× Make your TwitLonger posts ad-free For just £1 a month, you can support TwitLonger directly and remove ads from your posts

Click here to make your TwitLonger posts ad-free.

In my estimation, starting a league where everyone competes against each other for a small number of slots means everyone has to start on equal footing for there to be competitive integrity. One way to do that is to not give PT Finals invites to Rivals who earned them through top 8ing MCs in Barcelona or Richmond as they would get to start a new season ahead of everyone else. This creates a "double dip" situation where players used a certain finish to both qualify for Rivals itself and qualify for the PT Finals to give them an edge now that they're in Rivals (akin to saying an NFL team who won their week 13 game last season is now 1-0 to start the new season, which is pretty clearly absurd). The alternative to that is saying those players can't earn points at the PT Finals. At this point, it's taking away something already announced, and I assume to not be something that would be considered.



Inviting all Rivals to the PT Finals has a cost, but it's pretty isolated to monetary EV. Adding players to a tournament without changing the prize pool impacts the bottom line of the other people who qualified for that event. This could be fixed by adding money to the pool if it's deemed necessary.



As far as saying that inviting Rivals to the PT Finals gives them an unfair advantage over Challengers in qualifying for Rivals, this is rooted in truth but doesn't really ever play out that way. The top X Rivals in Tabletop qualify for the Gauntlet and will stay in the League play, whether it's Rivals or MPL. The next Rivals on this list compete against the Challengers for Rivals slots, but the odds of having any Rival who missed the Gauntlet having more points that the top Challengers is almost 0. This is pretty clearly emphasized by looking at current standings as the sheer number of Rivals who would need to be spiking in the Players Tour events is massive and, while possible, still unrealistic. So the Challengers looking to qualify for Rivals/MPL are effectively unaffected by this as they will still need to spike in the Players Tour events.



Making changes mid-season always has real costs, but we're also starting in a new world of esports. Mistakes happen and making things the best they can be, regardless of the timeline, as something I think should still be prioritized. It sucks that no matter what does or doesn't happen it will leave people worse off, but all of this makes it sound like the most fair solution is to cut some of the monetary equity from the PT Finals for people already qualified. I'm under the impression that the final attendance, even with every Rival attending, will still be significantly under the initial expected attendance due to the low attendance at Players Tours (so the actual bottom line will be higher than what it was before anyone qualified from a Players Tour event).



The people impacted the most by the status quo are discretionary invitees to Rivals. They had less time to prepare for events due to not knowing they were qualified as early, weren't able to discuss it publicly to properly help prepare, and also would be starting behind other Rivals for number of events they're qualified for. My opinion is that the discretionary invites already have the hardest time as they face the most public scrutiny and further setting them up for failure is a massive cost to the very people we as a community should be trying to help and promote. Inclusion and representation is so important, and this just makes things literally worse and also appear worse to the public.



TLDR: I wish everything was perfect from the start and many of these things should have been addressed well before the season began, but I would also prefer things get fixed when they can in the best way possible (whatever that decision may be).

Reply · Report Post