Is this serious? I suppose the sky is falling too…
They’re still having fucking Call of Cthulhu tournaments at Worlds. There’s, what, a couple dozen players who travel to Worlds for that? Netrunner is so popular that they are limiting entry :\
We have no way of knowing why FFG can’t/won’t cooperate. They’re organizing a 5-day event that is holding tournaments for 8 games. That’s a huge amount of work by many people. Maybe it’s someone not wanting to take on any extra work they don’t have to, maybe it truly is logistical/reservation issues, who knows.
There aren’t a couple dozen. Call of Cthulu worlds has 4 to 6 people. If this company knew what the hell they were doing, they’d be thrilled to have struck gold with netrunner and would be doing all they could to help grow it. But they aren’t, they’re still allocating the same number of game developers to call of fucking Cthulu as ANR. My post is not serious, but pointing out that they hold ‘worlds’ for games that no one plays should not be indicative of them knowing what’s best for them as a company or the community of their largest game. Their handling of ANR has been decidedly poor, and actually seems to be getting worse every year. Prize support actually dropped from 2013 to 2014. It’s absurd to think how well netrunner could be doing if FFG gave a toss.
It might not be a great deal of hassle to put aside a seat or two.
But do you not concede that doing so might set a precedent that could easily lead to hassle? I can certainly see how that could be a worry.
A few seats are put aside for this fan championship. Fine.
But then a different championship circuit wants a few seats put aside for them too. Is that fine?
Now my local game store runs a three-man tournament and asks for a FFG seat reservation for the winner. Is that fine?
Of course the other LCGs get wind of this and unofficial tournaments from seven other games communities start asking for reserved seats for their unofficial tournaments. Is that still no hassle?
If I were trying to organise what will be a complicated weekend anyway, I’d be worried about setting that precedent!
More to the point would it still be the World Championship as FFG envisioned it? It’s a tournament that’s supposed to be the pinnacle of Organised Play. At all levels the winners of previous levels (Store->Regional->National) are there, yes, but the vast majority of participants come through open entry. What percentage of the seats for the World Championship (which are limited anyway) have to get reserved for “elite” players before it starts to look like an invitational tournament, something quite different from the rest of the Organised Play system?
I don’t know whether any of this is what they think or whether it has anything to do with the decision, but it should at least be considered that FFG may have a particular vision for their World Championship, and that ANRPC might not necessarily fit that vision. But if they are unwilling to facilitate ANRPC piggybacking onto their tournament, it doesn’t necessarily mean they hate the idea of ANRPC per se, it might just mean that they want their own World Championship to remain wholly part of the Organised Play structure and not anything else!
Why not include an ANRPC World Championship as the pinnacle of the unofficial circuit?
Their World Championship is an open tournament, with first round byes for National winners. Seems pretty straightforward and simple.
Well, that may be a goal, but we were strapped this year. We formed the ANRPC in two months time, roughly, and hastily constructed a goal, this year, of sending people to Worlds. We didn’t want ‘elite seats’; we wanted to buy a ticket.
People keep talking about their ‘World Championship’ vision. It’s just a tournament that you could play in if you got to MN. If you hadn’t been there in the past, it’s like buying a Six Flags ticket. You pay your money, and can play any game over 4 days. We thought we would just let someone experience that. Didn’t think it would be tough to get into that system. They made it more inclusive, to a degree.
Not hating at all, just saying it’s old. If they’re still supporting CoC 10(?) years later, we shouldn’t be talking about them stopping supporting Netrunner at the 3 year mark…
@popeye09 not sure if you misquoted me (edit: or rather that you meant to reply to someone else), but it sounds like we agree…
@hypomodern AND Conquest :\ I’m not saying they’re perfect though. It’s tough to schedule so many games together. From my perspective, it looks like the only ‘planning’ they did was to overlap as few Star Wars related games as possible to maximize the number of people playing them. Which is understandable from an attendance point of view it’s definitely the largest IP they’re using amongst the LCG/LBG’s.
@hhooo overall my post was meant to be anti-hyperbole about the whole thing. There’s infinite reasons why this decision could have been made, so let’s not make it into something it isn’t.
This is exactly the crux of the thing. Getting to MN in November isn’t a priority for a lot of folks!
Yep. Hopefully we can work through this, whether its by buying g00ru et. al tickets and then “correcting the names” on them, or by some more formal means or what have you. If all else fails, if we do a good enough job getting fans out to our own events, we can host our own dang national championships down the line.
…most of them spurious, but you have a good point. “Never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by…” etc.
In my opinion, the World Championship will be marginalized due to these kind of decisions by FFG. It’s very likely that ANR Pro Circuit will eclipse the FFG ANR competitive tournaments. It’s like @mediohxcore stated in a recent podcast, that the SSCI was likely more competitive than worlds last year. Looking forward to future ANR Procircuit tournaments!
Don’t actually do this. I do not not condone or support registering this way.
Anyhow, I find this unfortunate, but the cash prizes are still available for players (or something equally cool). There’s more competitive scene for the players that wanted it. And as much as this sucks for people who were relying on this to get to worlds, I think some creative thought and positive attitude can go a long way to still make this a positive experience for the community.
Thanks to all of you who have worked to put this together, and to the team here in WI that’s been doing a great job trying to organize, manage expectations, and in the end extend a hand of friendship to FFG. We may not get to send people this year, but there’s no telling what will happen in the future. Just have to have the backbone to resist the urge to play the blame game. As hard as that is.
Hopefully, a dialogue with people in the scene who talk to FFG or through other means can bring a solution over time. The community should not develop a personality disorder though in the meantime because it fosters a lot of toxicity that isn’t helpful. Believe it or not but corporations are pretty inept at a lot of things and FFG might just be horrible at running a competitive scene(which has been displayed a few times before). Who knows what janky system they’re using for all of this.
Does X-Wing have these issues? It’s their biggest competitive game by far iirc.
They actively do not want the game to have a competitive scene. They have explicitly stated they do not want to support a player ranking. As Quinn’s noted, their tourneys are all ‘fire and forget’, hence why he started up his London tourneys, his inter-city Cup, etc. People like continuity, competition, and rivalries, and hopefully the ANRPC can foster that.
