New Update 3/5/2013 SEASONS TOURNAMENTS!

[Nate]

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-

[Cynaidh]

Nice! Looks like this will be interesting.

Since this is such a change to the rating system I am throwing out my former aversion to challenging, as who you fight will be much more important it seems to me sense a random match up with someone with lower points will end up with you receiving less points. So if in the past I have asked you not to challenge me or I have said I will not challenge you please consider all those agreements void at this point. Lets see how bloody the Blood Gods will get!

[Nate]

There is no challenging in Seasons as it would be too easy to game the system. The majority of the time a gladiator will be pitted against another within a range of his or her current rating to keep matches more fair. On occation a "wild card" match could happen where a gladiator is matched up with another far above or below them.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Cynaidh]

0.o you know i i totally missed that challenges where gone.... wow. The new toy is even shiner now. Is the top 10 being able to use trophies for more fights also intended?

[Nate]

0.o you know i i totally missed that challenges where gone.... wow. The new toy is even shiner now. Is the top 10 being able to use trophies for more fights also intended?

There is no restriction on fighting more often if you would like to. Since there is the risk of losing rating points on each loss, the choice is up to each Master.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Nate]

Having a small technical difficulty that I'm taking care of right now so the game will be down for a little bit.

[Cynaidh]

For those that didn't get to see it the achievement for becoming a blood god is +200 hit points.

[HipsterD]

Same retirement rule apply for Seasons? If I have a glad that needs retiring, I'm free to do so at any time during the current Season? No rush, just curious.

[Nate]

Same retirement rule apply for Seasons? If I have a glad that needs retiring, I'm free to do so at any time during the current Season? No rush, just curious.

Yes, the same rules apply.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Nate]

Sorry for the outage, the hosting company's power went down. All is back up and seems to be working. If you find any bugs with the new update please let me know. Thanks!

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-