IFPA 2018 changes?

General
102

From a player perspective, I don’t have an issue with paying an extra dollar. As others have stated, $1 is a nominal cost.

I have a problem with this money being use to solely increase the prize pool amounts for State/National Championships. I wasn’t aware that any of those contenders were complaining about lack of prize money. I’d happily contribute money to help pay IFPA staff, maintain the website, run more/better events, etc… I cannot see how an enormously large prize pool for the top 10% of players will further the growth of pinball.

From a TD perspective, this is definitely an additional burden for me. Not all locations will be willing to take on the fee. I can already envision complaints about why I’m subtracting money from the prize pool or whether or not I should allow certain players to opt-out of the fee. I’m dreading having to explain to novice players that a portion of their money is going to a prize pool that they have practically no chance of winning. This gives me serious reservations as to whether or not I want to continue running IFPA-sanctioned events in the future.

Once this policy is implemented, I think we’ll see less growth in new players and less tournaments being run. As an avid lover of the hobby and community, that is incredibly disheartening to me.

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103

The best solution is to stop overthinking it.

It’s $1…

The vast majority of tournaments take in an entry fee.

If you entry fee is $20 and you have 10 people your prize pool is $190, break it down as you see fit from there.

If you entry fee is $20 and you have 20 people your prize pool is $380, break it down as you see fit from there.

It’s nothing more than an administrative fee, no different than the fees TD’s take out for trophy costs, location costs, etc…

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104

IFPA should charge more and pocket the money for their services…just sayin’

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105

:poop:
I didn’t realize you were in OH! Kudos!
Good to hear the $1 won’t be dissuading you.
Would be cool to make it down at some point. But you know… “It’s a long way dowwwwwn!”

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106

I’m not. Haha. I’m in NKY, but no locations yet. Got to know Jesse at Arcade legacy really well and we started running the tournaments there. It’s very hard for us to expand the scene down here, but we’re doing our best. The free Friday tournament is our biggest draw, and now that it’s not free, it might deter new people from playing. But like I said, if they don’t want to pay the $1, I will to make sure it stays free.

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107

Why not try asking the bar to pony up a buck per player for the crowd you’re bringing in? Seems like it would be worth it on their end and take the burden off you.

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108

I don’t think it will discourage anyone from playing. If you’re discouraged from playing in an event because it’s $1, it seems to me like you don’t really enjoy the events very much anyways.

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109

Cause I’m a big chicken. Haha. No we will talk about it. There’s time. We get a much worse turnout when we have our pay to play Sunday tournament because it’s the age old, “I’m just donating my money” type deal as the same three people win the money most months. The draw of the Friday tournament is that is free and everyone is just there to have a good time and improve their ifpa ranking.

Yeah you may be right just worried that they will think it’s an entry fee that will go to the winner (these Friday tournaments are always 95% newcomers that have played less than 5 ifpa tournaments). I’ll make sure people understand why we have to take a dollar now and see what they think.

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110

If there’s an opt-out option for the US and Canada, couldn’t that compromise the integrity of the ratings system since all other countries will be 100% opt-in? I guess the real question is if people really will opt-out on a per-event basis once this goes live.

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111

What’s up ya’ll? I heard there’s a party going on here - am I in the right place?

I think this is great. I hear a lot about the supposed rift between fun/competitive events. I think it’d be a-okay if some split off and people get to chose what type of event they attend.

How many times have I heard people say “I could care less about WPPR’s, or serious competition - I just play FOR FUN”. If someone or group is really that anti $1/WPPR etc, they can still totally throw events FOR FUN. I do like trying to qualify for states, and don’t have the energy/gusto to try and make every event. If this means that the relative “competitive value” of some events actually increases due to the scarcity of point based events then great! Makes it easier to pick and choose which ones to go to.

And people looking for super casual/fun non dollar taking tournaments should still have plenty of options as well (assuming they actually continue (or start?) throwing non sanctioned events).

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112

It’s possible, but we won’t know until we know (cough, Modern’s Super League won’t impact the rankings much, TRUST ME, cough).

There’s a Stage 2 here that I posted on Pinside, but not here yet:

It ultimately depends on the attrition rate, which we won’t know until we know.

If out of the 3500 endorsed events we had, it drops 90%, there’s a path for us to keep that 10% and feed those results into our “PRO” rankings. We can then bring back the 90% events that were run as ‘non-points’ events, and feed those results into a separate “AMATEUR” ranking.

The “PRO” would then continue to run with the endorsement fee. The “AMATEUR” would not have any endorsement fee.

It’s a decent amount of effort to set that up, so we want to wait and see where that percentage actually lands. If we see that 80% of events are still choosing to be endorsed, then created an amateur rankings system for such a small group doesn’t make sense.

TD’s can then offer their player bases both “PRO” level and “AMATEUR” level events, and have them both tracked on the IFPA site in the separate rankings systems.

This is the START of something. I won’t know where to take it until I see how it plays out.

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113

Are you saying that if the player doesn’t pay a dollar, in addition to the regular fee, if any, then they can’t play in the event, not even for fun ?

114

I think it’s that the entry fee to the event is $5 with $1 of the payout per player - paying for it to be a sanctioned event. If they don’t pay the $5, they can’t play. But i could be wrong in how i’m looking at it.

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115

Respectfully, please stop being so dismissive of folks concerns. Yes, it’s just $1 per player in cash, but it is likely to result in well over $1 of effort on the part of TDs to explain the situation to their players new and old.

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116

This is what sours me the most about this. Before the SCS, this was floated to state reps, and a lot of the concerns seen here were brought up. Every concern was dismissed. Since these TDs (myself included) would be responsible for not only the collecting, but the receiving of large sums of money (according to the predictions shared), I think we deserve more than “it’s just $1”.

And I also think that this will be a “success” no matter what the outcome, with results being fit into goals not defined in the beginning.

This is an attempt at normalization, not an experiment.

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117

“It’s $1” ignores the effects of aggregation.

To give a specific example, for Flip Flip Ding Ding in Seattle, they run a weekly tournament every Thursday for roughly 40 people. Players who attend every week will be donating $50/year to the pool.

Or, the location can take on the fees. Either way, if FFDD doesn’t change what it does, they will be sending $2000/year to other tournaments. FFDD gets to choose between WPPR points for a year, or another Dog Soccer. And they are far from the only location running weeklies.

The other option is to change their reporting, to either not report results at all, or (as @pinwizj suggests) report every 3/6/12 months through some sort of aggregation that the TD will have to figure out.

In all cases, event organizers will have to go out of their way to do something they didn’t have to do before. Well, I guess if they stop reporting, that’s not true: instead, they’ll go out of their way to stop doing something they enjoyed doing before.

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118

Letting the players individually opt-in/out for each event is a terrible idea that will cause many headaches and butt-hurt.

It should be determined at the event level, either: for points, or not for points.

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119

With aggregation in mind . . . it sounds like the case is being made that it’s really not worth it for them to report/sanction it. I would also wonder if their player base would think? It seems like the local TD’s could get a sense of what their player base wants and design their events accordingly. If FFDD wants to buy a new soccer instead of funding state/national champs they should totally do so and not have their events sanctioned. Or by it NOT being sanctioned does the location lose those 40 people buying beer/coin drop etc, and they’d actually make more money by floating the buck or having the TD pull the buck from entries. I have no idea how much people will ACTUALLY care about this until it’s being used in practice.

I may be in the minority, but if seattle went from having 5-6 sanctioned events a week down to 2 or 3 sanctioned events and 2 or 3 non sanctioned (FUN) events it could actually be positive.

But hey like . … that’s just my opinion . . . man.

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120

At one point in time TD’s emailed me about adding an event to our calendar, and emailed me the results after it was done. I did all the labor of uploading the results, checking for duplicate accounts, etc.

We switched to having the TD’s submit through our calendar and upload their own results, and it was a shitshow. That was a massive amount of work they didn’t have to do before . . . we survived.

We then switched how we graded tournaments. TD’s had to figure out the value of their events by providing us way more information than just the final standings. It was a shitshow. That was a massive, massive, massive amount of work they didn’t have to do before . . . we survived.

We’ll see if this is the shitshow that the TD’s can’t handle. Stay tuned! :slight_smile:

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121

I may be a bit out of touch being in a major pinball city, but I have an argument for and a concern of the system.

The $1 seems to be a non-issue, given that the tournament is a fun, positive atmosphere for everyone. As I mentioned before, the Kickback Weekly (Wednesday at 7:30 for the folks coming to town) is a $5 knockout tournament that pays out the top 3 and refunds the last place finisher. The attendance is constantly between 16 to 24 players depending on schedules, and about 75% of the players are above 1,000 in IFPA rank and 50%+ are above 2,500.

The place is BYOB, so generally a snack and alcohol potluck goes on. People are open to each other, and the good players don’t mind helping the newer folks out or answer their questions. Other than a few personal “you dummy” moments, nobody’s frustrated at the games.

Now for the standings. Recently, Cryss has been showing up and has won 4 of the 5 weeks he has been in. I’ve finished in the money in all but 1 week I’ve played. Otherwise, the rest of the spots are generally open for grabs, especially with a few “equalizer” games that can hand strikes to good players (Elektra, MMR, WMS Indiana Jones, BoPB). Even with the common trend of CDS and S P and someone else getting paid, nobody has had any issues that I know of and everyone is happy to see each other and have a good time.

I don’t think the $1 will be too impactful to the player end, especially if the explanation is worded correctly. $6 Kickback or $5 Kickback weeklies with 20% less pot won’t scare anyone away since the weekly community is quite accepting and positive. Besides, if you don’t win you can always partake in the free craft beer/PBR and whiskey. :slight_smile:

From the TD end, I hope that @pinwizj and @PressStart create a system that makes the process as pain-free as possible. You’ve got until January, I believe in you!

From the other end, my concern is that the $1 system will incentivize the out-of-state PAPA and Pinburgh greats to take a swing at the PA Super Duper Mega Jackpot for SCS. Between the Replay Foundation, PPL events, and other PA leagues, there’s a hell of a lot of potential cash that probably won’t be going away anytime soon to play for. I just hope that PA SCS doesn’t become the Eastern IFPA Major instead of a tournament mostly for Pennsylvanians and the foolish few who dare enter the den of wolves. :smiling_imp:

Oh well, that’s a “play better” argument that I hope to set straight this week in Classics.

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