I know a post a lot, but I’m a man of many words.
With the Kilgore community fund well underway it has come to my attention that pot bonuses are more than likely going to be in effect throughout the 2017 season for both offline and online events. For the last few days this subject has been brought up in various stream chats talking about this very topic and so I wanted to give my personal feedback on the matter from the perspective of a competitive KI player who travels.
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Payouts
Most of the time I would say that payouts for KI are up to the discretion of the tournament organizers. I remember back at EVO 2015 Killer Instinct received a $50,000 pot bonus the biggest one we have ever seen for this game however it was decided that it would be distributed to top32 as apposed to just top8. Personally I’m still upset to this day that occurred. With about half the pot going to the winner, already the rest is usually slim pickings and it felt pretty odd as a 4th place contender to only received $2,000 as apposed to the $5,000+ I would of received if they had otherwise paid out to just top8.
This is important because it rewards the competitors who played well which is what tournaments are suppose to be about, finding the best of the best; not giving players pity pay just to reward people for showing up. This by no means is an insult or shots fired to anyone but it overall just devalues what it means to place high at the event. Honestly I could of bought my first car if they had paid out just to top8 haha just saying.
I know Killer Instinct World Cup is already set in stone for paying out top32 but I feel this should change in the future.
Offline Vs Online
During the 2017 KI Ultra Tour it seems the plan is to focus heavily on online events more than ever as this is a critical component to the KI community currently. Online events are great, they offer the means for players to experience partially what it’s like to compete and test their skills against veterans from the comfort of their own homes not to mention the ridiculous netcode.
My problem with online events comes into play when they start to devalue offline events which carry more weight with the public and ability to grow the game. While there are many reason why people don’t want to travel, not showing up up and building our presence at offline events could be a reason why we aren’t at EVO this year. More recently I traveled to Frosty Faustings which had a $1,000 pot bonus. My reward for placing 3rd was only $150. I spent $550 to travel there which does not include food or other amenities required to travel meaning my net loss was around $400 for doing relatively well at the event. The winner received $500 of the bonus which means they probably broke even which is also weird. The final KI Pro League is coming up which has a $1500 pot bonus; while not much more it doesn’t really make any sense to offer online events more money vs offline events.
Regardless of the argument being people should travel for fun instead of money, there are simply people who don’t view it like that. People treat tournaments as an investment especially the more competitive or top players in their game. Don’t get me wrong I 100% feel Online events are awesome and in some way can do better than offline events however for the future I think this mentality should be considered for future planning of pot bonus spread.
Money drives players, it makes people work and player harder when they know something is on the line. You want more exiting matches but we have to provide incentives for players to travel.