So this is mainly taking the approach that tournament winners qualify, which pressures players to attend more events. Which is OK but maybe a little harsh in a community that's almost entirely traveling on their own dime. It's also probably a little biased towards players geographically close to the earlier events. (If you don't qualify in your "local" event you can decide later to travel to another event and try to qualify, but if your "local" event is at the end of the season you have to either commit to traveling or go for broke on the local event.) Unless players were restricted to only being able to qualify out of their own region, which might detract from the qualifying events but enhance the championship event.
On the other hand seeding points are kind of meaningless. Did anyone ever know how Evo seeding points even work?
The points structure in Capcom's league feels kind of tacked-on. I think points have to come from a much larger field than a few trade show tournaments to be meaningful.
I used to play chess too, so a few random related thoughts:
1) [Elo] Ratings are kind of a big deal. They're not perfect by any means, but I could go to the annual state tournament and be competitive in the under-1400 section without worrying about being crushed by some master-rated player. The prize money is basically all in the open section so it's still the same people competing for it and there's little motivation to game the system. When it comes to fighting games, however, I don't think there's nearly enough of a population to implement this model.
Also, trying to improve your rating is a nice motivator to keep going and not get too down when you lose to a much stronger player.
2) Swiss pairings are nice. If I go to a 5-round tournament I know I'm going to play 5 matches. I'm going to be pretty sad if I go 0 and 5, but I'm not going to be eliminated from the tournament after two games and wonder if I should have even bothered showing up. Fighting games would have a hard time implementing this though because we're limited by equipment. It's not like chess where everyone has a board and you're only constrained by venue space. (Side note: shout-outs to @
RapZiLLa54 and @
SwiftTomHanks for running round-robin pools at their events to follow the "more matches" philosophy.)
I also feel like Swiss pairings also do a pretty good job of matching similar-skilled players since they kind of "re-balance" each round (and start off seeded by well-established rankings...). Though I'm not sure if this would work quite as well in fighting games where match-ups are a significant factor.
Kind of straying here, but essentially I kind of see there as being two tiers of play. There's the highly-competitive, top-player-packed scene, which is where stuff like a pro league and attracting spectators comes in. But there's also a place for a "casual" class of play and I don't think our scene really carers to that at all right now. (But note apropos of the recent League of Legends comparisons that a thriving casual scene can benefit the spectator-driven aspect of the game as well.)
