This is really two suggestions. The first is to add a 'best of three' mode to the multiplayer match maker. This could be accessed either by an additional check-box next to the GM opponents one, or as an option presented after the first battle. Matchmaking would proceed as normal except that if both players want to fight best of three, they are re-matched until the best of three is decided. The second suggestion is to use best of three to bring some of the focused deck optimisation from single player to competitive multiplayer. The first battle of three occurs as normal, but then the looser is given a couple of minutes to adjust his build while the winner's build is held fixed to give him something to aim for. The last round looser doesn't get access to his full item collection as that would take too long, or access to the restore function, he can only swap out characters for other characters who he has pre-equipped in his multiplayer keep. Meanwhile the winner of the last round chooses the map for the next battle. At present the keep's view of items equipped to out-of-party characters as 'in use' is an illogical annoyance, but it does mean that there are no item use conflicts between any characters, so making quick swapping practical. It would also provide a further incentive to accumulate even more items, so you have enough to simultaneously equip multiple variations of essentially the same character. Or a nicer why to handle that would be to give all characters two or three 'kit bag' slots that can be accessed during inter-battle character selection. Although the time commitment is a bit higher, adding this into the normal matchmaking would avoid splitting the player base and allow it to gracefully degrade into single match mode when there aren't enough players to support it. I think it would be interesting to see if the current meta dominating builds will stand up so well when people can optimise against them, though of course a build super optimised against one specific build may itself be very vulnerable to being optimised against in the third round.
Agree completely with your first suggestion. In case you weren't watching at the time, the first Card Hunter tournament was a peasant tournament with best of 3 matches and sideboarding. My rules weren't perfect—it was a test run after all—but the best of 3 matches made each round way more interesting IMO. Best of 1 matches and the lack of sideboards in the current CH PvP format make it way more luck-based and rock-paper-scissors-y than it should be. That said, why should the winner choose the map for the next battle? That sounds like a way to compound advantage, rather than actually running multiple tests of skill.
Letting the winner choose the next map is only for the variation that allows (only) the looser to adjust their party. To bring SP style build specialisation to MP, one of the player's decks has to be fixed to give the other something to aim at. The thinking is that this gives the first looser a huge advantage in the second battle, so the winner is allowed to pick the map to compensate a little, and to give them something to do while they are waiting. If card hunter is truly rock-paper-scissors then the first battle winner will always loose the second round and win the third, but i think the game is a bit deeper than that. A slightly better approximation would be a blended rock-paper-scissors with chance and skill: e.g. in the first round player 1's pure rock strategy defeats player 2's scissorsish deck, player 2 could then pick a pure paper strategy for battle two, but then player 1 could just move to pure scissors for the decider. So instead player 2 may want to pick a more neutral strategy that has enough paper to give him a chance against the pure rock deck without being too vulnerable to a scissors deck in battle 3. And if win-win is better for your rating than win-loss-win, then both players have an incentive to come to the first battle with a non-extreme deck that might triumph in battle 2 even with the enemy able to optimise against it. If both players could change their whole team between battles, you'd be back to optimising against almost the whole meta instead of a specific deck. Freezing both decks for the duration provides a better test of the decks and players' battle skills but no new deck specialisation gameplay either. Allowing a limited but equal amount of change to both decks does allow some specialisation, but doesn't deliver SP style specialisation. It may be that equal limited change is more fun than my scheme, but i think mine is worth trying at least. (Sideboards are (single?) spare characters you can swap into your party for the next battle? Allowing many standby characters but only one substitution per battle would give more flexibility, or allowing no subs and just a few kit-bag items per character could more tightly restrict the change. If kit-bag slots existed, both approaches could be blended: only one player allowed to substitute characters, but both given access to their kit-bags.)
When I say rock paper scissors, I am not referring to random determination of a given match. I am talking about the environment. Some builds are good against some and bad against others; thus Build X usually beats Build Y but loses most of its matches against Build Z. Sideboards alleviate this, but without the ability to change your build between rematches in a given match-up, the environment becomes somewhat RPSy.
I think i follow what you're saying. My point is that if you find you're playing build Y in match one, a single sideboard may not be enough to transform your deck into Z. I think it's interesting to allow that option. If Card Hunter were pure RPS my scheme would be rubbish, but i think it could be fun with the blend of absolute and relative deck strength, skill and luck that is Card Hunter.
