VGC 2015 World Championship

[Lohgock]

Maybe per definition, but lets be honest. A game where anyone can win just because of how high the chances of side effects are, in which making poor plays is rewarded way too often and in which the metagame is created by people who have no understanding of competitve battling but only want their game to be sold to children is not something you can call an esport.

Not to mention how big the differences from NA to the other regions are (at least Europe). We have about the same playerbase but our organizers dont have any software to enforce timer or any knowledge about the game at all. In fact, they only care about TCG, only organizing VGC because they have to. We don't even get money prices at Regionals anymore and the prices at nats are shitty compared to US.

We needed to start a shitstorm in order to not have shitty cp bars, new regionals are announced a week before they'll happen (and one week after nats lol), they wanted to make italian nats bo3 after everyone signed up etc etc

All in all, the organization in pokemon is a mess, nobody cares about the meta being playable and chances are too prelevant to make it competitve. I don't see any of those points changing soon even tho solutions are very obvious.

 

[Firestorm]

Cool. I'll let Blizzard know that someone on an internet message board says Hearthstone isn't an esport. Maybe there's still time for them to cancel Worlds. Will also let Viera know that it was chance that had him take 1st at the Japan Cup, Nationals, and Worlds this season (100% of the official events he played in this year).

You seem to have a poor understanding of how the circuit works in NA btw. Our events are also run by TCG organizers (outside of Premier Challenges, like in Europe) and only TPCi has access to the software to enforce timer. You might get that software at Regionals now that Europe has an Organized Play manager (started less than two weeks ago). I also noticed the Organized Play Associate position for Europe is finally off the site so maybe after almost a year of looking they found someone suitable in Europe. Nobody gets money prizes at Regionals.

 

[Lohgock]

I'm not saying they didn't achieve anything. Maybe my english is too bad or you didn't really read what I wrote, all I'm saying is, that Pokemon is way too random to be called a real (e)sport. You tried to counter this argument by saying I'm bad-mouthing peoples success which is simply wrong and shows me you can't disprove my point.

Don't get me wrong; it's awesome pokemon made it to the big stage and how much attention it gets. A sport still needs to be competitive and while a lot of sports have some kind of randomness implented, chances in pokemon play a way too big role. Also the thing with rewarding bad plays I mentioned earlier being too relevant doesn't speak for pokemon.

To put it in other words: would you still call Football competitive if anytime in the game some player randomly kicks the ball in his own goal or doesn't move when an opponent walks past him? Would you call Smash (which is one of the most competitive esports) competitive, if sometimes your charackter uses down a instead of up b, walks down the stage or just doesn't move for 5 seconds? I mean, you could, that's up to you but you hopefully see my point. Suddenly the games becomes way less interesting.

Even though your first point doesn't respond to anything I was saying, let me ask you a question: If I started a "roll-a-dice"-World Cup, will you defend it the same way you're defending Pokemon and Hearthstone World Cup? I mean, someone calls it a World Cup and someone will win, maybe even all main events he attended, therefore it must be competitive, right? You see where this is going.

Btw, since a lot of people will heavily misunderstand me: I'm not, in any way, calling Vieras and all the other peoples sucess random. I was impressed by how Japan destroyed worlds and I think, they're coming close to fully understanding the game. What people achieve in Pokemon overall is just impressive, especially players who constantly win but then I see Lajos playing better than his opponent yet getting completely bs'd out of T8 @ worlds. I see Woopahking trying to throw a game t1 just to look cool and getting rewarded for it. Is that really what an esports should be like?
Also, a little beside the point: I don't play Hearthstone but I have 3 friends playing it on a high level and all three confirmed it's fun to play but one of the most random games ever.



Ok, so your events are also run by TCG organizers. Do they care about VGC? From what I've seen on stream, they do. You have solid commentary, while our commentators talk about how cool shiny Metagross looks because they don't know about typing effectiveness. Our organizers are so bad, UK nats R1 started after US Nats was already over. At german nats, Top 32 started at midnight when Top 16 starts 8 hours later.

We have enough people here suitable to filling that position. For example, Billa is trying to get that job for over a year now.

We did get money prices at regionals (although last year they were "just" big PCs organized officially), although it was just a traveling award of 150€. Not getting anything while paying 10€ entry, a hotel and the travel is kinda eh. But that's really a minor thing to whine about.

 

[rapha]

Lmao are you sure you understand Mark's playing as well as you think you do?

The morning before finals there was a group of about six of us that planned with Mark extensively for hours about his upcoming set. He wasn't trying to look cool. He knew exactly what he was doing because he was well prepared and had weighed every possible option in any given situation before he even stepped on stage.

 

[Lukethehedgehog]

The morning before finals there was a group of about six of us that planned with Mark extensively for hours about his upcoming set.

I swear I have no idea if this is trolling or not.

 

[rapha]

I swear I have no idea if this is trolling or not.

How could that possibly be trolling lol

 

[Lohgock]

Because he would've outright lost had Mark made the obvious play ?_?

 

[Lukethehedgehog]

I swear I have no idea if this is trolling or not.

idk really, but after browsing this I can't really be sure anymore.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

Because he would've outright lost had Mark made the obvious play ?_?

I'm sorry, but "obvious play" is such a fucking cop-out and I hate it when people say that. "Seahawks would have won if they had just made the obvious play and run it with Marshawn Lynch." Now, we can talk about the Seahawks' last play in Super Bowl XLIX being a shit play, but the point is, someone made that call and someone paid the price for it.

Let me just provide my own experience with Pokemon (both VGC and Smogon Singles.) A big part of the game is deciding what play you're going to go with. Now, you can pick the safe play (or what you call the "obvious play") or you can pick something that's riskier but has a potential for greater payoff. For example, let's say I have a Specs Sylveon out. I could just make the safe play and go for Hyper Voice, or, knowing the opponent has Mega Venusaur, I could also go for Psyshock expecting to hit it - which would make things way easier for my Sylveon but would make things way harder for me if they went to Tyranitar or something expecting that (of course, bringing out Tyranitar against a Specs Sylveon is also a risky play, but if it wins you the game then is it really a bad one?) What separates a good player from an average one is knowing when to go for the safe play and when to take a risk (For example, they might take a risk if they know there is no way they'll win by making the safe play.) From what I understand, Mark seems to have a far better grasp on this concept than you do. You just sound like someone who's salty that a player much better than you made a risky play that ultimately paid off.

 

[Steven Stone]

In the second match, I just saw a player with the game name of AV Link (something something star etc.) Didn't I lose against you multiple times in TheMantykes tournaments?! If so, sorry about your loss.

Isn't that Ashton? (AV Linkyoshimario?).

 

[Lohgock]

I'm sorry, but "obvious play" is such a fucking cop-out and I hate it when people say that. "Seahawks would have won if they had just made the obvious play and run it with Marshawn Lynch." Now, we can talk about the Seahawks' last play in Super Bowl XLIX being a shit play, but the point is, someone made that call and someone paid the price for it.

Let me just provide my own experience with Pokemon (both VGC and Smogon Singles.) A big part of the game is deciding what play you're going to go with. Now, you can pick the safe play (or what you call the "obvious play") or you can pick something that's riskier but has a potential for greater payoff. For example, let's say I have a Specs Sylveon out. I could just make the safe play and go for Hyper Voice, or, knowing the opponent has Mega Venusaur, I could also go for Psyshock expecting to hit it - which would make things way easier for my Sylveon but would make things way harder for me if they went to Tyranitar or something expecting that (of course, bringing out Tyranitar against a Specs Sylveon is also a risky play, but if it wins you the game then is it really a bad one?) What separates a good player from an average one is knowing when to go for the safe play and when to take a risk (For example, they might take a risk if they know there is no way they'll win by making the safe play.) From what I understand, Mark seems to have a far better grasp on this concept than you do. You just sound like someone who's salty that a player much better than you made a risky play that ultimately paid off.

I'm not really sure, if you really know what you're saying.
First of all, how do you know he's a better player than me? Seems to me you're throwing random insults at me hoping I don't notice you can't disprove my point.

I don't get your sports analogy since I'm German and we don't call advertisment sports, so can't really say anything about that.

Second of all.. well.. you're wrong. For starters, you're completely ignoring this is Doubles. You can't say "hyper voice is safe if he doesn't switch out while psyshock is riskier but pays off in case he switches out". You and your opponent both have partners. If your team has no means of dealing with Venusaur, then it's probably better to go for Psyshock. If you have enough ways to deal with it you can go for Hyper Voice because even if he switches out it's not worth risking Psyshock since you can deal with Venu anyway.

Most of the time, there's nothing like "I could make the safe play or I could make the risky play - it doesn't really matter in the end". A lot of times, there's one play that's the best one, in some situations there are two possible plays BUT there can also be a drawbackless play. These are the ones you try to create in a game. A play that's always the best, no matter what your opponent does. It doesn't matter how obvious this play is, it's the best in any given scenario.

Now, let's look at the matchup in t1 of the game. Lando-T & Zapdos for Koki against Chari & Cresse for Mark. Koki knows he has to prevent TR in order to not have one hell of a bad situation. He also needs to be aware of Chari since he's kinda weak to it. Since Knock Off + TBolt doesn't kill Cresse if Knock Off doesn't crit or he gets a para + paraflinch, it's not likely he can prevent TR this way. Now, had he gone for Rock Slide + TBolt he would've had a far better chance of preventing TR plus getting rid of Chari in case it doesn't protect. In fact, the chance of him preventing TR by going for Rock Slide is more than twice as high than by going for Knock Off and he still has this neat "side effect" of killing Charizard.
Tell me if I'm missing something but I'm sure in this situation Rock Slide was 100% the best play thus the obvious one. Koki had no reason not to go for Rock Slide so the question is, why did Mark attack with Charizard? Don't tell me "well, it worked out so it was good". I don't know why he did, I only know he risked the whole game by taking a completely unneccessary risk.


I'm kinda disliking what this discussion turned into btw.. I'm not trying to discredit Mark. He won worlds, which speaks for itself. He was on a big stage, millions of people were watching him and he's a young guy. All I was saying is he risked the game t1 since I didn't understand the hype and to show how pokemon needs some work to become an esport. I don't know why people are taking this to a personal level and start insulting me for no reason. Especially when they don't seem to have really understand the principes of good / bad / obvious play.

 

[Firestorm]

I'm not saying they didn't achieve anything. Maybe my english is too bad or you didn't really read what I wrote, all I'm saying is, that Pokemon is way too random to be called a real (e)sport. You tried to counter this argument by saying I'm bad-mouthing peoples success which is simply wrong and shows me you can't disprove my point.

Don't get me wrong; it's awesome pokemon made it to the big stage and how much attention it gets. A sport still needs to be competitive and while a lot of sports have some kind of randomness implented, chances in pokemon play a way too big role. Also the thing with rewarding bad plays I mentioned earlier being too relevant doesn't speak for pokemon.

To put it in other words: would you still call Football competitive if anytime in the game some player randomly kicks the ball in his own goal or doesn't move when an opponent walks past him? Would you call Smash (which is one of the most competitive esports) competitive, if sometimes your charackter uses down a instead of up b, walks down the stage or just doesn't move for 5 seconds? I mean, you could, that's up to you but you hopefully see my point. Suddenly the games becomes way less interesting.

Even though your first point doesn't respond to anything I was saying, let me ask you a question: If I started a "roll-a-dice"-World Cup, will you defend it the same way you're defending Pokemon and Hearthstone World Cup? I mean, someone calls it a World Cup and someone will win, maybe even all main events he attended, therefore it must be competitive, right? You see where this is going.

Btw, since a lot of people will heavily misunderstand me: I'm not, in any way, calling Vieras and all the other peoples sucess random. I was impressed by how Japan destroyed worlds and I think, they're coming close to fully understanding the game. What people achieve in Pokemon overall is just impressive, especially players who constantly win but then I see Lajos playing better than his opponent yet getting completely bs'd out of T8 @ worlds. I see Woopahking trying to throw a game t1 just to look cool and getting rewarded for it. Is that really what an esports should be like?
Also, a little beside the point: I don't play Hearthstone but I have 3 friends playing it on a high level and all three confirmed it's fun to play but one of the most random games ever.

Pokémon is competitive. There's a reason I used Viera as an example. I can also use Ray, Sejun, Wolfe, Markus, Aaron and many others as an example here. If this was the equivalent of a roll-a-die competition, you wouldn't have players who have displayed such a consistent level of success in the game. Sure they have off tournaments, but there's a reason they're considered the greats.

There are random elements in games. A game of Melee can be won off a luckily-timed stitchface. A game of League can be won off a triple crit in a crucial teamfight. Pokemon has it more than most others. I don't see how your definition of what an esport is supercedes what most in the industry would use. Don't put the term on a pedestal or to put games down. An esport is a game being played at the highest competitive level. That's what players do when playing in the Pokemon Video Game Championships. Personally I think that a game also needs to be entertaining to watch to be a sustainable esport.

and I think we've got that covered fine. We might not be at the stage where we're filling up Madison Square Garden or the O2 Arena but this is pretty solid.

Also keep in mind that Senior Division is like the Under 16 of the Pokemon world. If you're going to talk about the game at the highest level, you want the Masters division.

Ok, so your events are also run by TCG organizers. Do they care about VGC? From what I've seen on stream, they do. You have solid commentary, while our commentators talk about how cool shiny Metagross looks because they don't know about typing effectiveness. Our organizers are so bad, UK nats R1 started after US Nats was already over. At german nats, Top 32 started at midnight when Top 16 starts 8 hours later.

We have enough people here suitable to filling that position. For example, Billa is trying to get that job for over a year now.

We did get money prices at regionals (although last year they were "just" big PCs organized officially), although it was just a traveling award of 150€. Not getting anything while paying 10€ entry, a hotel and the travel is kinda eh. But that's really a minor thing to whine about.

Depends on which ones. On the west coast I have some really awesome TOs who care about the video game side. There are a few of those in Europe too. In other places on the continent they couldn't care less it feels like. My area of Canada is the only one with people dedicated to really growing the VG scene and that's mostly because I got involved with the TCG side of things a while ago and helped introduce video game to the area.

One PTO at a Regional manually set the top cut number to 8 instead of 16 causing someone to miss cut at x-1. Bad TOs exist in every game. Most of the things you're whining about sounds like someone who hasn't spent a lot of time in competitive gaming. You don't have a strong understanding of the worldwide circuit for Pokemon let alone other games.

Not getting anything while paying 10€ entry, a hotel and travel is literally how 99% of the fighting game community plays their game. That's what I did when I played Smash. That's what I did in Pokemon until this year where I got some prizing for the first time. If you think esports means everyone gets money for playing, you were mistaken.

 

[Lohgock]

Ok, I noticed you have a different understanding of competitive sports than the german community has. That's totally ok and especially nice to see people being happy despite low standards. I compared pokemon with rolling a dice for the sole reason of showing how great chances influence the game. People tend to compare it to chess or other esports that have no or very low chances like Smash. These analogies are as wrong as mine was. Since you mentioned Markus - he went 4:3 ar yesterdays Regional, lost to a person who haxed his way all through swiss despite having a mediocre team and playing no better than mediocre, too. He also completely haxed me scoring two crits, one freeze, two burns and a fully para in 8 turns while I played a nearly perfect game (to be fair, I knew his team before the game started and they had some delay to start the round so I had plenty of time to make a game plan). I watches some replays people saved and none was without game-deciding hax.

That's just an example and we all know what can happen if rng decides to not like us. Now, people, like you, can say, that's part of the game and you have to deal with it and you're completely right. We have no other choice than to play by the rules or stop playing but does that mean it's good how it is? Everyone playing at least 10 games or reading the average post on Smogon or any other board has to notice what's wrong. Like I said, I'm not discrediting Viera or any of the other guys for their impressive work (I'm playing Pokemon for a long enough time to realize what they did), I'm saying in order to create a game where good players constantly win against worse ones we need to change some stuff in Pokemon. Otherwise, it will continue to be a game where even the best people can easily be beaten by being lucky.

I never claimed to have a "strong understanding" of other games. It's still enough to know most games reward people for winning a tournament. Not saying we don't but it's not even enough to pay the trip and the hotel and we need to find someone buying the displays of trading cards. If you're calling me unaware in knowledge of the worldwide circuit for not knowing your exact pricings, that's ok. I saw your pricing at nats, we don't even get half of that on ours despite having about the same amount of attendees. I obviously don't know how anything but your nats are organized (you can't called ours organized btw) but did one of these things ever happen at one of your regionals: 1. a judge fell asleep during a semi-final match 2. you have manual timer but the judges don't know about the tiebreak and time out rules 3. you ask a judge how the standing of the quarterfinal-match next to her she's watching is and she repeats she doesn't see the screen from where she's sitting? All that happened yesterday at one regional. Oh and the exact same judge also judged at worlds. It doesn't matter if that's exclusive to Germany or a worldwide problem, all of that is ridicolous. Now call it an esport all you want, if that's how esports work, you better go play football in the garden.

 

[Firestorm]

I wasn't talking about traditional sports, I was talking about esports. There's a reason I also said you can have unlucky breaks but what we consider to be truly skilled in the game is based on consistency -- though I must say we've never had an undeserving World Champion in the past 6 years. Ray, Arash, Sejun, and Shoma are all individually recognized as among the top players in the world both for their peak performance at Worlds as well as in general. I compared Pokemon to an esport that has a very high element of luck in Hearthstone. It's one of the most popular esports seeing constant grassroots and sponsored tournaments with over 100,000 people watching their world championships online and is usually among the top 5 games watched on Twitch at any given moment.

As for your questions, our Regionals for VG require a TPCi employee to be present so there is a Battle Box to lock. This may happen in Europe this season or next now that they have OP members working there? This means judges, though they still sit there for some reason, aren't really required. As far as knowing tiebreaker rules, I doubt 99% of them know especially given most of our players (including ones that played at Worlds) don't know them correctly. However, the judges in my area are resourceful and would come ask one of us that they know is well-versed in the video game for help if they don't know the answer to something. After 2 years or so they've definitely gotten the hang of things though.

Last I checked, winning Nationals got you a trip to Worlds. I think registration fees for VG Regionals is being considered for better prize support. If you're up to paying more to cover venue and prize costs, let your TO and Pokemon know. In Smash they often do $10 - $30 for venue fee (to pay for the space depending on how expensive it is) and then $10 for entry fee per game (Melee Singles, Melee Doubles, Smash 4 Singles, etc) to pay for the prize pool if that's something you want to do at local events.

There's a ton that can be done by both TPCi, local organizers, and players to make the game even better competitively, but as someone who works in the industry, it is definitely ignorant to say it isn't an esport as is.

 

[DM]

Hi I'm late but it was super awesome meeting faint and hanging out with all the other dudes and dudettes

if you could have gone and didn't you're stupid

 

[Firestorm]

i just realized i never met vader what the fuck