John, I think you might have read some things that weren't actually intended. In fact, I'm not even sure who you were directing some of that toward. But we all know by now that you're a pistol so it's no big deal either way.
In any case, I wanted to go a little more deeply into what I said about the current "Top 12" main lineup placement scheme being flawed. At least in 2013.
At the KO1, there was a pretty straightforward group of invitees. And except for Scott Kessler not being invited, I don't think there were any ruffled feathers.
For the KO2, the million qualifier was fine because nobody else that I can remember at the moment, except maybe Mike G., was even close. Ross could have put up a million, but in my understanding, he didn't have time to get it done. In any case, the KO2 cutoff was pretty smooth.
But there's a big problem right now in the player pool which makes the cutoff an issue that should be addressed. Too late to do anything about the KO3, but I'm thinking about next time.
If 12th place were 1,000,000 and 13th place were 950,000 it would represent a significant difference in ability, and there would be no problem. But that's not the way things are.
Much of the field right now is super-tightly clustered in the same area, which, unfortunately, happens to be right around the cutoff.
Check out spots 11-16 on our "unofficial" DKF leaderboard:
11 1,019,600 Steve Wiltshire
12 1,012,800 Kyle Goewert
13 1,010,400 Ben Falls
14 1,008,800 Svavar Gunnar Gunnarsson
15 1,007,600 Robbie Lakeman
16 1,005,700 Phil Tudose
That's six spots, with a TOTAL range of 13,900 points. A tiny little 1-2K separating each player from 12th to 16th. We're talking less than TEN POINTS PER SCREEN over a full game!
While John is absolutely right that there is a huge difference in ability between 850K and 1M (or 1M and 1.1M), there is literally ZERO difference in ability between this particular range of scores.
Nobody ever said that 1M+ came easy.
But the difference between 12th and 13th CAN come easy nowadays, especially given how random this damn game is. This is the problem I see with Mitch thinking that the wildcards should be (for lack of a better word) "punished". There's not enough of a difference in ability between all of the players hovering around the cutoff for 12th to deserve a massive privilege over 13th.
A few extra 800 smashes in a game that is played otherwise identically should NOT be what gets #12 into the main lineup and #13 tossed into the wildcards. There's no difference in ability there; only a difference in the randomness.
I agree with Dave when he says that "you have to cut it off somewhere." But the cutoff can be done more intelligently.
It really wouldn't be that difficult.
First, you give an auto-spot to anybody who is CLEARLY above the field (the 1,050-plus players). As of now, that's 7 people. No problem.
This would leave 5 spots, which is where you run into this massive pile-up of effectively identical personal bests between 8th and damn near 20th.
So what do you do? How do you make it fair?
Simple:
you force 5 players from within that group to distinguish themselves from the rest in a way that's a little more solid than a single personal best score and you give KO spots 8-12 to those players.
There are several ways to determine those. You could have a tournament, or a series of tournaments. You could have each player submit 3 big games, and go by the average of these 3 scores (as opposed to just their PB). Etcetera.
Doing this would also force players to demonstrate consistency, which to me is WAY more important than an isolated personal best, especially when it comes to tournament play.
And if you don't wanna do that stuff, fine. Prove that you're better than the crush group and get 1,050. Even if you have to lower your pace to do it. That way players like Dave or Ross can shut down any accusations that they're "hiding behind high pace."
The fact that the cut-off is NOT more stringent is exactly why I LIKE the wildcard format this year, and why I think it's fine if the wildcards get a lot of time, maybe TOO MUCH time, on the machines. Some think it's unfair, but I think the
opposite is what would be unfair, because the lower-ranked of the top 12 are not being asked to do enough to decisively differentiate themselves from the best of the wildcards.
I'm actually okay with the idea of a dedicated machine being a perk, and the wildcards being significantly disadvantaged, BUT only if all 12 in the main lineup
truly earn that perk, and not just because 12th place managed to get a few extra timer ticks on a single pie factory that 13th place didn't.
Like Dan said, I would like to see qualification for the lower-ranked players move toward more of an aggregate model, relying on an actual sample size of multiple games and/or multiple tournaments, as opposed to a simple, one-dimensional "personal best." The personal bests are just too close!
Besides, we all know how random one game can be, not just for the bad, but for the
good. Shaun Boyd himself, for example, openly admitted that his 1,037 game was "very lucky." Allen got 540K once. How many times has he gotten anywhere NEAR that since?
We should do more to respect the randomness of the game and consider it when thinking about qualification criteria. We also need to start placing more importance on consistency.
