Was it worth it last year? It's the same thing.
Fall Regional Prizes Anounced
- Thread starter Prodigiosus
- Start date
Was it worth it last year? It's the same thing.
Agreed. I actually started going to a DBZ CCG league due to the cards that advertised them inside packs. I learned about the tournaments there and would have gone to them had I had enough money at the time. I wouldn't be against taking out one of the commons and replacing it with an advertising card. You can even make it so that one side is an advertisement and the other is a piece of a puzzle. I used to love collecting those puzzle pieces as a kid.
If you really want to get ambitious you can make them redemption cards. What better way to get people to buy more packs and in turn advertise than to have an advertisement card that has a redemption on the back. Just make them completely useless promos (just special art, it wouldn't even have attacks).
ColdCoates90
Active Member
I get Dav's philosophy. Adding in extra prize money to the lower age divisions is basically the equivalent to offering something for free to a first time customer in a store to entice them to keep coming in.
What about the customers that have been there since the store opened though? I understand why P!P doesn't care about the old customers;they know we'll still go to events despite this. They have the numbers from years of keeping up with POP ID's and can track the fact that a good chunk of people have stuck it through since they got into the game at a lower division, and they have no reason to think that they won't stop coming to tournament and buying more cards.
Why throw money(prizes) at people if they'll keep coming to tournaments?This mindset makes sense to me but it's frustrating that there is nothing for P!P to show to the customers that have been here since they have been in business. It's maddening but it makes perfect business sense. They should not waste a dime on anyone that is assured that they will still go to events and buy cards.
This is why we have seen massive cuts in prizes along the years. Anyone remember when we got entire boxes of cards for winning a pre release event? Airfare+hotel for winning gym challenges? Anyone remember the sportsmanship awards at worlds? Sure did make for a nice entrance for Nintendo's turn at the franchise. All of this was slowly phased out ,however, as Nintendo realized that the shiny carrot could be removed and the horse would keep running.
The game has lost it's flashy prize support as P!P has altered it's strategy towards enticing more new players to join the buying craze with the least amount of money possible. It's a business. Any sort of favor we seem to enjoy from Nintendo is oh so blatantly calculated to make you let go of a few more
dollars to keep playing...
I think if the player base of this game wasn't quite so powerful though that this would be the blow a lot of players needed to exit the game. For some it might be though. Let's hope that more new players join to replace the old ones.
/Spirt of the Game
What about the customers that have been there since the store opened though? I understand why P!P doesn't care about the old customers;they know we'll still go to events despite this. They have the numbers from years of keeping up with POP ID's and can track the fact that a good chunk of people have stuck it through since they got into the game at a lower division, and they have no reason to think that they won't stop coming to tournament and buying more cards.
Why throw money(prizes) at people if they'll keep coming to tournaments?This mindset makes sense to me but it's frustrating that there is nothing for P!P to show to the customers that have been here since they have been in business. It's maddening but it makes perfect business sense. They should not waste a dime on anyone that is assured that they will still go to events and buy cards.
This is why we have seen massive cuts in prizes along the years. Anyone remember when we got entire boxes of cards for winning a pre release event? Airfare+hotel for winning gym challenges? Anyone remember the sportsmanship awards at worlds? Sure did make for a nice entrance for Nintendo's turn at the franchise. All of this was slowly phased out ,however, as Nintendo realized that the shiny carrot could be removed and the horse would keep running.
The game has lost it's flashy prize support as P!P has altered it's strategy towards enticing more new players to join the buying craze with the least amount of money possible. It's a business. Any sort of favor we seem to enjoy from Nintendo is oh so blatantly calculated to make you let go of a few more
dollars to keep playing...
I think if the player base of this game wasn't quite so powerful though that this would be the blow a lot of players needed to exit the game. For some it might be though. Let's hope that more new players join to replace the old ones.
/Spirt of the Game
I disagree strongly with this decesion for reasons I discussed earlier. However, despite disagreeing with P!P on this issue I feel much better about it now that somebody has explained the reasoning behind it. Something to consider in the future is perhaps have these reasoned discussed along with the change instead of waiting to make a reactive statement. Masters are by far the largest and most vocal age group so you had to know there was going to be some backlash on this. Even if you think your sound like a broken record let us know "we still care about you, but we have to make budget related choices" goes along away.
Lucario-Master
New Member
I dare you, I double dare you, you don't know how fast the game would be dead.
Nintendo puts in minimum amount of money and effort into this game and gets soo much, and the thing is whenever a single person complains its always "the judges do soo much for this game, blabla, your lucky you get anything"
Now im not saying i don't appreciate the judges, but its there choice to put so much into the game and Nintendo gives them so little also, I don't feel like this should be a players vs judges/organizer problem, more of a entire community vs Nintendo problem.
But it seems like the organizers keep on defending what happens when I'm pretty sure they also know that Nintendo is being terrible when it comes to giving Pokemon the support it needs to grow.
I have actually seen many people LEGITIMACY say that because of all the decisions of Pokemon recently they are going to quit.
I love this game and have so for a long time but it is obvious that they are not getting the message, and i would suggest for more people to "boycott" Pokemon for some period of time. Yes i also suggest that seniors do this too because you may be getting what you want now but you will be in masters eventually.
Just saying....
It seems a little silly to see how many people are trying to analyze this being a "bad business decision" but so clearly lack any working understanding of how this sort of decision gets made by a business. I'm not quite done with my MBA yet either, but it's frustrating to read so many unreasonable posts: do so many of you honestly think that this sort of decision got made with no research or without the intent of improving the game as a whole? And honestly, how many of you were winning these prizes anyway?
So far this year TPCI has made getting a Worlds invite significantly more achievable while encouraging people to actually play out difficult matches, added an extra opportunity for everyone to play in Regionals, removed Top Cut from BRs(which is the one move that is objectively bad for players, but makes sense considering time restraints for a 1-day event), and gave extra prize money that wasn't distributed to anyone before to two age divisions. While I know everyone is a victim in their own minds, it's pretty difficult to take people threatening to quit over anything TPCI has done this year very seriously, because I think that's pretty obviously a net benefit for the players this year.
I'm not really behind the decision of not just giving slightly smaller prizes to everyone who 2nd-4ths a Regional regardless of age division and splitting the money that is being spent anyway evenly between all of them, because if you divide it out and spend the same amount of money as you are now the prize award for each individual doesn't get anywhere near little enough to reduce excitement for the Juniors/Seniors who earn it(and because I'm not sure this was the best fight to pick), but regardless of that I wish more people would buy in to the logic behind the decision because it's really important for the long term health of the game.
For all the complaining people are doing about this on this site and others, most of you are going to keep playing anyway, because you love this game and/or the community and that's why you care enough to complain about it on the internet in the first place. The organizers get that, and I'm sure they appreciate it, because it's important for these events to have that current passionate group of players to work. But as people who love the game, it should be more important to us than anything else that the community keeps growing and these events keep continuing for many years so that we can keep interacting with the community and playing the game we love. For that to happen as players age and start losing interest, new players have to be introduced, and for that to happen TPCI has to find ways not only to get kids to events, but to keep them interested enough to keep coming back. I've been playing Pokemon in various competitive forms since 2002 (not counting leagues during the first card game set or playing the Game Boy game since the day it came out), and in that time I've seen countless players come and go. Those players leaving only doesn't kill the game because there's new players coming in to replace them, and if we want the game to get bigger, or to even maintain the current numbers, we need to get more of those players.
I'd be really interested to see the following bits of data: the attendance rate of Juniors/Seniors who finished near the top of TCG Regionals the last two years at Nationals vs. their Masters counterparts and any data available as far as people winning when they're young making them more likely to stick with Pokemon. I'd wager the answers are "dramatically more Masters show up to Nationals after doing well in Regionals but not winning money than Seniors or Juniors" and "there is an extremely high correlation between winning and coming back." I'm mostly a VGC guy, and even in our case with so many fewer winners and players we have a lot of examples of the former case happening with former Worlds players. The kids are definitely the right group to focus on, just not sure he made the best choice about where to start doing it... but I'd wager getting the kids who are actually good to Nationals reliably is a pretty effective way to get the most skilled/dedicated kids coming back every year and having the prize money available might lure other kids in, too. I think it's pretty tough to argue with trying to make those things happen.
I don't think this was a perfect call either but I think it's pretty ridiculous to see people threatening to quit the game because someone else got something and we didn't, especially in a case like this where it was pretty obviously done with a lot of foresight. Those of us who love the game should be in it for the long haul, let the people running our game do what they can to make it last so we can all keep enjoying these events. The game seems to be well-run, healthy, and growing, which isn't something we've been able to say many times during Pokemon's history... why complain now?
So far this year TPCI has made getting a Worlds invite significantly more achievable while encouraging people to actually play out difficult matches, added an extra opportunity for everyone to play in Regionals, removed Top Cut from BRs(which is the one move that is objectively bad for players, but makes sense considering time restraints for a 1-day event), and gave extra prize money that wasn't distributed to anyone before to two age divisions. While I know everyone is a victim in their own minds, it's pretty difficult to take people threatening to quit over anything TPCI has done this year very seriously, because I think that's pretty obviously a net benefit for the players this year.
I'm not really behind the decision of not just giving slightly smaller prizes to everyone who 2nd-4ths a Regional regardless of age division and splitting the money that is being spent anyway evenly between all of them, because if you divide it out and spend the same amount of money as you are now the prize award for each individual doesn't get anywhere near little enough to reduce excitement for the Juniors/Seniors who earn it(and because I'm not sure this was the best fight to pick), but regardless of that I wish more people would buy in to the logic behind the decision because it's really important for the long term health of the game.
For all the complaining people are doing about this on this site and others, most of you are going to keep playing anyway, because you love this game and/or the community and that's why you care enough to complain about it on the internet in the first place. The organizers get that, and I'm sure they appreciate it, because it's important for these events to have that current passionate group of players to work. But as people who love the game, it should be more important to us than anything else that the community keeps growing and these events keep continuing for many years so that we can keep interacting with the community and playing the game we love. For that to happen as players age and start losing interest, new players have to be introduced, and for that to happen TPCI has to find ways not only to get kids to events, but to keep them interested enough to keep coming back. I've been playing Pokemon in various competitive forms since 2002 (not counting leagues during the first card game set or playing the Game Boy game since the day it came out), and in that time I've seen countless players come and go. Those players leaving only doesn't kill the game because there's new players coming in to replace them, and if we want the game to get bigger, or to even maintain the current numbers, we need to get more of those players.
I'd be really interested to see the following bits of data: the attendance rate of Juniors/Seniors who finished near the top of TCG Regionals the last two years at Nationals vs. their Masters counterparts and any data available as far as people winning when they're young making them more likely to stick with Pokemon. I'd wager the answers are "dramatically more Masters show up to Nationals after doing well in Regionals but not winning money than Seniors or Juniors" and "there is an extremely high correlation between winning and coming back." I'm mostly a VGC guy, and even in our case with so many fewer winners and players we have a lot of examples of the former case happening with former Worlds players. The kids are definitely the right group to focus on, just not sure he made the best choice about where to start doing it... but I'd wager getting the kids who are actually good to Nationals reliably is a pretty effective way to get the most skilled/dedicated kids coming back every year and having the prize money available might lure other kids in, too. I think it's pretty tough to argue with trying to make those things happen.
I don't think this was a perfect call either but I think it's pretty ridiculous to see people threatening to quit the game because someone else got something and we didn't, especially in a case like this where it was pretty obviously done with a lot of foresight. Those of us who love the game should be in it for the long haul, let the people running our game do what they can to make it last so we can all keep enjoying these events. The game seems to be well-run, healthy, and growing, which isn't something we've been able to say many times during Pokemon's history... why complain now?
Absoltrainer
Active Member
da hell is going on here?
Players being disrespectful to each other and to mods
Mods being disrespectful to players
Poke Profs and TO's being disrespectful to players and each other.
The majority of posters in this thread are adults, and yet the majority of those adults are acting like children...
I sure as hell don't rememeber threads degrading to this level back when I played....
Grow up people....and that goes for EVERYONE slinging insults and acting like they are 12 (actual 12 year olds excluded, since they seem to actually be acting mature.....)
To those being mature and actually contributing to thee discussion, disreguard this.
Players being disrespectful to each other and to mods
Mods being disrespectful to players
Poke Profs and TO's being disrespectful to players and each other.
The majority of posters in this thread are adults, and yet the majority of those adults are acting like children...
I sure as hell don't rememeber threads degrading to this level back when I played....
Grow up people....and that goes for EVERYONE slinging insults and acting like they are 12 (actual 12 year olds excluded, since they seem to actually be acting mature.....)
To those being mature and actually contributing to thee discussion, disreguard this.
The (Unfortunate) Bottom Line:
-The Master's division is by far the most devoted to the game.
-We spend the most time and money crafting the most competitive decks and mastering the skills of this game.
However..
-We buy most of our cards from the secondary market. Pokemon does not see a penny from this.
-The devoted Masters, (+/- 1,500 players) make up only a small fraction of TCG Consumers.
-All said, Pokemon is a business. It doesn't care how much time we spend developing strategies, building competitive decks and staying up all night play testing every last match-up. They don't see any money from that. They see money from kids' parents buying them cards.
It is extremely unfortunate that prize support is being cut from the most devoted division. Even if we don't spend as much as the kids, we certainly make the most sacrifices. Is it a good business decision? Yes. Does it feel like a kick in the crotch? You Betcha.
-The Master's division is by far the most devoted to the game.
-We spend the most time and money crafting the most competitive decks and mastering the skills of this game.
However..
-We buy most of our cards from the secondary market. Pokemon does not see a penny from this.
-The devoted Masters, (+/- 1,500 players) make up only a small fraction of TCG Consumers.
-All said, Pokemon is a business. It doesn't care how much time we spend developing strategies, building competitive decks and staying up all night play testing every last match-up. They don't see any money from that. They see money from kids' parents buying them cards.
It is extremely unfortunate that prize support is being cut from the most devoted division. Even if we don't spend as much as the kids, we certainly make the most sacrifices. Is it a good business decision? Yes. Does it feel like a kick in the crotch? You Betcha.
losjackal
Technical Administrator
Right. And those kids who don't know about organized play outnumber the kids that do. If most of the kids you know in Florida buy online, who do you think is buying all of the blister packs sold in the Florida Wal-Marts, Targets, and Toys R Us's?
It's extremely hard in Masters and now not even worth the 6 hours + drive to get nothing. Really disappointed with where this game is heading. And to greed, I would be completely fine with a balance of money or even no extra money if your going to be bias and choose ANOTHER division over others. It's simply not fair in ANY means.
It's not equal, but it is fair. (It's pretty interesting how many people say "not fair" when it's something they don't like.)
It's fair because you know the prizes at stake before you go to Regionals. If the matter was the contrived example a few pages ago with "Congrats on winning $1000 in the raffle. Oh you have brown hair? The max prize for brown hair is $400, here you go." That would have been misleading and not fair to change the prize after the fact. You are not being duped in such a fashion here.
Furthermore, there are other prizes on the line for Masters. 2nd place gets 110 Champ Points. 3rd and 4th get 90. Even 5-8 get 70. I hardly believe any Master competing for a chance at Worlds is going to look at that and say it's not worth it.
Reflection is good, and change is messy. Dave said they hopes this goes a certain way; if not, they'll adjust. I think the company is betting the majority of those players are "life long fans" already, and that not having a chance at an additional $500 prize 3 times a year isn't going to change that. Especially when I assume they may have already won some prize money or scholarship from Pokémon already, and still feel a sense of gratitude for whatever they win playing this game.
Your mention of "redemption" reminded me that something is up with League rewards this year. Biggie has said it's going to be more important than ever to have league kids registered online with a Trainer account. That makes me think some kind of cool online tie-in with their profile, or maybe even so far as to earn rewards on PTCGO too. I won't speculate beyond that, but it seems like P!P has something up their sleeve to help attendance at the League level.
You say "it's a business" like it's a bad thing! If the business didn't exists, and weren't healthy, we wouldn't get to play this game at all. A new business needs to invest in incentives to get people to start adopting its product. It doesn't matter how good the game is, because there are alternative card games to play, and even other things to do besides play a card game. Tons of competition for a kid's time. They absolutely removed the big shiny carrots (and replaced them with smaller ones) because there are horses running now. It's not a bait and switch, or even something evil, it's a matter of marketing and investing and growing something from nothing. Now that there is something, they are using whatever resources they have (people and budget) to make it grow some more, or even rebalance it a bit towards the younger kids so as to make more revenue for the Pokémon company overall. But to expect that just because they had big prizes in the beginning that they must have those big prizes now is just unrealistic.
HotGustofWind
New Member
Last weekend at Battle Roads, there were five juniors. The TO gave the fifth place finisher 2 booster packs as well. I did not hear one master scream “Age Discrimination.”
My son reported that one junior was playing a starter/theme deck without sleeves. One of the judges also noticed this and gave the boy some brand new blue Ultra-Pro’s. Very Nice!
Lest we forget, the heart and soul of the GAME of Pokemon, is the kids.
Now, as to the BUSINESS of Pokemon, I do not have a good answer as to how to grow the younger age divisions. I wish there were more kids playing, but I know what it takes for a junior to be competitive, and frankly, I do not see that many parents with both the financial resources and the commitment/desire/time to make it happen. It is certainly not all about winning, but no one likes being crushed just because your opponent has a deck you cannot compete against. If you are on the short end of that deal, I do not see you getting top 4 at Regionals, so the extra prize support cannot be much of an incentive.
Now, if we really believe better prize support will grow the game, then here is a simple suggestion to grow revenues to cover increased prizes: Sell those cool Japanese sleeves and deck boxes in the USA!
My son reported that one junior was playing a starter/theme deck without sleeves. One of the judges also noticed this and gave the boy some brand new blue Ultra-Pro’s. Very Nice!
Lest we forget, the heart and soul of the GAME of Pokemon, is the kids.
Now, as to the BUSINESS of Pokemon, I do not have a good answer as to how to grow the younger age divisions. I wish there were more kids playing, but I know what it takes for a junior to be competitive, and frankly, I do not see that many parents with both the financial resources and the commitment/desire/time to make it happen. It is certainly not all about winning, but no one likes being crushed just because your opponent has a deck you cannot compete against. If you are on the short end of that deal, I do not see you getting top 4 at Regionals, so the extra prize support cannot be much of an incentive.
Now, if we really believe better prize support will grow the game, then here is a simple suggestion to grow revenues to cover increased prizes: Sell those cool Japanese sleeves and deck boxes in the USA!
The arguement that "prizes have stayed the same for masters, why should we care? " is really getting to me, TPCi has a budget for prizes at tournaments each year, that extra $30,800 (yes, $30,800 for 14 Regionals in the US and Canada) could have been used to up the prizes in every division for Nationals and Worlds. Absolutly NO ONE can argue that making T16+ in either of those tournements in any division isn't much harder and those players are much more deserving that Juniors and Seniors who play a 4-6 Round T4-16 tournament that is arguably easier that many Battle Roads or Cities in Masters. I would know, 2nd Place in a 5 Round T8 Spring Regionals in Seniors in 2011 when I had a 101 Fever and slept in our hotel room during lunch break, it's THAT easy.
mewsmom
New Member
I can see this reasoning being both a positive & negative experience. We've seen it first hand with previous junior players and will now watch the second set of Jr's in this area age up. They dominate when they are in Jr's but when they move up to Sr's- they don't do so well. I've seen their spirits decline and some even walk away from the game. The putting of prizes in their hands to make them feel like winners can be a false sense of hope & being a great player. It's a great feeling to be a winner, but it would be a greater feeling knowing you won because your great at what you do and not because a of lack of participation.
We recently had a brand new junior at a Battleroad- was the only junior- so even though he lost all his matches against seniors- he still got first place prizes & was very excited about that. Now next time if he plays at another tournament in juniors, loses all his matches and doesn't get any prizes, what is he going to think?
I think low growth in juniors is partly due to the economy and possibly advertisement. Those who grew up in Pokemon, know it's not an item of the past. What are we doing to reach the new generation of parents who think pokemon was a fad of their childhood? I hear it all the time-I use to love Pokemon, that's still around? I feel we need to reach this new generation of parents and show them the benefits of being involved in Pokemon!! We see high attendance at the pre-releases around here but many of those pre-release players don't participate in tournaments.
We need to find that incentive that encourages parents to be involved and allow their child to be involved with the competitive side of Pokemon.
To be fair even buying from the secondary market supports nintendo. If a seller buys 2 cases of a new set its only because they feel they can resell a majority of what they open. If they weren't selling it they wouldn't buy it...so through the chain P!P is making money off of it.
This is different to an extent a Junior or Senior who makes T4 at Regionals is already invested in this game. The players you refer to are local players who are less invested. A gesture like above might be an insentive for them to come back or to bring new friends. These are the kids needed to grow the game.
UnpokemonMom
New Member
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'm very new to this party, and have a question to ask - when you say you want to increase participation at the Junior and Senior levels, are you talking about the national and world championships, or just Pokemon players in general (like local leagues)? Thanks.
psychup2034
New Member
That's because there were 2 booster packs at stake, not $500. :nonono:
Mystery Thing
Administrator
But is what he'll think if he gets squashed at his next tournament worse than somebody telling him at that one "yes, the standings say you finished first, but since I don't think your deck is very good, you didn't deserve to win, so you don't get any prizes?"
Masters players may (well, clearly do) resent that the target audience of TPCI in terms of marketing (heck, just look at the website, yuck) is kids, but that doesn't change that their target audience is kids.
DukeFireBird
Gallery Administrator<br>Forum Moderator
Should the value matter? When I read that all I saw was greed. Those 2 packs i bet meant more to that player than anything else at that moment.
The way alot of people in this thread have replied makes me sick. Can't we be happy for at least some increase in prize support?
Also the logic behind the masters being the biggest group is a duh because the same juniors and seniors age up to be mastets so of course the masters are the most devoted.
The reasobing Dave gave was reasonable to me so Dave and tPCI, I thank you.
to those who think the universe revolves avround them, I'm sorry.
Of course value matters...would you care if Romney came a 10% tax break to the upper class or a 60% tax break. Either way does it really effect the middle class or you? Sarcasm
deckmaster
Active Member
LOL .
But seriously, the people defending TCPI/Nintendo here have little to no valid points. Masters are people too, if you add prize support in another division and not in the other, it naturally is unfair. Also, taking into consideration that the age division who has been supporting this TCG since its North American release back in 1998 is not getting the added prize support shows that TCPI/Nintendo does not support customer loyalty. More importantly, this move does not encourage players in seniors to continue to play Pokemon. Why else would you want to age up into the Masters division just to have prize support reduced?
psychup2034
New Member
The value shouldn't matter, but we live in a real world where value matters. You know what means more to a junior than 2 packs? The 180 packs that $500 could buy.
Try giving a junior 2 packs, and give another junior 180 packs. See who's happier. I bet you that junior who got two packs would be very upset seeing another junior get 180 packs when he only got 2.
For better or for worse, I was raised with American values, so people clamoring for equality does not make me sick. People typically react with harsher language toward greater injustices.
I'm glad you acknowledge that "the masters are the most devoted." Some people believe that businesses should reward their most devoted customers. Other people believe that businesses should treat all customers equally. From its actions, it seems like TPCi subscribes to neither of those philosophies.
I appreciate the fact that someone came out and communicated with the players about the reasoning for the decision. I can sympathize with Dave's difficulties when coming up with a budget, but like many of the players, I am not supportive of the decision. No-one's claiming that the universe revolves around them.