(Message luke:48)
Date:    Thu, 22 Apr 1999 09:54:57 PDT
To:      <l5rinfo@frpg.com>
From:    "Luke Peterschmidt" <Lukeout@frpg.com>
Subject: RE: Nearly Final Seeding Plan

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X-ListMember: andy@cowell.org [l5rinfo@frpg.com]

> This is bogus.  First of all - who's to say whether the seeding tourneys
were
>more difficult than GenCon will be?  And more importantly, this avenue was
most
>certainly NOT NOT NOT open to everyone, due to accessibility and $$
concerns
>that I believe have been well documented through this discussion.  Have you
>been reading the mail?

I think you're misunderstanding the qualifying (or I did a bad job
explaining it). From each GenCon qualifier, MANY people will move on to the
final day. From a Kotei Emperor tourney - 1 will be seeded, the overall
winner. I think it's clearly harder to win a large tournament than to just
be one of the many that gets advanced for each GenCon qualifier.

On top of that, ALL Kotei Emperor tourneys are open to everyone who can make
it - just like GenCon. Following your line of thinking, it's unfair to hold
a major storyline event at GenCon at all because so many people can't make
it. As far as money, GenCon itself is way more expensive than any of the
Kotei tournaments (the 5 in the U.S. or the ones overseas).

As for as money and accessibility combined, I would say it costs a whole lot
more in time and dollars to enter (and win if you're lucky) a Kotei event,
then pay and travel to get to GenCon, then it would cost to just go to
GenCon.

I have no good counter for the "hey, how can I be rated the best in my clan
if there aren't many sanctioned tourneys around" argument. It is clear that
the more you play the better your chances are. The only things I can do is
say:

1) Sanctioning tournaments is free - we have removed all barriers to running
them.
2) Any ranking system rewards players for more play (even ELO)
3) These players have supported us, and we are going to support them. They
have proven their ability over the course of the YEAR/LIFETIME OF THE GAME
and have spent lots of time and money to play in lots of tournaments and
have done well consistently. These players earned their spots - and again, I
would say it is MUCH harder to be the best Mantis player in the WORLD than
to be one of the MANY people who will get seeded from a single War in the
Heavens qualifier.


>If you are going to argue the merits of the seeding system you're using,
that's
>fine, but don't push this sort of explanation on us.  It simply doesn't
fly.

I hope my further explanation sets the record strait.

>I know I sound pretty peeved here - and I don't want to play "spoiler."
But
>my angst and others' I know is largely due to the lack of a dialogue.  It
would
>really help relations if we could have more frequent and friendly
"back-and-
>forth" discussions.  I believe you'd find that we have a great many useful
>thoughts to contribute.

I get this comment every now and then - "why don't you all post here more
often", which is usually followed by "you never listen to us." This list was
set up so that the players would have a place to talk amongst themselves,
discuss strategy and decks, etc... Sometimes in boards like this if the
company rep is too present, the discussion gets tainted or at the very least
sidetracked. I view that my goal on this list is to keep you all informed of
upcoming news (like the changes in the card frames, new DCI stuff, etc...),
and to fix any easily fixable misunderstandings.

One thing about these lists is that 95% of the members just read - they
don't post. The other 5% are VERY vocal and probably not representative of
the rest of the group. I try to only get involved in threads like this one
when it is clear that many different people have opinions that may not be
based on the facts (that's why my firsts post on this topic was a simple
clarification of the facts).

As you can see, once I jump into a fray, it's very hard to step back out
again without it appearing that we don't care about you. I then feel the
need to further and further clarify and respond to everyone that doesn't
understand every little detail and that does little but detract from the
greater purpose of this list.

As far as "do we listen", I think it's clear that we do. Hell, LBS had a
major release structure change because of that gamers input on that list.
However, what I don't do is turn on a dime because people complain. Some
people complain about ANY change and separating those folks from the mix is
nearly impossible. Certain things do get done so far in advance that I have
to nail them down half a year to 9 months early. I make those calls based on
the L5R brand document. That document has been formed over the years and
gives me a really clear vision of what L5R is all about. To date, I haven't
made a decision I've regretted when I've followed that document (yes seeding
made it through easily).

Sometimes my biggest challenge is spin. Remember the DCI announcement? All
of the "The DCI is going to ruin my game" posts? Well, what's been the end
result - we are getting substantially more tournaments run, we have the
ability to do prereleases for the first time (which we're doing with Pearl),
and the data collection is better than ever. Hell, if our two DBAs didn't
get hired away, you'd be seeing even more benefits right now. I hope that it
is clear that I'm not out to ruin your game, I'm out to improve it. And that
does fundamentally mean I'm going to do new things, add features, etc... I
want to grow L5R, and anything that doesn't improve overtime doesn't grow,
it dies. If you're not ready for change, you may not be happy - but if you
want excitement, new features, and more opponents - this should be a great
year for you.

Whew.
Luke Peterschmidt
Long Winded Brand Manager: L5R, LBS


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