Finals are boring. Pt. 1: Slow Play

I have no issue with a game reaching the clock with a clear victor. Maybe we should just raise the bar on a "Game Win in a Final" and make it so the winner must have half of the available VPs on the table or more. So there would be no winner on a tournament final (assuming 5 players) where no players have less than 2.5VPs. That should easily up the aggression.

Decebalus wrote:

Most finals in VTES are boring.

I've been in two finals this year. I won one of them, and neither of those were boring. Not a single one of the finals at the Week Of Nightmares or the NAC was boring from a spectator's point of view. When I played on the East Coast earlier this year the finals were *awesome* and totally fun to watch, even though I wasn't in any of them.

Either this is a local/regional problem or VTES really does have boring finals. I am beginning to believe it to be the former, and one of the many things -- some good, some bad -- that makes European and American VTES very different games.

KevinM wrote:

Decebalus wrote:

Most finals in VTES are boring.

I've been in two finals this year. I won one of them, and neither of those were boring.

I have to agree, having played in one of the finals you mentioned and having semi-watched the other. I've been in several finals this year, and none were what I would call boring.

Some certainly evoked negative feelings in me, but boredom wasn't one of them.

Juggernaut1981 wrote:

I have no issue with a game reaching the clock with a clear victor. Maybe we should just raise the bar on a "Game Win in a Final" and make it so the winner must have half of the available VPs on the table or more. So there would be no winner on a tournament final (assuming 5 players) where no players have less than 2.5VPs. That should easily up the aggression.

So you change the rules and state that in the finals someone must obtain a GW. What if this doesn't happen in 2 hours?

So you up the time limit to 3 hours. What if this doesn't happen in 3 hours?
So you up the time limit to ∞ hours. What if this doesn't happen in ∞ hours?

The logical conclusion of your argument is to legislate play because nothing else is guaranteed to fix your issue.

Changing the time limit won't solve this particular problem, only changing player's attitudes about the final table, VTES in general, and gaming as a wider concept will solve your problem.

Sadly, I believe the majority of VTES players are either not good enough at VTES to comprehend this issue or completely uninterested in changing the current paradigm.

@KJM:
Time limit changes will do...
I don't care what the time limit is. It can be 2h, 2.5h, 3h... I'm honestly not bothered and think it should either be: a) legislated by VEKN into a constructed tournament format; b) up to the organiser's judgement. No matter what the time limit, if there is no incentive to oust more than one player, longer times will only favour bloating, flicking or wall decks; shorter time limits will favour aggressive bleed decks. The trick is to put the balance somewhere between the two ends.

What happens if there is no GW?
Everyone gets 2nd place. There is no tournament winner. (Prize support is the business of the organiser). Its part of an idea to influence players to go for a game win instead of a "1 step ahead of the others and let my rating take care of the rest" win.

Legislating to fix the issue.
If you raise the standard for 'winning' then you will force players to change their play style to gain that win. Changing the 'win conditions' is the most likely way to influence player's attitudes to playing in the final.

There doesn't need to be a GW because the #1 seed getting 1vp and going to time *is* the Game Win. So what you want is already in place. Yayyy!!!


And when someone other than the #1 seed gets a VP, then *that* player is the #1 seed and has achieved a "game win", and should be treated as such by the rest of the table.

That's why you have to change player's minds and not the rules because nothing else is guaranteed to fix your issue.

If the majority of VTES players are either not good enough at VTES to comprehend this issue or completely uninterested in changing the current paradigm, that should not be reason enough to change long-standing rules that have served MANY of us quite well. We need to explain to players how they win a final, even they (or you) don't understand the underlying concepts.

I'd personally begin by finding a dozen or so players that are proven to be able to "regularly" win finals and see what they say. I'm kinda, sorta, maybe one of those, but I can think of a dozen players right now that I'd invite into such a study.