I'm sort of going the opposite of Mitch here.
I like that this new format blurs the line between the top 12 and the wildcard division in the "dedicated machine" sense.
I think it's a line that should be blurred because over the last year, the gap in skill between the best of the wildcard players and many among the top 12 has narrowed to the point of being imperceptible.
That being the case, we should be trying to mitigate, not exacerbate, the significant privilege the 10th-12th place players get over players who are only a few thousand points behind them in terms of personal best. Machine access should be more of a gradation than a sharp cutoff.
"Top 12" is just so arbitrary. Especially since a one-time personal best game (which also requires a bureaucratic verification process) is a highly-flawed criteria for KO qualification anyway. But that's a post in itself.
John and Eric's format gives the best of the wildcards a way of getting more time on the machines, which they deserve. Again, several of the wildcards are at least as good as some of the players in the top 12.
Does anybody really think that a player who manages to get almost a million in a single-day online tourney (which will probably describe several in the top 9), then goes on to defend his position in a 16-way standoff at the KO does NOT deserve his own dedicated machine for a single day, but meanwhile it's perfectly fair for somebody who got a little over a million, only one time, to get his own machine for TWO days?
Yes, they both did something different to get their own machine, but it's pretty close, especially with how high these wildcard scores are going. In fact, I would argue that the Day 3 wildcarders probably have a harder job.
I'm okay with the Kong Off itself being cutthroat, simply because it must be, but am a fan of machine access being more equitable, because it can be, and it should be.
Time to be blunt: "the 12 best" just doesn't reflect reality in 2013.
Personally, I see five categories.
1. Two megabeasts (Saglio, Willms)
2. Three superbeasts (Chien, Lemay, Wiebe)
3. This third group is a big group. This is a cluster of more than a dozen very good players who have gotten between 975K and 1050K, but who are mostly relatively close to one another (though there are definitely a few who are "captains" of this group and on the upper end of it).
4. Post-killscreen (or "doublehammer or bust") players who are well on their way into the "cluster" group and several of which will get there by KO3.
5. Pre-killscreen/singlehammer players.
And then there's Ross and Billy, who don't quite fit into any of the categories in this scheme for their own specific reasons... Ross is kind of an enigma (his PB comes nowhere close to reflecting his actual ability) and Billy deserves an eterna-machine simply because he's the reason any of this is happening at all.
As a collective, the five players in groups 1 and 2, quite frankly, totally outclass and dominate the rest of the field, and I'd go as far as to call the KO3 for one of those five (not sure which, but one of them) right now.
People always say "with the randomness, it's anybody's game." But after what I saw at the KO2, I just can't believe that anymore. There IS a level of difference. Wiebe got almost a million the first day, then did it TWICE the next day. Similar with Dean and Jeff. These guys were running circles around everybody else. Vincent and Hank were off of their best during the tourney, but we know what they can do. Again, any one or two of them might be off for a weekend, but the others will pick up the slack, making them totally unstoppable as a group. They're the Gang of Five!
As for the third group, there are now just too many players crowded into it, and more are on the way. There's too much intermingling of ability between some top 12ers and some wildcarders for it to be fair to exile so many of the wildcarders to a deep second-class status when they're starting to mash up with the first-class (especially since there's really a "super-first class" now that's crushing the "lower first class," and even more decisively than the lower first class is crushing the second class). It stands to reason, therefore, that there should be more of a mash-up on the machines too.
It's not like a 300K player would be surviving to Day 3 and getting his own machine. The dedicated Day 3 machines will go to players like Phil Tudose, who I'd easily put in a horse race against anybody below the "Gang of Five." People like that will be able to do serious damage on the leaderboard because (unlike at the KO2) they're actually going to be given the time and the space.
