Heads Up #1: Pvp Tournament

[~WhiteFang 0]

To prepare everyone for one of our biggest feature that is about to arrive I'd like to take some time to sit down and bring a series of Heads Up topics regarding this feature.

 

In the first heads up I'd like to talk about the global outline of the pvp tournament system and how the system is globally structured.

A number of terms will be introduced and re-used in later heads up topics, but if you have questions regarding any of them, feel free to ask!

 

Please note that any information given in the Heads Up topics are subject to change at any given moment, the content of these topics won't be always kept up-to-date but an attempt to do so will be made.

 

Tournament Global Outline:

1. Registration

2. Event Start

3. Round Start

4. Teams can adjust time of their fight (Optional)

5. Fight Initializes

6. Fight Starts

7. Fight Ends

8. Repeat from 5. until one team is victorious

9. Round Ends

10. Repeat from 3. until the round is deemed the end round

11. Event Ends

1. Registration

- Registration can be set by entering a start and end date. (Setting for start and end date)

- Registration opening and closing can be announced. (Setting to enable/disable)

- Registration can be limited Towns or Guilds (Setting to No-Limit/Side/Guild; Sub-Setting for Side (Elvine, Aresden, Neutral); Sub-Settinh for Guild (Input GUILD ID))

- Registration can have fees assigned and registration fees can go (partially) to the prizes.

1.1 Registration Fees

- Optional, not all tournaments have fees.

- 4 Types of fees: Item, EKs, Contribution Points, Majestic

- Fee Type Item can be added multiple times

- Fees are payed upon registration and will be displayed before the registration is final

- Fees will be refunded if the registration is withdrawn before the registration period ends.

1.2 Registration Items

- Optional, not all tournaments require items to be registered

- Players individually register equipable items, unregistered items CANNOT be used throughout the tournament

- Registered items can be updated as long as the registration period isn't ended.

- Every item can only be used once (Setting to enable/disable)

- Registered items can be viewed by other players (Setting to enable/disable)

2. Event Start

- The event start indicates the opening of the event.

3. Round Start

- Teams are matched up depending on the Round Type: Fixed Brackets (= first round random, sequential afterwards - standard tournament breakdown), Random Brackets (= randomize teams every round - breaksdown like a standard tournament except that you don't know who your opponent will be in the next round), League (= Play against another team every round until every possible team combination is played)

- From this point on teams can access the round information and see who they're up against.

4. Adjust Fight Time

- Teams can adjust their fight time (if this is allowed according to the event settings)

- Any team can change their fight time within the allowed fight window (set by GM in event settings, can be for example a 72 hour window in which the teams must pick a suitable time to fight against eachother).

- Only team leaders can adjust the fight time.

- Team leaders can agree on a certain fight time. Once all team leaders have agreed, the fight time is locked and cannot be changed.

5. Fight Initializes

- Once the fight time minus teleportation time (set by GM in event settings) is reached, the fight time automatically locks itself and the game server will virtualize the given map if it hasn't been assigned an existing map.

- Map restrictions are applied to the fight map along with the additional restriction of disabling PvP.

- Each team member participating in this given fight that is currently online on any given game server will be offered a teleportation to their fight (or atleast be teleported to the map where the event NPC lives).

- From this point on each team member which participates in the fight can teleport to the fight map from the NPC without any limitations (so they can recall if they forgot items etc...)

- From this point on spectators can join the fight map (in observer mode)

- Team Leaders can "ready up" their team, if all teams ready up with more than 1 minute to the fight time, the fight time is adjusted to be 1 minute from the moment the last team clicked ready up. (Can be used by teams to speed up the start of sequential fights - e.g. if TP time is 30 minutes, then in a sequential fight all people are already present, it's stupid to have to wait for the teleport time to be over to start the fight if everyone is present (aka ready))

6. Fight Starts

- A countdown is made to announce the fight starting (countdown starts at fight time minus 1 minute), once the countdown is done and the fight time has arrived the PvP disabled restriction will be lifted and announced to all people in the map indicating that the fight has started.

- Once the fight time is reached the fight starts. This means nobody can teleport to the map using offered teleportation or the NPC teleportation.

- People can continue joining the fight in spectator mode (observer mode)

7. Fight Ends

- The fight ends and PvP is disabled again at the point when a single team with one or more team members remains alive within the fight map.

- At the ending of the fight (depending on the setting set by the GM for the event) either the score is added (in case of score or score difference fights) or a position is assigned (in case of last man standing)

8. Repeat from 5

- Based on event settings (set by the GM) a repeat is done starting again from point 5 except that the map is not re-initiated.

- The fight time is set and locked to the current time + teleportation time + fight delay (set by GM in event settings).

- Teleportation is allowed again (as in theory the fight didn't start yet due to the adjustment of fight time).

- This keeps repeating until at one point 1 team is victorious (depending again on the event settings).

9. Rounds Ends

- Once all fights are played and each have a single team being victorious the round is ended.

10. Repeat from 3

- If the round that just ended is not considered the end round (depending on the event settings), the game generates a new round starting all over again from point 3 but using the info (e.g. victorious teams) of the round that just ended (and/or prior rounds).

11. Event Ends

- If the round that just ended and is considered the end round (depending on the event settings), the event ends and the winner is announced.

- From this point on wards prizes can be collected from the event NPC.

To anticipate possible questions I will attempt to make a Q & A section below with possible relevant questions that could occur from reading through this topic. Questions not covered here will be added to this section as well.

Q: How to become team leader?

A: A player can choose to Register or Join a team. When Registering a team, a new team is created and you're assigned as the Team Leader. Joining a team will not grant you team leader. A team leader can decide to pass on the leader position to any other team member that has joined his team, by doing so the current team leader loses his rank and abilities tied to it and the member who was selected by the team leader will gain the rank and its abilities.

Q: What if someone joins my team and I don't want to team with them?

A: The leader of a team can kick anyone from their team as long as the registration period didn't end.

Q: What if I join the wrong team?

A: Players can withdraw from a team as long as the registration period didn't end.

Q: What about last-second-joiners who join my team when I'm offline?

A: Unfortunate for your team, ideally you'd compose a complete team and go together to register, the leader registers and the others join. This way you avoid registering a team which is then filled by random people.

Q: I am 1 second late for my fight, am I screwed?

A: Essentially yes you are. In normal circumstances there will be sufficient teleportation time available. As your fight map is available at fight time minus teleport time, you should have sufficient time to teleport to your fight.

Q: Spectator mode (observer mode), what is this?

A: Spectator mode uses an existing GM feature called observer mode. This spectator mode removes all dialogs on your screen and changes your mouse cursor. It allows your to freely move anywhere on the map without your character being present. Essentially you are not even present in the map at all.

Q: Can spectators interact with the fighters?

A: No, spectators can in no way interact or talk to fights. As dialogs are disabled, a spectator cannot do anything. All spectator chatting is always local chat (white), so they cannot reveal any sensitive information. Also spectators see the fights as enemies and therefore cannot see any of their conditions (amp/pfm/pfa/etc...). Passing pots, items etc cannot be done by spectators as they don't have dialogs and the server forbids such actions (as the server knows you're spectating).

Q: What is "score" and "score diff"?

A: This part isn't covered in this heads up and will be covered later. I won't cover it fully detailed in this answer, but briefly I can say that score is a certain amount of points you need to obtain to win that specific fight and score diff is the difference between your score and any other opponents score (e.g. In tennis to win a set, you need a score of 6 to win and a diff of 2 points, so you can't win with a score of 5 vs 6, you'd need to play once more and win to get 5 vs 7 as your need a difference of 2 points and a minimum of 6 points to win).

Q: What is Last Man Standing?

A: Will be covered in detail on a next heads up topic, but briefly I can say Last Man Standing (LMS) is a type of tournaments to play (Other types include Capture the Flag (CTF) and Hold the Point (HTP)). Mainly LMS is standard pvp fighting, last player to survive wins. This type also determines how scoring is done, for LMS you score a point if your team is the last surviving team and for CTF you'd score a point if you return the flag to your base while your flag is present in your base while for other types like HTP or possibly even more types scoring can be different.

Q: What is an "ending round"?

A: An ending round is the final round of the tournament. Depending on the round type (mainly Brackets or League for now) the ending is determined differently. In brackets the ending round is the round in which only 1 fight is played, while for league the ending round is the round in which all possible combinations of fights are fought (e.g. XvX with 8 teams, the ending round is round 7 as you have 7 opposing teams. e.g. XvXvX with 9 teams, the ending round is 28 (if my math is correct xD). The more XvXvX... there is, the more rounds are required to play all possible combinations).

Q: What's the difference between XvX and XvXvX

A: XvX there are 2 teams in a single fight, each team can then on its own have a given number of members. So a 5v5 would be 2 teams fighting with each team having 5 members, thus 10 people in a single fight. Where XvXvX is 3 teams in a single fight, then again you can apply the same as above, in a 5v5v5 you'd get 3 teams of 5 members, thus 15 people in a single fight. More "vX" are added as more teams are in the same fight. It sounds fairly strange and new as this is a kind of fights never played before in Helbreath, in XvXvX a different strategy is required as you're opposing 2 teams, which on their own oppose eachother... Logically you can see that you could make a deal with either team to eliminate the third team, but then in the end you'd still have to face the team you made the deal with... Anything is kind of possible and things can also flip from one side to the other if the deal is broken by one of the team members... As you can see, these new kind of fight sizes allow new and interesting pvping aspects ;)

Q: Virtualize the map? can you explain this?

A: Virtual maps is a feature that has been in Nemesis for a long time now but never has been used accordingly. It was originally invented with the purpose to serve Guild Halls and PvP Tournaments. Essentially all tournament maps will be virtual maps, that are maps of which only configuration is known by the game server. Once a GM or server requests to visit such map, its settings are loaded and the map is created. For example Arena is a virtual map, it doesn't exist, only its configs are known. Once a tournament starts, multiple fights need to be played in an identical environment. The server will then use the Arena map configs and create a number of Arenas (virtualize them) and internally name them arena1, arena2, arena3, etc... for as many as there are required. Each Arena is then assigned a specific fight in case of tournaments so the server knows which fight belongs to which map and visa versa. For the players these arena1, 2, 3 will all look identical, act identical and be identical, they'll all carry the name "Arena". Therefore, for a player there is no way to determine in which arena number they are (only GMs can actually see/know this). This technique of virtual maps allows us to host for example multiple 1v1 fights which will be equal and fair for everyone as all fights take place in an identical environment, yet one 1v1 match doesn't affect or interact with another 1v1 as technically they take place in different maps, yet for the player this appears to be an identical map.

[KeNZo 0]

AWESOME!!