I haven’t thought about this too deeply, but my intuition tells me that when IFPA starts sanctioning tournaments again, those first tournaments will be exceptionally valuable. The relative value of a 25 point tournament in 2021 will be higher than the same 25 point tournament in 2019 because all players in the database have had their overall WPPR values decayed. It’ll be like the first few hours of a pump and dump tournament when all the high scores are still low. So there could be some major shakeups for the first few months.
Edit: just realized @WWJ said essentially the same thing. Nevertheless, it’s probably the case that any initial weirdness will even out with time.
The probably-fairest thing to do would be a freeze variation where you time-shift the decay by the length of the shutdown, i.e. treat the down time as if it didn’t exist. If things are down exactly one year, all pre-covid events decay exactly one year later than normal. If it’s 18 months, shift by that much. For instance, a 5/1/19 event would have been “due” to decay by 25% on 5/2/20. If we’re down 12 months, it now decays 25% on 5/2/21; 18 months and it’s 11/2/21, etc. Put in a pre- vs. post- “switch” that either adds or doesn’t add the gap time to the decay dates. That would preserve the relative value of pre- and post- events. The absolute time amount I feel is irrelevant in this unique situation. I wouldn’t increase the decay times in general, i.e. apply a longer delay to both old and new results, since that alters the balance now in place.
Think of it as if the entire pinball community got “Snapped” by Thanos, and now we’re restored X years later. (With a nod to the new game, of course, nice job Keith and crew!) We just pick up where we left off as best we can. Snap time doesn’t count.
I imagine what BMU suggested would make a lot of players feel more excited, and less defeated, to jump back into the competitive ranked fray once things spin back up. I know a lot of players lower in the rankings for whom its much tougher to accrue points, and it’s a good battle for them to pick up just a few points. I could see it feeling pretty rough to see that drop to 0.
Can’t Shep just waive his keyboard and make some magic?
Lets pretend, that when things start to open, that the eager players can make a splash wave on the ranking that will take a while to settle. What is really at stake. I mean, really. Not just bragging rights. Lets compile the list.
IFPA qualifing.
Seeding into tournaments.
(In Europe at least) grey-area reservation of tournament tickets to the best players.
For 1), can be solved outside of the WPPR itself. If necessary. There may be plenty of time to the cut off so it is deemed fair enough as-is.
For 2), I generally avocate for the WPPR in the morning of a tournament is only used for first round seeding. And not have influence for anything else - like ties, byes, finish position - for the rest of the day. Following this rule, I guess the effect of a splash is to live with.
For 3), don’t bother any consideration. TDs will have to make their choice, take any heat that may rise and explain their decision.
When we finally get through this pandemic, if the reaction of a player is:
“Well that 18 months sucked, but we’re back! I’m so fucking excited to get out there and play in these events that I’ve missed so much! Holy shit the IFPA calendar is stacked! I may play in 300 events this year!” [CHECK WPPR RANKING] “Well shit, I’ve dropped from 24.75 WPPR’s to 13.77 WPPR’s during these 18 months, why bother playing anymore?”, just point me in contact with that player and I’ll give them a virtual hug.
If you look at the impact the ‘current year activity’ has on the rankings, it’s always been super powerful. If Raymond started playing on 1/1/19 as a ‘new player’ he would have finished 2019 with 896.50 WPPR’s, putting him in the top 5 in the world.
We’ve never built the system around worrying about the nuances of WPPR scoring for lower ranked players. One could argue that players who were plateauing and playing in events that weren’t hitting their top 20 will have a chance to see that positive movement on their rank when they start playing again, with an easier time replacing those now decayed events in their top 20.
If anyone needs to feel MORE EXCITED about the ability to play in sanctioned events again once we’re up and rolling, I’ll just multiply everyone’s WPPR total by 10. I would trade in ALL my WPPR’s today for COVID to be done so I could be out there playing again.
I suspect the logic is something like “if LAG (=current date stamp minus event date stamp) is greater than 1096, then current-valued WPPRs = 0; if not but lag is > 731, multiply WPPRs by 0.5; if not but lag > 365, multiply WPPRs by 0.75; if not, WPPRs as is.” This is just adding X to 1096, 731 and 365, where X is the length (in days) of the shutdown. That’s how I do it in my Excel sheet anyway. And preface it with not adding X if the event date is after the break, use the normal decay formula for new ones.
I like the snap-freeze because it doesn’t make people go to zero, makes the balance between new and old events the same as it is now, is easy to explain, is easy to implement (or should be), doesn’t change rankings after the shutdown until things resume (it seems silly that people would go up or down in the rankings when nothing is happening). I don’t think we want to have 18 months of decay and then reopen in a situation where good performance in just-reopened events will skyrocket people up the ranks far more so than comparable performance normally would. Besides being unfair, I think it unwise to over-encourage people to get back into competition when the chance of a pinball super-spreader event still exists. That will be an added danger re NACS and such: too few events in the eligibility window once reopened may cause some over-eager players to travel too much too soon to try to qualify for their State or other jurisdiction. I’d rather see 15 or 18 months of events summed up for NACS than just 3 or 6, especially if the geography of the events held is unbalanced.
Any change in the rankings while a pause is in effect will not be fair to the top players who have spent much effort to get where they were prior to the pause.
After the 500 players or about, there could be great excitment interjected into pinball if all players were reset to zero for the restart.
To take advantage of the opportunity to ignite some new excitment while still rewarding players for their past play, my suggestion is to have pre-covid and post-covid rankings intergrated into the current template. Let the excitment build as everyone resets back to zero but reward the top players by preserving their pre-covid rankings.
It would be unwise to start any competition if there is still a chance of the virus spreading, we are many many months (more like years) before ‘normal’ competition (and travel) can be resumed.
If someone is not allowed to travel to any particular event (anywhere in the world) because of Covid, it is no longer an open event and thus not eligible for WPPR points anyway.
that view may be an bit extreme but maybe the ifpa may need to drop the world part for part / all 2021
but maybe have some EU only and US/NA only stuff.
waiting for an full restart maybe to long. And may really hurt shows that moved dates from 2020 to 2021.
What if pinburgh said 2021 is an go if no ifpa points will some demand an full refund people who are locked out the USA want the same?
Other shows / events that say IFPA tournament but don’t have one may face lawsuits / change backs.
Sorry, It didn’t mean to come across as an opinion. To clarify.
What I meant was that if countries, local areas, etc. are still enforcing travel restrictions due to Covid then it would be unwise to start competitions where people would previously have traveled from afar.
I would highly doubt that anyone would be filing a lawsuit due to an IFPA tournament not being held, I would be even more surprised if they won.
If any show is entirely cancelled I would see nothing wrong with people asking for a full refund.
Deleted rest of my post as it was off topic and too Covid centric
If part of the show says IPFA and there is no then there may be some false advertising issues.
Now how willing some event like you had tickets roll over but now it’s show time and we have the show but no IPFA to give an refund then? Pinburgh refund in FULL if they have it but no ifpa for the people who want out over that?
Not sure why this thread is talking about false advertisement and lawsuits. Probably needs to move into a different thread. As for suspension vs decay, this giant break from WPPR has helped me realize how little WPPRs matter and how much fun it is just to compete and play pin with friends. Whatever IFPA decides on the issue, I think it won’t much matter. I look forward to seeing all of you at a competition sometime in the future.
