I’ll preface this by saying I enjoy the current setup of paid tournaments, except we should have one of the maps randomly instead of a featured map every week. but thats not the point of this post, the rewards you get from paids is.
Currently, the reward for winning 1 match on a free tournament is 200 rank/glory and a silver chest. no entry cost.
Currently, the reward for winning a paid tournament is 200 rank/glory, a silver chest, and a QP. Obstentially, no entry cost because it gets refunded, as long as you win.
Previously, winning a single round (and losing round 2) on a paid tournament was 300 rank/glory, a silver chest, 20 gems, and a QP. Cost of entry was 5 tickets, but keep in mind tickets can be bought for ~15 gems each, so total cost was equivalent to 4 1/3 tickets.
so what we see is that with the current setup of rewards, the only thing we gain from winning a paid over winning a free is 1 QP and different skins, and if you already have all the skins from frees and paids that you need, then the chests amount to diddlysquat, and the QP is currently quite meaningless until they can be used as entry fees for bigger tourneys. That is coming, right anet?
if paids are supposed to be where the good teams go, why not make them a little more risk/reward based?
this would be a good reward for winning a paid:
300 rank/glory (have the same amount as before for winning 1.)
1 QP (may as well keep them coming.)
chest (ofc.)
10 gems (I’ll explain further down.)
Keep in mind for this next part that a ticket costs 12 gems to purchase.
Under the previous system of 8 teams queueing, the game was able to sink 200 tickets from the game per paid tourney. however, also under the previous system, this generated 1200 gems to be split among the winners and also a few more that were given out randomly. this means that each individual ticket generated at least 6 gems into the game, depending on what was given out randomly.
This current system sinks 10 tickets, but 5 are refunded. additionally, thousands more tickets are generated from the daily and monthly being done. So whats the problem? tickets are not rare enough. before, there was no daily to get your tickets; the only way to get them was rank up or win a free, so there needs to be a sink before frees become frivolous. if 10 gems are given out instead of the 5 tickets back, then 50 gems are generated per 10 tickets, which means each ticket generates 5 gems.
If the tickets are becoming more rare because they are being sunk into gems, then the most viable options players have are do frees to farm or buy more with the gems they earned.
with this setup, it will not only allow more players to acquire gems through in game means (and freebies for casuals is never a bad thing…give a sample of cash shop items and they might buy more), but also have more money circulating and allow for a much healthier in game economy than we already have. the biggest barrier with the previous paid tournament system is that 40 people needed to get on and have the time commitment for it. with the current system, paids pop far more frequently and will allow for a lot more movement in that market, since only 10 people are needed to get going.