You dont have to cap the sanctioned tournaments, just start by having a ranking and all those top players from regions get a place reserved to Worlds which they'd have to accept or decline prior the event or something.

You dont have to go for a mtg system, neither have to implant the exact same system right now, just let the community grow. I just like to see the best players at the best events, sure if they decline to go is a thing, but if they cannot get the entry is another.

Maybe you should have bought a ticket earlier.

I would prefer that Worlds be invitational only. Add more regionals until demand for them is satisfied, and make worlds only be top 8 from regionals or nationals (or top 1/8th rounded up for tournaments with fewer than 64 players).

I don't really buy the "amazing player that can only go to one tournament per year" demographic is worth catering too; if you want a shot at world champion, you have to prove yourself first, IMO. Those people who are limited to one can do regionals or nationals.

I think that would be far better than it just being the N people who managed to not have the server time out in the 45 minute window tickets were available. That's pretty lame.

The larger the game gets the less feasible the accommodate everyone idea becomes. I was actually surprised to find out that worlds is an open event. While they could possibly get more people at world there is going to be a limit at some point.

Organized play implies progression in competitive levels. IMO it is more important that Nationals/Worlds be a competition between the best players in the Nation/World than everyone who wants to play gets to play. It certainly shouldn't be just a tournament between those lucky enough to register fast.

@OP: No, your system is horribly flawed. It basically makes it a "pay more to play more" situation. If you had to travel around to every regional/SC for the game to have any real hope of attending the next higher event that would be a huge turn off to me, and I consider myself to be a competitive person.

I dislike rating systems completely. It turns every game into this do or die situation and there are a lot of ways to cheat the system.. I remember back in the MtG days where you had at least 2 DCI numbers. One "for fun" and one "for serious". That's lame. There was also rampant reporting of events that never actually happened, but were reported to have happened to boost a few people's ratings.

There's a lot of problems implementing a fair system that doesn't feel oppressive.

There's a huge difference between 'elitist' and professional. The more competitive this game becomes, the more it will benefit from a professionalized system for events.

FFG's games will never be "proffessional" games. A LOT of their philosophies are "Don't do what WOTC/Wizkids do". It is essentially the same arguement that pops up when people complain about prize support.

I totally agree. As soon as you make a game seem like it is "Professional or nothing" the game will slowly die. If you go the opposite way and start casual and allow for more competition, the game grows exponentially (as X-Wing has over the past few years).

A great example is the article about the biggest FNM in the world. See HERE . It's the biggest not because they have the most competitive environment/mindset, it is because it has the most casual and inviting one.

It is a shame that several hundred? thousand? people missed out on Worlds. But that doesn't mean we need to overboard on competition and ratings and all that. Not unless you want to turn off the casual 94% (assuming the Wizards numbers in the article translate well to X-Wing) which keep the game growing.

Last year Worlds had 2 flights of 128 so 256 like this year. First flight was full, 2nd flight was not full by like 40 or something, AND alot of those playing were people that played and missed on the first day. The thing that seems to have hurt the layout of this is that they added more games to play (armada and IA) IA doesn;t take alot of space, but Armada does, it also takes 2 days. IMO IA should have been in worlds and Armada should have waited a year, just to work out the details of set up for the site. BUT I don't work for them, and it probably should be a lottery set up.

1) first 24 hours are just sign in anytime from noon monday to noon tuesday, allowing worldwide sign ins.

2) THEN draw the 220 (leaving room for the reg/nat/past winners to take their spots). THOSE 220 have 24 hours to get themselves signed in, if they don't, they are dropped and the next handful are picked to take their spots.

3) you have your full allotment and people are still crabby cuz they didn't win the lottery, but all have a fair shake at it.

OH and NO to a ranked system, even giving points for attending regionals and nationals only helps those that have the cash to make it to tons of those events. Lottery is probably going to get the least kick back. I guess, when it doubt, go alphabetically ("A" last name for me

I brought this up (among others) during the World's registration rage and it didn't receive much support. For me, I'm never going to spend money going to a National/Worlds event (I'd rather have more ships!) so maybe my opinion isn't of such value.

To make a more informed opinion, I have some questions FFG's site doesn't seem to answer:

-Players who win a Regional are saved a spot at Worlds. Is there a time limit on how long they have to register before the spot opens up?

-Are Regional/National winners in other nations also saved a spot?

-So...there's no US National event (all info I found was about Regionals/Worlds)

To me, I don't see a problem with Worlds being exclusive. To me, I think it's reasonable to say FFG doesn't have the resources to do an "World's X-Wing Only" event and have room for everybody who's interested. Based on how World's has several different games and FFG is running it out of a facility they control, I don't think it's feasible or they would have done it already. You don't give them enough money to make it worthwhile.

So, that said, there's no way around the limited space. Why not keep that limited space for the people who placed Top 8 at a regional (or something like that). The only issue I see with that is possible under-enrollment...is it common for people to place that high and never attend a Worlds?

-Players who win a Regional are saved a spot at Worlds. Is there a time limit on how long they have to register before the spot opens up?

-Are Regional/National winners in other nations also saved a spot?

-So...there's no US National event (all info I found was about Regionals/Worlds)

Players who won a regional have a saved spot until like a month before I think, or some date prior to the event

I think so ( maybe its just the nationals are)

there is a National - Gen Con

Not saying I support this, but if you were to do it that way, it should be based upon persons attending and placement.

For example, winning a 8 player SC should grant, let's say 8 points. Winning a 32 player SC may grant 32 points, and coming in top 8 grants 8 points. That way you're not giving an advantage to those who live in a small area. You may be giving an advantage to those in an larger area since the total is higher, but in the above example, there are 7 players with less than 8 points in the small tourney area, while there are 24 players with less than 8 points in the large tourney area.

Also, you should have 1 SC slot, 1 Regional slot, and 1 Nats slot. This way you can't go to 10 SCs and have a high score. This prevents something like what happened in tennis a few years ago, where the #1 (women's) player in the ranking was far from even the top 10 actual players by skill.

Yes, and this.

I'm all for some system that gives players more incentive to get to tournaments, and rewards them if they do well, even if they aren't the winners.

from https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2015/5/18/ffgs-2015-world-championships/

This year’s event will still be larger than last year’s, and we are reserving seats for all current and former World Champions of our current games, as well as our U.S. Regional Champions, North American Champions, and select National Champions from the United Kingdom, Australia, and continental Europe.

and farther down had your other info on dates and such

Your suggested system make very little sense. The reality of this game is that it is very difficult to assign players to a tier based on skill. Lets say that you win a regional tournament. How many points do you get? Now, lets say that I won a regional tournament - do I get the same number of points as you?

To complicate those questions, only 15 other players were at my regional. However, the three winners of the last three world tournaments were in attendance. Your regional had 100 other players. 95 of them were Cub Scouts earning their Space Combat badges.

The problem with competitive X-Wing is that the players are too diverse. Some take the game very seriously, playing multiple times every week and boasting about their W/L record. Others play five times a year and really, really, really try to prove that Captain Kagi is worth taking in every list that they make.

Now, about the best that we can do is watching for players who consistently win large events that draw a ton of players. The problem is that it takes years to see someone win like that.

No thank you. Worlds has reserved seats for winners, that's enough. As far as a lottery system, that does nothing to solve the issue of people being left out. Everyone had a fair shot at it. FFG announced weeks ahead of time when tickets would be released, and explained in detail the process for signing up.

I disagree with the scheduling and size of the tournament, but the process of awarding tickets seems reasonable.

As popularity grows and so will the competitive scene it won't be long before there will be more competitors than seats open for premiere events such as Worlds, no doubt players that deserve to be there will not have an opportunity to attend.

There is sort of a ranking system to get in. Winning a store tournament gets you a regional bye, while winning a regional buy gets you a ticket and a bye in nationals. Winning a national will get you in worlds. So the most talented players are not left out if they miss the 45 minuet (or second) window when tickets go on sale.

I think instead of a ranking system there could be like a qualifier round the day prior for those that have not got a seat yet. Say a match with 4 games. If a player were to win all 4 games then that could earn a seat at the tournament.

A question for players of other competitive games....say MtG for instance.

Are there ever any examples of sponsorship or financial support? Or cash prizes or anything of that sort?

While I previously stated I didn't mind World's being invite/qualifier only, I would be concerned of X-Wing growing into the level where players are competing (indirectly or directly) for sponsorships. I can imagine having to attend a Regional, Nationals, as well as Worlds can get mighty expensive, especially if they become multi-day events.

I know Heroclix has developed a fan run "pro circuit". With cash prizes and sponserships.

A question for players of other competitive games....say MtG for instance.

Are there ever any examples of sponsorship or financial support? Or cash prizes or anything of that sort?

While I previously stated I didn't mind World's being invite/qualifier only, I would be concerned of X-Wing growing into the level where players are competing (indirectly or directly) for sponsorships. I can imagine having to attend a Regional, Nationals, as well as Worlds can get mighty expensive, especially if they become multi-day events.

As long as it doesnt go to a big money system to get tickets, I don't know if it would be an issue. As for sponsorships, if someone whats to pay me to go to it and wear their shirt, then sure, I will do it. DO I see that happen, like a 3% chance. If a store wants to put their name on me as I play, I will support my store, as it can really only do good, as long as I dont start punching people in the face while wearing it.

I'm in the nope boat.

If I'm required to place in store champ events just to get a shot at attending a higher event, my mood goes from casual to cut throat at those local championships and if attendance is point based I'll be attending as many as possible with my cut throat attitude to accumulate those points; if I'm dead set on attending that higher level event. Then it will sell out in minutes before I can buy my ticket and I was a **** for no reason in this hypothetical situation. Also all my store champ wins were with Defender lists.

Instead of prize sniper threads there will be point sniper threads. And more fat pancakes.

Larger premier tournaments with more rounds sounds best. And if a regional venue sells out this year and can't accommodate 1.5 times that many players next year it shouldn't be awarded a regional next year.

I think this year's World's was just sized too small, and this decision was made just based on last year's attendance and resources available. Should the event, or at least the X-Wing part, be bigger? Of course. Should the topmost level events be exclusive? No. Nope. No Way!

Reserved seats for people who won the lower tournaments I think is sufficient.

There are still tickets for Nova Open Championship.

Worlds is obviously popular and perhaps a bigger venue may be needed and calling volunteers to help run the event and the tournaments is going to be the way forward (as discussed on the Nova Squadron Radio podcast).

The only element of ranking I'd be happy to see is a clear up of the reserved seats... FFG must have an idea of where their national championship kits go and how many they send; each national kit basically comes with 1 reserved seat in the form of a voucher/code for the national champion, if that voucher is not used by a certain date (17th Aug this year) then open up that space to everyone. The current system is not far off that anyway.

@OP: No, your system is horribly flawed. It basically makes it a "pay more to play more" situation. If you had to travel around to every regional/SC for the game to have any real hope of attending the next higher event that would be a huge turn off to me, and I consider myself to be a competitive person.

I dislike rating systems completely. It turns every game into this do or die situation and there are a lot of ways to cheat the system.. I remember back in the MtG days where you had at least 2 DCI numbers. One "for fun" and one "for serious". That's lame. There was also rampant reporting of events that never actually happened, but were reported to have happened to boost a few people's ratings.

There's a lot of problems implementing a fair system that doesn't feel oppressive.

There's a huge difference between 'elitist' and professional. The more competitive this game becomes, the more it will benefit from a professionalized system for events.

FFG's games will never be "proffessional" games. A LOT of their philosophies are "Don't do what WOTC/Wizkids do". It is essentially the same arguement that pops up when people complain about prize support.

I totally agree. As soon as you make a game seem like it is "Professional or nothing" the game will slowly die. If you go the opposite way and start casual and allow for more competition, the game grows exponentially (as X-Wing has over the past few years).

A great example is the article about the biggest FNM in the world. See HERE . It's the biggest not because they have the most competitive environment/mindset, it is because it has the most casual and inviting one.

It is a shame that several hundred? thousand? people missed out on Worlds. But that doesn't mean we need to overboard on competition and ratings and all that. Not unless you want to turn off the casual 94% (assuming the Wizards numbers in the article translate well to X-Wing) which keep the game growing.

That article you linked shows 250ish players showing up every week. That's pretty impressive. I'm equally impressed by the number of people who attended GP Vegas this year; at last count there was 8k plus players in attendance, with a cap of 10k. They might have reached capacity for all I know. That's up from just shy of 5k players in 2013.

So yeah, people like casual events. People also like competitive ones, and while you can have a casual atmosphere without the professionalization, you can't say the same for the increasing volume of competitive players.

As I stated, I'm not saying my system is the best, but that it is a starting point for discussion. I was hoping the community could help flesh it out.

I don’t think there needs to be a ranking system in place, just a bit more forethought from FFG.

This year to attend ‘Worlds’ you had to be online at the right time, not have your connection time out within the 45 minute window on a seemingly overloaded server for long enough that you could have bought a ticket before it was full. Consequently a far more exclusive group than any ranking system could have ever created.

This is not what I would consider an appropriate pool of players to contest an event called the “World Championships”. There are no doubt some good players in the event however certainly not a group of players of the calibre that is worthy of contenting the “World Championships”. There were clearly many other deserving players that could/should have had first dibs that didn't get tickets.

Make no bones about it, this is the World Champs, as many on this thread have stated a “Higher Level” event. It should not be a collective of anybody lucky enough to have bought tickets.

To me this event should really just be called an “FFG Open” and have a true World Championship at another stage.

As a suggestion of what should be done for worlds:

All National champions should be offered a place, along with all regional champions. They would have to confirm attendance ahead of time of course. (currently US regional event winners get a slot over national champions from countries that are not on the “selected” list)

FFG would provide a registration of interest period of say a week where everyone who genuinely wanted to attend could register, this would give FFG a realistic number of who would actually like to attend.

Now assuming say 50-100 slots are filled with national champs and regional event winners you could cap the event at a number that realistically encapsulates the demand, then if required run a lottery of the open registration group if there is still too much demand for the size of event that they can accommodate.

Surely this is not that hard to organise?

That's why I said you would still have an open tournament before the Winners tournament. It makes sense that the best players should be allowed at worlds. That's why you have regional's and nationals, those are the open tournaments for everyone. If you win them you win an invite to Worlds. It make sense. It's a shame the worlds will not even have the best players. Mr. Froggies, and others notables will not be able to attend. Not because of skill, but because there computer wasn't fast enough.

Shame really! I love to watch worlds to see the best players. How many players are going to quit because of 1 loss now. I just think FFG has really dropped the ball on this one.