JSmithers: The issue I have with the cut in credits being offered is that it was difficult and great competition among the top players to try and be in that exclusive top 3. There are hundreds of tourneys ran that pay top 70 or 60% for ready go. These were literally the only 2 that paid top 3. And yes the same group of top players were always near the top battling it out. So wgt takes a tiny hit on credits entered compared to credits paid out but remember there are also ball hits that go into these tourneys. Plus many of these top players put the credits right back into the game. Gifting balls, clubs, passes, creating tourneys for others to win some credits. IMO the big picture of these 2 out of 100s of tourneys being nerfed will create a negative snowball effect. Not to mention a lot of these top players stream on twitch and bring more people to the game for free. Watering down your premium tournaments seems to me like it is going to have a negative effect in the long run.
It's just my opinion, and I may well be wrong, but I think you're attacking this on too many fronts.
A regular competition for the top players seems a good idea both for these players to enjoy and for others that want to measure their play against the top players.
Why is the gifting attractive to wgt? Give us more credits and we'll be "gifting balls, clubs, passes, creating tourneys for others to win some credits. " And if you didn't do that those people would need to buy credits from wgt with money? I don't know about the big effect but if it was true they could switch back and they have some indication (I know it was different) from the last time they slashed the pay-out.
The elephant in the room of course is that these tournaments needed something done to or about them. These two tournaments are the primary reasons for a lot of the multi's restarts and sandbagging that goes on. That is at lower levels and obviously wouldn't effect any TC or open to all premium tournament.
I don't really want to go there on the streaming but maybe you or wgt could put together a highlight package from each one (I imagine if it was on someone's channel it'd get them a few viewers) as well as some games being live.