I'm speaking as someone who's very exited to see how this whole thing plays out, but not feeling like it would be worth my while participating in. I say this with a character sheet resting in my inbox that I made to what I perceived to be the specs for this tournament.  

[quote=@Rilla]
How about, if [@Darth] is agreeable we keep the current system of players creating their own characters. Because it is part of the learning process, and we take Darth's idea of pre-made skills, and apply it to them. He can help structure a wide array of abilities to be simple, yet bring something unique to the table so everyone isn't doing all the same things with different elements. 
[/quote]

	I think this is a great idea, or at least it would have been a great idea. But you've already got people submitting and possibly working on applications for this. I do think Darth's points would at the very least be worth looking at. 

	If this thing is still in the ideas/conceptual stage, I have a few observations.

	As someone who's been rollplaying for a while and doesn't have more than one joke arena battle to their name, The following things are my primary concerns with arena in no particular order:

	Arena players are jerks.

	It's just two people beating each other up with no storytelling.

	It's competitive.

	While my previous experiences with arena players outside the arena section has been that they are argumentative, stubborn beasts, I can now see that not every arena player is deserving of that reputation. You guys can be pretty fun, level headed, and even agreeable. If this tourney does one thing for arena, it will be to clear away arena's reputation of being a toxic community.

	The second one is just wrong. When you actually look at some of these battles, they are more than just slug fests. Sure, some of them are, but the really good ones actually are based around a story. The stories are as diverse as the arena players themselves.

	The competitive element... Make no mistake about it, I have no problem playing competitive card games or the occasional team based FPS. But these affairs do not require me to interact as “intimately” with my opponent. I have no problem creating a story cooperatively with a bunch of strangers, but I'm not sure I could do the same thing competitively. 

	I'm not sure if this is what you already had planned, but I think what would help alleviate some of the anxiety is for everyone to have like a tutorial sparring match with their mentor. It would help write the story and give everyone a bit more insight of what's expected of them. I don't think people outside of arena are as uncreative/inexperienced as you think, they just don't know what's cheating and what's fair in your eyes. As an example, the fire ninja that is linked in the first post has dominance over fire, but they can create steel weapons. Isn't that more in the realm of earth/metal than fire/heat?