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.
Can I get more details on how your league works? I’m from the US so I don’t know of really any leagues of anything that don’t have head to head play.
Those golf majors may not be matchplay but they are of course head to head. Everyone is playing at the same time on the same holes (think of each one as a pinball machine). They are just finishing on different games and are in groups of three or four.
Personally, I wouldn’t have an issue with there being a “PRO” tour spread out over the world. As you stated it couldn’t just be 50% US, 50% Europe, but would have to encompass the whole globe.
Unfortunately, this will never work until people can afford to cover their expenses from prize money - which is a looooooong way off.
It would be even more a case of “buying” points if these PRO events were worth significantly more than a standard comp.
I do actually agree with you that there needs to be a grading system that is as simple as possible without adding extra criteria. It’s just I disagree with the grading criteria your using
Personally, I would like to see the IFPA produce a dozen, 2 dozen, (who knows the exact number) of officially sanctioned formats. Each of which would be worth a set number of points. People could then chose which tournament format best suits their needs and use it.
It wouldn’t stop certain locations running multiple comps every month/week/hour, but it would mean everyone was playing from the same rulebook, and formats could be more accurately graded to reflect the skill/luck required to win them rather than it just being a matter of the number of games.
Which is harder to win, or a better judgement of the best player on the day?
A tournament with 64 people all playing 7 games on 7 different machines 64pts awarded for top score down to 1pt. Highest total wins.
or
A tournament with the same 64 people who play each other in head to head single elimination?
or
Same 64 players, split into 16 groups of 4, for a round robin. After those 3 games top 16 progress into 4 more groups of 4, round robin play, winners of those 4 groups play a single 4 player game to decide the winner.
There’s arguments for all 3, but, option 1 wouldn’t score any points at all under current grading rules, and option 3 would score more than option 2 because of a 4 player game.
This is despite the fact that all comps play the exact same number of games.
This is where I see the problem lying, differences in opinion between what format is most “deserving” of points.
Tournament formats could be reviewed every year and formats added or taken away as deemed appropriate.
Any tournament not from the “official list” doesn’t qualify for WPPR pts.
The football league is simple - 20 teams every team plays every other team twice (home and away) making a total of 38 games. 3pts for a win, 1 for a draw. Highest total wins. There is no final group of head to head play to decide who is the overall champion.
The fact that the teams play each other shouldn’t confuse the situation with regards to head-head play. The point is after the allotted number of games, there is no further need for a head-head section.
Likewise after the allotted number of games of pinball in a league format, there should be no further need for a head-head section. If you finished in top place, why should someone who finished below you have the opportunity to play against you and finish above you? You’ve already proved your worth by finishing top after the league section.
I don’t see the golf majors as being head to head at all. Being in a group of 3 or 4 is irrelevant to their own score. I did use the analogy of each hole being a different pin. During our pinball league meets, we usually have everyone playing in 2s or 3s, but that is not head to head play.
In my experience options 2 and three are SIGNIFICANTLY harder to win.
From your response to me, it seems you run a standard league that meets however many times, and has however many people.
I don’t necessarily think a league that ends after the regular season without a final meet should be worthless, but it should be worth a hell of a lot less than one that does have a final. Having the finals puts the best against the best making their run in the reg season important for seeding and power to choose games, etc but shouldn’t get them the crown. Gotta beat the best to be the best imo. Especially since depending on how your league is set up you might not even get to play against all the other great players in one reg season.
Um. For the purposes of the IFPA rules, this is head-to-head play. Don’t confuse a knock-out bracket for head-to-head play.
The H2H requirement exists in large part to ensure that everyone turns up at the same time and plays on the same kit. In part it’s a kludge to ensure that long-term open-qualifying (selfie leagues, e.g.) type leagues didn’t grade out too highly, but also to ensure that you actually have to see the other players in the league.
I am really confused by why this shouldn’t confuse. This is a perfectly valid pinball format and satisfies the direct play requirement. There is nothing in the rules that says the winner must be determined via head to head battle between the top 2 players. Look at 24 hour final battle.
There have been many justifications for the direct play requirement. They span thoughts about requiring situational play, to nerfing SL (how did that work out), to knowing you have won at the end of the tournament instead of 3 days later.
In the football example pts are awarded after head to head play (satisfying IFPA), in the pinball example pts are awarded after all players have played the same game and then ranked, there is no head to head play in the pinball. Thus not satisfying IFPA.
I run all 3 formats, along with a few others, the pts they garner are vastly different.
I don’t intend compromising the integrity of any comp just to try and max out pts, if it detracts from the fun for ALL of the players. Which in my experience, and from feedback, making comp formats just to max out pts takes away from the enjoyment of “lesser” players
This is my biggest complaint with the current system as it stands. Once WPPR went to the “direct play” requirement, a ton of small/fun events that you might be able to run on a friday night or sunday afternoon became worthless. Now the only real choice for a short duration event is to do some sort of knockout bracket, which in my opinion, seems the most variable (edit: volatile as noted below) result wise, isn’t a whole lot of fun IMO (I don’t like that I don’t play or compare game performance against all participants) and still isn’t going to grade out very high.
So for me this question is really interesting, and there’s an issue of “in theory” versus “in execution” that also came about.
First off, calling something HARDER or EASIER regarding a format is impossible, because that level of difficulty depends on the player. For example, a tournament that is Harder for Elwin to win is most likely easier for my mom to win. The word that we ended up using in all of our IFPA discussions was “Volatility” of a result. More volatile being a less true judge of skill, and less volatile of a format being a better judge of skill.
At first blush I totally AGREE with Wayne here (SHOCKING I’m sure for Wayne)
I believed in it so much, we based WPPR v5.0 on exactly this model. A game played, was a game played, regardless of the context of how that game played was analyzed.
Taking it to the extreme, I actually defended indirect play as a BETTER judge of skill as it truly makes for a less volatile result.
If we’re all playing a match on Walking Dead, and there’s a group of 20 players, which option is a better judge of skill:
A) I put up 200 mil, which is the second highest score out of everyone, but I was in a head-to-head match against the person that put up 225 mil. My record is 0-1, and I finish ranked tied for 11th in the tournament.
B) I’m given a 2nd place finish out of 20 players because the game was being compared to everyone in the field.
OPTION B by a country mile does a better job of analyzing how I did in the tournament IMO.
Now . . . this is where “in theory” and “in execution” all fall apart, and why we had to move on from WPPR v5.0. This is not just Super League related. There are simply built in advantages for indirect play formats with respect to player count, and games played based on time.
An open qualifying, stop by and play your games whenever you can, is far more likely to pull in more players compared to a scheduled event where everyone has to be there at the same time. That’s just FACT, regardless of what that means for the volatility of the result. With number of players being a metric used in determining value, this makes all formats that include indirect play inflated in value compared to tournaments that don’t include indirect play.
Second issue was TIME. You can play a single player game twice as fast as you can play a head-to-head game, and 4X as fast as you can play a 4-player game.
During the year when WPPR v5.0 was implemented, we saw the exploitation of these issues all over the place. PAPA style groups were falling out of favor because it took too much time to be able to play the same number of games as a high score tournament.
Rather than watching group play fall out of favor, we decided to adjust the WPPR system to be as “time neutral” with respect to formats. The intention was that if you had 4 hours in an evening, there was no “best way” of earning a ton of WPPR’s. This was the most POPULAR question sent into the IFPA inbox. “I’m running a monthly, have about 2 hours to spare, how do I get the most WPPR’s out of it”.
That brings us to where we are today.
Is it possible for us to bring back “Indirect Play” formats, and simply cap them at 25% TGP, or 50% TGP . . .I guess . . . however through the implementation of requiring Direct Play, I’ve actually learned to appreciate that style of situational pinball play that simply doesn’t exist in open play high score tournaments. It brings in a level of game strategy that isn’t necessarily always the same thing.
Indirect Play → Do “The Thing” on the game and you’re fine. Don’t and you’re done.
Direct Play → Sometimes doing “The Thing” is required, sometimes it’s not, it opens the game up to so many strategic opportunities depending on the situation that match is presenting.
We hoped that MOST organizers felt this way, and that we would continue to see Group Play as much as Head-to-Head, as much as Best Game events going forward.
I was clearly naive in that way of thinking, because a majority of organizers we tracked were consistently trying to max out points in as little time as possible, full stop.
I thought there would be a counter balance here of less players showing up if the format wasn’t “FUN”, and simply a WPPR grab . . . after all a 100% TGP event with 2 players is worth 1 point. A more fun event at 50% TGP with 10 players is worth 2.5 points. The problem is the players continued to just show up regardless of their enjoyment level, mainly because THEY wanted more WPPR’s as well for their participation.
At some point we had to step in to try and balance things out, versus watching the world migrate to nothing but high score tournaments.
that there needs to be a grading system that is as simple as possible without adding extra criteria. It’s just I disagree with the grading criteria your using 
