Implemented Eligibilities from two different continents

[SparksBlade]

Hello. Just about a month ago we introduced the ruling on eligibility for continental teams.

Players who are eligible for a country that is "established" are not eligible for any continental teams. This will be directly applied in WCoP 2025 and there will be no grandfathering for people in this scope that are currently on continental teams.

The part I want to highlight here is "for any continental teams". This means a player with eligibilities from Spain and Indonesia is tied to Team Spain, because from the Indonesia eligibility that player would have to be on Team Asia which is a continent team.

I simply don't think that's what we should be doing - wanting people to play on their regional / country team instead of the continent team should not be prohibitive to this extent. In my opinion, the solution we should be looking for is the prevention of eligibilities bubbling up to continents. My eligibility for India can not make me eligible for Team Asia. I should be tied to the nearest regional team(s) from my eligibilities. If I had India + Italy eligibilities, I would be ineligible for Team Asia and Team Europe because there are closer teams for both those regions, namely Team India and Team Italy.

There is however a question of differentiating multiple eligibilities from same continent vs different continent, and one of those eligibilities not having a country team. I'll use two examples: Player A with Spain and Finland eligibilities, and Player B with Spain and Indonesia eligibilities.

I believe there are three options, and I'll list them in order of my own preference:

1. Allow both players to choose from either eligibility, making no difference between eligibilities from same and different continents.
   • Player A can choose which eligibility they want to go with, Spain or Finland? Spain locks them to the team for that region, which is Team Spain. Finland locks them to the team covering that region, which is Team Europe. So they can pick between Team Spain and Team Europe.
   • Player B can choose which eligibility they want to go with, Spain or Indonesia? Spain puts them on Team Spain, Indonesia puts them on Team Asia.
2. Treat eligibilities from same continent vs different continents separately.
   • Player A has both eligibilities from the same continent, and has at least one eligibility from an established team country. Thus, they can only play for that country team aka Team Spain, and cannot use their Finland eligibility to join Team Europe.
   • Player B has eligibilities from different continents, so they can still pick to go with Spain or Indonesia eligibility, and can join either Team Spain or Team Asia.
3. Keep as is - if you have at least one eligibility in a country with an established team, you cannot play for a continent team at all. Player A and Player B both can only play for Team Spain, as their other eligibility can only land them on a continent team.

Thank you for your time, hope you have a lovely week.

 

[Lokifan]

Hey so I want to be brief about it, I lived my whole life in Morocco. I'm born in Morocco and I don't have nor blood related link nor paper link to Germany. Germany is a great country and all but there is not single reason I should be ONLY eligible to play for Germany after living here for only a bit more than 3 months.
It's a disrespect not just for me, but also for Germans people. Why should I, a person with the only relationship with Germany is being a student who doesn't even have fully acquired a good level in German, be representing Germany after 3 months and a half? Worst than that, why doesn't I have the right to play for Africa after literally living in Morocco for 19 years and 3 months out of my 19 years and 6 months on this planet?You can restrict me from team Africa if team Morocco exist but this is not the case and as long as it is not the case, I should be able to play for Africa and NOT be restricted to Germany, a country where I literally lived 3 month and a half.
Because right now if I do a recap, you guys give me no choice than to play for Germany, a country I'm here since december 2024 only for my study and if I wanted to play for litteraly the place I lived my WHOLE life, I should have I guess not taken the best opportunity in my life because of Pokemon? I don't even have words at this point to state how utterly stupid this situation is. I should not in a single world not being able to play for the place I lived my whole life in it because I decided to not study in it.
As long as Moroccan team doesn't exist, I'm native from Africa and I don't care how long my study will take but during this period or even further I should NOT in a single world being restricted to play a Pokemon tournament for the place I'm native from.
Yeah I writted a bit more than what I was expecting but I needed to show how stupid and ridiculous this situation is.

 

[Star]

Cases like the above from Lokifan are pretty compelling, but just want to say I think Option 2 sucks and if we do make a change it should be Option 1. You can basically copy paste Finland over Morocco in the above post and the sentiment is the same. Doesn’t make any practical sense to me to treat the two cases differently.

 

[kjdaas]

Just making a quick post to voice my support to the obvious solution 1, which I think everyone agrees with.
People like Lokifan or Feliburn should be able to play for the continental teams from their region (Africa and LA respectively), even though they are currently residing/have resided in a country that has a country team.
This was always the case in the past and the rule change about established teams should not affect this.
The idea was to remove people that have 2 eligibilities while living in only one country (i.e. Belgians playing for Europe could pick both), which should not be the case and I am glad the TDs fixed it.
No country in the world should give you the ability to play for two teams, especially when the country is performing at a decent enough level to consistently reach the later stages of the qualifiers.
However, players that have eligibilities for two countries due to having ties in both countries (e.g. working in the US west, but having been active for 10 years in The Netherlands or studying in Germany, but starting on Smogon from Morroco), should be able to play for both.
However, they should pick one and stick with it.
Eligibilities are tricky part of WCoP and having an extensive ruleset that neatly tackles all cases will be hard, best is to deal with it on a case by case basis.

 

[Zoyotte]

Hey, as I saw we aren't many players affected by these decisions (25), but I need to point out the issues that can create the Option C (that is currently in place rn). As the Captain of Team Africa, and a binational player, I'm affected by this new eligiblity rule as like 6 other african players (5 of them were on the LU last year.), removing those players from the team basically leads Africa's death as we hadnt even enough players to fill a complete roster last year. If we add to that the case of Lokifan, it makes the situation more embarassing.

Moreover restricting users that has two eligibilities, to automatically one choice, seems strange for a tournament like the WCOP where you can choose between your eligibilities and play with who you want. The new established rule was created in order to empty the continental teams that were stacked, but the reverse effect is happening for Africa, with those multiple eligs players that are forced to leave.

I heavily support Option 1, the one that offers that permit to choose whatever country you want to play with.
Thanks for reading.

 

[Silent Waltz]

Hello, so i'd like to share with you guys my perspective of the new eligibility restriction and why it's gonna result as a bad decision for the tour and the comunity.

First of all, I was born and raised in Algeria and spent the vast majority of my life there, as for today i've been attending uni in France for about 3 years now. Why should these few years spent in France bound me to only play for the French team and not for team representing my home country, this restriction simply doesn’t make sense.

A more reasonable approach to prevent abuse of continental eligibility would be to only allow players to join a continental team if they don’t already have eligibility for a country located in that continent. For example, someone eligible for both Spain and Indonesia should not be prevented from playing for Asia just because they could also play for Spain. On the other hand, it would make sense to prevent a player with only Indian eligibility from playing for Asia, as that would give continental teams an unfair advantage over country teams by providing them with a much larger player pool to choose from.

Regarding the current state of Africa, if this decision remains unchanged, the team literally won’t have enough players to fill a LU. Imagine how ridiculous it would be for a team that has already qualified for the main stage to show up with unfilled slots.

That's it for my pov hope the TDs will make the right choice, cheers

 

[Mada]

As an outsider that has been a foreigner studying abroad for some years, this just seems as asking for some special double standards to happen for your case. You don't feel French or German or you don't feel you should represent them? I understand that, but rules have been focusing on IP-elegibity for years so either you revert this change in the rules for everyone or you don't pretend for some specific users to be allowed to evade those rules just based on their feelings as this has been a "problem" for several years now

 

[blank]

While I agree with Mada in principle, I do think this is the type of case that warrants some kind of exception.

The continental team issue was primarily regarding countries that have enough players to field teams being held back by the existence of continental teams - think Belgium, Netherlands, Mexico, China, etc. The issue was never about certain teams being too strong, nor was it about establishing a rigid dogma to follow.

While Africa is a continental team, it functions more like a small country team in practice. The countries that make it up are not able to field teams on their own. This is clearly a small and underrepresented region. Having rules that essentially nuke this team would go against the spirit of the new continental team rule and the spirit of WCoP in general.

Still, granting an exception for one region is not fair. As such, I think the proposed change is sufficient and should be applied universally - if Lily moves to USA, she should still be allowed to play for Europe, Lokifan should be allowed to play for Africa, etc.

Furthermore, regarding switching teams and dual eligibilities - I think the system needs to be more firm. Players should not be allowed to switch teams unless they have been gone from WCoP for a significant period of time (several years) and moved in that period of time. Basically, the WCoP team you start with should be the one you stick with - full stop. Applying this retroactively would probably be very controversial and unfair, but I think it should be considered moving forward.

 

[Eeveeto]

Furthermore, regarding switching teams and dual eligibilities - I think the system needs to be more firm. Players should not be allowed to switch teams unless they have been gone from WCoP for a significant period of time (several years) and moved in that period of time. Basically, the WCoP team you start with should be the one you stick with - full stop. Applying this retroactively would probably be very controversial and unfair, but I think it should be considered moving forward.

This is such a great idea! Should totally be enforced! After playing 5 times for Team Europe, I totally should be locked there and not allowed to play for Spain (country where I currently reside) even if I wanted to.

 

[Silent Waltz]

As an outsider that has been a foreigner studying abroad for some years, this just seems as asking for some special double standards to happen for your case. You don't feel French or German or you don't feel you should represent them? I understand that, but rules have been focusing on IP-elegibity for years so either you revert this change in the rules for everyone or you don't pretend for some specific users to be allowed to evade those rules just based on their feelings as this has been a "problem" for several years now

It has never been about feeling French or not the issue is that the concept of losing eligibility for a continent just because I'm now eligible for a country makes no sense when the country is not on the continent, This leads to many weird and unfair scenarios, For example continental players are now not allowed to travel to a qualified country for more than 3 months or else they won't be eligible anymore like it's the case for lokifan which just doesn't seem right at all.

 

[Cicada]

Tbh I don't see the issue with allowing to join a continental team if it's on another continent than the other eligibility? It's not a matter of double standard, it just feels logical that Lokifan's case is different than say a belgian joining Team Europe. It doesn't seem like a hard policy to apply, maybe there's some semantics I didn't catch on but so far I didn't see any sound post that contredicts that logic

Cases like the above from Lokifan are pretty compelling, but just want to say I think Option 2 sucks and if we do make a change it should be Option 1. You can basically copy paste Finland over Morocco in the above post and the sentiment is the same. Doesn’t make any practical sense to me to treat the two cases differently.

For instance, you can pretty much copy paste Finland over Morocco while keeping that in mind and have two different cases that can be explained logically.

 

[One Last Kiss]

This is such a great idea! Should totally be enforced! After playing 5 times for Team Europe, I totally should be locked there and not allowed to play for Spain (country where I currently reside) even if I wanted to.

Nah, im with u only if you have another IP from a european country that is not considered established, the idea that a person has played 10 times for a team and therefore he should be locked in that continental team, should be abandoned, if your team is good enough to make main stage, you should support them and represent your country with them.



Regarding the feliburn and lokifan issue, I don't think they should both be removed from their teams, I don't think anyone who is forced to leave their country either out of necessity or in search of a better quality of life should be deprived of the possibility of playing for their country just because of life situations.

maybe it's not the place, but I would like to suggest a rule that does not allow players to move to others teams, and that players can only play for teams either continental or from specific countries that match the IP they registered with and were initially playing on smogon.

As the tournament itself is about representing your country/place of birth, by registering on the forum from Spain you would be considered a Spain player even if u arent for the rest of your stay on the forum and you will only be entitled to play for that team while you are on the forum.

It's a bit of a drastic idea, but it would save a lot of work from now on, would prevent teams from losing and gaining players disproportionately, and would also resolve dilemmas like the ones in this thread.

 

[Star]

We will be adjusting the rules to the following and this only applies for those not already locked to an established country team.

If you have two eligibilities, one for an established country and the other for a continental team via residence in a different non-established country, you will have a one-time choice between the two. Should you choose the continental team, you completely forfeit eligibility for the established country. If in the future, the non-established country that qualified you for the continental team becomes established, you are locked to that new country team.

That's a little convoluted so using examples from the thread.

1. CharizardFan47 has IPs from Algeria and France. This year he is choosing to play for Africa through his Algerian eligibility. This means he is completely forfeiting French eligibility for the future. If Algeria becomes an established team in 2027, CharizardFan47 must play for Algeria and has no other eligibility.

2. PikachuLover83 has IPs from Spain and Finland. This year he is choosing to play for Europe through his Finnish eligibility. This means he is completely forfeiting Spanish eligibility for the future. If Finland becomes an established team in 2027, PikachuLover83 must play for Finland and has no other eligibility.

Both cases above assume the person doesn't move to a brand new region in the future and get new IPs. In that case they could still qualify for a new team through that, as the existing rules allow.