Pros and Customs on tour: Please don't knee-jerk ban it!

[tigerofintegrity]

If we create a SIM tour, that number of participants will be split.

I'm not questioning your logic here, I know many people are only interested in one particular tour, I just want clarification since I'm really still just new here. Can players not participate in more than one tour? So in this case, both the normal and SIM tours? Or is each player restricted to just one tour?

Anyway, back to the point, I do agree with what you're saying. Currently, with TS4 just out and players still finding their way to this site, the important thing is to concentrate on making a really good tour that tends to everyone's needs first and foremost. You do need to have a good challenger and futures system in place to keep the lower ranked players equally as happy and I think this is definitely a bigger priority right now than a hypothetical pro tour. You want to keep your members.

I do think that, in the future, should ITST stabilise a lot more and everything is already running smoothly and in place, this could be something worth looking into. If there is enough interest and dedication from members, it might be something that will boost the community somewhere down the line.

And no worries. I like this process of debating everything so everyone can understand what the pros and cons are. It's a lot like the scientific community. And obviously every decision you make is with the best interests of ITST in mind. Whenever I suggest things or debate with you, that's my goal too.

[Sherlock 117]

I'm not questioning your logic here, I know many people are only interested in one particular tour, I just want clarification since I'm really still just new here. Can players not participate in more than one tour? So in this case, both the normal and SIM tours? Or is each player restricted to just one tour?

You could play in both tours (or all three, if we had a third), but many people won't. So say we have 200 signups a week right now in the Xbox 360 men's tour. Then we would wind up at first with about 140 in the normal tour, and 80 in the SIM.

If we split it up even more, the numbers become even more diluted.

As people lose, like Djarvik said, because they have to play the top level tournaments and can't play futures events, they leave and gradually the numbers drop more and more. On the other hand, if we have multiple challengers and futures events, people find their competitive level and stay, because they have close fun matches. They win some, they lose some, maybe make a few SF and F, and can have goals to work towards.

So Djarvik, like me, probably really likes your idea actually. But not as a stand-alone tour. The most we would ever want to dilute it to is 2 separate tours, normal and SIM. And as THE SIM tour it would probably not be popular enough to support over a full year, for several years. I'd have to agree with Djarvik that this would be a great Exhibition type tournament to host every now and then though!

The entry fee tournament is another great idea. I would definitely play in it. Throw in a $20 prize to the winner maybe?

[tigerofintegrity]

Yeah I understand where you're coming from. I would much rather have a single, exemplary tour where tournaments are always filled and that everyone's enjoying than having half-filled tours with more people being disgruntled about each of them.

I guess my suggestion would be great in an ideal situation where we had unlimited participants to draw from but we don't so focus is needed. Thanks for clearing that up guys. Now I can have faith ITST is in sound hands.

[Coolhand Texas]

Having a tournament where the winner gets paid, is bound to cause some cheating and cheesing. I like the idea but I can just see people who will do anything to win.

[Nardy2010]

My motto is you cant knock something if you haven't tried it.....i don't care if "the normal" way has worked for the last 3 top spin games and last 5,6,7,8,9210020303 years!! If it hasnt been tried on THIS version,then it doesn't matter. And really whats so bad about even trying it or having a test run, i mean really

[djarvik]

My motto is you cant knock something if you haven't tried it.....i don't care if "the normal" way has worked for the last 3 top spin games and last 5,6,7,8,9210020303 years!! If it hasnt been tried on THIS version,then it doesn't matter. And really whats so bad about even trying it or having a test run, i mean really

I dont think you realize how much work goes into this site and what it entails to "run tests" and the consequences of the tests failing on the community and the amount of work it brings. I would tell you that "we already been through this" but then again you will dismiss it like you did above.

Lets start with the fact that I haven't seen a simple and sound SIM idea just yet. Sure, a few people brainstorming and have good ideas - none of them simple enough though, even if on the right track and results are good, first and foremost it has to be simple.

I can also give you a full list of things that never been tried and are not really worth trying

Saying that you don't learn from past experiences is saying you don't learn at all. Anything you EVER learn is from past experiences of others.

TS4 is extremely similar if not the same as TS3 in the way it handles stats, balance, strong setups and pretty much everything about that game. Control are near identical. There are more animations now, larger timing windows and no outs. But essentially, we playing a simplified TS3, yes, that game that was too hard for many. Main difference is that TS3 was simply very hard to learn and master.

We have been testing SIM in TS3 for over a year (and started testing a year after release). With different set of rules. Every test pissed someone off and they left. Every test (but one) failed. As soon as we announced SIM, our regular tours suffered a hit in sign ups, people were awaiting the SIM and it was not coming to through. Remember, in order for this site to function, draws needs to be full. You can have the best SIM tour or rules - if you dont have players - you have no tour. Our priority is to launch the tour, get the ranking in place, get absolutely"must have" rules in place and then move on to other things. Right now, we had one, one ranking update, the game is less then 2 month old, there are more balancing updates and a patch on the way.

I think our regular guys got a bit spoiled by how much work was done to TS3 in its time, rules and SIM, to make it what it was....so they expect instantaneous results with TS4, since day one. Then there are a wave o new guys, some oppose to any change, some just want any change.

Saying "lets try" its easy, what is hard is actually coming up with something worth trying and making it work.