Anyways, do you get to keep skills you get in battle, like getting the dodger skill, even though you didn't buy it?
No, it would be too hard to keep track of, and it would probably benefit fighters more who took longer to kill their opponent, which wouldn't be fair.
It wouldn't be hard to keep track of. Just push (v)iew at the end of the match. And it would be fair, because the longer fights give the crowd more excitement.
Yeah, but it would be unfair. Would it be unfair that your gladiator struck down his enemy in 1 hit, gaining no skills, while my kobold toyed around with my opponent for few minutes and gained legendary knife user and legendary dodger? It would make the whole tournament too unbalanced, imho.
EDIT: Gannon, your results: Murderphant won with out getting hit. Your set-up is very hit or miss. With 16 people I'd say you have around 1/8 of winning, more or less. The logic behind that is: You need to win 4 matches to win total, but only lose 1 to lose overall, therefore, 1/4 base chance. Your set-up has two possibilities, with very little to consider inbetween, Hit first and win, or miss first and lose. That translates to a 1/2 chance of winning the round. 1/4 * 1/2 = 1/8. Will run Yugi now.
You seem to forget that we get more points after every round. The people who buy strong weapon from the start have an advantage if they survive the first round, they have more points because they don't have to sell their equips (selling equipment only gives half of the points back). So those guys who are completely dressed in leather armor won't handle so many rounds, as they will sell their armour at one point or another, but that makes them 'lose' points.