QFT!

This is one of the first thoughts that entered my mind when I saw that HL was going to be the only way to earn your way into the PC. If you're going to use HL to promote the game, then you HAVE to have other ways for people to play and earn a spot on the PC. Nothing will turn away new players faster than a bunch of jerks who are going to push around the new players.

And YES, YES, YES!! Pcq's with no cash pay out are fine, as long as packs and truly exclusive EA's are offered as prizes!

Keep Hobby League and City Championships. Make 'em work for a few months so that retailers have their faith in UDE rebuilt somewhat. Bring back PCQs, without the cash is fine. How about an extra box of product for the winner? Maybe a winner-only EA? Doesn't really matter. Keep the PC Points, and the same PC point distribution schedule at PCQs, keep the 10 Point requirement for the PC. Maybe even no-cash 10ks. If WOW can have Darkmoon Faires, why can't we have no-cash 10ks? They're pretty much the same thing.

While all of Jeff's changes may be necessary in the long run, making too many changes at once angers or scares everyone.

I've seen that a couple people are asking why the pcqs were so low in attendence when they offered prize cards. The biggest hit to the pcqs was the switch from dual formats to only constructed/only sealed. The prospect of being able to scrub in constructed to go and play sealed, allowing a player to have twice the chances of qualifying. When they went to single format, players had to either be shark that wanted to qualify, making some people choose established decks over innovation. This with some formats being less fun to play in dropped attendence alot.

Though it seems that banning cards raise the pcq attendence. Warren had 25 people show up when Dr. Light got ban hammered. I then went to michigan where there was a large turnout right before the last ban cycle(though it seems michigan has a strong player base out at RIW). I will play at any event UDE gives me to be able to play at their professional events. The announcement that the first mega-weekend/10K will be at columbus excites the hell outta me.

Small plug here: Anyone with a comfortable driving distance to columbus...GO TO THE 10K!!!

It seems UDE will be watching this event to see if they should run more 10ks. Maybe if the turnout is good enough, they'll plan more 10Ks or maybe start a pcq-like tournaments to qualify for pcs. At the last columbus 10K, we had over 150 people. That was constructed while this is a release sealed 10K, so I hoping that this will be 200 people strong.

The short answer to the question posed here is definitively "Yes I would". But I'd like to go beyond this and perhaps offer some of my thoughts upon the subject as a whole.

I (representing 4 others) in the past few months have not frequented pcqs in my area. We like many others are perhaps partially to blame for this predicament we are now in but not to truly pass the blame off us. I'd just like to add why. For me it comes down to some very simple things. The past two sets (LSH and HOG) sucked like never before for me and my play group. Limited play we found to be an absolute bore and the constructed format that stemmed from it only worse (this was only truly discovered after buying more boxes than were truly warranted in the end). I want to go to a pcq to have fun playing competitively, this wasn't going to happen so I didn't go. But a few weeks ago came the revitalization of my love of the game. We banned three cards that absolutely needed to go for all constructed formats and Marvel Team Up previews began.

Over the past weeks since the bannings I have personally been giddier than an entire group of japanese school girls. I checked the pcq schedule weekly looking for updates to see when the next pcq would show up in my area so I could begin figuring out new deck ideas for whichever format showed. Then came this past monday... woo boy that's a blow to me. I have a hobby league of sorts (rather small) and a city championship once every 3 months now... I really don't think is going to cut it for my revitalized desire to play this game semi-competitively. Even further beyond this in the past I personally have played janky fun decks and also thrown hobby league games to newer players to help them build confidence and hence my rating has suffered, as at the time it never truly mattered to go to a PC.

For my sake and the sake of everyone else that enjoys this game I would say we need PCQs.

How is anyone expected to get a better rating than others if they keep playing the same 10 people every week in hobby league and then at the city champs which occur so rarely?

Now that the metagame has shifted and new fun cards are finally coming after the drab of the past 6 months I want to travel to competitive tournaments again, without PCQs and personally having a rating too low to get me to an actual PC where am I supposed to play truly competitive VS?

well im 14 hours away & im going to try to make it!!!!

aside you people from ohio are weird & i like you all!!!!

I don't agree the dual formats dissappearing had anything to do with it. I think there were just too many formats & too many pcq's.

Perhaps ... however I would think it would be easier to change City Championships/Hobby League/etc to include the point system than to set up a seperate tournament structure.

Actually, I've been proposing ideas on the other thread. But, I think I have a really good compromise to the whole situation.

1. Go back to dual format events. Everyone seems to like these. You can still start out with sealed pack for $25 and then play in constructed for $15. You can even discount the second event to $10 if they participated int he first event.

2. Make truly EXCLUSIVE EAs for the prize support. Make an EA that ONLY PCQ *FINALISTS* get in addition to the other prizes. Make the EAs of cards people like or want. Only make popular cards or popular characters. If it doesn't fit one of those categories, it's not really worth making. EAs of Spider-Man, Captain America, Robin, Wonder Woman, Silver Surfer, etc... would all make good prizes. You could even make exclusive shirts and mats. Both would go over extremely well and would be super popular.

3. Do away with amatuer prizes and give prizes deepr. The PC point system rewards consistency and loyalty. Some players have 10-15 points, but have never finished better than 4th. Why should these guys be excluded from prizes. They obviously attend a lot of events. Just give prizes through 12 places. It can just be more booster product if you like.

4. Get rid of the cash. Most people aren't playing for the $250. It's nice, but most people know they weren't going to win it anyway. And most people were just psending the money on daily expenses and weren't even using it for the PC. If attendance grows, we can eventually get some money back (maybe like $100 to the winner). giving exclusive playmats, EAs, etc, would be like printing money anyway and I'd assume it's MUCH cheaper.

5. Give more rewards to judges. Have some exclusive EAs for people that judge PCQs. This would encourage them to promote events and work them. Maybe package two per kit, so TOs with larger events would have them to give out to multiple judges. The more people you have promoting your events, the better. It would also encourage more volunteers to step up and work harder as well.

6. Get TOs to hold events in hobby stores when possible. Obviously, the store would need to have the space, but encourage TOs to use hobby stores. Currently, the stores don't have to be large, as play space for 30 would be larger than needed for many PCQs right now. Also, have the TO pay the store $2 per unique player that day. It's not much, but even at 20players, the store makes a minimum of $40 to start the day, before snack, drinks, sleeves and/or pack sales. This would encourage stores to promote VS and it would give VS a more local presence while creating great exposure for the game.

I think if we did these things, PCQs could see a definite increase in attendance while giving players high level events. And most importantly it's affordable. This would still allow PCQs to be run while costing UDE very little in comparison to the old system.

I play to play. No matter if I get a shirt, a headach or a hand shake

I should also add:

7. Give TOs no more than two PCQs per 3 month cycle. Three months generally = 13 weeks. For any player willing to drive one to four hours, they should be able to reach a PCQ once every four weeks or so. That's much more within reson and it still keeps events at a premium.

I do and have done for a while now, once a month. We call them Trial of the Finests. I wouldn't be at all suprised you end up with something similar soon as the North American OP model does seem to be mirroring the European one fairly closely, a year behind.

We get no cash prize. We do get exclusive EAs, some of which are meh (Krypto) and some of which are awesome (Roy Harper). We get 5/3/1/1 PC points for 1st to 4th.

Its not great and the attendance has dropped from PCQs, but its much better than nothing.

I don't know if I would because everything in life has to have a reward effort/reward equation .If one has to really go out of their way to do something say drive one or two hours and take a day off from work to do it ,it really needs to be worth it .PCQ were about qualifying for the pro circuit a chance to compete against the best in the world ...not totally for money but also for just the pure fun of good spirted competition and the pride of having accomplished a goal .It would be really sad if our beloved VS. game became like yugi oh ....were you win a freaking special card if you win the ultiamte number one spot ...please ....most people in the world look at adults winning the world championships as someone who probably lives with thier mom and has to keep playing juvenile games to avoid adulthood .But even my non gamer friends including my wife found out that you could acutally make a decent living playing a card game other than poker they usually stopped and took notice .....not becuase of just the money involved becuase let's face it you can make more money playing poker ...it's much more popular right now,no because they were like wow superhero game and the company that makes it supports it that much ..."that's impressive ,maybe ill get into that." hence effort /reward
made them want to check into it ....but is this going to go away ?
if we all spend more money buy one more box than usual would this solve the problem because it seems UDE your only intrested in fattening your wallets and don't much care what the players think.

Ps. it means nonething that UDE just won a award for best expansion in a card game ...but yet this game is floundering .Maybe more like you made a couple hundred thousand shorter than in the past .Stick to standing with your player base and I know we wont let you down.We will come through becuase plain and simple VS. rocks ! Thank you UDE for making such a awesome game ...but rember it's us consumers who made you all the bucks.,please don't abadon us just because some folks didn't get bonuses this year!

To be honest, I'd perfer cash, simply because it allows me to feel like I won something of tangible value, as opposed to product, which has no set value.

A scaled back PCQ (something along the lines of $100, reducing the cost by more then 50%) would be better, however, some tournament would be better than no toruanment.

Reguardless, there should be an equalizer. If not money, then product. Maybe 2 or 3 boxes for first, 2 boxes for second, a box for 3-4 and half a box for 5-8, or something.

PC points were brilliant. It made me love the compeditive aspect because I wouldn't have to worry about every single match I ever played, and instead be content by placing in low ranks such as 8th place, and get 10 points that way.

Losing the point system makes the compeditive factor drop for a lot of people, and thats no fun.

I agree DR. Strange if at the pcq's if they just gave away product then that would be okay too.Give you something to work for ...none of us play to lose if you say that then why do you do anything ,,wait those of you who say you play to lose are probably sitting on the couch right now ..that or playing UDE's new favourite WOW ..hoping they can milk the blizzard cash cow that's just a fad people ..it's not gonna last ...look at everquest .BLizzard has always succeded because of their art work I meant these are the guys who put out starcraft which is still played today.
rember put your money where your mouth is this year buy more product give UDE what they want ? MONEY and lets show those WOW inferiors that VS. will be the number one tcg in the future ..becuase we are not just a fad .Superheroes have been around a lot longer than WOW.

i would play a no cash pcq, but

EA for the winner needs to be damn good. not those city champs EA's im talking like EA Big Leagues would have made a great City Champ prize but no got to make crappy prizes. Also winner should get like 2 boxes of cards, that has GOT to be cheeper to UDE then give out 250 in cash like 220 dollars cheeper.

keep the pc point system its a great system do crap on what is good. Duel format pcq were great keep those.

and always if your from the 5 states around iowa read my sig.

I'm really tired, so Im just gonna throw my hat in the "I want some money" ring. I really wouldn't want to drop $20 to play, $7 for gas, and $5-10 for food, as well as drive 1 1/2 - 2 hours, do a bunch of play testing and try to get the cards for my deck, and all the other stuff I gotta do to get to a pcq, if I had no chance at winning any money.

Thats basically the biggest reason everybody in my area got into the game. When MOR came out we said "o shi- one million dollar Pro Circuit? plus 10k's and stuff? F yugioh, lets play this!" But gradually our HL faded away, and now we just go to the PCQ's once a month or so, and the PC's. Well, no more of that, and since it looks like our HL is probably dead beyond revival, everybodys just gonna end up trying to sell their stuff on ebay or whatever.

lame