Charranitar
Member
After this past weekend, I think it would be hard to justify continue to play this game in a competitive manner past this season when the competitive tournament structure is so obviously flawed. I finished 4-0-3 for 11th place, playing a Plasma deck which can hit for 120 damage on turn 1 and has multiple OHKO attacks, so by no means was I playing a slow deck, yet close to half of my games ended in a tie (and actually more than half did as my final round opponent conceded to give one of us a shot at Top, as a tie did neither of us any good). I don't think it's good to have a tournament structure in which you never lose a single match the entire day, but you don't get a shot to try to become the champion of the tournament. I think in that regard, an expanded top cut (Top 16 like it used to be just a year ago) would rectify the issue of having all worthy players in contention to win the tournament.
The bigger issue though, than the limited cut, is the best of 3, 50 minutes. The game is at a pace right now, where it's almost impossible to finish 3 complete games, but it's also really hard to not finish 2 games in that time limit, making for a tie to be the most likely outcome of a match against two evenly matched players with evenly matched decks. This rewards the good players who hit less skilled players, or favorable matchups, and punishes the good players who get paired against other good players, and even/unfavorable matchups. I think the good players still rise to the top, but some are unfairly punished by having to play more of the other highly skilled players than others. Again, an expanded top cut would help to alleviate this problem.
When two good players play each other, the margin of difference can be so little in a game, that the decision of a match would expected to be extremely close. With the current system, extremely close means tie. In the past, and I think what most players would prefer, extremely close would mean, extremely close, but one player came out ahead by the slimmest of margins.
I'm not sure if anyone will actually care about this thread, but I think my opinion should matter to the higher ups in charge of this type of stuff because I'm #22 in North America in play points right now, which means I invest more money than most into the organized play system than most others. This thread has plenty of others high up in the play point standings posting out against the current system, so I think it would be wise for the people in charge of this to take seriously the request for change.
And remember, these are your competitive players who would like skill to be best represented in determining a winner. If the competitive players reject the system and would appreciate a change, it's only logical that the more casual players would like to do away with the system of bountiful ties and exclusionary top cuts.
The bigger issue though, than the limited cut, is the best of 3, 50 minutes. The game is at a pace right now, where it's almost impossible to finish 3 complete games, but it's also really hard to not finish 2 games in that time limit, making for a tie to be the most likely outcome of a match against two evenly matched players with evenly matched decks. This rewards the good players who hit less skilled players, or favorable matchups, and punishes the good players who get paired against other good players, and even/unfavorable matchups. I think the good players still rise to the top, but some are unfairly punished by having to play more of the other highly skilled players than others. Again, an expanded top cut would help to alleviate this problem.
When two good players play each other, the margin of difference can be so little in a game, that the decision of a match would expected to be extremely close. With the current system, extremely close means tie. In the past, and I think what most players would prefer, extremely close would mean, extremely close, but one player came out ahead by the slimmest of margins.
I'm not sure if anyone will actually care about this thread, but I think my opinion should matter to the higher ups in charge of this type of stuff because I'm #22 in North America in play points right now, which means I invest more money than most into the organized play system than most others. This thread has plenty of others high up in the play point standings posting out against the current system, so I think it would be wise for the people in charge of this to take seriously the request for change.
And remember, these are your competitive players who would like skill to be best represented in determining a winner. If the competitive players reject the system and would appreciate a change, it's only logical that the more casual players would like to do away with the system of bountiful ties and exclusionary top cuts.