However, Schradinger, to answer your question because I don't believe people will be fair. Color my cynical I guess. It's not a big deal, just personal preference.
If that's the case, then you'll never be satisfied with a judgement no matter who does it. Unless you're worried about there being a "judge club" where all the judges start to rule in favor of the other judges every time. Though again, if that's the case then you'll never believe any judge has earned their rank, whether they did it in a tournament or not.
If you don't believe a fellow judge can be impartial in a tournament setting, why would you trust them to do it in a normal ranked match? It's pretty much impossible to have a ranking system like this without some level of trust, unless none of the judges ever participate in any ranked matches at all, but that's going to cut down on the fighter pool quite a bit considering how small the community currently is.
Physical Description: Standing at 1.9 meters in height and weighing in at 100 kg, David presents an imposing physical presence that is only heightened by his implacably calm demeanor. His keen hazel eyes are almost always moving, as if memorizing every facet of the environment and analyzing it for strategic value. Aesthetically, he has short dirty blonde hair, a small collection of mostly-healed scars, and a musculature that most would call "chiseled", due to the training he put himself through both before and after recieving his abilities. When out and about as his crime fighting alter-ego, David wears a skin-tight body glove of what appears to be a black, fibrous, non-reflective fabric, though thicker and far more durable than any conventional fabric ever could be. Fixed on top of this body glove are an assortment of semi-flexible armor plates that boast a coloration only slightly lighter than the jumpsuit beneath. To top off this ensemble, his head is encased in a black armored mask with non-reflective lenses to protect his eyes, and a vocal distorter to disguise his voice.
Psychological Description: More often than not, David possesses a nearly unshakably calm demeanor, due in large part to the rapidity with which he can analyze and apply logic to almost any situation. Even when caught unawares, any true feeling of surprise is so brief that one might miss it altogether if they don't pay rapt attention. He also tends to appear aloof and distant, disconnected from the issues that normal people have to deal with on a daily basis. This is not to say, however, that he has no emotions or desires of his own, simply that his superior intellect has a tendency to overrule the pull of his heart with cool logic and deduction.
Powers: Enhanced Strength - Mercer is able to lift 3 metric tons above his head, leap several stories from a standing start, and deliver blows strong enough to shatter concrete.
Enhanced Speed - He is also capable of reacting to objects moving at supersonic speeds with almost casual ease, sprinting at speeds up to 450 kilometers per hour, and maintaining 200 kph speeds over long distances.
Enhanced Durability - With bones that are all but impenetrable to modern firearms and a muscular structure capable of withstanding intense trauma, Mercer's durability may be the aspect most enhanced by the procedure. He is able to entirely recover from even severe wounds in hours or days, and possesses an increased resistance to direct energy assaults, such as those utilizing heat or electricity, though he is still far from immune to their effects. His resistance to toxins and disease is also potent enough to render normal doses of chemical agents entirely ineffective, and he can no longer become ill.
Enhanced Endurance - He has also been gifted with immense stamina, capable of maintaining constant peak performance for over an hour before tiring, holding his breath for twenty minutes straight, and going without sleep for up to a week without suffering loss of cognitive ability.
Enhanced Perception - In addition to reflexes quick enough to allow him to track bullets in-flight, he also possesses greatly enhanced senses, both the traditional five, as well as the senses of balance, timing, positioning, direction, and electroreception. In combination, these enhanced senses allow him to perform complex actions with flawless coordination and nearly perfect timing, far out-performing any human regardless of training or skill.
Enhanced Cognition - Mentally, he is capable of utilizing up to 100% of his superhuman brain simultaneously, granting him perfect and instantaneous recall, the ability to perform feats of multitasking and on-the-fly calculation that would shame any modern computer, and the capability to consciously control his entire nervous system, up to and including even the autonomic functions of his body. He can not only regulate his heart rate and breath patterns, but also desensitize select areas of his body in order to endure greater pain than any normal man. On an intellectual level, he has an IQ that would likely be rated at or near 200, and can solve difficult problems and deduce details from even the smallest morsel of evidence, thinking faster and better on his feet than most people do even when given several days to study a problem. This ability is potent enough that he himself does not fully realize the extent of his cognitive functions and simply refers to it as instinct, when in fact it is his superhuman mind putting the pieces together faster than even he can consciously comprehend.
Equipment: Armor - With a body glove composed of several layers of interwoven carbon nanofibers, David's armor makes him nearly immune to harm from electrical attacks thanks to a superconductive outer layer and an insular inner layer, as well as exceedingly resistant to thermal variances, able to comfortably withstand the intense heat of napalm and the cold of liquid nitrogen. It is also highly resistant to slashing and piercing, though only moderately effective against firearms, due to its inability to effectively disperse impact force. It is for that reason that he has the outside of the armor fitted with semi-flexible plating composed of high-impact polymers which are additionally even more resistant to temperature extremes than the body glove, and can withstand the impact of any modern firearm intact. Offensively, the gloves possess solid reverbium studs over the knuckles in order to further increase the power of his punches (effectively doubling it), and the entire body glove is capable of generating an electrical current that can be used both for stunning opponents, causing paralysis within half a meter of the contact area when used on a human, or for creating an intense static clinging force with a holding strength of up to one metric ton per square inch. The mask also contains a neural link to control all of the armor's functions.
Shield - Constructed of molecularly aligned reverbium, this 0.8 meter concave disk is capable of reflecting a large portion of any energy that strikes its face or edges, and dispersing the rest with minimal impact on its bearer. Its unique properties also allow it to rebound off objects when thrown, without losing any of its momentum or impact force in the process, as well as striking objects with nearly twice the amount of force generated by its actual mass and velocity. A notable exception to its reflective abilities is visible light, which is primarily absorbed, partially dispersed, and only minimally reflected, giving the shield a flat gray sheen.
Staves - A pair of retractable staves whose length can vary between 0.6 and 2 meters. The last 30 centimeters on each staff is constructed of reverbium and equipped with a power cell capable of energizing it, allowing each blow to deliver a significant electrical shock in addition to enhancing the physical power of the blows tenfold. At maximum output, the electrical damage is severe enough to instantly kill a human being with even a light touch.
He grunted as her punches drove home into his ribs, though the blows didn't hold enough power to break the bone they were still enough to drive the breath out of him. When she stepped through and back, he followed her movement, bringing his right foot back and around to keep himself facing her. He tossed the broken cup aside as he did so, raising both arms into a loose boxer's stance, held at chin height with his head tucked as hers now was, left foot leading with slightly more weight shifted back onto his right. His breathing evened out as he watched her, noting that the cut above her eye could prove an advantage for him, thanks to the abundance of small blood vessels in the forehead. She wouldn't bleed out from it or anything of that sort, but it certainly had the possibility to obstruct her vision.
Now that she had her space, David simply took his stance and waited, idly wishing that he'd had the time to remove his jacket before this all started. It was unnecessarily constricting, and likely wouldn't survive this encounter intact. Such a shame to ruin a fine jacket.
I'd be game for a good hand-to-hand match, if this is still open for challengers.
Name: David Smith.
Random Descriptors: Race: Human (Caucasian) Gender: Male Age: Older than he looks. Height: 6'4" Weight: 180 lbs Hair Color: Dark Brown Eye Color: Brown
Physical Description: Tall and deceptively thin, his physique is comprised of tightly packed muscles that grant him a level of strength that very often surprises his opponents, who are expecting to face a man reliant on speed and avoidance rather than one capable of delivering blows on par with the likes of heavyweight boxers. He keeps his dark hair cut short, usually no longer than a quarter of an inch, and tends to wear clothing that is tailored to both compliment and accentuate his tall and slender physique.
Personality Description: No data available.
Abilities: Willpower - More than once, he has been called the strongest man in the world, though not in the physical sense. Repeatedly demonstrating a profound ability to apply the theories of mind over matter in a very literal sense, he has come to be known by those familiar with him as a man possessing a truly indomitable will, capable of overcoming obstacles that would leave other men balking in disbelief at the sheer insanity of the attempt. Hypercognition - David's brain is, for reasons unknown (though likely related to his possession of superhuman willpower), capable of absorbing and processing information on a subconscious level at speeds that surpass even the most powerful supercomputers. He can glance at a situation for an instant, and then correctly deduce the most likely outcomes based on a myriad of factors that most humans would fail to even notice, and indeed he himself is not consciously aware of noticing them. He can learn to speak a new language in days, perfectly mimic the movements of martial arts masters from simple observation, and discover a loophole through which to escape from nearly any trap. The instinctive nature of this ability renders it vulnerable to conscious override, and if he allows arrogance to get the better of him instead of trusting his instincts, its effectiveness can be reduced or eliminated almost completely. Bend The Rules - Whether this is a side effect of his tremendous willpower or a separate ability altogether is unknown, but what is known is that he is capable of subtly and subconsciously bending the rules of reality in his own favor, making possible things that ordinary men could never hope to achieve and enabling him to match the feats of the peak humans of comic book lore. In addition to making him inherently lucky, it allows him to perform feats such as catching arrows mid-flight and sword blades between the palms of his hands, avoiding automatic and even well-aimed gunfire, punching holes in concrete, performing feats of accuracy and precision that can boggle the mind, and shrugging off wounds that would cripple or kill mortal men. It is this ability, combined with his immense willpower, that has kept him in his physical prime despite being well over one hundred years old.
Skills: Martial Arts - He has spent a great deal of his life studying and training in martial arts techniques around the globe, and has subsequently developed a new style of fighting that is unique to himself, combining the traits he has found most effective from the various disciplines he's studied, both armed and unarmed, with his hypercognitive instincts to produce a style that can become nearly unbeatable if utilized to its fullest potential. Firearms - Due to possessing an innate sense of spatial awareness and trigonometry, he is a phenomenal shot with every known firearm, having trained in the use of pistols, shotguns, rifles, and even self-propelled projectile launchers. His hypercognitive mind allows him to instinctively perform the calculations required for making very difficult or even otherwise impossible shots, such as deflecting a bullet off a surface to strike a target out of his direct line of sight or sniping a target from a kilometer away with perfect accuracy. Whether these feats are due entirely to his mind or also supplemented by his rule bending is unknown.
Weapons: To be determined.
Character History: No data available.
I can nix the hypercognition and rule bending, since you'll be giving up your mystical abilities.
He moved the instant the liquid caught fire, leading with his right foot as he stepped forward and gripped the now-empty cup by its base to thrust it toward her. The blow was aimed to strike squarely on her nose, though the fact that he held the glass with the opening facing her meant that the rim would strike just above her upper lip and just below her brow, with enough force to break both skin and glass. If the glass did break, his grip on the stout base would relegate any pointy shards and jagged edges to the receiving end of the attack, very possibly blinding her in the process, and he was fairly certain his hand would remain unscathed. The same could not, in all likelihood, be said of the young woman's face. Right now he had the momentum of the fight on his side, and he was not keen on giving that up anytime soon.
Regarding rankings, there is one thing I would caution against and that is becoming elitist. There was/is an arena forum on the star wars site where I got my start, and what ended up happening once the rankings got higher for the really good fighters and the average fighters began to lag behind was that elitism began to set in. The top-tier fighters hung out in their untouchable castle and the rest just dwindled off until there was no one else left to fight and the entire arena died. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be a ranking system (on the contrary, I think it could be a lot of fun), but there also needs to be an attitude of "if you're not that great, we'll help you get better" to accompany it. Otherwise the average fighters are left floundering with no guidance regarding how they can improve and they eventually lose interest and leave, and the arena dies. A little positive constructive criticism can go a long way.
Regarding points, I like the 100 for a win, 50 for a draw, 25 for a loss idea, and when it comes to tournaments I vote for a bonus of 100 per victory for first place, 50 per victory for second place, and 25 per victory for third place, in addition to the normal point gain. It gives a good incentive for trying to win, while also preventing the winner from becoming borderline untouchable in the rankings.
Edit: I'm also not saying that there's a lack of constructive criticism around here, as I've seen several threads dedicated to training purposes, but just wanted to reinforce that such things are likely going to be necessary in order to keep this arena community alive as well as help it grow. As was mentioned by others, this community has always been very good at keeping things low-stress and openly inviting. :)
PS: If there is a third place prize, I just realized it would have to be shared by whichever two fighters didn't win the two second-to-last fights, so either they each get 25 extra points per victory, or we just do first and second place bonuses.
