Vets, how were the HP fee PvP tournaments?

Trisul

It's been awhile since they ran tournaments that required HP entrance fees, but I remember they had some around the time I started playing MPQ.

Just curious, but what was the feedback on them? Did people love/hate them? Were rewards extra juicy?

(I don't even remember the event names so I couldn't find any in Events subforum. I think the featured I remember was Falcon?)

Unknown

My impression is that since the format isn't any different there's nothing special about them either so people probably lost interest after a while. It's still won by exactly the same tactic as any other format and it's not especially lucrative from the player's point of view so while nobody seems to outright hate it there's also not much of a demand for them either.

GothicKratos

I seem to remember mostly positive/neutral feedback about them, because since there were less fish in the bucket, there was less chumming of the waters, so to speak, but I was also too low on the totem at the time to participate when the last few were ran.

Unknown

They do not run them any more. That should tell you something.

The original ones, the winner got one of every cover.

The more recent ones, only the first two places did not lose HP on the event and the rewards of lottery of course.

I think the event could find success if they ran it as a HP entry fee, but the events were iso heavy and the rewards were large amounts of iso. Maybe double or triple iso drops and progressives with the placement tiers having generous ISO amounts. Maybe make last place 1000 or 500 ISO. The turnout should be good.

I would run a simultaneous HP event for covers, either Punisher, Patch, Lazy Thor, etc. I would probably put a restriction of no 4* characters could be used in this one.

I would make it where you could only enter one of the two PVP's. Hopefully, the veterans would (should) enter the ISO one, leaving transitioners to clean up in the one for the covers.

Trisul

How big were the brackets? 500 still?

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

How big were the brackets? 500 still?

I do not recall. I do not think they were that big in the later versions. I am not sure there was a bracket in the intial ones.

Unknown

The Elite version had just one giant bracket. The latest one they ran had very small bracket, something like under 100? I think it might even have been 20 like the Anniversary LRs.

mischiefmaker

As I recall, there were two kinds of hp-fee tournaments. The first two were unbracketed, and to say that they "weren't very lucrative" is, uh...well, see for yourself:

Here are the rewards for the first event with a buy-in: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2605

Here are the rewards for the second: http://imgur.com/a/jlKoQ, and recall that this was back when 3* and 4* covers could be sold for hero points. I forget the exact numbers but if you sold every single cover, I believe that was worth around 15k ISO and 2k hp, so ~40k ISO and ~4k hp for first.

The problem with those events is that there is a HUGE dropoff between the tiers, and they were run before alliances, so nobody had any reason to coordinate (indeed, since walkyourpath more or less invented shield-hopping during the first event, nobody even knew there was something to coordinate about!). Therefore, in order to do well you basically had to stare at the leaderboard constantly to queue the unshielded people and/or try to snipe them. Also, the second event lasted 6 days, and the first lasted 2.5 days -- they were exhausting (wyp reports having lost 5 pounds winning the first one). So for many people they were way too much work/commitment for too much uncertainty in rewards.

The later tournaments I recall being bracketed (at 100 or 200?) and much shorter, but the rewards were pretty meh (guaranteed mostorm cover, I think?), so while they weren't as exhausting, they weren't particularly attractive.

Unknown

The third tourney with the small bracket was attractive because the Mohawk cover fed into her featured PvP which rewarded DP covers for the first time. Her PvP ended up being the most competitive ever up to that point.

dider152

This is the first I'm hearing of this. I didn't know there were any, as I didn't see an indication in game. But then, I'm not elite, and I wouldn't have payed money to enter a bracket that I wouldn't have done well in, anyway.

esoxnepa

I played in one where the prize was a 3* power upgrade wild card token. Buy-in was, I think 150 HP, and you were guaranteed a heroic token for playing.

At the time, I was just entering max 2* land, and found the event no fun at all. It basically became a lightning round.

This was before the 2*s were being given out as freely as they are now, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth. It felt like paying to get beat up.

I have found I like that they do not do many buy-in events. I wanted to believe buy-in events would help drive them to create great content. Before the Gauntlet was released, I had called on them to release an event like the Gauntlet with a buy-in. Anything to get D3 to release a nice single player PvE experience. Then the Gauntlet came out free, and I was thrilled. (I don't like playing the gauntlet too much, as scaling means I can only play my top 6 characters. They are 166-140, while everyone else is under 100.)

So buy-in events kind of sucked, in my opinion, but D3 provides great content "free." So use your HP for things you enjoy in the game.

Unknown

Link to Falcon Buy In: Here.

It ran for 12 hours. 150 HP buyin, only 1st place made HP. It handed out prizes to 52, but I think that was just weird code artifacts. You were guarenteed at least one heroic Token, top 2 got Mororo. 2nd place 1 cover, 1st place 2 covers. I remember thinking this was stupid, should have been 3 for 1st, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd.

I think the one before falcon gave out a weird token that was a guarenteed 3* cover pull. No cover rewards IIRC, and same HP distribution where everyone but 1st lost HP. I believe they also used the LR shortie shields. Running one now with shield recharge would be a clusterbomb.

Unknown

I'd think having buy-in persistent PvE content would be a pretty good thing, but buy-in PvP events just don't seem to work out that well because it's dominated by the same tactics as normaly PvP stuff, and if you're going to spend a bunch of HP then you could already do that on any normal PvP event already. I think buy-in PvP would make sense only if there are very unusual rules because anything that looks like a normal format is just going to come to shield hopping/boosts/strong roster which is exactly the same thing as any other PvP event.