Fall Regional Prizes Anounced
- Thread starter Prodigiosus
- Start date
JohnnyBlaze
New Member
Ive been saying this for years now. To keep the Jr/Sr age divisions from getting smaller and smaller the age ranges need to change. Since everyone knows to become a Professor you need to be 18 yrs old lets follow this schedule:
GrandMasters 30+
Masters 18-29
Seniors 13-17
Juniors 12 and under
Right now having a 15 yr old battle a 40+ Masters is just ridiculous. You know whos gonna win? the 15 yr old!! Pokemon can take away all the Travel support for the GrandMasters. Remember this is just a rough idea but these age divisions will help allow Travel Awards to the older teenagers/college age students while also allowing Jr/Srs to stay in their respective age divisions longer thus promoting larger Jr/Sr age divisions.
GrandMasters 30+
Masters 18-29
Seniors 13-17
Juniors 12 and under
Right now having a 15 yr old battle a 40+ Masters is just ridiculous. You know whos gonna win? the 15 yr old!! Pokemon can take away all the Travel support for the GrandMasters. Remember this is just a rough idea but these age divisions will help allow Travel Awards to the older teenagers/college age students while also allowing Jr/Srs to stay in their respective age divisions longer thus promoting larger Jr/Sr age divisions.
UnpokemonMom
New Member
I like this. My 11 year old didn't like age-ing up when he turned 11 in July.
Plus this eliminates my embarrassment at losing to a 16 year old. :lol:
GodBlessAmerica
New Member
I really think there should be only two divisions. 12 and under, 13 and up. By dividing the game into three divisions you are making it more difficult to run events (2 events is easier to run than 3 in theory) and making the prize support worse universally. I am all for making a division for younger players, because when I played yu-gi-oh from when I was 6 until I was 11 I found myself constantly playing against 18 year olds that had a bigger budget for cards and were overall smarter. Having a 7 year old play against a 12 year old is completely reasonable. And once you're 13 you are at the point where you should be capable of competing with people twice your age. They split up the VGC into only two divisions at first, and you saw Aaron Z still holding his own, top 4'ing NorthEast Regionals and getting 17th at Nationals.
King Piplup
Active Member
Edit: ^NO.
I'll be honest, I don't have the time to read 200 posts on the subject, but I get this much out of it-
There are a LOT of masters out there tearing down TPCI for this change.
Some of them for legit reasons, such as how the prize support would've helped them even get to Nats. For those people, I feel for and agree with your stance.
For those who believe the Jr/Sr divisions should have no prizes and you should get them all (You know who you are), or have a bigger sense of entitlement then globe itself, I could not wish to see you move out of Pokemon more.
On the prizes themselves, I agree with the choice to give 2nd a full ride.
However, 3/4 do not need those stipends...as much as some masters beat down the seniors age division in terms of competitiveness (not saying such statements don't have truth in them, as they do), it still takes dedication and money to get to T4 at a Regional, ESPECIALLY with the regionals being further split. Frankly, those who have done enough to T4 already have parents that 99% are willing to pay for them to attend Nats.
I would've much rather seen a 250 (or even 200) split across all 3. However, I would've further liked to see this money as scholarships...
And yes, I'm a Senior taking that stance. Selfish /=/ correct. (a lesson I wish many of the posters here would learn)
The bottom line-Yes, it's a questionable move. No, they didn't decrease prizes, and the more I think about it, the more it saddens me that a good number of people are too caught up on themselves to be happy they increased prizes SOMEWHERE.
I'll be honest, I don't have the time to read 200 posts on the subject, but I get this much out of it-
There are a LOT of masters out there tearing down TPCI for this change.
Some of them for legit reasons, such as how the prize support would've helped them even get to Nats. For those people, I feel for and agree with your stance.
For those who believe the Jr/Sr divisions should have no prizes and you should get them all (You know who you are), or have a bigger sense of entitlement then globe itself, I could not wish to see you move out of Pokemon more.
On the prizes themselves, I agree with the choice to give 2nd a full ride.
However, 3/4 do not need those stipends...as much as some masters beat down the seniors age division in terms of competitiveness (not saying such statements don't have truth in them, as they do), it still takes dedication and money to get to T4 at a Regional, ESPECIALLY with the regionals being further split. Frankly, those who have done enough to T4 already have parents that 99% are willing to pay for them to attend Nats.
I would've much rather seen a 250 (or even 200) split across all 3. However, I would've further liked to see this money as scholarships...
And yes, I'm a Senior taking that stance. Selfish /=/ correct. (a lesson I wish many of the posters here would learn)
The bottom line-Yes, it's a questionable move. No, they didn't decrease prizes, and the more I think about it, the more it saddens me that a good number of people are too caught up on themselves to be happy they increased prizes SOMEWHERE.
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Either split the money evenly throughout each of the divisions or at least give masters the option to win money, I don't get it if most people at an event are masters. Rougly 50%+ They should be giving masters a chance because if they don't implent a prize I see some masters seeing this stupid and quitting there for decreasing the amount of players and at some point they won't be making THAT much since most players will go away. Anyhow overall this wasn't a thought out move by TPCI at all. I'd like SOMEONE from TPCI give us an explanation AT LEAST.
z-man
New Member
Did anyone actually say that? Looking through the past posts, most people want equality... not inequality. I can't see anyone saying that masters deserves more than J/S...
Also, the splitting up of seniors into juniors and masters (J = 12-, M = 13+) was very successful for Japan. It'd also help TPCi's budget big time. We might want to redraw age lines, but the senior's division isn't super necessary. That is another discussion altogether, but I honestly believe that it'd be for the better... but it'd take some getting used to.
I'm sorry. We merely want to taste some of that increased prizes, but we aren't allowed to because we're too old to get a chance to compete for it. That is unfair. If your boss was giving raises, but only to qualified female employees, would you be happy that some female employees got raises? Maybe, but you'd be frustrated that you were immediately excluded from the possibility of getting a raise simply because you aren't female.
For the sake of discussion, let's flip the script. How would you all feel if Masters got T4 stipends, and J/S didn't? I for one would be equally outraged.
losjackal
Technical Administrator
Better analogy would be three different raffles, free to enter, divided up among ages. Prize support is different among those ages, because 5x as many people enter the oldest raffle. Do you have a problem that the two smaller raffles get more prizes than you?
ChaosJim
Member
Yes. I think most people would. I feel like that wasn't the answer you were going for though.
While not a perfect representation of last year's Regionals, imagine that we treated 'owning two Mewtwo EX' as the requirement to enter the event for every player. I'll put the cost of said Mewtwos at $50 each, so players effectively had to spend something close to $100 in order to attend Regionals. I realize that some players in fact spent less, but others spent far more. If you want to complain about my estimation, I think you're missing the point. Assuming each player has put $100 into their deck, even if only $50 of that makes it back to TPCi, that means that for 150 Masters, you're looking at about $7500 entered into the pot. For 50 Seniors (not every Regionals had this many), you're looking at $2500 entered into the pot. For 32 Juniors (not every Regionals had this many), you're looking at $1600 entered into the pot. It doesn't make sense that Masters would get 1/4 of the prizes the other two, seemingly less lucrative, divisions get.
If anyone wants to let me know the average event attendance for Regionals in the Spring, I'd be happy to update my estimates. If you want to nitpick the cost of a deck, that isn't constructive to the overall conversation at hand.
Good post Erik! I will point out that there were some players back in the day complaining that Int'l players deserved more trips and prize support, but not many. Most of the support came from the Judges/PTOs/TOs (like me and MT and SD_Mom) Go back and look at some of the threads that Rainbowgym and others posted about the inequities of international play vs USA.
Keith
Mystery Thing
Administrator
Touching back onto the ERMAHGERD AGE DISKRIMINASHUN (no offence to everybody; funny meme is funny (right sdrawkcab? :wink
) thing, there's tons of random discrimination in this game. It's a necessary evil.
In order for somebody in my city to get to their BFL for events (so like, just to play in 6 BRs, 4 CCs, etc; and this is obviously under-counting because nobody with a ghost of chance will ever play in exactly the number of tournaments you can play in to hit a BFL limit), you would have to make eight 5 hour drives (4 BRs + 3 CCs + 1 Provincials), two 12.5 hour drives/2 hour flights (1 Provincials + 1 Regionals), one 22.5 hour drive/2.5 hour flight (1 Regionals), and one 3 day drive/4 hour flight (Nationals).
Compared to somebody in New England or California, this is CLEARLY discrimination based on location. It's unjust that a player here is screwed because there's not many events here! So it's only fair that TPCI equalize this unfair gap, under no control of the players, by compensating them to get to events. A couple thousand dollars per player sounds about right.
See how ridiculous that sounds? For whatever reason: age, location, whatever, there are going to be things in the tournament structure that are "blatantly unfair." You get over it and move on.
) thing, there's tons of random discrimination in this game. It's a necessary evil.In order for somebody in my city to get to their BFL for events (so like, just to play in 6 BRs, 4 CCs, etc; and this is obviously under-counting because nobody with a ghost of chance will ever play in exactly the number of tournaments you can play in to hit a BFL limit), you would have to make eight 5 hour drives (4 BRs + 3 CCs + 1 Provincials), two 12.5 hour drives/2 hour flights (1 Provincials + 1 Regionals), one 22.5 hour drive/2.5 hour flight (1 Regionals), and one 3 day drive/4 hour flight (Nationals).
Compared to somebody in New England or California, this is CLEARLY discrimination based on location. It's unjust that a player here is screwed because there's not many events here! So it's only fair that TPCI equalize this unfair gap, under no control of the players, by compensating them to get to events. A couple thousand dollars per player sounds about right.
See how ridiculous that sounds? For whatever reason: age, location, whatever, there are going to be things in the tournament structure that are "blatantly unfair." You get over it and move on.
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In the case where the raffle is not its own reward, and buying tickets in one category has significantly lower expected value because there is more competition for smaller/fewer prizes, then yes, buying tickets in the higher age category would be a bad idea. Particularly because in such a situation I'd expect the other raffles were pulling prize money from the lower-prize, higher-participation raffle. There might be circumstances --- for charity, for a community group --- where this makes sense. But if I'm playing the raffle to try to win, then at best it makes no sense and I wouldn't play.
Pokemon is its own reward, and the folks organizing these tournament series have to balance a lot of things --- selling cards, advertising Pokemon, making an environment where people can have fun, finding the best players, coming in under budget, growing the game at a sustainable rate, probably a bunch of things I don't even realize. While chess tournaments often have larger prizes for higher ratings brackets (which is not the same as age categorization, but probably a better parallel than a raffle), sometimes a lower ratings bracket can have prizes that are seemingly "inflated" as compared to the level of effort/competition required to win. One of the things this does is encourage players who aren't Master-level to play, attend, and get better (and increase attendance, also increasing the prize purses for grandmasters). I don't know if this is actually a good idea or not, not having organized major chess tournaments, but it doesn't seem wrong on its face, and this change in Pokemon doesn't seem wrong on its face to me either.
That said, I can't blame folks for being upset; a smaller prize pool for the largest and (possibly) most competitive division is pretty surprising. While players (and staff!) aren't necessarily owed anything, I do wonder what they were hoping to achieve here, and whether or not it will work.
(Also, this is a minor point, but it isn't only college-aged masters who have access to carpools and sleeping on the floors of packed hotel rooms. I always slept on floors on family trips when I was a youth, and if I didn't turn out fine, it's not because of that!)
Good post Drew (I ran out of thanks for the day), but I think he hits many good points.
As with many things, many players believe they are entitled to direct communication with/between the powers that be to make such decisions. As we saw in the BR thread, when Biggie posted, he still was skewered by many here. All he tried to do was get a heads up to anyone traveling the 1st weekend. He said he couldnt post more, but an announcement was coming SOON on the season (which it did). Didnt help. Keep shooting yourselves in the foot MAs, I'm sure TCPi OP Brass will be right here to "talk" with you again.
Keith
losjackal
Technical Administrator
No doubt! If anything, logically I would expect that the division with the most entrants gets the most prizes. But to insist that they are get THE SAME, which is what proponents like BlisseyRocks say, doesn't necessarily make sense to me. So since Masters is unlikely to get more prizes than the other divisions, in my mind, the amount of prize support for each division can be a variable.
Well, here is where my reasoning respectfully diverges (acknowledging full well that we know each other in real life too). Although I don't have numbers to back this up, I suspect if we are trying to tie the prizes back to what is lucrative for the company, that the 5 to 15 age group (of course including non-competitive players) spends more on Pokémon cards than the 16+ age group. So if in the general population of the USA, the Junior and Senior aged kids are buying the most cards in general, why not give them more travel rewards? (Both your and my arguments work, it's just how one connects the dots.)
I am actually starting to look this up from my tournament list, because I'd like to see the ratios across the country of Juniors to Seniors to Masters.
z-man
New Member
This isn't random. This is very selective discrimination. I'd make a longer argument, but I've got class now. This change singles out one particular community (masters) while what you're talking about is the random distribution of people over our country. The location and number of tournaments in an area is determined by preset rules. If someone takes problem with that, there's always a way to sign up as a TO and attempt to get a new tournament. Where ever you go, you're going to be competing for the exact same thing.Touching back onto the ERMAHGERD AGE DISKRIMINASHUN (no offence to everybody; funny meme is funny (right sdrawkcab? :wink
In order for somebody in my city to get to their BFL for events (so like, just to play in 6 BRs, 4 CCs, etc; and this is obviously under-counting because nobody with a ghost of chance will ever play in exactly the number of tournaments you can play in to hit a BFL limit), you would have to make eight 5 hour drives (4 BRs + 3 CCs + 1 Provincials), two 12.5 hour drives/2 hour flights (1 Provincials + 1 Regionals), one 22.5 hour drive/2.5 hour flight (1 Regionals), and one 3 day drive/4 hour flight (Nationals).
Compared to somebody in New England or California, this is CLEARLY discrimination based on location. It's unjust that a player here is screwed because there's not many events here! So it's only fair that TPCI equalize this unfair gap, under no control of the players, by compensating them to get to events. A couple thousand dollars per player sounds about right.
See how ridiculous that sounds? For whatever reason: age, location, whatever, there are going to be things in the tournament structure that are "blatantly unfair." You get over it and move on.
Think about it this way. If there was a * next to the booster packs that says "we will award half as many booster packs if you have white hair", would you consider that discrimination? I certainly would. Even if TPCi gave some form of justification for this change, it'd still be discrimination. This is not a necessary evil... it is absolutely nonsense. The same goes for getting less money because we're older. If we accomplish the same thing as a 13 y/o, why should that 13 y/o get a stipend while we, older players, don't? The only reason the 13 y/o got the stipend is because they are a 13 y/o. THAT is age discrimination.
There's just major point I'd like to make here. These events are NOT free. The average competitive player probably spends $200+ on their deck alone (plus whatever other legal cards they have) and spending probably two nights in a hotel, plus costs of getting there/eating out all weekend. Figure that some players may be flying to a Regional (and in order to get 400 CP it's very likely that this is necessary) and you're looking at a big chunk of change just for one weekend of Pokemon.
Between cards, travel, and other expenses a player is easily spending $1500-$2000 to get an invite and attend Worlds. This is a significant financial investment. While it's delusional to expect to be able to turn a profit playing competitive Pokemon, it would be nice if some of these costs were deferred. To think that Masters are less worthy when their division makes up 2/3 of the total tournament entrants is a slap in the face. I won't argue that Masters should earn more prizes than the lower age divisions because of tournament size, because that is ridiculous. So why are people defending that one division shouldn't earn as much as the rest?
Between cards, travel, and other expenses a player is easily spending $1500-$2000 to get an invite and attend Worlds. This is a significant financial investment. While it's delusional to expect to be able to turn a profit playing competitive Pokemon, it would be nice if some of these costs were deferred. To think that Masters are less worthy when their division makes up 2/3 of the total tournament entrants is a slap in the face. I won't argue that Masters should earn more prizes than the lower age divisions because of tournament size, because that is ridiculous. So why are people defending that one division shouldn't earn as much as the rest?
I've heard the younger kids spend the most on cards (that their parents buy) ; argument a few times now. Where exactly did that info come from? Also, do you happen to keep old tournament attendance numbers somewhere or is it just the current ones that are on your page?
Mystery Thing
Administrator
This is selective too - by living in Alberta, you have virtually no chance at a CP invite. And just like age, it is something that the player has no direct (/reasonable) control over. And no, it is not as simple as "well just get more tournaments." If it was, we would have a lot more than 8 BRs per year. Why would I, as a PTO, not want to maximize the number of events that I can get run in this province and order to make it easier to get my players to Worlds? Why would I not want to have a Regional closer to them? Because I can't.
Players here spend just as much on their decks as other players do. They do just as much prep for major events as other players do. The only reason the Alberta player has to pay so much more in order to get to events is because they live in Alberta. That is location discrimination.
For the Regionals prizes, Masters are getting hosed because of their age; something that is out of their control. And for tournaments, players here are getting hosed because of where they live; something that is also out of their control.
FincastlePokemon2
Member
Just a quick thought on this, particularly since our family does this too. That $200+ to make a good deck - how much of that really goes to Pokemon? When we need a good card, we don't buy booster packs, or even boxes - we go to eBay and buy the card. That $85 we spent for the Terrakion EX/Tornadus EX deck - it didn't go to Pokemon/TCPi/etc. It went to a (very successful) eBay vendor. Yes, they bought their cards (at some point) from Pokemon, but if they weren't making a profit above and beyond the cost of cards, there's no way they'd be selling like they do on eBay.
I know this is somewhat "off-rant" but a part of the "we spend lots of money, so listen to us" argument isn't really apples to apples.
(Of course, spending money for room/board/transportation also doesn't go to Pokemon - it's great for the local/regional economy, and hopefully a boost to our fellow "Poke"man, but it hasn't got any bearing on a business decision for Pokemon.
losjackal
Technical Administrator
^^ The cost of travel has already been brought up, with the acknowledgement that the typical Master spend the same or less than an equivalent Junior or Senior who must travel with a parent. (The Master certainly doesn't spend more...)
Juniors and Seniors spend money on good cards too.
As for age discrimination, there really are other factors in play that your argument is intentionally leaving out. Parents who must travel with their children. Familial obligations to take care of. Many parents may not think it's worth the time or expense to play a card game. The fact that National is underattended by Juniors and Seniors as is compared to Masters. Those are all reasons why it's reasonable to have an added incentive for the younger ages.
Juniors and Seniors spend money on good cards too.
As for age discrimination, there really are other factors in play that your argument is intentionally leaving out. Parents who must travel with their children. Familial obligations to take care of. Many parents may not think it's worth the time or expense to play a card game. The fact that National is underattended by Juniors and Seniors as is compared to Masters. Those are all reasons why it's reasonable to have an added incentive for the younger ages.