[2022] Feedback Friday - In-Game Tournaments

Hi sokastocal! So glad you enjoy extra modes tournaments! There is currently one scheduled everyday in NA and EU and one in most other regions on the weekends! We funnel all of our Extra Mode enthusiasts to one timeslot to make sure that they get the best possible matchmaking experience when playing. Hope to see you in the next hoops tourney!

Sorry you got a ban! So we do take measures to try and make this a bit less painful. If you join a tournament and your partner ALSO joins BUT IS AFK, after a bit of time the required number of players for a forfeit is reduced so you can leave the match without penalty with only one ff vote. If your 2nd player doesn't show up at all (like in your case) you will be able to ff and leave without penalty; BUT, you still need to wait 90 seconds before you can ff and avoid a ban.

We've explored the idea of offering up rewards for player made custom tournaments before, but the issue that arises is it creates an opportunity for players to easily transfer these rewards across accounts through the system.

Thanks for sharing this idea! We've thought about this and other Tournament Titles before but decided it was best to keep the same title for all Tournaments.

Having a generic Extra Modes Tournament isn't a bad idea, although S# [Rank Icon] Extra Modes Tournament Winner may be too long to fit comfortably.

Sup Kz, thank you for the thoughts. Soooo, to be honest, I really dug into this when designing tournaments. xD 1/ When you lose, we aren't able to let you spectate another game at the moment for a variety of reasons. The main causes are that there's a hard cap of 10 players able to join an online match so not all players who want to spectate would be able to do so, and maybe more importantly, there is a potential performance hit for players when a player joins a match. Not ideal for a highly competitive game mode like tournaments. 2/This one was potentially doable, but (due to the cap mentioned above) we'd only be able to let you and your team spectate the match that you were waiting for. The potential performance hit is still an issue, so you'd have to wait for a break in the action to join (like politely waiting to take your seat in between scenes at a theatrical performance). Lastly, there is the argument that you'd be getting a potential advantage over the players you are about to play. Not super fair, especially if you won due to a disconnect or a non-blowout ff. We opted for a cleaner implementation because of these concerns.

Glad to hear that you enjoy playing Tournaments! We've been discussing this internally as mentioned by u/Psyonix_Ted here.

The feature could still be used to transfer items or credits which devalues those items and credits that are being earned honestly by other players. To touch on the reasoning quickly...anyone could create a 1v1 tournament with 3 rounds with a pw and only tell 1 other person the pw. Then both players would get a bye until the finals and 1 player could just let the other player win. Thus transferring the credits/items/whatever.

Suuuuure, let's talk about 1v1 tournaments!

Many of you have been asking about them, so here I am to give you some context as to why they aren't currently part of the feature's design.

So, a large issue with adding 1v1 tournaments connects to how scheduled Tournaments must be structured to begin with. The most important 2 Tournament requirements that relate to 1v1 tournaments are:

• Tournaments must start at a specific time and their round times are finite.
• A tournament time slot must have a known list of all participating players at its exact start time.

Cool. Without getting too deep into the weeds, larger team sizes allow us to service more players within a single tournament time slot. You'll notice that sometimes when you sign up for a tournament, your first match does not start immediately. Sometimes we supply you with an estimated wait. During that wait, the system is working through every team participating in the tournament at EVERY skill level and pairing them with their tournament and with their specific round 1 match. In a 3v3 tournament we can make this tournament available to 3 times as many people because we process match pairings by team. In a 1v1 tournament this process would take roughly 3 times as long for the same number of players. This means that we would either have to limit the number of players able to join a tournament--not super fair, or make some players wait much longer to get into their first match. If players are waiting longer to get into their first match, this limits the amount of time they would have to complete that match before hitting the match time limit required for the 2nd match to start on time (or for the losing team to have enough time to join the 2nd chance tourney)--also not fair.

Solving these issues and the others not articulated here is a non-trivial affair. This doesn't mean I'm guaranteeing you that there won't ever be 1v1 tournaments. We know it's a popular request within this community. But, hopefully this explanation gives a little extra context as to why they are not in the game right now. Please understand that we are listening and doing everything in our power to design the best possible experience for you. =)

Hiya other other alt alt! The cost of our reward tiers are carefully balanced to not make grinding a specific reward bucket more efficient than redeeming the higher tiers. They're set up to give you a clear choice between the likelihoods of specific reward rarities.

Sup Frogblaster. Glad you like tournaments, I do too! The thought of bringing back fan favorite tournament rewards has been talked about internally and I honestly really like the idea, being able to trade up BM Tournament rewards is a topic of conversation internally as well, and hopefully my other post pertaining to 1v1 tournaments gave some good context. Thanks for the post!

Hi!!! Gariet1!!! I like where your head is at. There is definitely some higher level competitive potential that still exists within the Tournaments feature. As you say, to expand Tournaments in this way would take quite a bit of resources. But know that your idea is heard and that it's a good one! Thanks for the post.

Sup, h_word. Hope you're good. I'm glad to hear that you're impressed with the Tournaments update and that you're specifically calling out one of my favorite features. Pretty dope.

Your suggestion has definitely been considered previously, it had a few sticking points with how it would be designed and implemented. One such sticking point was that adding more playlist options would split up players and could create less fair matches for both playlists. That said, exploring this option again in the future is not out of the question.

Yea, this has definitely been something players have brought up. I'm not promising ANYTHING here, but there is possibly potential for expanding the Tournaments schedule again at some point, even if just a little. IF this happened, it would create the opportunity for an off hours tournament that helps players still enjoy the feature who can't during its current slots. Inevitably, tournaments time slots will not ever work for every single player. They are intended to feel more special than a regular competitive match and this is partially brought on by the fact that they are not accessible at all times. Tournaments are currently during peak play hours within their regions, this creates the the most competitive matches possible, which is needed for a feature like this; but, this doesn't mean that a single off hours tournament wouldn't receive enough interest to also be at the necessary level of competition. We see you and the many others who've asked for more tournament slots, again no promises, but you're not being ignored.

Hi there, Akerlake! Fundamentally, we want to reward players for improving their Rocket League skills. Tournaments are the highest level of competition in the game, so we want to reward players who are the most competitive. This is done as tactfully as we can. It is still possible for players opening the lower reward tiers to get the rarest rewards. We also did not want lower ranked players to spend all of their time grinding for a small number of rewards of a higher tier, those players are going to feel the most reward by purchasing the reward tier that their tournament payouts support. We believe this is a very strong player experience that is fair for players of every rank. Thanks for your post!