Fall Regional Prizes Anounced

[mosherstomper]

"We have found that the previous structure of travel awards did not positively affect the attendance of Junior and Senior players. This new structure takes our limited budget in attempts to increase attendance in these groups; and if the additional cash reward makes a measurable difference this year we will look to relocating prize support to make this a universal reward."

"We have recieved additional funding or been instructed to allocate a certain amount of funds into the Junior and Senior division for this years Regional Championships. This money is to be used for increasing the availability of Nationals to these players. We do not have the funds/authorization to fund the additional rewards for the Masters this year, and that may remain the case. For that we apologize and hope that the advent of more CP importance and pack prize rewards still make the even rewarding for all who succeed in the events."

"We apologize to the Masters division top 4 finishers who will not be recieving the same prize support as their Junior and Senior counterparts. We are looking into ways of rewarding these Masters preformers through means outiside of the budget, such as codes for our official online program PTCGO or Hall of Fame recognition and hope to implement them in next years reward packages."

I;m sure i could come up with more. I'd take a simple "We are truly sorry this change does not affect everyone. We hope the people who recieve less still appreciate the good we intend by the system",

if P!P released this, or something similar to LLs or TOS, to tell their competitive players i would be more than happy. obviously putting it on the website would put a negative veiw on themselves and would just be a bad move. but handing the information down to the people it directly affects is a huge deal.
this is also saying "hey were trying this, if it works then masters get added to".

but that would be the type of communication i would like to see. thats the kind of answers im looking for.

 

[patthemanvan]

I like how much flak mosherstomper is getting for trying to be civil and go through the proper channels.......

 

[Alakalen]

3) Prizes adjusted for inflation! It's been over eight years since the first $300 award, yet inflation and airfare have done harm to the award's value. Now that we have tangible prizes at the $500 range, OP could theoretically avoid editing the prize for a decade, yet still give the players receiving the stipends something of real value.

This isn't even true though. It's actually smaller for Juniors and Seniors. Yes it was 300 before, but it was 300 for the kid and 300 for the parent so 600 total. Now the Junior/Senior only receives 500 total. So they are getting 100 less.

Same thing @ aaron about moving prizes to Juniors/Seniors, they didn't. They took away prizes there too.

 

[Poke_trainer]

What 'reasoning' or 'solutions' are you going to accept other than getting what you want?

Says the TO that postpones events so she won't miss a recital. I guess she's the only person in the world with a family. SoCal players asked for some events to be moved from Sat. to Sun. because there would 2-3 events on one Sat. We asked to get more TOs/Judges to run them in case the usual ones can't. She said they can't sacrifice their personal life to give us what we want. Players give up a lot of their time to show up to these events. I'm 100% sure that players have missed out on holidays, birthdays, family time, etc. And now we're getting prizes that aren't really worth it.

 

[thefizz]

You've pretty much made my point for me. You're attending Nationals anyway, which means you didn't need the bonus money. So they're giving it to those that do.

I'd venture a guess that if a kid T4 Regionals, their parents are probably taking them to nationals anyway too, thus by your logic, "don't need the money"

I don't see whats wrong with being fair and balanced among the age groups. It seems ridiculous to give something to someone simply because they are younger. Masters work harder, have longer days, and have to make more sacrifices to even be put into position to be placing high enough for prizes than any other age group.

 

[BrightRush]

What 'reasoning' or 'solutions' are you going to accept other than getting what you want?

We just want the system to be fair to ALL players. Can we not have opinions here on decisions made for the game we love and enjoy? All you do is defend TPCI to the very end and bash the competitive players for wanting to make this game better for everyone. Were not asking for more money/prizes but just a balance in support and refrain from losing prizes as well.

 

[Electrode]

Great, so we're going to encourage more kids to play and they'll go get steamrolled by the kids who have parents that are players/judges and NOT make T4. Sounds like a plan.

 

[autoaim]

So, all i have gotten from this is;

1.Masters get nothing new, while SR's and JR's get extra prize support.

2.A bunch of different points of view from all sides where made, yet we still don't understand why TPCi made this decision.

3.We have no communication with TPCi?

4.SD pokemom, yes i am going to point #4 at you, i have never spoken to you nor met you, but i believe mosherstomper asked for you to contact TPCi, so please do so.

Now my question is this.

What can we do to form a ladder of contacts up to TPCI?

 

[LionheartEX]

Taken a quick skim over the thread...

By my logic, Masters got nothing new, but didn't lose anything right? That's what I understand from this thread.

But all hell breaks loose when JR and SR get something new? I'd assume JR and SR get the extra for a few reasons - extra incentives for parents to take their kid to Nationals, as well as to build on the smaller age groups.

Seems reasonable to me. If they didn't take anything from Masters, then all this comes down to is "They have it, so I want it too!"

Calling this Age Discrimination is kind of absurd (and by kind of, because people can't read sarcasm, I mean completely freaking insane). It's a card game - the prize structure and events themselves are not mandatory to play in, they can set whatever prizes they like in order to build numbers as they need.

If people are going to sit out of Regionals because of this (When prize support actually looks good - I wish we got travel awards at all)... I don't even know how to begin with how utterly moronic that actually is.

 

[FirestormXVI]

What little influence we have is limited to the scope of OP. Obviously I don't know 100% for sure, but I think it's a safe bet that the prize structures for events comes from above the heads of OP. We really don't have any influence on what happens above that level.

The OP guys read assorted forums. Trust me, they will know players are ticked off whether we tell them or not. But that doesn't necessarily mean they can do anything about it.

I don't think the prize structure comes from above OP. There's a good chance that a direction for the budget might be - for example, I'm pretty sure the reason we get shafted so much in Masters is because marketing wants more focus placed on their target audience of children. We're the majority of OP's customerbase, but not Pokemon as a whole.

 

[Hgssprime]

Everything sucks about this

 

[vegitalian]

There have been a lot of weird changes lately, and this is probably the most insulting.

 

[NoPoke]

I understand why a lot of masters feel this is unfair but I don't understand the ANGER.

I'm from Europe: we have none of those travel awards, with a few exceptions no free events, everything costs more over here. Well I could go on and on....

For my benefit, as I don't know what the payouts were last year, who is worse off under the revised scheme?

 

[Heartgold22]

People are mad because the lack of communication and reasoning.

 

[NoPoke]

people are mad because of a lack of reasoning for giving out more? That just seems like trying to find something to complain about. Surely that isn't the reason?

[is it more this year? like I said I don't know. ]

 

[SaiaSandstorm]

'contact the higher ups and get some reasoning/solutions'?

you're assuming that this decision is up for popular vote of the players....i'm pretty sure it isn't.

It's not like we're the consumers buying their product or anything...
A terrible business that doesn't listen to what their customers want?
I know from education and experience that businesses that do not get their "users" involved often crumble to the ones that do.

I'm SO glad I quit this game. One season was all I needed. I'll move to a game that cares more about their player base.

Disgusting.

 

[LionheartEX]

It's not like we're the consumers buying their product or anything...
A terrible business that doesn't listen to what their customers want?
I know from education and experience that businesses that do not get their "users" involved often crumble to the ones that do.

I'm SO glad I quit this game. One season was all I needed. I'll move to a game that cares more about their player base.

Disgusting.

Enjoy your $20 entry fees and horrible playerbase.

Although based on the posts of some I'm seeing lately, that playerbase is extending here. Makes me sad.

 

[bullados]

I'm flashing back to 2001/2002.

What happened in 2001/2002?

WOTC replaced the Masters age division with the Professor Program. A horribly mismanaged farce of a "deal" wherein they gained free employees and salesmen and gave us zero tournaments.

What happened to the game at that point?

This:

While this is nowhere near as extreme, this is the same type of thing we've seen in the past.

It ruined the game for half a decade, if not longer. We're honestly still recovering from that particular decision.

Offering different prize support systems for different age groups is simply an insult to those age groups that do NOT get the prizes.

It's saying "We do not value you anywhere NEAR the same as we value them".

I understand that Pokemon is targeted towards the younger age groups. I get that. I've been using that argument for YEARS to defend TPCi's decisions on a lot of things.

But to not give at least TOKEN value towards the age group that (A) has the highest turnout at tournaments and (B) spends the most on cards out of the competitive players is simply insulting.

If you want to say, "the Juniors and Seniors need to have extra support towards going to Nationals because they need to sponsor two people instead of one", then I'll get that argument. Give the Masters half the stipend of the Juniors and Seniors. Believe it or not, the vast majority will be happy that they're getting SOMETHING.

TPCi could easily take $100 out of each place for the Juniors and Seniors. That's $600 total. Give that $600 evenly across the Masters 2nd-4th place finishers. $200 each. VOILA!!! The Masters get half the stipend of the Juniors and Seniors, and they're HAPPY!

Another solution. Most players that are placing that highly in a Regional Championship don't really care that much about getting more Pokemon trading cards. They have already completed their collection. Juniors and Seniors included. Cut out the card prizes for the Top 4, and add the difference into travel support. I know what a box costs the PTOs to purchase, though I'm not at liberty to disclose that amount here. Even if you assume the cost is half of the wholesale cost (around $520 a case), that's an additional 3 cases in money that you're giving to the age groups, or about $780 in total. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it's something.

Right now, what the Masters age group wants is to not be treated like the ******* stepchild of the Pokemon TCG. We've been treated this way before. It lead to the near complete and total destruction of the game. One that we are still, in large part, recovering from (I don't see Pokemon routinely outselling MTG anymore). All we want is to be treated equally, even roughly equally, as the Juniors and Seniors.

I don't think that's too hard to ask, do you?

 

[AnUnown]

I must be crazy... 7 pages of complaining Bout something I thought was fine.

 

[vegitalian]

The money and prizes don't matter to me, but the principle of devaluing the largest portion of your playerbase leaves a sour taste.in my mouth. Strictly speaking in business logic, it's cheaper to retain a consumer than to conquest for new consumers.