Ideas that PUI could consider for next year...
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ryanvergel
New Member
Cool. You're in the minority. I pay for my badge to play in nats, as does 90% of the players >_>
Mew
New Member
And I as well. In fact 99% of the players that came from Memphis only went because it's where Nat's is.
I'd bet if Nat's was in a different location in Ohio, at the exact same time as Origins, the vast majority of Pokemon players would go to Nat's over Origins.
Hey Ryan, how can you speak for the majority? How many polls have you held, or how much research have you done, that shows that 90% of the players in this game don't go to Origins to play other games?
This year may be different since I might not have time to do other stuff, but I certainly go to Origins to do more than just play in the Nationals Championships. Last year I attended Origins and didn't even play in the National Championships because it wasn't even on my chart of things to do.
So, there are 2 people that might reconsider their trip if Pokemon moved away from Origins. I am sure there are some others, and I am sure your guess of 90% is WAY off.
This year may be different since I might not have time to do other stuff, but I certainly go to Origins to do more than just play in the Nationals Championships. Last year I attended Origins and didn't even play in the National Championships because it wasn't even on my chart of things to do.
So, there are 2 people that might reconsider their trip if Pokemon moved away from Origins. I am sure there are some others, and I am sure your guess of 90% is WAY off.
ryanvergel
New Member
Out of the dozens and dozens of people I've met only a very, very small percent said they went to nationals for origins. Nearly EVERYONE said that the only reason they got an origins pass was to participate in nationals.
We could care less about all those other games they showcase. Sure, a few people like the other games they see, but I don't spend 70 dollars on a badge for pirates or whatever stuff people play... it's for nationals. And this is the same sentiment I've heard from every other player I've met besides 1-2 people before I read the few responses in this thread.
Origins makes like 50k just from badges from pokemon players... it's kind of ridiculous.
I think 90% is pretty close. In fact, we should make a poll:
Why do you pay for your origins badge?
1. To play in Nationals
2. To go to Origins
Let's see what the percentages bring in =D
I'd be much happier giving my money directly to POP to support the game rather than some lame convention. The convention does nothing for me but hike up food/hotels and make it hard to find good food/service or prices. Origins smells bad, has a lot of rude people, and is generally a waste of time for anything other than pokemon. The slight enjoyment I get out of receiving a booster pack of Pirates or seeing poorly made costumes does NOT constitute my paying for my badge. I spend that much money because of pokemon... the other stuff is negligible and I think most people feel the same way.
edwarpy
New Member
Ding! Ding! Ding! I think we have a winner. Worlds are for the future, when it's an Olympic Event,
just don't drop the skiing and shooting thingy.
Also, hear! hear! for ryanvergel's suggestion, Masters pay. What Master doesn't have $5? What junior
does? What about it Jimmy? Step back from being a store guy and a pot-stirrer, hit-and-runner, what's
good for the game?
Edit: For those playing for scholarship...
C'mon, my guy Nate just popped one. Gas + Hotels = Maybe we're now breaking even...
What's a dollar gonna be worth in eight years anyway? Pokeplay is no investment. Play for fun,
give out the cards!
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Mystery Thing
Administrator
This will be the first year out of five I went exclusively for Pokémon, and that's only because I'm working the whole time. It's too bad that your experiences have been so cruddy, but I don't have any issue with the hotel rooms (it's called sharing; last year the hotel cost me $210 for all 5 nights combined), and the food prices at any convention center will be crazy high (it's to be expected). No matter where they hold Nationals, it will smell funky - stick 1000 people in the same room, and it's gonna be gross. At least those people with "poorly made costumes" tried and are having fun with it, which I'm sure is more than you've ever done in that area.
Last year, I volunteered for Nationals, but did other stuff during the non-Nationals days. I did two 5 round sealed tournaments, and literally everything else I did was NOT Pokémon. What's wrong with going out to try new games that you would normally never play?
If you don't want to pay for a badge, either win one (don't start with me on how hard that is in your area, that's not the point of my post and I already know how it goes in the large US markets) or don't go. If all you're going for is Nationals, your hotel room will be MAYBE $300 for the two required nights if you plan so poorly that you have to and/or want a room completely to yourself, and what's a 2-day badge cost, $35 if you wait to get it on-site? No matter where Nationals is, you're paying a few hundred, at least, for the hotel room. And is a paying $35 to enter a 500+ person two day tournament with 4 people getting trips to Worlds that big a ripoff? I don't think so.
If you think Origins is lame, that's too bad for you. It's not that hard to have a good time and enjoy the whole thing.
Charisychulee
New Member
I think Igglybuff is a pretty decent starter. If you go first, bang, draw 3 cards. Not amazing but good.
IF I could ever afford to go to Nationals I would DEFINATELY play a bunch of games other than Pokemon. Granted I play many games but I would also look into some new games. A lot of people at Origins give out free product just for playing the demo for that game!
brendan2236
New Member
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drrty byl
New Member
From the perspective of a player (it's the only one I have to offer):
Match Timing "Stalling", intentional or otherwise, is still a problem. I'm sure everyone here has both lost and won matches illegitimately due to this broken and fundamentally unfair aspect of the game. There are a lot of sour, moldy (rotting?) prunes out there because of this. Certain decks and strategies exploit this weakness in the game, sometimes deliberately. The fix? As many have pointed out, chess clocks are too expensive to implement on a large scale, and should therefore be left to chess. Why not adopt 30min+X turns for swiss as has been suggested in the past?
Pay-to-Play (ouch) I've participated in 20 premier tournaments this year, and will likely play in at least 6-7 more. I don't think I would have gone to that many events had a hypothetical $5 entry fee per-event been tacked onto each, and for what -- the shot at getting a few more packs of card sets of which I've already bought plenty? (that's $130+ in entry fees alone after all; in addition to travel expenses, etc.). Now, if we were playing for the entry fee pool distributed to the top 3 as opposed to product prizes, it might be interesting -- but last I checked, the gov't. frowned on unregulated organized gambling rings. I suspect OP will continue to finance expansion of the game by steadily increasing card prices and cutting back on big unrecoupable awards [airfare], so I don't know if the OP-cost-offsetting-via-pay-to-play argument really figures in here. The "scholarship" status of winnings make them tax deductible. If anything, OP is more of an advertising tool for the card product. I am continuously expanding my "ownership" of the game by increasing the size of my card collection with the release of each new set. The tournament prizes are great, and it's excellent that they exist, period -- but when we start paying to play, we are simply buying, and to a much lesser extent, "winning" our product "prizes". To a certain degree, everyone already does this by purchasing cards to play. I agree that it would be nice to see a more even distribution of prizes.
Format Either let us play with more sets or stagger releases carefully so that we're not constantly dealing with a single all-powerful deck to beat. Something like 80% of the top cut at our regional was GG. Prior to GG, it was Blissey-whatever. Releasing one over-powered mammoth without numerous counters makes playing interesting or new concepts difficult, if not impossible, for the competitive player that wants to win.
keep playing - have fun!
Match Timing "Stalling", intentional or otherwise, is still a problem. I'm sure everyone here has both lost and won matches illegitimately due to this broken and fundamentally unfair aspect of the game. There are a lot of sour, moldy (rotting?) prunes out there because of this. Certain decks and strategies exploit this weakness in the game, sometimes deliberately. The fix? As many have pointed out, chess clocks are too expensive to implement on a large scale, and should therefore be left to chess. Why not adopt 30min+X turns for swiss as has been suggested in the past?
Pay-to-Play (ouch) I've participated in 20 premier tournaments this year, and will likely play in at least 6-7 more. I don't think I would have gone to that many events had a hypothetical $5 entry fee per-event been tacked onto each, and for what -- the shot at getting a few more packs of card sets of which I've already bought plenty? (that's $130+ in entry fees alone after all; in addition to travel expenses, etc.). Now, if we were playing for the entry fee pool distributed to the top 3 as opposed to product prizes, it might be interesting -- but last I checked, the gov't. frowned on unregulated organized gambling rings. I suspect OP will continue to finance expansion of the game by steadily increasing card prices and cutting back on big unrecoupable awards [airfare], so I don't know if the OP-cost-offsetting-via-pay-to-play argument really figures in here. The "scholarship" status of winnings make them tax deductible. If anything, OP is more of an advertising tool for the card product. I am continuously expanding my "ownership" of the game by increasing the size of my card collection with the release of each new set. The tournament prizes are great, and it's excellent that they exist, period -- but when we start paying to play, we are simply buying, and to a much lesser extent, "winning" our product "prizes". To a certain degree, everyone already does this by purchasing cards to play. I agree that it would be nice to see a more even distribution of prizes.
Format Either let us play with more sets or stagger releases carefully so that we're not constantly dealing with a single all-powerful deck to beat. Something like 80% of the top cut at our regional was GG. Prior to GG, it was Blissey-whatever. Releasing one over-powered mammoth without numerous counters makes playing interesting or new concepts difficult, if not impossible, for the competitive player that wants to win.
keep playing - have fun!
slayer_chaos
New Member
I think it's kind of rediculous that some people don't want to pay 5$ to get into a tournament after you spend hundreds of dollars on cards. It doesn't even have to be for everyone, having it just for the masters is fine, and even then just for majors. We're the people that are more likely to be way more competetive than the younger kids anyway.
I don't know how engraved this is into the pokemon community since I'm fairly new, just having started playing the newer cards in December. But I think the Swiss format is terrible, change it to double elimination. I know it's there to ensure that even if you're not one of the best you still get a chance to play all day, but when I was at regionals anyone that cared about rankings figured when they weren't going to be in top8 just dropped. The only people left playing were the ones that didn't care about ranking, weren't going to make it, and playing meaningless games anyway. So even if you go 2 and out you can still play casuals or have some side tournaments. This, again, could be done just for the masters who probably understand winning and losing a lot more than the younger kids.
I'm with a lot of other people in that we need to emulate the japanese system of more sets in each modified. Or we need to create more formats. Unlimited is fun to an extent but it really is broken beyond repair. Have a more official version of it with banned/limited cards. We're getting to the point like magic where we can have more formats with the huge card pool that we have now.
And the thing I think is the most important, more small, local tournaments. League is a fun casual place to play and trade but it is awful for actually trying to improve your deck. There's only 2 people that isn't in my group of friends that is really worth playing in my league that goes consistently every week and that's the store owner and his son. If there were small bi-weekly or monthly tournaments there you'd get so much more practice in an actually tournament enviroment and would raise the top level play so much. Just think if you had an honest crack at a serious G&G player once every 2 weeks, the ideas or strategies you'd be able to come up with would be priceless. You'd get to experiment new techs, new deck ideas, or new strategies that would be too risky to test out at a major.
I also don't like how you play with at most a 59 card deck every game. I would also like a sideboard and 2 out of 3 at tournaments. But I don't really think those things are gonna be changed anytime soon:lol:
I don't know how engraved this is into the pokemon community since I'm fairly new, just having started playing the newer cards in December. But I think the Swiss format is terrible, change it to double elimination. I know it's there to ensure that even if you're not one of the best you still get a chance to play all day, but when I was at regionals anyone that cared about rankings figured when they weren't going to be in top8 just dropped. The only people left playing were the ones that didn't care about ranking, weren't going to make it, and playing meaningless games anyway. So even if you go 2 and out you can still play casuals or have some side tournaments. This, again, could be done just for the masters who probably understand winning and losing a lot more than the younger kids.
I'm with a lot of other people in that we need to emulate the japanese system of more sets in each modified. Or we need to create more formats. Unlimited is fun to an extent but it really is broken beyond repair. Have a more official version of it with banned/limited cards. We're getting to the point like magic where we can have more formats with the huge card pool that we have now.
And the thing I think is the most important, more small, local tournaments. League is a fun casual place to play and trade but it is awful for actually trying to improve your deck. There's only 2 people that isn't in my group of friends that is really worth playing in my league that goes consistently every week and that's the store owner and his son. If there were small bi-weekly or monthly tournaments there you'd get so much more practice in an actually tournament enviroment and would raise the top level play so much. Just think if you had an honest crack at a serious G&G player once every 2 weeks, the ideas or strategies you'd be able to come up with would be priceless. You'd get to experiment new techs, new deck ideas, or new strategies that would be too risky to test out at a major.
I also don't like how you play with at most a 59 card deck every game. I would also like a sideboard and 2 out of 3 at tournaments. But I don't really think those things are gonna be changed anytime soon:lol:
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P_A
Active Member
To be honest - "We" up here in Canada, didn't do anything. It was a decision by members of POP (Pete DeShaw, and possibly others) who made the decision based on emails suggesting that it was unfair for Nationals to be held in Toronto every year. Were the emails correct? As far as I'm concerned, yes. Do I stand by Pete's (and possibly other's) decision? Yes, of course. Did they have to change the venue city? No. They had no obligation to do that, but they did, based with the knowledge that here in Canada there is no middle ground geographically when it comes to pokemon. There's either East or West. It IS only fair that both sides of the country's players get a chance to get the Nationals experience - especially so when you don't want one side to benefit purely due to the luck of their geography. In the US, pokemon is played in most of the states, so Origins is a slightly more centralized location than lets say New York, Dallas, Seattle, or LA. Moving their Nationals to other major centers would be a bit of a logistical nightmare. Plus, I'm sure Origins would probably go out of their way to accomodate POP, where other spots might not care to. Origins may cost more for the players, due to entry fees, but it's certainly a prime location for the event.
Yeah unfortunately change takes time. I'm sure that even with all these different suggestions POP will have their hands full of stuff they'd like to change but can't realistically very easily. We have to then realistically be as patient as we can, to be around when some of these good suggestions actually bear any fruit. We can't be sure they will use any of this, but I'm sure they are reading closely.
vanderbilt_grad
New Member
I was thinking the same thing.
Tego
New Member
Try telling that to little Jimmy who just carpooled to his local City Championship with 5 friends, bringing nothing but his random.dec, and doesn't have parents who know anything - or even care - about OP. Without these kind of new/casual/young/inexperienced players, the game stops. We want to be as welcoming to them as we possibly can, and demanding 5 dollars from them isn't very welcoming, no matter how low the prize may seem to us hardcore players and fans.
ryanvergel
New Member
I don't like the idea of charging any non-master entrance fee, nor do I like the idea of having a fee for anything less than states. Regionals/nationals charging 5 dollars per master still rakes in a LOT of money... the kind of money that could do things like maybe pay for more venue time (allow for longer top cuts maybe, etc) more scholarship money, more promos/freebies for the juniors, etc.
5 dollars from a master at nationals who already paid 70 dollars for a badge and hundreds on travel/stay shouldn't be a problem.
Mystery Thing: Last year was my first year at nationals, and I won a state and got a free badge and the 300 dollar travel allowance. This year I'm still getting a free badge. I'm not complaining about buying a badge (since I'm not)- I'm just saying it's ridiculous to think that people would buy a badge but not a small entrance fee to the same event. Origins was cool, but worlds is just as if not even cooler because it's entirely pokemon themed. The fact that nats is held at origins is such a negligible plus to me that it really doesn't justify my possible spending money on a badge.
However, this year I plan to play in the fluxx tournaments at origins so I'll have another game to have fun with.
5 dollars per master times 500 masters is 2500. That's an entire regional scholarship amount and just imagine how many more local, smaller, game-growing tournaments that could help support.
The people paying 5 dollars at these huge events in masters are already devoting LOTS of money- taking money from them really won't affect much, but when you consider how much extra money it could bring in to help the game,... it makes you wonder.
The OP budget may not have grown despite the game's growth, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to increase funds for tournaments/game growth.
5 dollars from a master at nationals who already paid 70 dollars for a badge and hundreds on travel/stay shouldn't be a problem.
Mystery Thing: Last year was my first year at nationals, and I won a state and got a free badge and the 300 dollar travel allowance. This year I'm still getting a free badge. I'm not complaining about buying a badge (since I'm not)- I'm just saying it's ridiculous to think that people would buy a badge but not a small entrance fee to the same event. Origins was cool, but worlds is just as if not even cooler because it's entirely pokemon themed. The fact that nats is held at origins is such a negligible plus to me that it really doesn't justify my possible spending money on a badge.
However, this year I plan to play in the fluxx tournaments at origins so I'll have another game to have fun with.
5 dollars per master times 500 masters is 2500. That's an entire regional scholarship amount and just imagine how many more local, smaller, game-growing tournaments that could help support.
The people paying 5 dollars at these huge events in masters are already devoting LOTS of money- taking money from them really won't affect much, but when you consider how much extra money it could bring in to help the game,... it makes you wonder.
The OP budget may not have grown despite the game's growth, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways to increase funds for tournaments/game growth.
I was always a slightly above average student, I got/get decent grades but when it comes time for scholarships I usually get out shined by the 4.0 and 3.5 students. I hate taking money from my parents and lets be honest my part time job won't pay all the bills. Pokemon has really given me the chance to be more independent, I may not have payed for all of my college expenses but I was able to pay for over half. The pokemon scholarship program has really helped me out and I'm sure there are kids out there who have got them that have need them far more than me.
Pokemon is just a game. Many of the people that only go to Origins to play just Pokemon do that because they haven't even tried going out and looking into other games. If you're spending $70 on a badge, why on heavenly earth would you not leave the TCG room? Again, this year I will be part of the judging staff, so my time will be filled up, but in the past years I've done a lot of different fun things, like test out new cards games like Naruto, Civilization, play a few games of Heroclix, sword fight my friends with humongous foam swords, dress up and role play a magician in a live-action role playing game, learn how to make an effective board game (which much of it can be applied to making a regular game or video game), play board games like Risk, and Monopoly, and a lot of other stuff. I'm going to get the most out of my pass, and I feel bad for anyone who set in the TCG room for 5 days without trying to experience the entire experience of Origins.
I feel attendance would go down if Nationals was moved away from Origins. You would lose a chunk of people that went to Origins as a 4-5 day family vacation and not just for the 2 day pokemon tournament. Not only that, but Pokemon would have to spend even more money on adding more events to fill up the empty gaps of inactivity, or choose to just make it a 2-day event. If they choose to make it a 2-day event, we lose out on all the days of league, side events, and other stuff, that was at Origins.
The only idea I feel might be adequate would be if they moved Nationals to another game fair, but there aren't that many, the same size of Origins, happening during the same time.
I feel attendance would go down if Nationals was moved away from Origins. You would lose a chunk of people that went to Origins as a 4-5 day family vacation and not just for the 2 day pokemon tournament. Not only that, but Pokemon would have to spend even more money on adding more events to fill up the empty gaps of inactivity, or choose to just make it a 2-day event. If they choose to make it a 2-day event, we lose out on all the days of league, side events, and other stuff, that was at Origins.
The only idea I feel might be adequate would be if they moved Nationals to another game fair, but there aren't that many, the same size of Origins, happening during the same time.
vanderbilt_grad
New Member
Prime "you feel" that attendance would go down ... but the argument could be easily reversed that the Origins fee and location are keeping folks away now. Those are folks you would never see in the current system. How can anyone know for sure?
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