Is it just me, or does VGC get the short end of the stick?

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Huy

INSTANT BALLS
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The Vendors that you see at events are not TPCi vendors, but independent vendors. Right now, the people putting in the work aren't TPCi staff anymore but local Pokemon Tournament Organizers and Professors that VOLUNTEER to set these up.
 

Age of Kings

of the Ash Legion
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The main purpose of my post was to rebut the whole "TCG should be favored and here's why" thing. I absolutely appreciate the effort that goes into these events: after all, they don't have to put these on but do so anyways. But I'm under the impression TPCi provides the prizes and calls the shots on certain things and that's where it's unfair.

edit;; i realize that post may not have been directed at me but i might as well express some appreciation!
 

Alaka

formerly Alakapimp
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AoK the point isn't that TCG brings in more revenue in general, clearly it doesn't. The point is that having organized play for TCG allows them to sell far more cards and funds itself, whereas having OP for the video game dodsn't really sell that many more copies of the game because chances are if you are interested in entering a pokemon tournament you already own a copy.
 
Well clearly TCG > VGC because of the money. But really the amount of effort put into VGC event's, specifically at a lower level, are really poor. Then the prizes are not nearly as good as a result.

Hopefully the one TCG thing the never implement into VGC is the point system (which to my understanding effects the ability to get into a higher level tournament). Multiple small regionals, one or 2 big nationals, and a worlds should be good.

They could probably rearrange the systems to be better for VGC.
(Click Hide Tag to see rant about VGC locations and what should be done to improve locations)

Like this year it was a bit more, uh "localized" as some people are putting it, which is a good thing. But really they need multiple tournaments in each state to replace the regionals perhaps. The people that run VGC could cut their spending there and then put more money into prize's for nationals and worlds and maybe just money into those events overall. Really the only problem with multiple tournaments in a state that usually not many happen and those that do are in bad locations (I get a choice of detroit, garden city, or driving hours to lansing here in Michigan? Yeah no thanks. Why not at someplace in Oakland? It's better than the others, especially with less crime and is much more convenient to many others than Lansing. But really somewhere better than those dumps (not saying lansing is bad) is preferable).
 

kamz

VGC 2011 Seniors Champion
City championships for vgc next year would make the rating system worth it also state championships would help too. With only regionals and nationals the rating system isn't really worth it
 
Really have to agree with kamz on that. City championships for VGC would give many more opportunities to play, I don't think it would be too hard to work in alongside the TCG ones. Not too sure how I feel about using points to enter at Nats and such, it would only let the more qualified people in but those in isolated locations would have to do a good deal of traveling to qualify.
 

Firestorm

I did my best, I have no regrets!
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Your complaint basically comes down to "wah wah why didn't everything change overnight"
 
TCG releases a new set every 3-4 months, as for games they come out like what once or twice a year? Loads of distributors buy the boxes then sell em to people, so they are getting much more money out of selling cards then the games itself. It only makes sense that they fund more to TCG then VGC. I'm not complaining about the prize support i'm happy VGC even has the prize support. If you want them to fund more into VGC then we need a lot more people buying more games. Nuff said.
 
Most complaints boil down to wah wah something
Wah wah complaints do come in handy when a majority of people post about the problem. For example if we didn't all complain about the lottery in 2009, nothing would have changed.

I'm not going to repeat what has been said countless times already on this thread but just that tcg only has the prize support that it has because of the amount of $ that the players spend on it. We even got more with the addition of fall regionals because they slashed the prize support from tcg (scholarships).
 
Some official on Pokegym actually said that the budgets from TCG and VGC are entirely seperate and that the cut of scholarship money from TCG was not because the VGC budget required expanding, but because the budget they get from higher ups remained the same while they were required to do more with it (more events with more people, I assume).
 

Havak

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Yeah Mekkah, that is true. The budgets are entirely separate. They could cut all the prize support out of TCG entirely and it wouldn't change anything in VGC. As Mekkah said, the budgets remain the same, but they need to expand the player-base all the time. This means more events, which also increases the amount of players, but due to more events the prize support has to take a cut in order for prizes to be available at each tournament.

They are able to save money by having TO's host everything, but for the most part these people are volunteers. Maybe we need more people to do this and it is a big workload for them now that they have to keep up with everything in VGC as well as TCG. In an ideal world, all tournaments and leagues would have a TCG expert and a VGC expert. This could be something for each of us to put forward to your local League Runner if you want to try and boost the amount of people playing VGC. I can't see us getting much more prize support in the future, but I reckon Play! Points will come into it somehow. The more you earn, the greater prizes you can purchase with them. Think Nintendo Club points each time you buy a game.

Some TO's will obviously charge a small fee to entire tournaments. When I used to play TCG at my local League, they did £3 tournaments most weeks for fun, where basically everyone got a TCG booster for their £3 entry and then got to play in the tournament to determine who would win a couple of extra boosters. They also charged £5 to enter the more premier events, and of course even more for pre-releases.

I for one, would gladly pay £5 to enter smaller, but still premier VGC events. Ones that mirror TCG tournaments (City, State, Province) and go towards a rating. The only thing is that this would probably not go towards TPCi and their prize budgets, it would go to the TO's or the store / venue they are playing in. Unless TPCi require TO's to note down the number of players and entry fee, then allow the TO to take a percentage. I just hope we can expand VGC more in the future, like everyone wants. However, I'm happy enough with what we currently get and it's obvious they are still at least trying to expand year upon year.

We don't really have much of a right to complain about how things are going right now IMO.
 
Thought I would add my 2 cents.

I would love to hold more (local) events for VGC. I have been running DS Tournaments as side events after my TCG premier events. What I need from the VGC community is recommendations on prizes that could be offered with little to no budget. In the past I have offered booster packs, PTCGO codes, plushies, DS cases, and female DW pkmn. I cannot make special in-game unlocks/pokemon, so don't ask for those.

With the TCG players, it's easy. Booster packs! What do you want that would draw players to drive 1-2 hours for an event?

Oh, and to answer the top question. Yes you do, it stinks, and likely for many of the reasons mentioned by you guys.
 
Thought I would add my 2 cents.

I would love to hold more (local) events for VGC. I have been running DS Tournaments as side events after my TCG premier events. What I need from the VGC community is recommendations on prizes that could be offered with little to no budget. In the past I have offered booster packs, PTCGO codes, plushies, DS cases, and female DW pkmn. I cannot make special in-game unlocks/pokemon, so don't ask for those.

With the TCG players, it's easy. Booster packs! What do you want that would draw players to drive 1-2 hours for an event?

Oh, and to answer the top question. Yes you do, it stinks, and likely for many of the reasons mentioned by you guys.
Mr. Schumacher I have been giving away RNG'd/old event pokemon either for stats, shiny, or both.

A lot of our local VG players don't play TCG so packs aren't ideal. They also don't encourage the VG tournaments either. We have been running VG tournaments in Utah since 2006 and the players like the VG pokemon.
 
I really think they should get sponsorships from somewhere and get a decent prize pool, like the fighting game/MLG/stuff like that circuit. Except not shit and misogynist and terrible and whatever, and sponsored by Cartoon Network or someone. Hilarious as it would be, I wouldn't want Brazzers sponsoring the VGC.

BUT YEAH it seriously would be a good idea. TPCI have honestly been having a laugh with a lot of this year's arrangements... let's have bigger tournaments with worse prizes, and take out all the fun parts??? whata fuck man??? yo TPCI if you were playing a rally car game right now all you'd hear is WRONG WAY WRONG WAY WRONG WAY cause thats just not cool.

Thank god the European staff were as dudey as ever this year and I had a WAILMER of a time. And with the TCG, I actually would play it but here in the UK there's hardly anyone even remotely interested in it. People play Yugioh and Magic fairly regularly, like you'll have a card shop in most towns with about 30 or so regular players of either, but I've yet to meet a single English person who plays Pokémon TCG other than that one guy I met at Worlds 2010 who was there on the invite he won. Pretty terrible tbh, and I wish it wasn't like that. The only interest in Pokémon TCG you get over here is from nostalgic doofuses digging out their old cards lol, think the "i only recognise the first 150 pokemon cause im a douche" crowd.
 

Firestorm

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He probably hasn't seen people play Pokemon cards because he's banned from sanctioned events. Zog, in the future please refrain from posting about things you have no idea about.
 
Zog, in the future please refrain from posting about things you have no idea about.
As a longtime card game player and having suggested Pokémon TCG at my local card shop to no interest, yes, I think I know what I'm talking about.

The UK TCG seems to be more based around a particular group of people from my experience, as opposed to say Yugioh with a larger playerbase, and that's what I'm saying. On the event finder the only one within 40 miles of me is a regular casual kind of thing which I've actually attended, and I can tell you that generally people just play Yugioh and Magic instead. There are maybe 5-6 guys actually interested in Pokémon TCG and the rest just come to hang out. Just to pre-empt here as well, travel in the UK is a lot harder than in the US. It's slow going and several times more expensive, so going by gas prices and the general slowness of getting places, consider any distance in the UK as being roughly 5 times further than in the US.

Now I'd appreciate an apology, cause that was a very rude thing for you to say.
 

Dozz

Has anyone in this family ever seen a chicken?
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Zog, have you actually been to a sanctioned event? Rather than a saturday morning casual play league? Of course people are going to play YGO and Magic at those, as they have more people to play against.

I went to Battle Roads in Shottingham and there was certainly more than just 5-6 interested. Everyone who actually played seemed to know what they were upto. Also, people did travel to this, from outside Notts (E.g Lincoln) and I imagine that people wouldn't do these journeys every weekend for the casual play or a league. These events were spread out fairly well nationwide. (Notts, Manc, London and Cardiff spring to mind) so I imagine everyone was sort of near one, in one way or antoher, and the playerbase doesn't mind making a one off trip, in the same way VGC players all migrate to Brum every year. These events are what you want to look at as a representation of the UK scene.

I don't think you'll be getting your apology now.
 
Yeah Dozz that's actually what I'm saying 9.9

That you pretty much only see TCG play in the UK at official events. As in, there's hardly any grassroots play at your random card shops and like, and that there's only a small number of serious players (who all attend the official tournaments and are something of community in themselves). Thought that was clear tbh.
 
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