Pokemon VGC 2010 DATES / rules announced for the US!

[Zog]

Just saying, what I mean by having your strategy ruined is more that people become aware of what they might need to prepare for or might even copy the team. Take zerowing's Phoenix team for example: if he'd have made that public before the tournament people would have thought "Hmm that team looks good, I'll have to make sure my leads can deal with Garchomp and Zapdos.", which would theoretically put zerowing at a disadvantage if he'd have fought someone who read his team. Another example would be lvl1 Smeargle. That was a complete bolt from the blue when it was first used in Japan, and now it's standard fare to have something in your team that can deal with it.

Edit: Bleh no I can't play in the tournament, 1am is too late.

 

[Chirnobyl]

wait, people weren't prepared for Garchomp + Zapdos leads? lol, well even so as stated previously, you can only hope to counter so many things, and common strategies like those are generally thought of anyway, like in my case I didn't think directly of Garchomp + Zapdos, however I was prepared to bring down Zapdos + Electivire which in a way was about the same thing barring the fact that Garchomp has a stronger Earthquake and Electivire is faster after the first Discharge from Zapdos

 

[CrazySnorlax]

If Japan is having like 47 tournaments, why doesn't America have one in each state? Then it would let like everyone play and no event would be over crowded.

 

[Mosquito]

If Japan is having like 47 tournaments, why doesn't America have one in each state? Then it would let like everyone play and no event would be over crowded.

The United Stats is ALOT larger than Japan. Japan is about 300 miles (north to south, and east to west) when measuring Honshu, the largest of its islands. The US is about 1000 miles north to south, and about 3000 miles west to east. Besides, that wouldn't help the fact that Alaska would have like 20 people in its regional, and New York/Cali/Texas will get flooded with maybe 500 or more each. Rhode Island would be a regional serving a small area, and would be like 40 miles from the nearest on to it, Connecticut. Basically, it's the Constitutional Convention all over again... We need a Great Compromise.

 

[POKEMONBATTLEBRAIN]

Plus, the pokemon fanbase is a much higher percentage of the entire population in Japan than over here in the USA. Hence more competitions.

 

[CrazySnorlax]

Well last years places werent that great either. Only like one event on the east coast. People who lived in New England area had to drive a crazy amount of time for not even a set spot. They should at least put an event in areas were multiple states can get to in a reasonable time. Becuase i live in New York, i could only go to one event. Some people could actually go to multiple events because of how they placed the tournaments. Next year better have atleast 10 stops.

 

[mattj]

Well last years places werent that great either. Only like one event on the east coast. People who lived in New England area had to drive a crazy amount of time for not even a set spot. They should at least put an event in areas were multiple states can get to in a reasonable time. Becuase i live in New York, i could only go to one event. Some people could actually go to multiple events because of how they placed the tournaments. Next year better have atleast 10 stops.

It was their 1st (or 2nd???) try. I'm sure they've learned from last year and will impliment changes. :)

 

[Zog]

There really should be more in Europe, too.

Best case scenario could probably to just have 2 nationals for each country, actually. This year only 2 people from each country got to San Diego, which was 6 from 3 countries and that isn't really any good. Especially when the US got 16 people. Have a north and a south national for the European countries, 2 getting to the worlds from each, and there you have a nice round 12 from Europe, and probably with a lot more people turning up to each event than before.

It'd save so much trouble for everyone in Europe. While the distance to London for me is only 200 miles, it costs a lot of money to get down there. I went by car with about £50 in petrol costs iirc; the motorways are very busy and the petrol prices are several times higher than in the US, also train tickets are expensive and the trains unreliable from my experience with them. As opposed to the freeways in the US, where you can go fast along the open road and where fuel is cheap, in the UK you're looking at hours sitting around in the car, barely moving, surrounded by lorries, so bored out of your mind you're looking to see how many Eddie Stobarts you can spot. On a probably rainy, basically featureless 4-lane motorway that's enclosed in a sort of ditch lined by manky pine trees. Not even mildly interesting roads like you get in the US, where you see the occasional tortoise or something at the roadside. Anyway, it took a whole weekend and around £150 for me to get down to the London VGC. If they'd have held a second UK qualifier in Manchester for example, that would've made the tournament much more accessible for everyone north of, say, Birmingham, and actually plausible for any scots or welshmen.

So yeah, while I'm aware that the distances in the US are so much larger, travel is also much easier. And on top of that, in the US people generally do travel more. Most people I spoke to about the VGC were very interested until I told them it was in London, then they just couldn't be arsed. Somewhere like Manchester would be an ideal location, being the other location in the UK (the other is London) to have one of those LAN gaming places (it's on the bottom floor of HMV iirc), so there is an active gaming community. The French and German ones would probably be similar. Marseilles and Munich would make sense but I've never been to either of those places so yeah.

 

[Alaka]

sign ups are currently open for a live tournament using this ruleset, go to #smogonwifi

 

[Dane]

It was their 1st (or 2nd???) try. I'm sure they've learned from last year and will impliment changes. :)

I'm not sure how they did registration this past year, but did they ask for participant's address/zip code/state?

If they did, they might be able to get a pretty good database going as to how far some people had to travel to reach a given destination, and how many people did in fact have to travel far distances to reach it.

From there, they could find the average travel distance, construct a map with those spheres of travel shown, and then find the areas that aren't close to any spheres.

 

[Chirnobyl]

yeah, hopefully they learned that there are quite a number of people wanting to get in >_> I mean they probably saw this after the first year and introduced two more areas, although my gripe was that they didn't hold it in NYC, where the population is dense >_>

 

[mattj]

I'm not sure how they did registration this past year, but did they ask for participant's address/zip code/state?

Not that I remember, and I went to Nashville, St. Louis, and Worlds. They only just asked people face to face every now and then. No database if I recall...

And Zog, Europe seriously does need more tourneys. I felt so bad for viper and the rest of the German crew. We all played each other outside of the tourney and they were seriously good!!! If they had more of a chance to get in (in the form of more qualifiers probably) they definitely would have gotten far. Hopefully, Nintendo will do something more there next year.

However, I have a feeling the number of qualifiers may be linked to sales and whatnot in a particular area, so... :?

 

[Hax-boy]

Hi, does anybody know when the preference challenge's start???

 

[Zog]

I'm pretty sure pokémon sells well in the UK. With the kids I've known to have owned a Nintendo handheld, it's pretty much a 1:1 ratio of GB/GBA/DS players to pokémon game copies. However there's very much a sort of 'uncoolness' associated with playing pokémon at around the ages of 11-13 which is probably why so few juniors turned up to London. Older kids all remember pokémon fondly, and quite a few people I know at school play it with acceptable competitive knowledge. I know 3 or 4 people who taught themselves to EV train, and several more who I taught. It's more a case of snotty little 11-year-old brats peer-pressuring the others into thinking "pokemon is gay" and "pokemon is for babies". However the funny thing I found is that many of these 'badass' kids actually owned pokémon games, just never admitted to it.

I think the problem, at least in the UK, isn't that the sales aren't there: it's that kids rarely admit to owning pokémon games because they don't have footballers or blood or guns in them. And it's more a thing in kids' society than something marketing could resove. Maybe it'd actually be plausible to just do a massive, open for all ages UK tournament. With the stupidly bad juniors turnout at London (I think it was either 9 or 12, compared to 132 seniors), it makes sense. Just the underage participants wouldn't have a chance really, and it'd be tricky to integrate into the worlds. So it would probably never work but it's worth some thought.

Also I have no idea what you mean by a preference challenge lol.

And yeah it's a complete joke that New York didn't get a VGC. I mean really, NYC is something close to the first place I think of when I think "America" so it should've at least had a regional. They even used to have the Pokémon Center there.

 

[Havak]

Zog, I think the main issue with the entire thing was poor advertising. I was actually amazed that so many people in the UK still turned up despite it being somewhat 'low key'. If I didn't visit Smogon, I probably wouldn't have even known of the Pokémon Video Game Championships at all. I don't recall seeing any advertisement in magazines such as Official Nintendo Magazine, at least not until a few days before the event (clearly not enough time for the majority of people).

To be honest, part of me thinks that the organisers didn't advertise the event properly on purpose, because there was only one tournament in the whole of the UK and they didn't want to disappoint to many people. It also wouldn't have hurt to announce the official date and location a bit before they usually do. I'm used to Nintendo Events being announced in the UK literally a week before it actually happens, sometimes less, or sometimes not until it's already started in the case of the recent Wi-Fi Events.

Ah well, all we can do is hope for better in the future, hopefully things can only improve (but really, the selection process at least didn't improve from 2008-09, did it?).

 

[ultimatedra]

Zog, I think the main issue with the entire thing was poor advertising. I was actually amazed that so many people in the UK still turned up despite it being somewhat 'low key'. If I didn't visit Smogon, I probably wouldn't have even known of the Pokémon Video Game Championships at all. I don't recall seeing any advertisement in magazines such as Official Nintendo Magazine, at least not until a few days before the event (clearly not enough time for the majority of people).

To be honest, part of me thinks that the organisers didn't advertise the event properly on purpose, because there was only one tournament in the whole of the UK and they didn't want to disappoint to many people. It also wouldn't have hurt to announce the official date and location a bit before they usually do. I'm used to Nintendo Events being announced in the UK literally a week before it actually happens, sometimes less, or sometimes not until it's already started in the case of the recent Wi-Fi Events.

Ah well, all we can do is hope for better in the future, hopefully things can only improve (but really, the selection process at least didn't improve from 2008-09, did it?).

Umm, it was all advertised on the Organized play web site - www.go-pokemon.com

You fail to realize that NINTENDO IS NOT RUNNING THESE. TPCi is and that is why it was not in Nintendo power. People still fail to realize that they are two totally seperate companys now.

SO, if everybody wants to keep track of these, they have to go to TPCi's website - www.go-pokemon.com

 

[mattj]

Unfortunately gopokemon.com is 99% card info. Even when the VGCs came out, it was difficult for me to find any info about them on that site. :? I actually got most of my info from elsewhere until Worlds.

 

[Havak]

Unfortunately gopokemon.com is 99% card info. Even when the VGCs came out, it was difficult for me to find any info about them on that site. :? I actually got most of my info from elsewhere until Worlds.

This.

The majority of people who visit Go-Pokémon will visit it because they play the TCG. Yes, they'll probably know of the VGC, but they're blatantly going to choose the TCG over it.

I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard for them to advertise in more places and actually make a lot of people aware. You can't give me the whole 'they're separate companies' thing, because Official Nintendo Magazine did two interviews with the UK Nationals Champion on their site, which is obviously Nintendo. It's Pokémon, I'm sure they could advertise it on more official Pokémon sites if they wanted to get more people to play. But as I said, I'd bet they purposely didn't because there was only going to be room for 128 in each age group anyway.

If they did advertise more, maybe they would've had to turn away more than four seniors, but I'm sure they would've got more than 7~ juniors...

 

[Chirnobyl]

wasn't it posted on the official Pokemon site before? cause iirc that's where my friend found it..., but even then, who regularly visits the site...

 

[mattj]

wasn't it posted on the official Pokemon site before? cause iirc that's where my friend found it..., but even then, who regularly visits the site...

I do every single morning in order to catch up on the latest pokemon news! :D

... yeah right...

 

[Duckster]

If Japan is having like 47 tournaments, why doesn't America have one in each state? Then it would let like everyone play and no event would be over crowded.

Why can't Canada have one in every province?

Hah, I hope these new rules stay, whether I finally get to play or not. I hope so though, so I can finally take the title and retire from playing this game once and for all. One thing's for sure, shit's going to get raw up in this bitch real fast.

Street Pokemon: the realest way to play since '99

 

[Flaros]

hmm. I can't figure out whether rayquaza will be standard to counter weather teams or if it won't be and weather teams will just pack garchomp to handle rayquaza. running neither seems terribly terrific.

 

[CrazySnorlax]

Did they also annouce the dates for the japanese tournaments?

 

[drug_duck]

Hi, does anybody know when the preference challenge's start???

Prefecture =/= preference.

A prefecture can probably be compared to a county in the U.S. governmental system, maybe even to a State since the Japanese counties aren't too big as far as I know.

They will certainly start at the end of October because so it was last year.

 

[Zog]

He probably didn't mean prefecture championships lol. But yeah it'll probably be late this month. Looking forward to watching the videos on the GTS- everyone make sure you remember to watch all the double cup videos as they crop up. You get some crazy ones. This Japanese one which was up around the time of the worlds comes to mind: hail team guy only wins because his Froslass' blizzard bags a double freeze. Whoah.

And I so wish everywhere could have as many tournaments as Japan. I think they used the Japanese DSs at London actually. The DS' usernames were all 'Pokémon' in Japanese anyway and I've seen white lites in pictures from the Japanese regionals. The scale of these prefecture challenges is amazing though. I bet for some people, it'd be plausible to attend 4 or 5 different events provided they're not all too close together. And they'll probably have to: the Japanese regionals are pretty much the biggest acid test in competitive Pokémon. So many tournaments with so many people and yet few actually get through. There's a reason why Japan always tops the tables.