STO Champions ... a new way to fight

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We are proud to announce the formation of Star Trek Online’s first 3v3 League: STO Champions.

NEW RULES AND REGULATIONS POSTED IN LINK @Tarsiscannon, @TranceaddicT, @GenXCraig have thought long and hard as to how the void that the absence of K-T League has created can be filled. To that end, we have created STO Champions with an entirely new concept: Fast & Furious, Strategic and a true test of your captaining skills.

No one likes to be facerolled 15-0 ( or constantly faceroll others " no challenge " ). It’s a drag, it’s tiresome and, let’s face it, all of us could have more fun grinding emblems. To bring those players back who have been turned off by the anxiety associated with facing premade after premade, we have endeavored to create a great competitive and learning environment.
But all premades are encouraged to join, beacause we want Top level engagements as well.

You will not be facing a team with skills well above your own. You will be pitted against players with an experience level more or less equal to your own. Will you encounter someone with greater skill? … yes, but not so much that you won’t be able to learn. Above all else, you will be able to have fun PvP again.

It is our hope, with the participation of the STO community, to bring you regular seasons throughout the year. Everyone is welcome to register. There will be 3-man teams (plus one substitute), but you can sign-up as a Free Agent, if you fly solo and don’t have a team yet. Free Agents are encouraged to form a team amongst themselves. We also encourage the Cryptic Devs to sign up as Free Agents or even register and field a team.

A new limited cross-faction team is available too for those klingon pugs that want to join a fed team.

Finally, we would also like to acknowledge the hard work and determination of the K-T organizers without who a strong basis for this league would be long coming.

Competition will be governed by the Double Elimination Blind Draw Tournament format.

Come join us and let the games begin "Click" Link in my sig. Once In the site directly go to Join League in right column.

Joining the Battle Group is not a Perequisite to admission to the League

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Hmm. I am not sure how this will work.

Don't you just ask PuGs to become Premades, to avoid PuGs having to face Premades, by having them fight other PuG turn Premades?

Wouldn't it be more sensible to have only free agents and then semi-randomly create teams out of them, based on class and ship choices as well an internal ranking scheme?

I have my doubts that those worried about facing Premades are able or willing to devote the time to build such teams. That seems to be why they are PuGging in the first place.

Mustrum "When did I become Negative Nancy again?" Ridcully

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The design was for easier team formation and is intended for all levels of game play including premades.
:) Basicly its easier to get three people teams. With a larger quantity of quality comepition, including cross faction teaming will be epic fun

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Have fun with that

Just read the rules about all the skills, ships, and items that aren't allowed. Obviously meant to create a more balanced playing field, but I would advise against taking that stance. The entire point of 3v3 is that it makes it easier to counter cheese builds. Three people running FAW (overrated anyway) or SS is much easier to counter than having five people all running it. Not to mention the fact that you can only have one cruiser, one sci ship, and one escort makes it mostly impossible to create cheese teams anyway. However, the fact that on top of only being allowed one of each profession on top of that seems to overly pigeonhole teams and kill variety, not to mention the fact that you are severely limiting the number of teams able to be formed for your league. The exclusion of carriers seems particularly ill thought out, since that leaves the federation side with objectively better ships in the Intrepid, MVAM, and Excelsior.

Hopefully you'll take this to heart if you want this league to have even a chance of being successful.

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First 3v3 league? Obviously someone's not aware of Blade Radio's "Battle for the Blade" 3v3 PvP tournament starting this weekend.

anyway I like ideas like this, 3v3 is so much easier and strategic, because you can't get 20 some odd people all FAWing and launching mines and unloading fighters. Good luck with this.

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Unlike just a normal tournament STO Champions is geared to form a community of PvPers, from experienced to beginner. So yes I would say we are the first. But aside from that.. I encourage ALL pvpers to join... its to bring the fun back to pvp while our things on the devs table are still being developed..:) but even if we werent the first I would LOVE to see people break out of there shell and try something new

Plus anything to promote Pvp is a good thing in my book, because its my favorite part of this game.

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Thanks Hurly... for your support:) I got your app approved:D

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Thanks Hurly... for your support:) I got your app approved:D

Unfortunately I just read the official guidelines of the tournament and I have since edited my post to reflect the issues I see. Obviously I won't be participating in the current state of the league, although I would like to. It does seem like a fun distraction, but since 3v3 isn't yet seen as a serious pvp format I would advise that you don't try and make it that way from the get go. I don't see many people being willing to make a team following strict guidelines and skill/ship/item white-lists for a format and league that are both frankly not yet relevant. Perhaps you should be more open with your rules in order to maximize your audience and build your initial prestige, and save adjustments to those rules in subsequent seasons as they are deemed needed.

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Nothing is set in stone yet... the guidlines are just preliminary at this point. Give me some suggestions. I hate Cheese builds too...:) I would love to see us be able to come together and all have a great time... waitng for random ques to pop sucks. Ship restictions are off for now:D

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Well, I see it this way:

Needing one sci, one eng, one tac, one cruiser, one sci ship, one escort will not eliminate cheese, but will limit the amount to which it can be applied, and make it much easier to counter.

For example, with the makeup above the cruiser is the only ship that can make effective use of FAW, but can be countered by a single target weapon subsystems. FAW stacking is no longer an issue.

Likewise, only one person can use scramble 3 per team, and because you have fewer people the scramble is much easier to clear.

So if you decide to make teams strictly balanced with one of each ship class and one of each career you really don't need the white-list on items or powers (although I agree with the scorpion fighter ban). It takes care of itself. Having both class/career restrictions and a whitelist feels like it is both restrictive and redundant.

The reverse is also true, you could cut out the ship class and career requirements and keep the whitelist. This would allow everyone to form any kind of team, but would dictate how the individual team members need to play.

The big issue with specific ship classes here is the Klingon faction, and of course the BoP which can really fit any role. If you want to keep the class/career restriction, I would add two more categories so you have Escort, Cruiser, Sci ship, Carrier, BoP, where you can only have one of each on a team. It might be wise to lump carriers in with sci ships to limit sci spam, and you could also conceivably lump in BoPs with Escorts. If you can only have one carrier on each three man team the pets aren't as much of an issue. Don't forget that on the fed side you could have an MVAM/Galaxy-R/Vulcan team open up with five pets as well.

Personally, I like the idea of having force-ably balanced teams with only one person allowed per ship class and career. It will lower the amount of possible participants, but will create interesting strategy. You could conceivably walk the middle line and simply not allow all three people to be in the same ship class or career, which would mostly limit cheese but allow most people to form teams and participate.

Lastly, I'm not crazy on the idea of free agents being tied to particular teams once they fill in. The original picture I has was the free agents would roam between teams and form their own teams and fight each other, as well as do exhibition matches against premade teams and other teams of free agents -- that it would be a fun way to meet new people and fleets and share knowledge. There is significant advantage if you want to have set class/career requirements that free agents be able to fill in where they are needed when they are needed.

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Well, I see it this way:

Needing one sci, one eng, one tac, one cruiser, one sci ship, one escort will not eliminate cheese, but will limit the amount to which it can be applied, and make it much easier to counter.

For example, with the makeup above the cruiser is the only ship that can make effective use of FAW, but can be countered by a single target weapon subsystems. FAW stacking is no longer an issue.

Likewise, only one person can use scramble 3 per team, and because you have fewer people the scramble is much easier to clear.

So if you decide to make teams strictly balanced with one of each ship class and one of each career you really don't need the white-list on items or powers (although I agree with the scorpion fighter ban). It takes care of itself. Having both class/career restrictions and a whitelist feels like it is both restrictive and redundant.

The reverse is also true, you could cut out the ship class and career requirements and keep the whitelist. This would allow everyone to form any kind of team, but would dictate how the individual team members need to play.

The big issue with specific ship classes here is the Klingon faction, and of course the BoP which can really fit any role. If you want to keep the class/career restriction, I would add two more categories so you have Escort, Cruiser, Sci ship, Carrier, BoP, where you can only have one of each on a team. It might be wise to lump carriers in with sci ships to limit sci spam, and you could also conceivably lump in BoPs with Escorts. If you can only have one carrier on each three man team the pets aren't as much of an issue. Don't forget that on the fed side you could have an MVAM/Galaxy-R/Vulcan team open up with five pets as well.

Personally, I like the idea of having force-ably balanced teams with only one person allowed per ship class and career. It will lower the amount of possible participants, but will create interesting strategy. You could conceivably walk the middle line and simply not allow all three people to be in the same ship class or career, which would mostly limit cheese but allow most people to form teams and participate.

Lastly, I'm not crazy on the idea of free agents being tied to particular teams once they fill in. The original picture I has was the free agents would roam between teams and form their own teams and fight each other, as well as do exhibition matches against premade teams and other teams of free agents -- that it would be a fun way to meet new people and fleets and share knowledge. There is significant advantage if you want to have set class/career requirements that free agents be able to fill in where they are needed when they are needed.
I would agree with the gist of this. If you can only have one of every ship class and one of every career type, you limit the "cheese" option notably - and sufficiently. And I would make a place for BoPs and Carriers as well.

On the KDF side, I would say that they should pick from this list:

BoP, Carrier or Fleet Support Vessel
Escort or BoP
Cruiser / Battlecruiser

With additional restriction of only one BoP.

If it later proves problematic that people use, say, the Bird of Prey and a Raptor both in an Escort role to have "unfair" DPS, or combine a Fleet Support Vessel and a BoP to have "unfair" science abilities, that could be adjusted accordingly.

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I Have made the changes on the site to reflect the class divisions in KDF.

The item and power limitations, I agree with you on...They wont be needed with the unique team setups

They wont be implemented except for scorpions.. because everyone knows they are just spam

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Starting to sound better (quite a bit better actually), although I fear you still might run into issues with the format. One issue in particular now stands out to me:

If you can only have one of each ship class and one of each career option, yet you are only allowed one substitute per team you run into an obvious problem. Because of restrictions, there's a very good (about 2/3) chance that if one player cannot make a match the substitute will not be able to fill in anyway since he will not be qualified as per the regulations. There needs to be a loosening somewhere, such as in the number of allowed named substitutes, flexibility of rescheduling, or perhaps in the "free agent" system to make replacements easier to get on a team. I'm sure there are a few solutions with various pros and cons, and one or more of them needs to be included to fix what seems to be a fatal flaw.

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I would say get rid of the career restriction not the ship. Captain abilities have long cooldowns so I see no need to limit the career type.

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Taking the suggestions you have presented .. the regulations have been softened on free agent accessability and team compositionwith cross faction teaming it will be easier to fill in with free agents.

Thank youe all for the great feed back... It will make this a great succes

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Looking much better. I would personally still like to see the max of one named alternate increased to a maximum of two, but even in the current form the rules don't seem too restrictive.

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The limit of subs is now to two... I want to be able to include as many people as possible. Every registered player in a team or acting as a free agent Can play as any of their VA alts on the same account.:)

Tahnks again:)

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Mixed-faction teams?

:cool:

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Mixed-faction teams?

:cool:

Unfortunatly mixed faction teams isnt allowed yet because under testing has thrown balance.
And currently the Classes defined in the league alow greater variation in Klingon teams.

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Mixed-faction teams?

:cool:

Bro, if you looking for a Klingon Engineer to help your BOP/Sci then look no further. :)

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I still find it funny looking at the ship Listings... and the proof of how one sided the game is.. I mean yeesh.. Feds get so many more ships of each type compared to the KDF.. Oh well... Have fun all..

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I still find it funny looking at the ship Listings... and the proof of how one sided the game is.. I mean yeesh.. Feds get so many more ships of each type compared to the KDF.. Oh well... Have fun all..

But Klingon teams have more clasifactioins in general. So the team compositions are a bit more varied. I hate that the Klingons dont have as many ships yet but as they are added the classes will fill up like the feds.:)

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I would love to see mixed faction teams. Kind of impractical while the tech still doesn't fully support mixed faction teaming on private matches though.

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I would love to see mixed faction teams. Kind of impractical while the tech still doesn't fully support mixed faction teaming on private matches though.

I do hate the tech isnt there either. Mixed teams would have an unfair disadvantage to some degree because you wouldnt beable to auto target a heal to them

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One thing I am worried about with a 3v3 format is that it is probably almost impossible to get training matches. 3v3 doesn't usually happen in the regular queues. And I am not quite conviced by the wisdom of this choice:
professions are now not as limiting to increase potential canadates
Do you really want 2 subnukes on each side?


Mixed teams would have an unfair disadvantage to some degee because you wouldnt beable to auto target a heal to them
Why can't teams put themselves at a disadvantage if they choose to do so?

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One thing I am worried about with a 3v3 format is that it is probably almost impossible to get training matches. 3v3 doesn't usually happen in the regular queues. And I am not quite conviced by the wisdom of this choice:

Do you really want 2 subnukes on each side?

Considering Teams composition has to be anounced before match, including toon, profession, ship... the other team can acomidate counters easily. one sci team is good to clear a sub nuc... so bring two sci teams

Why can't teams put themselves at a disadvantage if they choose to do so?

I do see your point... but then I would need to balance the the ship classes again for a mixed senario...
example : Carriers and cruisers are similar in hull and sheild but have a sci layout... So were would it go?How would you propose this change.
The league will never support Cruiser "spider heal" invincable teams. That is why the ship specifactions are a must.

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Better than three subnucs :p

I think it works decently as a middle line between cheese and accessibility. I'm not even sure whether or not a two sci team would be better than a team consisting of 1 of each career for a 3v3 either. I certainly think that one of each career is ideal, but then you have the issue of forming teams to those guidelines and getting subs.

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My biggest emphasis right now is to get people to accually rise up to the challenge and form a three man team to get it going. If later on the League decides they prefer a single profession per person we can do that.
The best part of this is that we can make it our own.

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I would love to see mixed faction teams. Kind of impractical while the tech still doesn't fully support mixed faction teaming on private matches though.

The code branch STO will move to with season 4 supposedly will allow this. Still a little off, but if this league works, there should also be some experience and guidelines that would allow to add the new "complication" of multi-faction teams.

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Limited Multi Faction team are now available...:) and with that the balance of one Sci, one Tac. and One eng has been reestablished. Teams wiil be Much easier to put together, and with free agents now with unlimited flexabilty alows for people to play more often.
During the season we will hold 3v3 exhibition matches were people can train together

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First 3v3 league?
Actually, the original (http://forums.startrekonline.com/showthread.php?t=210850)introduction for the league was made in a different forum about 2 weeks ago. Since there was no response from the non-PvP community (unfortunately, the one's we hoped to interest) we decided to repost in the PvP forum.

Because of restrictions, there's a very good (about 2/3) chance that if one player cannot make a match the substitute will not be able to fill in anyway since he will not be qualified as per the regulations.

Hurleybird, I don't think you realize, we are registering players by @names and therefore ALL of a player's toons are open for use. We are restricting substitutes in that you are only allowed to substitute one player for a match with a registered Free Agent. So, the team can consist of either 3 original or 2 original + 1FA. Many, many people have multiple toons from multiple professions with at least one ship from each classification. This is how we think that the ease of creation will be permitted.

Lastly, I'm not crazy on the idea of free agents being tied to particular teams once they fill in. The original picture I has was the free agents would roam between teams and form their own teams and fight each other, as well as do exhibition matches against premade teams and other teams of free agents -- that it would be a fun way to meet new people and fleets and share knowledge. There is significant advantage if you want to have set class/career requirements that free agents be able to fill in where they are needed when they are needed.

I agree with this; I forget what our thinking was behind the restriction. We'll open FAs to be available as needed, but they must be from the registered pool of FAs as well as claimed and posted before a match. After the match they are released to FA pool.

I believe with the FA change and the @name registration our original restriction on profession/ship-class provides plenty of flexibility to form teams.

On the KDF side, I would say that they should pick from this list:
BoP, Carrier or Fleet Support Vessel
Escort or BoP
Cruiser / Battlecruiser


One of the important features we want to provide is complete cross-faction teaming. Using your suggestions, we are going to try a modified "holy trinity". The modification being the treatment of BoPs, Carriers and Cruisers in cross faction teams. FED has 3 classifications: Escort/Science/Cruiser and KDF has 5 separate classifications: Escort/Science/Cruiser/BoP/Carrier. The modification comes when cross-factioning: BoPs & Carriers = Cruisers. With this, we also think it prudent to require that cross-faction teams have their layout review by STOC Administrators. This will be to ensure their build won't disqualify the team.

Examples:

FED team: Defiant, BoP/Carrier, Nebula (the BoP/Carrier replace the Cruiser).
KDF team: Raptor, Excelsior, Varanus (Excelsior replaces the BoP/Carrier).

A plethora of in-faction ship-class combinations exist for the Klingon faction. I believe this is logical counter to the FED ship variety.


I still find it funny looking at the ship Listings... and the proof of how one sided the game is.. I mean yeesh.. Feds get so many more ships of each type compared to the KDF.. Oh well... Have fun all..


As it stands now, the KDF has more classes of ship than FED. (Granted you only have 9 different ships and FED 14, but this also provides for a greater variety of builds for the KDF.) With the BoP/Carrier/Cruiser special rule I think we've made complete cross faction teaming a reality.

Mancom, I think our changes address your some of your concerns. With regard to the 3v3 ques, none exist; the system won't even start a match with less than 4v4. We will have to run exposition games as much as possible through the OPvP channel.

If you are suggesting that we remove ships from the FED side, well, that just ain't gonna happen; so what else do you suggest? We want this league MORE accessible to ALL players.

@Everyone,
We need and want you to talk to us. I think we've demonstrated that we WANT your input. This league is restricted to SPACE not faction.

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Now we have a working model for cross faction teaming..:)

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I may be signing up for this... as it does seem like it'd be fun ;) just depends on if my fleet wants to make a 3 team or I go as a gun for hire.

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Any news? Your site is down...

There's a new site http://stopl.guildlaunch.com/index.php?gid=172342 for a STO PvP League. Any conncetions?

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Sounds interesting.

Whats Blade Radio?

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Any news? Your site is down...

Sorry about that; didn't get an announcement out before we took it offline. We are in the process of a significant change. As a result websites availability is limited for a few days. Please be patient; we are sure you will enjoy the end result. As soon as we open enrollment, we will let you know in this thread.

There's a new site http://stopl.guildlaunch.com/index.php?gid=172342 for a STO PvP League. Any conncetions?

I have seen this site. There has been no activity since late November/early December and I believe that it is now defunct.