Sure part of what I do not like is forced by the current relative distribution, but there is still fixing that needs to be done in terms of best finish limits, and the system is still over reaching, or over designed, at the moment. Now I do believe PP wanted to limit the attendance effect by creating best finish limits, but the current system does not go far enough.
The BRs add no value to fairly or accurately determining if a player is better than those in his/her region or not, and (not to keep repeating myself), they are only an exercise in who can attend the most tournaments. That is not really going to change with a new distribution, but maybe BR can made insignificant enough to limit the effect.
Let me give an actual example. Let's say a player is only 3-4 points out of top 40. As you know, the distribution is quite tight. There essentially is no best limit at states-regionals. 4 of 5 means everyone will have to do all 5 for practical purposes (again needs to be 3 of 5 if best limit is actually going to mean anything). Most above average players will have maxed the best limits count on cities too by attending 6-8 tournaments. So the difference leading up to nationals is really only battle roads. Now if a player/parent starts driving to every single battle roads in their area, he/she will only be playing the very same opponents that he/she scored against (either for better or worse) in cities, states and regionals. The relative performance in ranking is already reliably established from those premier events. Battle roads becomes nothing but an exercise in who can attend the most of them to accumulate more points through their normal success rate of reaching top cut.
So as I keep saying, it is an exercise in attendance, not an exercise in skill, among the group of players in that range of ability, say top 20-60 placings in the rankings. And it is my opinion that the attendance demanded from current system (on the order of 20+ tournaments now) is too high, especially considering that many of these are going to require hotels and overnight stays to reach that number.
I get that PP wants CPs at all events, but there is no logical reason to have 5 levels of grading when 4 does the exact same thing just as well or even better. Forced attendance is a very bad reason to have so many levels and such high best finish limit counts. PP really should bring into any discussion on changes for next year a simple question: How many must attend tournaments should the system reasonably be driving the average to best players to attend?
My input is somewhere in the range of 12-16 max for a good player with a 65-75% top cut rate. That would mean reducing the total best finish limits across all levels to 8-12 tnmts instead of the current 18. So if you would want to put your more aggressive distribution on top of my limit suggestion, that would be fine with me:
National = 1 limit
Regional = 1 of 2
States = 2 of 3
Cities = 3 or 4 max
Battle Roads = 3 or 4 max
The above gives max of 12 best finish limits. Works perfectly! Ideally, I would rather see BR dropped all together, but this is a compromise.
PS. I do like your proposals for attendance kickers across the board.
The BRs add no value to fairly or accurately determining if a player is better than those in his/her region or not, and (not to keep repeating myself), they are only an exercise in who can attend the most tournaments. That is not really going to change with a new distribution, but maybe BR can made insignificant enough to limit the effect.
Let me give an actual example. Let's say a player is only 3-4 points out of top 40. As you know, the distribution is quite tight. There essentially is no best limit at states-regionals. 4 of 5 means everyone will have to do all 5 for practical purposes (again needs to be 3 of 5 if best limit is actually going to mean anything). Most above average players will have maxed the best limits count on cities too by attending 6-8 tournaments. So the difference leading up to nationals is really only battle roads. Now if a player/parent starts driving to every single battle roads in their area, he/she will only be playing the very same opponents that he/she scored against (either for better or worse) in cities, states and regionals. The relative performance in ranking is already reliably established from those premier events. Battle roads becomes nothing but an exercise in who can attend the most of them to accumulate more points through their normal success rate of reaching top cut.
So as I keep saying, it is an exercise in attendance, not an exercise in skill, among the group of players in that range of ability, say top 20-60 placings in the rankings. And it is my opinion that the attendance demanded from current system (on the order of 20+ tournaments now) is too high, especially considering that many of these are going to require hotels and overnight stays to reach that number.
I get that PP wants CPs at all events, but there is no logical reason to have 5 levels of grading when 4 does the exact same thing just as well or even better. Forced attendance is a very bad reason to have so many levels and such high best finish limit counts. PP really should bring into any discussion on changes for next year a simple question: How many must attend tournaments should the system reasonably be driving the average to best players to attend?
My input is somewhere in the range of 12-16 max for a good player with a 65-75% top cut rate. That would mean reducing the total best finish limits across all levels to 8-12 tnmts instead of the current 18. So if you would want to put your more aggressive distribution on top of my limit suggestion, that would be fine with me:
National = 1 limit
Regional = 1 of 2
States = 2 of 3
Cities = 3 or 4 max
Battle Roads = 3 or 4 max
The above gives max of 12 best finish limits. Works perfectly! Ideally, I would rather see BR dropped all together, but this is a compromise.
PS. I do like your proposals for attendance kickers across the board.
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