woulda killed you to include an "don't care/will wait and see" option?

still waiting for josh to show us this "well past 51% positive feedback" hes received. maybe its all in the seven comments that were posted on the ifpa page before commenting was locked LOL.

I havent read this thread but maybe you can wade through it and do the math for us...

http://tiltforums.com/t/ifpa-2018-changes/2586

It's mostly positive because the average number of events played per year in the US/Canada is 4.8 events per year.

For those players they are looking at a $4.80 charge to enjoy the IFPA site and everything that comes along with that (earning WPPR's, being ranked, having a personal archive of results, etc). At $5 per year they can rationalize this as not a big deal.

Why not then instead put a voluntary $5 membership fee on IFPA's site for "professional" player rankings, rather than hit everybody up at local events for fees?

So far, I have seen one positive comment out of hundreds between tiltforums and pinside.

Most people are not elite players. Most are average players and are never going to see state or national tournaments. While you might have support for bigger prize pots from the group of top elite players, average local players aren't too thrilled about it.

Averages are useless. What's the standard deviation?

Most people I know (none serious or pro players) player either 1-2 events a year or 20+

We have no interest in handling the logistics of 50,000 players and flagging those membership fees, when they start, when they end, processing those payments, etc.

Working with TD's I'm able to work with a much smaller group of people. Plus it's a group that is already dealing with the hurdles we put in place to endorse events (submitting to the calendar, submitting results, etc).

Average local players who don't win these events shouldn't be paying any fees if a TD takes the fee out of the funds collected at the tournament.

For example we just ran the IFPA Pin-Masters out in Dallas. It was a PAPA Circuit event that required us to pay a fee of $5 per player to earn Circuit points. We had 70 players participate and had to write a check to PAPA for $350. As TD I didn't ask all 70 players for an additional $5. In most cases those funds would be pulled out from the winners of the tournament.

Most of our announcements (especially on Pinside) start with huge disapproval ratings (mostly because Hilton accounts for most of the posts)

Remember the AVERAGE we're talking about. The feedback I'm getting from players that play in 5 or fewer events per year is that "$5 isn't a big deal per year". We're simply finding another path to collect those funds that don't put the logistics on IFPA Staff, but rather on the TD to help manage.

I'm not paying to watch a 40 year old throw a temper tantrum over a sling shot kicker not firing.

On the flip side, I have no interest in collecting $1 from each person, depositing it in my account, giving the IFPA my credit card number and then paying the bill.

Now I get to deal with the logistics of collecting the money and sending it to you.

As I said in the other thread, if this was to handle IFPA expenses, I wouldn't have an issue with the extra work. But it isn't. It's going to subsidize someone elses' trip to a tournament.

also it's the tax issues if say an TD is sending in over say $600 /year or a state TD takes in over $600 with a big bag of hurt if it goes over $10K for there pool. even more if the state TD is also doing other events with cash in and cash out to the same 3rd party.

Will IFPA cover someones legal fees if they need to pay them?

/jk obviously.

1mlwhh (resized).jpg

Would it have killed you to ask the op in a nicer way?

Copied from the other IFPA Shitstorm Thread (tm) . . . just to clarify where my vision is with where IFPA sits in 5 years:

We don't plan on screwing it up. We plan on making it better.

There's a path here where I see 3000 "AMATEUR" events per year, along with 500 "PRO" events per year feeding those systems concurrently.

Having an SCS at the "PRO" level for all the cash and glory, but also having an "AMATEUR" State Championship for recognition but without the issues of the cash at play. Inviting some players out to an "AMATEUR" National Championship isn't against the realm of possibility as well if we're already out there and setup for the "PRO" event to also take place.

The 'have your cake and eat it too' is my mission on this. Those that strictly want to play for fun can earn AMATEUR WPPR's and avoid all the fee nonsense. Those that want to take it more seriously can participate in "PRO" events at their choosing for PRO WPPR's.

Figuring out how to piece it all together will be the challenge once 2018 hits and we see how the 'market' reacts.

I think this is the "don't vote" option...

I can process and automate this process for you without too much troubles...

I demand more forums and more threads to discuss this!

Appreciate that. I'll be in touch when we implement our IFPA "Premium" player accounts . . . completely separate thing from our endorsement fee. That's been on the agenda for about 5 years but hasn't been seriously pursued yet.

10 years from now I can see both fees existing.

I really couldn't care less about a $1 fee for a tournament. I don't feel it will drive behavior one way or another. I will say I was hoping for some changes with league point structures though as I feel that those are way to valuable in the current state.

For instance, I shouldn't get the same points from winning a local league as I would for finishing top 16 in a major tournament like TPF. I really feel that league points should be half what they are at best. Last year I played in a league every month because i wanted a chance at SCS. This year I'll play a couple of months and will let things fall where they do. I know I'm probably on my own island here but its how I feel.

We're going to move forward with it. Even Pinside is polling 40% favorable which actually BLOWS MY MIND. I figured we would be at best 10-15% favorable.

What is yet to be determined is the implementation of a "Professional" and "Amateur" rankings system that can run concurrently to capture the lack of support for this "Pro only" version (should there be a lack of support after things take off in 2018).

We'll review Q1 2018 and see how it's going. If we feel we're losing too much of the audience that we've built up, we'll begin the process of working towards launching the "AMATEUR" rankings for the 2019 season, no fees, but still allowing players many of the perks of what they have today under our Pro-only system.

For petes sake, it's a dollar. The number of registered players on the ifpa site has increased more than 5 times the numbers they had 5 years ago. I for 1 am happy to pay a buck to have the ifpa helping to make league and tournament play better and more accessible to everyone. It's a buck people. Let it go.

or another choice of "are your ifpa points worth a dollar a tournament to you?"

Good, then every time you play in a tournament, send them $1. Why should a further burden be placed on the person running the tournament?

I'm not against it because of it being $1 or $5 or whatever. I'm against it because it's going to be a pain in my ass to deal with every time I run an event.

I'm also against it because of how the money is going to be used. It's going to be handed out to top tier players, which does nothing to attract new people to the sport. I'm the one spending time explaining to the players where their $1 goes, collecting the $1 and then submitting it to the IFPA. And it benefits my events how? Does it expose new people to our beloved sport? No.

Like I said, if they were using it for the benefit of everyone and attracted new people to the sport, I would be the first one to say "Hell yeah, I'll help".

Exactly.

You win the Internet for today. /EndArgument

Let's clarify this . . .

Here were the rankings of the 40 players that participated in Nationals a few weeks ago:

8 were ranked in the top 50
8 were ranked 51-100
24 were ranked 101-250
4 were ranked 251-500
4 were ranked 501-1000
7 were ranked 1001-5000
1 was ranked 13,671st

The average rank of those that participated was 1083rd.

How many players would you consider elite? What level is that cutoff?

Perhaps we're using the term "sport" rather loosely...

You can call it whatever you want.

Then you don't go to tournaments now anyway

From your list looks like aboot 250 and under

That's the absolute thing of it! There are weekly tourneys, sometimes multiple ones per week, in the San Diego scene. I'm pretty sure they're IFPA rated. So now what was once a $5 buy in is now $6, and that adds up.

It seems to punish people who play a lot.

Yep, rough farmer's math. 1 event per week is $50/year.

This is a meaningless number. What does that number jump to if you eliminate all the people that did just 1? As mentioned by another poster, without standard deviation or variance, average is a misleading number.

Really? Because the feedback I'm getting from those players is 'why should I pay into something that I won't be able to win. I don't want to pay for imaginary points'

But this isn't just for the elite. Based on what they were saying 75% of the collected fees go back to the state to award during the state championship. At the state level, a lot of people are able to compete for that, not just the elite. In Kansas, the majority of our players in the SCS were above the top 250 list.

I have played in all sorts of other competitive leagues, namely dart leagues. They collect MUCH more for the governing body and use it to make the championships a world class event, which in turn, brings more people into competitive darts. I would imagine it will have the same affect in pinball.

interesting how josh is just making up the math of how this will benefit everyone, and making up that there is positive feedback. this is just ego madness.

I think this element has been missing from the conversation.

$1

I'll buy that for a $1

This is the case any time a pending IFPA change is announced.

The more I hear the "$1", the more it assures me that this is a rich mans hobby. Rich, dismissive men.

All I see is that kid from Better Off Dead. "I want my two dollars!!!"

I'll stick to Pinside feedback only because of the huge interest in competitive pinball that is found here.

So positive feedback looks to be 39%. We will see if it hits 51% or else I'll nuke the whole thing?

So i play in 3 leagues a week and usually 2-4 tournaments per month. Does this mean i am going to be charged $4 a week to play pinball? thats 4*52=$208 a year in fees?!?!

This is absolutely false! they charge a flat fee to be a member per year and its only around $20-$30. I can play in 6 leagues a week and still only have to pay $20-30 a year to participate!

I would be ok with a flat fee of $5 as they claim is most people would only be out but $200+ is absolutely ridiculous!

oh no you di-int!

It ultimately comes down to how the TD's plan on reporting those results.

Our league meets monthly, but submit results annually, so our fee would be $36 for the year, versus $36 per month ($432 fee) if we submitted every session.

But for each event???