Guns of Icarus Seasonal

[Thomas]

Are you tired of one-off tournaments and gimmicky rulesets? Tired of not knowing when the next real competitive event is coming up? The Guns of Icarus Seasonal is here for you!

This tournament occurs on four seperate occassions over the course the year, with a grand final tournament of the seasonal champions along with a wild card team to mix things up. The rules are straightforward and simple, teams will know the brackets and maps a week in advance, allowing time for preperation.

Here's how it works:


Seasonal Format

Each season there will be a double elimination, best of one tournament where anyone can compete. Dates are listed below. A team must lose two times before they are ejected from the tournament. The only exception to this is the finals where a team only needs to lose once.

The season will span 2-3 weeks depending on caster availibility as well as number of teams signing up. Time limit rules will be in place to prevent too much time occuring in the lobby as well as in game. Refs will cover each match to call for pauses and resets as necessary.

Sign ups will be open for 2 weeks (3 weeks prior to the first matches).






Champion Tournament Format

At the end of the seasons, the Champion Tournament will be held with the four victors as well as a Wild Card team. The Wild Card team will be selected at random from a pool of teams that register to be the wildcard and have competed in all four seasons. If no team is available that has competed in all four seasons, the pool will be available to teams that have competed in three seasons; and so on.

These five teams will then undergo a double round robin over the course of 2-3 weeks depending on time and casters available. Rules for both seasonal and champion tournaments will be identical.

At the end of the champion tournament, everything is reset and everyone can enter the next seasonal tournament.


**In the event that a Season Champion team is no longer present, their slot will be given to an additional Wild Card team


Rule Set

• Team sign ups will close one week prior to when matches begin. Late sign ups may be allowed prior to the first match ups at the organizer's discretion.
• Teams will be assigned the password to their match by the referee. From lobby creation and passwords handed out, teams have 7 minutes to ready up and begin the match.
• Last second swaps will not be immediately penalized but may be considered for a rematch if the opposing team requests it. A 'last second swap' is considered as changing the ship or ship loadout within 10 seconds before the match start.
• Each match has a hard time limit of 20 minutes, there will be no overtime.
• In the event of a tie, the team that scored the first kill in the match will be considered the victor.
• If the score is tied 0-0, both teams are considered to have lost.
• Pauses must be requested by the team captain and will not be enforced until the ref calls for the pause. A pause may not last longer than 2 minutes. Each team may only pause the game twice. Pausing will not count towards match time. Only a ref can end a pause.
• In the event a player disconnects and does not return within the pause limit, the team can opt to forfeit or continue. Players can be subbed as needed.
• In the event that the match becomes unplayable due to slowdowns or bugs, the match may be restarted at the ref's discretion. If the match is reset before five minutes, the score will be reset. After 15 minutes of play, the match cannot be restarted. Between 5 and 15 minutes, the remaining time will carry over to the new match, ships must stay the same, and the current score will carry over.
• Players can play only for a single team each season. Teams can change from season to season.
• The team (and all players who participated on that team for that season) that wins a season cannot compete in any other season, but secure their slot for the champion tournament at the end of the year.
• If a match is called into question due to error on part of the ref or organizers, the entire match may be replayed if there is enough proof that it should be replayed. If the outcome is altered, subsequent matches will be done over. These events should be reported within three days after the match.
• Rules cannot be altered after sign ups have been completed until the end of the season, unless there has been a signifcant change to the game that requires a revision.

Schedule

Spring Seasonal - Blossoming Colosseum:
Sign Ups End March 28th
First Matches begin April 4th



Summer Seasonal - Burning Colosseum:
Sign Ups End July 11th
First Matches begin July 18th



Fall Seasonal - Harvest Colosseum:
Sign Ups End October 3rd
First Matches Begin October 10th



Winter Seasonal - Frozen Colosseum:
Sign Ups End January 9th
First Matches Begin January 16th



Champion Tournament - Iron Colosseum
Wildcard Team selected February 13th
Matches Begin February 20th



Prizes

After talking with Muse, we've been given the OK for badges! There will be a unique badge for each season and for the champion tournament (winners).

This being said, we have the option of asking Muse to design the badges, or ask for badges from the community. Currently we feel it would be best to ask the community to submit a set of badge designs. Our goal would then be to pick what we feel are the best designs and submit those for the badge creation.

[Thomas]

So right now we'd love to get some feedback, as well as contact information for those willing to volunteer as organizers, casters, and refs. And of course badge submissions!

Right now we're mostly looking for feedback to make adjustments and such, the schedule is pretty flexible, and we'll be aiming for sometime on Saturdays (probably around 2 PM EST as a start or so). If we get a lot of teams signing up and not a lot of casters, we'll have to find a way to handle that (some matches not streamed or extending the number of weeks).

Do the rules sound fair? Did we miss anything important?

[Omniraptor]

No offense, but the last second swap rules doesn't seem to address any issue, because it simply moves the deadline from 'match start' to '10 seconds before match start'.

[Thomas]

That's true, but at least the team has a higher chance of seeing what ship they're up against instead of it being a complete surprise.

I don't think last second swapping has been a real issue in a long time. We could try some kind of pick system, but that could just needlessy complicate things.

[DrTentacles]

I'm assuming signups are teams of two ships, correct?

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Honestly, its better to find an artist to do the badges vs making an open invitation. I talked with Muse for the Aero badges and they were open to community members submitting designs, however, no one took advantage of the open invitation to do so. Interest in it is lukewarm at best.

Overall its a nice idea. Just implementation and planning overtime might be problematic. Remember Muse breaks the game with patches at times. I'd prepare for that in mind. Keep some rules on standby for the worst case scenario should they do a patch before a day and it breaks the game. There is enough of a track record of them doing big patches before or during competitive events that it would be foolish not to plan for it.

Also keep in mind time frame and time slot. Snagging the prime time competitive slot is good but you might face competition for it as other events come and go.

Oh and planning things far in advance, does not always mean people take notice and remember it. For Aero2 I had a lot of people that just didn't even know it was going on till it was under way. Ran a solid 2-3 months of skype group release, public release, stream shows, along with forum posts and the videos. No one checked the forums at all and heck Muse even forgot it was happening. We didn't get one bit of ingame advertising or outside promotion vs Aero 1 which had a lot. Course community activity overall was pretty low during that time. I noticed similar in other games. Dunno why for a few months people were just out of it.

Not sure a good way to remedy that. All I can say is, keep it in the limelight as much as you can. Hope people notice.

Thomas I just had an idea right now for prizes. What about using the Workshop tool to create event specific emblems/etc. Say you win and you get a big logo you can slap on your boat which labels you as champion of the event. That might be a neat idea since badges really don't get seen unless you check profiles. For that, you might get some artist interest. You'd have to run a few designs by folks till they agree on one but its an idea that hasn't been done yet. Heck if I do an Aero 3, I'll be looking into doing it.

[Thomas]

Teams are two ships (8 players). We'll probably clarify that in the rules.


Thanks for the great feedback Gilder, that's a lot of good advice. Right now we're just trying to make sure everything looks alright and get any early volunteers we can. Once we're near the end of February we'll start some hardcore recruiting for refs and casters, then we'll open up sign ups; hopefully that will be close enough to the competition to keep people aware but not so long before it that they'll forget.

It makes sense about finding an artist. For now I think we'll keep the open policy for badge submissions but seek out an artist and commission something.

I really like the prize idea for ship decals, but we'll have to talk with Muse about that. Since their current policy is to give anything created in the workshop and accepted into the game to everyone.

[Dementio]

I am concerned about how people will keep this tournament in mind.

If teams can only play for one season and then a second time for the championship, how many will remember that or even be around?

[Squidslinger Gilder]

I really like the prize idea for ship decals, but we'll have to talk with Muse about that. Since their current policy is to give anything created in the workshop and accepted into the game to everyone.

Yeah lemmie know what they say. Could also just submit a decal via e-mail so its not public. All Muse would have to do is add it into game and link to certain accounts. They wouldn't have to take time to actually create a special decal.

[Thomas]

Losing teams is a legitimate concern, especially ones who do well in the early seasons; since it's a longer way off to the champion tournament. Although teams that do well in tournaments tend to stick around a long time, even if it's just to show up to official tournaments. We hope the lure of being the top among the top teams will encourage them to keep the champion tournament in mind, but we'll definitely send out reminders and attempt to stay in contact with all season champions throughout the year.

But it's only teams that win a season who cannot participate in following seasons (until the next year), this allows us to have a group of unique teams in the final tournament.

Of course we can also attempt to spice up the rewards a lot for the champion tournament. Similar to the workshop decal, we could potentially have a unique set of goggles for the champions who win the final tournament or such. It depends on how Muse feels and what the competitors would want.

[Llamas Unite]

I like the idea of a longer term "real competitive event" and the structure of the tournament that you've put together, but I think your current plans regarding the length of the tournament are... ambitious. One of the major issues that I can see, and as Daniel touched on, is very few teams necessarily survive for a full year, and if they do it's rarely with the same players.

Assuming you held the first round of the tournament in February of 2014 for example, the teams that would've been competitive (from my memory) would be teams like the Mandarins, the Thralls, the Gents, Sac. Unfortunately teams like these that used to be stalwarts of the GoIO competitive scene have either moved on or continue in very different forms.

Using Ryder as an example, a year ago we were an alliance between [sRyd] and [CsM], and from that alliance, only 3 members have carried over onto our current team. Assuming that by some stroke of luck we had managed to win in a tournament like this one, we would have a place in the final thanks to players who are no longer active, and so a clan with a different name, mostly different crews and different strategies would be in the final compared to the team who qualified.

While the wildcard teams are a way of working around the issue, it doesn't address the core issue that a tournament stretched over a year is ambitious to say the least with any smaller online community. I think shortening the event to go over a period of six months for example would still allow for the scale and prestige that you want to associate with the tournament, but would drastically increase the likeliness of teams being able to compete from beginning to end, and over a period of six months it's more likely to encourage teams to stay competitive, rather than maintaining a competitive team for an event whose final is 11 months away.

Just my thoughts, because I feel with the current format not many teams have the stability to enter the first two events and guarantee the same or even similar team for the finals

[Kamoba]

I will say I am interested in this, so is my co-pilot Mean Machine, but arranging with the other members of the team, subs included for a whole year, I can't guarantee to fill a whole team for the whole year..

Six months, still cant guarantee it, but its more likely. So I agree with Llamas

[Thomas]

I can understand the concerns over the time period. We wanted to have a number of tournaments over the year, instead of some one off tournament that left everyone waiting and wondering what the next competitive event would be. This allows for a bit more consistency.

My favorite competitive scene so far has been the Hephaestus, but that suffered some problems of it's own, particularly the length of the tournament, and that it seems to only be once a year. If we try to rapid fire tournament after tournament, I expect a lot of competitive fatigue from players. So the 3 months between tournaments is for a decent showdown, but ideally with enough time for teams to recuperate and do the more 'for fun' tournaments that come and go.


Teams will come and go, and there's not a lot we can do about that. Perhaps having something to look forward to might actually help with the team stability, we'll have to see. I've also noticed that some teams only pop into game for the bigger tournaments. So with the Hephaestus, we had a lot of teams that had gone silent show up again and play competitively. With more competitive tournaments like this, although not on the scale of Hephaestus, it could keep them interested and showing up.



One reason we like the seasonal format is because it allows teams to not consistently lose hope. Once someone wins the spring season, that team can't compete in this particular series until the champion tournament, allowing a fresh team to win in the summer. Then there are two teams that can't compete, and a new team can then win again in the fall, then a new team winning in the winter. Even if you don't win a single seasonal, there's still a chance to make it into the championship; so it's harder to become depressed about losing a tournament.


We can still allow for team flexibility. Even if only a few members of a competitive team remain for the champion tournament, they can replace the missing members with pretty much anyone who isn't already on one of the other champion teams; and are likely to do so over the course of the year as players come and go.


For right now I feel we should just give it a go and see what happens, taking it 3 months at a time. If most of the winning teams from the seasons are gone by the championship, we can do without the championship next time around.

[Kamoba]

If that's the way you wish to go forward, though it sounds like the size of the competitive community may struggle to keep up, especially if this clashes with co-op release and the pvp community gets split to pvp and pve (regardless of new players the pvp community will likely suffer an un-wanted dop )
But it's your call.

[Mezhu]

Great initiative. One and a half years too late, though.