First-round byes now require 400 seasonal PWPs (up from 300).
Second-round byes now require 750 seasonal PWPs (up from 600).
Third-round byes now require 1500 PWPs (up from 1200).
I guess the current thresholds were too low, even after multiplier restructuring.
Guess it means we've all got some more grinding to do, although imo it feels almost unfair that attending (and performing any better than horribly) one GP will almost instantly qualify you for a bye to the next, while for those who's never been before don't really stand a chance.
I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing though, in round 1 you're likely to be paired with someone of equal experience (who didn't qualify for a bye) anyway.
Edit:
Quote from "~_Angel[us »
_~;8219024']I don't really think this change will make much of a difference considering that Season 1 is three months while Season 2 is about four and a half. Most people will end up with substantially more points at the end of this season anyway.
~_Angel[us]_~ brings up an extremely relevant point that while the threshold increased, the length of the GP season increased significantly as well.
To put this into perspective, there were 97 days in the last GP season (December 26, 2011-April 1, 2012) and 139 days this season (April 2-August 19), a 43.2% increase while the thresholds only increased 33% and 25% for first and second/third round byes, respectively.
Basically, if you want to open packs to get cards for Standard and Modern, the simpler approach is to just buy all the singles you need and then set some money on fire to make up the difference.
I don't really think this change will make much of a difference considering that Season 1 is three months while Season 2 is about four and a half. Most people will end up with substantially more points at the end of this season anyway.
It feels almost unfair that attending (and performing any better than horribly) one GP will almost instantly qualify you for a bye to the next, while for those who's never been before don't really stand a chance.
I actually think it's a bit better this way. I'm a L2 from Italy and I've been judging all the PTQs and GPs I could've attended this last season but still, if I won one more game rather than going 6-3 at the only Competitive tournament I attended (GP Madrid) that alone would've given me a bye for the next season and qualified me for my country's nationals. I don't call that proving that you're a good player, that's just having a decent sealed once and remembering to attack
Just a Day 2 at a GP doesn't make you bye worthy, in my opinion. A day 2 plus a couple of strong finishes at a PTQ do, and the new thresholds better reflect that.
"If you're a good player and do anything more then FNM it's not really that hard to get to 400 points."
If you're an American, sure. Last season 17 New Zealanders got 400 points, 3 of whom got the 750 for a 2nd bye under the new system. With the previous system in place 24 got a bye and the same 3 got 2 byes.
I can get that wizards might prefer 2809 US players rather than 4937 US players getting one or more byes, because that might create some significant issues at tournaments.
But the big point scoring tournaments regularly available in the US aren't anywhere near as frequent elsewhere. That makes the point thresholds kinda awkward in other places. Happily there are at least a decent amount of grand prix trials for regional GPs to help the top local players get byes.
As the result of a vocal, but visible, few OP 'fixed' a problem that didn't exist. Stay classy!
Available byes dropped by ~50% this season, now that the hard line 15k byes left (more like 16k+ with the Worlds split.) Apparently this worst case scenario and enough complaints from name players was enough to justify raising the bar.
Disappointing that WotC is not learning from not opting into knee-jerk reactions based on small community feedback.
Again, this change is great for people who actually have the chance to travel to these events, not so great for people like me who want to travel to them, but the only real events held around here are FNM and store drafts, which I average 7 pwps from.
I guess this puts it more in line with ratings-based byes, though, as the number of wins you needs goes up quite a bit.
I thought you were rewarded byes for doing well. If they raise the threshold of how well you have to do to earn a free win, how is that a bad thing? It allows the people who play better (not just more often) to receive the benefit rather then people like to just be handed a free bye just for fun. I seriously doubt that being awarded no byes instead of one is going to make a difference if you were going to that GP or not. It's not a perfect system, but this makes more sense IMO.
I pretty much play and/or judge in a GPT or SCG IQ every week (thanks to working for one of the fastest-growing Magic tournament centers in the world) so I still feel confident I'll get my second bye in time for Worcester. Maybe if I go on a roll this PTQ season I can snag 3 byes the hard way!
as far as american gp's go this is a good change. the fact that it's awkward for the rest of the world is an issue that seems to be 2nd priority, but that's becoming the norm.
If you're a good player and do anything more then FNM it's not really that hard to get to 400 points.
Quite true. I fell just short of achieving the 300 points first bye last PWP season by playing just FNMs exclusively. Had I made the trek down to the Seattle GP I easily would have had enough points.
As the result of a vocal, but visible, few OP 'fixed' a problem that didn't exist. Stay classy!
Available byes dropped by ~50% this season, now that the hard line 15k byes left (more like 16k+ with the Worlds split.) Apparently this worst case scenario and enough complaints from name players was enough to justify raising the bar.
Disappointing that WotC is not learning from not opting into knee-jerk reactions based on small community feedback.
Sadly I agree with this. There's an awful lot done for the pros...they didn't want to grind GPs after PWPs so it got fixed. Then they didn't want friends to miss out after a good season, so we got sponsorship. Then they were worried they wouldn't cash due to byes so now this is fixed.
Geese and golden eggs spring to mind. Especially considering how amazingly fast Wizards fixed FNM Championship, the closest thing to an amateur level even we have (oh that's right, those who multi-queued them back in the first 3 months have an unassailable lead still).
_~;8219024']I don't really think this change will make much of a difference considering that Season 1 is three months while Season 2 is about four and a half. Most people will end up with substantially more points at the end of this season anyway.
Exactly this. I can't believe more people aren't mentioning this.
In the first season of this year, we had fourteen weeks. This meant that you needed to average 21.4 points per week for one bye and 42.9 points per week to average two byes.
The second seasons consists of twenty weeks. This requires 20.0 points per week for one bye and 37.5 points per week for two byes.
Make no mistake about it: the limits went down, not up.
~_Angel[us]_~ and dgschess are right and I've edited the OP to include such info. However, scaling the threshold by region still seems like it'd be a great idea.
Basically, if you want to open packs to get cards for Standard and Modern, the simpler approach is to just buy all the singles you need and then set some money on fire to make up the difference.
got 300 points from just playing in gp seattle. Wizards is definitely wanting to cut down the amount of ppl getting byes. Almost 40% of the players at GP seattle did not play the first or 2nd round due to how easy it was to get pwps. But as for other countries that dont see as many big events, this new cap is gonna hurt a lot.
After telling this to most of the people that play in LGS most have lost all interest in any GP that isn't in our country since getting 400 points is already VERY hard here in Argentina, few people managed to get to 600 this season, now most people won't ever have even 1 bye. Seeing as how we get about 2 GP per year (officially is 3, but any GP that is a far as Costa Rica is the same as a GP in the US moneywise) GP may as well not exist for us.
This season our "GP" is the one is Costa Rica so 99% of the players in the country don't care about points.
Way to go Wiz, keep showing that you don't like your Latin American players.
I have never been a fan of byes. I personally think that everyone should be on a level playing field. I can't really attend any events that aren't fnm, so I probably wouldn't end up earning any byes anywats
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Season 2 may be longer, but there are also only 11 GPs this season so there will already be a lot fewer PWPs going around. There are the 3 WMCQs per country but as 5x 1-day events, those are little more than PTQs.
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Season 2 may be longer, but there are also only 11 GPs this season so there will already be a lot fewer PWPs going around. There are the 3 WMCQs per country but as 5x 1-day events, those are little more than PTQs.
Too bad those events will just be feeding the rich, as they have their own PWP threshold for entry. Aren't they the same multiplier as PTQs though, at 5x?
Basically, if you want to open packs to get cards for Standard and Modern, the simpler approach is to just buy all the singles you need and then set some money on fire to make up the difference.
I really wish they would get rid of the Bye system altogether to be honest. All it does is reward those that have more time to hit up all of those other events.
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Of more than 1000 people registred, only 320ish played first round of GP Torino. That should settle it about how hard it is for Europeans to get byes.
You don't have to be "rich" to enter a WMCQ, as the threshold is so low anybody active in the country is qualified. You could even be qualified by playing FNM only.
And yes, it's x5 for WMCQs.
Europe is a big place with many different experiences.
Which is why France has a threshold of 300 PWP for WMCQ but Slovenia has 50.
Regional PWP is probably the best answer for byes...although it starts to sound a lot like rating done based on the competition you play against. If only there was some kind of scaling rating that did this...
I really wish they would get rid of the Bye system altogether to be honest. All it does is reward those that have more time to hit up all of those other events.
That's not at all true. It rewards players who play well at GPs. Most of the people with 2 or 3 byes don't even play in small tournaments. They play strictly in GPs, and they don't even play in all of those.
Season 2 may be longer, but there are also only 11 GPs this season so there will already be a lot fewer PWPs going around. There are the 3 WMCQs per country but as 5x 1-day events, those are little more than PTQs.
For the overwhelming majority of players, this is not an issue.
The extended amount of time means that there are more 1x events, more 3x events and more 5x events. Players who have a goal of getting one or two byes by Planeswalker Points are not flying across the world to attend Grand Prix: they are grinding 1x, 3x, and 5x events to accumulate the points slowly. For these people, the reduced number of Grand Prix during this span is not significant. The extra time is.
Besides, whether or not you have a Grand Prix in your area during the season is pretty much a crap shoot. If you don't, then oh well. If you do, then it's actually the previous season's points that you are more concerned about.
The reduced number of Grand Prix during this season only hurts a very small subset of all Magic players: players who travel to multiple Grand Prix and are mediocre. If you attend multiple GP's and do well, then you will either rack up a million Planeswalker Points or get your byes through Pro Points. It only hurts those who attend multiple GP's, but still only earn 150 or so points at a time (for example, a 4-5 record at a 1025-person event is worth 160 points).
Overall, there are more Planeswalker Points being handed out to players who care about them. I think the end result is even more byes than the previous season, because the thresholds weren't raised high enough.
ps- Who else thinks that the Helvault is filled with Planeswalker Points?
I guess my thought on this is that it shouldn't take effect immediately. I know we just started the new season, but there are some "bigger" GPs coming up that will effect people's attempt at gaining a buy or two (at least out here on the West Coast). GP L.A. (Anaheim) and GP Vancouver are right around the corner and it may be a little more of a mathematical roadblock than anything. But alas, there probably won't be as much backlash to their decision because, as I said, the new season just started. If we were halfway through the season, maybe more people would be frustrated.
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Too bad those events will just be feeding the rich, as they have their own PWP threshold for entry. Aren't they the same multiplier as PTQs though, at 5x?
300 PWPs is not a lot and the 5x is just the same as PTQs, so it's not like the point-earning opportunities for those with <300 PWPs are diminished. In fact there are several PTQs around the US during the same weekends as the WMCQs (and personally, I'd rather go to a PTQ than WMCQ). The reason I said they are "little more" than PTQs is that presumably they'll have more rounds, so that those interested in farming PWPs could have more rounds in which to do so.
For the overwhelming majority of players, this is not an issue.
The extended amount of time means that there are more 1x events, more 3x events and more 5x events. Players who have a goal of getting one or two byes by Planeswalker Points are not flying across the world to attend Grand Prix: they are grinding 1x, 3x, and 5x events to accumulate the points slowly. For these people, the reduced number of Grand Prix during this span is not significant. The extra time is.
This assumes that the reason for raising the bar is in fact that the season is longer. Also note I was making a general comment on the changes in all three thresholds overall; presumably the reason for such a change is that Wizards thought players earned far more pwps than they thought they would. I don't think there's any question that fewer GPs (which, pointedly, means fewer accessible GPs) will lower the number of points at all levels of play. Certainly no one is saying that it will do so for ALL players.
Of course, maybe the behavior of players for whom the 300->400 pwps is actually relevant is why the 1-bye threshold got raised by 33% while the others "only" got raised by 25%. In any case, it's all speculation if Wizards doesn't explain their decision, and it'll be interesting to see what they do for Season 3 even if we still don't know exactly why.
The reduced number of Grand Prix during this season only hurts a very small subset of all Magic players: players who travel to multiple Grand Prix and are mediocre. If you attend multiple GP's and do well, then you will either rack up a million Planeswalker Points or get your byes through Pro Points. It only hurts those who attend multiple GP's, but still only earn 150 or so points at a time (for example, a 4-5 record at a 1025-person event is worth 160 points).
I dunno about that, I think it's relevant for a lot of people who can't travel to every GP in their geographical region and so have fewer opportunities for top performances. There are a lot of pros at every GP that don't even make Day 2. The simple reality is that a "good" performance and a "bad" performance is difficult to define using PWPs. The difference between a player who makes Day 2 and one who doesn't could be 8 PWPs, just as it is for any other cutoff - T64, T8, whatever.
Where the threshold changes will really have an effect is in how it affects the initial behavior of players - i.e., whether they bother or not. I'm sure there are a lot of players who look at 400 pwps or 1500 pwps and are just like, there's no way I'm making that, so I'm just not going to bother. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that the impact will come from how it affects the effort.
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First-round byes now require 400 seasonal PWPs (up from 300).
Second-round byes now require 750 seasonal PWPs (up from 600).
Third-round byes now require 1500 PWPs (up from 1200).
I guess the current thresholds were too low, even after multiplier restructuring.
Guess it means we've all got some more grinding to do, although imo it feels almost unfair that attending (and performing any better than horribly) one GP will almost instantly qualify you for a bye to the next, while for those who's never been before don't really stand a chance.
I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing though, in round 1 you're likely to be paired with someone of equal experience (who didn't qualify for a bye) anyway.
Edit:
~_Angel[us]_~ brings up an extremely relevant point that while the threshold increased, the length of the GP season increased significantly as well.
To put this into perspective, there were 97 days in the last GP season (December 26, 2011-April 1, 2012) and 139 days this season (April 2-August 19), a 43.2% increase while the thresholds only increased 33% and 25% for first and second/third round byes, respectively.
Just a Day 2 at a GP doesn't make you bye worthy, in my opinion. A day 2 plus a couple of strong finishes at a PTQ do, and the new thresholds better reflect that.
If you're an American, sure. Last season 17 New Zealanders got 400 points, 3 of whom got the 750 for a 2nd bye under the new system. With the previous system in place 24 got a bye and the same 3 got 2 byes.
I can get that wizards might prefer 2809 US players rather than 4937 US players getting one or more byes, because that might create some significant issues at tournaments.
But the big point scoring tournaments regularly available in the US aren't anywhere near as frequent elsewhere. That makes the point thresholds kinda awkward in other places. Happily there are at least a decent amount of grand prix trials for regional GPs to help the top local players get byes.
Available byes dropped by ~50% this season, now that the hard line 15k byes left (more like 16k+ with the Worlds split.) Apparently this worst case scenario and enough complaints from name players was enough to justify raising the bar.
Disappointing that WotC is not learning from not opting into knee-jerk reactions based on small community feedback.
I guess this puts it more in line with ratings-based byes, though, as the number of wins you needs goes up quite a bit.
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Quite true. I fell just short of achieving the 300 points first bye last PWP season by playing just FNMs exclusively. Had I made the trek down to the Seattle GP I easily would have had enough points.
Sadly I agree with this. There's an awful lot done for the pros...they didn't want to grind GPs after PWPs so it got fixed. Then they didn't want friends to miss out after a good season, so we got sponsorship. Then they were worried they wouldn't cash due to byes so now this is fixed.
Geese and golden eggs spring to mind. Especially considering how amazingly fast Wizards fixed FNM Championship, the closest thing to an amateur level even we have (oh that's right, those who multi-queued them back in the first 3 months have an unassailable lead still).
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Exactly this. I can't believe more people aren't mentioning this.
In the first season of this year, we had fourteen weeks. This meant that you needed to average 21.4 points per week for one bye and 42.9 points per week to average two byes.
The second seasons consists of twenty weeks. This requires 20.0 points per week for one bye and 37.5 points per week for two byes.
Make no mistake about it: the limits went down, not up.
This season our "GP" is the one is Costa Rica so 99% of the players in the country don't care about points.
Way to go Wiz, keep showing that you don't like your Latin American players.
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Too bad those events will just be feeding the rich, as they have their own PWP threshold for entry. Aren't they the same multiplier as PTQs though, at 5x?
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Europe is a big place with many different experiences.
Which is why France has a threshold of 300 PWP for WMCQ but Slovenia has 50.
Regional PWP is probably the best answer for byes...although it starts to sound a lot like rating done based on the competition you play against. If only there was some kind of scaling rating that did this...
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That's not at all true. It rewards players who play well at GPs. Most of the people with 2 or 3 byes don't even play in small tournaments. They play strictly in GPs, and they don't even play in all of those.
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For the overwhelming majority of players, this is not an issue.
The extended amount of time means that there are more 1x events, more 3x events and more 5x events. Players who have a goal of getting one or two byes by Planeswalker Points are not flying across the world to attend Grand Prix: they are grinding 1x, 3x, and 5x events to accumulate the points slowly. For these people, the reduced number of Grand Prix during this span is not significant. The extra time is.
Besides, whether or not you have a Grand Prix in your area during the season is pretty much a crap shoot. If you don't, then oh well. If you do, then it's actually the previous season's points that you are more concerned about.
The reduced number of Grand Prix during this season only hurts a very small subset of all Magic players: players who travel to multiple Grand Prix and are mediocre. If you attend multiple GP's and do well, then you will either rack up a million Planeswalker Points or get your byes through Pro Points. It only hurts those who attend multiple GP's, but still only earn 150 or so points at a time (for example, a 4-5 record at a 1025-person event is worth 160 points).
Overall, there are more Planeswalker Points being handed out to players who care about them. I think the end result is even more byes than the previous season, because the thresholds weren't raised high enough.
ps- Who else thinks that the Helvault is filled with Planeswalker Points?
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300 PWPs is not a lot and the 5x is just the same as PTQs, so it's not like the point-earning opportunities for those with <300 PWPs are diminished. In fact there are several PTQs around the US during the same weekends as the WMCQs (and personally, I'd rather go to a PTQ than WMCQ). The reason I said they are "little more" than PTQs is that presumably they'll have more rounds, so that those interested in farming PWPs could have more rounds in which to do so.
This assumes that the reason for raising the bar is in fact that the season is longer. Also note I was making a general comment on the changes in all three thresholds overall; presumably the reason for such a change is that Wizards thought players earned far more pwps than they thought they would. I don't think there's any question that fewer GPs (which, pointedly, means fewer accessible GPs) will lower the number of points at all levels of play. Certainly no one is saying that it will do so for ALL players.
Of course, maybe the behavior of players for whom the 300->400 pwps is actually relevant is why the 1-bye threshold got raised by 33% while the others "only" got raised by 25%. In any case, it's all speculation if Wizards doesn't explain their decision, and it'll be interesting to see what they do for Season 3 even if we still don't know exactly why.
I dunno about that, I think it's relevant for a lot of people who can't travel to every GP in their geographical region and so have fewer opportunities for top performances. There are a lot of pros at every GP that don't even make Day 2. The simple reality is that a "good" performance and a "bad" performance is difficult to define using PWPs. The difference between a player who makes Day 2 and one who doesn't could be 8 PWPs, just as it is for any other cutoff - T64, T8, whatever.
Where the threshold changes will really have an effect is in how it affects the initial behavior of players - i.e., whether they bother or not. I'm sure there are a lot of players who look at 400 pwps or 1500 pwps and are just like, there's no way I'm making that, so I'm just not going to bother. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that the impact will come from how it affects the effort.
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