Since this clearly became a public issue instead of the private discussion that Night Strike wanted, I feel I'll go ahead and make my thoughts known. I'm still fairly confident that my comments will be overlooked by the converging mob as I'm not grabbing a torch and pitchfork here, but there are a number of points that I feel many people posting here have overlooked.
First and foremost, this
was a public discussion. There were a couple, actually. Many good ideas were thrown out and a good discussion was held, but, like most public discussions here at CC, there is a lot of trolling and flaming and baiting being thrown around, and the thread often gets derailed. You can read them, and post in them,
here and
here. Then, as I understand it, NightStrike took the best points out of those threads, picked the people he felt would be able to look at the proposed rules objectively, and took it to personal messages and the private moderator forums. He also didn't just contact his favourite tournament organizers, I was included in the message as a major tournament player, and HighlanderAttack was obviously included, which lends credit to NightStrike who obviously values HA's opinion on the matter.
It is absurd to say that this is vindictive behaviour by NightStrike towards some tournament organizers. While it may seem this way, this is only because of the ridiculous slant that HighlanderAttack has put on this thread with his posts and the personal messages he sent to many of his friends and supporters that linked them to this thread. The same thing happened with the previous threads, and it not only derails the discussion, it makes many people look like fools. I highly doubt that NS will trust HA in this manner again, nor should he.
Furthermore, I think HA's over-reaction to the whole event is equally absurd. While many of the proposed changes do significantly affect his tournaments, they are simply proposals. I know when I responded to NS, I had many different suggestions to the proposed rules and would like to see further discussion on some of them. Whether my comments carry any weight is ultimately up to NS and Optimus Prime and the other moderators here, but the rules posted here and the changes being touted are simply proposals at this point.
Secondly, I would like to make a point about the numerous time people have posted saying something along the lines of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". This is not a fix, because the system we have right now is not broken. Think of it more along the lines of a new line of cars. Last year's models, the 2009s, weren't broken, but that doesn't stop car manufacturers from updating and releasing the 2010 models that all have improvements. It's an update and revision of the rules to streamline the process and add a level of fairness to the equation that is currently lacking.
Now, on to the actual discussion of the rules.
The current rules by which we play with were set up over 2 years ago. The medals that are now handed out for tournament organizers and tournament winners were implemented a little over a year ago. So we're currently playing for new prizes under old rules. The main point that I would like to make is that there needs to be a level of fairness, a certain guarantee that a player will have, that his medal is fairly won and is equal to the same medal as another player has received. Many of the proposed rule changes will not affect the majority of the tournaments currently in action, but will prevent medal hunters from coming in and running sub-par tournaments just for a quick medal. Granted, this is not a common occurrence, but the rules are rules for a reason.
In my opinion, the granting of medals all comes down to minimum standards which must be met. The best analogy that I can think of is the Olympics (and I tend to think it makes a great analogy). We've just seen the winter Olympics and there is a rather wide variety of sports and events being played. One can easily argue that figure skating is vastly different than alpine skiing, as it is, yet each sport is governed by a minimum level of competition and at the end the winner is granted the same medal. So setting up the minimum standards by which tournaments must be run ensures that there is a level of competition that will be met and that all medals are won fairly, just like setting up basic rules about the number of competitors and running drug tests in the Olympics.
Which means we just have to come up with the minimum standards. This is not to say that each tournament must be run exactly to these standards, but they must be run at least to these standards (so if the minimum number of players you must have for a singles tournament is 16, then you could run a tournament with 16 players, or 32, or 1000 if you wanted).
My opinion on the fairest way to determine these standards is by running some simple odds equations. There must be a maximum percentage chance that a player has to win a tournament, determined by two factors. Simply put, there must be a minimum number of players per medal awarded at the end of the tournament. I believe this number is 16, so that every player in the tournament has no better than a 1 in 16 chance of winning the tournament. It does not mean that you must have only 16 players in each tournament, but you must have at least 16. For doubles, where two medals are handed out, you must have at least 32 players (16 teams). The same can be said for triples (48players/16teams) and quadruples (64players/16teams), and even for quintuples if we ever get those (70players/16teams). This will not affect any singles tournaments currently being run as the current minimum is 16 players, but will drastically affect teams tournaments. Also note that this is simply my proposal, not the one currently tabled by NightStrike.
The other major point is the minimum games played by the eventual winner. I suggest that it should be 5 (for reasons stated in my response to NightStrike), but for the purposes of discussion here I will stay to the proposed 3. This proposal most significantly applies to singles tournaments in which you can win 2, or in some cases, a single game to be crowned champion. Especially considering escalating games in which many are won by a mistake made by another player, or luck with the cards, it is hardly fair to consider winning 1 or 2 games a significant enough margin of victory to crown one player champion over all others. By ensuring a 3 games (played, not won) minimum, it ensures that the winner will have to prove that he is indeed the best in the tournament, not the luckiest.
Again, this rule will not affect the majority of the tournaments posted, simply a few of the single player tournaments. The organizers will have to change how these are played, but given the creativity that most tournament organizers have shown, I do not see this as being a major hindrance.
The third major contested point is the minimum points limit for tournaments. I argue that there should be no points minimums allowed at all. If we look at a different rule, that all tournaments must be open to at least 50% of the public, which nobody has brought up in this thread as of yet, the no 2000+ tournaments rule is in direct conflict with this. With the current scores carried on ConquerClub, 50% of the players are at 1080 points or above. A 2000+ tournament is open only to about 5% of the players on CC. I realize the rules are applying in different circumstances, but to the letter of the law, this rule in itself breaks other rules.
Even were that not the case, I do not support point minimum tournaments. If higher ranked players want to play higher ranked players, they are free to go to callouts and find matches there. It is not fair to exclude 95% of the players on CC to ensure a "higher level of competition".
Finally, the last rule. 3 tournaments recruiting players by each organizer at one time. Again, this stipulation is to ensure a higher level of competition and a minimum standard. As was proven in the other threads, many of the tournaments that are put out by the same organizer at the same time have the same players, and this does not ensure that level of competition, or fairness to other tournament players. Keep in mind that this will not affect ongoing tournaments, but simply makes the create/join a tournament fairer to new players, new organizers, and altogether more objective and unbiased.
Obviously, the tournament directors are going to have that last clause where they have ultimate rule over everything. Every business in the world has that, so that is no surprise. That's just there to ensure a level of fairness over the entire competition and I don't foresee that ever being used.
Finally, I suggested this to NS in my PM, and it seems Bones and jpcloet came up with the same idea as well.
Don't limit any tournaments from running, simply don't grant them medals. Anyone can run any tournament they like with any rules and any number of players they like, it simply won't be sanctioned and neither the organizer or the winner will receive a medal. But any tournament must comply by those rules to receive medals at the end.
That's my opinions on the matter, for whoever wants to read them. It's a long post, so I'm not really anticipating anyone will read it. In fact, I expect that within a couple of hours there will be enough hate posts to bury this one, just like all the other posts with meaning in this and the other threads.