planeswalker points

[Roy Raftery]

Has anyone seen the change to the DCI ratings? It was showcased on daily mtg yesterday.

Basically you cant lose points, the more you play the more points you get and you get multipliers for playing in bigger events.

Coming top 16 at a GP no longer automatically gives you a place on the pro tour.

 

the main thing is it rewards people for playing and not sitting on their rating, or being afriad to play because of their rating. I'm not saying i agree with all the changes but i think something did need to be done. you need to read the whole article to get an understanding of it though. The whole 'planeswalker points' thing feels a bit childish but i guess its all in good fun and adds to the fantasy feel.

more importantly, thank you wizards for my new pick up line, hi, i'm a level 36 sorceror, fancy a drink?

[Dan Barrett]

I agree it's a loss Peter, but Magic is also not really about turning up to a tournament every two months, crushing it, then disappearing. As Mills says, this change is to incentivise us to play more (IE spend more money), and it seems it will work quite well at doing so.

[Tom Reeve]

The problem really is that incentive structure is almost nonexistant. Maybe one, at most two UK players will ever hit the Top 10 Europe PT qualification slot in any given season, they will take none of the 65 non-geospecific slots, and incredibly few will get more than a single GP bye. I would be shocked if any UK players ever qualify for the FNM Championship, given that we don't have the large, multi-round Constructed FNMs that are common in the US. And there are currently no other incentives. There's no reason to care about Lifetime points, almost every relevant Competitive ranking measure is global, and therefore competing against people with vastly greater access to nearby GPs and large SCG/TCGPlayer tournaments on a regular basis.

They've removed both the GP Top 16 and PT Top 50 qualifications tracks, which means that even if a UK player wins a PTQ and, say, Top 16s the Pro Tour, they're probably going to have to win another PTQ to play on the next Pro Tour and have any chance of staying on the train based on Pro Points. If they even keep the Pro Players Club in its current form, of course. The site looks nice and everything, but I can see actual literal zero upside for the overwhelming majority of UK players.

[Gary Lynch]

I think a lot of people are missing the point of where this fails. Location.

 

Lets say you play fnm every week at the games club (average 16 players) and you 3-0 every week. You get 33 points per week x 4 weeks x 3 months = 396 points

 

Now lets imagine a random american who gets 36 players at their fnm (cause its standard not draft) and they also 3-0 every week. 39 points per week (they get 4 for entering instead of 2) x 4 weeks x 3 months = 468 points

 

This player has gained 70 points more than a UK player just based on the fact they played a bigger tournament. Same number of wins, same number of events.

 

Now imagine how much more points they will have when you factor in the massive SCG tournamets and the fact they have 2-3x as many GP's as Europe and you can see how 2 players of the same relative skill levels will have massively different numbers of points.

 

This system basicaly means that almost everyone that qualifies for the pro tour on points will be American and the rest of the world has no chance. Also you can forget getting byes to GP's unless you travel to mutiple GP's per season.

 

Oh and btw congrats on winning that GP you flew out to but you still dont qualify for the pro tour.

 

Yeah good system.

[Peter Dun]

I think people in China will do just fine Gary (although probably more down to fraud...) :P

[Peter Dun]

didn't comment about whether you personally like or dislike them... it would have been better to say "one" but that would sound pretty pompous :S

 

James Mills said:

I'm afraid that these people will have to start playing more then. The premis behind this decision is that it will get the players who sit on their rating involved with playing more tournaments.  

 

I don't go to FNM but now I'm going to reconsider because of the planeswalker points.

 

Obviously I will start when core set draft rotates out.

 

Hold on, when did I ever say I don't like any of the people you have mentioned?

Peter Dun said:

Mills: that's not fair. Some people simply can't play that much because of outside commitments. Only a very small % of people sit on rating. This new system heavily favours areas with more tournaments.

 

Under the current system ppl who do not play FNM like:

The OJs

Dan G

Richard Bland

etc.

 

might not even be qualified for nationals. Now, I don't care whether or not you like these ppl, but you have to admit that nationals without those players, and guys who play less frequently due to work (such as say... Simon O'Keefe) is a HUGE loss

[Daniel Royde]

It's possible to be good, play a fair amount of magic, and buy a reasonable amount of product without going to sanctioned events.

My last 10 events are: 1 PT, 3 GPs, Nationals, a random PT day 2 standard, a GPT and 2 Jason drafts.

The first of those was in mid MAY.

 

I'm not the only player like this.

 

I don't play a lot of sanctioned events because the level of play in most of those available to me is so low that it's not fun. I'm not the only player in this situation.

 

Local events, by definition can't be of an interestingly high level. I don't want to be encouraged to go to events that aren't fun.

 

How can people be in favour of a system of qualification which gives you more points for things that have nothing to do with playskill- participation points.

A system that treats a win against any opponent the same any other.

A system with which some people will have many more points available to them because of where they happen to live/how big their local community is.

 

That seems like a really good way of choosing the best players for the Pro Tour.

 

[Nick Lovett]

What your calculations don't show Gary is that in the US is it common for FNM to have much larger numbers and play to a winner i.e. they often have 5+ rounds

 

The closest that we have is Tuesday night invitational draft:P

Perhaps more people should petition Jason to run round robin tournaments and encorage participants to each conceed the 1st 2 games to reduce the total time taken for each round.

[Jason Savage]

I wish there was a like button on Demonictutor!

 

Great Nick.

Nick Lovett said:

What your calculations don't show Gary is that in the US is it common for FNM to have much larger numbers and play to a winner i.e. they often have 5+ rounds

 

The closest that we have is Tuesday night invitational draft:P

Perhaps more people should petition Jason to run round robin tournaments and encorage participants to each conceed the 1st 2 games to reduce the total time taken for each round.

[Thomas David Baker]

While we're doing back of the envelope calculations about Americans, the Standard tournaments at the FNMs at Channel Fireball are four rounds (one while drafts are going on) not three.  There's as many as 60-70 people at FNM here.  Obviously Superstars (CF's store) is not typical for any location in the US, though.  There are also draft and constructed events every day of the week.  Only one of the SCG Opens in the last year has been within 4 hours drive of here, though.

 

[Mark Langley]

Dan you also have to factor in that it simply isn't healthy to have a percentage of the UK playerbase simply sit out of events for 2-3 months each year to ensure they qualify for Nationals/GP Byes/PT Qualification though. Yes FNM is screwed and yes maybe the level of play locally isn't brilliant for you but the overiding feeling I get from this is that the premium events, GP's/PTQ's are now must attend events and that local events are there to bump up your points.

 

What we haven't yet commented on or had confirmed is that the implementation seems to be in two stages and that according to Kibler there are further multipliers for finishing well at premiun events such as GP's/PT's and Nationals. These multipliers would seem to be such that if you do well, you should qualify for the next event on points. Of course this is only what is being thrown around between Maro/Kibler and Finkel currently on Twitter apparently.

Daniel Royde said:

It's possible to be good, play a fair amount of magic, and buy a reasonable amount of product without going to sanctioned events.

My last 10 events are: 1 PT, 3 GPs, Nationals, a random PT day 2 standard, a GPT and 2 Jason drafts.

The first of those was in mid MAY.

 

I'm not the only player like this.

 

I don't play a lot of sanctioned events because the level of play in most of those available to me is so low that it's not fun. I'm not the only player in this situation.

 

Local events, by definition can't be of an interestingly high level. I don't want to be encouraged to go to events that aren't fun.

 

How can people be in favour of a system of qualification which gives you more points for things that have nothing to do with playskill- participation points.

A system that treats a win against any opponent the same any other.

A system with which some people will have many more points available to them because of where they happen to live/how big their local community is.

 

That seems like a really good way of choosing the best players for the Pro Tour.

 

[Glenn Goldsworthy]

level 41

This system has been totally nicked from WOW

 

agree that this is totally rigged for Americans, we can't get FNM to run in most places as Friday nights are party nights.

[Thom Richardson]

The one shining light of the system is the flights for players invited on points.  Which is super sweet. Having been in a situation where I was Qd and unable to attend i like this a lot.

 

Although I highly doubt that it is  realistically possible for any UK players to get one of the 75 slots. :(