My Problem With the Alliance Tournament

I was back from my vacation in the Canadian Wilderness last night and ran a very enjoyable fleet in EVE, followed by a quick game of Overwatch before bed. I bring that up because I've been thinking about the two games a lot recently.

I picked up a single Overwatch podcast to listen to, Overchat, and I enjoy it even though it spends a lot of time talking about the E-sports scene and the teams that compete. Meanwhile in EVE podcasts there have been discussions about the upcoming alliance tournament and the teams and rule sets and etc... and I couldn't care less.

"What's wrong with me?" I asked. My casual play in both games means I will never participate at the level of either the Alliance tournament in EVE or Overwatch tournaments, yet discussions of the former bores me to tears while the latter I can enjoy.

After some pondering I hit upon the answer.

In the Overwatch if someone describes a high level competitive match to me I know what they are talking about because although I play the same game at a lower casual level it has overall the same basic mechanics and strategies for the most part. I can never be that good but I can appreciate what they are doing that is so good.

In EVE, the Alliance tournament is divorced from the gameplay we experience on a daily basis. In almost 10 years of playing I've never encountered a perfectly balanced 10 v 10 battle with matching ship points and restrictions and bans and an equal start with opponents that don't try to flee. The Alliance tournament setup is not EVE, its an arena game using EVE mechanics. Since I don't have personal experience with that gameplay, I have trouble following its descriptions in podcasts and visualizing it and thus caring about it. On the other hand, someone describing an normal engagement is far more enjoyable because I've been in plenty of small and medium and large scale combat.

Since the tournament use CCP only tools and environments, players can only approximate the tournaments themselves and then only with large amounts of effort. Because of this, I'll probably never get to dip my toe in and a facet of EVE gameplay is lost to me and others like me.

I've argued for CCP developing some sort of arena gameplay for EVE in the past and I still think its true, but I understand this is my problem with interest in the Alliance Tournament and CCP has decided to not pursue that avenue.

Missed Opportunity

Last week on twitter I speculated on how the Command Destroyers and their Micro Jump Field Generators were going to impact the next alliance tournament to which CCP Fozzie replied:

Currently we plan to disallow the MJFG module for CCP-run tournaments.

He followed up with:

If you or others want to argue in favour of us leaving it in I'd be very willing to consider your/their points.

And later in response to questions:

 The interaction between the MJFG and arena boundary are the issue. The ability to launch people outside the arena.

I've been mulling that over ever since and I want to respond.

This is a missed opportunity to shake up the alliance tournament format and breath some new life into the current tiers of teams.

There has always been a tenuous connection between the PvP that happens in space all the time and the PvP we see in the arenas during tournaments, but at least the arena size was roughly equivalent to the typical grid dimensions of your average fight and the activities that happen therein. The Micro Jump Drive of battleships and battlecruisers started to impact that dynamic a little but it was minor and localized on the pilot in the ship and had no dramatic affect on arena combat.

The MJFG of Command Destroyers has far more reaching implications since it impacts all ships in the area of effect and I can see why the initial reaction of CCP is to simply disallow it. But combat has changed a lot in space and we have larger grid sizes and the MJFG has expanded combat on the new grids in dynamic and sometimes hilarious ways.

So why leave the arena size at 250 km? What's so special about that size anymore?

I can see when the tournament first started years and years ago that a size of 250 km would be more than enough for combat of that era, containing all possible activities a fleet could do without including warpin/outs from off grid, but the reality has changed and I think the alliance tournament should change to reflect that.

I think CCP should consider increasing grid sizes to at least 3 times if not 10 times larger. Encourage less in your face brawling and more tactical maneuvering. Discourage ties via some mechanics tweaking, maybe add some warpable objects to encourage movement, but let's see what a larger arena combat including MJFG Destroyers looks like. It may still not be the same as random PvP you see in real space, but it would be closer.

No Winners Here, Just Losers

Last month I posted about the scandal to erupt around Alliance Tournament 13 winners Warlords of the Deep in a post titled "No Winners Here": 

Over on EN24.com a headline screams "WARLORDS OF THE DEEP PILOT ADMITS FOUL-PLAY IN ALLIANCE TOURNAMENT XIII", which to be fair, is a little misleading as the aforementioned pilot himself is quoted as saying "[a]ll things that I hated because they are underhanded but are / were absolutely legal". The article is basically a re-posting of an EVE Online forum post found here.
Feel free to go read it but basically it boils down to accusations from a pilot of the winning alliance of Alliance Tournament 13, Warlords of the Deep, colluded with second place alliance Camel Empire to fix the results of their matches and share the prize pool.

[...]

There are no winners here. DHB WildCat is either a lone whistleblower with a sudden bout of conscience (or vengfulness) or a troll that has alienated former friends, most people will assume the worst about Warlords of the Deep and call their victory tainted at best or CCP will determine that they did violate the spirit of tournament rules and remove their prizes at worst, and no matter what CCP's alliance tournament takes another huge credibility blow while its still suffering from previous controversy like Alliance Tournament 9.

Well, two days ago CCP Logibro posted in the EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion forums a post titled "ATXIII Collusion Investigation results" (post in full): 

Hello Players
After assessing all evidence available to us, we have determined that Warlords of the Deep and The Camel Empire colluded to fix the result of Series 117b (the second match of the BO3 Quarter Finals between the two teams). As such, all Prize ships, medals (both inventory items and character sheet) as well as the Alliance Tournament Cup will be confiscated from both teams. PLEX rewards will remain as they achieved a position in the top 16 before the match they colluded in.
Additionally, the team captain for Warlords of the Deep (Kadesh Priestess) is permanently banned from participating all CCP Tournaments (including the upcoming Amarr Championship), while the captain of The Camel Empire (Bob Shaftoes) is banned for a period of one year from the conclusion of the tournament (until 2016-08-30). This includes any character they control, or any alliance they may be executor or captain for even if they do not wish to fly in the tournament.
A number of players from outside the teams purchased prize ships. The ISK from these purchases was previously placed in escrow, and will now be returned in full. Anyone that this affects will have previously received information regarding this matter when the ships were originally frozen.
The two alliances themselves and all other players on those teams will have no further actions taken against them as we do not have specific evidence that they were involved. However, the two teams will need to select new captains or executors as per above if they wish to compete again.
All remaining teams will be move up two positions in rankings and prizes (other than PLEX) will be redistributed on this basis. While we can’t know for sure that the tournament would have resulted in the same way if the two teams had not been competing, we believe this is the fairest way to handle the situation after the conclusion of the tournament.
As such, the new top 4 are as follows:
1. Pandemic Legion
2. Exodus.
3. The Tuskers Co. & Nulli Secunda

Note that as there is no clean way to determine which of the two teams would be placed 3rd or 4th, we have decided to instead split the prizes of the two positions evenly between each team (5 ships each). However, both teams will receive 12 inventory medals each.
Finally, we are looking to make the rules more stringent in the future with regards to working with other teams. Details of these will be announced in the future, but in many cases, if we think it seems suspicious, we’ll be inclined to remove your team from the tournament.

If any players have further questions, please feel free to ask.

Well, colour me surprised! I honestly didn't think anything was going to come of the allegations from September as I assumed it would be hard for CCP to verify any of them, but apparently the logs do show something and the retaliation hammer came down hard and swift.  Not only do Warlords and Camel Empire lose their prize tournament ships, they don't get to partake in any of the ISK rewards for performing well in the tournament. Its as if they didn't win a single match.

Of course this decision by CCP has some people in uproar about how they disagree with CCP applying rules too strictly or such things as well as about favouritism towards Pandemic Legion since, as W0lf Crendraven posts:

I also want to say that i disagree with the final placings, while nulli indeed lost to pl neither the tuskers nor exodus did. They simply got seeded in a different spot and had to to meet hydramel twice before pl had to, which - just as pl, knocked them out.

In that persective, 3 of the top 4 went unbeated by any legit tournament team, crowing any one of them as the number 1 is wrong and unfair.

Simply not crowning a victor and destributing the prices in a even matter amongst the top 4 would be by far the better ruling.

 Lovey Dovey responds:

That's how tournament brackets work at all. Warlords/Camel were disqualified due to Match 117b being fixed, which is after the match that knocked Exodus into the Losers Bracket. Tuskers were in the Losers Bracket already at that point as well, while simultaneously PL were advancing higher in the Winners Bracket which put them at a higher seed.
That's how the double elimination bracket works, people in the Winners Bracket are seeded higher as they progress. PL eventually ended in the Winners Bracket finals (Match 123a), which again placed them under the double elimination bracket system at a higher seed than Tuskers & Exodus. This is how that sort of system works and determines who is in what position.
Instead of demanding CCP give teams that didn't get seeded higher in terms of the bracket ships they didn't earn, it'd be a far more logical step to argue that the double elimination bracket system is faulty and needs contingencies to account for these sort of things if not have the AT use a wholly different system.

In other words, there are no real winners here, just losers.

I really think its time for CCP to retire the alliance tournament format for something that has less opportunity for collusion and gaming the rules. This latest episode has left me with the feeling that the whole institution for the top teams is just another mechanic to be abused and pushed to the line of exploit without going over the literal interpretation of the rules by the top teams. The spirit of the tournament is lost now as greed has taken over.

No Winners Here

Here we have an example of a no win situation.

Over on EN24.com a headline screams "WARLORDS OF THE DEEP PILOT ADMITS FOUL-PLAY IN ALLIANCE TOURNAMENT XIII", which to be fair, is a little misleading as the aforementioned pilot himself is quoted as saying "[a]ll things that I hated because they are underhanded but are / were absolutely legal". The article is basically a re-posting of an EVE Online forum post found here.

Feel free to go read it but basically it boils down to accusations from a pilot of the winning alliance of Alliance Tournament 13, Warlords of the Deep, colluded with second place alliance Camel Empire to fix the results of their matches and share the prize pool.

The next day there was a response from a Warlords of the Deep representative on EN24.com dismissing the accusations and the pilot, DHB WildCat, that made them:

The DHB has been part of Hydra for 3 years, during AT12 he happily accepted his Chameleon prize without any feelings of remorse of dishonour, and furthermore he won roughly 280bn isk betting on the fact that Camel would infact win with evebet, during AT13 he also acquired his AT ship quite happily and netted a modest 360bn on bets of us winning. Any such self loathing or feelings of despair would be believable, however if the DHB was truly as principled as he wants to sound he would not have accepted the chameleon he was given a year ago and the uniques he was given this year for his efforts.

Hopefully CCP takes this seriously and investigates to the best of their abilities, but until collaborating reliable witnesses step forward it because a case of he said / he said, and most of the evidence (if any) to be found will be on hidden on servers and forums that CCP does not control. In other words, it will be nearly impossible to prove any malfeasance or collusion unless more people come forward.

There are no winners here. DHB WildCat is either a lone whistleblower with a sudden bout of conscience (or vengfulness) or a troll that has alienated former friends, most people will assume the worst about Warlords of the Deep and call their victory tainted at best or CCP will determine that they did violate the spirit of tournament rules and remove their prizes at worst, and no matter what CCP's alliance tournament takes another huge credibility blow while its still suffering from previous controversy like Alliance Tournament 9.

Perhaps it is time to restructure the Alliance Tournament and stop giving away insanely valuable prizes which seems to only increase the temptation to work against the spirit of event. And if supporting reliable evidence comes forth that the collusion did occur, even within the letter of the law so to speak, I think both Warlords of the Deep and Camel Empire team pilots lose the prizes and get permabanned from future tournaments to send a strong message.

Power Creep

On twitter last night I posted this:

Proposition: The alliance tournament prize ships should be distribute to more than just top two teams. Discuss.

I got a couple responses:

Allow me to expand on my thoughts more.

Pandemic Legion just won their fifth alliance tournament which is a remarkable testament to their skill, no doubt about it. Other recent tournament winners, Hydra Reloaded and Verge of Collapse, both did well getting to the final four with Hydra being the team PL beat to win the big prize. In fact, it is my opinion that all of the teams to get to the quarter finals did it on skill and blood and sweat and tears. Congrats to you all.

But how much money did it cost to get that far? A team can easily spend a billion in ships and modules in a match, if not much more. Implants for each pilot (even limited to only +3% or lower) can be hundreds of millions or more each. In double elimination if you fall into the losers bracket you have to get ships for extra matches too.

And then consider some of the compositions we see as the tournament goes on. Not only do we see faction and tech II ships galore but even previous tournament frigates and cruisers come out to play. As Mynnna said in a response to a twitter question of mine:

"Some spend hundreds of billions of isk."

WOW. And outside of the top two teams the rewards are essentially nil. The third place team in previous tournaments may have got a handful of PLEX or straight up 20-25 billion ISK, but compared to the possible hundreds of billions of ISK invested it is a drop in the bucket. And if you don't spend hundreds of billions of ISK to compete, your chances of advancing far are limited at best.

To be fair, not all teams that advanced far had massive budgets.

So it is possible to compete and advance far in the tournament without a massive budget, but just like a professional sports team, its a lot harder. And outside of the top two teams, the tangible rewards are nil.

But for the top two teams, the rewards are massive.

The second place team gets 10 blueprint copies with 5 runs each of a unique tournament prize frigate which are often more powerful than most other frigates in the game and which cost virtually nothing to build but sell for 20 billion ISK each. This Cambion BPC goes for 60 billion last week but does not mention the number of runs. Even assuming a base sell price of 20 billion each you have a winning prize estimated at 500 billion ISK.

The winning team gets 50 runs of a unique prize cruiser. Its hard to get a firm price fix on these as they don't get sold very often. Eve kill estimated the Etana kill at 50 billion, here's someone trying to sell an Adestria last year for 60 billion. Let's use round numbers and say 50 billion as a base price to sell a tournament cruiser. That means the winning team effectively won 2.5 trillion ISK in the tournament.

I was a little surprised too.

Here's my concern.

The winners of the alliance tournament are not just making a profit, they are making a massive profit which they can then turn around and use to their advantage in the next tournament, either for funding the best compositions money can buy for every match in every round, or using the powerful but cheap points-wise tournament ships in the compositions themselves.

Previous winners Pandemic Legion, Hydra Reloaded, and Verge of Collapse were in the quarter finals because they are excellent teams but I think that they have an advantage from previous winnings and second place finishes. A huge advantage? No, but one that increases every time they win either of those massive prize packages. For everyone else, the alliance tournament can be a huge money sink making it more difficult to compete year upon year. The gap increases every year.

I have a proposal to float of course, a simple one that can help alleviate this power creep for future tournaments.

I like the idea of a unique limited number of tournament cruisers and frigates being prizes, but I think we should reward more than just the top two teams (with token cash thrown at the third place). Here is my prize structure:

1st place: 25 runs of tournament Cruiser and 25 runs of tournament frigate
2nd place: 15 runs of tournament Cruiser and 15 runs of tournament frigate
3rd place:  10 runs of tournament Cruiser and 10 runs of tournament frigate
4th place: 5 runs of tournament Cruiser and 5 runs of tournament frigate.

What good will this do? Well, there is still a large payout for the winners (down from estimated 2.5 trillion to 1.750 trillion) but a doubling for second place (up from estimated 500 billion to about 1 trillion) and a a huge payout to third and fourth place (estimated 700 million and 350 million respectively). This also has the effect of ensuring that any overpowered ships are not concentrated and hoarded in a single alliance (perhaps depressing the price of said ships a bit but I suspect that they will always command huge sums being unique, and I don't think that is necessarily bad anyways) and allows a better chance for reward for teams that make it into the semifinals. I'm not opposed to giving tens of billions of ISK to the other four quarter finalist teams either.

By flattening the spike of rewards at the top of the tier you give more resources to more teams to have resources to draw upon for the next tournament. And since there are more "reward spots" you have more chance for a "dark horse" team doing well one year and earning the financial wherewithal for a better run the next.

Ultimately the goal should be reward the winners handsomely while still avoiding or limiting a self-reinforcing cycle where only the top two winning teams get advantages for the next tournament. Spreading the rewards is the best thing to do to fight this.