Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Prize support is disappointing

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jeffrey123 said:
Not my point. There aren't very many excellent vgc players like there are tcg players. You face them in cut as well, or even like top 8 which is better
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Gonna drop the issue after this as it's off-topic, but that's a ridiculously ignorant statement.

ChaosJim said:
Please don't derail the thread with comparisons between the VGC and the TCG.

I think the idea of scaling needs to play a role too. Winning a 250 person State Championship is more impressive than winning a 16 person one. I don't think someone should be punished for living in an area with fewer active players, but at the same time players should be rewarded for their added success and dedication to make it through many (or even many many) additional rounds.
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I think the CP kickers are a decent way of doing that for now. At least people get a bit of CP for making it far in a large tournament.
 
Firestorm, I think kickers are a great step in the right direction. I'm just voicing my concern that I think something more needs to go on. Kickers have a really complex effect on the CP race overall. While thinking about them, realizing that most 250 person events will be harder to win than most 50 person events, and despite this the main factor in who receives more CP is what type of event it is. In another scenario, they are two different State Championships, and one person had many extra rounds of Swiss to receive the exact same prize (physical and CP wise, though they might've earned more ELO points).
 
Kickers need to happen to encourage attendance.

I just feel as though the current Kicker system isn't the correct balance.

In my sig, there's a proposal for a new version of CPs.

I'm pretty certain that version isn't 100% the correct thing (I'd prefer using ELO with a Top Cut Kicker without Play-At-Risk, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, and is probably impossible to work through).

But the current version of the Kicker system doesn't have a modifier for higher attendance, longer tournaments (which, in general, are more difficult, though not always). And that, in my mind, needs to change.
 
The places with higher attendances also tend to have more tournaments. Its the nature of OP that it tends to go where the players are.

So while I don't dispute that a bigger tournament is harder to win, the CP system also has to try to account for play opportunity too. If the CP system failed to accommodate the sparse OP areas then POP might as well just pull out of those areas. That would be a bad thing not only in the USA but in much of Europe too. I'm sure that wotc would be rubbing their hands with glee if POP decided to give attendance based boost CPs to the winners of the larger events.
 
I can't type out a huge post like everyone else here, but I will say that the distribution of prizes looks disappointing to say the least. Focusing only on the top players seems like the right way to go, but it's really not. They may or may not deserve the extra stuff they win, due to the major luck factor in Pokemon. One unlucky donk or one bad start, both of which are completely feasible and you may very well be pushed out of the prize range and into nothing.

And though I haven't seen who said it, removing prizes from Juniors and Seniors? Really? If anything you would think that they would get more prizes (the Juniors anyways) just due to the fact it pulls in more business.
 
NoPoke said:
The places with higher attendances also tend to have more tournaments. Its the nature of OP that it tends to go where the players are.

So while I don't dispute that a bigger tournament is harder to win, the CP system also has to try to account for play opportunity too. If the CP system failed to accommodate the sparse OP areas then POP might as well just pull out of those areas. That would be a bad thing not only in the USA but in much of Europe too. I'm sure that wotc would be rubbing their hands with glee if POP decided to give attendance based boost CPs to the winners of the larger events.
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Yes, and when I show up to a Battle Road I have to play against Frank and Michael Diaz, Drew Guritzky, Sam Chen, Frankie Durso, Michael Skoran, Geoff and Ben Sauk, Darrell Moreno, and Dylan Bryan. Including myself, that means that many of the events I'll play in during a year will have 9-10 people showing up who have had Worlds Invites in Masters. Many will have had multiple invites. It means that not all of us will fit into Top Cut, and there are many unsung players in our area who are good enough to give us a run for our money. If we consider Regionals, where the number of Top Cut spots increase, now I'm likely to see Michael Pramawat, Luke Reed, Ben Potter, Gino Lombardi, and a few other name players. So more people are fighting for the 'more' points. This in fact is what justifies the larger number of events. To be fair, on some occasions there might be two BRs within a 3 hour radius of where I live, splitting up these players, but with more and more event dates, that is less and less likely.

OP rewards areas that grow their communities by allowing them to hold more events. Anyone can do this by starting a league, or teaching a friend or two how to play. Some people start websites like The Top Cut. Please don't distract from the issue at hand by making a ridiculous suggestion (OP pulling out of sparse areas) so you have something easy to refute.
 
OP dies when there are no players.
Most players don't stay with a tcg game forever: three - four years is a more reasonable expectation.
OP always needs new players.
If there are sufficient disincentives in place how does a sparse OP area get new players?

You have misunderstood what I said and reversed cause and effect. OP doesn't pull out as the cause, dwindling players due to lack of reason to play is the cause. Which means that decisions that make it harder to get new players / more play activity need to be very carefully considered. One such decision would to make only the biggest events worth playing in. For example by adding points to the winners based upon attendance (I'll call this Bullados's proposal even though I've seen similar from others too) . Great if you live in a dense play area with lots of big events bad everywhere else.

It is attendance that drives more events and not the names who turn up.

If a decision is made that makes it harder on players in dense OP areas is that a good or bad thing? Suppose that same decision helps players out in the low OP areas, will you now change your mind and accept that not every decision has to benefit the same group of players?
 
But rewarding larger events gives areas with a smaller player base an incentive to attract more players to events.

Players in areas with large attendance get the extra points they've earned, while players in areas with smaller attendance have an incentive to grow into an area with larger attendance.

Its a win-win.
 
It's really late so I'm only going to give a fairly simplistic reply.

I'm really not all that bitter, but Nats 2011 I made top 64 out of around 1000 masters. Got nothing at all. Awesome.


If people are dedicated enough to go to Nationals, or even State and Regional competitions, chances are they are willing to spend money proportional to their passion for playing - which is obviously going to be a fairly moderate to high amount. The experience alone is worth 10 bucks, not even taking in consideration one could get a nice return on their monetary investment if they place high.

Why not charge (at least Masters) an entry fee? It would give these events a certain prestige that could attract a lot of new, competitive blood to this game.


I highly doubt it would turn even a small segment of players away - seeing that virtually all said players have probably spent at least 20x this entry fee on their deck, collection, transportation to get to said event, meal they had at the last sit-down restaurant they went to, etc.

More incentives for being good at this game will definitely "trickle down" to the aspiring public, potentially inspiring a whole new level of intensity to excel.
 
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Diaz said:
But rewarding larger events gives areas with a smaller player base an incentive to attract more players to events.

Players in areas with large attendance get the extra points they've earned, while players in areas with smaller attendance have an incentive to grow into an area with larger attendance.

Its a win-win.
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You don't attract players to low attendance areas by making the high attendance events more attractive.
You can call an additional barrier an incentive if you like but no amount of calling it an incentive will stop it being another hurdle for low attendance areas to overcome.

Attendance based boost in CPs for winners is a win-lose. With sparse OP areas on the losing side. :(
 
NoPoke said:
You don't attract players to low attendance areas by making the high attendance events more attractive.
You can call an additional barrier an incentive if you like but no amount of calling it an incentive will stop it being another hurdle for low attendance areas to overcome.

Attendance based boost in CPs for winners is a win-lose. With sparse OP areas on the losing side. :(
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You aren't going to attract new players in low attendance areas with tales of CP, no matter how many they would get for a tournament. You're going to attract new players by having better prizes.

If Pokemon wants to keep building a competitive player base they should start treating masters differently than juniors and seniors. An entrance fee is a good start. Do it next year at nats, then regionals and states the year after. I think as long as you announce that you're doing it at the beginning of the season it'll be fine.

That brings me to another point. Pokemon needs to announce the prizes more than a couple days before the tournament or in some cases this year, while the tournaments are going on. We should be able to know what we're working towards at the beginning of the season. If something like scholarship amounts are being worked on then put a place holder saying that a scholarship will be given, value to be determined soon.
 
If you define a new player as someone who has not played before but will only play if prizes are increased then I don't think that new player will become a committed pokemon tcg player. Their motivation is to go to wherever the prize support is.

From the perspective of an area with low attendance a new player is someone they don't regularly see. You won't attract that kind of new player if you tilt the system so that only big events yield enough points to qualify for worlds.



As to treating masters differently I really think that you don't want to ask for that. The last time we had masters treated differently was when wotc eliminated the master division. I very much doubt that masters will ever get more prize support than Juniors or Seniors. So asking for different is likely asking for less!
 
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grass_eater said:
Isn't 18 packs really nice? Thats half a booster box. I envy you... all my packs come from my own wallet =(
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Top 128- 18 packs, Stamped top 128 promo, Play! Pokemon hat
Top 64- Booster Box, Stamped top 64 promo, Play! Pokemon hat,
Top 32- Booster Box, Stamped top 32 promo, Play! Pokemon Hat, Exclusive Plush, Scholarship for $250
Top 16- All of the above plus a scholarship for $500


IMO. Top 8-on is fine regarding prizes.
 
NoPoke said:
From the perspective of an area with low attendance a new player is someone they don't regularly see. You won't attract that kind of new player if you tilt the system so that only big events yield enough points to qualify for worlds.
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There's a flip side to your argument:

From the perspective of an area with high attendance, a new player is someone they don't regularly see. You won't attract that kind of new player if you keep the current system because high attendance areas are so saturated with good players that newer players will rarely get any Championship Points/prizes.

Not everyone can be Tyler Smith.
 
Ian, I basically RAN OP out of a small area. The twin cities had an school-year population of about 100,000, and an out-of-school population of about 55,000. We were about 2 hours away from the closest OP area, so few people were willing to travel both outside the area and inside the area.

What I tried to do to increase my tournament attendance was to work with the "area" PTOs so that our schedules didn't overlap.

I believe that, by giving attendance boosters, my attendance would have been higher, as more people would have been willing to travel from the major population centers on weeks where there wasn't anything closer to them. And not just a bit higher. 50% higher, bare minimum.

The reason? Scheduling and promotion. If you introduce incentives for PTOs and TOs to work with each other, everybody's attendance figures go up. One incentive is CP bonuses based on attendance.
 
Bullados with Best Finish Limits players have to go to the events that yield the biggest CPs. Which won't be your smaller events when they have to make an economics based choice on where to go. There is no point in going to an event with a a payout of 5 points if you need 6 or more points.

I suspect that my definition of small is smaller than yours.

Some players can't afford to go to every possible event.

Psychup2034: The bigger events can take a little pain, small events less so. The biggest events don't need more players.
 
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25-30 average for Premier events isn't small enough? Or is it distance?

Might just be that I'm used to seeing 50+ tourney attendances in Chicago, Rockford, and St. Louis, and I've been comparing my numbers to those numbers.

I do know that, if attendance boosters did exist and I could have worked the scheduling correctly, I could have pulled 50 for everything except Pres...
 
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