Lets take a look at what happened here:
The tournament is setup to be 1pm server time, there are 6 teams entering. 30 people from around the world who are entering the tournament gather, keep in mind for many players this is occuring from 3am-6am. It's a bit messy grouping everyone together, and there even is an untimely patch implemented regarding the new map, if you relog or open a new client you need to patch. Eventually the first match is started, AcesOfSpades vs OrganizationXIII. One player disconnects, has to patch and logs back in. The teams are about to fight when, wait a minute..... they're not even set to pvp; they can't even target each other. Everyone gets re-entered in a party to be legible to fight. The fight begins, (in a new Orlo map that doesn't even have textures loaded properly).
The match goes on for I don't know.... 40 minutes maybe? Since a time limit was never established and both teams can continuously resurrect eachother indefinitely no team can fully wipe out the other. Eventually Zilp on OrganizationXIII disconnects and Andrasyte calls a halt and everything is delayed until next week with rule adjustments.
Lets think about this for a minute.... Technical difficulties aside, are you really going to gather all of the entrants together from around the world at a once and not even finish a single game? And then pass it off after the miniscule time frame of 1.5 hours like nothing happened?
It's obvious that there needs to be some adjustment, but scheduling such a small amount of time throughout multiple days is extremely disrespectul to the players and community. Leonis, finished the 2014 tourney in one day... Calanor/Shazamo finished the 2012 tourney in one day. At the absolute least, allocate a reasonable amount of time for this event. 1.5 hours is not enough, especially with all of the issues that were at hand. Even if the tournament is not to be finished in one day, at the very least schedule enough time to play all of the round ones. Atleast this way, the team who are knocked out won't need to be present for the next week.
Now lets look at the stalemate issue. I hope this sets an example of why there needs to be some class balancing. Because of resurrections neither team was able to fully kill eachother.
I don't beleive disabling res completely is the answer either and it also potentially results in some matches being over in 20 seconds. Note, AcesofSpades vs OrganizationXIII was not one of those on account that Aces had a highly defensive team to begin with. Though if it accounts for anything, there were far more deaths on OrganzationXIII's side than vice versa.
I beleive instilling a time limit is a good answer (I would say 10 minutes) and if there is no clear victor then the winner should be the team who had more kills. Resurrecting will be allowed, but would actually be more a liability if you can't actually kill the opponent. I'm sure there is a way to track this as all 3 GA pvp modes keep track of kills.
I also think Feuer's suggestion is fair too, only allow one player on the team to be a designated resser. Say you have 1 cleric and 2 mages, that cleric will be chosen as the designated resser. Everyone one else on the team, take the skill off of your toolbar; if you use it on your allies it's a match loss. Resurrect is still part of the game and should be tactical and not removed completely. I don't think limiting clerics is the answer, especially since people signed up already and may still want to play on their character, I think limiting, but not removing resurrect completely is more fair.
Also consider simply adding a respawn time like Junon Cartel and Game Arena PvP games have. Once your'e dead for 10 seconds, you respawn.
Lastly lets just look at these resurrect skills:
Soul Revive:
This is the basic skill. It costs 5 points to max, has the longest cooldown of 7 seconds and the longest range of 25m.
Soul Recall:
This is the unique skill. it has Soul Restore as a prerequisite and maxes at level 3. It has the second longest cooldown at 2.5 seconds and 10m range.
Soul Restore:
This is the Item mall skill, it costs 0 points to max and has the shortest cooldown at 1 second and has 10m range. It however has a slightly higher mp cost to cast.
Soul Restore is the one everyone uses because it doesn't cost any skill points, and has a cooldown shorter than every active skill in the game. This potentially causes imbalance in pvp for reasons we saw just now. Obviously there are bad times to res an ally, but if both teams are balanced and as long as your team isn't significantly weaker than the other it can be very strong. It's even more powerful when one team has multiple classes that can cast it, ie mages.
The high(ish) mp cost of casting res is less of a factor the higher level and stronger the castor is. Because at this point they will have gear and passives which increase their mp consumption and mp recovery far better than if it was on a low level muse using it.
At some point or another, the cooldowns on them should be increased, specifically Soul Restore as it does not require any points to invest into. The muse tree ones are also a deterrent for mages to get because they have the single target heals as prerquisites, which mages obviously don't take.
I would suggest increasing the cooldown on soul restore to 15-20 seconds. And possibly giving it a wand requirement as well. The others can be increased an additional 5 seconds or so as well.
Anyway, Andrasyte and Genesis, please consider these suggestions, and the suggestions of the community before setting anything in stone yet.
Edited by Phish, 03 August 2018 - 07:31 PM.