What remains baffling to me about this whole discussion is how hostile it is.
Listen, I get that a few people - like Sam Stoddard and some others, who do this for a living - would probably take some of what Steve said as a personal insult, because he didn't do it diplomatically.
For everyone else though, really, there's probably a decent bit of good coming just from this thread happening, even if in some places Steve is off-base. Its a good discussion; its worth thinking about how to improve the PTQ process, from invite-awards to prizesupport to locations. A discussion is healthy and even if, from the hundreds of posts here, most of htem are total garbage, all it takes is one person with a really good idea to make things a bit better for people.
There've been a lot of ideas here that might be pretty decent, from Steve and from others. The hostility and the taunting is unnecessary and it demeans the people doing it more than it demeans Steve.
And no, Steve hasn't covered himself in glory in this debate, but the last 7-8 pages, it's not him who looks bad.
I have an idea, and I don't think Steve has even consider this one. Now, hold on, it is mindblowin-g..what if, and let me tell you, this is a hypothetical what if...but what if there is nothing wrong with the system at all and it does it part perfectly as WoTC sees it?
I think with all of their resources, WoTC would have determined if there was a problem or not and some random lawyer from Ohio that doesn't have the resources. I don't see the reason to challenge WoTC on their PTQ model when barely anyone else seems to agree with you.
He seems to be merely stating that in attempting to further your reasoning you come across somewhat similar to Veruca Salt in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.
What remains baffling to me about this whole discussion is how hostile it is.
Listen, I get that a few people - like Sam Stoddard and some others, who do this for a living - would probably take some of what Steve said as a personal insult, because he didn't do it diplomatically.
For everyone else though, really, there's probably a decent bit of good coming just from this thread happening, even if in some places Steve is off-base. Its a good discussion; its worth thinking about how to improve the PTQ process, from invite-awards to prizesupport to locations. A discussion is healthy and even if, from the hundreds of posts here, most of htem are total garbage, all it takes is one person with a really good idea to make things a bit better for people.
There've been a lot of ideas here that might be pretty decent, from Steve and from others. The hostility and the taunting is unnecessary and it demeans the people doing it more than it demeans Steve.
Its just sad that he won't acknowledge that people more informed on the topic than him seem to disagree with him or that he refuses to concede that there might not just be anything wrong with the system at all.
I also think his last post of "thank you" might actually be considered spam on this forum too...
Not going to argue the semantics of increasing attendance, but kinda curious as to how increased attendance is going to affect player retention. I can't think of too many people who are going to quit the game because they can't win prizes with a crappy record at a PTQ. More likely, an increase in prize support will simply convert more non-competitive players into competitive players, but not increase the over all player base. It seems that you are conflating attendance with retention. Possible, I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that attendance increases cause, or even correlate, with retention rates.
I'll say straight up that you probably could have stirred this up in a more effective way, but to me it appears that you're making use of your higher (than normal people, at least) profile to put attention on the issue.
I would have preferred to see you do it the way you've been able to highlight things that might need changing in Vintage, but the audience is a lot larger and I suppose one pay-to-view column that's mostly read by eternal players might not be the best vehicle.
I think something you haven't addressed very well is that a lot of your suggestions apply to very small and localized geographic areas where PTQs are close enough and frequent enough that people are able to make choices and experience multiple TOs. This is only really true in 3 or so areas (the midwest centered on Ohio, the NY/Philly/Wash seaboard, and SoCal).
I'm not really sure there is a big enough concentration of magic players and population centers anywhere else to make this kind of thing work. So what you are really suggesting is mostly going to make life difficult for 2-4 big TOs (some of whom people seem to widely agree -are- very good), because Wizards would probably have to proactively hunt for TO competition in smaller areas where there's a limited amount of game or hobby stores of significant size to be interested in providing the service. Even in a city of decent size (like say, Des Moines), there are going to be a fairly limited amount of places with the resources and interest in MTG to provide the service. I don't believe you could really create TO 'competition' in those areas w/o actively seeking new alternatives.
There've been a lot of ideas here that might be pretty decent, from Steve and from others. The hostility and the taunting is unnecessary and it demeans the people doing it more than it demeans Steve.
I dont think anyone is being hostile to steve for coming up with an idea that is horrible. People do that all the time, myself included. Example: Gerry T argued against one of my points earlier, and I simply said, "you're probably right". The reason we're being hostile to steve is he is simply asserting his points over and over again, this is the 2nd forum he's raised a stir on, after being booted off his "home base" forum SCG. Initially people were attempting to actually combat his views, propose their own, but he would take their thought and just say, "NO, I already said this:" and proceed to keep quoting himself. We know he said that, we responded, and he brought this upon himself. I dont think anyone is "taunting". Well, there may be some, but a majority of people here are not taunting, but simply disagreeing. I think Steve's counter arguments are offensive, as he continuously picks apart peoples posts out of context, and as soon as someone makes a point against one of his arguments (Prize support) he jumps to another (competition) to another (the PT is there to support the PTQ) to another (TO's make way too much money). Using MarTroll's words, he's a total Moving target. So if the collective of people, who are all willing to take the time to respond to his claims are amused by how he desperately jumps from argument to argument to avoid admitting defeat, or simply walking away, we'll stay and continue to argue our points as well. If he really has nothing new to say other than requoting himself, and asserting chapter headings out of highschool econ texts, then its likely in his best interest to just say, "agree to disagree".
Second, why is he arguing with PTQ'ers about what they should want/need, or what would incentivize them to attend. Most of the people responding actually attend PTQ's, while steve has admitted he no longer does. I would assume we know the reasons why we do or don't attend a ptq, or what sorts of things would incentivize us to attend more.
Its just sad that he won't acknowledge that people more informed on the topic than him seem to disagree with him or that he refuses to concede that there might not just be anything wrong with the system at all.
I also think his last post of "thank you" might actually be considered spam on this forum too...
I think that anyone who believes that any system cannot be improved or has 'nothing wrong' with it isn't really being realistic.
Everything can be improved, the questions are:
1: what's the marginal cost and utility of doing so
2: how many people are affected by the things that could be improved
3: how much would those people's experience be improved by addressing weaknesses in the system?
I don't think Steve has conclusively answered any of those things, and I think he has acknowledged that some of them aren't exactly the way he initially percieved. He's also pretty open that he (and none of us here except possibly Sam or another TO) has any kind of definite answer to any of those questions.
A lot of the hostility here seems to have less to do with the issue and more to do with how a certain percentage of people don't like personalities like Steve's.
He charged in here and made fairly controversial statements from the getgo and stirred up a debate that is pages long on two separate forums. Even if not one single things he suggested is adopted, if there's one suggestion or idea in any of these threads that's used to improve a PTQ, you have Steve to thank in large part because his relentlessness has made this a much larger and higher-profile discussion (up to and including important members of Wizards disagreeing with him in public) that will have lead to that idea's genesis and attempting.
He played agitator here, and I don't know if that was his goal, but that is an effective way to get people to think about something. He has made everyone, including people who disagree with him, think about this. There are players and TOs reading these threads and going 'hm, maybe .. eh .. well, I might try x sometime'. If just a few x's are good ideas, Steve's benefitted everyone who goes to that PTQ.
You realize that you have just argued for the current PTQ system, as it exists?
- Ben
This. I think that's all that needs to be said, and perhaps the point that steve has stopped replying to Ben's points from page 13 henceforth. It is getting tedious to read the continued attempt to argue down everyone else steve, people who have an idea of what's going on has spoken, you clearly are without a clue. It's pretty obvious it's why you stopped trying to comment on their statements. You make no sense whatsoever, it's been great watching you destroy what image/releveance/credibility you had as a writer within the community.. ta-ta.
I dont think anyone is being hostile to steve for coming up with an idea that is horrible. People do that all the time, myself included. Example: Gerry T argued against one of my points earlier, and I simply said, "you're probably right". The reason we're being hostile to steve is he is simply asserting his points over and over again, this is the 2nd forum he's raised a stir on, after being booted off his "home base" forum SCG. Initially people were attempting to actually combat his views, propose their own, but he would take their thought and just say, "NO, I already said this:" and proceed to keep quoting himself. We know he said that, we responded, and he brought this upon himself. I dont think anyone is "taunting". Well, there may be some, but a majority of people here are not taunting, but simply disagreeing. I think Steve's counter arguments are offensive, as he continuously picks apart peoples posts out of context, and as soon as someone makes a point against one of his arguments (Prize support) he jumps to another (competition) to another (the PT is there to support the PTQ) to another (TO's make way too much money). Using MarTroll's words, he's a total Moving target. So if the collective of people, who are all willing to take the time to respond to his claims are amused by how he desperately jumps from argument to argument to avoid admitting defeat, or simply walking away, we'll stay and continue to argue our points as well. If he really has nothing new to say other than requoting himself, and asserting chapter headings out of highschool econ texts, then its likely in his best interest to just say, "agree to disagree".
Second, why is he arguing with PTQ'ers about what they should want/need, or what would incentivize them to attend. Most of the people responding actually attend PTQ's, while steve has admitted he no longer does. I would assume we know the reasons why we do or don't attend a ptq, or what sorts of things would incentivize us to attend more.
A lot of what you say is true. On the other hand, as someone who does reliably attend PTQs, you aren't exactly the audience Steve is addressing here. After all, you will clearly go when the tournament is bad, probably if the tournament had no payout except the invite, didn't provide concession access, etc, etc. You'd complain, but youre in that group of players who's gonna go. If PTQ attendance shrunk by 25%, you'd probably still be in that group. You're hardcore.
Steve is a serious magic player. He makes part of his living writing about it. He's participated in very high-level play (world championships in his best format, the Magic Invitational, etc). He doesn't PTQ anymore. He might not win PTQs, but I think we can agree Steve has enough skill at magic to play in them and reasonably win if he wanted to. That a player who fits his description (skilled enough, financially comfortable enough to afford the travel, etc) is no longer a PTQer is exactly what this kind of thread should be about. Growing PTQ attendance isn't about getting you to attend - you and people who value things the way you do already attend.
Increasing attendance is about getting people who have stopped for some reason to come back, or to consider starting if they never did. Steve isn't the best example of that kind of player, but in a lot of ways he's actually closer to the one this thread needs to be about than you are. People with your profile (and Gerry's) are already going! Further, you have a personal incentive to not favor a larger PTQ: More qualified players at PTQs makes slots harder to get for people who're already going. You -should- be resistant to attmepts to increase PTQ attendance, especially with more players like Steve. Another 5 players who can reasonably beat you at a PTQ just makes qualifying more difficult for you. You have personal and economic incentive to resist.
The downside is that I don't think there's that many players in Steve's demographic and that's probably why people talk about increasing attendance not being something that's that viable. Most attendance increasing would come from bringing in players who aren't really at the PTQ level. A pretty large majority of players who can reasonably win a PTQ and have an incentive to (ie aren't qualifying in some other way) are already PTQing as much as their personal budgets and geographic locations permit.
First off, I don’t do Magic for a living. Not even close. Magic is a hobby of mine, and one that I love. I came into this discussion early on by saying “PES gives out much better prizes than you quoted, here is what they are.”
I was then told by Steve that PES was one of the worst offenders in terms of exploiting their customers. I have attended PES events for as long as they have existed, and have made many friends with people who currently work with them people who have worked for them in the past. I have even judged a few events years ago.
Magic in the Midwest wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it is now with PES. They have always put their customer first and I know how much hard work they put into this, and how thankless the job is. I was not going to let someone slander them without proof based on the fact that he felt that the market could be better.
Steve, you are singlehandedly bringing down the level of intelligent discourse in the Magic community with threads like this. You aren't providing a rational argument with examples or an idea of how it could be implemented, you are providing a very basic concept and then arguing to the death that it is correct and everyone else doesn't understand it. You are arguing just to argue. Or maybe to sound smart, I'm not sure which.
The overwhelming opinion from people who actually go to events, from people who work these events, and from the people who run these events is that you are wrong. If this was a split decision and there were a healthy number of people that agreed with you, then what you are doing might be fine. All you are doing now is trolling.
If you truly believe that you are correct, then you need to abandon this thread and work on getting hard data that proves you correct. The onus is on you at this point. You brought the issue to light, nobody has to prove that the current system isn't hurting magic. You need to prove that it is. Economic theory and graphs aren't going to cut it anymore.
At the same time all of this is going on, you are trying to raise ill will for a group of people who run our tournaments, the VAST majority of whom do an excellent job and do not make a lot of money. They do it because they love the game. If you have examples of TOs that are running bad events, provide them, but I don't think you even know. You just want to apply an economic principle that you have experience with and a fondness for to Magic.
Do you understand that your idea of taking a TO that currently runs 6 events a season and puts it at 2 a season will hurt them financially? Do you understand that for many of them, it might not even be worth keeping their business open if all they can do is run one event every three months? How is that supposed to help Magic as a whole? All for an experiment that you believe would help the long term health of the game because an economics textbook told you so? Is that real?
If someone is calling you a petulant child, it isn't because they are trying to run an ad hominem against your argument, it is because you are acting like an petulant child. Nobody agrees with me so I'm going to keep trolling until I win through sheer force of will. This thread is filled with almost nothing but people who disagree with you, have provided proof that you are wrong, or at the very least asked for some kind of evidence from you that the current system isn't working, or that your idea would either help the system. You have provided no concrete examples, just a series of "the ambiguous level of competition I want is good for market A, so it MUST be good for Magic." What works for Victoria's Secret or construction won't necessarily work for Magic.
If you want to continue this (which I wouldn't suggest) be aware that it is only becoming more embarrassing my the moment. Do yourself a favor and either give up, or go into research mode if you truly care enough about it.
A lot of what you say is true. On the other hand, as someone who does reliably attend PTQs, you aren't exactly the audience Steve is addressing here. After all, you will clearly go when the tournament is bad, probably if the tournament had no payout except the invite, didn't provide concession access, etc, etc. You'd complain, but youre in that group of players who's gonna go. If PTQ attendance shrunk by 25%, you'd probably still be in that group. You're hardcore.
All of what I say is true. ;-)
Kidding.
I dont blame you for not reading EVERY post on this thread if you're coming in late, but that's not who I am. I AM NOT the PTQ grinder that hits every ptq i can. I'm the guy who lends cards to all those people.
I play FNM draft every week, and I play sanctioned drafts/T2 events every saturday and sunday. I'm in San Diego, reasonably close to LA, but I don't go to those, as the desire to drive and attend a PTQ have faded for me, i'm an older dude now. I go to the San Diego limited PTQ's (1-2 per year), on a very rare occassion the Orange county ones.
However, I LOVE competetive magic. I hang with the PTQ crowd, we test formats together, we money draft together, we brew together.
I think I'm EXACTLY the person he's talking about. And my point is, No reasonable amount of prize support would encourage me to go to LA to attend. Also, if anything, it being a different TO each time would actually make ME less likely to attend, as I may not be willing to drive to LA to attend a potentially horrible event, not knowing how good this new TO can run an event. I didn't include this in my argument before, because its likely that sentiment doesn't spread across the masses.
In a previous post I discussed the factors a player might consider in deciding whether a specific PTQ is worth attending (assumed: that player has a desire to attend PTQ's in general at some level):
1)Proximity- No matter how dedicated to PTQing you are, distance traveled is going to be an issue. Just to each person, that distance you're willing to travel varies.
2) Time - Everyone has time conflicts. Unfortunately, as we get older and gain responsibilities, some of us have more conflicts than others.
3) Budget - Some people may be limited by budget to attend. This is only relevent to steve's argument in regions that have enough PTQ's where a player may have to choose one event over another. My conjecture is this is a small % of the players, and that if Budget is a restriction, they'll choose the appropriate event to attend based on the two factors above.
4) Access to cards - this is true for any major constructed tournament.
Glen addressed a couple of these in his article(which is REALLY what brought all of this up, not Steve's ranting), and offered his suggestions. I recently posted a Partybus/partyhouse suggestion that got only one reply (not from steve).
PTQ'ers at all ranges of "hardcore-ness" have replied here, with Gerry T claiming to be a full bad ass grinder *spanning spectrum...* to me who attends a couple each year.
The fact is, Steve is not on this spectrum at all, yet he thinks he's more in tune with things that affect PTQ'ers desire to play in PTQ's, because he knows how to read Chapter 5 in a microecon book.
I think he realized this point, which is why he moved on to other points, like competition between TO's spawn efficiencies. What I don't understand, if he doesnt' attend PTQ's what problem does he even see with the current system? WOuld you have to actually observe the system in operation to make a fair judgement on how it could be improved. No one is saying improvement is impossible, just that he's saying wholesale changes need to be made from WotC OP all the way up to TO's, and its simply not neccessary. The marginal increase in attendance or satisfaction is not worth the cost or risk of blowing up the PTQ system all together.
I dont blame you for not reading EVERY post on this thread if you're coming in late, but that's not who I am. I AM NOT the PTQ grinder that hits every ptq i can. I'm the guy who lends cards to all those people.
I play FNM draft every week, and I play sanctioned drafts/T2 events every saturday and sunday. I'm in San Diego, reasonably close to LA, but I don't go to those, as the desire to drive and attend a PTQ have faded for me, i'm an older dude now. I go to the San Diego limited PTQ's (1-2 per year), on a very rare occassion the Orange county ones.
However, I LOVE competetive magic. I hang with the PTQ crowd, we test formats together, we money draft together, we brew together.
I think I'm EXACTLY the person he's talking about. And my point is, No reasonable amount of prize support would encourage me to go to LA to attend. Also, if anything, it being a different TO each time would actually make ME less likely to attend, as I may not be willing to drive to LA to attend a potentially horrible event, not knowing how good this new TO can run an event. I didn't include this in my argument before, because its likely that sentiment doesn't spread across the masses.
In a previous post I discussed the factors a player might consider in deciding whether a specific PTQ is worth attending (assumed: that player has a desire to attend PTQ's in general at some level):
1)Proximity- No matter how dedicated to PTQing you are, distance traveled is going to be an issue. Just to each person, that distance you're willing to travel varies.
2) Time - Everyone has time conflicts. Unfortunately, as we get older and gain responsibilities, some of us have more conflicts than others.
3) Budget - Some people may be limited by budget to attend. This is only relevent to steve's argument in regions that have enough PTQ's where a player may have to choose one event over another. My conjecture is this is a small % of the players, and that if Budget is a restriction, they'll choose the appropriate event to attend based on the two factors above.
4) Access to cards - this is true for any major constructed tournament.
Glen addressed a couple of these in his article(which is REALLY what brought all of this up, not Steve's ranting), and offered his suggestions. I recently posted a Partybus/partyhouse suggestion that got only one reply (not from steve).
PTQ'ers at all ranges of "hardcore-ness" have replied here, with Gerry T claiming to be a full bad ass grinder *spanning spectrum...* to me who attends a couple each year.
The fact is, Steve is not on this spectrum at all, yet he thinks he's more in tune with things that affect PTQ'ers desire to play in PTQ's, because he knows how to read Chapter 5 in a microecon book.
I think he realized this point, which is why he moved on to other points, like competition between TO's spawn efficiencies. What I don't understand, if he doesnt' attend PTQ's what problem does he even see with the current system? WOuld you have to actually observe the system in operation to make a fair judgement on how it could be improved. No one is saying improvement is impossible, just that he's saying wholesale changes need to be made from WotC OP all the way up to TO's, and its simply not neccessary. The marginal increase in attendance or satisfaction is not worth the cost or risk of blowing up the PTQ system all together.
Sorry, yeah, I probably mashed some of Gerry's posts together with yours becuse you give the similar vibe of being very knowledgable about PTQs in general.
I'd agree I don't think Steve has been that effective here, but I don't really think this thread has been that unproductive.
I have the feeling Steve may suffer from having had a nonrepresentative slice of PTQ experience since Steve is an eternal player, so his PTQs have probably all been Legacy PTQs. It wouldn't surprise me if format considerations like that change quite a bit about a PTQ, especially when the Legacy PTQs were a pretty new, big deal that got a ton of extra traffic, and more than expected, and probably featured quite a few overbooked venues or similar kinds of things.
Its also worth noting that the difference between the Vintage tournament scene and, in general, the official magic OP scene is pretty large and might account for some of his reaction. Steve's kind of used to playign in tournaments with really serious money involved in the prize support, like the Waterbury.
Sorry, yeah, I probably mashed some of Gerry's posts together with yours becuse you give the similar vibe of being very knowledgable about PTQs in general.
I may not be very knowledgable about ptq's but i've been playing them for many years (just not as often as some). But clearly i've attended more than Steve. I really got invested in this thread because of his butchery/mash-up of my two passions: Magic and Microeconomics.
I do think, with the length of time i've been playing magic WITH the PTQ grinders, and more casual-competetive people like myself, and my skills at networking with those people, leave me in a position to make speculation as to how us as the consumers would react to various changes. But I didn't think this was a unique position, i figure most people in this forum are either like me, or a more hard-core grinder themselves, and i figured (and was correct) that most of us feel the same way.
I dont think anyone is being hostile to steve for coming up with an idea that is horrible.
That's not a loaded reply.
People do that all the time, myself included. Example: Gerry T argued against one of my points earlier, and I simply said, "you're probably right". The reason we're being hostile to steve is he is simply asserting his points over and over again,
Except that what you are missing is that people are actually raising the exact same arguments over and over again. For example, Kibler made an argument that was almost verbatim addressed on the first page. In fact, I even listed it as (1).
When people don't actually read the arguments I've made, I'm forced to repeat them so that people see that I've addressed their concern or question.
this is the 2nd forum he's raised a stir on, after being booted off his "home base" forum SCG.
You see? This is loaded language that assumes that's what happened. Although Ben asked me not to monopolize the conversation on SCG, I actually stopped posting on my own accord because it wasn't the proper venue for that discussion, and Patrick suggested that I write an article on the subject. That thread was about Glenn Goddard's article, and this was becoming a separate topic that deserved its own space. So I obliged.
you are the one that is being hostile, with loaded/angry language.
Initially people were attempting to actually combat his views, propose their own, but he would take their thought and just say, "NO, I already said this:" and proceed to keep quoting himself. We know he said that,
Except that you/others didn't. Read Tom Martell's post on page 1 and 2, where he said I wasn't making an economic argument, and it was clear, since the SCG thread, that that's exactly what i was doing, which he tacitly conceded. People actually weren't understanding the argument. At multiple points it became clear that people weren't actually reading my posts, but perhaps, at best, skimming or reading replies and assuming that they knew what I was saying.
we responded, and he brought this upon himself. I dont think anyone is "taunting". W
Your post isn't?
idea that is horrible
2nd forum he's raised a stir on, after being booted off
petulance
He seems to be merely stating that in attempting to further your reasoning you come across somewhat similar to Veruca Salt in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.
but a majority of people here are not taunting, but simply disagreeing.
When Martell's friends post on Twitter to "go get me" and martell admits that he was doing it for lulz, that's not good faith argument and legitimate disagreement, that's taunting, trolling, and just being a jerk.
I think Steve's counter arguments are offensive,
My arguments 'offend' you? I'm offended by the slander and name calling, but not by arguments.
as he continuously picks apart peoples posts out of context,
Such as?
and as soon as someone makes a point against one of his arguments (Prize support) he jumps to another (competition) to another (the PT is there to support the PTQ) to another (TO's make way too much money). Using MarTroll's words, he's a total Moving target.
Those are not separate arguments. those are the same thing. I could diagram it for you. It's convenient for Martell and others to say that I'm a moving target as a way of justifying a lack of engagement (or having been proven wrong on multiple occasions). It's convenient to say "my logic is circular" as a way of dismissing my points rather than addressing them, or acknowlging their merit.
I could diagram the relationships between the argumenst you just cited, but I'll just explain their relationship.
My basic argument is that competition between TOs would provide greater consumer value, and serve the ultimate end of maximizing Magic's growth. This argument is built on a couple of key ideas, including the idea that the current structure is monopolistic, that monopolistic pricing actually doesn't want to maximize attendance since that wouldn't maximize profit. It's also built on premise that maximizing PTQ attendance would increase retention and promote re-entry, and thus maximize Magic's growth.
I tried to show that this monopolistic pricing is in fact happening, and make people see that by looking at prize structures. The counter-argument was advanced that increasing prizes wouldn't actually increase attendance, or, more sophisticatedly, not very much. Thus, I spent some time addressing this point. In reasoning that increasing prizes would increase attendance I was not making an entirely separate argument; I was not being a moving target. It was directly related to the foundation of my central argument.
Similarly, the argument was advanced that prizes for PTQs don't matter because the 'purpose of PTQs' is to qualify. I advanced the counter argument that the purpose of the PTQs is actually to make money for Wizards by generating card sales, and the Pro Tour serves this purpose by promoting it. To that extent, Tom had it exactly backwards. Prizes matter because they increase PTQ attendance, and that's a goal that matters to Wizards.
So if the collective of people, who are all willing to take the time to respond to his claims are amused by how he desperately jumps from argument to argument to avoid admitting defeat, or simply walking away, we'll stay and continue to argue our points as well.
And that's fine, just do so in good faith and without being rude or insulting about it.
If he really has nothing new to say other than requoting himself, and asserting chapter headings out of highschool econ texts, then its likely in his best interest to just say, "agree to disagree".
This is exactly my point here -- this isn't a good faith argument, but simply ad hominems designed to discredit the author.
Second, why is he arguing with PTQ'ers about what they should want/need, or what would incentivize them to attend. Most of the people responding actually attend PTQ's, while steve has admitted he no longer does. I would assume we know the reasons why we do or don't attend a ptq, or what sorts of things would incentivize us to attend more.
And you wonder why I'm forced to repeat myself:
How many times do I have to say that whether I've played in PTQs recently or not is logically irrelevant to the issues I've presented. It's only raised as a way of casting doubt on the author's knowledge, but it's not an actual logical argument. If the facts I presented are wrong, then prove so, but deal with them on their own terms rather than trying to make an argument by undermining the author. That's simply a logical fallacy.
This. I think that's all that needs to be said, and perhaps the point that steve has stopped replying to Ben's points from page 13 henceforth. It is getting tedious to read the continued attempt to argue down everyone else steve, people who have an idea of what's going on has spoken, you clearly are without a clue. It's pretty obvious it's why you stopped trying to comment on their statements. You make no sense whatsoever, it's been great watching you destroy what image/releveance/credibility you had as a writer within the community.. ta-ta.
Again, more ad hominems, more insults, etc, but I will respond to your actual substantive point:
I *did* response to Ben's claim. I said:
Couldn't Wizards implement rules that curb such abuses? For example, simply set the dates/times of the PTQs, but allow the TOs to compete on other measures? So for example, Wizards can say: there are 6 Ohio PTQs this season, we will be divving them up among six different TOs. However, Wizards would set the dates, and require the TOs to sort out the details.
I definitely get your point, that competition can have downsides, but I would think there would be mechanisms or ways of ameliorating or addresing many of those concerns.
I think the mod's ran away screaming from this thread about 10 pages ago... {rightfully so}
Hardly. I feel as if this discussion does have its merits, and nothing has directly stepped out of line yet, besides some early double-posts.
Nonetheless, consider this a blanket warning. Keep the tone civil, or I will issue infractions. Don't think that toeing the line is going to keep things going. If you want to regard his argument, go right ahead, and do so properly.
Look, Miss Salt, the fact of the matter is you argued this so far into the hole that you were told to stop posting on the forums you call home.
So you then came here so you could keep having the same argument that you already lost.
Loaded questions or no, when someone is engaged in attention seeking behavior they are not allowed to complain when some of it is negative. If I take my shirt off in public, I expect to hear more iterations of "hey fatass put your shirt on" than whistles, and you should too, metaphorically at least.
Also, stop crying trolling. If you're correct in your assessment that everyone is just trolling you, then do the mature thing and just let it go. Assume you have a moral victory, maybe try and talk to wizards about it, but stop stirring the community pot for no reason.
EDIT: Memnarch, just saw your post. I want to make it clear that I'm not insulting Ser Menendenenianunian, it just seems like he's taking this too far and someone needs to tell him to *just stop*.
Listen, I get that a few people - like Sam Stoddard and some others, who do this for a living - would probably take some of what Steve said as a personal insult, because he didn't do it diplomatically.
For everyone else though, really, there's probably a decent bit of good coming just from this thread happening, even if in some places Steve is off-base. Its a good discussion; its worth thinking about how to improve the PTQ process, from invite-awards to prizesupport to locations. A discussion is healthy and even if, from the hundreds of posts here, most of htem are total garbage, all it takes is one person with a really good idea to make things a bit better for people.
There've been a lot of ideas here that might be pretty decent, from Steve and from others. The hostility and the taunting is unnecessary and it demeans the people doing it more than it demeans Steve.
And no, Steve hasn't covered himself in glory in this debate, but the last 7-8 pages, it's not him who looks bad.
I think with all of their resources, WoTC would have determined if there was a problem or not and some random lawyer from Ohio that doesn't have the resources. I don't see the reason to challenge WoTC on their PTQ model when barely anyone else seems to agree with you.
Seconded. Gro gets 1st runner up for Fresh Prince tangent.
This.
Thank you.
I also think his last post of "thank you" might actually be considered spam on this forum too...
Not going to argue the semantics of increasing attendance, but kinda curious as to how increased attendance is going to affect player retention. I can't think of too many people who are going to quit the game because they can't win prizes with a crappy record at a PTQ. More likely, an increase in prize support will simply convert more non-competitive players into competitive players, but not increase the over all player base. It seems that you are conflating attendance with retention. Possible, I'm wrong, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that attendance increases cause, or even correlate, with retention rates.
I'll say straight up that you probably could have stirred this up in a more effective way, but to me it appears that you're making use of your higher (than normal people, at least) profile to put attention on the issue.
I would have preferred to see you do it the way you've been able to highlight things that might need changing in Vintage, but the audience is a lot larger and I suppose one pay-to-view column that's mostly read by eternal players might not be the best vehicle.
I think something you haven't addressed very well is that a lot of your suggestions apply to very small and localized geographic areas where PTQs are close enough and frequent enough that people are able to make choices and experience multiple TOs. This is only really true in 3 or so areas (the midwest centered on Ohio, the NY/Philly/Wash seaboard, and SoCal).
I'm not really sure there is a big enough concentration of magic players and population centers anywhere else to make this kind of thing work. So what you are really suggesting is mostly going to make life difficult for 2-4 big TOs (some of whom people seem to widely agree -are- very good), because Wizards would probably have to proactively hunt for TO competition in smaller areas where there's a limited amount of game or hobby stores of significant size to be interested in providing the service. Even in a city of decent size (like say, Des Moines), there are going to be a fairly limited amount of places with the resources and interest in MTG to provide the service. I don't believe you could really create TO 'competition' in those areas w/o actively seeking new alternatives.
I dont think anyone is being hostile to steve for coming up with an idea that is horrible. People do that all the time, myself included. Example: Gerry T argued against one of my points earlier, and I simply said, "you're probably right". The reason we're being hostile to steve is he is simply asserting his points over and over again, this is the 2nd forum he's raised a stir on, after being booted off his "home base" forum SCG. Initially people were attempting to actually combat his views, propose their own, but he would take their thought and just say, "NO, I already said this:" and proceed to keep quoting himself. We know he said that, we responded, and he brought this upon himself. I dont think anyone is "taunting". Well, there may be some, but a majority of people here are not taunting, but simply disagreeing. I think Steve's counter arguments are offensive, as he continuously picks apart peoples posts out of context, and as soon as someone makes a point against one of his arguments (Prize support) he jumps to another (competition) to another (the PT is there to support the PTQ) to another (TO's make way too much money). Using MarTroll's words, he's a total Moving target. So if the collective of people, who are all willing to take the time to respond to his claims are amused by how he desperately jumps from argument to argument to avoid admitting defeat, or simply walking away, we'll stay and continue to argue our points as well. If he really has nothing new to say other than requoting himself, and asserting chapter headings out of highschool econ texts, then its likely in his best interest to just say, "agree to disagree".
Second, why is he arguing with PTQ'ers about what they should want/need, or what would incentivize them to attend. Most of the people responding actually attend PTQ's, while steve has admitted he no longer does. I would assume we know the reasons why we do or don't attend a ptq, or what sorts of things would incentivize us to attend more.
I think that anyone who believes that any system cannot be improved or has 'nothing wrong' with it isn't really being realistic.
Everything can be improved, the questions are:
1: what's the marginal cost and utility of doing so
2: how many people are affected by the things that could be improved
3: how much would those people's experience be improved by addressing weaknesses in the system?
I don't think Steve has conclusively answered any of those things, and I think he has acknowledged that some of them aren't exactly the way he initially percieved. He's also pretty open that he (and none of us here except possibly Sam or another TO) has any kind of definite answer to any of those questions.
A lot of the hostility here seems to have less to do with the issue and more to do with how a certain percentage of people don't like personalities like Steve's.
He charged in here and made fairly controversial statements from the getgo and stirred up a debate that is pages long on two separate forums. Even if not one single things he suggested is adopted, if there's one suggestion or idea in any of these threads that's used to improve a PTQ, you have Steve to thank in large part because his relentlessness has made this a much larger and higher-profile discussion (up to and including important members of Wizards disagreeing with him in public) that will have lead to that idea's genesis and attempting.
He played agitator here, and I don't know if that was his goal, but that is an effective way to get people to think about something. He has made everyone, including people who disagree with him, think about this. There are players and TOs reading these threads and going 'hm, maybe .. eh .. well, I might try x sometime'. If just a few x's are good ideas, Steve's benefitted everyone who goes to that PTQ.
That's not a bad thing.
This. I think that's all that needs to be said, and perhaps the point that steve has stopped replying to Ben's points from page 13 henceforth. It is getting tedious to read the continued attempt to argue down everyone else steve, people who have an idea of what's going on has spoken, you clearly are without a clue. It's pretty obvious it's why you stopped trying to comment on their statements. You make no sense whatsoever, it's been great watching you destroy what image/releveance/credibility you had as a writer within the community.. ta-ta.
©
A lot of what you say is true. On the other hand, as someone who does reliably attend PTQs, you aren't exactly the audience Steve is addressing here. After all, you will clearly go when the tournament is bad, probably if the tournament had no payout except the invite, didn't provide concession access, etc, etc. You'd complain, but youre in that group of players who's gonna go. If PTQ attendance shrunk by 25%, you'd probably still be in that group. You're hardcore.
Steve is a serious magic player. He makes part of his living writing about it. He's participated in very high-level play (world championships in his best format, the Magic Invitational, etc). He doesn't PTQ anymore. He might not win PTQs, but I think we can agree Steve has enough skill at magic to play in them and reasonably win if he wanted to. That a player who fits his description (skilled enough, financially comfortable enough to afford the travel, etc) is no longer a PTQer is exactly what this kind of thread should be about. Growing PTQ attendance isn't about getting you to attend - you and people who value things the way you do already attend.
Increasing attendance is about getting people who have stopped for some reason to come back, or to consider starting if they never did. Steve isn't the best example of that kind of player, but in a lot of ways he's actually closer to the one this thread needs to be about than you are. People with your profile (and Gerry's) are already going! Further, you have a personal incentive to not favor a larger PTQ: More qualified players at PTQs makes slots harder to get for people who're already going. You -should- be resistant to attmepts to increase PTQ attendance, especially with more players like Steve. Another 5 players who can reasonably beat you at a PTQ just makes qualifying more difficult for you. You have personal and economic incentive to resist.
The downside is that I don't think there's that many players in Steve's demographic and that's probably why people talk about increasing attendance not being something that's that viable. Most attendance increasing would come from bringing in players who aren't really at the PTQ level. A pretty large majority of players who can reasonably win a PTQ and have an incentive to (ie aren't qualifying in some other way) are already PTQing as much as their personal budgets and geographic locations permit.
I think the mod's ran away screaming from this thread about 10 pages ago... {rightfully so}
I was then told by Steve that PES was one of the worst offenders in terms of exploiting their customers. I have attended PES events for as long as they have existed, and have made many friends with people who currently work with them people who have worked for them in the past. I have even judged a few events years ago.
Magic in the Midwest wouldn’t be anywhere close to where it is now with PES. They have always put their customer first and I know how much hard work they put into this, and how thankless the job is. I was not going to let someone slander them without proof based on the fact that he felt that the market could be better.
Steve, you are singlehandedly bringing down the level of intelligent discourse in the Magic community with threads like this. You aren't providing a rational argument with examples or an idea of how it could be implemented, you are providing a very basic concept and then arguing to the death that it is correct and everyone else doesn't understand it. You are arguing just to argue. Or maybe to sound smart, I'm not sure which.
The overwhelming opinion from people who actually go to events, from people who work these events, and from the people who run these events is that you are wrong. If this was a split decision and there were a healthy number of people that agreed with you, then what you are doing might be fine. All you are doing now is trolling.
If you truly believe that you are correct, then you need to abandon this thread and work on getting hard data that proves you correct. The onus is on you at this point. You brought the issue to light, nobody has to prove that the current system isn't hurting magic. You need to prove that it is. Economic theory and graphs aren't going to cut it anymore.
At the same time all of this is going on, you are trying to raise ill will for a group of people who run our tournaments, the VAST majority of whom do an excellent job and do not make a lot of money. They do it because they love the game. If you have examples of TOs that are running bad events, provide them, but I don't think you even know. You just want to apply an economic principle that you have experience with and a fondness for to Magic.
Do you understand that your idea of taking a TO that currently runs 6 events a season and puts it at 2 a season will hurt them financially? Do you understand that for many of them, it might not even be worth keeping their business open if all they can do is run one event every three months? How is that supposed to help Magic as a whole? All for an experiment that you believe would help the long term health of the game because an economics textbook told you so? Is that real?
If someone is calling you a petulant child, it isn't because they are trying to run an ad hominem against your argument, it is because you are acting like an petulant child. Nobody agrees with me so I'm going to keep trolling until I win through sheer force of will. This thread is filled with almost nothing but people who disagree with you, have provided proof that you are wrong, or at the very least asked for some kind of evidence from you that the current system isn't working, or that your idea would either help the system. You have provided no concrete examples, just a series of "the ambiguous level of competition I want is good for market A, so it MUST be good for Magic." What works for Victoria's Secret or construction won't necessarily work for Magic.
If you want to continue this (which I wouldn't suggest) be aware that it is only becoming more embarrassing my the moment. Do yourself a favor and either give up, or go into research mode if you truly care enough about it.
All of what I say is true. ;-)
Kidding.
I dont blame you for not reading EVERY post on this thread if you're coming in late, but that's not who I am. I AM NOT the PTQ grinder that hits every ptq i can. I'm the guy who lends cards to all those people.
I play FNM draft every week, and I play sanctioned drafts/T2 events every saturday and sunday. I'm in San Diego, reasonably close to LA, but I don't go to those, as the desire to drive and attend a PTQ have faded for me, i'm an older dude now. I go to the San Diego limited PTQ's (1-2 per year), on a very rare occassion the Orange county ones.
However, I LOVE competetive magic. I hang with the PTQ crowd, we test formats together, we money draft together, we brew together.
I think I'm EXACTLY the person he's talking about. And my point is, No reasonable amount of prize support would encourage me to go to LA to attend. Also, if anything, it being a different TO each time would actually make ME less likely to attend, as I may not be willing to drive to LA to attend a potentially horrible event, not knowing how good this new TO can run an event. I didn't include this in my argument before, because its likely that sentiment doesn't spread across the masses.
In a previous post I discussed the factors a player might consider in deciding whether a specific PTQ is worth attending (assumed: that player has a desire to attend PTQ's in general at some level):
1)Proximity- No matter how dedicated to PTQing you are, distance traveled is going to be an issue. Just to each person, that distance you're willing to travel varies.
2) Time - Everyone has time conflicts. Unfortunately, as we get older and gain responsibilities, some of us have more conflicts than others.
3) Budget - Some people may be limited by budget to attend. This is only relevent to steve's argument in regions that have enough PTQ's where a player may have to choose one event over another. My conjecture is this is a small % of the players, and that if Budget is a restriction, they'll choose the appropriate event to attend based on the two factors above.
4) Access to cards - this is true for any major constructed tournament.
Glen addressed a couple of these in his article(which is REALLY what brought all of this up, not Steve's ranting), and offered his suggestions. I recently posted a Partybus/partyhouse suggestion that got only one reply (not from steve).
PTQ'ers at all ranges of "hardcore-ness" have replied here, with Gerry T claiming to be a full bad ass grinder *spanning spectrum...* to me who attends a couple each year.
The fact is, Steve is not on this spectrum at all, yet he thinks he's more in tune with things that affect PTQ'ers desire to play in PTQ's, because he knows how to read Chapter 5 in a microecon book.
I think he realized this point, which is why he moved on to other points, like competition between TO's spawn efficiencies. What I don't understand, if he doesnt' attend PTQ's what problem does he even see with the current system? WOuld you have to actually observe the system in operation to make a fair judgement on how it could be improved. No one is saying improvement is impossible, just that he's saying wholesale changes need to be made from WotC OP all the way up to TO's, and its simply not neccessary. The marginal increase in attendance or satisfaction is not worth the cost or risk of blowing up the PTQ system all together.
Sorry, yeah, I probably mashed some of Gerry's posts together with yours becuse you give the similar vibe of being very knowledgable about PTQs in general.
I'd agree I don't think Steve has been that effective here, but I don't really think this thread has been that unproductive.
I have the feeling Steve may suffer from having had a nonrepresentative slice of PTQ experience since Steve is an eternal player, so his PTQs have probably all been Legacy PTQs. It wouldn't surprise me if format considerations like that change quite a bit about a PTQ, especially when the Legacy PTQs were a pretty new, big deal that got a ton of extra traffic, and more than expected, and probably featured quite a few overbooked venues or similar kinds of things.
Its also worth noting that the difference between the Vintage tournament scene and, in general, the official magic OP scene is pretty large and might account for some of his reaction. Steve's kind of used to playign in tournaments with really serious money involved in the prize support, like the Waterbury.
I may not be very knowledgable about ptq's but i've been playing them for many years (just not as often as some). But clearly i've attended more than Steve. I really got invested in this thread because of his butchery/mash-up of my two passions: Magic and Microeconomics.
I do think, with the length of time i've been playing magic WITH the PTQ grinders, and more casual-competetive people like myself, and my skills at networking with those people, leave me in a position to make speculation as to how us as the consumers would react to various changes. But I didn't think this was a unique position, i figure most people in this forum are either like me, or a more hard-core grinder themselves, and i figured (and was correct) that most of us feel the same way.
That's not a loaded reply.
Except that what you are missing is that people are actually raising the exact same arguments over and over again. For example, Kibler made an argument that was almost verbatim addressed on the first page. In fact, I even listed it as (1).
When people don't actually read the arguments I've made, I'm forced to repeat them so that people see that I've addressed their concern or question.
You see? This is loaded language that assumes that's what happened. Although Ben asked me not to monopolize the conversation on SCG, I actually stopped posting on my own accord because it wasn't the proper venue for that discussion, and Patrick suggested that I write an article on the subject. That thread was about Glenn Goddard's article, and this was becoming a separate topic that deserved its own space. So I obliged.
you are the one that is being hostile, with loaded/angry language.
Except that you/others didn't. Read Tom Martell's post on page 1 and 2, where he said I wasn't making an economic argument, and it was clear, since the SCG thread, that that's exactly what i was doing, which he tacitly conceded. People actually weren't understanding the argument. At multiple points it became clear that people weren't actually reading my posts, but perhaps, at best, skimming or reading replies and assuming that they knew what I was saying.
Your post isn't?
When Martell's friends post on Twitter to "go get me" and martell admits that he was doing it for lulz, that's not good faith argument and legitimate disagreement, that's taunting, trolling, and just being a jerk.
My arguments 'offend' you? I'm offended by the slander and name calling, but not by arguments.
Such as?
Those are not separate arguments. those are the same thing. I could diagram it for you. It's convenient for Martell and others to say that I'm a moving target as a way of justifying a lack of engagement (or having been proven wrong on multiple occasions). It's convenient to say "my logic is circular" as a way of dismissing my points rather than addressing them, or acknowlging their merit.
I could diagram the relationships between the argumenst you just cited, but I'll just explain their relationship.
My basic argument is that competition between TOs would provide greater consumer value, and serve the ultimate end of maximizing Magic's growth. This argument is built on a couple of key ideas, including the idea that the current structure is monopolistic, that monopolistic pricing actually doesn't want to maximize attendance since that wouldn't maximize profit. It's also built on premise that maximizing PTQ attendance would increase retention and promote re-entry, and thus maximize Magic's growth.
I tried to show that this monopolistic pricing is in fact happening, and make people see that by looking at prize structures. The counter-argument was advanced that increasing prizes wouldn't actually increase attendance, or, more sophisticatedly, not very much. Thus, I spent some time addressing this point. In reasoning that increasing prizes would increase attendance I was not making an entirely separate argument; I was not being a moving target. It was directly related to the foundation of my central argument.
Similarly, the argument was advanced that prizes for PTQs don't matter because the 'purpose of PTQs' is to qualify. I advanced the counter argument that the purpose of the PTQs is actually to make money for Wizards by generating card sales, and the Pro Tour serves this purpose by promoting it. To that extent, Tom had it exactly backwards. Prizes matter because they increase PTQ attendance, and that's a goal that matters to Wizards.
And that's fine, just do so in good faith and without being rude or insulting about it.
This is exactly my point here -- this isn't a good faith argument, but simply ad hominems designed to discredit the author.
And you wonder why I'm forced to repeat myself:
How many times do I have to say that whether I've played in PTQs recently or not is logically irrelevant to the issues I've presented. It's only raised as a way of casting doubt on the author's knowledge, but it's not an actual logical argument. If the facts I presented are wrong, then prove so, but deal with them on their own terms rather than trying to make an argument by undermining the author. That's simply a logical fallacy.
Again, more ad hominems, more insults, etc, but I will respond to your actual substantive point:
I *did* response to Ben's claim. I said:
Hardly. I feel as if this discussion does have its merits, and nothing has directly stepped out of line yet, besides some early double-posts.
Nonetheless, consider this a blanket warning. Keep the tone civil, or I will issue infractions. Don't think that toeing the line is going to keep things going. If you want to regard his argument, go right ahead, and do so properly.
[GTC] Gatecrash Patch for MWS (249/249)
Look, Miss Salt, the fact of the matter is you argued this so far into the hole that you were told to stop posting on the forums you call home.
So you then came here so you could keep having the same argument that you already lost.
Loaded questions or no, when someone is engaged in attention seeking behavior they are not allowed to complain when some of it is negative. If I take my shirt off in public, I expect to hear more iterations of "hey fatass put your shirt on" than whistles, and you should too, metaphorically at least.
Also, stop crying trolling. If you're correct in your assessment that everyone is just trolling you, then do the mature thing and just let it go. Assume you have a moral victory, maybe try and talk to wizards about it, but stop stirring the community pot for no reason.
EDIT: Memnarch, just saw your post. I want to make it clear that I'm not insulting Ser Menendenenianunian, it just seems like he's taking this too far and someone needs to tell him to *just stop*.