Restoring skill to the Pokemon TCG

[Ness]

@Ness: I would love for nationals to be that organized!
This year was a mess with the time between rounds and the time waiting to start.

and how hard is it to put the pairings on a projector screen instead of printing out a thousand pieces of paper and taping them all together for 10 minutes?

Nationals is always a bit disorganized. As easy as it is to blame the staff, let's not forget there's 1300 players broken into three separate divisions. Two things that would make Nationals run more smoothly:

1) Projected pairings or online pairings in addition to traditional posted pairings.
2) Reinstating draws in swiss. (We've already been over this and players seem to be fairly divided on reinstating them. However, the fact of the matter is they would shave hours off of a tournament as lengthy as U.S. Nationals.) I am not too concerned about reinstating draws at this exact moment, so let's save that argument for another day and focus on trying to make Top Cut games involve more skill.

 

[Raen]

Anyway, I have to say I quite like the schedule Ness posted. I would 100% support Nationals being like that.

 

[Box of Fail]

1) Projected pairings or online pairings in addition to traditional posted pairings.

I would really love to see Pokémon post the pairings on Pokémon.com and possibly on social networking sites as well. Or perhaps you could subscribe to a mailing list and have OP send you pairings via SMS. Crowding near the pairings is an extremely irritating and easily fixed problem.

 

[gallade]

Is it fun to always have the same person win a tournament? The very best player always winning a tournament? No, not really. It's very disheartening and isn't very enjoyable. If there wasn't any luck in the game this game would become chess. Have you ever played competitive chess? I suggest you do, than come back and say luck is completely bad for the game. Not sure if that will change your opinion about my being a communist.

Chess is a very hard thing to pick up playing and start winning fast. Why? No luck. Without luck in the metagame you must have been playing at a high level for as long or longer than someone else or be brilliant to beat them. Is that any fun? Is that going to sell cards? Probably not.
Posted with Mobile style...

 

[Cardzmaster2004]

Since this has been brought up a few times and I have first-hand knowledge of kinda how these events run, I figured I should post more or less how M:tG Top Tier events (Grand prixs, Pro Tours, Nationals, etc.) run their rounds.

First of all, there are NINE rounds on day 1. So your msot recent plot of rounds on day one is about what it should look like: best of one match (obviously since MtG plays faster, these matches are 2 of 3 in that game) running 40 +3. So, your chart is fairly accurate to Day 1:

Day 1:
8:30 AM: Be seated
9:00 AM: Round 1
10:00 AM: Round 2
11:00 AM: Round 3
Lunch Break After Round 3 until 1 PM.
1 PM: Round 4
2 PM: Round 5
3 PM: Round 6
4 PM: Round 7
Dinner Break After Round 7 until 6 PM.
6 PM: Round 8
7 PM: Round 9
Finish @ 8 PM

HOWEVER, for Grand Prix events at least, there is a cut AFTER Day 1. All players with less than 21 points (i.e. worse than 7-2) are cut from the tournament. The remaining player play 6-7 more rounds depending on the turnout. For Pokemon, six more rounds should be fine. So, here's more what it should look like:

Day 2
8:30 AM: Be seated
9:00 AM: Round 10
10:00 AM: Round 11
11:00 AM: Round 12
Lunch Break until 1:00 PM.
1:00 PM: Round 13
2:00 PM: Round 14
3:00 PM: Round 15
Dinner Break & Deck Check until 5:00 PM.

Now, here's where things get sticky and I'll QFT ExoByte:

Major Magic events do a Top 8 cut, regardless of event size.

The larger cut you're discussing is the cut to Day 2, which is MUCH larger than for Pokemon. however, their VERY top player cut is MUCH smaller and does not go larger than 8. That said, I don't see a HUGE issue taking cut to T32 at this point (even if it meant that I wouldn't have made cut this year under these hypothetical rules). Honestly, T32 makes more sense to me as that's where the physical prizes ACTUALLY start. You'd be looking at something like this to end Day 2:

5:00 PM: Top 32
6:30 PM or 7:30 PM: Top 16 (depending on 2 of 3 or 3 of 5 top cut)
Finish @ 8 or 10 pm.

From here, your Day 3 stays more or less in tact with your top 8 taking over:

Day 3
8:30 AM: Be seated
9:00 AM: Top 8
(Food provided for Top 8 inbetween rounds.)
11:30 AM: Top 4
Finals prepared after Top 4.
3:00 PM: Finals
5:30 PM: Awards
Finish @ 6 PM...

...if you do this the way it has been done in the past. It is also interesting to note that M:tG DOES NOT use time in their Top Cut. They instead ask the players to play at a normal pace and issue warning and penalties for slow play, even inside of untimed Top cut. Usually, this is not a huge issue (most Limited events in top cuts, por ejemplo); however, GBs nationals this year ended up having a 3+ hours final match. So a complete lack of time limit may be unreasonable but owrth testing. But it might be interesting to pilot some of these ideas at the upcoming early Regionals or two?

Personally, I think 3 of 5 in top cut is a bit much before Top 8. However, after that, I can see 3 of 5 being the ultimate skill tester that is needed of the top tier players. I also agree on the fact that T1 is WAY over powered, being able to pull of both Trainers AND Supporters T1. One the two of those should be barred from T1 usage at the very least (personally, I'd choose Supporters as their effects are more-game altering and there are not many trainers you NEED T1 outside of Communication for search or PP for donking purposes).

I do think something needs to be changed in the game, because games are WAY too swingy right now as far as luck is concerned. As far as your hierarchy of players go, I'm solidly in that 50% bracket and really didn't play well enough IMO to make cut this year. Yet somehow, through about two-three rounds of MASSIVELY quick set-ups while my opponent were only able to durdle up a few basics, I was able to luck in. Trainers and Supporters T1 were the BIG things that let this happen. One of these needs addressed for sure.

~Cardz.

 

[Jaeger]

Jason I'm so glad you made this topic

 

[sdrawkcab]

In Cyrus's tournament senario a top 128 cut would yeild 124 players at 9-4 64 of which would make top 128

 

[ajwalker]

I would really love to see Pokémon post the pairings on Pokémon.com and possibly on social networking sites as well. Or perhaps you could subscribe to a mailing list and have OP send you pairings via SMS. Crowding near the pairings is an extremely irritating and easily fixed problem.

That's all kind of privacy issues right there regardless of how momentarily irritating it is. Nintendo already bends over backwards to try and limit access and protect privacy (Friend codes anyone?):nonono: Why would they need to broadcast the pairings over the internet? That's not something I'd want to opt in to just to save 30 seconds.

Not to mention you could have issues with bandwith or WIFI access/coverage on the day of the event. Not everyone has an iPhone/Blackberry or other smartphone or laptop to access their Facebook page.

Display them on a big screen for major events. For smaller events, paper is fine.

---------- Post added 08/31/2011 at 12:03 AM ----------

However, 12 rounds with Top 64 might be too lengthy to do Best of 5. (This would be six 2 hour Top Cut matches.) In order to do this, we would need to have the tournaments run a little bit longer each day, which means there would be a dinner break as well.

Day 1:
8:30 AM: Be seated
9:00 AM: Round 1
10:00 AM: Round 2
11:00 AM: Round 3
Lunch Break After Round 3 until 1 PM.
1 PM: Round 4
2 PM: Round 5
3 PM: Round 6
4 PM: Round 7
Dinner Break After Round 7 until 6 PM.
6 PM: Round 8
7 PM: Round 9
Finish @ 8 PM.

No disrespect and I freely admit I've never been to Nationals or Worlds. However, I've NEVER known a Pokemon event to start on time when it's more than 20 or so players.

I've been to States and Regionals and I know the staff is working hard, but they were both at least (at least ) 2 - 3 hours before the event would actually start. And I would imagine at the bigger events like Nationals and Worlds, with even more players to register/check-in, the time delays would only grow.

Changing it to some sort of online pre-registration using only your P!P ID # (with pre-submitted deck list) would help tremendously. Then all you would need to do is present your card, let them check your deck against the list you've already submitted and you should be good to go. You could even have it already sorted to speed check-in.

 

[Box of Fail]

That's all kind of privacy issues right there regardless of how momentarily irritating it is. Nintendo already bends over backwards to try and limit access and protect privacy (Friend codes anyone?):nonono: Why would they need to broadcast the pairings over the internet? That's not something I'd want to opt in to just to save 30 seconds.

Not to mention you could have issues with bandwith or WIFI access/coverage on the day of the event. Not everyone has an iPhone/Blackberry or other smartphone or laptop to access their Facebook page.

Display them on a big screen for major events. For smaller events, paper is fine.

Well, for Pokemon.com, you'd have to log into your account presumably. Perhaps full names can't be posted on social networking sites; however, there could be an option on Pokemon.com which allowed players to consent to having their names used in online pairings on different social networking sites.

While this is true, I'm not suggesting POP do away with physical pairings (which simply require a printer and some tape... not too hard); rather, this online pairing alternative would improve the experience for those dependent on physical pairings as well. After all, because many would opt to use online pairings, the physical pairings would be less crowded. Obviously for this to work, online pairings would have to be posted before physical pairings. It seems highly practical to me.

 

[ajwalker]

Obviously for this to work, online pairings would have to be posted before physical pairings. It seems highly practical to me.

No, I think that would increase the work tremendously and give one more opportunity for errors to be introduced into the process.

They would have to send it out to dozens (hundreds?) of individual accounts, whether online, social networks or via text messages. The staff person would have to input each one individually, checking for accuracy all the time while everyone else is "encouraging" them to hurry up so the next round can begin. I would hate to be that person :frown:

Seems a whole lot harder than projecting them onto a large screen that can be seen at a distance at the large events or printing them out on paper at smaller events.

 

[Box of Fail]

No, I think that would increase the work tremendously and give one more opportunity for errors to be introduced into the process.

They would have to send it out to dozens (hundreds?) of individual accounts, whether online, social networks or via text messages. The staff person would have to input each one individually, checking for accuracy all the time while everyone else is "encouraging" them to hurry up so the next round can begin. I would hate to be that person :frown:

Seems a whole lot harder than projecting them onto a large screen that can be seen at a distance at the large events or printing them out on paper at smaller events.

Why each individually? I'm sure the TOM software could be modified to export the data, if it can't already. If you're talking about each account to whom to send it, I'm sure a (very simple) program could sort the outgoing pairings by POP ID so each person on the mailing list only gets their own pairings. Many automated mail programs already do that, for example when Amazon.com sends you confirmation of a purchase. You don't need people to input each individually; that's ridiculous and honestly I don't know why you're so sure such a thing would be necessary. Sending people their pairings is something that a program can easily manage. And the data's already in TOM for the sake of the printed pairings.

 

[Otaku]

Is it fun to always have the same person win a tournament? The very best player always winning a tournament? No, not really. It's very disheartening and isn't very enjoyable. If there wasn't any luck in the game this game would become chess. Have you ever played competitive chess? I suggest you do, than come back and say luck is completely bad for the game. Not sure if that will change your opinion about my being a communist.

Chess is a very hard thing to pick up playing and start winning fast. Why? No luck. Without luck in the metagame you must have been playing at a high level for as long or longer than someone else or be brilliant to beat them. Is that any fun? Is that going to sell cards? Probably not.
Posted with Mobile style...

The strikes me as more an emotional appeal rather than an issue of logic. gallade asks "Is it fun to always have the same person win a tournament?" First and foremost, should this matter? The ultimate goal of OP is to determine the best player and have fun while doing it... but notice the priority. If it was fun first... there would be no "winner". It'd just be large events where players go together to play, and you wouldn't pay attention to standings, or at least very minimal. In short at its most "competitive", a "purely for fun" tournament structure would amount to a slightly more organized Pokemon League.

Second, what of the other position? I ask "Is it fun to always lose due to luck?" In some ways this is more pressing, since there are many more "losers" than "winners" at the tournaments. I find losing a match due to my bad luck or my opponent's good luck to be much more frustrating than constantly losing to a skilled player. Plus I can still have fun when losing to a more skilled player if it was a good game. Winning is a part of the TCGs fun, but not all of it.

If you cannot stand the person most deserving of winning being the most likely to win, I'd suggest playing a "fair" game of bingo.

Luck does play a role in chess, it just isn't related to the game's own rules. I know, because while I have not played competitive chess, I have struggled to beat players far more skilled than I am at the game (which would be most - I just seem to struggle planning enough steps ahead). I still enjoy playing chess. Did I mention I'm nearly 30 years old? When I was younger I was very frustrated I'd lose to people over and over again. It still is frustrating if the opponent is, in short, rude. A "sore winner". However it would also be frustrating beating them since they most likely would also be a "sore loser". Turns out its how they behave that is the frustrating part, not really the winning or losing.

The inherent design of Pokemon already provides ample luck to allow a lesser skilled player to defeat a more skilled player. So Ness's proposal's aren't even doing what you're worried about. Worry when someone proposed eliminating random draws from your deck (e.g. turning every "draw" of a card into "search your deck" for a card), selecting your six Prizes from your deck and playing them face-up, and lastly eliminating all effects that require a randomizer of some sort. Now the game is chess.

 

[P_A]

Ha, believe me, as a former PTO, I don't think they'd want to fart around too much with TOM. For a pairings program, most of the bugs have been ironed out as of this time, but I remember some horror stories. The last time I checked, they didn't even have a chime built into TOM to announce the end of the round! As it is, it tends to run slow. If it included a side program to post pairings elsewhere it would slow to a crawl - guaranteed. I doubt that would ever happen. I could see the projection screen thing for pairings work though. That might be a good worthwhile idea.

 

[nnaann]

Is it fun to always have the same person win a tournament? The very best player always winning a tournament? No, not really. It's very disheartening and isn't very enjoyable. If there wasn't any luck in the game this game would become chess. Have you ever played competitive chess? I suggest you do, than come back and say luck is completely bad for the game. Not sure if that will change your opinion about my being a communist.

Chess is a very hard thing to pick up playing and start winning fast. Why? No luck. Without luck in the metagame you must have been playing at a high level for as long or longer than someone else or be brilliant to beat them. Is that any fun? Is that going to sell cards? Probably not.
Posted with Mobile style...

There's always going to be some luck involved in Pokemon, the same player will never win every tournament. Unless every single person runs the same 60 card deck, every matchup is going to be in one person's favour. No matter how consistent you make your deck, there is always a chance that either you or your opponent can have a bad start. Unless you decide to run a ridiculous amount of Basic Pokemon, or try to avoid low HP Pokemon, there's always a chance that you're going to get donked out of the game. TOM randomises which opponent, and deck, you will get paired against. There's luck involved as to whether you manage to get paired against bad players, or easy matchups all day. There's luck involved with how well your opponent's play on the day, and what good or bad luck affects them, since it can harm your resistance and prevent you from top cutting. Would Worlds have been different if one of Ross Cawthorn's opponents changed a win into a loss, and made him bubble instead of Top Cutting as the 16th seed?

Events like these happen all the time in tournaments, especially in Single Game Swiss. All those factors above affect people's records in tournaments and all occur regularly. Even if you were to take coin flips out of the game, you could play the same World Championships 10 times over and probably have 10 different World Champions.

I want to see Pokemon get a balance right between skill and luck, because right now there is too much luck deciding games. Having the World Championships final played out on a coin flip is just ridiculous, regardless of whether anyone enjoys luck playing a part in Pokemon, there's no excuse for that.

 

[espeon200]

Ha, believe me, as a former PTO, I don't think they'd want to fart around too much with TOM. For a pairings program, most of the bugs have been ironed out as of this time, but I remember some horror stories. The last time I checked, they didn't even have a chime built into TOM to announce the end of the round! As it is, it tends to run slow. If it included a side program to post pairings elsewhere it would slow to a crawl - guaranteed. I doubt that would ever happen. I could see the projection screen thing for pairings work though. That might be a good worthwhile idea.

Every PTO I've ever played under has had their own TOM horror story. The program works, but to add in the features that would allow them to send out pairings or post them online, while sounding like a simple tweak is a much bigger project than you'd think. I'd prefer for them to work on making TOM absolutely "idiot proof" (not calling anyone that uses the program an idiot) and stable on all computers than to add in bells and whistles like Facebook/Twitter integration or SMS messaging for players involved.

As for the projecting idea? Yeah, it would really work. The first Battle Roads I went to after getting back into the game, the PTO had found a way to hook up the computer to a big LCD TV behind the play area and was able to show the standings and pairings through that. It was awesome, and I wish more game stores could be outfitted to handle that sort of thing.

 

[SMP88]

I'm sorry, but all the posts about how Ness's schedule couldn't work because tournaments never start on time or how new features can't be added to TOM just sound like laziness on the part of Pokemon to me.

Every tournament , especially the larger ones, should be starting on time. If that means getting more people to help out or having those volunteers come earlier that should happen. There's absolutely no reason a tournament should be starting 2 hours late. Allow people to register online, get more people, fix TOM, whatever, I shouldn't have to be sitting around waiting for a tournament to start.

As far as TOM goes, if Pokemon needs to hire a couple programmers for a couple months to get things implemented into TOM they need to do it. Online pairings should be a fairly easy thing, just have the pairings be sent to a site as a pdf that anyone with a POP id number can access. There's no need for people to have to opt in to something like that. There's other things that could speed up a tournament, maybe implement a QR code system for reporting winners. Have each person's name be a QR code and print that on a match slip, when you scan a person's name it reports them as a winner.

Don't be complacent just because TOM doesn't crash anymore or things ran fairly smoothly this year. With more people coming to tournaments there needs to be an increase in the amount of time and money put into making the behind the scenes stuff work better and more efficiently.

 

[NoPoke]

you do realise that it isn't always the staff that cause the delays?

COPPA might get a bit unhappy about publishing full names of minors!

If you want horror stories ask those who have tried pre-registration.

Please not more reliance upon online systems.

 

[P_A]

I'm sorry, but all the posts about how Ness's schedule couldn't work because tournaments never start on time or how new features can't be added to TOM just sound like laziness on the part of Pokemon to me.

Every tournament , especially the larger ones, should be starting on time. If that means getting more people to help out or having those volunteers come earlier that should happen. There's absolutely no reason a tournament should be starting 2 hours late. Allow people to register online, get more people, fix TOM, whatever, I shouldn't have to be sitting around waiting for a tournament to start.

As far as TOM goes, if Pokemon needs to hire a couple programmers for a couple months to get things implemented into TOM they need to do it. Online pairings should be a fairly easy thing, just have the pairings be sent to a site as a pdf that anyone with a POP id number can access. There's no need for people to have to opt in to something like that. There's other things that could speed up a tournament, maybe implement a QR code system for reporting winners. Have each person's name be a QR code and print that on a match slip, when you scan a person's name it reports them as a winner.

Don't be complacent just because TOM doesn't crash anymore or things ran fairly smoothly this year. With more people coming to tournaments there needs to be an increase in the amount of time and money put into making the behind the scenes stuff work better and more efficiently.

I honestly don't think it's a matter of complacency or laziness. Real world situation here - At work I'm a safety coordinator at a chemical factory where part of the job is to destroy cyanide. You do everything possible to make things safe, and manageable when you have the time and money to do stuff, but sooner or later the job's gotta get done, and you have to get your hands dirty. I think TPCi is doing the best they can with the circumstances they have. They exercise due dilligence to get this and that done, and some things just require more time and money to get done perfectly. Are they deliberately putting things off? Hardly! If anything, some things just are more of a priority than others. If certain conditions are managable as is, and not too much of an inconvenience, then while other things are a priority, some things will be put on the back burner, that's all. Everyone and every company learns to prioritize sooner or later, even you. Just because your priorities match in some things doesn't mean they will in all things. Be patient, there's always room for improvement, and always will be.

 

[Mystery Thing]

I'm sorry, but all the posts about how Ness's schedule couldn't work because tournaments never start on time or how new features can't be added to TOM just sound like laziness on the part of Pokemon to me.

Every tournament , especially the larger ones, should be starting on time. If that means getting more people to help out or having those volunteers come earlier that should happen. There's absolutely no reason a tournament should be starting 2 hours late. Allow people to register online, get more people, fix TOM, whatever, I shouldn't have to be sitting around waiting for a tournament to start.

As far as TOM goes, if Pokemon needs to hire a couple programmers for a couple months to get things implemented into TOM they need to do it. Online pairings should be a fairly easy thing, just have the pairings be sent to a site as a pdf that anyone with a POP id number can access. There's no need for people to have to opt in to something like that. There's other things that could speed up a tournament, maybe implement a QR code system for reporting winners. Have each person's name be a QR code and print that on a match slip, when you scan a person's name it reports them as a winner.

Don't be complacent just because TOM doesn't crash anymore or things ran fairly smoothly this year. With more people coming to tournaments there needs to be an increase in the amount of time and money put into making the behind the scenes stuff work better and more efficiently.

One of the reasons that the LCQ started so late this year was the massive number of decklist issues there were. Trying to track down all those players to get things fixed was not a barrel of laughs. So what's your suggestion for fixing that? Disqualify them all? Then you have to go back into TOM, find those players, delete those players, re-pair everything, repost everything potentially, etc etc. And could you imagine the outcry when somebody wrote down 14 Energy instead of 13? Simple mistake, right? Oh well, bad list, you're gone.

Which would you rather: start late, or drive/fly/whatever x number of hours only to be not allowed to play at all because you made a tiny little slip on your list? Because a little error could happen to anybody at any time.


Obviously the entire staff group would love to start on time. But there's only so much you can do. And the more technology you introduce into it, the more chance there is for a problem. (Such as any system that has online registration: what if your internet drops? Cancel the tournament?)

 

[ajwalker]

I think this is starting to get off topic and I'll confess I'm partly to blame.

This was started to discuss how to bring skill back to the game but now we are talking about what TCPi can or cannot (should or shouldn't) do to speed up registration.

We should get back to trying to come up with some suggestions (besides on-line registration and posting pairings) in the off chance someone from TCPi sees this thread and finds workable solutions to bringing more skill back to the game we all love. :thumb: