Look, i get that people love their loomed items and that they're fun to play with in battle/siege/strat whatever but let's be realistic here- any imbalance in loom levels is a clear advantage for one team. If this is intended to be a true competition amongst nations then it should start with an even playing field.
So far the arguments for using looms are:
1. It's always been done before.
2. Without looms CRPG is just native
Which, in my opinion are pretty weak as far as justifications go. The first argument is easily shot down in that "that's just how we do it" isn't, and hasn't ever been a valid justification for anything. Just because something has been done one way in the past does not make that method any better than a possible new suggestion, it just makes the method familiar.
The second argument, "it'd be just like native" holds absolutely no water if one has been playing CRPG over the years at all. Pick up a bow in CRPG and shoot for a minute. Now hop on a native server and pick up a bow. Notice the difference in accuracy and flight time? There are weapons, armor, strategies, and mechanics in CRPG that will not be seen on native servers because CRPG is a mod that has been developed for years as a divergence from the base game. To insinuate that the only difference between CRPG and native is loom points is to have a sincere lack of understanding about the base mechanics of CRPG, native, or both.
I get it, people love their looms, and to be honest they're fun to play around with when one is goofing off- but let's be real here. The reason people love their looms is because they provide a tangible benefit for playing this game over a long period of time. I hate to burst anyone's bubble but no one in CRPG has done anything to "earn" a loom point, to begin with. Even at a x1 the worst leecher over time will eventually acquire one or more loom points. Looms are simply a veterans perk, a way of the CRPG dev team to say "thanks for playing our game over a long period of time" and nothing more really. They provide great benefits, sure, but having a series of great benefits that are not standardized in a tournament is like having a race where some cars have nitro and others are the stock model, it's just not even a facade of fair play.
Let's do a simple example, shall we? Take this wonderful tool here...
http://alpha-lider19.ru/MB/...and calculate the difference between an archer with 0 loom points and an archer with a full loomed horn bow + bodkins against an enemy with 50 armor and 60 health. Both archers should have 163 WPF, 18STR, and 6PD
For the lazy:
Base archer 13.9 damage per shot with a headshot of 26.7.
3 to 5 body shots or 2 to 3 headshots to kill the target
Full Loomed archer 20.0 damage per shot with a headshot of 34.8
2 to 3 body shots or or 1 to 2 headshots to kill the target
And that's just the difference in damage, i won't go into accuracy differences or pull up a huge chart of all the melee weapon or cav changes with loom points.
So, the
minimum amount of shots to kill with base gear is the same as the
maximum amount of shots to kill the same targets with loomed gear. What about this seems remotely sportsmanlike? Sure you can make the argument that the market is open and that people can just buy looms but a team should have to spend hundreds of thousands of gold simply to compete at an equal level with another team. The differences looms make are noticeable and very powerful, else people wouldn't be buying them or look forward to looming their gear. Such imbalance in power has absolutely no place in an event that seeks to be a tournament showcase the most skillful players from each nation.
I'd really like to see an argument for looms that takes this simple fact into account. The data is pretty clear, STF's should be used in this tournament (and any other event that claims to be a tournament) and looms should be explicitly disallowed in order to create a playing field that highlights skill, not veteran's perks.
