There is only one positive thing I can think of that comes from having a high rank, and that is the privilege of paying $200 and travel expenses to play in the IFPA championships. Everything else a player earns (or a player gets restricted). Now, if a player doesn’t understand what will happen if they get too high in the rankings (restrictions to higher divisions) and thereby miss out on an opportunity to compete in a finals at a major, indeed I feel for them.
I wonder if there isn’t a way to let people know how WPPR points/ranking will impact them down the road so they can make informed decisions?
Initial seeding at Pinburgh? I wouldn’t even factor that in. As far as US Nationals goes, maybe there is something to it, because of the byes and the advantage of being the higher seed within your match, but ultimately skill should win out across so many rounds and games (and as far as I can tell based on past winners, it has).
I didn’t bother with the rest because it’s all been said before. The UK isn’t meant to be comparable to the USA as a whole, just based on population, access to events, etc. EUROPE vs. USA a much better and fairer comparison, but I’ll save the copying and pasting of my previously mentioned thoughts on all this.
As you were
edit: Couldn’t help myself on the re-read for anyone else has a few days to kill
It should totally be OK for any and all monthly tournaments to be counted, or even more frequently (there’s a local weekly 2-strike knockout that exists near me). I believe the system should reward variety more than frequency. If you compare a top-50 player that has basically all their points from Modern’s super league vs. a top-50 player with consistently good results at a variety of locations and formats, who would you say is the more well-rounded player?
I’d like to see something where everything counts, but perhaps a limit on the number of instances that can be used for a ranking. So just throwing this out, maybe “quarterly” is the limit, so 4 times a year. That would mean a given player’s top-20 events for ranking purposes would only include their 4 best super league results over a year span, the rest still recorded but not used. You could do something similar for State rankings to keep small-time weekly tournaments from running over other area events.
12 ANNUAL events, with 12 different tournament directors. Each tournament will have a unique format to give players a taste of a variety of events the competitive circuit has to offer. Qualifying will still be held throughout the whole month, regardless of the unique format used, and it’ll definitely grade out to 100% TGP, so come one, come all!
In all seriousness, adding these sort of conditions to the rankings build script would not be trivial.
The easiest thing if we’re really talking about just Modern Pinball is to simply institute IFPA Death Panels. Rather than deeming whether you are worthy of medical care, our Board of Directors would look over your resume, and determine whether you should be eligible for SCS/IFPA WC qualifications based on that resume. That’s far easier then having Shepherd plow through code trying to limit how many points can come from any particular tournament name, tournament location, specific tournament director, etc.
Tried that one on Josh over a year ago, no dice. The opinion is popular with me; besides, there used to be a “multiples get divided up” WPPR rule where a league run twice a year got only half points each season, quarterlies got 1/4, etc. It worked fine then and didn’t stop people from running regular leagues.
If by “worked fine” you mean having to deal with people trying to work around the rule by changing the name of their league to something else, or switching up who organized the league . . . I guess that “worked fine”.
Modern Pinball aside, and I’ll ask @unsmith because he’s an FSPA guy, does it sounds more fair for those FSPA leagues to have to share points allocated for the year, versus each season being graded individually based on it’s own merit?
Further to that point, my old college league in Champaign is organized across 5 or 6 different locations during the same season, with 2 seasons run per year. What triggers the league being counted as the “same” or not?
Option A) Run two 6-month seasons across all locations, under the “Illini Pinball League”, splitting the annual points available divided by 2.
Option B) Change the league to individual sub-leagues “Illini Pinball League - Quality Inn”, “Illini Pinball League - Illini Union”, along with creating 4 other sub-leagues, each location running their own independent league (FSPA style).
Option A allows the league to split “25 points / 2”, where as Option B allows the league to create 6 different “25 point” leagues under the old system. That’s 25 WPPR’s versus 150 WPPR’s. Sign me up for some WPPR 3.0!
My own inclination is to go around it completely. Have a Separate “Pinball Tour” ranking for the top 50 events each year, half US, half not, that ranks just the “pros” who go out and compete against quality players at quality events designed to be like those on the golf and tennis tours. A combined PAPA Circuit + ECS Series is a bit like what I have in mind, but I would include other events that are of comparable scope and challenge, e.g. for 2016, add in Expo, PAPA Classics, NW Show, NW Championship, Louisville [got skipped this time]; for Europe, I’m sure the National directors there can suggest what to use, based partially on player count and partially on TVA.
When WPPRS were “opened up” to more events is when people started “gaming the system.” Golf doesn’t give a rats ass if you win your local club every week and are a scratch golfer - - you have no world ranking at all until you come out to play with the big boys away from home. If a few of the pros happen to also play regularly at your club matches, the club rounds still count for zilch.
Until you can’t game the system, people will complain about those who do.
“But what about the travel unfairness …?” Yeah, well, Adam Scott and Jason Day have to do a heck of a lot more traveling than the guys in Florida to keep their rankings - - that’s just the way it is, you have to go where the events with the top competition are. And notice that living in New York or London [or Myrtle Beach] counts for zilch - it’s not the population of people playing casually in your area that counts, it’s pro-level events held that does.
No, it does not, because FSPA leagues are real leagues that meet 10 times over the course of many months plus playoffs, and aren’t simply monthly tournaments calling themselves “leagues.”
There seems to be a general feeling that nothing can be done because people will continue to find ways to game the system after every change. That’s disheartening, but I know I’m not alone in wishing for improvement.
I know this was tried (sort of) with PARS but what favoring rating over raw points? I’m thinking of something that sheds effectiveness as you play the same people over and over again. The idea would be that it’s progressively less valuable to beat up on the same people forever.
One problem with this is the tendency for the world’s best to meet in finals of majors a lot, I wouldn’t want them penalized. Kinda just brainstorming here. I believe in the ranking system so I have an interest in seeing it be as accurate as possible when comparing players.
Forget that! The argument doesn’t deserve to be humored.
It’s not an apples to apples comparison, because you are missing a major component when comparing pinball to say tennis or golf…money!
No one, not even @sk8ball makes a living playing pinball, tennis/golf can be exclusive in their events because the value in showing up anywhere in the world is offset by the prize pool potential, even if you come in last place you are still making decent enough money to cover your expenses.
That isn’t the case in pinball.
Pinball is still growing, I don’t know that it will ever become mainstream enough to warrant the prizes that pro sports or even pro gaming Guess we’ll see how circuit at $5 a person helps to grow prize pools for other events.
So FSPA is a “real league” . . . should our requirements for a league season change? Minimum of 10 meetings? Can you host multiple meetings on the same night?
I bigger problem is - “Anything you can do I can do better. I can do anything better than you”
WHATEVER rules you make to declare something a “valid league” . . . Modern Pinball can just do THAT better than anywhere else on the planet can.
10 week seasons? Sure no problem, we now run 3 different leagues a week, a “Stern League”, “Williams League”, “Bally League”, each are a 10 week season where the only games used will be from that manufacturer, blah blah blah and the beat goes on.
I find the SL discussion kind of funny. I often get criticized for the opposite problem. My rating is inflated relative to many of my geographic peers due to travelling to a lot of larger US tournaments. Others don’t have the same flexibility and so can’t play at the same number of larger point events.
It comes back to the goals. Let circuit be circuit, IFPA doesn’t need to be. PCS / SCS matter. If modern skews things too much, compete and take the points, or Upstaters come play some Ontario tournaments. Canadians will welcome you…
I still haven’t read a logical explanation as to why there must be a head to head component in the tournament for it be valid.
I understand that American sports have a head to head component after a league format to determine a champion (NFL, NBA, WSB), but I think that is purely because of the huge geographical spread of the teams, making it unfeasible for them all to play each other in a single league, plus TV wanting to make money from a single showdown game/games.
That’s simply not the case for the vast majority of non US sports which produce a champion from purely league results. It is still accepted that the winner of the Premier league is the best in the country, likewise cricket, rugby etc. There are of course head-to-head knockout competitions as well as competitions which combine the 2 formats.
All of the majors in golf are effectively league play, there is no head to head component. There are of course matchplay events but these are less common than strokeplay.
Even tennis is not purely played out in head to head competitions.
