Hey guys,

So, I promised you more details on tournaments this week and here they are.

These tournaments, which are in testing right now, are skill-based PvP events that happen Monday through Saturday. Players of all skills can team up with three other players to battle it out in team Shootout!

Players will get a UI notification that the tournament is coming two hours before the first matches are played. At 15 minutes before the start of the tournament, players can register their four-player groups. The group leader registers for the tournament and names the team.

Once registered, teams are placed into one of three skill categories, Division 1 for new players, Division 2 for medium skill players and Division 3 for the elite players. The team rank is based on the average of the four player’s ranks. For Division 1, the average rank will be lower than Grunt, while for Division 3, the average rank is higher than Mobster.

Each division fights in out in Shootout matches with winners advancing and the losers getting kicked to the curb. If a match ends in a draw, it will switch to a two minute Sudden Death Elimination mode. This means no respawns and the teams play until one is completely wiped out. If at the end of two minutes both teams still have characters, the team with the most players win. If the number of characters is even, then the team that scored the final kill is declared the winner. In the unlikely event that both teams fail to kill an opposing character, both teams will be eliminated for being utter failures!

Each match is 10 minutes long followed by a five-minute rest period before the next round kicks off. Play continues until just one team is left standing!

We’ll be giving away a variety of prizes when we start the tournaments including boosts, rare mats and more. Eventually we are looking at ways to make the events even more valuable to players, but that’s all the detail I’m ready to share on that point at this time. More on that as we get ready to start the tournaments.

Stay with us through the next few weeks as we take a closer look at many aspects of the upcoming patch, from the economy to the 32-player map!

--KevinB