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GPDs and BSGs unfair?
 

Hi all, I am a diamond level protoss player, and a regular competitor in the weekly GPDs held by Eddie. I love these events, i've played close to 20 (sadly never won ) and I really enjoy the competitive aspect of climbing the brackets, and seeing where abouts I will end up.

When i first began to play in this tournament as a young gold, I would literally be demolished every week in round 1. My aim was to reach the second round (once i got a bye first round, silently fistbumped, my goal was complete :P) I started to get better and better, making it further through each week, until once i made the ro4 where i was once again demolished.

That is the furthest i had ever made it into the tournament. Recently I have been enjoying school holidays and have been playing a lot of games on ladder, making it to the top of my division. I regularly placed against masters players and win occasionally. I feel i am close to a promotion. I entered this weeks GPD with high hopes, I had played considerably more then usual in the holidays, and i felt on ladder that i was at the very top of the diamond division.

This brings me to the point of this somewhat aimless blog. The GPD and SEA tournaments alike are stacked with players far exceeding their competitors in skill, making it almost impossible for new players to win, or even progress deep into the tournament, be this due to smurfing or other reasons. Week after week i feel, the winner of each GPD is a diamond player who has played a total of 5 ladder games, and takes the finals 3-0. Being someone at the top of diamond, i feel that the skill of these players far exceeds any diamond player on ladder. I have heard that this is similar for the weekly BSG as well.

I think that this is bad for the SEA scene. Benji's recent video blog talks about how SEA needs to progress, and how the SEA scene is losing viewers and players alike. The majority of players and spectators are low level players like me, who make up the majority of the audience necessary to progress the SEA scene. We want to mimic the top players, so we join weekly tournaments, only to be destroyed in an unfair manner. This becomes disheartening and frustrating, so much so that I feel it is an unpleasant experience, and will drive away young aspiring players.

As for ideas to solve this problem and let a fresh new stream of aspiring players have at least a chance of winning our low level tournaments, I feel players should be required so meet a certain number of games played recently on ladder in order to compete.

These tournaments have league restrictions for a reason. Imagine an under 8 football league. One team of under 8's is placed up against an under 15 side each weekend. Will the small innocent 8 year old feel that he ever has a chance in the game? Or will the game he loves so much become an unpleasant and unfair experience?

Sorry for babbling on, i hope this was somewhat bearable. Thank you for reading, and remember that we should be trying to accommodate the low level players, the future of our scene and the majority of our audience.

Edit: With some more thought, I guess what i was trying to say all along is this. In a competition that is confined by parameters set by blizzard (league restrictions) it is possible to compete in this tournament when skill exceeds that of the other players by simply not contributing to ones ladder points, and thus avoiding league restriction. I would like you, the reader, to answer this question: Is it okay for someone to enter this tournament who plays minimal ladder games, and instead vigorously practices with and players?

At no point to i believe admins do a poor job and i respect that they volunteer their time, and do a wonderful job for the community. Thanks