Edit: I'd describe myself as a 'sometimes tournament player'.
Okay. I've given this some thought. I actually dug up my first post in a tournament (back in 2009), and I think I've got a pretty good handle on what motivates me.
For me, I think the most important factor when deciding whether or not to join a tournament is
STORY. If you say we're going to restrict X, Y, and Z things just to make the game hard ... I'm probably not going to be very interested. But if you say we're going to restrict X, Y, and Z things because of some nifty narrative that's been created ... I'm much more likely to join. A good backstory always gets my creative juices flowing and gets me wanting to create a character to engage with this new world that has been envisioned. Me and my new character, off on a fresh adventure, through uncharted game play!
So, along those lines, things I really don't like:
1) Forced respecs.
2) Forced RNG use.
I know that respecs have been part of the game for more than a decade now, but I still haven't warmed to them. For me, respecing a character ruins their identity and basically breaks any narrative that may have been created for the character's journey.
Similarly, I haven't seen RNG use incorporated into any sort of narrative. It always seem to be: We're using an RNG, because we're using an RNG. It'll make things hard ...
and hard is automatically interesting ... I guess ... *shrug*
Anyhow, it could just be me ... and since no one else has said something similar, I'd say there's a very real chance that it might be ... but, if the tournament host can create some sort of compelling story or reason for the restrictions, I'm willing to consider most anything. If the restrictions seem totally random, that's
not going to ignite my imagination and get me to join.
As to specific tournament ideas that have been floated, I'd be most interested in joining a Green with envy tournament. The timing just seems right for that one with D2R patch 2.4 about to go live. The tweaks to set bonuses, and being able to upgrade set items, isn't super interesting as far as my regular characters are concerned, but, it could be super fun to engage with those changes in a tournament!
(Yep, I'm like 95% sold on putting down my UT99er for a bit to do that tournament. Now, someone pitch me a story as to why we're only using set items, and I'm all in! )