New Blood Games Format & More!

[Nate]

Greetings Pit Masters!

A new update will be coming soon and I'd like to tell you a little about it. Originally the Blood Games was meant to be for the best of the best, however, I don't see any reason why each bracket can't have it's own competition and as such I'm expanding the Blood Games so that each bracket has its own tournament. The Blood Games structure is also changing. Currently, only the top 150 gladiators in the arena get an invite and it is a one month long tournament with each participant automatically fighting once per day at 2am PST.

The new format will be one week long and the top 32 gladiators from each bracket will get an invite. At the start of the Blood Games the 32 gladiators from each bracket will be sorted into four buckets of eight gladiators (for each bracket):

Bucket #1: Top 8 gladiators from the top 32 who got an invite
Bucket #2: Top 8 Rage gladiators from the top 32 who got an invite (not already in Bucket #1)
Bucket #3: Top 8 War gladiators from the top 32 who got an invite (not already in Bucket #1)
Bucket #4: Top 8 Theatrics gladiators from the top 32 who got an invite (not already in Bucket #1)

The arena officials will then randomly select one gladiator from each bucket to make eight groups of four gladiators each. It might be the case that buckets 2, 3 and 4 don't have exactly eight gladiators and if that happens the bucket with more gladiators will simply be used more often to complete the groups. Once this is done each bracket will have eight groups of four gladiators each (groups A-H). Each gladiator will fight the other three gladiators in their group one time with the top two gladiators from each group advancing to the Round of 16 knockout stage.

To build the knockout stage brackets the winner from group A will be pitted against the #2 gladiator from group B and the winner from group B will fight the #2 gladiator from group A and so on until eight brackets have been populated. Each bracket will fight and the winners will continue to the Quarter-Finals and the losers will go home and drown their sorrows at the tavern. The Quarter-Finals will consist of the remaining eight gladiators who again will be matched up according to how the brackets are set and the winners will advance to the Semi-Finals and the losers will join the defeated at the tavern. The Semi-Finals have four remaining gladiators who will be matchup up into two fights with the winners of those fights going to the Finals and the losers will advance to the 3rd place fight. The Finals now have just two remaining gladiators and the winner of that fight will win the #1 prize, the loser will get the #2 prize and the winner of the 3rd place fight will get the #3 prize.

Each gladiator fights once per day and the new Blood Games structure looks like this:

Day 1: Group Fights
Day 2: Group Fights
Day 3: Group Fights
Day 4: Round of 16
Day 5: Quarter-Finals
Day 6: Semi-Finals
Day 7: Finals & 3rd Place (begin registration for the next Blood Games which will start the following day)

In addition to the new Blood Games, I'm also consolidating the arena brackets from 15 down to 9. There will be three "Tier 1" brackets, three "Tier 2" brackets and three "Tier 3" brackets. At this time nothing will be any different than it is now other than their being fewer brackets, however, later down the road the three tiers might be different.

I was hoping to have this update ready by Nov. 11th, however, I think I'd like to do more testing. That said the tentative release date for this update will be the 18th or 19th of this month. At that time I'll release more details on the update.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Apoca1ypse]

Sounds great Nate :] I'm keen to see how this pans out.

How will things change for achievements and the like? Both in regards to Blood Games wins, and for Bracket champions/undisputed champions

[Dainoji]

Sounds really fun Nate, looking forward to it.

[Nate]

Here's a little sneak peak on what the new Blood Games format will be like. Below you can see how the field of gladiators is organized into eight groups of four. The image shows us the end of day 3 as each gladiator has fought every other gladiator in his group. The top two in each group advance to the knockout round which starts on day 4. You'll see there are 6 colums W, L, K, D, FS, Pts. The first four and last you are familiar with: Wins, Losses, Kills, Deaths and Points (which is a function of the gladiator's tournament record). The fifth column FS stands for "Fight Score". After each fight the Arena Officials score the fight based on how dominant of a win it is and assign the winner a maximum of 5 points. The loser is awarded the same amount of points but negative (for example, 3 points to the winner, -3 points to the loser). The Fight Score is used to break ties in the event multiple gladiators has the same amount of Points in their group.






Here we see the round of 16 brackets and beyond. At this stage a loss means the gladiator is out of the tournament with the exception that in the semi-finals the losers live on to fight in the 3rd place fight. As gladiators lose their names are grayed out and eventually when the tournament is finished the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place gladiators are highlighted in the appropriate color.



I hope many of you like what you see, I'm excited to see how these tournament play out!

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-

[Nate]

Sounds great Nate :] I'm keen to see how this pans out.

How will things change for achievements and the like? Both in regards to Blood Games wins, and for Bracket champions/undisputed champions

Any achievements for brackets being removed will also be removed. Gladiators who have already achieved an achievement will be grandfathered. Since Blood Games are happening four times as fast the Blood Games achievements will probably be multiplied by four as well and anyone with Blood Games achievements already will likewise have their counts multiplied to keep pace. New achievements may also be introduced.

Good luck in the Pit!

-Nate-