50+ teams the 16 best can continue.
(as if so many people will actually participate xD)

Regarding your item rules it's good that you exclude pvp gear, but some classes simply need items like tov trinkets or arcanocrystal to be on the same lvl as other classes that can fully gear in NH.
Or some healers would rather take 860 drape of shame than useless 900 cloak in NH. Many people will complain and not join a tournament where half their gear is banned.

Keys: In mdi for tournaments they custom create keys, means any kind of affix combination can exist (like bolster-sang-fort, volc-skit-tyra,...) just as side note.
I could talk a lot about affixes, but having skittish in the tournament might be even more devastating than easy overflowing.
The problem I see with skittish is that every team need to consist of hunter or rogue or they simply lose cuz they need forever with people dying from aggro.
Hard keys would be nice, but it should be hard for everyone then.

So, I am fully supporting you in most points, no need to hate each other. Freakz will anyway do it their own way.

[Lemonbunnie]

Look man, the reason your idea is horrible is because you tailor-made the conditions to suit you and your 929 donated friends and gave little thought to other players.

929 starter gear is stupid because it's an ilvl so beyond unrealistic, it's actually laughable. How many people had at the end of 7.1.5 this sort of ilvl? Or better yet, how many people do you think had 925 Arcano?

My rules, which I would rather think of more like guidelines than rules, are designed to actually make the mythic+ experience competitive, not some fully donated chars running around tank-spanking everything, not skipping any trash or doing anything remotely challenging. They are designed so that anyone, ANYONE, on this server can join with a group and actually compete, that's why there's an ilvl cap with gear source restriction, also why there's a rule forcing people to only play one class, as to not give an advantage to players who have every class and spec in the game under their belt.

This Tournament I think would help with the boredom that the playerbase is experiencing at the moment: nobody is doing mythic raiding anymore and if they are they are not even trying to progress Gul'dan, nobody really wants to do more than a +15 weekly (expect the bored fully donated players).

Also I don't think any of the stuff I said like 910 gear vendor or keys with custom affixes are particulary hard to.

@GMs, i truly believe that if you give players a balanced platform under which to compete in, you would see an increase in activity and engagement with the server. Currently people don't try so hard because they see that a fully donated player mops the floor with them and this only leaves them with 2 options: either fully donate themselves or just stop trying.

[Elvenking]

Useless ilvl discussion:
The 929 ilvl is just a suggestion, you can set the ilvl cap to whatever you want 929, 928, 900, 850, ...
That rule will apply to everyone so it's fair, where is the problem?

I just said 929 because all classes are pretty well balanced at that ilvl what I experienced in raids.
If you provide vendors or the host creates chars via gear lists is in the end the same thing.
I am just not sure if you can create a vendor to sell any kind of warforge/titanforge stuff, they will only sell the "raw" item.
My idea was just realistic thinking on how to get any item at the same ilvl = participants give gear list to host who creates chars.
We could even let every classmod make a model for each class/specc people play with, but this would greatly reduce customizability and many class models might not fit the individual playstyle.
Everyone has in the end either 900, 910 or 929 ilvl why should I have any advantage then if everyone has the same ilvl?

I even said that I support your idea, no need to insult me for no reason if our ideas about ilvl are actually the same.
Also keys have lvl not for no reason, if you set the ilvl cap higher you also increase the key lvl they compete with.
Some examples would be 880 ilvl cap keys 15-20, 910 ilvl cap keys 20-26, 929 ilvl cap keys 25-30.
It doesn't matter which ilvl you set if everyone has the same gear just the keys need to be in the correct lvl range.

The only argument against certain ilvl caps are fun factor.
If we make tournament with 840 chars around lvl 15 keys it would ofc be hard but maybe boring on the other side.
Everyone loves to see big numbers in the end.

Problem I see in general:
Such a tournament would need some kind of schedule for each team to be online at certain times.
I see a big problem if some people can't always be here for every single match and many will just win by default.
We are not competing for real money, so ofc many can't cancel all RL responsibilities for the tournament.
If every single match has to be streamed there can't be more than 4-5 at the same time cuz there are not infinite GM available.
Also streaming with GM floating in dungeons is even a problem on retail (might cause combat bug, or other funny stuff), so every team needs someone to do that = many can't participate if no streamer.

My tournament idea:
This problem is solved if there is no direct confrontation until the very end and rather something like a staircase model:
Tournament has a total of 5 phases each consisting of 3-5 days:
Phase 1: Everyone does the first key and uploads the video to YT (5 days time).
The homepage sync all keys like in armory and lists them sort by time, judges only have to watch the best 16 keys to decide if they move on to phase 2.
If the judges spot buguse/exploiting or a team doesn't upload their key in time they are disqualified and the next lower team slides up in the top 16.
Phase 2: Top 16 have 3 days time to do the next key and upload video to YT. Again judges only need to watch the top 8 of them.
Phase 3: Top 8 (3 Days time) but get 2 keys to do. Add time of both results togheter for ladder.
Phase 4: Top 4 (3 Days time) get 3 keys to do. Add time of all keys togheter for ladder.
Phase 5: The best 2 teams are fighting in a best of 5 in direct confrontation with stream. (5 different keys) //alternative would also work without stream and just continue schema with 5 keys and added up time.

Between each Phase are 1-2 evaluation days to check if the currently listed teams are permitted to continue.
Its just a big ladder and a certain amount of teams climb up with no big stream fesitval and precise schedule where teams need to be here involved.
I just think we simply can't host something big like a de facto freakz MDI.

Upload rules: 1 PoV with fully visible interface, showing all buffs / debuffs, chat and combat log in a specific tab.
It is recommended that everyone stores a local version of his own PoV (guides for OBS can be provided).
If a team is suspected to exploit everyone has to upload their PoV too then. (If your pc is too bad then just play fair)

Sorry for the long post, this is just my idea about this whole topic.
It would be nice if more people suggest something so GMs can gather many ideas and pick the best points of each for the final result.

[Lemonbunnie]

Basically what I have in mind with 910 gear vendors is that all the work would be put into gathering all the gear available and setting it's ilvl to 910 so that players can pick whatever combination of items they want (seeing as how many different classes and specs use a lot of different gear sets for different situations like trash aoe, boss st, combination of both, etc).

You could of course make a list of items you want and send it to a GM, but I think that would be a huge time sink for the GMs to make sure everyone has what they need. Ultimately it boils down to what's easier to pull of.
Also, I definitely don't agree with 929 being the ilvl at which classes are balanced, that ilvl just makes it easier to balance stats and playstyle and again, it's just wonky unrealistic. 910 seems more in line with what is currently available to the vast majority of players who don't donate. (I chose 910 because it's the highest non-warforged/titanforged ilvl you could get from a mythic nighthold item).

I agree that for the Time Trial round of games it would be too complicated and rather useless to stream every individual run. An easy solution would be for players to just take a screenshot at the end of the dungeon with their completed time and post it on the forum. Alternatively, maybe Shocker can make a separate ladder @ armory for this event so that there could be no suspicion of foul play, but I guess that would require a lot of work.
I don't agree with the recording requirement because many players can't record their games and it would alienate players who have a crappy PC, but otherwise do really well.
Though after the Time Trial round, i think it would be best if every match would be supervised by a GM.

The big problem would be, as you said, if some teams aren't online when the match is supposed to happen, but I think this could be avoided by talking before hand with the teams and picking a date and time which would work for everybody.

The thing to understand is that my idea with this tourny is to make it an Event. Basically every week have 1 or 2 matches where people can tune in to the streams and pick favourites, root for their friends, place bets, trash talk the supporters of the other team, stuff like that. The idea is to make people actually wanna participate in the game, rather than having to look at screenshots or videos after the fact. This means that on any given day there would only be two teams going head to head. Hell, if you wanna go crazy with it, you could also implement some kind of betting system in-game or on the site.

You could also make it a double elimination tournament, rather then a single elimination tournament, where even if you lose a game you still have chance at winning something (though this would require a bit more supervision).

Or you could also make something like every week teams have to complete a key with affixes set by the organizers and the winner is whoever manages to complete the highest + in time. Though this would destroy the idea of having a versus where the losing team of a match decides the next dungeon and could lead to backlash seeing as how one team could receive an "easy" dungeon and the other one receiving a harder one.
Hell you could also make custom challenges, like for a win to count every single trash mob in a dungeon should be killed (I'm sure more ideas could be thought of)

Whatever the implementation would be, the smart choice would be to do it in a way that allows anybody to compete, not just a couple of the best players (*cough* remember realm first EN, ToV, NH?*cough*) and ultimately being kinda dissapointing.

Also, regarding rewards, I think besides maybe some title or some rare mount/companion/whatever, players would receive 1 or 2 items from the donation list. Now that would surely motivate players.

[Thiad]

This ideea is brilliant and it would be a lot of fun and a huge event for the whole server to participate in, not like realm first nh when most of the server didnt even know what is going on, although it will take a little bit of effort from the staff to organize this, i have high hopes, the high end-game activity has died baisically since gul dan..this would be a great opportunity to get things rolling again.