Tournaments Update
Ever since we welcomed the Virsliga (Latvia) and other national Leagues into our game, some of you felt that the competitive scales tipped a bit.
Premium cards from elite clubs didn’t live up to expectations on the leaderboards, leading to an unsettling shake-up in the overall tournament framework.
We’ve listened to your feedback! Today, we’re unveiling a two-pronged strategy to address this situation.
Step 1 — Temporary solution
To promptly tackle the current issue while we prepare the long-term solution, we’re going to split the current tournament structure temporarily.
Global & U23 tournaments will each be split into two tournaments for Gameweek 88 and 90 exclusively:
- Global Winter/ U23 Winter— similar structure as the current Global / U23 tournament for Winter Leagues, Card rewards will be removed and CHAMP rewards increased 🥳!
We distributed enough winter leagues Cards for the season and we heard you that additional CHAMP rewards would be greatly appreciated. This temporary split offers us a chance to do that right away.
2. Global Summer / U23 Summer- similar structure as the current Global / U23 tournament dedicated for Summer Leagues only, minus the Legends division for U23.
There are simply not enough eligible participants for a U23 Legends division exclusive for Summer Leagues just yet. We believe that having the other divisions will still make it very attractive considering that there will be less participants per division.
As the majority of Winter Leagues will have wrapped up by Gameweek 92, leaving only Ligue 1 & Ligue 2 still in play, we will then only keep the Summer Leagues / Summer U23 tournaments live and have a dedicated small one for french teams for their last matches.
We hope that this temporary fix will be adequate to your feedback Champs!
Nonetheless this doesn’t mean that all problems are fixed, and we want to introduce long lasting solutions.
Onto part 2 of our plan! 🛣️
Step 2 — Redefining tournaments!
The key challenge is to create a comprehensive and competitive long term tournament structure.
We have a few action points to achieve this objective, let’s dive in!
1- Introducing permanent ‘National’ tournaments
Most clubs in Ultimate Champions now belong to League packages⚽️. As such, it’s vital that we shape our game to suit these clubs, simultaneously creating space for potential new entrants.
We aim to introduce permanent ‘National’ tournaments 🏆, designed to cater to an audience that keenly follows and competes with their favorite League teams every weekend 🎉!
What will happen to fun little tournaments like underdogs or packed field? 🐶
We still plan to run some in a rotating fashion to spice things up but they will be more ‘eventful’ than recurrent.
What will happen to my favorite club that isn’t in a national League? 🤔
We plan to create a dedicated avenue for more ‘isolated’ clubs that aren’t part of a National league within UC.
Such Clubs will be grouped together to have a dedicated tournament(s), like our previous Germany / Scotland / France tournament for example.
What will happen to Global tournaments on the long run? 🤔
Global tournaments (Global / U23) will continue to take place every gameweek. We’ll make them competitive in the long run with a new addition — more details in the following section!
2- Introducing: ‘Team Stacking Penalties’
Global tournaments should encourage the creation of ‘Global’ teams, wisely utilizing a broad spectrum of different teams across the game.
Unfortunately, the primary goal of these tournaments has been undermined due to the prevailing trend of stacking from a particular kind or even less prestigious teams outperforming renowned and pricier ones.
We’re eager to return to the heart of what global tournaments are all about. Thus, we’re excited to roll out ‘Team Stacking Penalties’.
If you stack too many cards from the same team & league, a negative score modifier will be applied to your team’s total score. 📉
Team Stacking will still be an option and could potentially be a viable strategy, but it’ll be much more of a risky move. Exact configurations and values will be thoroughly communicated 📢 and open for community discussion as we approach the update.
3— Improving tournament reward structure
We’ve identified two issues we’re keen to resolve with our current reward structure. 🎯
A. Receiving cards doesn’t always spark joy. Our present system lacks complex tiers or a way to ensure that the reward hierarchy is always respected.
B. Some of you would rather earn some CHAMP and hit the marketplace for a shopping spree
Our plan includes the following changes:
- More CHAMP rewards 💰
- More MGC rewards 🎁
- Fewer NFT rewards — Star tiers reserved for podium places only 🥇🥈🥉
We still want to enable players to gain NFTs — but through our brand new MGC Store, making it more engaging and fair!
Introducing: MGC Store
Upon the release of our Sustainability update 🌿 (find all details here: https://ultimatechampions.medium.com/sustainability-update-ea2ae2593d96), the old ‘Pack’ store will evolve into the ‘MGC Store’.
This MGC Store 🏪 is set to be the primary source of NFTs distributed in the game.
In this refreshed Store, you’ll discover a broad array of Reward Packs 🎁, available for purchase exclusively with MGC. These range from the equivalent of our current Basic Pack all the way up to a Gold Pack — also offering more specialized content (national / u23 / stars / etc).
- Each Reward Pack will carry an MGC cost that escalates based on the Pack’s content value.
- Likewise, each Reward Pack will have a Collection Score restriction 📊 that increases in sync with the Pack’s content value.
This approach will allow managers with more significant investments to reap higher returns from their rewards 📈.
Additionally, we’ll roll out MGC Starter Reward Packs 🚀 for each specific league, catering to players who wish to guide their collection in a particular direction!
4- Improved Tournament progression
Navigating the road to becoming a seasoned manager in our specialized tournaments hasn’t always been straightforward. New Players can dive into Leagues with their drafted team and global tournaments quite readily, but assembling a full 14-player U23 squad without relying on luck with global rewards can feel like a daunting task 😰.
With the introduction of national tournaments and more reward choices (see section 3), we’re making the journey to building a specialized team more lucid and progressive 📈. We want to transform the initial leap into a series of manageable steps 🚶.
We’re set to introduce variable team sizes and formations across divisions, marrying the simplicity of smaller tournaments like 5-a-side with the core appeal of UC — the full 11 athlete squad — for the main divisions 🥅.
Here’s a preliminary example:
“Local” Divisions 🏘️
- Beginner: 5 athletes, no subs, mostly commons
- Amateur: 5 athletes, 2 subs, commons and epics
“Pro” Divisions 🏆
- Qualifiers: full squad, 3 subs, commons and epics
- Pro, Veteran, Legend: similar to the current setup, with some small balance improvements from recent feedback
Post-draft, a manager will likely have a few cards from their favorite Leagues, making it an easier first step to head to the marketplace and complete a 5-person squad with an Epic for the initial tournament 🎉. Coupled with permanent National tournaments, we hope this will make for a fun first choice when deciding which National squads to start building.
Keen on making a name in the “Pro” divisions, where the rewards really kick in? You’ll still have to handle a full-size team!
Closing notes 🗒️
Our aim with this update is to carve out more dedicated spaces for fans of specific national leagues 🌍, ensure a smoother journey for our newcomers, and design a better reward system for our most dedicated Champs!
We’re also keen on fostering a more competitive environment for Global tournaments, keeping the global fantasy alive!
In tandem with the Sustainability update, we’re paving the way for a fun and enduring ecosystem and a bright upcoming new season.
The journey entails some growing pains, and we extend our heartfelt gratitude to every Champ for their patience and passion.
We’ll get there, we’re only getting started.
Pierre & the Ultimate Champions team
