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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

I listed the extreme on both ends. If I was the organizer of your league I would sit down with the player base and talk out the best way to deal with this process.

Submitting every other month cuts the fee in half. Submitting quarterly eliminates 75% of the fees. IMO there's a happy medium here where players are okay spending $2 per year on this, or $4, or $6, but not $12. Each player base values the 'fun' of rising in the ranks differently, so YMMV on this based on the other members of your league.

To turn the sarcasm off, there is NO WAY I would limit the feedback on this to 'Pinside only' as the determining factor.

The one good thing about dictatorships is that they get overthrown. Looking forward to meeting the person that starts the next competitive pinball organization to take things to the next level. As a player I will definitely enjoy the fruits of their labor.

Median was rank 186 . . . so I guess this means it is catered to the elites?

We have a group of ~20 Country Directors and 47 State/Provincial reps. I value their feedback more than my own and have avoided implementing things that didn't get a majority of support from the volunteers on our staff.

I mean . . .

large_uAvG211cGNKSFyPzXFVMZzjkBB8 (resized).jpg

Paul Okruhlica is in our Google Group as are all the other State Reps.

This was the first year we created the State Rep google group, so I just copy/pasted the list of 2016 reps.

My apologies, totally forgot about your situation up there. Let me get an invite to both you and Tom so you guys can poke around the message board.

Lol

Undecided. We will likely keep the $20 fee per SCS qualifier so we can "guarantee" bigger prize pools. All the endorsement funds collected would simply add to the total we've seen in previous years.

Should we generate enough funds to show it's working then we'll dump the $20 fee going forward from there.

So THAT made me spit out my coffee from laughing so hard

We have about 20,000 Raw Thrills stickers here in stock at work that we sell for more than $1 a pop in the 'real world'.

If anyone in Wisconsin wants to purchase one of these from us, I will go ahead and waive your endorsement fee for the event you're playing in.

That puts the work back on me . . . no thanks

Gotta put my TD's to work!

It would add $320 to whatever the prize pool is. So for Illinois if the SCS Pot was funded to $680, then the total purse available for the State Championship would be $1000 . . . minus the $16 endorsement fee that the State Championship has to pay in order to fund the following year's SCS pot

The $1 will now go to IFPA administrative fees.

For those interested in competing for bigger prizes, I will fund those prize pools out of my own pocket.

Better?

I do have two kids to feed, and my 3 year old daughter is an absolute ANIMAL

My wife is totally NOT into shoes, yet my daughter is shoe CRAZY . . . we have no idea how this happened. I blame Disney?

We also hope they don't get lost.

If they do we have our "Stage 2" for 2019 ready to go with our "Professional" ($1 fee) and "Amateur" (no fee) systems so people who are serious can enjoy one rankings system, while the larger group of non-serious players can enjoy our second rankings system.

I don't think you're a dick. I think you're EXTREMELY passionate

Got 8 months to decide if we go this route or not. Time will tell!

Larry smells a chink in the armor!!!! Damn you Larry!

This wouldn't be a player option.

It would be a TD option to either run a PRO points event or an AMATEUR points event.

The results would be in completely separate databases so the WPPR system as you know it would continue as the "PRO" system, earn IFPA related rewards, SCS qualifying, IFPA WC qualifying.

The "AMATEUR" rankings would start from scratch. The first event submitted would result in a new number one player on the Amateur list.

There would be no cross pollination between the two.

Yeah so I have to defend myself here a bit.

We do not sit back and watch the results roll in. I'm a TD myself and the work I do for IFPA DWARFS the work I have to do as a TD.

IFPA work for Becker and myself includes answering 50 emails a day with questions, comments, etc, along with approving 10 calendar submissions and 10 results submissions per day (on average). Most submissions take time to correct and make sure it's within our guidelines for approval.

Easily 2 hours of work every single day of the year, no breaks.

There wouldn't be PRO players and AMATEUR players.

It wouldn't be completely separate systems. Completely separate events.

Everyone playing in the AM events would be tied for 1st in the world in rank because the history of events hasn't started.

Under this plan there would be no player opt out of any event. Players could simply choose to compete in any event they want, and have two separate world rankings. One would be as a PRO and one would be as an AMATEUR.

TD's would decide in advance when they submit to the calendar which calendar of events their event will show up on.

The decision has to be made before hand, not after.

I'm not fully convinced that an AMATEUR system that means "nothing" with respect to any IFPA player perks would be of interest to players, and at this point I don't think players realize how they feel about being world ranked, and won't until they opt out of events next year and see what that feels like to them.

Your feedback is perfect. For your community you plan on finding a way to make The endorsement fee work.

For everyone else that still wants to play competitive pinball for free ... here's the best question I can ask:

Did the IFPA build this house of cards that is competitive pinball, and with a new "Amateur" ranking system that doesn't exist yet, we will somehow stop everyone from playing competitively who don't want to pay this fee?

IMO that gives FAR TOO MUCH CREDIT for what the IFPA has done to help move the competitive pinball scene forward.

If we're only a piece of the pie in terms of growing the sport, we're only a piece of the pie missing if we ever disappeared for good (regardless of this change being implemented or not).

Currently more than half of pinside favors this change as is??? I assumed we would polling at closer to 20-25% approval. Consider me SHOCKED at the level of support this has so far.

I don't actually put any stock in Pinside polls and assume most of the "for" votes are just anti-Hilton votes

I'm not concerned with Bowen disagreeing. We had a good chat this morning and we're simply agreeing to disagree on this. I believe even he thinks I'm actually doing what I believe is in the best interest of moving the sport forward. He just wouldn't process the same direction and I totally respect that.

Perhaps being totally transparent wasn't our best path through this . . . but that's just how I roll.

If I did this as an "administrative fee" to pay for our expenses, and everyone was okay with it, then I guess I'll learn my lesson with our next announcement having to do with collecting any funds.

I absolutely value Hilton's comments and Bowen's comments, as I have with our previous 100 announcements over the past 11 years that typically get received with a giant "WTF" to start.

In Illinois . . . not being able to find 15 other players that want to give $200 to Zach

Hopefully not in Wisconsin

For the 50 people interested out of 500

Sorry but that's just false.

The numbers I've seen in WA don't reflect them funding the National prize pool with even close to $8k.

Now THAT cracked me up big time

LOL yes it's "much preferred". Seems to be 'more people like this idea than don't like this idea'? Seems the Pinside poll only really matters if it shows disapproval?

If/when we do registered player accounts, I think Dave's idea is great. It will be a completely separate thing and we can use those funds for other things. Maybe we pay my volunteers? Maybe we donate all of it to charity?

The problem with Dave's numbers are that they aren't reality. Out of our 50,000 players, only 4,000 of them have "registered" accounts (this meaning we have their email on file). Somehow thinking that more players will pay an annual fee to be on the website when they already aren't registering for free doesn't line up with me.

So in theory I can agree with you (and Dave) that this idea is a good one, and that someday we may implement something like it . . . in addition to what we're talking about with the endorsement fee.

Not at all, totally got the point.

My point was that on my list of IFPA stuff for the future was BOTH of these items (endorsement fee for EVENTS, and premium account fee for PLAYERS).

There are many places where the location is sponsoring this $1 per player. Many more communities are taking it out of the prize pool so the winners simply get paid 'less' for their winnings.

In both of these examples no players are ever asked if they want to pay. They simply show up, pay whatever the 'normal' entry fee for the event is, and play.

It's by design. For a world ranking we wanted to limit the amount that someone could 'point to death' the system in determining who are the best players in the world.

For the SCS, it's not about finding the 'best ranked players in the state'. We want to allow ALL players to compete for a chance at those 16 spots. "Better players" don't necessarily make the cut because lesser skilled players can always play more and more and more and more to make the cut.

IMO it opens up the number of players we can reach with SCS qualifying knowing they can overcome any deficit in the standings by just playing more.

I assume you would feel the same way about the poll you started if it was 30-70 against?

An Empirical Evaluation of the IFPA Endorsement Fee:

http://spacecitypinball.com/blog/WPPR_Fee_Analysis.html

Props to Phil Grimaldi for some data mining . . . good lord.

That statement was made in context of me being a TD that had to deal with a player fee similar to what we plan on imposing.

I just wanted to provide an example that I personally had to go through to help explain that I know what it will feel like to handle logistically.

This is absolutely correct. In fact our old WPPR system limited locations to only submitting annually. If they submitted more than once a year, their points would be divided out by however many events they held.

Rather than shifting back to that 'old way', we leave that option open to the individual tournament directors to figure out. They are more than welcome to submit annually which would make the fee $1 per player per year.

I was comparing our old way of having that 25 point base value for the year regardless of the number of events.

Under the current system you're limited by TGP (max 100%). So there's room to optimize if you run monthlies that grade out to 32% each to submit them quarterly and not lose any value. Beyond that you would be giving up value (if you submitted annually for example).

1) No. Your TD is welcome to run that selfie league as a non-endorsed event and no $1 would need to be paid. It sounds like this is a perfect example of an event that doesn't need IFPA endorsement and will continue in 2018 regardless. We see that as a win as more people are playing competitive pinball even if they wouldnt become IFPA rated players.

2) I've seen a pretty high turnover at these events. Rarely are we getting the same State Champ every year. In Illinois at least we've had 3 different winners in the 4 years. Other States would have to speak up to their turnover. I've expressed my opinions that media coverage drives interest at the grass roots level. There more impressions you can land, the more people you can make aware of the game existing. We're focusing on proven methodology to drive that increased traffic in media coverage. For game tutorials check out what the PAPA guys do. We work together quite a bit to make sure our efforts don't overlap one another.

THIS 100%. The things we're doing at IFPA is not mutually exclusive with the efforts that anyone else can do. Those efforts are done in tandum and all build towards positive things for competitive pinball.

Hilton is starting his own ranking system for Wisconsin which means that group is still being motivated to compete. That happens while we focus on building awareness of the game at a more macro level, using proven methods that have already worked for our Big Buck franchise.

Fighting the urge to say exactly this

I have no problem sending you all the data needed to build the rankings yourself (which of course I did already). We're not open to officially supporting non-IFPA related activity through our IFPA website, but I'm personally supportive of anyone wanting to do this on their own to promote pinball within their local community.

As you mentioned previously, it shouldn't be too challenging to get this started on your side with a couple of people smarter than the both of us.

It doesn't take Bowen suppressing himself from IFPA for us to realize that there's a large group of people that don't support this "new idea".

There's also a large group of people that DO support this "new idea".

I'm curious what you would do if "some people" told you something you were doing was a bad idea, when YOU thought it was a good idea? Do you abandon a cause you believe in because "some people" don't think it's going to work?

We plan on doing exactly what you mentioned, and that's figuring it out for ourselves based on actual results of what goes down after the implementation.

Exactly this. And yes, BBH isn't Pinball . . . but as someone who has been highly involved in both communities I personally see a ton of similarities. There's a path here where I see BBH, Pinball, Golden Tee, etc. fighting TOGETHER for sponsorship of the "Arcade E-Sports" franchise.

What "people" want really depends on the perspective of the person. To you, you've already mentioned the SCS doesn't attract players in your area, and that's when it's FREE. So I'm not surprised from your perspective that having IFPA be a paid service will do anything better than the free service already isn't doing for your community in particular.

https://www.ifpapinball.com/coming-2018-official-ifpa-challenge-matches/

Just FYI for anyone interested.

These matches are FREE, and have nothing to do with the endorsement fee.

We have some ideas for bigger plans with the Ratings metric in the future but waiting to see if this takes off or not.

I like the idea of people hanging out and playing together, while this option is available with no notice needed to us for any given night.

With the impending death of the WPPR system who knows .... This could be the IFPA true ranking system of the future

It's not for WPPR points. It's for the IFPA Ratings system (a completely separate metric that we track).

That list by RATING is available here:

https://www.ifpapinball.com/rankings/overall.php?s=r&t=100