Since my post regarding no resouces on FFA maps does not seem to have been met with much enthusiasm, here is another idea for making FFA better than is much simpler.

1) In FFA tourneys, the top two places advance. This will result in longer tournaments, but players will get more bang for their buck, and most importantly, the in-game battle will not be done when one player secures a comfortable lead. It puts more emphasis on control points because its no longer a matter of finding a way to build enough troops to capture multiple control points.

Also, think of it like this. In baseball, for most teams the season is over in August, because only four teams from each league make the playoffs. In football, there are more exciting games down the stretch because with six teams from each conference making the playoffs, more teams are alive longer. In basketball, eight teams from each side make the playoffs... but that might be a bit too many. Anyhow, with only one spot, the game is over when one player gets good control. With two players advancing, the game will be kept alive longer and will be more fun.

2) In the final round of an FFA tourney, rather than the three losers all getting 2nd place, places should be determined in the order they finished with victory points in that game. Maybe this is the way it is now, but I don't think it is. Again, this puts an emphasis on trying to finish with as many victory points as possible, rather than just suiciding against your nearest opponent when one player gets far ahead of you.

I really agree with your points, especially number one.

I decided not to play a free ffa tourney earlier today because chances are you will get matched against at least one top player and so my chances to win are very low (>20% i would say) and so i just go there to play a long and tiring game to most likely just lose a lot of points.

Second player advancing may open the door for many interesting possibilities especially when it comes to diplomacy.

Plus, i kinda hate that you get a third place for just participating in most FFFA (>17 players), it cheapens trophies i think.

I think this is a really good idea. It would make FFA more enjoyable. I've stopped playing in FFAs because they usually take forever and its damn near impossible to win them. The strategy I've used in the past is just sit back and secure a few resources then build a huge army and make one huge push, but if the top 2 people move on to the next round that would change everything up.

Number 1 doesnt work because it allows, almost encourages, two people to collude.

I totally agree and love point 2. I have asked for this already and will continue to ask for this.

I should have been more clear, only top two advance when it is a four person FFA. I hate three person FFA's anyhow, so I don't even think about them when I think of FFA. Clearly in a three player FFA, only one could advance, or you would simply have a tag team. In four person, I think its much more difficult, and may not even be worthwhile. If it becomes very obvious, then it just turned into a teams game - so be it.

But regardless, I have now put forth two suggestions to make FFA better. Clearly there is a need, as the two people who responded in this thread both mentioned avoiding playing FFA games in the current format.

A solution must be found to:

1) Encourage players to fight more over CP than resources
2) Encourage a player not to quit fighting for CP when one player has a sizeable lead on them

Until somebody offers a better suggestion, in four-person FFA, I would prefer to risk the situation of collusion (because I really don't think it will happen much) and make the game dynamic much more fun and interesting, than deal with FFA in its current format.

The cooperation would be almost sure in every one of them. Only thing that stops cooperation now is that only 1 advances and even if 2 cooperate, one have to lose and there is chance they will turn on each other. If 2 people advanced and I would see someone I know, I would not hesitate to join up with him and I think he wouldnt either.

Ok, Fewar and Chrism. If we can only have one advancing thats fine. What are your suggestions for how to deal with the problems I have outlined?

To the extent people care about rating, I thought about giving people a win vs. the players they have more cps than for rating purposes. This would certainly make the top players go for second most cps if they couldn't win, but probably would not result in collusion. I'm not sure this is better though.

FFA is just a unique format. It is really hard to do something about it, but the games are often very fun.

I think we are on the same page, that the main problem is that when a player is far behind the leader, they need incentive to try to finish 3rd rather than 4th, etc. But I disagree that the "games are often very fun" as I find they are often very annoying. As soon as one player decides to fight for resources vs control points, or decides to throw in the towel and just try to destroy units and control factories, the game is ruined (which sadly is the vast majority of my FFA games).

My point is that, in my opinion, FFA is unacceptable unless each player has a strong incentive to try their hardest to finish as high as they possibly can in terms of victory points. I do like the idea of places affecting rating, although this won't act as incentive to everyone. But definitely, you should gain rating points in FFA for finishing second (although less than first place), and you should lose more for finishing fourth as opposed to third.

Certainly finishing first in FFA is fun and exciting, but one aspect of the fun in FFA is merely trying to survive and do enough to finish in the winners group. One fun thing about tournaments is that you don't have to be the best to win a prize, you just need to do well enough to get into the prize pool. For instance, poker becomes so much fun once you are "in the money." FFA tournaments work the same way, except that each game leading up to the money admits only 25% or 33% (every other game type moves 50% forward), so while the overall structure includes paying more than one person, each individual game along the road requires so much luck.

Right now, I pray that the two opponents closest to me play like they are supposed to, or else we are both going to lose - which becomes even worse if I am in second place trying to capture first, but because they are in fourth place and consider themselves done, they rush my factories because they only fun left for them is trying to capture factories, build a massive army, and get some kills before they lose on VP. I have no reason to avoid playing a free FFA tourney for my amusement and possible prize, but there is no reason for me to spend points on it at the moment, since more of an FFA outcome depends on your opponents playing to win than it does on skill.

Perhaps we should be looking at deterring/preventing collusion while still advancing 2nd place. Perhaps specific FFA maps could be designed in a manner where collusion doesn't help very much.

Maybe we should look at creating better FFA maps in general. For starters, there should never be a resource between two players at the start for them to fight over... resources should all be by base or in middle. If players have tendencies to grab resources, put all the resources in the middle so everyone goes to the same place, with some control points split between players and in middle. That really big four person FFA map, which looks like it should be called Grasslands (although another map already has that name), would be great if instead of only 3 CP, you had two more - one in each corner which currently has a resource in place of a control point. In general, FFA maps need more control points to fight over, and less resources to fight over.

Maybe a new FFA tournament format should be constructed, so that you are eliminated from the tournament when you place 3rd or 4th place once, or 2nd place twice. Therefore, its not really in my advantage to collude with somebody for 2nd place, and even if I did, I could only do this once.

To me, I have played other FFA games with control points where two people advanced and never had problems encounter collusion. Again, four player maps only, how would the collusion work? You could priority target when possible, but troops often shoot at anything they can. If two players are split, and they double team one opponent, the other guy being ignored is going to end up with the most VP and one of them won't make it, so the collusion failed because only one of them made it.

If two players start next to each other and collude, their goal is to not fight over what is between them, and possibly share it. For starters, there should not be a factory between them, and if there is it is a flaw in the map design. Second, if there is a clear "sharing" of a control point and someone posts a replay of the complaint, the players in question should be punished. While collusion is difficult to prove, there is a mountain of evidence available for everybody to see in the replay.

Again, maybe we can't have two people advance. I'm sure the admins don't want to be collusion police. But I think we need to be as creative as possible to come up with a solution to make FFA games go down to the wire, even when one player has a comfortable lead. There needs to be a meaningful difference, if not between 3rd and 4th, then at least between 2nd and 3rd.

I am for the rating change, at least i will go above 1600 .