Latest Thoughts - Restoration of the EoYP.

I have been thinking lately of a way for WotC to fix the damage. One of the solutions I thought of is to restore the End of the Year Payout. I'm not talking about cutting the Pro Player Club, it would be in addition to the Pro Players Club.

-The money would come from the prize money of the PT Cut.
-It would still save them the costs of the logistics used to organize the PT (the biggest part of the budget of a PT).
-Unlike the Pro Player Club, they know exactly how much they are giving away.
-It would give players a reason to chase the -currently useless- extra PT points given away at Summer GPs and Nationals.

Thoughts?

I'm all for it...

However it might be difficult to convince WotC to give away any more money this year than what is already in their fixed budget. I'd guess, the best we can hope for, is to have some changes in 2009, and then not even more money in total, but a better distribution of the same amount.

This is a field I'm not so knowledgeable in. Though the bullet pointed reasons seem viable.

Good luck with this one. Everything seems to make sense about your proposal.

I believe this is the proposal we're looking for.

I think they got rid of the EoYP last time because, while it was good for players, it was fairly poor money spent in terms of raising the profile of the game.

Maybe they could combine the best elements of EoYP with the player's club.

- Fix whatever benefits the next year's players club will provide at the start of the current year. Players need to know exactly what the rewards are going to be and be confident they're not going to change before they make the investments in travelling to GP's etc.

- Make the level boundaries relative rather than fixed. Part of the problem with the club is it seems like there's been a lot of tinkering because they aren't quite sure how many players will reach certain levels. They could get round this by fixing how many players can reach each level - top 3 for level 8, next 5 for level 7, etc. This gives them a better idea of what they can budget and also makes every Pro point become important again. This isn't perfect, some thought would need to be given as to how this works in the current year as you could get weird things happen like someone reaching a level that would make them eligible for a free flight to a PT only to have someone overtake them after a GP win and knock them down a level.

- Thresholds? The club would probably still need these as safeguards and they solve some of the problems with how a relative level system would work in the current year. Basically it would mean only the top 3 players could be level 8, but they wouldn't gain the benefits unless they'd passed 50 points for example.

some suggestions anyway
Craig Jones

I don't see a restoration of the EoYP. The only thing it does it get more money into the hands of the top pros. I'm not against that but it is not in Wizards interests. A PT costs much more then just handing out money but is a huge promotional tool which the EoyP is not.

I can see (more) changes to the level system but in the current climate I see no reason Wizards would want to spend some of their reduced PT budget on an EoYP*.

*Unless they got rid of the club system to pay for it which I think is a bad idea.

I believe the Professor hits on a very valid point: when instituting the PPC, I don't think OP was prepared for the sheer numbers of people that would be attaining the former Level 3 or higher... Nor did they anticipate the climbing travel expenses. With the large number of players attaining the former Level 3, there were literally dozens (or hundreds? I don't remember the exact number of Level 3s last year, but it was a lot) of players that were theoretically getting $500 just for showing up. If they showed up, of course.

He also points out the other major flaw in the current changes: the timing. I totally agree with setting next year's benefits at the beginning of this year. It would require that OP takes the time to plan out the PT a little more ahead of time, as well as most of the other Premiere-level tournaments, but I think that having an overall schedule far enough in advance (of events, benefits, potential estimated value of attendence, and other factors) would help immensely not only for the players, but for WotC's OP division as well.

Someone on another thread offered up that maybe we'll still be going through these adjustments until they find an equilibrium point (which is how economics work in the abstract anyway). I think the PPC is/was a step in the right direction over the EoYP, since most of the pros seemed to welcome the change. Would it, therefore, be logical to go back to an old system that wasn't particularly *loved* by the players, but was bad business for WotC? I see no problem with PPC other than WotC/Hasbro needs to properly do research based on reality and the likelihood of players reaching this apparent threshold of "too many pros making too much money."

Sure, it costs money to do research and implement a new regime, but did Hasbro foresee such a backlash in the Pro and semi-pro/amateur/casual communities? They didn't seem to foresee the effects of the PPC introduction, either... which leads me to believe that the company attempts to fix the here-and-now more than the long-term health of the game. I don't think that regressing to a system that didn't work for the company would really solve that.

Now, I can't really say for sure that one is better than the other since I am not *directly* affected by the payout system (unless I can win a PTQ this year...), but this is my opinion.

*edit: Reading FTL. Raph suggests augmenting, not outright replacement. The only way I can see this being feasible is if the cut even more out of the PPC benefits or make the restrictions so stiff as to keep anyone but the most hardcore of pros getting anything of benefit... mostly the guys that already have a significant amount of "pluses". I think when one of the main points of the argument is that the "middle-of-the-road" guys aren't getting what they used to, we should probably focus on helping them out. Again, just my opinion.

Offering Pro Points to those who do well at Nationals is a great idea as Attendance levels have already dropped to a point where some Pros Skip out on such events in pursuit of Pro Points at some GP half way around the world. At least the Player who wants Pro Points to add to their level would have two different options of how to obtain those Pro Points rather than having to go halfway around the world, be jet lagged, and have to understand a totally different language to get around, it must be frustrating at time especially for some of the Japanese Superstars and newer world travelers when they have no translators around to help them out.

Yet the GP Summer seems more or less of a bad afterthought. It offers more Pro Points to the player for making certain standings at the events but ultimately it has left us with a bad system to deal with in the process killing the purpose of living the Pro Lifestyle for some of the newer players entering the pool for the first time.

It looks good on paper but ultimately the plan that Wizards and Hasbro created ultimately doesn't quite work out.

I understand that your major concern is insuring that you can make living of playing magic, but lets not forget the aspiring new players. i think by cutting the amateur prizes and the attendence fee for lv. 3 there is need for a fix as well. and these players hardly profit from eoy pay outs.

for players on the edge of becoming a pro things got really bad. like sad before, no attendence fee for lv. 3 and no amateur prizes plus the increasing number of pros that now play ptqs due to the new invitation policy( lv. 3 allowed to play in ptqs)

now there is little to incentive to try becoming a magic pro because of said changes.

if you look at it, this group of players suffer the most. the lv. 4+ mages "only" loose pro tour where they might win money, where as lv. 3 mages loose actual money in attendence fees.

and if we try to keep the system healthy, we must insure, that it is possible to maintain and aquire the pro status. without new players joining the pt competitor ranks, the system will sooner or later collapse.

Raph wrote:I have been thinking lately of a way for WotC to fix the damage. One of the solutions I thought of is to restore the End of the Year Payout. I'm not talking about cutting the Pro Player Club, it would be in addition to the Pro Players Club.

-The money would come from the prize money of the PT Cut.
-It would still save them the costs of the logistics used to organize the PT (the biggest part of the budget of a PT).
-Unlike the Pro Player Club, they know exactly how much they are giving away.
-It would give players a reason to chase the -currently useless- extra PT points given away at Summer GPs and Nationals.

Thoughts?

Isn't this making the assumption that the money cut from the 4th non-Worlds PT is still within either WotC's budget, or within the allocated amount give to running PT ?

It may just be a simple truth that there isn't that money any longer (for now at least), and the system will just be less rewarding for the short-term future.


Secondly, how are those PT points useless to aspiring pros-to-be ? I would think that someone in Steve Sadin's position last season would jump at the chance to nab as many of those points as possible.

I'm someone who started PTing after the EOYP was ended, can someone give me a rundown of the payout for it?

WotC doesn't exist so that players can make a living playing Magic. Their primary goal is to help their own finances, not your finances. Even their secondary goal isn't to help our finances. We players aren't even employees. First, we are customers and secondarily we are (mostly) unpaid freelance advertising agents.

Obviously we would like whatever happens to help our finances. But whatever plan is implemented has to help Wizard's bottom line: does it bring in more money to Wizards or bring additional publicity to the game which will increase sales enough to justify the expense?

Returning to a system of writing checks to pro players just for the sake of them being pro players makes absolutely no sense from WotC's point of view. If they actually had all the money available to spend that they saved by cancelling the PT, they certainly wouldn't be handing it out in a way that provides zero benefit to their company. That's why they quit the end of year payout in the first place.

Why would WotC want to go back to it?