27 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Sure. But shouldn't we also put asterisks on Paul's wins when Nand wasn't there? Is there an asterisk on Nand's win when Justin wasn't there?

Worlds has never been a competition of the best of best. It's a competition of those willing to jump through hoops and able and willing to pay.

If Nand and Justin were willing and able to attend but didn't get tickets due to the lottery then yeah, that's a problem in my eyes.

And my entire point is that those people who spend more time on the game both tend to be better and be more willing to pay and jump through hoops

7 hours ago, Makaze said:

Nand and Justin were willing and able to attend but didn't get tickets due to the lottery then yeah, that's a problem in my eyes.

Through lottery only, or through the previous arbitrary method as well?

7 hours ago, Makaze said:

And my entire point is that those people who spend more time on the game both tend to be better and be more willing to pay and jump through hoops

I agree that those that those who spend more time on the game are better.

I agree that the best in the game are willing to jump through hoops.

I think you underestimate how many "scrubs" (relative to worlds winning candidates) are willing to jump through hoops. No matter what system is used, the majority of hopefuls have bay little chance of winning the competition.

If the player makeup is 5% contenders to 95% participants or 2.5% contenders and 97.5% participants, is the overall quality of competition that much different?

Not really. Could it have been better? Sure. Could the quality have competition been better in every single previous Worlds? Absolutely.

8 hours ago, Sekac said:

Through lottery only, or through the previous arbitrary method as well?

Either. No one is saying the previous system was actually good, it wasn't. It just wasn't as bad as this one.

8 hours ago, Sekac said:

If the player makeup is 5% contenders to 95% participants or 2.5% contenders and 97.5% participants, is the overall quality of competition that much different?

Not really. Could it have been better? Sure. Could the quality have competition been better in every single previous Worlds? Absolutely.

Yes... there is literally half the competition there.

I agree that it both could be better and could have been better at previous worlds as well. I'm not holding the old system up as any sort of ideal, just wishing they hadn't made things worse than they already were

47 minutes ago, Makaze said:

Yes... there is literally half the competition there.

But if Worlds has never been about the best of the best squaring off, does that really matter? The competition has never decided who the best player in the world is, just who had the best run of the people who were able to make it. That's not to take anything away from our various world champions, being the best out of a group of hundreds is an impressive accomplishment that the vast majority of us don't have the chops to pull off. They deserve recognition, I just think the quality of competition arguments ring a little hollow.

54 minutes ago, Makaze said:

I agree that it both could be better and could have been better at previous worlds as well. I'm not holding the old system up as any sort of ideal, just wishing they hadn't made things worse than they already were

Until they move to a venue that can meet the demand of participants (which I don't expect them to ever do), this issue is going to exist in some form or another. It is what it is.

From what I've gathered from people feeling left out, the main thing they're missing out on is the social event. It's a chance for them to catch up with people they only see at Worlds and a chance to make new friends.

This system seems to be shaking up the participants quite a bit. While the frustration of missing out is totally understandable, I have a hard time recognizing this new system as strictly worse, considering it'll allow the greatest number of new participants to experience the spectacle of Worlds.

It sucks that many of the usual participants are being left out, but I think the opportunity it provides to a greater number of new faces outweighs that.

21 hours ago, Sekac said:

But what I really don't understand is why all of a sudden people are saying this format waters down the competition. True, the system doesn't give preference to the best players in the world, but neither did their previous methods. Was there something about clicking refresh until you're in that gave an advantage to good players? No. It gave advantage to players who had an opportunity to register within a narrow window, but that doesn't select good players vs bad ones. So what gives?

If people are already to put an asterisk next to this year's winner's victory, then it should've been applied to all the previous wins as well for literally the exact same reason.

It's absolutely true that previous year's sign-ups have had issues, but I think it's very clear that this year is far less successful in pulling a more competitive pool. This is based on the number of good players who have pointed out that they haven't gotten in (these players were very few in number last year, to the point where it was rare to hear of one not getting in). I also think it's clear based on looking at a variety of sources that players who don't really play Xwing got tickets for it, just like I got a ticket for Armada but a lot of top players didn't X-Wing is especially vulnerable to this since it had a higher number of spots, has been around longer, and has a lower entry point than the other games.

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

But if Worlds has never been about the best of the best squaring off, does that really matter? The competition has never decided who the best player in the world is, just who had the best run of the people who were able to make it. That's not to take anything away from our various world champions, being the best out of a group of hundreds is an impressive accomplishment that the vast majority of us don't have the chops to pull off. They deserve recognition, I just think the quality of competition arguments ring a little hollow.

So the argument is that since it wasn't perfect before then it doesn't matter if they make it worse? Also my point is that by and large the best of the best were able to make it, or at a minimum if they were unable to attend it was due to personal reasons entirely out of FFG's control as opposed to being filtered out by the registration process.

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

Until they move to a venue that can meet the demand of participants (which I don't expect them to ever do), this issue is going to exist in some form or another. It is what it is.

I agree they should expand and also agree that they're unlikely to. But completely disagree that it's an unsolvable problem without expansion. If regional/system open top cuts were guaranteed a ticket opportunity and then after that registration window any remaining tickets are allocated by lottery then to me that solves the problem

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

This system seems to be shaking up the participants quite a bit. While the frustration of missing out is totally understandable, I have a hard time recognizing this new system as strictly worse, considering it'll allow the greatest number of new participants to experience the spectacle of Worlds.

It sucks that many of the usual participants are being left out, but I think the opportunity it provides to a greater number of new faces outweighs that.

We're just going to have to disagree here. If they want to host FFG Con then I'm all for broad inclusion, but if it's the X-Wing World Championships then player skill should overwhelmingly be the criteria for attendance.

3 hours ago, Makaze said:

We're just going to have to disagree here. If they want to host FFG Con then I'm all for broad inclusion, but if it's the X-Wing World Championships then player skill should overwhelmingly be the criteria for attendance.

Should be, sure. But it never has been, so this is not anything new or different.

Worlds has always resembled FFG Con more than it has resembled a true world championship. This is nothing new.

If you want them to make a true World Championship tournament, that's a separate conversation. I agree that would be a good event for them to do for the very first time ever.

Worlds has never been that and clearly never was intended be. I don't agree that this makes it "worse". It's worse because it resembles an event it never was less than it used to? That's a weird way to look at it.

It's like watching a comedy you thought was a drama. Then when the sequel comes out because it's even more of a comedy than the first one. Not morphing into a drama doesn't make it worse, it wasn't a drama in the first place.

3 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Should be, sure. But it never has been, so this is not anything new or different.

Worlds has always resembled FFG Con more than it has resembled a true world championship. This is nothing new.

If you want them to make a true World Championship tournament, that's a separate conversation. I agree that would be a good event for them to do for the very first time ever.

Worlds has never been that and clearly never was intended be. I don't agree that this makes it "worse". It's worse because it resembles an event it never was less than it used to? That's a weird way to look at it.

It's like watching a comedy you thought was a drama. Then when the sequel comes out because it's even more of a comedy than the first one. Not morphing into a drama doesn't make it worse, it wasn't a drama in the first place.

They market as a World Championship. It’s not just that people “think” of it that way, it’s that they set the expectation. They’ve taken steps towards making it more of that in recent years but this was clearly a step backwards.

5 minutes ago, AlexW said:

They market as a World Championship. It’s not just that people “think” of it that way, it’s that they set the expectation. They’ve taken steps towards making it more of that in recent years but this was clearly a step backwards.

They only market it that way because it's more exciting marketing. There's nothing about the selection process or structure that fits with that billing.

8 minutes ago, Sekac said:

They only market it that way because it's more exciting marketing. There's nothing about the selection process or structure that fits with that billing.

If your point is that they’re being intentionally dishonest about the purpose to draw a bigger crowd then I don’t understand why you’d be criticizing people who actually expect them to create an event that is actually what they say it is, or at least try. Or, to change the description. But that’s not how they view it. Having talked with some FFG OP they don’t view it as just some FFGcon.

In the last couple of years, they’ve reserved spots for regional winners. The structure is a tournament set up to determine one winner who is named “World Champion” so I’m not clear what you mean by that.

From the perspective of someone who is not a tournament player (and didn’t apply to worlds), I think the lottery system is a savvy business move. It encourages everyone to get excited about the World Championship and lets new players who aren’t part of the meta scene and may live in more isolated areas a chance to go. It creates the “golden ticket” feel for anyone who didn’t win a spot and probably makes a player (spender) for life out of participants.

I guarantee one of the best players in the world still wins the World Championship. And if some person who never rolled the dice competitively wins by some miracle? Then they obviously earned it by beating top competition and it’s a great story. It would sell tons of product to new players who may feel downtrodden by local meta scenes.

I get it, if you’re a top player who goes every year and this is the thing you really look forward to and you’re sitting there thinking someone who doesn’t even play randomly grabbed your spot, that sucks. Maybe they do need to make it more of a convention where the con fee gets you a spot in one game of your choice.

I think the aim of FFG is to provide a pathway for veteran players to play their way in while at the same time lighting the fire of new players (and their wallets) each year.