its unfortunate but for a game that is nearing a decade of competitive play with still a thriving international scene, we are still at the end of the day a grassroots community. it’s nothing against events but when there is already a large amount of events that the top players are considering to go to and have to budget for, i mean it makes sense that they would want something to ease the financial burden so they don’t just auto lose money, i have personally slept on random peoples couches and feigned for cheaper ways to travel but honestly as somebody who has top 8d a shit load of majors on my own dime i can tell you that going positive can sometimes just be dictated on the amount of money matches you can farm. this isn’t even to mention that a lot of people have other obligations with school and work, i myself would be working thursdays-sundays so that would mean i would always have to take off to go to any events that require travel. the scene ultimately doesn’t sustain itself by smaller tournaments, there are so many different ways you can make money from the scene now more then ever so it makes the whole idea of traveling somewhere else for tournaments that don’t have that legacy or are just in a cool place less enticing. realistically the only thing i can think to do as a TO would be to scale back operations at first and working with other TOs pooling resources and making a bigger more standout event rather than something that gets forgotten by most viewers on monday. i can’t blame anybody that would be frustrated about it, but it makes sense. and i feel blaming the ultrank system is silly when in reality at this point of the game people know good players so whether you see that somebody is highly ranked and you get their points to be a “higher ranked tier” or somebody that the scene votes on for coming out and seeing. at the end of the day when you have so many events (even locally like bro tristate has something every day) what are the real incentives for most people? i know i like seeing new places but do others, especially when they can’t expect to make their money back.