10 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Actually I think it would be. Right now (as seen on Streams and such) people are pretty easy-going about the game because they're playing plastic spaceships for bragging rights.

Add a significant sum of money to the mix and things start getting way more serious. Just look at any sport, how close to the edge of the rules players are pushing it.

The only way you can make tabletop x-wing a pro game IMO is by having a permanent referee or at least video feed of all games, and I doubt that's in any way feasible.

What I mean by: I would not be that big of issue, is related to Ranking System. Wizards has been doing it for years and there is little if none issues with the system overall. Players give their names or a number when they go play, and the software reports it back to a server and BOOM, you are ranked. Not an issue. From a life long competitive gamer, I enjoy ranking systems and actually had a local one going last year.

3 hours ago, Tappiocca said:

What I mean by: I would not be that big of issue, is related to Ranking System. Wizards has been doing it for years and there is little if none issues with the system overall. Players give their names or a number when they go play, and the software reports it back to a server and BOOM, you are ranked. Not an issue. From a life long competitive gamer, I enjoy ranking systems and actually had a local one going last year.

Well, for right now that won't be possible without ffg assistance, enough free time to contact all the places holding events and sell them on the idea of requesting that info and reporting it to me or asking @sozin to add it to list juggler's fields maybe?

For everyone who would like to see Strength of Schedule used as a tie breaker this would seem to me to be an essential component of that. The strength of a player can't really be determined by a single tournament where just a couple loses could make you seem a like a total loser especially if you don't want to was the rest of the day playing what are essentially meaningless matches if you're already mathematically out of the cut.

Is it only for US Tournaments or are we allowed to enter foreign Tournaments too?

On 1/20/2017 at 5:04 PM, Tappiocca said:

I've been saying for several years, that FFG should have some sort of cash compensation at Nationals/Worlds. This is a competitive *sport*, that we all spend large sums of money on.

This really is anything but a competitive sport. This is a hobby with a competitive scene. It's a healthy competitive scene, without doubt, but that by no means makes it a sport.

FFG don't need to start introducing cash compensation at any event level for a multitude of reasons. I find it incredibly generous that they've already offered to cover Nationals winners in entering Worlds, and I'm really not sure why that isn't enough.

4 hours ago, Enjineer said:

Is it only for US Tournaments or are we allowed to enter foreign Tournaments too?

The plan is for me to add canada next, then The rest of the world. I want to hammer out my weighting system etc. before I start having 20-30 tournaments to find results for every Monday! That said, what I can start adding is international events to the calendar. I'd like to start building that pipeline for people to submit upcoming events to me now. Seeing as I don't know where to find upcoming events for other continents.

so please let me know of any events that are coming up so I can add them!

You could simply pull a lot data from T3.

https://www.tabletopturniere.de/eu/overview?gid=108

On 1/20/2017 at 10:57 AM, Dengar5 said:

A ranking system will happen when X-wing tournaments start getting significant cash prizes for the top8.

When that happens, I will promptly sell all of my stuff and move on to other things. That sort of thing brings out the worst in people.

Who's going to pay for those "significant cash prizes" anyway? When I don't do tournament play I certainly don't want to pay for it. Considering the hike is what the miniatures cost me to get I REALLY don't want to see prices go any higher just to support a few players.

2 hours ago, StevenO said:

Who's going to pay for those "significant cash prizes" anyway? When I don't do tournament play I certainly don't want to pay for it. Considering the hike is what the miniatures cost me to get I REALLY don't want to see prices go any higher just to support a few players.

Significant cash prizes will only happen if their is a significant audience and thus sponsoring involved. FFG might invest more into broadcasting from the events, but there is little gain to increase the price pools as they already have plenty of players to show.

53 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Significant cash prizes will only happen if their is a significant audience and thus sponsoring involved. FFG might invest more into broadcasting from the events, but there is little gain to increase the price pools as they already have plenty of players to show.

That, and cash prizes tend to bring out the ugly in people. I love X-Wing for its relaxed atmosphere even at high-level tournaments, I'm sure it would get a huge lot more toxic if cash was on the line.

39 minutes ago, haslo said:

That, and cash prizes tend to bring out the ugly in people. I love X-Wing for its relaxed atmosphere even at high-level tournaments, I'm sure it would get a huge lot more toxic if cash was on the line.

I agree. I never had a coworker who was not a jerk.

I think that "large cash prizes" are probably never going to happen, this game doesn't have the true mass market appeal, and if they do the competition will change. That said, if it garners that kind of attention there is almost certainly room for a casual tournament circuit and a pro circuit. Look at video games or Magic, there are multiple different tiers of tournament.

Selling off your collection because enough people like the game to get sponsorships etc. seems pretty childish though. Do you own playing cards? cuz Poker has MASSIVE cash prizes. What about a video game system? Gaming tournaments just surpassed tennis with total prize payouts for major events and will possibly pass golf by 2020. If you don't like playing in cash prize tournaments... Don't play in cash prize tournaments. I understand what you mean about people changing when money is involved, believe me. But having that be the reason you quit IMO is ridiculous.

On 1/25/2017 at 6:42 PM, Timathius said:

Well, for right now that won't be possible without ffg assistance, enough free time to contact all the places holding events and sell them on the idea of requesting that info and reporting it to me or asking @sozin to add it to list juggler's fields maybe?

Not hard to do. I've been thinking about baking an ELO calculator into LJ for Vassal play anyways. But without support/backing from FFG OP I'm not sure how much traction it'll get.

Look at the utter **** show that is the competitive HeroClix community, and ask if you really want X-Wing to become more like it.

I have been thinking about this since our FLGS got Wizards approved for MTG. Now there are a ton of Magic players there every event night. I keep looking at all these people playing this game. Why are they here? Its not like the shop didn't support Magic before or had lame prizes. I see guys come in now to play in drafts and events and they all have a player number and its all ranked and a new community has developed.

Why not do the same for X-Wing? I've read what everyone thinks and some of us seem to want to work on making this happen. I want to be a part of that. If we can make something work, even if its just a regional ranking provided by the players, then maybe we can prove to FFG that a ranking system would be worth the effort.

PM me fellas and let's get to work on this! We already have some great tools at our disposal, let's put em to work. I want to help any way I can.

20 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Look at the utter **** show that is the competitive HeroClix community, and ask if you really want X-Wing to become more like it.

Are sure that is not by game design? Look how friendly the table tennis community is and elo rankings are standard since about the time they change the sets to 11 points, more than 10 years ago. ;-)

3 hours ago, Darkcloak said:

I have been thinking about this since our FLGS got Wizards approved for MTG. Now there are a ton of Magic players there every event night. I keep looking at all these people playing this game. Why are they here? Its not like the shop didn't support Magic before or had lame prizes. I see guys come in now to play in drafts and events and they all have a player number and its all ranked and a new community has developed.

Why not do the same for X-Wing? I've read what everyone thinks and some of us seem to want to work on making this happen. I want to be a part of that. If we can make something work, even if its just a regional ranking provided by the players, then maybe we can prove to FFG that a ranking system would be worth the effort.

PM me fellas and let's get to work on this! We already have some great tools at our disposal, let's put em to work. I want to help any way I can.

The thing we need the most help with is collecting data I still need results from Fargo and the tournaments happening this weekend especially the open.

Timmathius, there is a regionals event very near to me next month. I will contact the event organizer and fill him in on our intent and ask for his cooperation. I won't be able to attend this year sadly, but last time he and I had a great chat about painting minis so I'm sue he will be on board. Now that I think of it last year he did upload results to LJ so that is half the battle.

I'm also thinking this could be implemented at the store level as well by driven people. I will start a store league. I've been meaning to do that but this month has been kinda haywire. I seriously had all these goals in mind around Xmas but... Life! Haha.

Anyways here is what I had in mind. Maybe others can try the same in their own shops. Simply start a ranked league and run it for a length of time. You can have league events on your weekly XWing Night but you can also have players meet up and play a league match on their own time. If need be you can split the league into tiers which players assign themselves. Players would submit their league match results as they happen. As League Organizer our job is to turn that data into something useful and build a ranking list and maintain it. At this level there isn't much need for anything too fancy, all the basic infrastructure is in place. It is only a matter of simply doing it now.

I will start work on a store league today and I will keep this board updated as to how it all goes. Perhaps if players consent I will create a league thread and post rankings there.

I attended Worlds in November and asked a few of the OP Team about the future of the scene.

Among the questions was the subject of cash prizes and a global ranking system.

To cut a long story short, the answer was "We have no desire to take X-Wing down that path" - and while the question was X-Wing specific, the feeling was that the sentiment extended across all of their systems, Destiny included.

They have an amazing community, one that helps each other out, even at the highest level of competition.

As mentioned in this thread earlier, to introduce cash prizes is to invite the type of player they have no interest in courting.

If you came to X-Wing from another game system that had cash prizes or a ranking system did you find there were toxic players? Every anecdote I have from people who have moved to X-Wing from another system is this: "Man, it's such a nice community, nobody is a ****!" when pressed on why they think that's the case, the answer is usually to do with the road the competitive scene has gone down.

I'm not suggesting that just because a game has cash prizes/global ranking that it's going to be full of toxic players, and equally, I'm not suggesting that FFG runs a perfect, angelic system (Just look at the banned list for examples of people who tried to cheat). I suppose I'm suggesting that a system that doesn't supply people with a reason for wining at all costs, won't attract those types of players.

Just my $0.02

Rankings have been updated!

http://nationaltabletopgaming.org/x-wing-rankings

Some highlights are.

Jeremy Chamblee shoots onto the rankings with an amazing performance at the Mustafar open!

Dan Casslasy climbs into the number two spot after winning both the AustinTX and Plano TX regionals