Greeting Pit Masters!

This update has introduces Seasons! What are Seasons? Seasons are 2-3 month long tournaments where the top gladiators in the arena compete for prizes and fame!

The top 40 gladiators in Primus were promoted to a new bracket named "Blood Gods". The old Blood Gods bracket has been renamed Blood Lords (along with all titles and achievements). Then each week gladiators who meet the Blood Gods criteria will be promoted. The criteria to be promoted involves being in the top 10 and having above a certain number of ranking points.

Once a gladiator is promoted to a Blood God they no longer fight in the "regular" arena. Their overall record is still updated, but a new record that gets reset at the start of each season will be the one displayed on the ranking page. Blood Gods also have a new system to rank them. The system is based on a rating system originally designed to rank chess players and is now widely used in many sports and video games. The name of the system is called the Elo Rating System and you can find more information here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system

The short version is all gladiators have a rating and when matched up against another gladiator the number of points they win or lose is dependent on each gladiator's rating. If two gladiators have the same rating the winner will win X points and the loser will lose X points. If gladiator A has a higher rating then B and wins the amount of points won and lost will be less since it is expected that gladiator A should win. Had gladiator B (the underdog) won, the amount of points won and lost would be greater since gladiator B should not have won. Gladiators coming into the Season late will still be able to raise in the ranks since the system doesn't solely revolve around number of fights but more around who they defeat and lose to in those fights.

Once a week gladiators will be awarded with Blood God Points (BGP) that will be used to buy special gear only available to Blood Gods. The amount awarded is based on their participation, wins and rating with higher rated gladiators being awarded more. Please see below for more details:

* In order to receive any points at all a gladiator must initiate at least 20 fights.
* If a gladiator has initiated at least 20 fights, they then must win at least 30 fights to receive full points. Gladiators failing to win 30 fights will receive less BGP than they otherwise would have.

The special seasons gear will be available at the Blacksmith soon. Each Season new gear will be created and previous Seasons' gear will be discounted, possibly even finding its way into the regular arena.

As always we'll fine tune things as we go if need be.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-