Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Where's the love?

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I don't have much to say, but I wanted to throw my support behind this post. Time extensions are more reasonable than prize penalties where slow play is concerned because adding time to the match doesn't affect the board in any way. Returning to a proper pace of play may be more difficult after a prize penalty occurs, depending on which game out of three is being played and who the offending player is.

POP directed staff to use this method a couple of years ago at major events.
But it impacted the time flow of the events, so POP directed staff to discontinue the use of it as an "easy fix" and to focus more on training players to play timely via the penalty guidelines.
 
Knowing that I only get 15 seconds for a search mid-game does not change my argument. Sure I was given the correct penalty for the guidelines as they exist, I am only asking that improvements to the system be considered. There are obviously a number of players that feel slow play as called now is a problem.
 
Because you are bothering me with your incessant insistence (heeheee, that sounds funny...) that the whole "new printers" thing will make a significant difference, I have to do this to you.
This will be my last comment on the round time.
For the record, I was not including sit down time in my 20-30 minutes. Also, different printers is just one possible suggestion on how to cut down time. I'm sure there are more options.
Next, we come to
I believe that in a complex situation a player should be able to explain their train of thought clearly to the judge in order to justify their moves. A player will generally have several plans when carrying out a play, such as specific cards they are looking for when searching the deck, and if a judge thinks they are playing too slow, the player should be able to clearly explain their thought process. Simple aimless looking through decks/discards would be identifiable when the player is unable to explain their moves. I realize that a player might not be able to explain their moves with the opponent around so perhaps they could be pulled aside for a minute or two. A judge would then be able to decide whether the move warranted the amount of time that it was taking. (Edit: This would also be more of a 15+ thing I imagine since younger kids might not be able to explain clearly)

I have to say, this is comedy gold. After your insistence that the time between rounds is too long (See: Printer Argument), and in order to alleviate slow play penalties, you want to have players get up, walk away from their tables, explain each move to a judge, then sit back down, make the move, get up, move away, explain the next move, sit back down, make the move, etc.? And you know that the players who take a long time making one move will take a long time on other moves too, so it's not like this would only happen once.

Let's see what that does. Say, 5 games are under scrutiny for slow play. That's 5 judges that will need to keep their attention riveted to these specific games so they can chat it up with players regarding their strategy. The other judges then need to pick up that slack, slowing down calls on any number of games. Lets say that slows down another 5 games that will need time extensions. Not to mention the time extensions needed to have players wander from their tables mid game to talk to judges! All of that eats into between round time. Don't worry though, the printers will fix it!
 
Pokepop was referring to my time like it included sit down, This warranted making my 20-30 minutes more specific.

Also the printer thing was just one example of how to possibly alleviate time between rounds. If people are going to tear that suggestion apart, I will offer a few more solutions. First, projectors showing the pairings on a wall (I have seen this at smaller events, don't know how it would translate to a large event). Also POP could place TV's similar to those already used in the VG area around the tournament area and have the pairings appear on screen. Perhaps place the hive in a more central location (obv still next to a wall) and have the TVs around it. Feel free to tear down these suggestions as well.

Sorry I am the only one trying to offer up solutions in the thread. Its a small wonder that anyone posts on the 'Gym at all anymore.
 
so, a bank of tv screens like at an airport's arrivals/departures info? for *800* pairings?

a wall projection would have to scroll. again, how is that time effective for players who miss the first (...or second, or third) go-round and then have to WAIT for the page to scroll through the rest of the pairings to get back to theirs before they can be seated...as compared to printed pairings on a board?

'mom
 
Say they have a 40 inch or so TV. You could definitely divide the TV screen into three columns of pairings and have a complete flight displayed on just one TV with a similar font size to that used currently on paper. Players just walk up to the TV like they would to the pairing board.

Also could have multiple projectors to avoid scrolling. Again I said I didn't know how it would translate to a large event.
 
Knowing that I only get 15 seconds for a search mid-game does not change my argument. Sure I was given the correct penalty for the guidelines as they exist, I am only asking that improvements to the system be considered. There are obviously a number of players that feel slow play as called now is a problem.

Drew,

I appreciate that you have accepted that the judge acted appropriately, and I understand that your issue is with the penalty guidelines and the time allotted for game actions.

I will share that I was witness to similar feelings by judges that the guidelines could use a change here and there.

Consider what recommendations you would like to see, think about how the change you propose would effect the game and larger tournaments, and send your desired guideline alterations to TCPi.

While a change may not follow immediately, outline scenarios and justifications for the changes you would like to see. Cutting and pasting from your posts in this thread would almost write your note to TPCi. Your perspective as one of the game's top players is valuable.

I am sorry if the penalty had an adverse insurmountable effect on your game/match outcome.
 
Pokedad,

Thankfully the penalty had no affect on the match, although it could have (he took the wrong prize, despite having used Azelf earlier).

I have been outlining a number of situations since my incident and was in fact planning on contacting Pokemon regarding my issues after Worlds.
 
I have been outlining a number of situations since my incident and was in fact planning on contacting Pokemon regarding my issues after Worlds.
no, do it NOW.

'after worlds' is cutting it close, if not too late imho: the new tournament docs take effect for the new tourney year starting september first.

any changes to the pen guides/tourney rules must be discussed/written/edited/proofed BEFORE they go 'live' on the site, which usually is before the new tourney year starts 9/1.

'mom
 
Do you want to know the absolute fastest way to get the pairings out? Build texting into the tournament software. Cost might be prohibitive, but it would be really cool to text everyone their pairing info.
 
Pokedad, I'm starting to think that you're trying to troll me.
I described an attitude on these forums as being like the, "blue wall of silence" and you say that I'm comparing people to cavemen wearing badges.
If you aren't trolling, that is just one weak strawman.

You quoted so much of what I said and kept saying to show you examples from the Nats that just happened (because obviously anything that happened before Nats was so long ago that it's completely irrelevant).
Unfortunately, you missed one quote (funny how you forgot the one part that would have shown how trollish your shouts of, "show me when it happened at Nats" really were).
With all of that being said, please remember that I was not specifically talking about the staffing at any one event.
Feels weird to quote myself. lol

I've played competitively and I've judged my fair share of events, so I am saying what I am saying with the experience from both sides of this.
Trying to troll me does nothing to disprove anything that I have said and I would really appreciate it if you would stop already.

I do have to say that your moving of the goalposts was kind of clunky though.
Chronological postings:
Over and over, judges have come into these threads and asked you, told you, cajoled you, everything but begged you to contact TPCi directly with your specific recounting of firsthand experiences.

If you have been critical of judges in any of the three ongoing threads being used to air complaints about and criticisms of judges, perhaps you critical posters can post the time and date of your sent message to TPCi. Im sure it predates your post here; I expect each of you are responsible members of the Pokemon community, as dedicated to improving the game as the people above who provided the address to send your comments.

I can not imagine an instance where a person simply posted complaints here, but without any real interest in improving our game - having failed to provide specific instances of judge malfeasance to TPCi.

The only times that I ever had a negative experience with staff at any event, I made sure to contact WotC/POP (depending who was running things at the time).


While you may still carry the scar from the game loss your best friend suffered in a City Championship due to a bad call back in the WotC days, no one else cares; let it go. Finally if you are going to complain here, please be specific; and perhaps provide a possible solution to the problem you present. Thanks all.

You bring up that nobody here has a right to say anything negative unless they contact PTCI with their grievances, I point out that I actually have done that when I've had issues, and you respond by saying that the last event I personally had an issue at was too long ago so it doesn't matter and you throw in that trollish comment trying to claim that I'm sore over a city championship under WotC.

Very clunky, very obvious trolling, and a complete lack of finesse when moving the goalposts.
1/10

Seriously, I need for you to stop going Glenn Beck on me if I'm going to carry on this conversation.
It's funny that as soon as I bring up something somewhat negative about how some judges/PTOs act, you pretty much start trolling me and throwing around insults while trying to invalidate everything I say through outright mistruths.
Almost like some kind of wall that I referenced earlier. lol
 
POP directed staff to use this method a couple of years ago at major events.
But it impacted the time flow of the events, so POP directed staff to discontinue the use of it as an "easy fix" and to focus more on training players to play timely via the penalty guidelines.

That's interesting - thanks for the info. I wonder, though, if the biggest tournament of the season is the correct venue for "training players" to do anything. Ideally speaking, if time extensions are okay at smaller events (where the training should be occurring), they should be acceptable at the larger ones, too.

On the other hand, I can't begin to appreciate the complexities of running an event like Nationals on a schedule. Time extensions do seem impractical, especially during Swiss matches. Perhaps they could be used exclusively during the top cut, where there is (I assume) less pressure on the coordinators to keep things moving.
 
Do you want to know the absolute fastest way to get the pairings out? Build texting into the tournament software. Cost might be prohibitive, but it would be really cool to text everyone their pairing info.

but that requires a cell phone.
 
No way...bring some Kadabra's back to Pokemon and use them for match pairings -- telepathy anyone?! Fast and easy.
 
Reading over the posts in this thread, I still get a vibe of 'players vs judges' here. I think that the goal is for the exact opposite to be the case. All of us love this game, or we wouldn't participate.

What competitive players are saying here (I will include myself in this group, as I haven't judged a major tournament in years) is that we feel that there is an objectivity applied to something we feel to be subjective. I will take a section of Jimmy's post as an example.

A player could literally play a trainer and think, play an energy and think, play a supporter and think, claydol, think, think some more then think.

Going into a game, there is an understanding that both players have a combined 40 minutes to work with. A large amount of the thinking, in theory, would be done within the first couple turns (once each player knows what they're up against). But there are also times when your opponent drops something NOBODY would expect (like an Electrode SW, Jimmy).

Yes, usually those first couple turns will be the longest, but there ARE going to be turns late in the game that take longer. The Pokemon TCG isn't mechanical enough (thank goodness) where you can analyze what's left in your deck and run from there. One of the main contributors to this is the ever-expanding card pool (we had a GIGANTIC format this year), another is the ever-expanding player base and rising skill levels.

There is an understanding that there must be guidelines in place in order to keep tournaments running. All I've been saying is that in grey-area issues such as questionable play speed, there should be an objection before a penalty. The counter-argument to this has been "well if a player is cheating, should a judge not step in?" or "if a crime is being committed, should the police not step in?" These issues are FAR more black and white than the grey area of thought process (and also delve into morality discussion).

I would like to thank all of you who take time out of your busy lives to keep this game going. I appreciate what you all do so much. But if I experience something I'm not happy with, why not bring it up for discussion!
 
Pokedad, I'm starting to think that you're trying to troll me.
I described an attitude on these forums as being like the, "blue wall of silence" and you say that I'm comparing people to cavemen wearing badges.
If you aren't trolling, that is just one weak strawman.

You quoted so much of what I said and kept saying to show you examples from the Nats that just happened (because obviously anything that happened before Nats was so long ago that it's completely irrelevant).
Unfortunately, you missed one quote (funny how you forgot the one part that would have shown how trollish your shouts of, "show me when it happened at Nats" really were).

Feels weird to quote myself. lol

I've played competitively and I've judged my fair share of events, so I am saying what I am saying with the experience from both sides of this.
Trying to troll me does nothing to disprove anything that I have said and I would really appreciate it if you would stop already.

I do have to say that your moving of the goalposts was kind of clunky though.

Jeremy:
I've appreciated your posts in this topic for the most part.
You are making an attempt to see both sides of the issue and not just look at it from the player's point of view.

But this topic is specifically supposed to be about judging at this year's US Nats, so I think it is fair of PokeDad to call judging issues that happened in years past to be off topic.
Heck, strictly speaking, since this was supposed to be a counterpoint topic to another one that was already calling out judge issues, all of these judge problems are off topic!
Which, if you think about it, kind of kills your "blue wall of silence" point.
The key point of a blue wall of silence is... silence.

What you are really complaining about is a "blue wall of support", where judges tend to try to point out what might else have been going on in a particular situation that led to a call in question.
That's what judges will generally do in public.

What gets done in private, is a lot of these situations do get discussed and guidance is given on how things may get handled better in the future.

But you're unlikely to see judges dressing down other judges in public because that would be unprofessional.

Think about it. Do you really want judges ripping into other judges left and right in public based on one-sided postings about some "horrible thing" that was done?
Sometimes it was a horrible thing that was done, but I've seen many cases where the "horrible thing" was a horrible misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what actually happened.

On the Gym, as long as things are kept respectful, we allow all of these things to be discussed and aired, and if the judge in question wants to pop into the discussion and set records straight, great.
 
Prime, I am sorry but I have to side with the player here. Especially at an event like Nationals when there are SOOOO many players. Most standing around the perimiter of the tournament area.

I do it at my Yugioh events of 200+ players and it helps tremendously. It takes the focus off the tournament staff.

Jimmy

There are a ton of different sounds at an event like Nationals. Doing this, you'd have 3 age groups announcing every X minutes that there was still #X of games going on, a long with the Pokemon VGC announcing stuff, and side events announcing stuff.

You really think it's harder for a player to take a 2 minute walk to the area, take a glance, and walk back?

Or, they could look at the clock. If it's still going, the round is still going. If the time has stopped or has been reset to the normal time, the round is over.

The only difficulties a player should have with knowing when the round is going to start is if they are not in the same room, and have ventured out to the vendors. But if they are there, they wouldn't even hear an announcement over the mic from the playing room. So, it doesn't matter which system they used.

At a tournament, it is the player's responsibility to keep track of when the next round starts. It's not the judge's responsibility to go find all the players and tell them to come back.
 
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I like 'airing grievances' publicly, because I really like mass communication and information exchange in coming up with solutions. What good is it to come up with a narrow scheme that probably isn't entirely well-conceived, when I/we could offer suggestions and see how they might actually work, how they are received, etc.? I feel like this thread was intended to brainstorm... if we had any conclusive arguments/ideas we WOULD have sent them. I think most of the schemes and stuff discussed on the thread are half-baked, but well-intended.

The penalty "guidelines" are bad, outdated and are probably misused a lot of times. The importance for the time constraints is so important because there is probably inefficiency elsewhere (self-admitted, as the duration between rounds has gone down yearly- clearly the process is becoming MORE efficient, but it still obviously has a way to go (probably)).

I know the POP higher-ups read this. They will definitely read THIS thread. Does my e-mailing my suggestions vs airing them here do that much of a difference? is the difference even GOOD?
 
emailing your suggestions to the customer service address quoted so many times already is the official way of registering your complaint(s); posting here is NOT.

i'm sure TPCi has some kind of internal tracking system for issues recieved vs. solved. posting here isn't going to get your complaint into the actual queue, much as we enjoy have the OP folks reading and posting to our forums.

'mom
 
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