Unfortuantely, this just isn’t how it works IRL. What the player base wants, is maximum points. Nerfing flip frenzy for IFPA means almost nobody comes to your non IFPA, or sad points IFPA event, if you run flip frenzy. It’s basically death for the format, much like pingolf. Yeah, people will still do them but exponentially less frequently, and with dramatically lower attendance.
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Your defending the format and saying it needs a “big finals afterwards to catch oddities.” What you are really saying is the qualifying is iffy at best and needs a big correction in the finals part. If the integrity is paramount enough to have finals then the qualifying is not good enough.
If the format can’t carry itself all the way to the top then it should be nerfed. Like best game is, like card format.
I guess this will vary depending on your player base. I’m in the Philadelphia area. We have basically 60ish players in the Tri State area here. Anything that gets put on the calendar regardless of format will get 20ish+ players to show up. The bulk of our events are already low value and people still show. We have a good core group though and I’m very grateful for that.
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I think TGP EV PER HOUR, which as we all know is the most important metric in the universe, is still higher for Flip Frenzy at 50% compared to head-to-head matches or group match play with scheduled rounds.
One ball Flip Frenzy isn’t nerfed at all, so that may be the most popular format in 2023 
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I’ll also pass along this free exploit . . .
It’s NOT Flip Frenzy if you schedule the event to be:
“20 head-to-head matches. Pairings will be done based on players available that aren’t currently playing in another match.” 
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I am saying I prefer playing pinball over waiting around and the integrity might be worse but still good enough I’d be fine with smaller finals but others don’t seem to like the entropy that FF can bring.
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A bit curious why you didn’t set the 1 ball FF to 0 TGP? Not a criticism just interested in the theory behind it
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Fair enough
We like Karl
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Crappy exploit, removes the fast play angle, removes any incentive to quit when ahead or behind, no sale! Good DAY sir, or whatever the meme is.
Only thing stopping me from getting an FF tattoo is I don’t want people to think it stands for Foo Fighters.
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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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