Changing the European Championship Qualifications systems

Hello, It's been repeatedly reported that the current qualification system (more specifically, 1GW in an ECQ) has some flaws with "small" events. Examples : players thinking they are qualified for the EC for attending the finals of an ECQ. Suggestions to change it have been made during the NC Conclave in Genoa. Here is the list of the options I am currently considering good. For you, players in Europe, the idea is to give your feedback to your National Coordinator, who will then vote on a specific page based on said feedback. First, let's list the ways a player has, as of today, to qualify for the EC. 1- Get 1 GW (or more) in an ECQ event 2- Play the finals of a National Championship 3- Play the finals of a Continental Championship 4- Organise / judge a Continental Championship Qualifier without playing in it 5- Win an 8+player event Suggestions are (this list is NOT closed, we can add any good ideas you would have in there - email them to me : ) as follows. Remember that the EC should focus on three objectives : Maximise game quality, maximise fun, and maximise attendance. Also keep in mind that each country organizes two major events : their National Championships, and their ECQ. Ditching one would have a strong impact. A- No change. This means EC 2017 will have to run a LCQ on the Friday[/li] B- Make the EC an open event. This removes all the rules listed above. This means the ECQ events that we all used to have can no longer exist. This also means the LCQ is moot, and we need to find something else to play on the Friday C- Change Rule 1- to "Any player attending an ECQ is qualified" Any player attending the LCQ would thus qualify automatically D- Change Rule 1- to "Any player getting 1GW (or more) or attending the finals of an ECQ is qualified" This solves the "small tournament" issue. However, I have concerns about fairness regarding such a change - the whole idea behind having a "1GW" threshold was that 2 players with the same results would get the same prize. E- Change Rule 1- to "Any player attending 2 ECQs is qualified" It should be important to notice that this denies the possibility of attending solely the LCQ event to qualify F- Change Rule 1)- to "Any player attending 1 ECQ and ?a/their National Championship?" qualifies As you can see, any combination of anything is possible. G- Something else - ? As you can see, some of the options above make the LCQ "less" necessary. For options A, C, D (and E), events such as the Legendary Vampire, the Nation's Cup, or similar tournaments are good options for those already qualified. However, if B is chosen, we'll need to decide either to have the EC a 2-day event - Day1 on Saturday, and Day2 + side event (which can't be an ECQ) on Sunday - or a 3-day event - Storyline? Draft? Nation's Cup Something else? on Friday, Day 1 on Saturday, and Day2 + side event on Sunday. Since this affects the EC quite heavily, it would be a good idea to settle the question before EC bookings become available. Once again, European players, feedback to your NC. Use National forums to create polls (or sections on vekn.net if need be).

As a side note, it is also a possibility that the EC Day1 to EC Day2 threshold gets slightly changed. So far, we have 40 players from Day1 go to Day2 (which often causes table-point splits). However, we've almost always had 1 GW qualifies, and less "depends". I am considering "1GW qualifies from Day1 to Day2", rounding up to 5n players. And if there is a side event during Day1, maybe include the winner of that event into Day2.

> Pascal wrote: > ... > Once again, European players, feedback to your NC. Use National forums to create polls (or sections on vekn.net if need be). > Is there a deadline for the feedback of the NCs to the Inner Circle? National Coordinator Germany nc [dot] germany [at] magenta [dot] de

I'll open the NC poll next week or so. It'll remain open for two weeks.

Here a proposal by one of the German players, which other German players (incuding me) find good: – It is good that you have to qualify for the EC. – Only attending a specific tournament (e.g. an ECQ) should not qualify. – Playing the finals of an ECQ should qualify (like playing the finals of a National). – Gaining a game-win in a National should qualify (like when doing so in an ECQ). – The winner of the side-event to Day 1 should qualify for Day 2 (which would make the side-event more attractive). – All the other EC qualification rules should stay as they are. National Coordinator Germany nc [dot] germany [at] magenta [dot] de

For Russia it surely works one way - if somebody not qualifies he will surely not go, if somebody qualifies, he will start to think is it possible for him to go. Also one of the problems is that you want to travel with a team, so if part of the team not qualifies, then all of them decide not to bother with traveling So we are totally for making EC open event. I would think that making it 3 day will be good too, like top 60 go into day 2, top 30 into day 3 (or 80/40). ECQ and other qualifications you can use like in mtg - qualification spots and other things can be transferred into additional VP into day 1. So guys with many wins can hope to skip day and still be qualified for day2. NC Russia

> Pascal wrote: > Remember that the EC should focus on three objectives : Maximise game quality, maximise fun, and maximise attendance. > Could you elaborate on how you see "maximise game quality" and "maximise attendance" co-existing? To some extent, they're pulling in opposite directions. If you want to maximize game quality, you would generally want a relatively small number of highly-skilled players attending. Say, the top 30 players in Europe(*), based on some semi-objective element - perhaps the top X players with the highest rankings (the sort of model a lot of sporting championships use), or every country can send at least two players but more players can qualify if they pass some threshold (sort of like the Olympics uses, so even tiny countries get some representation), or whatever. If you want to maximize attendance, you would generally want to make it as open as possible. 200 players want to come? Well, you're maximizing attendance. 500? Every V:TES player on the planet crashes in Nice? Maximize attendance, right? ***** You can potentially marry the two somewhat if you - for example - have a multi-day Championship, which I believe America has done at some point? Day one is fairly open. People have had to do something in order to qualify, but you are happy to make it fairly broad. Take the top X players from that day, and they play in day 2. Everyone else gets to play in a different tournament on day 2 if they want - something like a First Chance Qualifier for the following year, or perhaps something totally different like a specific storyline event or draft/limited(**) or whatever. Questions/problems: - Do players who qualify from day 1 to day 2 get to play a different deck, if they want to? Something to think about. Probably yes, under "maximizing fun" - playing the same deck for 6 rounds might be quite dull. - How do you cope with the slightly altered incentive for players on day 1, where they don't necessarily want to win (reach the finals, as they would in a normal tournament), but just the top X, however many X is? Perhaps you can use their final ranking from day 1 to seed players into day 2? Say, you take the best 25 players into day 2. Those ranked 1-5 get put on five separate tables. Those ranked 6-10 get put one on each table. 11-15, repeat. That sort of thing? Something along those lines? I imagine other games have thought about this, maybe. It might mean that you want to come in the top 5 on day 1, and not just play a deck that's optimized for scraping into the qualification spots. But you still run into the issue that the first day essentially breaks down into several smaller tournaments(***) playing alongside each other, because there aren't enough rounds to mix everyone up. So you still get the issue that a cluster of really good players get in one of the "sub-tournaments" on day 1, so get knocked out, while some worse players get clustered into a different sub-tournament on day 1, and get a much easier path to day 2. (*) This is muddied by the fact that there's nothing stopping players from outside Europe attending. But I'll leave that element out, simply for brevity. (**) Draft with proxies? (***) As in, things like the seating charts / Archon essentially just say "Well, we'll mix up these players. And this other batch of players will mix up entirely separately", once you get over a certain number of players. Even if you try mixing it up more, you still face the issue that with - say - 100+ players and 3 rounds, each player only plays 12 people maximum, and some will get potentially screwed over by playing 12 better than average attendees, and some will get a cushy path to victory by playing 12 worse than average attendees.

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > > > Pascal wrote: > > Remember that the EC should focus on three objectives : Maximise game quality, maximise fun, and maximise attendance. > > > Could you elaborate on how you see "maximise game quality" and "maximise attendance" co-existing? To some extent, they're pulling in opposite directions. > Maximising attendance is rather self-explanatory. Maximising game quality is based on an assumption (might be wrong, but you never know) that those who cannot travel to the EC qualifiers, or don't want to go to the EC without their qualification guaranteed might as well be good players who don't have enough time. Or they could be players who have a different game style. Or they could just be anyone. The important idea is that I'm afraid that keeping ECs with fewer players wil probably be ECs with fewer players from a same "core" group (+ few extras). I think it would be good for diversity if some new faces could appear at the ECs. Different playstyles, different players and different decks wil provide a wider experience for all. > jamesatzephyr wrote: > If you want to maximize game quality, you would generally want a relatively small number of highly-skilled players attending. Say, the top 30 players in Europe(*), based on some semi-objective element - perhaps the top X players with the highest rankings (the sort of model a lot of sporting championships use), or every country can send at least two players but more players can qualify if they pass some threshold (sort of like the Olympics uses, so even tiny countries get some representation), or whatever. > That's improving the "level" aspect of the game, not the "fun" aspect of the game. It is perfectly valid, but I think having new faces would help on the second one more than on the first one. > jamesatzephyr wrote: > If you want to maximize attendance, you would generally want to make it as open as possible. 200 players want to come? Well, you're maximizing attendance. 500? Every V:TES player on the planet crashes in Nice? Maximize attendance, right? > That is one of the options, yes. However, making the EC an open even removes the ECQs, which are, for each country, one of the top-two events. > jamesatzephyr wrote: > You can potentially marry the two somewhat if you - for example - have a multi-day Championship, which I believe America has done at some point? Day one is fairly open. People have had to do something in order to qualify, but you are happy to make it fairly broad. Take the top X players from that day, and they play in day 2. Everyone else gets to play in a different tournament on day 2 if they want - something like a First Chance Qualifier for the following year, or perhaps something totally different like a specific storyline event or draft/limited(**) or whatever. > The EC has been working that way so far. Top 40 players from Day1 qualify for Day2, and the other players attend a FCQ for the next year. Of course, if the format is open for Day1, the FCQ becomes moot, so something else should be devised. > jamesatzephyr wrote: > Questions/problems: > > - Do players who qualify from day 1 to day 2 get to play a different deck, if they want to? Something to think about. Probably yes, under "maximizing fun" - playing the same deck for 6 rounds might be quite dull. > They can change decks. Also : Day1 has its finals, and the results of Day2 - or; to a wider extent, of the EC - (so far) don't take Day1 into consideration. > jamesatzephyr wrote: > - How do you cope with the slightly altered incentive for players on day 1, where they don't necessarily want to win (reach the finals, as they would in a normal tournament), but just the top X, however many X is? Perhaps you can use their final ranking from day 1 to seed players into day 2? Say, you take the best 25 players into day 2. Those ranked 1-5 get put on five separate tables. Those ranked 6-10 get put one on each table. 11-15, repeat. That sort of thing? Something along those lines? I imagine other games have thought about this, maybe. It might mean that you want to come in the top 5 on day 1, and not just play a deck that's optimized for scraping into the qualification spots. > This issue has been existing for approx 16 years. It sometimes comes as "My buddy and me are on the same table, he is already qualified, such a shame he plays a weenie presence vote deck and I am his prey with a weenie auspex / with votelock". That's the "round3 issue", where some players lose motivation for some forwardness. The fact is that, so far, 1GW has always qualified you from Day1 to Day2 (sometimes a bit less has been enough), and I think (but I'm not sure) that 2GW7 has been enough to get to the finals in the past 6 years. Which means basically that a player would get "something better" on Round3 with a GW. Except Ruben, since he's already top seed after 2 rounds with his 2GW10. Preparing seating for Day2 based on public Day1 results would probably not be a good idea. > jamesatzephyr wrote: > But you still run into the issue that the first day essentially breaks down into several smaller tournaments(***) playing alongside each other, because there aren't enough rounds to mix everyone up. So you still get the issue that a cluster of really good players get in one of the "sub-tournaments" on day 1, so get knocked out, while some worse players get clustered into a different sub-tournament on day 1, and get a much easier path to day 2. > True. But even if you met everyone during the event, you wouldn't meet them with the same [grand]prey/predator relationship. So unless you organise an event where you play all possible games (for 10 players, that would be 10! / 2 - approx 414 years), there will be a flaw. We could have "Swiss rounds", but with a maximum of 3 rounds it would be quite difficult. But it's an option (in which you'd have to handle ties very carefully, as one player with 1GW3 could be sitting at a table of 1GW5 1GW5 1GW5 1GW4 and another with 1GW3 would be with 2VP 2VP 1.5VP 1.5VP

Opening poll to the NCs. Please provide your feedback on the matter to your NC to help him/her vote accordingly.

If we open attendance to everyone we could change the format to three day event instead of two days. First day would be open to everyone. Second day would be open to top 75 from Day 1 (Archon pods are 25 player , right?) Third day could be the usual top 40. What we could also do is to keep qualification system (at least ECQs and NCs) and have qualified players a bye to Day 2. In this case, we might want to think if the current ECQ qualification would provide too many qualifications for the 3 day system. Then again most likely many of the same people would qualify on Day 1 too so Day 2 wouldn't be too crowded. If we decide to fully scrap pre-qualification ECQs that would be redundant could be exchanged by Grand Prix tournaments. I also have a concern what will happen to regular tournament attendance if the qualification system is changed. These are already struggling to get enough players to be big enough (8+ players) Finnish Politics!

In many other card games you get a first round buy if you won a tournament on the level below (for example FFG CCG:s like Android and Game of Thrones). In these games, if you won a regional level tournament you get an automatic win in the first round of the national championship (6 or 7 rounds of swiss). This is a bit tricker in v:tes, but maybe strong performers in large tournament can start the EC with some VP:s. For example, a player that wins a 25+ player national or ECQ starts EC day 1 with 1VP. You can only choose your best tournament performance between two EC:s (the exact terms of this system must be worked out) Don't if this will work, but tournament attendance should be the most impactful factor. Overkill is highly underrated. You know, like in computor games and such.

> agzocgud wrote: > In many other card games you get a first round buy if you won a tournament on the level below (for example FFG CCG:s like Android and Game of Thrones). In these games, if you won a regional level tournament you get an automatic win in the first round of the national championship (6 or 7 rounds of swiss). > > This is a bit tricker in v:tes, but maybe strong performers in large tournament can start the EC with some VP:s. For example, a player that wins a 25+ player national or ECQ starts EC day 1 with 1VP. You can only choose your best tournament performance between two EC:s (the exact terms of this system must be worked out) > > Don't if this will work, but tournament attendance should be the most impactful factor. > OK That's an interesting point. Not challenging the idea which is - in the theory at least - something doable (maybe not with points but with something else) to keep ECQ's motivating for people. The additionnal VP in day 1 has pretty much no interest unfortunately. It will affect maybe 5 people in the whole tournament, provided those 5 would have satisfied the pretty difficult conditions to fulfill: the guy who was 6th or 7th in the final and can now be 5th, and the guy who was 41st ... I mean why not? It's possible but it's not what we are after We are now waiting to get more poll results. Please keep in mind in the discussion some issues: -> I have seen several people considering opening EC on Friday. I personnally don't think it's a good solution, but we are here to discuss. In any case, please keep in mind that it would affect many people to be forced to come on Thursday evening at worst at the place of the tournament, and could also affect some locations choices for the EC in the future -> Increasing player's satisfaction should be something crucial, even vital (and that's why we do polls). No matter what we decide, it's important to remember that we need people to be happy about it and that should be more important that considerations such as the competitivity of the events -> side events need to be attractive, whatever the solution found Since everybody is sharing his scenarios, here is what I devised, If you want my personal opinion, I would love to see a multi qualifying tournament for day 2: -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's EC final -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's FCQ final -> 5 people automatically qualify from winning Grand prix during the year (those 15 people don't have to play on friday) -> 10 people quality for being finalists on Friday. on Saturday, those 25 people have access to a special high level tournament, should any of the 15 qualified players not show up, we would qualify additionnal people from Friday tournament based on ranking and they would of course also be qualified for day 2. the other battle in the regular day 1 and the 15 first players in that tournament also advance to day 2 Day 2 is a 40 players regular tournament. First chance offers spots for next year already. In that scenario, every tournament has an interest and we limit the kingmaking possibilities, I also like the Grand Prix rewarding players as a kind of "EC Circuit". It also has negative aspects such as every tournament having impact for players, probably limiting the number of casual tables. Thoughts welcome. IC Organized play coordinator Please contact me with any OP query using the mail in my profile

> TapeTaChatte wrote: > -> 10 people quality for being finalists on Friday. > You mean the top 10 players I suppose, unless there are two tournaments on Friday? > TapeTaChatte wrote: > on Saturday, > those 25 people have access to a special high level tournament, should any of the 15 qualified players not show up, we would qualify additionnal people from Friday tournament based on ranking and they would of course also be qualified for day 2. > So basically, "Legendary Vampire" is played on saturday, and the Day 1 qualifier is split on two days. > Thoughts welcome. > Another possibility would be to have the Day 1 span on friday and saturday (so that's seven rounds + a final on saturday) and reward the 15 players you mentioned by granting them a GW (and a bye, they can't participate to the first round, or last one if you don't want to mess with the archon). Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

It was that kind of impact I was hoping for. Those five people will be very happy! How about the five that doesn´t get to play the next day? This may be an issue the first year, but when everybody understands the rules, it shouldn't be a problem. I believe that you could dump the reward a bit more, perhaps winning a 50+ ECQ should reward 2 vp. And I don't like the idea of the top players of last year automatically qualifies, each year should be a seperate tournament, and shouln't be based on old merits. Overkill is highly underrated. You know, like in computor games and such.

> Ankha wrote: > > > TapeTaChatte wrote: > > -> 10 people quality for being finalists on Friday. > > > You mean the top 10 players I suppose, unless there are two tournaments on Friday?[/qupte] > > Yes correct > > > > TapeTaChatte wrote: > > > on Saturday, > > > those 25 people have access to a special high level tournament, should any of the 15 qualified players not show up, we would qualify additionnal people from Friday tournament based on ranking and they would of course also be qualified for day 2. > > > > > So basically, "Legendary Vampire" is played on saturday, and the Day 1 qualifier is split on two days. > > > => Kind of, yes, you could say that > > > > Thoughts welcome. > > > > > > > > Another possibility would be to have the Day 1 span on friday and saturday (so that's seven rounds + a final on saturday) and reward the 15 players you mentioned by granting them a GW (and a bye, they can't participate to the first round, or last one if you don't want to mess with the archon). > > The thing is: I would like a version of the tournament where people who would like to come at the EC but can't make it on Friday still have a shot or way or another. Also if we took 7 rounds, would we change decks at some points? But food for thoughts, come on, come on IC Organized play coordinator Please contact me with any OP query using the mail in my profile

> agzocgud wrote: > It was that kind of impact I was hoping for. Those five people will be very happy! How about the five that doesn´t get to play the next day? This may be an issue the first year, but when everybody understands the rules, it shouldn't be a problem. > I believe that you could dump the reward a bit more, perhaps winning a 50+ ECQ should reward 2 vp. > > And I don't like the idea of the top players of last year automatically qualifies, each year should be a seperate tournament, and shouln't be based on old merits. > well in your system as in mine, we both use other tournaments to influence a tournament at the EC (I the day 2, you the day 1). If we don't want to merge tournaments one way or another, then we need either to stick on the old version of EC, or to open it, but that brings back the question of how to give incentive during ECQ then! IC Organized play coordinator Please contact me with any OP query using the mail in my profile

I like the idea of a tournament season, and when the finale of that season has concluded, players start at equal ground again. Overkill is highly underrated. You know, like in computor games and such.

> TapeTaChatte wrote: > If you want my personal opinion, I would love to see a multi qualifying tournament for day 2: > -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's EC final > -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's FCQ final > -> 5 people automatically qualify from winning Grand prix during the year > (those 15 people don't have to play on friday) > -> 10 people quality for being finalists on Friday. > Currently there has been only 1 Grad Prix, but what if there are multiple in the future? Why make Grand Prix so special? Why downplay EC Qualifiers`s? (yeah, some have ridiculously low attendance, but I'm used to having 42-93 people participating in the Finnish ECQ) Finnish Politics!

> agzocgud wrote: > I like the idea of a tournament season, and when the finale of that season has concluded, players start at equal ground again. > I might be wrong on this but I seem to remember that he current system we've been using already gives the Day 2 finalists qualification to the next year's EC. So much for equal ground, eh? (I'm more than fine with this, if you have enough chops to be on EC's Day 2 final it is more than highly likely you would be qualifying anyways later on...) Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > TapeTaChatte wrote: > > If you want my personal opinion, I would love to see a multi qualifying tournament for day 2: > > -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's EC final > > -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's FCQ final > > -> 5 people automatically qualify from winning Grand prix during the year > > (those 15 people don't have to play on friday) > > -> 10 people quality for being finalists on Friday. > > > Currently there has been only 1 Grad Prix, but what if there are multiple in the future? > > Why make Grand Prix so special? > > Why downplay EC Qualifiers`s? > (yeah, some have ridiculously low attendance, but I'm used to having 42-93 people participating in the Finnish ECQ) > The idea is to promote 5 Grand Prix (they would probably be 5 major tournaments, probably would include Ropecon for example, hoping to get 50+ players on each) to structure the season to the EC Still, I'd like to find a good way to keep ECQ attractive. Any thoughts on that? IC Organized play coordinator Please contact me with any OP query using the mail in my profile

Imho to keep an interest in ECQ we should add the Finalists to the qualified players, ie either you score a GW or you are among the first five (before dropping outs) then you are qualified for the next EC. Pentex Board of Directors Prince of Oye Plage Alastor Grand Nord

How I see the conditions of the "puzzle": 1. Make EC an open event 2. Give the guys who got just 2 days chance to win 3. Retain some meaning in LCQ and ECQ tournaments 4. Bigger tournaments must be more "valuable" than small ones (qualifications for the finalists of 10 people ECQ looks not so good) My solution: Make all tournaments work as qualification for day 2 together. As an example (not the final one): - day 1 works as usual, but is open - winners of GP or national got +1 GW to day 1 result - winners of LCQ, ECQ and other finalists of the nationals got +1 GW to day 1 result (but no more than one from all sources) - GW at LCQ, ECQ, GP or wins at other tournaments give +1 VP to day 1 result So each GW moves you closer to day 2, but you still can just drive to day 1, win couple of tables and qualify to day 2. You can beat this system by grinding several GP and/or nationals wins, but yea... NC Russia

> TapeTaChatte wrote: > > > Lönkka wrote: > > > > > TapeTaChatte wrote: > > > If you want my personal opinion, I would love to see a multi qualifying tournament for day 2: > > > -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's EC final > > > -> 5 people automatically qualify from being in last year's FCQ final > > > -> 5 people automatically qualify from winning Grand prix during the year > > > (those 15 people don't have to play on friday) > > > -> 10 people quality for being finalists on Friday. > > > > > > > > Currently there has been only 1 Grad Prix, but what if there are multiple in the future? > > > > Why make Grand Prix so special? > > > > Why downplay EC Qualifiers`s? > > (yeah, some have ridiculously low attendance, but I'm used to having 42-93 people participating in the Finnish ECQ) > > > The idea is to promote 5 Grand Prix (they would probably be 5 major tournaments, probably would include Ropecon for example, hoping to get 50+ players on each) to structure the season to the EC > > Still, I'd like to find a good way to keep ECQ attractive. Any thoughts on that? > Since it is being complicated to maintain a high attendance to tournaments in general, I would personally prefer to see 5 big GP + EC + the regular national tournaments. IMHO, if the new format of EC day 1 is open, I don't see much interest in maintaining ECQs. I would do in total 4 different Grand Prix in the season (regions to be determined). My proposition: -Friday: Draft EC or another fun event (like multi-deck, or something unusual) to don't penalize people not being able to escape their jobs. -Saturday: Day 1 open, everyone can participate -Sunday: Day 2 with last year's finalists + winners of previous GP automatically qualified (rewarding continuity in performance) European Cup - a final where the non finalists that did the best accumulated performance between Day 1 and Day 2 can participate (not necessarily with the same decks) - play the player, not the deck! European GP (this makes the 5th GP) - the GP of GPs, the winner is automatically qualified for next years Day 2 This would make 1 final on Friday, 1 final on Saturday, 3 finals on Sunday! 1 draft EC champion 1 EO (European Open) champion 1 European Cup champion 1 European GP champion 1 EC champion

When will the decision be taken and made public ? Happy holidays everyone !!! Pentex Board of Directors Prince of Oye Plage Alastor Grand Nord