Should non N.A.F have to pay more

[DoubleSkulls]

I think ideally TOs who receive support from the NAF are entitled to offer its members a small discount in their tournament fee. I don't do this myself but I think its appropriate if you receive help to reward the organisation providing it.

I dislike the "membership included" concept as I feel people who don't want to join the NAF, although obviously insane, deserve not to have the tournaments they can attend further restricted.

I do think NAF membership should be compulsory for the NAF World Cup - it is the only NAF organised event (as opposed to approved) so I think it absurd that someone could win without being a member.

[Duke Jan]

This whole discussion boils down to what the NAF's involvement in the tourney scene should be. It should be to promote the hobby. The perks of membership are the dice and your achievements at tourneys are recorded. But the biggest perk is not personal gain, it is the gain of the community. Excluding non-members from small tokens such as the balls would be utterly wrong. I get a vision of Eric Cartman going "I got a ball, you guys didn't, na-na-na-na-na" Give non members the ball for PR reasons. It's not a Lizzie cheerleader. I think this would be a negative way to get people to join. Giving everyone a ball is a positive stimulant.

There are of course differences between minor and major tourneys. Major tourneys attract many more non-members than local tourneys but the stimulant for joining the NAF should be the same, a sense of a community for the benefit of BB coaches.

As for the discount, don't give people the idea they're being forced into something they don't want. So the membership discount should be less than a full year's membership, a 10€ discount is blackmail, not a stimulant.

The NAF needs no such backward ways for recruiting people, so this should be avoided at all cost. The benefits are mainly for people who are involved with the international BB scene. The image of the NAF being some sort of elite that either forces you to join or spits you out is something that should be avoided at all cost.

***Edit**
The NAF world cup should be the only NAF only event in the world. It's an overly-elitist event to begin with and has a silly ruleset that will deter non-members anyway. It's everything a BB event shouldn't be. I.e. taking itself too seriously.

[Igor Tahavanale]

I know that this can go off in to a right old barney but I'm going to throw it in anyway...
...There are players to whom their ranking is important. They have paid their memebership, and enjoy the ranking-ladder squabble to get to the top. To them the matches should be ranked, it's an NAF sanctioned tourney and they want to score. Non-NAF coaches remove that from some games. That is the main reason why the events try to push NAF after all, isn't it? To rank all the matches?

I think i nice way to settle the the perceived forcing of NAF membership would be to rank non-NAF coaches at NAF events at a given figure per match. Then the NAF players who are ranking mad are happy, and there is no need to cater for the all NAF issue becasue the match is counted (although only for the NAF coach).

NAF membership is then not a point of contention, the benefits are just that, and non-NAF can then not be perceived as taking anything away from NAF events in anyones eyes.

So I went "other", I don't fit totally in to any given option at the moment. I don't have an issue with the price thing, but then I'm NAF. I can see why others would have, and I can see that some people have no interest in joining. I just think that this idea takes some of the problem away, and makes the issue less for TO's who feel the need to get the thing ranked 100% for the NAF players.

[Darkson]

[Going off at a tangent as well]

But how do you rank non-NAF coaches, when they're an "unknown"?

Take two NAF coaches, A and B, and 4 non-NAF coaches, W, X, Y and Z.
A and B are of about equal ability, and play the same race at a tourney, and get 2 NAF wins and 2 defeats in their other 4 games.

A plays W and X, who are both relatively new to the game, and gets 2 wins.
B plays Y and Z, who are both vet BB coaches that just don't want to have to join the NAF but have played in many tourneys, and he gets beaten by both.

If you rank all the unknowns at the same level (say 150 for arguements sake), then A will have an unfairly higher ranking than B, which then makes the NAF rankings even more inaccurate for the standings, thereby defeating the object of making them better for the "ranking-mad" coaches.

I recall there was a long thread discussing this very thing on the NAF site.