I guess you guys caught jwong at a bad time. when we flew him out, (we only flew him out once for ARK III) he had no problem playing casuals with people. Even Marn had no problem. The night before ARK IV Marn sat down the entire time during setup and played tons of people. I don’t think jwong or Marn MM’d anyone that weekend. But like I said, we flew Jwong out for ARK III and he flew himself out for ARK IV, and even brought Marn with him.
If it takes having to fly a single big name out once just so other top players would see this and be interested, I don’t see what’s so wrong with it. Sure some are dicks about playing casuals, but like the guy above me said, this is their “profession” and they’d rather make money doing this. But Jwong and Marn were pretty cool about getting games in with people. Hell, Marn even offered to pay for mine and a few others dinners.
But, being in a shitty state like Arkansas, it’s hard to get exposure. Nobody knew about our tournament until we had Jwong show up and we had over 1k viewers. People give us shit for flying him out, but we could care less. We pitched in within the community for his ticket because we wanted him here. We wanted our tournament to be recognized. There are ways to get recognized without doing this, we just took a chance with this.
Up until ARK III, our turnouts weren’t that big and we didn’t have many top players. ARK IV we had Jan, Happy Medicine, Marn, Ranmasama, Jwong and more. We even had more people from regions we had never reached show up. And fuck yeah, we advertised the fuck out of Jwong and Marns appearance there. It helped a lot.
Absolutely have to agree with Panda on this. It’s not exactly like this is the West or East coast or something. Some people in this area/region have been trying to put said region on the map and have failed pretty miserably. Come on guys… Aside from KiT when Charlie and Ian hosted, what other tournaments have had a turn out like that here in TN? Goose Egg!
Honestly, it’s pretty much marketing at this point. We have to put this place on the map. Well, atleast those of us that care. Having an opinion stated like, “It’s pretty stupid to flyout *top players” doesn’t really make much sense to me. It really all depends on what your trying to do. What your trying to market.
As far as the “Top Player” mentality goes. Any “well-known” player I have ever met, has been chill with me so I dont know what some of you guys are talking about? I have never met anyone that I have to MM just to play. Not Wong, Flashmetroid, Santhrax, Juicebox, Valle etc…etc… Hell, there are some people here who have an elitist mentality. Thats laughable.
I just want to say…I read books Im smarter than all of you lol
As for the flying a player out thing hey it worked for ARK and thats cool. And I think O did it for KIT. To me it just I dont know you pay them money to come then they win and you pay them again. I feel like if your pot is high enough some of them will come anyway. But I could be wrong there to whatever
Edit: As for top players being dicks I never had any issues with any I met. Hell juciebox ignored MM attempts to finish casuals with me O and Squab at Evo
It’s one thing to “offer” to fly people out here, and it’s another for them to “expect” it. One is pretty cool and the other is so dumb it hurts my head thinking about it. My post earlier was mainly talking about the latter.
I <3 Juicebox. Dude will casual you for nothing, Happy Birthday SEIYA dance on your ass when he lands super and still talk your ear off about matchups or strategy if you ask.
So far him, BALA, Romance, and Combofiend are the best experiences I had, especially BALA and Romance. They played with me Zach and Arson at FR a ton and basically just wanted to help us out as much as they could. Combofiend played a pretty good bit with me a t SB:SS and gave me some really good pointers.
The top players only playing casuals for money is just part of an overarching issue. There are a lot of cool top players tha give casuals, not going to argue that.
I will say at Final Round, Valle was only playing casuals for money…but that shit didn’t help him against the Handsome One, now did it?
I think the biggest problem with top player/FGC politics is the preferential treatment. And not all the blame should fall on the players. Part of it is TOs polejocking them and giving them whatever they want. And I’ve seen it first hand. I’ve been at majors where they waited 30 minutes…an hour…two hourse for a player to report to their match. Now, let no name Negro Justice from TN be FIVE MINUTES late to a match. They will DQ the melanin out my skin. So now I’m just Justice, no negro, and I drove 6 hours to get DQ’d because I was taking a piss while some nigga with a bunch of fucking letters in front of his name is just chilling by the stream station laughing without a care in the world.
when we flew him out, (we only flew him out once for ARK III) he had no problem playing casuals with people. Even Marn had no problem. The night before ARK IV Marn sat down the entire time during setup and played tons of people. I don’t think jwong or Marn MM’d anyone that weekend. But like I said, we flew Jwong out for ARK III and he flew himself out for ARK IV, and even brought Marn with him.