What did you think of the new system?

[tofucocoa]

What the topic says. Maybe some Nintendo employee will be able to find feedback posts more easily in a separate topic rather than a few here and there.

While the whole 2-reigonals a year thing is all well and good, Summer is when people can really set aside time to travel to reigonals. I also didn't like how low key the event was (no Eye of the Tiger or Final Countdown??) and you really couldn't record matches other than standing behind a competitor and zooming in on their screen. Speaking of that, you could stand behind and watch people of your own division without the judges getting onto you, which really doesn't help against team scouting.

 

[Firestorm]

I really don't think a poll is very helpful, but it would be good if people could coherently and calmly give their criticisms as well as what they liked about this year's format.

I didn't attend a regional this fall because Salem, OR just turned out to be too inconvenient to get to and there was some confusion about prizes. So from second-hand experience:

Pros

• Even though this was their first time dealing with the video game, the PTOs seem to have run things very smoothly! Everything finished very quickly. I know many of them had very little time to prepare and they did a great job.

Cons

• The most glaring issue was the lack of a top cut. Swiss without a top cut just doesn't work. I think concerns about time is what likely stopped this, but as we saw, almost every regional ended well before 4PM aside from Oregon which started quite late. We can have a top cut and I really, really hope that the April ones do so we can have more accurate results. Not to mention Top Cut really gets the atmosphere going as people can watch the finals match (no TV really required, you can just get an overhead projector to show one of the DS' top screens)
• Sundays are not good days for regionals. This is hard to avoid aside from making sure they fall on long weekends seeing as TCG and VGC have to be completed, but Pokemon has a lot of kids playing and their parents want them back home in time for school! As far as us university kids go, I think we'd prefer them not to be during Midterms =[
• End Seniors and Juniors TCG Top Cut before they have to play VGC! One of the regionals was pretty set on finishing Seniors and Juniors so they could play the video game the next day. Another ended early and kinda screwed over some of the competitors who wanted to compete in both. The two formats can really grow from each other (I know so many people here who have picked up the TCG in the last few months), but it's hard to do that if they have to keep picking. I understand they'll have to by Nationals and Worlds, but it would still be nice to do both in Regionals!
• Some staff with video game knowledge would be helpful to avoid any weird issues that may arise.
• Communication! One regional had 4 different start times given out. And as I mentioned, I had been told by TPCi that Canadians couldn't win travel prizes in the US and then the site itself was worded confusingly to make it seem as if you could win the travel prize regardless (just to your own National instead of the one the regional was in)... I think it would be better if PokemonVGC was updated and every regional hosted their information there rather than being in 9 different sites with 9 different formats.

I'm not going to lie. I did prefer last year's format for entirely selfish reasons. These really are social events for me. I love meeting up with friends in the community from across the country. Seattle is close enough to me that the addition of the Vancouver regional wasn't a big deal. The simultaneous events cut down on the amount of people I can see and if US and Canadian Nationals clash, I'm gonna lose out on another. The summer having an event every weekend also made it a pretty awesome time for Pokemon with something to follow each weekend.


I'm assuming moving forward we may get City and State / Provincial Championships and maybe even Battle Roads which should really help with the community-building (although a bit more local like the TCG seems to be). So I look forward to seeing how this format pans out. I understand that this is a transitional year and that it gets a bit worse before it gets better!

 

[Dimsun]

I hate to say it was horrible, but it was pretty bad. The lack of experience from TCG staff was obvious; along with that there was no top cut. It kinda sucked to have all of them on the same day too, considering there was no real metagame development between regionals, which is a big deal in VGC. You have no idea what you can win with if they all happen at once, especially in seniors division. Not to bash on Masters, but you have no clue what someone will use when they haven't yet really used something like smogon but understand EVs. There were no TVs, the attendance was tiny(I'm not sure if that counts as the tourney's fault or the people's), and uh... yeah.

 

[Shiny Regice]

The lack of advertising really killed attendance. You have to think of the casual players that are accustomed to visiting PokemonVGC.com or even Pokemon.com in hopes of finding the VGC events. They are HORRIBLY hidden in the depths of their TCG locations this year (if they even were listed). Having so few people there and having it be a lot less epic was definitely a bummer. Regardless I thought the tourney at Ft Wayne with extremely smooth which was nice.

 

[Cyrus]

First off: hats off to our staff for being helpful, nice, and knowledgeable the whole day. Plus, Marriland being there certainly helped.

Anyways, it's a bit of a stretch to say I wouldn't go to another VGC; on the contrary, I'm excited by my nice burst of beginner's luck, and am interested in competitive video game play. However, swiss-only sucks, and is not worth the saved 2-4 hours of venue time whatsoever. It's absurd to deny reasonably large prizes to players based only on their resistance, and even more absurd to deny these based on opponent's opponent's resistance (as is the case with StL).

tl; dr : a fantastic, fun way to make up for my lackluster TCG showing the day before, but needs some serious work. Event legitimacy should always come first, and it seems like the players will have to drag P!P kicking and screaming until they finally grant swiss + top cut.

 

[Unreality]

Pros: I guess after a while they started doing things right. Everyone was pretty friendly when you were following their rules, they were pretty strict about people staying away from the matches which I guess was OK.

Cons: Felt less like the regionals we knew, more like "get in, do your games, get out". The tournament organizer was very scattered and told us to show up at 8 am on Sunday when we had to be there at 11. Also there was one point in the seniors battles where they were like "EVERYONE POWER OFF YOUR GAMES RIGHT NOW" because some error happened. Finally, asymmetrical top cut would have been great, we certainly had time for it x3

 

[soul_survivor]

To me it was okay. I mean I really didn't like there being no top cut. It was like you lose early on, and no t4 for you, or Pray the person who beat you will do good. In my case though I lost rd2 to stupidity, and he ended 4-2. This pretty much meant no matter what I do, its impossible to make t4 even though i finished 5-1.

I also wish the advertising was better, but I also felt there was no true "metagame" which could be good or bad. Good because people make their own strategy, and you won't see random people run something like top-ogre because a group of ppl ran it, and were successful. This forces people to make their team themselves. Bad because well as Dimsun said Seniors had iffy teams, and I pretty much saw what people were running in seniors, by watching. It was ugly. There were like a few amazing teams I saw, and others were horrifying. Its basically have someone who goes on smogon/skarmbliss to make your team, or go on it yourself, and well make a team like cybertron's team.

 

[commi$$ioner]

I thoroughly enjoyed the dead silence and packing and cleaning up of the venue as we made it to our 4th/7th round.

 

[Solace]

I enjoyed Swiss because it gave all of us something new to talk about inbetween rounds and the way it was run allowed for some hanging out between great Smogoners. However, there were a few problems.

The thing with Swiss is that it works fine if you can have people that are all arguably around the same level, but... obvously that cannot be guaranteed at a regional. Although I myself definitely enjoyed being able to come back and turn my record around after losing, it was a lot more detrimental to certain people. Places 2-4 were pretty much based upon how well your opponents did, especially since so many people had the same record but lost from that.

I also think making it Sunday kinda killed a lot of the atmosphere. With less kids around, it made the regional a lot more competitive and I think people might have acted a little differently and certainly felt silly with their actions had there been a 5 year old watching from Juniors.

I did enjoy the event but I definitely feel like it would've fallen apart if not for Mike Liesik being there. I hope the April ones fix the problems that the November ones had.

 

[Everstone]

I can't really say anything about prior vgcs since this was my first, but during juniors and seniors, they didn't catch any hacked Pokemon or banned moves until as late as round 3-4. They cleaned up their act for masters and hack checked everyone at the beginning.
It didn't really feel very organized. No acknowledgment of winners, just basically "Here's the list of places top 4 come to get your prizes, everyone else bai"
Swiss was ok since everyone got to play the whole time, but there should have been something to account for people with identical records in top 4 instead of basing it on their opponents' W-L ratio, which can't be controlled by the player. I think we finished an hour earlier than expected, so a head-to-head tiebreaker would not be out of the question.

 

[The Lube]

I thoroughly enjoyed the dead silence and packing and cleaning up of the venue as we made it to our 4th/7th round.

yeah man, that was awful. awkward dead silence the whole time during matches, and then between later rounds we had to wait like 30 minutes for them to pack up the entire venue

 

[TheGr8]

I enjoyed the swiss rounds for sure, it was the first one I went to with Swiss format since my only other VGC was Newark last June. The whole staff thing, well from the RI was a bit wacked out and inexperienced which Liesik being there was going to help out. That was the only issue I really think all day we had. Top cut would be nice to have we really did have the time for it we got out at like 3 or 3:30

 

[macle]

fucking shit

all of us in ft wayne had to play each other in the first 3 rounds. we beat the shit out of each other and let stupid randoms get up into the top percent.

 

[ZachDro]

fucking shit

all of us in ft wayne had to play each other in the first 3 rounds. we beat the shit out of each other and let stupid randoms get up into the top percent.

9 Smogonites there, and I think between ourselves we had 23 battles. That's to be expected with 252 battles taking place as only 72 people were there, but facing each other so early in the rounds messed things up a lot. The lack of top cut didn't allow any hope after the second loss. Need a top 20% cut, and it could easily be done while running 7 rounds per regional.

Also, I agree with the notions that the advertising sucked. The VGC website had nothing on it, Pokemon.com had nothing on it...I bet half of the people that come there look at those two sites first. There has to be some incentive to advertise or it's going to have a turnout like before.

My three tips to Liesik:
1) Get a top cut going. 20% top cut is the best format, as has been seen in nats. There's enough time for 5 more rounds if not more.
2) Location, location, location. Advertise all over. Get the VGC site up to date and get it up to date asap. You need to make sure people know that it's happening and know where to go.
3) Check your judges. I heard a lot of very poor comments about the judges and people running the events, especially from Rhode Island and Florida. A great idea would be giving a survey to the people in top cut, and an optional one for the others leaving. This would help you understand where you are and what you need to get to!

Hope everyone had fun, it was a bit frustrating beating each other out of contention but the day overall was a blast.

 

[theamericandream38]

Lack of top cut was beyond retarded, especially when you combine it with the fact that there is no IDing in Pokemon (or so ultimatedra says) and standings are never posted prior to the end of the final round... I could have safely scooped Kaleb into top 4 if I had been able to see my breakers/if there was actually a top cut, which was frustrating to say the least. If TPCI wants pokemon to become a legitimate competitive game, they should do things that all other games *coughmagiccough* do (allow draws, top cut, post standings before penultimate and final rounds).

All that being said, I thought the event was run pretty smoothly, and the staff at ft wayne was not bad like some regionals apparently had (protect metagross? Sitting in the wrong seat? Reeeaaallly?). I can understand the feelings of "it wasn't as big of a spectacle" and whatnot, but the overall benefit of additional regionals (one within 10 hours of me? Yes please!) and open nationals are, in my opinion, worth it.

 

[Sapphire Birch]

t8/16 cut please.

thats all i ask for.

 

[Shinkou]

This was definitely the best format so far, despite what I hear others are saying. I lost my first round but was able to win five in a row to finish 5-1. In the previous format, I would have been angry and bored while waiting for my dad to finish so that we could go home without waiting for the end if he did not make the top.

Obviously, the lack of a playoff and prizes only given to the top4 were problems but TPCi has come a long way since the tragedy of VGC 2009. I am glad that the tournament is starting to be taken more seriously with the introduction of swiss rounds and Mike himself said that this year was meant to measure how long the tournament would take before making plans on how to perfect the system. I was mad that I could only make 7th despite making such a huge recovery but at least I was able to play the entire tournament and had fun.

 

[Calm_Lava]

Top 16 cut would be the most logical aspect especially since everyone is divided up and the regionals are significatly smaller, t16 would still be the best thing in my opinion. And as far as top cut being implemented in April, after the VGC in Missouri, i ran into Marriland at the hotel i was at and me ryuzaki and ashenlocke talked to him about it and he said he'd definitely put a word in about it because he saw the results of no top cut and felt the same way we as players did. He also said that if any changes WERE actually to be made, they would only be possible if the tournaments were to be run by the organizations themselves (ex: if in MO, Yeti Gaming was running the tournament). So if Pokemon is running the tournaments, then they will (should) already have the structure set in stone for April and we wont see a top cut.

 

[Superpokemon67]

I'm sorry, but the fall regionals were entirely pathetic. They had no advertising, as shown by the number of people (only 26 masters wth), the staff was entirely clueless with the VGC, the lack of top cut was awful (Hitmonrocker and I both went 4-1 but placed only 5 and 6th due to pathetic tiebreakers; top cut would've fixed that). It felt so tiny and different than last year I would rather have single elim with more people than swiss like every time. I don't kow, that's just me, but they better change some things next year, or even in April, before it actually moves forward.

EDIT: Meeting smogoners was still awesome though.

 

[Tobes]

Everything Firestorm said.

BRING BACK TVs AND TOP CUT

 

[Jegretis]

I didn't go, but I heard there was a small lack of attendance. They really should have updated the VGC website and advertised it a bit more. Not only that, but I honeslty think that the Regionals should have not been on the same day. I think its only just me, but yeah.

They still have a chance to redo this, they just have to do it again by upcoming Spring. Everyone who won yesterday still has their invites to the nationals, but I think its too late to change the 'flow' of the tournament set-up.

 

[Blades]

I liked Swiss hella' more than the previous style and here's why. Better players will do better. Period. Let's take how I did for example. I got crit by the guy who ended up winning the tournament and it cost me my second match. In the regular VGC format, I would have driven X number of miles for X number of hours to lose second round and be pissed for the next month. In this format, I continued to win because I'm a good player and it showed, so bottom half in the other tournament turns into third. Adding more matches takes a lot of the luck factor out of this game that we play. That being said, this play style is better for EVERYONE. Let's say you're a casual player and you just want to have fun and play the game, but you get matched up with me first round. I beat the crap out of you 4-0 and you go home. I'm sure you had a ton of fun there. I feel bad about knocking people in earlier rounds out of the tournament because I know I'm taking them out of late rounds that they could have won. Here, it's not the case. A round one loser or casual player gets to keep playing, have more fun, play people their own skill level. It just works out for everyone. One of our guys lost first round but ended up going on a 4 win streak after that. It was his first VGC and for that reason I'm glad that he got to play more matches. In other words, better players win/place higher, worse/casual players get to play more matches. It's a win/win.

That being said, this:

(Firestorm) The most glaring issue was the lack of a top cut. Swiss without a top cut just doesn't work. I think concerns about time is what likely stopped this, but as we saw, almost every regional ended well before 4PM aside from Oregon which started quite late. We can have a top cut and I really, really hope that the April ones do so we can have more accurate results.

This was the reason I got third and not second. It cost me 2 byes and a second place medal; all of which could have been decided by a couple more minutes and a few more matches.

Also, I would like to address this:

(Dimsun) I hate to say it was horrible, but it was pretty bad. The lack of experience from TCG staff was obvious; along with that there was no top cut. It kinda sucked to have all of them on the same day too, considering there was no real metagame development between regionals, which is a big deal in VGC. You have no idea what you can win with if they all happen at once, especially in seniors division. Not to bash on Masters, but you have no clue what someone will use when they haven't yet really used something like smogon but understand EVs. There were no TVs, the attendance was tiny(I'm not sure if that counts as the tourney's fault or the people's), and uh... yeah.

Metagame development is a joke. That just means you can't build a team and copying some winners strategy is how you want to do it. "Metagame development" boils down to, if "Oh hey this guy won with this team!" ... let's consult the flow chart...
Then,
A. I'm going to use a team just like his/hers because it's great!
B. Now I have to make a team that counters that stupid team that everyone and their mother now has.

If B. then,
Ba. Oh hey someone won with a "Metagame" counter, now that's the best team.
Bb. Ah crap, my "Metagame countering team" couldn't beat a regular goodstuffs team or a less commonly used strategy.

If Ba. then,
Ca. I see your metagame countering, metagame team and raise you a metagame metagame countering metagame team.

... RINSE REPEAT. You can win with a good team, try making one.

 

[Age of Kings]

Lack of top cut is the main complaint I have, and I think others have already echoed my opinions of that. Lack of attendance and advertisement is another, I was shocked to see a California regional have <100 attendance but when I posted photos of the event elsewhere there were people who told me they would have gone had they known about it. Casual people who play the video game are less likely to be "in the loop" so to speak, but I'm sure more players would have gone were there some more advertisement.
My last complaint is that there should be more prizes besides championship points or w/e. Top 8 just got a plushie for their troubles. I mean last year top 16 just got invites to nationals but since they're not doing that this year there should be at least something. I would understand if they can't do this due to budget concerns but TCG had way more prizes and I'd like to see the VGCs reflect that.

However, this was much improved from the stupid single elim of previous years. Nothing can be perfect and this was a big step forward in the right direction. Hopefully next year (or even April regionals) will be top cut.

 

[dtrain]

Went to R.I. this weekend. To sum it up
Pros: Event was run smoothly. As soon as all matches ended pairings were up.

Cons:
-The situation with SapphireBirch getting DQ was very disappointing. This never should have happened.
- What time the event starts. There was no communication with the PTO at RI about what time Masters definitively starts. I emailed the store the week of the tournament asking and never received a reply. Then on Saturday we ask them and they say get there between 8-9 only to find out registration was at 11. Really could have used another 2 hours of sleep. So yea what Zachdro said. I think having the VGC site definitely helps.
-Low turn out. Putting it on a Sunday makes it tough for other people to come out
-No announcer. The best part about these events was that Nick had the positive energy to make the events the best they could be.
-NO TOP CUT. This was the biggest problem since depending on attendance, you'd get plenty of people with the same record missing out on top 4 (in RI we had at least 6-7 people who went x-1 while in another regional (I forget which) some lucky person made 4th with a x-2 record)

*Of course I know this was a test trial for future events and am very looking forward to what changes will be made for spring regionals and next season :)

 

[Huy]

For what it's worth, I still think this is a move in the right direction. The issue at hand this time around was timing. TPCi threw the event at PTOs 2 months before it had to be done and didn't allow nearly enough time to get everything planned out. As for the advertising, I think that was intentional as to not overwhelm the new staff with such a large amount of people. Genereally, we got the same amount of people that usually show up for a TCG regional and that made it alot more managable for the PTO. I am not sure how disorganized the other events are but I was VERY pleased with how efficiently run the SoCal event was for it being a first time.