Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Sentiments after Nationals

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We need more invites!
Here's a few more.
-- 1 year later --
We need more invites!
Here's a few more.
-- Rinse and Repeat --

The line must be drawn somewhere. I feel the line is fine as it is.
 
My thought is that POP seems to view Worlds as a multicultural experience where great players from all over the globe can play a unique tournament. The goal seems to be world wide competition and exposure more than crowning a winner, though the latter does happen.

US players seem to view Worlds as a tournament that is supposed to have the best players from all over the globe, regardless of country of origin, competing to see who will get to be the World Champion – the best player in the world for that year.

The European players seem to view Worlds as something akin to the Olympics where players represent their country for national honor. An event where the goal is for the representatives of various countries to compete against one another until one country is left standing as the World Champion for that year.

These are somewhat mutually exclusive viewpoints.

By what I understand the European view to be, it’s already unfair that the US gets more invites than anyone else, because it gives their country more of an opportunity to win, which is unfair to all the other countries with far more limited representation.

By the US view it’s unfair that more US players don’t get a shot since a more limited pool prevents many worthy players from getting to play, thus preventing the event from being as legitimate as it otherwise might be.

POP seems to be balancing in the middle of these views, giving the US more invites than other places, though proportionally far less than they otherwise might.


IMHO What I think that the Europeans need to understand is that most US players don’t really even THINK about the idea of representing their country with rare exceptions. It’s a foreign concept in many ways to their mindset. They are there to represent themselves and nothing more most of the time. The US player could care less if every country has a representative or not. It’s neat meeting players from around the world, but if one of them wins they view that win as a matter of individual accomplishment, not something representing country. This isn’t to say that the US players aren’t proud to be American. They usually are. It’s just that they don’t link the idea of winning a game of Pokemon as doing anything for their country. There is no established tradition of regular inter-country competition here like Europe has for Football, Basketball, and whatnot. US Pokemon players aren’t acculturated to think in those terms outside of the Olympics ... which frankly a lot of people don’t really care that much about anyway. Our competitive events are usually between our own Cities / regions or are individual in nature, and have nothing to do with national pride.

OTOH I think that it would do the US players good to think about why our European players react they way they do every year when worlds invites are brought up.
 
vanderbilt_grad, your post is gold!

DarthPika said:
Furthermore, why the heck is worlds by country? I don't care what country wins, but what player wins. I couldn't care less where he/she came from.
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One of my league players top cutted at worlds last year. Keeping what you said in mind, I asked him if he remembered the name of the player who knocked him out of top cut. He doesn't remember the kid's name, all he remembers is the kid was highly ranked and was from France. So, country of origin does mean something.
 
Prime said:
Great post!

If that is the goal of Battle Roads, then I feel they are partially a success, but can be improved upon.

I agree that Battle Roads do bring real competitive tournaments to an area. That is something Battle Roads do accomplish. League tournaments can be fun, but you won't have people coming in from out of the area to play. Battle Roads brings competitive tournament scenes to that area, at least for that one day.

That leads me to my first problem. They are only held twice a year in each location. I'm not being greedy, I'm just saying that Battle Roads could keep players interested in competitive play throughout the year if they were held more often. I don't know if this would be possible, but I would like to see it.

I agree on principle. In practice, it'd be difficult to impossible to police correctly. The BRs aren't FNM. They are free events sponsored completely by PUI. Without revealing more, I'll just say that there are plenty of good reasons that BRs are not FNM, and probably won't be for a while.

My second problem is the prizes, or the prize card. I don't feel the trophy card is a good prize for a event like battle roads if we are thinking of battle roads as an event that brings competitive playing to an area. In my opinion, the better prize card would be a foil of a very playable trainer. Give out foil Roseanne's Researches, or Bebe's Searches, or Cynthia's Feelings. Heck, give out a BR-stamped Claydol or Uxie. Those cards would let experienced players feel happy because it is a special looking good card (they love RH trainers, don't they?) and let new players feel happy because it might be a card they don't have a lot of.

IDK about you, but I feel that the Victory Medal card is far better than most players believe it to be. 3/4 of the time you play it, you're getting a card from your deck. 1/4 of the time, you get to choose what that card is. I'd put it on the same level as Pokedex for its ability, especially as a Trainer. Now, I wouldn't be opposed to having other cards in there as well. They just don't have the glitz and glamor of something called "Victory Medal" that has that pretty Gold or Silver medallion in the picture.

My third comment would be to keep the k-value of the event as it is; small but influenctial. I feel it gives the event a decent reason to play if your looking to gain rating points. It gives that class of player a reason to play.

Agreed and supported. I wouldn't have players coming from as far as Chicago and Kentucky (I think) to my events if they weren't Premier rated. Yet, the rating needs to be small enough for the events to remain at least mostly local.

I think it would be fantastic if TOs could run Battle Roads throughout the year in their area/s. They do promote competitive play. I do wish there were more of them, possibly double what we have now. I would love to see a new Battle Road show up with each new set (every 3 months). And since TOs can run them, I would hope more players would try to become TOs and start running events so they could take some pressure off of their local PTOs shoulders.

This, I think, would be superior to the current system, and it would probably add to the prestige of pretty much every level across the board. The problem is that there are only 3 months between each set. What you're proposing is that each set has a corresponding 1-2 weeks of low-level Premier support before the high-level stuff starts. Unfortunately, there are only 10 weeks between set releases. The PTOs are generally working towards setting up the next big Premier event cycle, and most registered TOs that I know prefer to play. This would only service a very small proportion of the game, and I really don't think it's a great idea without more fleshing out.

I think Bullados's idea of Battle Roads is the closest to what BRs are now. Entry-level is not what they are, as I've explained before. Neither is 'new player friendly'.

It largely depends on the TO that's running the Battle Road. I've seen plenty of BRs that are, quite simply, States or Regionals in miniature. And that's fine. If that's how a TO wants to run their events, more power to them. In my events, though, I try and make sure that every player has as much fun as possible by giving away as many door prizes as I can afford, ensuring that everybody walks out with something (even if it's just a WOTC era promo), and always making sure that the kids are more important than the event itself. It's led me to having 2 out of my 4 Premier events where both the Seniors and the Juniors outnumbered the Masters, and a third where the Juniors outnumbered the Masters.

In general, the face of an event is decided by the TO and the Staff that work the event. I work hard to make my events as kid-friendly as possible, and many of my league parents appreciate me for it.
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My responses are in bold above. It's simply easier to reply to each part than to the whole, hope you don't mind :D
 
Bullados, I think we are getting to a point in the game, there is so much growth coming about and the need for more tournaments is rising. Because of that, the need for more staff to run these tournaments is coming around.

Pre-Releases in some areas run after events, where they need some extra help. Nationals is growing every year, requiring more staff. I honestly free that events like Regionals and States have room to add side events themselves.

I really feel that more Battle Roads could be held if more players stepped up and starting running tournaments locally and building up experience and then running a Battle Road in their own area. More Battle Roads would bring in more new players, or at least more competitive players. Larger competitive areas mean higher attendance at Cities/States/Regionals.

Leagues get them hooked on the game, BRs get them hooked on competitive play, and they ride the wave of Championship tournaments all leading to the biggest event in the nation (Nationals) and for those lucky enough Worlds.
 
Prime, remind me why more invites is a bad thing. If the game is growing, then the invites need to increase to accomodate. Making worlds more exclusive is bad for the game because it is far more discouraging to newer players.
 
Articjedi said:
Prime, remind me why more invites is a bad thing. If the game is growing, then the invites need to increase to accomodate. Making worlds more exclusive is bad for the game because it is far more discouraging to newer players.
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On point! The argument that Europe needs more invites to encourage their players, works for the US as well. Especially when considering new players who haven't ever tasted a States, or even a Cities win, to know that they haven't a shot without years, and years of dedication to a game that just may die off suddenly.
 
Articjedi said:
Prime, remind me why more invites is a bad thing. If the game is growing, then the invites need to increase to accomodate. Making worlds more exclusive is bad for the game because it is far more discouraging to newer players.
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More invites = more players. More players means the event is less prestigious.

If Worlds took a percentage of a player base, I would agree that invites would need to grow. But I haven't seen any math that has shown that the number of invites we have gotten each year correlates to the player base (percentage-wise) yet.

Last year, the game saw growing as the year before it did, yet the total number of players in each age group was locked at 128. Why do people expect that 128 to change this year or next year?

Making worlds more exclusive is bad because it is discouraging to newer players? I would say what players have to go through at all is discouraging. A new player has to go to many tournaments, doing well in all of them, or possibly do extremely well at the biggest tournament in the world. That by itself is not going to change, regardless of number of invites.

I don't think that is a good excuse. New players can't win battle roads, and yet we need to add more invites so they can feel it is easier to play in worlds?

New players aren't the target audience for Worlds. Worlds is a reward for certain players for doing extremely well throughout the year or at their Nationals (which is the biggest tournament in their nation). I know people want to play in this prestigious event, but not everyone is going to be able to play, and I don't see any reason to keep adding invites.
 
Prime said:
More invites = more players. More players means the event is less prestigious.

If Worlds took a percentage of a player base, I would agree that invites would need to grow. But I haven't seen any math that has shown that the number of invites we have gotten each year correlates to the player base (percentage-wise) yet.

Last year, the game saw growing as the year before it did, yet the total number of players in each age group was locked at 128. Why do people expect that 128 to change this year or next year?

Making worlds more exclusive is bad because it is discouraging to newer players? I would say what players have to go through at all is discouraging. A new player has to go to many tournaments, doing well in all of them, or possibly do extremely well at the biggest tournament in the world. That by itself is not going to change, regardless of number of invites.

I don't think that is a good excuse. New players can't win battle roads, and yet we need to add more invites so they can feel it is easier to play in worlds?

New players aren't the target audience for Worlds. Worlds is a reward for certain players for doing extremely well throughout the year or at their Nationals (which is the biggest tournament in their nation). I know people want to play in this prestigious event, but not everyone is going to be able to play, and I don't see any reason to keep adding invites.
Click to expand...

Yes, most players aren't good when they are new, but you can't be all inclusive. Take Aylam, who first started playing this year and WON NATIONALS.
Or Stephen Y, the top ranked VA Senior player who got 36th at worlds last year only 6 months into playing.
 
I think people care too much about their worlds invite. You don't need to get in every year. I think the line gets drawn when people fly to St. Louis for a tournament, get a loss or two, and drop to save their invite. Nationals is bigger than worlds anyway, isn't meeting and playing more people more important than placing higher in an exclusive event?

The US is a harder place to play. By a lot. I live in the US, and it is as hard as people say. So what? I don't play all season to go to one event. That's pretty dumb. I play all season to play all season. I go to BRs. When it is apparent my deck is going to net me a lot of premier point losses, I don't ever drop. I play fun decks that could never hope to do well in a serious tournament.

If you play a whole season to get into worlds, and spend your free time on the internet arguing to make your shot at worlds fairer, maybe you should try just letting the Americans have a hard time, and stop worrying about your invite. I've never been invited to worlds, because I check my rating once every two months or so. I play to have fun, and if I do well and net points at a big tournament, sometimes I run a silly deck for a bigger tournament and blow them all.

Play to have fun, not to get into worlds, and you'll realize that it'd be fine if the US got a measly 4 invites at all. Who cares?
 
ShadowCard said:
What foreign language did you take in school?
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Latin. :lol:


Also regarding battle roads I think that this is pertanent. From the Lafonte home page:

"Every tournament won, no matter how big or small,
is a sign of Lafonte dominance and will thus be displayed.
Each Battle Road win represents the hopes and
dreams of another nit being crushed as they fail to win
even the smallest tournaments in our presence." -Josef Bolton
Click to expand...

I really don't want to rag on Lafonte but I feel that this sentament needs to be put out in the open in the context of discussing battle roads as being "entry level" events that are friendly to new players. Among many other things THIS is what new players will come into contact with at any competitive event.
 
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