Finally coming back to this thread to post another thought... And I'm still supporting the concept of not adding 'better' prize support. However, I'm also starting to get a bit of a negative vibe about the thought of giving losing players event-stamped trainer cards. Why?
I believe in something called the 'Soccer Mom Theory'... Okay, it's not really called that, but it's what we tend to refer to it as in my psychology class.
If any of you know what a 'soccer mom' is (I'm certain most of you do), then you may already know where this is going. If any of you happen to fall into that category, I'm sorry; this is a personal opinion and a (highly opinionated) theory that I've been taught in the local school system.
In the SMT, it has been established that the group generalized as "Soccer Moms" are responsible for sports in some communities (namely Soccer, via AYSO) to give rewards to every player, regardless of what they did during a game. This included the fact that players would always receive trophies at the end of the season regardless of how their team ranked. In fact, until the later years, most teams are not ranked. They simply win or lose with no one really keeping track.
Most of this generation has grown up, and includes my age group (I'm in my mid to late teens, specifically seventeen as of late March). I have noticed, as have many noted psychologists, that the behavior of some teenagers (mainly reactions to how fair or unfair they believe something to be) can be a tad... Radical. Since this forum is children-friendly, I don't want to go into too many details about it, but I'll be rather blunt: the majority of our age group tends to overreact. It is believed that this was to happen because of the fact that we expected life to be fair from an early age.
Now, I'm not saying all teenagers fall into this group. Some never played those types of sports, and some areas actually made things competitive (Around my 3rd grade year of playing AYSO, things became more serious in my area. Tournaments were being recorded and it wasn't a 'everyone wins' sort of scenario). However, as generalization of the US as a whole, this seems to be an accepted concept. You can't expect kids to change their belief of 'everyone wins' when they get older.
Now, granted, I understand that the trainers being suggested would be helpful to these kids. Heck, part of me thinks it's a great idea. I also understand that there's quite a bit of difference between winning a couple of trainers and winning a box. However, I do not believe that it is exactly wise to reward these kids for losing. Perhaps we could give them the trainers when they
join the league or every time a rotation takes place, but... I don't think we should just give them to the losing players (of a tournament/event, that is).
After all, these trainers are highly sought-after. Just giving them to the kids kind of ruins part of their motivation to win the packs, doesn't it?
Once again, just a personal opinion. I don't mean to offend anyone here with it.
And I don't know if this has been addressed (even I have addressed it), but I feel the need to clarify something.
YGO/MTG have 1 age division. Pokemon has 3.
Yu-Gi-Oh! has two now. The Dragon Duel Tournaments are for players under the age of 13, while regular tournaments are for players 13 and up. However, I don't know how this factors into prize support as I've not paid much attention to the Dragon Duel Tournaments.
