More things to be said... (just my oppinions)
I see more new tournaments systems comming (shogunate, chad's ladder - maybe). These are serious things...
Fallen Tournaments shouldn't compete with these tourneys when it would come to fairnes or seriousness. We have other advantages (more clans at the same time, short event where everybody fights everybody, feel more intensive for more people at the same time, we can use different fighting formats...). But yeah, the cost for this is it is less "fair" sometimes.
I'm not telling I'm aiming for unserious stuff on purpose - the fighting system we used now for qualifiers was never meant to be random. I still kinda believe that the odds were always equall - always 3x5 fighters in the arena on separate TSpeaks - same for everybody. I also believe that if you put 3x5 good fighters against 3x5 bad fighters the result should be that the first team will win. The only difference was that some clans took pikes and crushtrhogh weapons (like Turks and my old friends) and some brought shielders (Mercs), but this comes to your decisions/mistakes (we did the same btw).
To the Ladder - the point will of course go to the Ladder, it was announced and I see no reason why it should be changed. The ladder itself starts to work quite well, I think always somebody will have a bad day or he will go through unlucky tournament where will be more random qualifiers (like this one and Grey Order and you). But this is not a problem in a long run, we had 6 tournaments so far. With more and more played one big blow in one Tournament won't play a role. Also counting of LPTS can change a bit over time (especially in performance ladder)...
Lastly the most important thing
A lot of guys (Mercs mostly) complain. Well why not, but if you complain you should also give some other option/solution. The ideal thing is 100% fun and 100% seriousness at the same time (this can never be achieved, but we can try to get close to it). I said and asked that having always the same qualifiers would make the tournament boring - I haven't got any answer to this (how the qualifiers should look like, if they should always be the same etc...) from anybody here on forums yet. The current idea is to have a bigger stress on FUN in qualifiers and bigger stress on FAIRNESS in finals. The point shoudl be that good clans should make it even through a bit more random qualifiers to the finals, where position from that you qualify plays no role. The finals are than quite FAIR with same chances for everybody...