aka lying/cheating, which is unfortunately a feature of every format
I don’t mind the nerfing itself so much as I vehemently disagree with the opinions that it’s a dumpster fire format. Especially coming from folks whose M.O. is game-specific exploits that bear little resemblance to actual pinball play. What’s a bigger perversion, flip frenzy, or collecting a SJP on Sopranos before validating the playfield?
You gonna keep rolling with all-classic finals at Enterrium? 
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BANNED MANEUVER
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I don’t think so and we can’t let an TD have that level of control over an event or if they do you need an game judge viewing that game full time and to DQ any one who get’s any non valid drain.
For all the griping in this thread, the overall consensus on nerfing FF still seems to be, in a nutshell… “well, I just don’t like it.” And to be fair, as a player, I don’t like the format that much either. But I very much disagree that was a good enough reason to do something about it.
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The queue is more deterministic than agnostic. The initial distribution of matches and the order of the initial queue has a high impact on what machines you’ll play and who your opponents will be. That initial (random) draw is much more important that any other initial random draw in other tournament format.
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I tried to be very specific in my critique of FF. And I have yet to read any rebuttal that would change my mind. … I look forward to your responses to my points.
And, as much as we may enjoy our discussion, it really doesn’t matter because it’s just my mind and yours… and not Josh’s mind.
I’m honestly tired of thinking about this but sigh… ok.
the lack of the top-performing players competing against each other (even in qualifying – this shouldn’t just be taking place in the finals)
This already happens in almost every other format. Unless you’re running a round robin on purpose, which almost nobody does because it takes forever, the best players are very equally likely to either play each other, or not play each other, especially in cases where there are more players than matches. But the FF queue is random, which IMO, is about as fair as things can get. But everyone knows how much the world hates things that are random because they feel like they’re seeing patterns. And beyond that, even a matchplay elimination bracket guarantees the best players aren’t all going to play each other and the player that gets to finals is going to see at most, like 75% of the remaining field? I’m not great with maths but hopefully that number makes sense.
In general, I think far far too much of the negative or positive opinions of various formats in pinball are far too often linked to feelings and are not often backed by actual evidence to prove or disprove the hypotheses—especially when those feelings are being expressed by a Name Brand® vs. a Kirkland Signature® level player. Personally, I’d want to see data that says flip frenzy (or any format for that matter) is worth too much and why. And then compare that data to other formats. Show me the relative strength of competition and an expected win statistic for each player. Then let’s make an educated decision on the merit of it with numbers instead of “It sucks. Johnny won again and I never even played Johnny. It looked like he played Billy 13 times and Billy just found out about pinball yesterday” or “there weren’t enough head to head matches so it’s easier to win.” Well, if it is easier to win, we’d see data that showed us the K-sig players were defeating Name Brand players with more frequency and then we’d have a real good reason to do something about it, instead of it feels like it’s being exploited or it feels like this format sucks.
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Curiously, would anyone’s opinion of flip frenzy change if the queue and game selections were “balanced across the series” so to speak? So that the software strove to remove actual randomness and insert some form of balancing?
if you rank flip frenzy according to win percentage (instead of net wins) it actually incentivizes playing fewer games.
I do think a modifier to flip frenzy sounds interesting, let’s say a 30 person tournament. at tournament start all players put into 1-1 matches. After 4 or 5 games end (8-10 players queued), create new matches balanced as @jay suggests or even swiss. (Have we gotten far enough from FF to avoid the TGP nerf yet?) I’m not sure how you balance matches played though
anyways, the real victim here is not flip frenzy format, it’s @haugstrup having to receive requests for a hundred new formats which are as TGP-efficient as flip frenzy but distinct enough that they avoid the TGP nerf (please code my above format into next.mp)
Don’t worry, I’m good at saying no 
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This is by far my biggest issue with Flip Frenzy. I have played in tournaments in which I strongly suspected people were gaming the queue and it really soured the experience for me. I now just don’t play in them.
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I just reviewed the results for the 15 or so largest frenzy events held in the past month. The distribution of finishing positions is comparable to that of other formats, i.e. the best players tend to be at or near the top with just occasional exceptions, and the lowest-ranked players finish near the bottom. None of the winners were low-ranked. Doesn’t change my opinion on the format, but does indicate that it’s no worse than other formats at differentiating skill in terms of finishing positions.
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“Back in my day real players flipped both flippers at the same time!”
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Hey, don’t knock Kirkland Signature… Costco sources some good stuff! 
Actually, almost all qualifying formats have the top performing players play against each other during qualifying: Swiss, tiered Swiss, strikes, and due to the indirect nature of facing everyone, so do Herb and pin-golf.
The ones that don’t — when the field is large relative to the # of rounds — are Random and Balanced. Large field Balanced is still better than FF, because you don’t have repeat opponents — where in FF repeat opponents are common.
I feel the FF queue is far from random — there’s a tendency to face a similar set of opponents due to the nature of FF, with a high chance of repeats.
My main point still remains: using a metric for comparing players that uses unequal # of games.
I wrote a quick flip frenzy software package to do that, and then Monte Carlo’d it a few thousand times. Picking players from the queue that the opponent has faced the fewest times (and splitting ties by picking the player who has been waiting in the queue longest) does a fairly good job of balancing the spread of opponents. But the downside is that on occasion players can spend 30 minutes or more in the queue. And on other times they barely have time to get seated.
I felt that destroyed one of the greatest things people like about FF - the rapid pace, yet with a fairly consistent 10 minute or so break between rounds for refreshment. I never experimented with it in a practical test
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Flip Frenzies are an awesome format to:
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adhere to a fixed time frame
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get new players into the scene and into competitive pinball in a friendly, less daunting way.
I always run a 3 hour frenzy, followed by an 8 person finals.
We ran a 44 person Frenzy last Friday - started on time at 7pm, done by 10pm, finals done by 11ish.
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20.9 average games during the 3 hour frenzy. (Probably twice as many games for most people vs a normal 3 strike)
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standings always hidden
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No players are allowed to leave a machine until all 3 balls are played
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if anyone even thought about gaming the queue they’d get an earful. But they’re actually running to the desk to submit results so they can play more games.
It’s a great format, when run correctly.
Maximum pinball in a fixed time frame.
It’s a shame it’s getting nerfed.
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The way you are running it now with the new rules it is still 23/25 92% TGP. Instead of it being 33/25 132% without the nerfing in the new rules. Think it is pretty fair. Just because you have to play your balls doesn’t mean I have to try to play I can just let them drain. I agree that FF has its place I just don’t think it should be rewarded like other formats.
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