Sea of Champions

Sea of Champions is a competitive Sea of Thieves Tournament inspired by Twitch Rivals. The Tournament uses private Arena Servers. In Sea of Champions, 5 Galleon crews compete across 5 standard Arena matches for a $1000 Money Prize. The tournament was created by two of the winners from Guardian Con 2019: The Battle for Orlando, Chromagon & EdgeOfElysium and was hosted by Mudcat and Pottersauce.

Teams
- Bold indicates team captain.

- * Ragetrox replaced original Blighted team member "Pickleman".

Rules
Sea of Champions ran on basic Arena rules.


 * 15 minute match.
 * 5 Sloops, 2 players to each Sloops.
 * 150 Silver for discovering a Sea Dog Chest, 1000 for delivering a Chest.
 * 5 Silver for a player kill, 40 Silver for a Cannon hit on an enemy Ship.
 * -1000 Silver for your Ship sinking.

Code of Conduct
Sea of Champions is designed to amplify the spirit of friendly competition. Under no circumstances will bad sportsmanship, discrimination, harassment, or cheating be permitted. If this behaviour is witnessed by staff during or outside of the event, Sea of Champions retains the right to block individuals from future participation. By signing the document, a person agrees to the following:

1.	Players will not attempt to misuse or tamper with the Sea of Champions accounts provided, including but not limited to fraudulent and malicious behaviour.

2.	Players will not use discriminatory, hateful, or pervasive language.

3.	Players will not discuss any illegal activities.

4.	Players will not harass, bully, intimidate, or threaten other contestants.

5.	Players will not cheat or use unintended game exploits to gain an unfair advantage.

6.     Players  will broadcast their participation on Mixer, Twitch, or Facebook to verify their compliance with this agreement, and permit Sea of Champions to use their broadcast during the event period for the purpose of spectating the event on the official Sea of Champions platforms.

Permitted / Banned Actions
Permitted

● Sword lunging and dolphin diving.

● Shovel cancelling.

● Sword lunge cancelling.

● Sword swing cancelling.

● Chest drop quick swimming.

Prohibited

● Macro assisted gameplay

● Exploits that might allow multiple or single guns to be fired quicker than the developers intend (Double X Reload).

● Exploits that might allow a contestant to deal more damage than reasonably intended.

● Exploits that might allow a contestant to bypass oncoming damage in an unintended manner, or modify the player model hitbox.

● Exploits that might allow a contestant to increase their natural movement speed greater than what is intended.

● Exploits that might expand a contestant’s inventory greater than what is intended (inventory glitch).

● Cheats that might enable ESP, teleportation, God mode, invulnerability, etc.

Points
Points were given to teams based on their final position on the ladder of each round:


 * 1st Place = 10 Points
 * 2nd Place = 8 Points
 * 3rd Place = 6 Points
 * 4th Place = 4 Points
 * 5th Place = 2 Points

Private Servers
Like Twitch Rivals, Sea of Champions was hosted on private servers. Sea of Champions itself is run on a ‘make-shift’ private server provided by RARE. This has been set up to force player clients to play against only your opponents. Captains are given Sea of Champions profiles to use in the match to allow their teams to join only other Sea of Champion profiles in the Arena. These profiles were:

- SoC Goldhoarder - Gullible Gambit

Rounds
Round 1=


 * -|Round 2=


 * -|Round 3=


 * -|Round 4=


 * -|Round 5=


 * The 5th round was restarted due to losing a team at the start of the match.


 * -|Final Table=

Feedback
The ping experienced by almost all players was negatively received throughout the tournament by participants and viewers. Players were consistently lagging back into positions, falling off ships, unable to grab items or efficiently combat other teams. As a consequence, players such as FoxDie were visibly frustrated throughout the event and suggest this should have been cancelled to deal with the issues, while other players such as Doed claimed this would be their last Sea of Champions.

The community watching the event expressed frustration as the commentators were often describing play well after the on screen play has happened. The differences between players stream delays also made the event confusing, as time would often jump several minutes forwards or backwards depending on the player the official SoC channel was observing.

Chromagon explained that "the server region is populated based on the majority region of the Captain accounts that setup the private match. Three NA East should theoretically make it an NA East server. As we saw today, there appears to be additional discrepancies happening that most certainly did not present themselves during our test matches. We have collected the data and feedback and will be talking with Rare about how to resolve these issues".

Despite the rules stating "Exploits that might allow multiple or single guns to be fired quicker than the developers intend", the double X reload exploit was allowed in the same way that the double dig or sword cancelling was allowed. Several players have been accused of having macro assisted exploits, which Chromagon will be investigating.