Just out of curiosity, who actually took the time to read the link that Brent posted about Keits’ proposed payout structure? I don’t think paying out the top 10% is catering to the more casual / less competitive players at all. In fact, up until a 32 entrant tournament is reached, only the top 2 players get paid, and the structure doesn’t start paying out beyond 3rd place until a 64 man tournament is reached.
Take the last MvC3/SSF4 tournament (45/41 entrants, respectively). Had the top 10% structure been in effect, only the top 3 would still be paid, and with the usual 70/20/10 ratio at that. The dollar payout for Marvel would have been the same, $315/$90/$45. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that changing the payout structure to the top 10% brought in an additional 19 players for next tournament, bringing it to 64 total entrants. The payout for the top 3 would be $416/$115/$57, with 4th getting $25 and both 5th place finishers getting $13.
I don’t speak for everybody, but if changing the payout structure could potentially bring in that many new players, isn’t it something worth considering? If we could somehow get 19 additional players for next tournament via some other method and keeping the structure 70/20/10, that would be worth considering as well. In the meantime, and until we even get close to having a 64 man tournament, would anyone be averse to exploring a method that would bring in more players and still have the same payout structure as is used currently? Besides, is anyone really arguing that the player who got 4th, or even tied for 5th, in a 64 man tournament is soft?
First and foremost, the pay out system is never what fighting game players come out to tournament’s for. If you want to optimize turn outs, you need to advertise the community. Changing the pay out system is NOT going to help your turn outs. We come out for the competition or to have a nice time with some cool people. This I think needs to be reiterated because in my opinion there would be absolutely NO REASON to change the standard of our current top 3 get paid out.
By giving back “entry fee” at such low place’rs, you realize that you’re creating a weak minded environment for competitors? Let’s remember what COMPETITIVE FIGHTING GAMES are all about shall we? It’s about putting something on the line (namely your quarter/money) and playing to see who can win. By giving back entry fee you make for an EXTREMELY compliant weak community. Why is this you may ask? I almost gurantee you I could place top 8 in the tournament’s we have now and I haven’t played the game seriously in literally over 8 months. Why would it be fair for me to get that money back? I put NOTHING on the line to potentially win a shit load of money, which by the way, if I didn’t win? No worry, because I’ll get my money back through the broken ass top 8 pay out system.
If you’re not top 3, you ain’t in the money. You shouldn’t be getting paid. The required amount of players for a top 8 pay out would be MINIMUM of 100 players. The idea of having a top 8 pay with anything lower is absolutely ridiculous with the turnouts that we bring here in the NW. I see absolutely no reason for it. It takes away from people trying to become good enough to get top 3, because why would they need to if they’re already in the money?
By increasing the pot pay out to more than 3 people, you’re slapping the people who DO take top 3 in the face…why did they work as hard as they did? What does it really mean now to be the best? Does that even matter any more now that pretty much all top 8 people get paid now days?
It decreases the integrity of the scene…as if it hasn’t been tarnished enough.
EDIT: People who say “OH sweet there’s a tournament for street fighter! OH? And if I hit top 8 I can get my money back too?! Yeah, I want to join the tournament!” aren’t people who I want in the community. I’m looking to weed those people out. You’re either a warrior and trying to hone your skills, or just someone who’s compliant with their abilities and okay with defeat. In all honesty, too many people here thinking that “the bigger community, the better.” So many people in this community that are just a part of something and don’t even DO anything when it comes to the actual game. If you are one of those people, ignore this message.
Here’s food for thought…aka for the people lilke cookiecarnage who think that “changing our payment schedule will get more people!” Riddle me this sir:
The pay out system has primarily been top 3, and we’ve gone from having 300 man Evo’s…to 2,000+ evo’s…How has the tournament pay out system deterred us to gain more people at all? Shit’s been the same for years, yet we’re 10x the size? Completely flawed argument…to say that “our pay out system will get more people.” We’ve BEEN getting more people.
And along those lines, when did we ever have turnout issues? I think MHC proved with Sixth Ave that if you have a great location, people are going to show up.
Nolan, you make a good point but…GO TO A TOURNAMENT FIRST SCRUB! :nono::razzy:
No one sees a big problem with this? The fact that 30% is going to people who took 4-8 of all places? Shit, the difference between 8th and 4th is 4%…and that’s not a slap to anyone’s face? Why did they even practice to take 3rd at all? And a 40% going to 1st place? Why did they even practice to win anyways? Your reward for this practice is 40% of the pot! Congratulations! Where is the incentive?
Brent: First off, NO ONE is having monthly 1,000 man tournament’s. No one. I don’t think that’ll ever be accomplished to be honest. ESPECIALLY at a local scene. Secondarily, to say that the 10% idea is strong, would be to say that you would be fine with paying out top 100 players. Where the 1st place gets as little as 40%…where the other 95 people get nearly as much as he does? Give me a fucking break.
can we kill the idea that this just for portland thing… its just idea for EVERYONE to mole over. not a thread of fix portland turnout scene and whats wrong with portland…
I do not have an answer to your question. I am new to this community so my suggestions arent really worth anything. I would like to hear your opinions though.
Do you think the current size of the community and viewership or streaming is at the right number?
What do you think is a good way to help NW communities increase turnouts and viewership?
Should everyone stick with tradition and not change? or should they try something new? or do a hybrid, try some new stuff and keep some of the traditional stuff.
As for the increase in turnout, I can only offer my observation of a similar example to compare with Evo. WSOP’s main event turnout used to be only 300 over people and now they have huge turnouts. People might say its a combination of many things, Prize money, fame, sponsorships and the love of the game. I am think both took similar paths to their success.
im sure cookie brought up this idea of a new pay structure because he saw such a low turnout in the portland tourney. 19 in Super and 15 in Marvel. From my count 8 people from seattle. like 40% of the competitors come from seattle.
What im saying is that this debate about the pay structure would not have even started up, if portland was able to organize their scrubs to show up to their own events.
dear seattle. why are u guys still showing up to these? Portland doesnt need seattle support. Portland needs their own support.
Me, Grant and Brentwere at my house tonight and we all agreed if the payout and rules are clearly understood beforehand, no one can complain about payout afterwards.
We all have different goals for the community…I am more on the Micky D side of the fence, I would rather have 10 new warriors with a good competitive attitude than 100 people who only are entering cus their goal in life is to get top 8 and get their entree fee back…we should he playing because we want to get BETTER at the games, you can stay home and play for free if losing 5 bucks entry fee is that big a deal imo.
I would like new people too so tops can get more money, but payout structure is NOT the problem, the problem ith the WA scene is we dont have a good centralized place to play that can accommodate more than we have, and because in the fighting game culture it is taboo for people to make money organizing tournaments… you guys want too much from part time volunteers. We all want Korean Starcraft mainstream recognition from grassroots efforts, it aint realistic.
I’m having some trouble coming up with a comprehensive response for everyone who posted. A lot of ideas and questions have been posted and it is tough to respond to them all equally. I am going to start with the questions first, since those can be answered most clearly (thanks for posting actual questions Deezo).
Sorry if I don’t get to your post right away or if I have to end up not responding. I can’t argue with anyone over their idea of what a competitive mentality is (what’s best for it, why it’s important, etc.) but if you have some direct questions feel free to post them and I will be more likely to answer you.
-So at what number of entrants should we even be thinking about a top 10 (or whatever) payout?
-When should we look at having a top 15 payout? A top 20 payout? A top 40 payout?
The number of payouts goes up as the bracket starts to double, and eventually with each 32 man increase. Keits has an example posted here that shows what the payouts would be at each interval, right before and at an increase- http://shoryuken.com/podcasts/DollarSummaryJPG.jpg
<15 - One Winner (100%)
16-31 - Two Winners (80%, 20%)
32-63 - Three Winners (70%, 20%, 10%)
64- 95 - Six Winners (65%, 18%, 9%, 4%, 2%, 2%)
96- 127 - Continues on. Check chart for clearer illustration.
This is just a small example. The chart that Keits created shows this in much more detail with actual numbers, and for majors or supplemented tournaments, there are pot bonuses at each payout increase.
-How many people won’t enter tournaments because of the idea of throwing money away?
I can’t give you a number on this, but I imagine it would be the around the same number of new players who wouldn’t enter a 10$ house tournament in MVC2 against Row, Rat, JMar, Nolan, Evan, Zach, King, Mark and yourself, and if they had done so, wouldn’t do so again. It sounds like an extreme example, but I don’t think it is too far fetched when you look at the skill gap between new players and our top players in SSF4.
-How many people are you expecting to gain from having a bigger payout?
The larger payout system itself isn’t a solution to getting higher turnouts. Higher turnouts will result from promoting tournaments, having a good venue and atmosphere for players, and growing the community. Changing the payout system to one that grows with the community sets us up so that don’t outgrow our pay structure and discourage participation by perpetually shrinking odds and sapping players funds once we do start to reach high numbers. It prevents a problem so that we don’t have to address it later. It is what I am addressing in my first post here.
-Why should I be entitled to anything if I didn’t play well enough to deserve a prize?
The point of re-evaluating the payout system is to setup a standard for identifying who deserves a prize. It sets a standard for identifying what spots deserve prizes based on the number of entrants, instead of setting arbitrary top 4, 6 or 8 spots based on projected tournament attendance and guesses. No one would argue that a person getting 4th in a 1,000 man tournament failed and deserves nothing, but where does that line end? Setting up a system that is easy to understand and identifies benchmarks beforehand is useful.
-What is the importance of entering if there isn’t a possibility of me not receiving something?
In the 10% system, 90% of the players are not getting their payment back at every tournament. 9 out of 10 people are losing all their money, so for the majority of players, there is still a high chance of losing.
I thought the turn out was pretty good. The location was actually really nice and the streaming commentary and setup was top tier! After hanging out with some of the guys in the community, I think the NW community is pretty nice. Actually, I think all Street Fighter communities that I have had a chance to meet and hang out with are all very nice!
The payout structure was just a conversation I had with Angel about organizing tournament in Singapore and the differences between the 2.
I cant remember how the prize pot came up, I think we were talking about player attendance and stuff, and I thought perhaps having a prize for 4th place and onwards could be an option to be considered by the players and organizers. But I feel that at the moment there isnt one magical solution but a combination of things to get bigger audiences and players.
I wish there was one, then we dont have to work that hard! LOL
I came to the tournament as a visitor from a different community so naturally the topic of differences between each community will come up.
From my view of organizing tournaments in Singapore, we consider what are the goals of the players and the tournament organizers?
attract a bigger audience
attract a bigger player base
cater to the top tier players
cater to the mid and low tier players
Treat the game as a sport
Treat the game as a hobby
alittle bit of everything from 1 to 6
Keep the group small but playing at a very high level
Keep it between friends
promote the event
promote your star players
Promote the game
promote the stream
produce a good stream
capture videos
and a whole lot more, not to mention the financial cost of doing all these things
How we decide to structure our tournaments in our community is through tournament formats, prize pots, streaming, video uploads and other things are to achieve some or all the above goals.
There is no point to these examples, just my own views and opinions from organizing tournaments.
I do feel that I face many of the same issues like turnout and audience that each community is facing and we are also trying to figure out things as we go along.
My personal main goal is to have fun. Fun in Competing, meeting new people and watching the game. One thing I started doing is telling people how to beat my Thawk so that I can push myself to get better by eliminating my bad habits and think differently.
I hope there isnt any misunderstandings that I am trying to prove something or try to force the NW community to do something different.
I just also think that if you want to pull the “how many new players would this actually pull?” card, you also have to realistically consider how many old players would drop out if the payout structure changes. My guess is basically zero.
So. If you are a person who tries their hardest to be the best, but now you’re thinking that it won’t really be worth it if you don’t make as much money from the tournaments (because you always place top 1 and don’t think the player number will increase)… I have to question your priorities. And your math/budgeting.
Honestly though in the grand scheme of things, the bitching about cost in this hobby is WAY out of proportion to how much competing in fighting game tournaments actually COSTS compared to other hobbies on a per hour basis.
You can pick up a used xbox for less than a hundred bucks now, get a TE 70 and SSFIV for 30 bucks. That’s 200 dollars, and it’s ALL YOU NEED to get started, and then $5 every other week at Salty Runback. So for your first year, you could theoretically be competing fulltime for $320 starting from nothing. That’s practically nothing to spend on a hobby, and consider how many hours of practice you can get in during the whole year with $200 of equipment.
I can see people not wanting to play in a house tourney with those heavy hitters just to basically give them money, but at some point we need to realize that it’s going to cost money to find out where you stand, unless we go to a Japanese system where there is no prize money (which I also have no problem with).
