How would you all feel if I made it so you only received exp/gp for your top 3 scores in a tournament. also, only your top 3 scores would count towards the total number of entries in that tournament?

I like that idea.

That sounds fair.

Yup, good idea!
Cause right now, if someone is online while no-one else is, and he enters a tournament with e.g. 20 max players, he can fill all 20 slots.
All he/she needs is 1 kill, and then wait for the game to finish (just build 1 tower for example). That way he has the high score on all his 20 games. Easy EXP/GP.
If you look at my private tournaments, i made one called "EXP/GP Exploit?" which demonstrates this.

(Also look at my profile, i tested it once)

Why top 3? Just take the best score and have a leaderboard - as in the multi tourni thread

I would perfer top 1 too.... but I worry some tournaments would take ages to end...

For example, if there was only 10 people online and a tournament requires 25 unique people to enter before it ends....

I don't think you should be scared of long running tournaments - unless it causes you a problem system wise. Im sure that if that started happening and it was a problem people could shorten the end times accordingly. There is a natural equilibrium that will occur once people use it for a while.

As the site gains more members that problem gets smaller and smaller.

D: i totally posted this suggestion last night, but it was a reply to a not really related thread so i can't really blame you for missing it, but yes thats an amazing idea