2017 the Death of the Selfie League.

Will the IFPA allow Belly Putters for PinGolf Events?

- Certain formats (Selfie Leagues, TOPS Tournaments, etc) rely on players submitting their own results without the verification of a TD or authorized scorekeeper on site. Any qualifying format that includes “unverified” results where a TD, league official, or authorized scorekeeper is not present to record their score, will not have the qualifying portion included in the TGP calculation. The IFPA will classify these qualifying formats as strictly for seeding purposes, with only the finals format counting towards the TGP calculation.

As in the 20% cap for unlimited qualifying and cutting the field in half, or does that also include the 4%/game for those that are available to play?

not really... Just decreases the TGP to zero for qualifying. Still will be lots of selfie leagues because they are fun to play in.

I will say it is really sad to see this format stripped of value since so many like it and it seems to really help to bring out new people and introcuce them to competitive play. 50% value of qualifying games would seem to be a better compromise than 0%.

I think what Josh is saying is qualifying games will not count.

good question. If the unlimited qualifying still earns 20% then it seems fair.

They should kill off these leagues entirely...there are players in the top 100 with most of their points coming from leagues. They are glorified attendance prize WPPR factories.

lame

It's because I've messed it up every time I submit, isn't it?

I will say that EVERY event has the ability for people to cheat the system. Even experienced scorekeepers can miss a beneficial malfunction or a player gaming the system. The self policing of selfie leagues and threat of being eliminated form all events seemed to take care of all possible cheating in my experience. Taking the qualifying value to zero is a bit extreme IMO.

There should be a compromise since there are so many benefits to these type of events.

It's also given my location a nice % increase in coin drop since I've started them. I'm going to double the size of my finals from 4 players to 8 to mostly make up for the loss of qualifying. If we could get to 16 players that would have happened already, but it's a small following for now. That's something that is hard to balance; I have no idea what NYC finals look like, but their numbers dwarf us so we will be affected by any corrective action.

My events tend to be 3 points if normal participation happens.

I'm just basing this on what I've seen - players in the top 100 who have virtually all of their points coming from what is basically a participation trophy. I haven't seen a compelling reason why these leagues are allowed to exist from a competitive standpoint, though I do appreciate it's giving locations more coin drop.

I understand I could participate if I'd like but dedicating one day a week to this and basically buying WPPRs isn't my idea of a good time. I prefer actual one day or weekend tournaments.

They keep chiseling away at these superleagues...eventually at some point they'll do just do what they should and kill them.

Kill them with fire.

I can see the point for the top 100 players who get most/all of their active results from NY Superleague. The problem here is that the NY one has somebody there to verify scores, so they won't be affected by this. So NYC will still be heads above.

I have many local players who struggle with work schedules. They say the #1 appeal is the convenience of being able to come in and submit scores. If they qualify and show up for the finals (most of the time) great. If not, they come in 4th for the month, even if they qualified 1st. I give away a growler and fill token to the winner, so maybe a change in points won't matter that much. But, I do have several players who are very interested in the state ranking points. Many couldn't care less what their INTL rank is, but making AZ state finals is a big deal. One year, Mark and Will will be dethroned and a few Tucson players are looking to make that claim.

I can see the people who don't know what to do and play a game to get on the list. I can see the people who know exactly what's going on putting up a score on anything and everything. What I can't see is a player who knows exactly what is going on and doesn't play a full card. Is that actually a thing? To correct this, NYC will put everyone on blast to do 50% of the games. Do you have Brian making a sniffer script to audit their logs?

Sure

Sure. Plenty of people end up playing in these "leagues" either on a whim, without really knowing what they are doing, or in some cases, more or less without their knowledge. Places with a lot of street traffic can take advantage of this to pad their league with players who won't be coming back.

It's not just about playing a full card. But I think this will require people to show up to at least 2 weeks of SuperLeague per month.

I think it's great to hold the open qualifying leagues to some verification standards. Makes perfect sense to me.

Hmm I wonder if Superleague will drop their number of qualifying games to make it easier for casuals to hit 50% participation and make up the difference toward max TGP in playoffs.

I'm curious to see how proactive they will be about getting over that 50%.

I don't really have a point of contention, just need to know how to answer the questions that are sure to come. It's a bummer that we'll take a hit in points, but we can adapt a little.

I dig this update. This is the Superleague fix that I found WPPR 5.2 to be missing the mark on.

Also it makes sense that TGP is calculated per amount of play a game gets. I haven't read all of what you have for Pingolf yet, but it sounds very promising.

Interesting though, why the change to selfie leagues when both you and Shep are running one? Seemed like the boost to coin drop was a big point in its favor, but will it still be doing that with the lower value? Or do you have a format change in store for next year?

I have NEVER played in a supervised event where i could not easily cheat or take advantage of a game if i so wished. The distinction of supervised vs unsupervised as being physical precense at a location is silly.

This isn't about super honest, upstanding people like you. It's about keeping everybody honest, even those who aren't as impervious to temptation as yourself.

A compromise would be to limit the qualfying value, not make it a flat zero.

For someone trying to continue to build local competitive pinball and bring in new faces, the current format has been very successful. Limiting qualifying points just means more convoluted finals to maximize point value and make up for the loss of qualifying points.

Also not even necessarily a question of honesty. Without an official there to keep tabs on what's going on, players could be profiting from a beneficial malfunction without even knowing it. Our selfie league spans a broad range of skill levels (as I imagine most of these do?) and while I believe all my players are honest I'd guess about half of them don't have enough game knowledge to even recognize when they should stop playing in many cases.

No, it is yet another decision laid solidly in the bias of the top 100 mindset. Better idea would to make a maximal base value from qualifying. It is obvious that so many decisions are based soley to preserve the values of some at the top of rankings and to go against the guy running the nyc super point grab.

Bring it on. Im on fire. Might as well get all the bullshit out of the way now.

Let me guess. Cannot have a league play in two states and have your points get awarded in both states? Booooooooooo. Haha

No i was the first one to tell you how dumb it was before and that would be a welcomed change. Bout time u do something right

It will have just helped out my weird area of NKY and Cincinnati that is a desert for IFPA points. But I completely understand if that rule was being abused elsewhere.

I'm not sure I would consider it a hate fest, the 50% participation rule is something that a lot of people have wanted for a long time.

What a tease!

I'm incredibly excited to hear, the SCS is what I'd call the greatest new addition to competitive pinball that I can think of. Would love to see it improved upon even more.

IFPA sponsors are adding cash to each SCS prize pool?

Actual guess - Qualifers bumped from 16 to 24.

That would be awesome.

I think that would be a really bad idea. Most locations already have a tough enough time hosting 16 hardcore players. I think that is also a different calculation for each state and should be based on base number of active players (%) if they are tweaking it.

I think it would get way more noob players involved, and that's a great thing.

That is a good point and I agree. I already hosted a bolt on event last year where the top 48 in the state played and competed in an end of year event and it was a great success. Unfortunately many states dont even have SCS at this stage and lowering the barrier for hosting is probably still more important at this stage. As things continue to build then I could see opening up qualifying a bit deeper in a few more years.

Best of the Rest Champ Baby!

I think the 5.3 changes are good.

Josh, do you think we will see a drop off in Selfie Leagues?
I think this is the only negative. Not because of WPPR but because it could hurt some of the locations running them in that there could be a drop in the number of players.

I hope whomever hosts this year is able to carry on and do it again!

Do we even have a Milwaukee TD or location?