I agree with all of this, "but" this should be the reason that Nintendo either allows legal hacks or actually enforces the No-Tolerance Policy they were so willing to bend in the case of Alakapimp.
As you can probably guess by my supposedly "ridiculous" stance on competitive Pokemon that you know all too well, I completely agree. I feel that we should only play competitively with things that are made available to all within the games themselves (which is why I think Mew, Celebi, etc should be banned) and other than that, have virtually no bans/clauses (especially those that the game doesn't provide a method of enforcing). In the same sense, there is no auto-create feature in Pokemon games. TPCI shouldn't allow any hacking, period. In the rules it said that the use of external devices is prohibited. You use it, you get DQed, end of story (from exceeding EVs to the auto-egg hatchers and 999 Master Ball users). The fact that Alakapimp got a free pass only convolutes TPCI's stance on hacking even further.
For the sake of this "rant", I'm willing to overlook Nintendo's insistence upon having their tournaments as doubles only with virtually no exception.
What solution do you have to offer? The 6 Pokemon singles that can take anywhere from 10 minutes to one hour? Or do you suggest 1v1 Stadium Mode, an even more Rock-Paper-Scissors type metagame than doubles.
I'm willing to ignore the fact that hundreds of families had to drive for hours for Regionals, only to be turned away at the door because of a random entry process they could do nothing about.
I have two things to say about this point. First, is that you only get in if you show up. Everyone who went knew that there was a chance that they wouldn't get to play. Was I upset that I didn't get in at two tournaments? Sure. Could I live with the question in my mind of if I could've won had I went? No. It's a risk and everyone knew it. You can't win the lottery unless you pay up and buy a ticket. Second, and more importantly, give it time. This is a work in progress, being only year 2 of the VGC. They're not going to get handed more money than they can prove that they need, especially with money being as tight as it is. People showing the interest in the tournament and making these long drives is going to make this tournament grow faster.
Seriously, think about it:
Hey, would-be entrants in this Official tourney! You didn't get in because of our computer's RNG, and there's no way we could have orchestrated this part before you drove all the way up here, but here's some intangible pixels we hacked up to comfort you on your five-hour drive back!
Could a pre-registration have been coordinated before the tournament? Yes. Does TPCI particularly want to do that? No. When it comes down to it, this tournament is a huge advertizing scheme in an effort to publicize Pokemon and get more people to buy the latest game. Besides, when they're in a growing stage like this, they need numbers to show up. With pre-registration, I bet the numbers at the tournaments would be half of what they were, if not less. If it looks like there's little interest, how are they going to convince the executives to cough up the cash to help this thing grow? They're not going to give more money to something that isn't stirring up crazy amounts of interest in Pokemon.
I will be damned if our Smogoners should have to waste any time making their pokemon legitimately if they don't want to when it very literally does not matter even if you admit to it. I honestly cannot think of a bigger reason than Nintendo itself looking the other way on an actual illegal hack, when they evidently run the only tournaments that matter, to have us as a community finally stop thinking legitimacy and painstaking breeding and training even matter at all as far as competitive battling is concerned.
Again, I agree with the fact that TPCI needs to pick a stance on hacking and stick with it. Hopefully it will be what I want: absolutely no external devices, for anything at all.
I tried to stay on your main point of how it is sickening that someone was allowed to continue because their hack didn't matter, which I agree with. However, all of these criticisms of the tournament that are being thrown around really tick me off. Everyone here acts like it's Pokemon's duty to host these tournaments for us. If I were running the tournament, I'd be tempted to just drop it entirely, given how ungrateful everyone is. The fact of the matter is that it's a work in progress. It seems that no one takes the initiative to write in a thoughtful letter with suggestions. For those who haven't already, ideas and critiques should be sent here:
customerservice@go-pokemon.com
Overall, your entire rant is pretty hypocritical. Alot of similar criticisms could be thrown at Smogon too. How many people put in hard work on the site only to get some "hacked up pixels" in the form of a badge? In return though, chaos gets to sit on the heaps of money that he collects off of the site. What's more is that in the grand scheme of things, they were tricked into writing articles for a metagame that no one but Smogon cares about. While Smogon had people wasting their time on countless 1v1 analysis revamps, people could've been writing them for a pertinent metagame. A metagame, that if Smogon put the effort into studying, would yield more publicity via the VGC than it could ever hope for. You can bet that Omegadonut spent his time formulating a team for a tournament that mattered. He has a Wii, DSi, trophies, trips, Pokemon goodies, the possibility of winning even more, and the
official title of National Pokemon Champion. What do Smogon tournament winners have to show for what they've done? How many players have been promised t-shirts and Pokemon XD for winning Smogon tours and Official Smogon tournaments, only to never receive them?