I get the why completely, I just think that if approved formats is the way it’s going, being more liberal with the approved formats, especially one’s that aren’t abusing the system (many of which are probably worth less than they should be) doesn’t make a lot of sense and is definitely not encouraging more events and more play, especially amongst the more casual players, a few who have relayed to me how much fun they’ve been having at pingolf, vs some of the other league formats they’ve been exposed to.
A stampede isn’t direct play? Now I’m really confused. But yes, an additional 7 games.
We haven’t played the finals yet, and it’s a league in it’s first season so no other results have been reported. So I guess I have the option of changing the finals format, and telling 8 people they’re playing in “B” and 8 they’re playing in “A” or keeping the tournament nearly worthless. Either way it pretty well sucks for me as people are going to be disappointed. Would doing a top 8 for “A” only final allow the previous 3 nine hole qualifying rounds to have those games be eligible towards TGP?
If stampede play is all 8 players play, top 7 advance . . . that’s NOT Direct play under v5.2 rules. Taking those final 8 and doing a h2H, match play or ladder format would be it eligible.
Advancing the top 8 to “A” will work, since more than 50% of the field is eliminated from winning the league. That’s the only way you get those initial qualifying rounds to count.
(You can actually advance 12 to “A” is you want and it’s still fine)
Do the format that you believe is fair and fun and that your players love, and let the WPPR’s fall where they may. If you’ve got 1000 WPPR’s, you just need 2 bucks and you can get a cup of coffee. But if your players have a great time at your tournament, you’ve done your job.
The impetus to start the league in the first place was becuase many of the local players were expressing some frustration at the lack of events and inability to truly compete for CA SCS points. Otherwise, I would give no effs. I personally gave up last year when I realized I wasn’t good enough, and had little interest in traveling enough, to be able to improve my ranking significantly. I currently bleed more points than I can gain playing events down here. It’s just the way it is and there seems to be little interest in having that be any different. So I have to make a choice about what’s best for the health of my league and thus far, I feel like an event that gives back some wppr value is an important part of that—hence my dilemma.
As far as the amount of local events, perhaps these “local” players should start hosting events of their own. Not enough events? Start/host more events.
I’m trying! How is that bad attitude to have? I’ve spent countless hours prepping games, building trophies, updating websites, sending emails. I obviosuly give many effs about my league, I just don’t give many about my personal wppr points, but others care about theirs and I want to do my best to accomodate them. I just can’t help but feel pretty downtrodden about it at the moment. So I’ll stop posting and try and sleep now.
Hey Jay, I think you might be going about it the wrong way and trying to please too many others with what you are doing. I’m spoiled up here in NorCal, but one thing that happened was that the main guy doing tournaments eventually stopped (although he still runs a few here and there) and in that vacuum a bunch of new folks jumped in and started throwing tournaments and we now have way more going on all the time up here. When I first got into pinball in late 2012 I think I managed to go to every single pinball event but now there are too many and I think I miss more than I make).
Anyhow, as @joe said earlier, focus on what you like and enjoy and if others don’t like it that’s their problem and not yours. You sound like you are in the same place as I am with respect to WPPRs. I am not chasing them as I feel like I’m pretty accurately ranked, but I still love competing and that’s more fun to me than the actual WPPRs are.
Just throw tourneys you like and if others have problems with it then they can set up their own. There’s lots of ways to maximize points too so feel free to ask around ( @echa has some great ones like her Set Phasers to Flip tourney which is a fun easy format that gives lots of players a chance and winners to earn some decent WPPRS: http://hellaheartpinball.com/phaserstoflip.html)
Sorry, I wasn’t very clear. I meant to ask if the traditional league format (at least here in the UK) where players play say 8 machines per meet, 6 times a year is no longer endorsed?
I understand that if we were to add a ‘finals’ at the end of the season that with the new changes it would be endorsed, but can not believe that is being proposed.
Why play all year over dozens of games to be the top player, only to finish the season in 8th because you had one bad afternoon. Seems to go against the idea of a league format.
Is your league doing direct play? If so, no need for a finals.
If it is not doing direct play, then simply limit the final week to only the top 10% of players. So, if you have 40 players, only top 4 would make the finals.
Professional baseball . . . 162 regular game season, the Champion is decided by winning 12 games (or 13 if it’s a Wild Card team)
Professional basketball . . . 82 game regular game season, the Champion is decided by winning 16 games
Remember that there isn’t any difference to calling something a “league” or a “tournament”. Same rules apply for both or we would be having people call things one or the other for certain benefits.
You play all year over dozens of games to QUALIFY for the playoffs (this is true for tournaments and leagues). That process should limit the number of finalists that have a chance to win the league. Being top qualifier for a tournament doesn’t necessarily win you the tournament (it does give you certain advantages). Same can be said for leagues.
Having one bad afternoon is EXACTLY what the culmination of a league/tournament is all about. The qualifying/regular season always takes up far more time compared to finals, but it’s the finals where you earn your stripes.
That’s a long winded way of me saying that the traditional league format you have is no longer endorsed by the IFPA for WPPR points
Actually, I think this change puts my current league format in jeopardy. Ranking is based on Outscored %. You play in groups of 4, but at the end of the night, your score is calculated against the scores of all other players. If you had the best score on a particular machine, that’s 100%. Right in the middle is 50%. Etc. Your ranking is determined by averaging those averages across the whole season.
It’s actually identical to pin-golf in that your score is compared against all players, even though they may not be in your immediate group.
There are definitely other leagues that do this, right?
It sounds like they do an ‘everyone plays all 8 machines’ and then get ranked top to bottom. This of course would be an INDIRECT format.
If they already do match play style on those 8 machines with 3-2-1-0 scoring, or 7-5-3-1, or 4-2-1-0, etc. . . then you’re right they are already fine.
Comparing your scores against all players is definitely INDIRECT competition, which makes that something we will no longer endorse.
The easiest way around this is adding a finals component of DIRECT style competition where you actually are playing those other 1/2/3 people in your group to win.
I didn’t think having a league that maximized TGP and did something fun and different for both normal meetings and the finals had to be mutually exclusive. It’s my fault for not understanding the 50% rule for this year so I’ll deal with that. But I have to at least voice my displeasure with these changes as I see them leading directly to tournament homogenization and less fun. The last wppr changes marginalized players that weren’t in locations with big scenes and these changes further marginalize players and leagues that want to do their own thing to some degree. With that the IFPA is becoming more exclusive and less inclusive and this all seems rather opposite to the mission of continuing to promote the growth of competitive pinball—especially at the local level—by redefining what competitive means.
I can’t disagree with you here. We’ve actually had a ton of recommendations that we should just list APPROVED formats, you MUST pick from the list, and if you don’t, it’s not endorsed . . . period.
I’ve tried to fight that, and continue to do so in the effort to see new and interesting fun formats still being created.
Knowing that the only hurdle here for organizers to implement is a DIRECT play component, there are still plenty of opportunities to run creative/fun formats that fit within our guidelines.
[I’m writing this here just so I can laugh 3 years from now when we’ve implemented only being able to choose from an approved format list]
Not sure I understand this correctly. So if 300 people attend an event, but only the 50 are rated, a 20th place finish will be worth less points than if all 300 players are rated?
(Finishing in 10th place got you 47% of the points that were awarded for 1st place)
So the drop off goes much slower for the larger field tournaments.
WPPR v5.2 will make those Super League results behave like a 50 player tournament with respect to the distribution, so you would see 10th place get closer to 20% of the points awarded for 1st place - so around 11 points instead of around 27 points.
