I’m still hard press on what to favor. I dont want to take player will away but nor do I want the integreity of the sport discredit either.
The only thing I come to understand is that with our current tool and system, its still difficult to detect collusion let alone prevent it. Of course their been some painfully obviouse case but we can’t expect every case to be that obviouse, other who plan to colude will be more cunning and clever. But we shouldnt use this as reason to start policy things that we can’t 100% prove either.
Im personally lean towards modify starndard tournament system. I’m in favor of character locking at the begining. I prefer to leviate TO’s the burden of questioning the integrity of player performance by locking them their choices. Some have express cocerns about this mentioning counter picking. Counter picking still seems prevalent with the current system. Als If counter pick becoming prevalent. I think its more fault of the game desigh than the TO’s system.
Detecting and punishing the obvious cases is enough. As has been stated, we don’t really care if they split as long as they don’t make a sham of the grand finals.
I have never cared about chops. I used to watch chops get made at poker tournaments, and so long as it doesn’t affect the results of the tournament, I could care less. I never got put into a position where I felt a deal was in my interest and never made one. (Factored in that most of my final tables were on Full Tilt at a time where they refused to have a system in place for facilitating deals and chops.)
I don’t know if I would if I was in a position that I felt like it was financially better for me to do so or not. But anyone taking deals and then acting like a retard in the finals is open to ridicule in my book.
If anyone was watching the Imperium UMvC3 stream on Offcast’s channel, you all know what almost went down and what I threatened to do to the players who did. Idiots trying to troll winner’s finals with Morg/Storm/Phoenix and radnomly jumping around and hitting day 1 combos. No way you can say that that shit wasn’t obviously underperforming. Heck even folks on the stream knew what was up. That wasn’t “running alts” or trying to make the tournament/set more exciting, that was straight up sandbagging and lack of respect for us on the part of both players - they were lucky that it was only WF and I let them restart it with their actual teams.
I play for myself. I don’t play for stream monsters or other tournament players, what do I owe them? why do good players HAVE to put on a show? we don’t sign contracts that say must put on show at all times do we?
disrespect is a matter of interpretation. I think its incredibly disrespectful that stream monsters DEMAND to be entertained when they’ve added 0$ to the pot and are only there to make jokes about X players. We’re not entertainers, we don’t get paid as entertainers.
if I don’t feel like playing my best team for X reason, why should I have to? I paid money to enter the tournament, people didn’t pay me to enter it and put on a show. Technically tournament players are consumers and at that point, they can do w\e they want. Tournament players pay for an experience, the tournament itself. ANY player should be able to do anything with that experience they so desire. If a random troll wanted to enter X marvel tournament and troll with phoenix wright teams, they have the option to do that right since they spent THEIR OWN money?
When the FGC starts to pay top players regularly, like most esports, only then can the scene demand the entertainment value and I would have 0 issues with it at that point.
There’s a difference between “not playing my best team” and simply picking a random ass team and doing shit that not even casuals would be doing.
And the other problem here is that you don’t seem to realize that the only way for the FGC to be able to pay top players regularly is by increasing profits, part of which comes from advertisments and sponsorships - something that grows only by having a good number of regular viewers. The latter is something you cannot grow if you don’t have a good quality “product” in the first place and stopping these kinds of shenanigans are part of what makes a good quality “product.”
Off course, knowing you, you probably fail to realize that this isn’t just on the TOs. No, this is on everyone’s shoulders, from the TOs right down to the players. Everyone needs to come and help grow this thing if we want to bring it to a level where people (and not just a few of us lucky ones) can make a decent living off it.
Just because you pay doesn’t mean you get to do what you want. Playing your best is part of what you are paying for when you enter a tournament (and inversely playing against people playing their best too). If you want to go and see how good you are and everyone else is dicking around is that ok?
The point of FG tournaments is to see who is the best. Anything undermining that is a problem to some degree.
Fuck growing and justifying requiring performance based upon that. Ain’t about that.
MtG Judges get bomb promo cards.
MtG Judges get basic courtesy and have nice forced schedules with which to DQ people by.
MtG stores that run tournaments take your money.
I am wholly unaware of any major MtG tournaments that do not have a profit motive.
FG tournaments are generally run by those without any profit motive.
FG Judges get ignored and hated and abused.
The organizational structure for FGs are generally entirely volunteer-based based upon the avowed mutual interest of playing to win. If you are notably fucking around playing casually (hey you know clearly it’s not possible to play casuals unless it’s on a lot of someone else’s time) that’s disrespectful to the entire process.
People who grouch about “well playing seriously is only justified if we make dollars” seem like selfish bastards who are perfectly happy exploiting the people running their tournaments but can’t be bothered to actually think through their thoughts. If the people running the tournaments start believing in that same sort of justification I feel like our entire FG tourney world falls apart.
as a TO myself who’s helped ran the regional tournament scene since mvc3, if someone came out to my area and did that, I wouldn’t feel exploited. I didn’t pay that guys traveling expenses to get here. I didn’t pay for his food while he was down here and I sure as hell didn’t pay his way into the tournament. Why should I have any moral authority to FORCE to play what I deem fit? Its ridiculous from my perspective to force that as a TO.
if you consider that exploiting the TOs, aren’t TOs exploiting players? most TOs are trying to grow a brand and the better the tournament looks, the better the brand looks. However growing that brand is coming 100% purely from exploiting tournament players. The TOs get all the gain while the players who helped grow it receive nothing in return.
We help tournaments like EVO\CEO be big because of tournament players showing up, thus generating regular players to show up. These guys sell shirts\merchandise and does any of it go back to the prize pools? they use our play to make their own venues bigger and then sell merchandise once they get big enough and return none of it to the players. Doesn’t that count as exploitation?
So run your tourney by your rules. That’s the real key. If you want to go by some casual random rules (MtG style?) do your own thing. Just don’t expect other people to be living by your rules. If you’re in somebody else’s house, you go by their rules. Historically Justin (for example) would check with the TO first AFAIA. Respect.
I don’t know what TOs you are specifically referring to. There is often a reference to some mysterious phantom baller TO. Seems weird and dishonest to not name names as opposed to slandering the entire TO/judge/tourney volunteer community.
I thought the tournament itself was what the players were there for? Why were the players who wanted to be there there? The notion that players get “nothing” in return is crazed. I apologize to everyone who ever attended a tourney I ran: I did not realize how much of a vampire I was. I probably should go tell the TOs I know who have dedicated hundreds to thousands or hours to doing this for the community and run into tens of thousands in debt that they are getting all the “gain” and that they are exploiting players.
Who is selling shirts and merch at Evo? As far as I’m aware that’s mostly the community. As far as I’m aware the people in charge at Evo are just trying to keep a cool random tournament from S*GL live in the modern era and keeping it as non-commercial for-the-players as is sensible.
You guys ascribe way too much profit motive to the worst possible way to profit. Stop projecting your own biases upon others and think through what other people are doing. smh
I wouldn’t have any beef with a profit motive from TOs. like if the split is pay out to top 8 and keep enough to turn a profit for the house, doesn’t really bother me.
just lay it out in advance. if you intend to make a profit, let players know what the split is in advance. if you expect them to play out every match they’re in, make sure they know in advance. then the players can choose to show up or not.
This conversation really confused me, so I thought I’d pay more attention and report back.
The thing about Magic is that it’s not really a spectator sport (you can, but … IMHO a random MtG match is less interesting than most random … GG Isuka matches). I judged a 40+ player competitive level event Saturday, and the top 8 was just me, the other judge, the scorekeeper, and one girlfriend. The finals were “watched” by nobody but the players as I helped tear down the room. Sunday’s 40+ player competitive level event was a repeat of this same complete lack of outside interest in the top 8 and finals. (Sunday, they agreed to split the cash pot in advance, but played it out for the invite.) It’s a mental game, but anybody here can be just as good as the top MtG players right now today given the same cards and enough time to think through and consider play angles. That’s utterly impossible for fighting games. Fighting games are a spectator-friendly sport, and one of the reasons you can readily rope people into helping you run/TO fighting game tournaments is because it’s damned fun to watch. If you remove this “it’s damned fun to watch”, you neuter community interest, you neuter interest of people who want to be running/paying for these things, and you basically shoot yourself in the foot. It’s needless and counter-productive.
I’m not sure I agree. The Pro Tour videos on youtube have around 50k views. Coverage of opens is a big part of what keeps SCG popular. The commentators are always gushing about Ichikawa’s stream on Nico Nico.
That’s kinda my point. It’s not generally a great live spectator sport, and as regards online videos it’s the exception rather than the rule that any given stream will be watchable. Sure, some people watch online videos, mostly those that go to extensive lengths to add a presentation layer, but in general it’s not nearly as watchable/visual of a game. SCG gets loved for the commentary and such, not just for showing the game.
people have standards, the only problem is players won’t respect them unless it involves a lot of consequences.
What are the consequences of colluding? A slap on the wrist or nothing.
The consequences for sandbagging GF’s?
There just isn’t enough consequences to take any of it seriously. Maybe if rules were the same everywhere and enforced draconianly you would see a difference. For that you need actual organisation.
I’ve heard about Star Craft players throwing matches and there were actual consequences. Money and sponsors lost. The same can’t be said about FGC players because they aren’t making any, with the exception of Daigo that allegedly makes under 200k/year.
I’ve played competitive card games for over a decade, and I have to say that collusion/concession is fucking stupid. I know that it’s accepted in MtG, but many other card games do not allow it. Think of it like this: You concede so your friend can get into the Cut. This means that one person, who might have played for their wins, will now not make it into the Cut. There is also the issue of Strength of Schedule (a measure of the difficulty of your tournament based on your opponents’ wins). When you drop from the tournament, you “reduce” the SoS of all the people you played that tournament. This can effectively fuck their chances of making the cut if they are in a tied position (SoS is used as a tiebreaker).