A question of legality (in General)

Ive a few grey areas i'd like clearing up before the tournaments properly begin, easiest way is to give the cases in turn :

(Please say where the rules stand to your knowledge, or input etc or any cases you have, they need to be decided upon beforehand so no1 gets accused of cheating or the like after the fact)

1) I finish the tournament, along the way I picked up some helm gauntlets. Few minutes before the tournament ends I sell them to the store, then buy them with my main, geting a nice pair of HG for store price.

1A) Same scenario as above but instead of buying them myself I tell about 10 friends that at 6 o clock server time im going to be selling them to the store and to try and camp them like a game.

1B) Same as above except I offer to tell one person in chat when I will sell the HGs to the store in return for 50K if they get them.

2) It is the start of the tournament, I have burnt my BA much quicker than anyone else, on my main I sell a leather set of upgraded armour to the store (HLA, cloak, LGs etc) and even though there is a 10min cool down period no other competitor can afford them anyway.

3) Before the end of the tournament I notice I have about 100K of free cash, I ask a friend to put up an auction for a hard leather cap with a BIN of and buy it for 99K telling them to keep 25K for their troubles and send the rest to my main.

4) I need a Lesser tattoo of endurance on my tournament character, there arnt any in auction but I have one on my farm character, I ask someone in chat that if I send them the tat if they would put it in auction for me.

Just thought better ask, 6 hours to go :)

I guess Slayer has some work to do :)

Meanwhile, what would you suggest as answers to all the (very good) questions you've asked Myth. You have quite a bit of tourney experience so your input is as valid as anyone elses :)

If we can't transfer the money and gears from the tourney character to our normal character, maybe we should just restrict selling or auctioning of gears as well. That would stop all these "abuses".

Kong: agreed, but normal trade by the tournament character should still be possible. Camping store and auctions is an effort that should be rewarded accordingly.
The problem here is that this is only supposed to be happening at a "fair price" and that is something that's not well defined.

We also have a problem with some people unlearning everything on their characters to give others a nice easy target.

Thats always been the case Ranger, and it isnt really a problem as theres nothing stopping the other competitors attacking the same person, or attacking the character doing the score farming.

It also ruins rewards having then a very inflated score and no1 to fight anywhere near that range.

I guess right at the end in last few hours there could be a ban on it or something along those lines, other than that from experience its just a tactic that has very mixed results.

"Thats always been the case Ranger, and it isnt really a problem as theres nothing stopping the other competitors attacking the same person, or attacking the character doing the score farming.

It also ruins rewards having then a very inflated score and no1 to fight anywhere near that range.

I guess right at the end in last few hours there could be a ban on it or something along those lines, other than that from experience its just a tactic that has very mixed results."

However, in a Tournament where the winner is determined by score, it doesn't matter if they can fight anyone near that range.

Also, opponents who've finished their BA by that point can't attack the inflated opponent and take advantage of the cheat their tournament opponent created.

And lastly, seems to me it goes against the point of determining the outcome by score altogether, which would be to determine the effectiveness of your strategy and its defensibility against other players (since they would be trying to bring it down last second and pull theirs past it to win).

There's my 2 cents worth.

Well it does seem to be somewhat solved by the latest tourney letting you only attack other tourney characters the last day.

QBRanger, 6:29 AM EDT
We also have a problem with some people unlearning everything on their characters to give others a nice easy target.

Whoa, this is an issue that will seriously need to be addressed. My only problem is trying to determine a viable option without limiting the normal game in some way. You have brought up some very interesting points that need to be covered in a timely matter. (Did you just sit around and think of ways for somebody to manipulate the tournament system, or are these problems face in previous tournaments by other opponents not necessarily tactics used by you?)

I unfornuately wasn't here for CB1 so this is my first experience with tournaments and I can say it's all around arousing experience. I would hate to see all of Jon's hard work trying to reimplement this system be ruined because of the avoidability of these problems.

Tournies worked fine in CB1 with the same problems or issues being asked about here. So it wont ruin it.

Sorry for the double post, but one option I came up with is setting a unique flag on items bought by tournament characters similar to the tags characters have in their name. This said tag will only allow tournament characters to interact with these items. So this keeps the game's economy and the tournament economy separate. I.E. Anything purchased from the store by a tournament character will need to have been spawned by the store itself or sold to the store by another tournament character. Regular players will not be able to purchase the items after a certain amount of time. This would need to apply to auctions also. Items put up for sale by tournament characters will only be available for purchase by other tournament characters. This limits the production for extra CB2$ due to the extra BA created by tournament characters from benefiting your main character. Sorry if the idea sounds stupid, but it's the only thing I could come up with off the top of my head. The system could be altered as necessary in terms of fairness.

Flamey: in CB2 tournaments are implemented in a slightly different way...

Oh, I wasn't aware. Is this different implementation of tournies affecting the final outcome? Or is it a behind-the-scenes code thing?

Well I did do some major score farming for the practice one, but I hunted those targets myself. Nothing stopped anyone else from hunting good targets, so I don't think its that big of an issue.

The other stuff is definetly a grey area, since a tattoo gives a very large advantage if you can get one early one.

took care of 1)

2) non-issue

3) auction money laundering is illegal whether tournaments are involved or not

4) i don't see a problem with this since anyone can bid

So I'm guessing that this means there are *NOT* two separate stores/auctions for tournaments / non-tournaments? For some reason, I thought that it would be almost like a separate instance of CB running, with its own independent stores, auctions, blacksmith, etc.

I guess this:

The following items could not be assigned:

* A War Hammer [20x1] (+0) (tournament characters may not sell valuable items directly to the store. use auctions instead)

Other assignments, if any, succeeded.

has something to do with this:

"1) I finish the tournament, along the way I picked up some helm gauntlets. Few minutes before the tournament ends I sell them to the store, then buy them with my main, geting a nice pair of HG for store price."

"took care of 1)"

Yes.

There's obviously a difference in opinion about what's "valuable" ;)

"valuable" = "eligible for auctions"

This brings up a curious point...what if, in the course of upgrading from weapon to weapon in order to keep one's tank damage up-to-par, one runs out of room to hold weapons? Is one's tank minion simply stuck with the weapon it is holding and may not buy a new one?

Auction it at $1 BIN, or at least below store price. Just like some make a business of BIN'ing leather into auctions, I'm sure some will make a business of the reverse ;)

Where is Vendo when you need him?

Will Mr. Chairman bid on a $1 BIN?

It seems that my tourny char can place auctions but without BIN's. Is this a bug or how it's supposed to be?

It is designed to stop abuses, like trying to transfer items from a tourney character via the auctions.