Dev Blog - Tournament Structure / December 2024

Hello friends!

We are continuing our development of the tournament mode that was first introduced with the fall update last September. We envision a tournament mode that caters to all players and that is regarded as a fun and rewarding experience on the whole. We can all agree that we still have some way to go to achieve that and that it will be a journey, but that only means the sooner we start the sooner we get to something good!

The Journey Begins

We have now put into place three types of tournaments that are active at different times throughout the week. One is the old Blitz Tournaments, the others are Boot Camp and Iron. Each of them has a different structure in terms of how much it costs to enter them and what rewards they give out. The Boot Camp Tournaments cost the least to enter, the Iron Tournaments the most, with Blitz the middle of the road:

• Boot Camp - 25 Gold OR 3 Diamonds.

• Blitz - 150 Gold OR 20 Diamonds.

• Iron - 300 Gold OR 40 Diamonds.

The reward structure for each is then set up slightly differently. Boot Camp and Blitz Tournaments have a fairly ‘flat’ reward structure, meaning that every participant gets something and the difference between the first and last place is not that great in terms of reward difference. The Iron Tournaments however have a much more top-heavy reward structure, with the bulk of the rewards going to the finalists, with those that lose immediately not getting anything back. Here is an overview:

Boot Camp

• 0 wins: 15 Gold

• 1 win: 15 Gold, 1x Limited Wildcard

• 2 wins: 20 Gold, 2x Limited Wildcards

• 3 wins: 25 Gold, 3x Limited Wildcard

Blitz

• 0 wins: 75 Gold

• 1 win: 100 Gold, 1x Base Pack

• 2 wins: 125 Gold, 1x Base Pack

• 3 wins: 175 Gold, 1x Base Pack, 1x Trophy

Iron

• 0 wins: Nothing

• 1 win: 150 Gold

• 2 wins: 300 Gold, 1x Officer Pack, 1x Random Special Gold Card

• 3 wins: 450 Gold, 2x Officer Packs, 2x Random Special Gold Cards, 3 Trophies

So what is the reason for 3 different tournament types, with different reward structures? The answer is that we want to offer tournaments for players at different stages in their Kards journey. Boot Camp tournaments are aimed at newer players, Iron tournaments at more hardcore players and the Blitz tournaments bridging the two.

Boot Camp tournaments are easy to enter for starting players, you will never lose too much for joining and can even get your hands on a few limited wildcards, which can be very important in building your early collection.

Iron tournaments however offer a lot more risk, but also juicier rewards. You may end up winning nothing, but doing well means solid rewards. It is intended for veteran players with significant resources that they are willing to risk for great rewards if they believe their skills are good enough.

One final thing to mention here is that with the Blood & Iron update you can now leave the tournament bracket screen while waiting for the queue to fill or the next round to start. You cannot start any other matches while you are participating in a tournament, but you can edit your decks, browse the shop or chat while you wait. You will be notified when the next round is about to start. Note that the deck you are using in the tournament is locked for the whole duration - any edits you make to the deck will not impact the version you are using in the tournament.

Analyze & Adjust

This is our starting point - to have these 3 tournaments, that offer something to the majority of the player base, as a baseline. The goal is to get them into a healthy state. A healthy state means participation is high enough that wait times are not a serious issue and we can open the tournaments to a wider audience schedule wise.

 In order to achieve this healthy state we must be sure that we have optimized the entry cost and reward structure for each of the three tournaments correctly. In the next few weeks we will be iterating on the structure, aiming to make it attractive enough to drive up participation. We will analyze the data every week, make some adjustments and repeat this until we reach a satisfying result.

While we are focused on getting the entry cost & reward structure right, it is important that other variables are touched as little as possible, so that the data we gather from week to week remains comparable. For this reason, we will refrain from touching the tournament schedule for the time being.

The current schedule, with one or more tournaments active every day between 12am and 6pm UTC time, is based on the times when we have the highest number of players playing. The 6 hours between 6pm and 12am tends to see significantly fewer players online, which can result in excessively long wait times for tournaments until the overall participation numbers have grown. Once the entry cost/reward structure is in a good place, we will start to adjust the schedule, aiming to open it up some, but this is most likely some weeks away. This schedule applies to the three baseline tournaments only, stay tuned for details on the Christmas tournament below.

More Tournaments

We are planning various additions to the tournament mode, which we will start to implement once the tournament mode is in a healthy state.

On one hand we want to add more special types of tournaments on a regular basis, like Classic Tournaments and Pauper Tournaments. On the other hand we also want to add more tournament rules. The priority of these rules depends a little bit on how the tournament develops over the next few months, but among the things we are looking at are:

• Rank Limitations - Only players above/below a certain rank can join a specific tournament.

• Best of 3 or 5 matches - Lengthens tournaments, but also reduces the times a player loses because of being unlucky, possible with multidecks and/or sideboard feature.

• Bigger tournaments - Support 16 and 32 player tournaments.

• Player created tournaments - Allow players to set up their own tournaments dictating entry fee which is then used for reward structure.

• Qualifier Point Rewards - Players can gain Qualifier Points as rewards (for instance for winning a tournament or finishing in the top X of the OC leaderboard), which can then be spent as entry cost for special tournaments.

These things are all in the future though, until then, we can enjoy the Boot Camp, Blitz and Iron tournaments. 

There is one tournament we are going to sneak in there though - a Christmas Special tournament. This will be active over the Christmas period. It will be open to all and best of all - it will be free to enter! 

It should be noted that while we do want to offer exclusive tournaments that require skill and effort to enter down the road, the in-game tournament system is not intended to replace the e-sport competitive tournament scene. It can complement it though.

The TL;DR Section

• You can now enter three different types of tournaments, each with their own entry cost and reward structure.

• These will be offered on a fixed weekly schedule for the foreseeable future, focused around the peak player count periods.

• You can expect to see some adjustments to the entry cost and reward structure for the three tournaments in the next few weeks, as we search for the optimal structure.

• You can now leave the tournament bracket screen while waiting for the queue to fill or the next round to start.

• There will be a free-to-enter tournament over the Christmas period.

• Later we want to add more types of tournaments, with more expansive rules.

We would love to hear your feedback on these changes, especially the entry cost/reward structure. Remember that the rewards for Boot Camp tournaments should be something of greatest interest to new players and the rewards for Iron tournaments should be something of greatest interest to veteran players. So let us know your thoughts and what changes or additions you would like to see to the tournament system.

See you on the battlefield, commander!