I haven't weighed in in a post in a very long time, haven't been as active as a player and there are a couple of factors to it which have varied between time, lack of time to playtest, last seasons dreadful format, and this season's rules haven't been very pleasant either.
Personally, from both judging and playing in this format, I have found that it is very hard to both keep players happy and wanting to come to events. Personally, I'm okay with the whole entry fee to a tournament thing. There has been a ton of amazing prizes this season simply because of the whole entry fee thing and I am personally okay with this continuing. What I am not okay with is what 50+3 has done to this community. I have probably witnessed so many errors in SotG in the past year at the various events I have both played and judged at. Judging at Indiana Regionals in the Fall, for one. I thought we did a great job as a team and we all tried our best to get as much done there as possible, but so many things we had to start keeping track of that shouldn't have been a factor in the first place. For one, Stalling has been getting worse. Stalling has always been something I personally have hated because it is not a strategy that merits any amount of SotG whatsoever. How does it feel being the person with 0 wins in a Bo3 series and your opponent is literally stalling you out to prevent the dreaded tie from happening? This not only hits the person doing it with SotG, but then the person who is calling a judge for slow playing then looks unsportsmanlike for trying to rush the opponent or catching them in the act. Suddenly words talk around the play area from your opponents friends and suddenly the community slowly is becoming toxic due to disdain and other such things. Its a terrible catch-22 and honestly this hasn't been helping SotG. It's been making it worse. I know in the Masters side (I was judging Seniors which was substantially less stressful), our judges were WATCHING players who were intentionally slow playing to draw games out. This should never be a thing. Ever. I get watching slow players prevents the stalling from occurring, but the number of people we were potentially having to watch was huge. (I believe I saw someone mention that there isn't enough staff for this. Sorry, lets just not try to have a billion judges.)
Then there were also people who purposely made decks to tie and screw other players out of potentially cutting. This is blatantly anti-SotG. Everything that this new rule set has not been healthy from a judges point of view.
From a players point of view, it is taxing psychologically and honestly, while I've been playing at many tournaments, my motivation to play diminishes to an extremely low amount right after I tie for the first time because I know a tie does nothing for me and there was nothing I could have personally done in the game that isn't against SotG to have improved those odds. Some decks just play extremely slow, and in order to finish games on time, it also further diminishes the deck choices you can make. I've been wanting to try out Aromatisse/Klingklang, but the fact that it rolls heavy into late game is what prevents me from playing it. I would tie literally every game. When I was at States, the first tie I got taken into just made me feel completely like it was useless to continue. I personally threw my game to my opponent because he had a better shot than I did as far as points went. Do we really want to have players intentionally draw or throw their game to their opponent so their opponent has a better chance of winning? I won't lie. Every time a game has gone to a "tie" for me, I have wanted to concede my match and give it to my opponent because I just don't feel right with a tie on my record, especially if my opponent made a valiant effort at a comeback and ultimately should have won. I dropped in 3 rounds at Ohio States simply because I did not want to play anymore. That's how far this game has sunk for me. It literally is no fun to play anymore. This is not how a game should be. Especially not one whose playerbase has been growing for years.
Regarding the argument I've been seeing above. Has noone ever heard of a Cinderella story? The Top 128 has always been such a thrill at Nationals because you can always see crazy things happening in it. Players who started off 1-2 end up finishing at 7-2 or 6-3 and manage to sneak in and go so far in the top cut due to having a phenomenal fight in Best of 3. Someone from Ohio during the SP era was playing Machamp and cut in at the 64 seed on one side, and managed to upset his opponent. Yeah, I get that the Top 8 is supposed to dictate the best of the best, but some of these "bests" can also play very well in Swiss and not even remotely well in Top Cut. I've made some crazy runs at nationals, opening up the week at 6-0 and letting go of 3 and still cutting, making it through 2 rounds of cut before dropping. I get there shouldn't be that safety net, but if you understand player psychology, you have absolutely no idea how relieving it is ending the day at 6-0, knowing even off of 3 losses you still can get in. You take off that strain, that weight that can heavily effect your play in Top Cut, and be able to breathe a little bit to regain the focus and play off the headache (Which I've had after a lot of heavy focusing). That doesn't exist in 50+3. Its just constantly worrying about one loss or tie completely ruining your chance into the big show. There are no ties in Basketball. In Football. In the big tournaments, a win must be decisive. I understand judges/profs have lives outside of pokemon and can't run 20 hour long tournaments. But to be quite honest, having judged and played Regionals, I haven't noticed any difference in how long the day is. If anything, they just got longer.
Seriously, can we just can this rule? Its effecting everyones SotG. The collusions, the intentional draws, the intentional slowplaying. Its not healthy. At all. I haven't wanted to play this game in months just because its so stressful and droll now. I understand adrenaline and wanting to play to win. That's cool. It also shouldn't be a stressful mess to everyone playing (or even judging).