First, I absolutely agree with and support the invitation of William Jensen. I hope they do that in the future for other borderline Hall of Famers. Maybe Chris Pikula or Tsuyoshi Ikeda could finally get in, but that's a topic for another day.
The controversy is about the invites given to the following players: Michael Hopkins (USA), Fernando Solorzano (Costa Rica), Stephen Murray (Scotland), Jasper Johnson-Epstein (USA), and Gergely Gulyas (Hungary). Later on Twitter, Organized Play head Helene Bergeot listed the accomplishments of these players, as well as what the focus was for their decisions:
There are two issues: The awarding of invites to "undeserving" players, and the awarding of plane tickets to non-ptq winners.
The plane ticket issue is this: There are 44 Gold level pros currently, all of whom are qualified for the next pro tour. They only have plane tickets if they top 25 the last PT, top 4 a GP feeding into Seattle, or win a PTQ (yes, they can still play in PTQs). A said goal of the change to PWPs was to give all invited players a plane ticket. I think we can do with less PTQs and more plane tickets to these pros. But that said, it seems pointless to give out a sponsor invite without giving a plane ticket, so I don't feel like that should be changed, but I don't blame gold pros for feeling slighted.
A trickier issue is the lack of defined criteria to earn these, and a seemingly fluctuating standard. For PT AVR, the recipients of the sponsor invitation had much more impressive resumes. Two of them had 2 GP top 8s (only 1 GP top 8 in the entire group of new invites). A 26th place finish at a PT. And the one guy that didn't have a GP top 8 made the finals of five PTQs. So what is the standard? They won't say, and I understand that. It can change, it's based on what "feels" right (Aaron Forsythe's words, not mine). But to me, these don't feel right, and it's not just the stats (I think Hopkins and Murray have good cases based on GP and WMC performance, but the others don't impress me compared with other people I know), its the last tweet by Helene about only looking at people that didn't qualify before.
There is a large group of players (about 100 or so) that are Silver level pros. These players are pretty good, you've probably heard of a few of them too. They got to Silver level by playing in on of the last two PTs and also a couple of money GP finishes. These players are the ones that consistently put up results like the ones that qualified the sponsor invites, but these players weren't looked at because they had "got there" the past few seasons. WotC seems to be implying that a PT first timer is more deserving than someone who Q'd legitimately before and travelled to GPs on their own dime. Maybe they are. Maybe the Silver level pros had their shot and didn't convert, and maybe its time to give someone else a shot. But these someone elses aren't demonstrably better than a Silver level pro with similar or slightly worse stats. This is just another reason of why it sucks to be Silver. All you get is one PTQ against some of the best players in the world, thanks for playing.
And just to put it out there, lets look at my stats from the past season. Top 2 a RTR PTQ, top 8 a RTR PTQ. Top 64 a GP. Played a PT. I don't think that's enough to "deserve" an invite. But since we're looking at the past two seasons, maybe it changes things: Top 1 PTQ AVR, Top2 PTQ RTR, Top 8 PTQ RTR, Top 16 GP, Top 32 GP, 3x Top 64 GP, played in 2 PTs. Still not that impressive if you ask me, especially compared to others over the same period. Or look at Bing Lukes MODO results from this season alone: 3 MTGO PTQ Top8 plus a MOCS Top8. Its so fuzzy how can you really say?
Anyway, the big point is the system doesn't work. PWPs was supposed to reward consistent PTQ performance, but we all know how that turned out. But the system still doesn't work. Wizards acknowledges this with these sponsor invites, but it still feels like a temporary solution. I hope they are working on something better and clearer for the future.
4 comments:
Why assume it is only about "deserve"? Obviously the goal is multi-pronged: reward successful players AND encourage non-pros to keep grinding. Giving these slots to people who have recently been in a PT merely reinforces the perception among the broader player base that qualifying for the PT is something that only other people get to do, and thus discourages aspiring players.
I hate that they reduced the number of PTQs; I enjoyed grinding qualifiers & now I know I'll never play in another PT. As a result, the chances of me ever getting serious about Magic again are slim.
Tracey-
I agree that it's not about "deserve". I was trying to be careful about the way i phrased things, but it was a little rushed. I think the way they are doing it is fine for a customer loyalty program, but I do not think it creates a legitimate "sport" out of the game. When i think of the PT i think of the best in the game competing against the best. There is a lot wrong with the system currently if that is the goal (and i'm not sure it is their goal), this is just one example.
I feel like the number of PTQs is more now than before since they moved to store run, so i'm not sure about your comment in regards to that.
It's interesting that you think the number of PTQs is higher now. I'm not doubting the accuracy of that, just that when I searched last week for PTQs near LA, I found zero. There's one in Riverside (I guess that's kinda close, but not really) and one in San Diego. It's possible one has already been run, since the search didn't show anything before the date I searched. I feel like back in the day there were PTQs basically every week within driving distance of Houston (& in the northeast, based on articles); maybe it was different in LA.
re: # of ptqs.
for Philadelphia (old system), we had San Antonio, Dallas, Houston, LaFayette. Same with Honolulu
for Barcelona (new system), Lubbock, Dallas x2, San Antonio, OKC, Austin, Houston, Baton Rouge. Seattle was the same, -1 Dallas +1 Shreveport, but i think there were more overlapping days for Seattle.
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