I’d leave that part out… just set all players who register after Jan 31 for their home state. Basically provide the month of Jan for folks to declare a state other than their home state… after that, all undeclared players at that time, and for the remainder of the year, will automatically be set for their home state.
This does leave the drama of people waiting til last minute to choose their state, trying to avoid/join other players who also may be choosing other states… I’d say hide all registrations til Feb 1st then do a big reveal
Is there a reason to have this restriction? I can’t currently think of a scenario where a brand new player (or a tricky veteran) could abuse being allowed to join the leaderboard mid-year, and register a state at that time.
I don’t understand by why the declaration should be so early (Jan 31st). If it must be something…make it halfway through the year: June 30th. Anyone just getting started at that point probably has little chance of making it anyway (except perhaps in smaller states).
But then again, I don’t think people should declare at all. However, I’m aware that this might be because I’m in Colorado, where we don’t have players from surrounding states coming in to steal our WPPRs. Is this actually the exception, and not the rule? Off the top of my head, I’d imagine that California and Colorado might be the two primary states that are immune to this. Are there others? Florida?
Rather than declaring a state, the state in which you earned the most points is the default state, rather than the state in which you are positioned highest?
For example you could have 50 WPPR pts in one state that places you 18th, but only 45 pts in another state that actually places 10th.
Unlucky- your 50pts earned is the one that counts and you don’t automatically qualify.
A lot of the arguments about people not playing because they won’t progress towards state finals, just don’t ring true to me. I would like to hope that the vast majority of players enter competitions because they enjoy them, or because of the prize money - not just as a means to get to the state/national finals. If that is the case, it’s a pretty sad state of affairs that people need that kind of incentive to play pinball
If someone joins the NEPL giving them access to the 6 states where those results are reported, they are given an advantage that all other existing NEPL members wouldn’t have. There is then a process of determining how long does that ‘new’ player have to register with us.
Ultimately the logistics of executing this on the back end is not something I’m willing to put the time or effort into taking on. It’s hard enough manually selecting the 16 qualifiers for each state during registration week as the State Reps funnel us their ‘yes’ responses. For Illinois I can reach out to the top 50, and be ‘done’ pretty quickly having my top 16 locked in. This pre-selection process would force me to have to reach out to EVERY registered player, which right now is over 200 players for Illinois.
This is all an attempt to solve this “massive problem” of these out-of-towners ruining the SCS process because of their mysterious wait and see attitude. By “massive problem”, at least from the Illinois and Texas metrics, was an 6% problem.
94% of the players out there are selecting their ‘home state’ already based on the existing process.
The other interesting wrinkle that we haven’t seen play out yet, is that the only big payday to be had the past 4 years has been to get to Nationals. No State Championship pot was worth anything significant. This motivated the puddle jumpers because there was no financial motivation to ‘stay home’ and play in a perceived tough state.
With the idea of variable State prize packages (which wouldn’t be known by January 31st of the season), along with the possibility of “Super States” offering more qualifying spots (which wouldn’t be known by January 31st of the season), I’ll be curious if that 6% number actually DECREASES once we get to the 2018-19 selection process.
With that said . … 52% seem to think selecting your state before the season starts is a good idea, so what do I know
As someone who had an out-of-towner come and take his state champs, I still don’t think it should change. If we had played better he wouldn’t have had the opportunity. Good on him.
LOL, am I going to institute something that we don’t have the infrastructure to handle on our end from a logistics standpoint, based on one online survey to Tilt Forums . . . no
After 29 votes it’s now 55% in favor of the current selection process.
I will certainly take the feedback as valuable, with the understanding that for 94% of the players that are picking their home state, this vote is a “doesn’t matter to me, let’s get this over with, I know where I’m playing regardless” vote.
The real question in Amanda’s hypothetical world is how many people register if there is a $125 player fee to register? Any takers on that one?
Honestly I don’t like changing the SCS. It’s a fun tourney system that keeps me playing all year to achieve a tangible result. And the first SCS I played in, I didn’t even know the SCS was a thing! Having played in the NEPL I earned points and qualified. Adding a pre-registration and $125 fee means that a lot of newbies who play well their first year will miss out on the SCS.
then again, I am lucky to live in New England where there’s a decent amount of pinball and 5 states I could qualify in for SCS.
I would not be in favor of this. I often qualify in three “states” - MD, VA, and DC, just from playing local events throughout the year. My choice of where to play States has nothing to do with the competition I’ll be facing, and everything to do with the chosen location (it varies) and whether I think it’s a good place to hang out for a few hours and play tournament pinball.
I’d hate to lock into my home state and then find out the tournament organizer has chosen a dog of a location to hold States in. Example: Last year, VA was at a private residence, DC at a well-known and popular local bar, and MD was at a crappy mall arcade. This might work if States tournament officials have to choose the location before players choose their state, but that’s not really practical to do that a year in advance.
There’s a geographical argument here as well. Say you live in Northern VA, but the VA organizer chooses Richmond to hold States. It would likely be much more convenient to play in DC or MD, if you couldn’t or didn’t want to travel down to Richmond.
I think the current system works just fine. Just my opinion, take it as you will.
I don’t think the $ is the issue if they are given a choice on if they want to pay. For example if we took Aaron’s current tournaments played divide by the $125 it would break down to about $4 per tournament.
A good number of east MI are with me and like the idea of a structured circuit to qualify you for finals.
If you feel your good enough for SCS & Nationals you should have no problems with a registration fee.
I do believe that there needs to be more structure in terms of what events will qualify you for states. As right now there is believed to be some “cheating” going on.
My biggest gripe about SCS is the points from last year’s SCS carrying over towards the next year’s qualification. It kinda breaks the “best player in the state for the year” metric that it should be. Players that didn’t qualify for the previous year’s SCS are at a disadvantage to those that did. I think every player should be reset to zero at the beginning of the season so that no player has a head start. Your WPPRs from the SCS should still count, just not towards the next SCS.
We have yet to see a player qualify for a state where the previous year’s State Championship points made a difference.
Right now the functionality of our our filters are built are pulled through the calendar submission process. Every event in the US has a registered state where it’s being played. If we pull in “State field = IL”, “Year field = 2017”, we pull in all events in the system for that state in that year.
If we ever saw that the State Championship tournament results themselves are getting a player into the top 16 when they wouldn’t have otherwise, I would have more interest in spending the time (or having Shepherd spend the time) to find a work around on our filtering side.
