Regarding that last series, I'm obviously disappointed about losing. Unfortunately, in game 1 I let my timer get low and it didn't register my move in the dying seconds. But the other two games were tough battles and as far as I'm concerned Jimmy definitely deserves to be moving on.
However, despite the sour taste in my mouth, it would be ignorant of me to not admit that this has been a successful result for a first tournament. Finishing within the top 0.008% is actually an incredible statistic, while on a more personal level, I proved to myself that I can beat tournament players and hold my own against the best.
Quick side note - Also, I just want to say sorry to my buddy XtraTh1cC, whose veil team I made look really bad with those losses. Here are some replays from the last two rounds to prove that it is actually a god squad.
R6 and
R7. But alas Heatran with Wish support was just too much lol, although i did bring it pretty close.
Before I move on, now seems like a good time to address the "mystery" around who I am. Despite my theatrics, I am actually not an alt. I have no idea why this guy called Lavos in the chat was confirming I was someone called konzern or why another guy was saying that I had ip addresses all over the place and that I was using a proxy. Although, to be 100% honest I do actually have another account that I no longer use. But it's less than a year old with less than 10 posts so I don't think that qualifies for anything (or maybe the moderators will find this a horrible crime and ban me idk).
Anyway, I've never put much focus on forming friendships online, but on behalf of the few people I've spoke to (most of whom are on the brink of quitting which is saddening) and also for myself, I just wanted to address something. This should go without saying, but please don't interpret this as complaining or combative, that is not my intention.
The main reason that I'm so annoyed with losing is that I know that I've just let a golden opportunity go down the drain. An opportunity that took FOUR bloody months to create.
It is incredibly hard for newcomers to break into the tournament community. I'm sure there are many of you who have probably been trying for years to no avail. I'm relatively new to Smogon, so perhaps I am missing something, but from my naive perspective I can't help but wonder: how exactly are we hoping to integrate a continual influx of new players into the elite tournament scene?
In order to set some context, I will briefly describe my situation (which I believe is probably representative of the present new generation of players):
- Started playing in the closing stages of ORAS
- After learning the fundamentals, it has only been in the last 6 months that I've reached a high level.
- Have now reached a stage where I have achieved basically everything that can be done on the SM OU ladder. I have reached #1 multiple times, achieved a 90 GXE (without stall btw), had 3 accounts concurrently in the Top 10 (with each account using a different team I built), and peaked top 10 with every archetype (hyper offense, balance, stall).
- Given this dead end, I would like to transition into tournaments to have a new challenge.
With the foundations set, lets now breakdown the official tournament calendar to figure out the pathway.
-
SPL - Requires tournament success to play.
-
Snake - Requires tournament success to play.
-
OST - A chance for new players to prove themselves. However, this is hardly a good chance at all. I am well aware that my run could have ended literally in Round 1 had I been haxed or if I was paired with someone like ABR. Considering the amount of games it takes to reach the rounds where people will notice (realistically speaking anything worse than quarter finals is practically worthless), I would barely even call this an opportunity. The chance for disaster to strike is virtually imminent.
-
Classic/Grand Slam - Each of these tournaments consist of 5 metagames that aren't SM OU. New players could potentially follow this route, but they'd better have a LOT of time on there hands if they want to have any hope of making playoffs. Especially considering that they are playing against people who have played these tiers or some variation of them for years. Besides, I'm not even sure that a lucky streak to playoffs would even gain them any ground as this doesn't prove competence in the main format.
-
OLT - Probably the best opportunity for new players to prove themselves. However, quite like OST (although to a lesser degree), you have to hope that nothing really unfortunate happens to you at the deadline. Although the last two times that OLT were on I just so happened to be taking a break from the game, I do have an irrelevant personal anecdote from when I found out about PLT (Pokespain Ladder Tour) earlier this year. After investing many hours to ladder up a fresh alt from scratch, I was eventually able to sit in the Top 2 in the few hours before the deadline with the highest GXE (without using stall btw) out of all the players in that cycle (and as it would be, the highest out of all the previous 11 qualifiers too). However, I was overtaken by a surge of players towards the deadline and in an attempt to regain my position, I unfortunately lost. Despite winning the next two, it was all but too late with the deadline striking and with my account a mere couple points behind. This is the kind of a disaster scenario that hopefully shouldn't happen often, but I felt like sharing anyway to prove how fragile one's chances can really be (not that anything can be done about it, pokemon will be pokemon). But don't mistaken me, this is definitely a solid pathway to recognition.
-
Smogon Tour – An alright opportunity for new players to prove themselves. While they can compete well in SM, they are at a disadvantage playing BW and even ORAS (some new players may be proficient ORAS players though unlike me). Although my situation is not the majority, I might as well share my own personal account of this tour. The tours are at 8am Saturday, 6am Sunday, and 4am Monday which makes it virtually impossible to compete for me. I did however give it a go once, waking up on a Saturday morning trying to play at my best. Irrelevant anecdote incoming: In Round 1, I was taunted by my opponent and his friends throughout the game but still managed to win. Rather than say gg, I was instead told "nice chokes" by my opponent. Round 2 next and I unfortunately faced an impossible match up and that was the end of it. Not a very worthwhile experience, hence why I wasn't eager to give it another go.
-
WCOP - A respected tournament which seems to be a catalyst for exposure. In going through the Smogon Awards results for Best New Player you can see that four of the six nominees got their first chance in World Cup: Cdumas, BTB, Kory2600, and Ban Manaphy (correct me though if this wasn't their breakout chance, I haven't followed the circuit for long). The other two people on that list accomplished freak of nature results by winning Smogon Tour and Smogon Championships which I feel is an unrealistic expectation of what needs to be accomplished in order to breakout. But of course this isn't all sunshine and daisies. Depending on your region, it can be almost impossible to be picked to play for this tour. Even living in the weakest SM OU region out of all 16 countries (Oceania), I don't think my ladder success and one good tournament result will give me much of a chance to be selected.
- Unofficial Tours? - From what I have gathered, the vast majority of these tours customise the format and no one seems to really care about the winners. This oupl tournament doesn't seem too bad, but from the few replays I've seen, I don't think it is meant to be taken seriously with people bringing memes/fun teams half the time. But I suppose, if you were to somehow completely dominate that tour, then that may give you a chance?
So in summary, the "average" new player has 1/3 of Smogon Tour, OLT or a potential lucky streak to at least the top 0.1% of OST to work with. In my specific situation it is even harder because of time zones. Before I give my finals thoughts, I also want to mention that recent decisions have only further exasperated this issue:
- OLT was reduced from 8 cycles to four
- Discussion has been had about scrapping OLT entirely
- WCOP SM OU slots have been reduced
- There was even discussion about bringing seeding into tournaments. I actually coincidentally saw that post the second it was posted, when it had 0 likes. As I read it, assuming that the masses would just run with it, I was legitimately angry, as in my opinion it was so elitist and condescending. Thankfully though, people rejected this notion.
With over 2000 entries in this OST, there is clearly a chance for Smogon to grow into something grander. But I can't help but feel like these decisions and the current structure are driving the site into the ground. Sticking with the current system is a time bomb waiting to explode as it can only handle a very limited amount of players. With that being said, I don't have a solution. Perhaps there is no solution (pokemon is sometimes an unfair game, and we have to work with it). Or perhaps there is no problem, and I am making a caricature out of this. Also I'm not counting out that I might be coming from a genuinely misguided perspective, so I hope if anyone were to correct me that they do so nicely. I know as well that I'm not presenting this case as well as some others might, as I'm quite exhausted right now, so please don't just nitpick me. Rather I hope something about the central issues can be addressed instead.
