while I can see the logic in "its not worth the money to go to a small event when I could go to a big event instead", I think its unreasonable to expect a TO to give lots of benefits to a small game. I would never expect a tournament to provide main stage and pot bonus to a game with 11 entrants.
I don't think anyone is mad that DTN took the pot or stage, or didn't want to give it to us. It's the way they did it. Like, GUTS 2 wouldn't have the same good memories of it if when we showed up they were like "wow, you couldn't even break 10, let alone some unrealistic expectations I've been pushing on you? Here's a couple setups, play in the hallway, no stream."
GUTS is a great supporter of SG but to put it bluntly this is unreasonable to expect us to be treated.
I think it's more along the lines of "these things (pot/main stage), as well as giving us goals to hit and benefits for hitting them, are signs of respect," and it's important to support events that will respect us. We have a handful of events that treat us this well, so we should prioritize those and not stress ones that don't.
It's starting to look like the surge of growth for SG predicted after last year has pretty much come to a halt, as unfortunate as it is.
Honestly, I'm not upset about this. We did what we could. There's still some growth possible, but it's good enough the size it is. We don't need to be giant.
if the community intends to take the stance of "give us main stage and a pot bonus before people sign up or we don't want anything to do with you", not only is that a level of entitlement I don't think we deserve yet
I've had enough of huddling in corners, playing with the wrong version, not having setups, and players not getting paid/medals. The reason this thread was created (and the two before it) was so that we could be done with 10 people showing up to 12 majors a year and actually get things like a main stage. Sure, more events are nice, but if they get in the way of the events we've chosen to support, because those events support us and we have a great time there, why would we do that?
it also pretty much ensures we will never get past a handful of majors a year (though maybe's that's OK? Zid mentioned that pretty much everyone in the FGC who would have picked up SG has done it by now but I still would like to think we could bring some more established players into the fold)
The time for growth is more or less over. It's okay to not be huge. We have obviously flourished by picking our battles (events), and I wouldn't want to see us take any steps backwards. I think about this video every time I think about why it's important to be okay with being a smaller community with targeted focus: