As I mentioned in a post about a year or so ago, the introduction of the CP system was going to require multiple adjustments of the overall system until it was tuned to where we felt it needed to be.
Last year (2013 Season), we discussed what we thought the targets should be at length, and used the data that we had to make our best guess. Several of us, myself included, felt that 400 was too low, and we should set the target between 450-500 and assess the number of invites shortly after Nationals, and move the number down, if we felt the invite quantities were too low. Doing this would have obviously been viewed more positively by the player-base than going the other way.
However, because Worlds was scheduled in a much larger space than previous events, there was also a concern from management that it would feel "empty" and the entire team (not just OP, but events, marketing, PR) were tasked with doing everything possible to make it feel full.
With that, we decided we'd set the target at 400, and see what happened. This would give us good data to tune the numbers in the future, and would likely "over invite" from our previous events, which was fine. We were also aware that there would be complaints, such as those in this thread, regarding our readjustment of the targets when the time came. It feels like we are taking something away this year, rather than like we gave you something last year.
Were you at worlds, you may have noticed that the back of the tournament hall had a large pipe and drape section hiding part of the room. This was a pretty large amount of space, draped off to make things feel more cozy, and the hall feel fuller. This was done even though we had far more attendees than ever before. That's just how large that space was.
Our goal is, and has pretty much always been, 128 players per age division in attendance at Worlds, and there are a number of factors that have to go into how we're going to get there. This isn't just entirely about the number of invites awarded, it's about the location, the estimated attendance rate and invitations and how they work together.
Hawaii, for example, always throws a wrench into things because there's much higher player attrition from the number of total invitations because of the expense and distance for travelers, particularly Europeans.
Past years, our invitation numbers were between 120-150 per age division (including LCQ, JP and KR and the winners from the previous year), and our high attendance from those years was about 133 (for any division). As the years have gone on, our attendance rates vs. invitations have steadily increased, leading to adjustments along the way. For example, when we stopped passing down ranking invitations from those that had already been earned at a National, or not earned by someone not opted in.
Our total percentage of attendees vs. invitations now runs at 80%-86% in total. However, our breakdowns by region are much, much different.
Our attendance by age division respectively (JR, SR, MA) was:
NA: 90%, 94%, 93%
EU: 74%, 63%, 88%
LA: 57%, 64%, 53%
APAC: 50%, 76%, 64%
It's worth noting that due to whatever reasons, connectivity, access, etc. that JR and SR players in LA and APAC have a very low account activation rate, which dramatically reduces the number of player eligible to receive invitations. So, for example, the 50% attendance rate for APAC Juniors was a total of 4 players of 8 invitations.
Given the location of this year's World Championships, we would anticipate that NA attendance rates will remain similar, EU attendance rates will increase, and that LA and APAC are likely to remain similar, or increase slightly. Our goal is to bring invite rates to a level similar with past years, which we don't feel is too low. At 500 CP, we'd have seen about 30 North American Masters last year. That's only 10 off of the invite rate of previous years, and it's not unreasonable to expect that 5-10 more players would earn invitations given that another 13 NA Masters were within 50 points of 500, and that a high rate of attendees would come from the 30-40 invitees. We saw 60 EU Masters in that range, and at an attendance rate of about 88%, we'd hope to see about 50 in attendance.
Numbers were adjusted for the Senior division similarly to bring the total attendance down slightly from 2013, with Junior attendance at 118 for 2013, we did not feel that any adjustment was necessary.
I understand that the above will not satisfy many of you, but I felt it appropriate to at the very least address this thread from the OP/TPCi standpoint so that you'd at least understand some of the reasons why this has been done.
Thank you,
Prof_Dav