Technically these are three simple (and awesome) ways to improve qualifying for the Pro Tour, but its the same idea. The PTQ scene has exploded in the last two years, making the dream of qualifying and playing in a Pro Tour harder than ever before. With many PTQs now going to nine rounds of swiss, it would be very nice if there were some simple and better ways to get to the big game. Here are some that I've been mulling over for a while:
1) Turn all Specific Grand Prix trials into Generic Grand Prix Trials. This is done at PTs and GPs, why not do it locally also? It's frustrating to see Grand Prix trials in your area, only to have them for a GP that you can't attend, when there might be one you could attend later in the year. It would create a market for GPTs to be held FAR more often, and encourage people to play in them far more. And more opportunities to play Magic is a good thing.
2) Have Grand Prix award generic invites - Again, one of the worst part about Grand Prix is that you can end up qualifying for a Pro Tour that you can't afford to attend. Getting $500 for 16th is nice, but if that ticket to Japan is 1,100, you could easily be priced out. It would also let Wizards hold Grand Prix with different (and more varied) formats than just Qualifier Season with a few Legacy events thrown in. I, for one, would LOVE to see another 2HG or some other team format Grand Prix without requiring WotC to figure out how to make a Pro Tour mixed format teams. (Though, I would love to see a Teams PT as well) I'd even argue that it would be better to vary the Grand Prix season formats from the PTQ season formats just to give people a break. Limited in the middle of the standard season? Yes, please.
3) Qualify the top 25 unqualified "PTQ Road Warriors" a season. WotC could work this out through some kind of point system similar to that of PT points. You get 6 points for a PTQ top8, 8 points for a top 4 and 10 for a finals (for instance). If you didn't make GPs generic, you could include points for top 32/64. You could also add some number for playing PTQ or GPs (though this might require a lot more record keeping). Maybe more, maybe less on the exact number of points (you don't want to make one finals better than two top8s), but you get the idea. The people who are going blood, sweat and tears to qualify, hitting eight, nine, or ten qualifiers per season and doing consistently well can be rewarded. No ticket, no hotel, just the opportunity to play in the Pro Tour. You can even track this weekly on The Week That Was and get people excited about grinding out PTQs. And let me tell you what, making to early top8s is going to convince a lot of people to get fired up about the season.
A lot of people might think that rating invites do the same thing that the Road Warrior awards would, but that just isn't the case. It's basically impossible to get up to a qualifying rating playing in PTQs alone. You need a strong run at a GP or PT to get over the 2020 hump (which is where you really stop gaining any kind of meaningful points per win at PTQs) and up to the 2050s-2070s to qualify.
There would be a lot of details to work on out this. Ideally there would also need to be some kind of balance to make up for region (otherwise it could easily become an extra 25 slots in the Midwest/northeast that have a disproportionately large number of PTQs compared to other regions of the US/world). But it would be awesome to REALLY reward the PTQ grinders who might be good enough to play on the PT, but can’t handle the variance of needing to go something around 10-1-1 in a tournament to qualify.
What do you think? Would these suggestions or something like it inspire you to work harder at the game? What small changes to the qualifying system would get you to go to a few more PTQs/Grand Prix a year?
Friday, March 5, 2010
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