We wanted our players to feel rewarded for being strategic and for the effort they’d put into their rosters. We wanted players to have an experience of “heroic” struggle; that you would engage in pitched PVP combat and that experience would be enjoyable as you swapped ranks and vied for dominance.

Hello holotable, heroes!I know that there will be some out in the community that are curious as to why now? What finally broke the wampa’s back?When we launched Tournaments, we had some key experience beats we wanted to land with the feature:Ultimately, we wanted Tournaments to be a new way to compete with other players that would be a fun addition to the game and would also provide a new way to introduce new characters into the game.As you all are aware, we’ve gone through a number of iterations from the initial design of our Tournament structure in an effort to reach this vision. We’ve monitored the forums over the course of Tournaments and we’ve heard the feedback loud and clear. However, we’re a pretty disciplined and data-oriented team so we wanted to try a few more iterations to see if we could steer the ship to the place we wanted it and you guys would enjoy.Where we structurally landed is Ally Points refresh, 24 hours length, and a steep Ally Point refresh ramp. Behaviorally, we saw some players engaging for 14 hours and still getting knocked out of “good” rewards. Even more alarming, we saw a significant drop off in Tournament participation, Tournament over Tournament. In sum, where we landed with Tournaments was off target from where we had envisioned we would end up.So, after reviewing the data from our latest iteration, stitched together with the qualitative feedback from the forums, we internally agreed that the Tournament structure needed to be retired for now. And to expand that further, it needed to be retired because the bones of the system would likely never get to where we needed it to be for you to have a great experience.That’s how we’ve got to here, now. So what’s up for the future? Immediately, we are cancelling all Tournaments for the foreseeable future and removing some changes we made in the game to support Tournaments. Specifically, this means removing the ally point inflow from completing the Daily Activities and from Galactic War shipments.This should come as no surprise: no Tournaments, means less need for Ally Points. Ally Points were made much more plentiful to make participating in Tournaments easier for everyone. Now that Tournaments are being paused, you can choose to spend them on Bronziums or hold off in the event they get used for a different purpose down the road. At this point we have no plans to do so, but in the coming months that may change.In the longer term, we’re doing a deeper review internally on what would we need to design, engineer, and implement to get Tournaments to a “good” place. Think of this like a Volkswagen Bus up in the mechanics shop being transformed to an Aston Martin DB9. And as we work on this transformation we may discover that it can’t be salvaged and that PVP Tournaments may not have a place in the Galaxy of Heroes.That sort of work and change doesn’t happen overnight. We ask that you be patient with us as we see if we can bring Tournaments up to snuff. When there is something to report on Tournaments, you’ll hear from me as soon as I can safely tell you about it.