Guys think of it this way.
Let’s say you give a kid 20 dollars for ever A on his report card, 10 for every B and 5 for ever C.
You do this for his 3 years of Middle School.
He gets to high school and you decide you have been spending too much and now tell him he gets 10 dollars per As, 5 for Bs and none for Cs.
Around Junior year, you change it again to 5 dollars for an A and nothing for anything less.
will the kind complain? Probably. You can tell him to be grateful he gest any money at all, but when you offer amazing prizes, then take them away little by little, it's can get frustrating.
I remember a time Pre-Releases were 20 Dollars and the winner got a box of the new set and a Winner's Pin. Everyone else got a total of 10 packs for playing.
Then we lost the box as a prize and got only winner pins instead.
Then we lost the winner pins, removed top-cut rounds, and got nothing for winning and the price raised by 5 dollars.
Then we lost 2 of the 4 additional packs we used to get and it was replaced by a crappy deck box and at one time a notebook
Now granted the sleeves were a HUGE improvement and made the 25 dollars a lot more worth it.
Look at tournaments.
When I first played in regional’s, top 4 got scholarships, I got top 8, and got half a box.
The year after that I got top 8 again, top 4 still got scholarships, and I got half a box
Then they take away half the scholarships and top 8 does not get half a box anymore.
We were all accustomed to Origins being possibly the greatest highlight of a Pokémon Season. Pokémon Nats PLUS all the other free stuff? Then they throw St. Louis on us, an absolute horrible place with a bad vendor to boot?
The point is, is this, if Pokémon is going to dangle a bunch of awesome prizes in front of us for most of our career, then decides to not only to reduce them, but reduce the reduced prizes, people get upset.
Seriously, this "be happy you get free stuff" crap is annoying the heck out of me.
You guys get all up in the faces of people who have been playing for 3 times as long as you have and get mad at them because they are nostalgic for the good old days. I see people who want Gym Challenges back get shot down all the time. Why? Because they are supposed to be happy that Pokémon even holds worlds and gives invites, not supposed to be mad that they stopped doing something we liked.
REALLY????
If Pokémon DIDN’T give prizes, almost no one would go. If Pokémon did not hold Nats or Worlds, people would not bother to play the game. A healthy OP is needed to make money. Pokémon HAS to host tournaments and HAS to give incentive, otherwise they will lost players and thus lost money.
Pokémon has made an increasing amount of decisions that players have been reacting negatively to. Are we gunna quit over it? No, we keep playing. That being said, PUI/TPCI has in the past listened to the players. We make a point to express our annoyance in hopes that it might be changed back. That is why the top guys visit the site. As small of a population as the players are, they are still customers.
So seriously if you are going to be post “be happy you get anything at all” Remember this. We have to get something or a good 50% 0f the player base would quit. Remember that as you go back each year back to when Nintendo took over the game, you will see the prizes increase. Compare the prizes of tournaments from the RS-on day, to today, and look at the difference. Remember that players you yell at have been playing a LOT longer then you.