This was kinda my thinking about why I like the increased time/availability for wildcards.
There is a big skill plateau happening right now at the "million and change" mark, with plenty of wildcard players who are just as capable (if not more) as much of the main lineup of taking a top 10 scoreboard position for the weekend. There are just too many good players now.
In a year or two it's going to be flattened/diluted even further. Something should be done to reflect that.
I honestly think it might be time to start moving away from a "best in the world" model, where certain people are pedestalized to get dedicated machines/special treatment, and maybe do the Kong Off more like a poker tournament. Or like Funspot, where you just go and you play and the best man wins.
3 days, make it open enrollment, no "main lineup", no "wildcards," everybody just starts on Day 1 playing amongst everybody else, and the field gets cut down each day based on scores.
Or you could start the field-whittling process in online tourneys, the way the wildcards are doing.
Just separate the Kong Off qualification/format completely from the TG scoreboard.
Then you don't have to worry about any of this "top 12" business anymore, who's ranked, who isn't, whether it's MAME, arcade, etc. etc. At the expense of a few egos, it would really solve a lot of problems! I can already sense that we may be about to have a battle with Richie/Jourdan over this stuff and it's a totally unnecessary battle.
Plus, as Hank said in another thread, nobody uses their dedicated machine for the whole weekend anyway! After Dean got 1,079 on Day 1 (when many of us, including him probably, thought he'd just killed the tournament), he walked for almost the entire rest of the day. Billy barely played! There was a LOT of dead time on those machines, which other players could have been making use of.
