Progressive knockouts are by far the best value, for numerous reasons
1. Winning one is the largest payout in all of tournament poker, especially if you crush the final table and KO everyone yourself. It can and does happen.
2.You can actually be profitable in a KO long before you even reach the money, and at that point you are literally "freerolling" the tournament. Talk about a fun opportunity to absolutely crush... this is the only type of tournament where this can happen obviously.
3. It is much easier to get paid off with our biggest hands, because most players understand that half the prize pool is locked up in the KO bounties and they are much more willing to get all in with weaker holdings and go for those bounties.
4. PKO tournaments finish faster than regular tournaments, mainly due to point #3 above, there is more action and thus more knockouts and therefore the field size reduces down quicker than normal.
If I have the choice between playing a PKO and playing a regular tournament, I will ALWAYS pick the PKO and its not even close. I often play regular tournaments and find myself sad during the event that we don't have bounties to play for. LOL PKO's have "ruined" my love of a standard tournament, they seem boring in comparison!
My opinions obv, the one big drawback to a PKO is that you can make the money and still not turn a profit, because the regular portion of the prize pool is obviously much smaller than it is in a regular tournament when half the prize money is locked up in the bounties. It's a real downer to make the money without having earned a single KO along the way... but that is almost irrelevant, the reasons I listed above more than makes up for the negatives.