Limited PvP in PoE (The Equal Playing Ground)

If you're familiar with Limited play in Magic: The Gathering, the following concepts should be easy for you to understand. If not, read on for a full explanation!

The idea is to introduce two new ways of PvP-ing, where everyone starts on a level playing ground, and use their skill (and some luck), to fight for the top spot.

Glossary:
You can buy into these tournaments with a small fee, a large part of this fee is then paid out to the finalists of the tournament. This fee could be in the form of any currency in the game, I used Chaos Orbs in the example, but you could run just as well run high-payout events with exalted cost buy-ins, or free events with no pay-out.

Swiss 8-Player Sealed Tournament
You've entered the starting area. You're on a 10 minute timer to select your gear, choose a class, and spend your skill points.

You create a Limited PvP-only character, this would use a generic toon rag-doll, as you will want the ability to choose which class to play after you've picked your items. In your starting area, you find 6+ large chests, that are all guaranteed to drop X items of various types and rarities. These could be guaranteed to drop with appropriate level 20-28 mods, but randomized to some extent so that you still have to construct your build intelligently.

You pick your equipment, say you get that awesome PDPS sword, you're likely to pick Duelist. If you get that coveted +1 skill Wand, you'll go Witch, and spend your skill points accordingly. You're making intelligent choices, based on available resources.

You then get a free selection of pre-levelled skill gems.

It's an even playing field. Obviously, some skills and choices will be better than other, but the meta has the potential to shift, and is easy to adjust.

The 10 minute timer has hit 0, get ready for your first Swiss round!

-Buy-in 2 Chaos Orbs
-Start as generic toon
-Open x chests of gear, fill your gear slots & inventory with as much as you can (no stat req, white sockets, guaranteed links?)
-Pick x skill gems (limited amount to make choice meaningful)
-Pick class, start at level 28
-Swiss Duels (3 round fights, wait for all fights to finish, re-pair)
-Winner 8 Chaos Orbs, 2nd place 4 Chaos Orbs, everyone is rewarded with Leo XP

Swiss 8-player Draft Tournament

Similar to the above described "Sealed Tournament", but, instead your starting area contains exactly 1 chest. You have a minute to pick up one item, and once you've picked it up, you can't change your mind. When everyone has picked an item, or the timer runs out, you get teleported to the next area, where another player has already picked an item. This continues until X items have been drafted, and you go on to choosing your class, spending skill points, and picking pre-levelled skill gems.

-Buy-in 2 Chaos Orbs
-Start as generic toon
-Open a chest, pick one item, get moved to next area (no stat req, white sockets, guaranteed links?)
-Pick x skill gems (limited amount to make choice meaningful)
-Pick class, start at level 28
-Swiss Duels (3 round fights, wait for all fights to finish, re-pair)
-Winner 8 Chaos Orbs, 2nd place 4 Chaos Orbs, everyone is rewarded with Leo XP

Nice Advantages

-Can leverage large amounts of in game assets, areas, and code.
-Currency sink (Slightly less currency paid out than rewarded, it's swallowed by the system).
-Events can be free, 2c buy-in, 10c buy-in, 5ex buy-in, or anything!
-Events fire as soon as 8 players have queued up, making it a 4-round event. Larger events could have larger player caps, and would contain more rounds.
-An entire event should not take longer than 40-50minutes, after which you can go do something else with your life, or queue up again like the no-lifer you are.

Disadvantages

-Likely to require large amounts of coding to make sure Drafting works

I think this idea is pretty interesting and is likely a good way to get people more interested in PVP.

At first I was confused about the buy-in, but then I realized it was a player buy-in like poker and not spectator betting like horse racing or sport betting. I am very much against spectator betting in this type of game, because such betting can lead to huge amounts of match-fixing, cause GGG likely doesn't have the resources available to regulate that, and it would be very easy to get away with.

But the poker type buy-in idea you talk about is actually an interesting idea and I can't think of any major drawbacks except the coding one that you mention. So it may be a long-term future project for GGG, but it seems cool!

Please, this. I have little to no interest in such gear dependent PvP, I'd definitely give this a go though.

This seems like something they can do based on some coding they've already done for races.

Really cool idea and I like it.

This sorta PvP I can get behind and def try out for fun.

I've been advocating this for months! It has to happen!

Sounds interesting, would definately try it out!

This would differently get me into the PvP side of PoE.
It also follows the same concept of the different races, most like Decent. You make something from the same base, with the choices along the way, and somewhat minimize the rng.

These concepts are so much more attractive than the current PvP system. There's a reason races are popular in their current implementation and are not based on "bring your existing level 28 racing character". The current version has its merits of course, but I think these formats would attract a broader crowd.

Drafting is one of my favourite game mechanics ever, so i totally support that idea!!

Maybe it would be easier to implement using npc merchants and their inteface instead of chests and looting?

Or actually, thinking about it, the drafting part would not even need to be in-game. Everything could be done via some sleek website interface opening for the event, and then when you are done you log in and everything is into the stash. It would also be an awesome way to start testing out the future trade-by-forum functionality. You see, you just have to do it now.

tl;dr EHRMAHGERD DO IT

Really cool suggestion. I'd participate in the free versions until I was confident I could do well in the paid versions. I like that there is the ability to transition into a more skill based version like this.

Reminds me of hunger games style mini-games and such.