Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

BRAutumn: no top cut

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Championship point distribution, invite structure, among other things.

It's not just like this is the first time this has happened, TPCI has been notorious for releasing information way beyond "last minute."

Furthermore, TPCI is not coordinating the globe's pokemon events. Just North America. Each continent has it's own pokemon organized play, their own invite structures, etc.

As for TPCI running north America, they have been doing a pretty awful job. There have been very very very very few things a competent player of this game can say they have done right, in the last decade.

Things they have never done right......

1. Customer Service
2. Communication with their fanbase
3. Releasing pertinent information pertaining to the game
4. Updating and debugging tournament organizer programs
5. Technical support for said program (TO's have to call other TO's for help)

THIS IS BASIC HOW TO RUN A SUCCESSFUL COMPANY 101

These are just some of the things I thought of, that TPCI has done pretty much a god-awful job at.

It's a mockery and just flat out, shameful to Pokemon. As a brand.





I MEAN, COME ON. We're talking on Pokegym. A forum that isn't even official. Are you kidding me? Why doesn't TPCI have it's own official, forum, where like... People who work for TPCI have to update us on information regularly. How hard would it be for TPCI to hire a "community Director" someone who frequently speaks with the fanbase, about everything. It's literally the middle-man between the company and the fans.

It's really simple.
 
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psychup2034 said:
This post shows a serious lack of understanding. P!P wants to make sure that the invite structure for next year is as fair as possible, and the players really appreciate their effort. However, the final event of the inaugural Championship Point season finished over 2 weeks ago. They could easily have done the analysis after Nationals, and plugged in the Worlds data a day after Worlds finished. They had all the reasonable information 2 weeks ago, and could have sent the new structure for approval to Japan a couple days after Worlds finished. (It could also be that Japan is slow to respond about approving the invite structure, in which case it's the lack of expedient decision-making on the Japanese side that's at fault.)

I work for a company that turns over analysis on millions of data points for large financial institutions literally in a day. If deciding next year's invite structure was given higher priority, it could be announced before September 1.
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I'm not trying to justify P!P taking forever, and I can't speak to previous years as last year was my first competitive season (where the CP information was released MUCH later than it should have been). But the data work you described is extremely formulaic and that is why millions of data points are able to be analyzed quickly. I'm not sure a formula where you put in data points and it spits out "Here's the invitation system you should use. BRs should have these many CPs, Cities these many, etc...and X should be the CP cutoff."

Again, while I'm clearly not as frustrated as many people on here, I too am frustrated that we don't know if championship points will be there at battle roads. But I can at least understand what could potentially be causing these delays.

Here is where I do have a complete lack of understanding: P!P only makes decisions for North America? I didn't know this, and had assumed otherwise since everywhere but Japan (and maybe Korea?) were, to my knowledge, on the same championship point system last year, just with a different number of invites to Worlds. To me that seemed like a global operation.
 
I agree with many of Rockmans points, though i do believe that his disection of the situation is highly shallow and presented without any major impact. I don't like just yelling about a problem, but i do find myself quite jaded with the way its been handled as well.

Battle Road start in under two weeks now. This to me is the minimum time frame in which to announce anything integrial to an events attendance. Yesterday i had to put in my two weeks notice of days off in order to go to any Battle Roads. Because no information on the tournament structure had been announced up to this point, i was in a difficult delima. On the one hand, i enjoy the game without need for benefit. I enjoy the process, the people, the enviroment, and all the like, so i want to attend some events regardless of point value. I know i'll get to judge one event, and would defnately attend a few close to me even if there are no CP for them. However, i also am looking to be competitve this season. Worlds is in a brand new location, at by far the easiest place yet for me to travel to. I've been trying to finance for Worlds for a logn time and this will hopefully be the year. Now, if there are to be 0 points distributed at BRs, i'd be better off taking the hours at work to pay for if not Worlds travel, than the more immediate Regionals coming up, since there is a higher demand for travel to stay competitve. Both paths are based around me wanting to play the game, but rather than being bale to make a well informed decision, i had to make a proverbial coin flip of scenerios. I tried to play to either side, being able to play in about half the battle roads, but i truly am dissapointed.

And that's just my scenerio. I can't imagine what it must be like for a Poke-parent trying to co-ordinate not only their work hours, but their children's weekends to a schedule they can't fully determine. Juniors had an insane bench mark last season, and even a "X and your in" system may not bouffer that enough to make BRs irrelevant if CP are still awarded, depending on the cut. And that brings up another beast entirely.

It's not as if we know nothing about the up coming season. If that were the case,t hat might indicate that there was cause for the delay, that planning was still being conducted and that the wait would result in a better year for everyone. We had the small tidbit of No top cuts at Brs announced. Why that? Of all the things to announce, why would you start the whole season off on a decline that breeds speculation, rumours and pre-emptive concern from competitve players? This was the main sway in me taking a conservative number of days off; if they really felt that was the softest blow battle roads are likely dead in the water. Yet still, they gave another teaser with the introduction of a benchmark, which again swayed me from abandonning BRs entirely. If there's a magic number, than 1 or 2 points missed will not only be the difference between an invite or a run with the LCQ, but it will be so completely base don your own preformance. No one taking double invites at Nats, or winning on Elo. Completely based on your game plan going in to every tournament and the result you leave with.

....And with that in mind they again cut off the stream of information. Why? With these two pieces in mind, it seems exceptionally farfetch'd that they don't have everything planned out. I don't think they'd decide for a benchmark if they didn't know the exact number and how that number can be achieved. I completely understand not starting a fireworks show with the finale, but we live in a world that demands advance warning, and anything under two weeks begins to quickly strain decisions from players looking to get competitve with other arrangements on weekends. I really don't understand why someone would withold so much information this long by choice. There's nothing to be done for this season (though the sooner the better), but as many have pointed out this isn't new. It's starting to become a really bad habit.

I know people read this forum who have pull. If next season, someone would push something like a two weeks minimum timeframe for the tournament structure to be announced, it'd be greatly appreciated. Or, if there is an internal downside tot his, if it could at least be explained. As the view from here is utterly cut and dry.
 
psychup2034 said:
Battle Roads start in 5 days.

We're not asking for the whole point structure. We just want to know if Battle Roads are worth any Championship Points.
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5 days is under two weeks is it not? =F

But as CK brings to my attention, to me BRs start in little under two weeks. Though eevrything i said still applies, it is certainly worse for everyone who has BRs startign as early as 9/1.
 
CardKaptor said:
I'm not sure a formula where you put in data points and it spits out "Here's the invitation system you should use. BRs should have these many CPs, Cities these many, etc...and X should be the CP cutoff."
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I think you're way overestimating the difficultly of balancing the Championship Point system. While there isn't a specific formula, some basic data analytic skills in conjunction with listening to customer feedback should be sufficient.

---------- Post added 08/27/2012 at 01:56 AM ----------
Shino Bug Master said:
5 days is under two weeks is it not? =F
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I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm piggybacking on your point to show that some people are even more screwed by the lack of communication.
 
rokman said:
....
Furthermore, TPCI is not coordinating the globe's pokemon events. Just North America. Each continent has it's own pokemon organized play, their own invite structures, etc....

....

It's really simple.
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Both statements are incorrect. POP sets the invite structure for everywhere outside Japan.

No its really not that simple and I'm glad its not my decision to make. It would be really easy for POP to just make a decision and I'm sure that no matter what the eventual decision is there will be complaints but that is not a good argument to rush the internal discussion that is most likely taking place.
 
You guys do realize that only 3-4 people handle all this OP information. There is no "corporate staff" other than they guys you already know....Dave, Dan, Pete and Brad...they are customer service also.

And as NoPoke has mentioned, they handle OP for all areas of the world except for Japan.

You will get your information in time...you were going to go to Battle Roads anyway..right?
 
Prof Clay said:
You will get your information in time...you were going to go to Battle Roads anyway..right?
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No, that is the entire point of the complaints here. Mind you that I find a lot of the posts in this thread to be exaggerating the issue a bit, but the point stands. I (and a lot of others) would not be attending any Battle Roads if they did not award Championship Points. Not knowing whether or not BRs will award CP forces players to sacrifice time, money, and effort to attend these events for possibly nothing in return.
 
Prof Clay said:
You will get your information in time...you were going to go to Battle Roads anyway..right?
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We definitely didn't get this information "in time," considering I'm trying to make plans/get a hotel for an event 5 days away without even knowing whether I'll be going or not.

I wouldn't be going to Battle Roads this weekend if they're not worth any Championship Points. It's a lot of money for no substantial reward. I could buy a box with the money I would save on transportation and lodging from going to Battle Roads this weekend.

While I would love for Pokemon to be my full-time job, it turns out that I live in reality, where I would be volunteering for a local community center's clothing drive this weekend if Battle Roads aren't worth any Championship Points.

---------- Post added 08/27/2012 at 12:26 PM ----------
NoPoke said:
No its really not that simple and I'm glad its not my decision to make. It would be really easy for POP to just make a decision and I'm sure that no matter what the eventual decision is there will be complaints but that is not a good argument to rush the internal discussion that is most likely taking place.
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I would actually prefer it if it was your decision to make. Aside from the fact that I personally am aware of your knowledge of statistics, I think you'd be better at the logistics of this decision-making process as well.

First of all, as a judge, you would probably make a substantial effort to confer with your players before making any such decision. Additionally, you're used to communicating with players, so you would probably also keep us posted on when the final decision would be announced.

You probably would have also made some type of plan after Nationals were completed (almost 2 months ago), such that players who are booking hotels and arranging transportation for Battle Roads would know at least a week in advance about whether they need to be making those travel arrangements or not.
 
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Prof Clay said:
You guys do realize that only 3-4 people handle all this OP information. There is no "corporate staff" other than they guys you already know....Dave, Dan, Pete and Brad...they are customer service also.
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THE ENTIRE STAFF IS MADE UP OF FOUR PEOPLE.............

Do you not see how pathetic that is? That's the amount of staff that runs a GAS STATION. We're talking about a company that is dealing with an entire trading card game?
 
For hire!!! Available immediately!!

Prof Clay said:
You guys do realize that only 3-4 people handle all this OP information. There is no "corporate staff" other than they guys you already know....Dave, Dan, Pete and Brad...they are customer service also.

And as NoPoke has mentioned, they handle OP for all areas of the world except for Japan.

You will get your information in time...you were going to go to Battle Roads anyway..right?
Click to expand...

Looks like they need to hire a few more people! How does an intelligent university graduate with lots of ambition, playing experience, and willingness to work hard sound? If someone from pokemon PMs me, I'll send a cover letter, my resume, and college transcripts. I'm available immediately and willing to relocate on the spot. I will GLADLY be the middle man for the pokemon company, or anything really. . .Just throwing it out there!!! :)

-Guy
 
I know this won't go over well, but had we considered that pay for the employees could come out of the OP Budget and therefore they work with as few people as possible so that they can not have to cut something from the tournament schedule?

Just saying. Flame away.
 
tinox6 said:
Looks like they need to hire a few more people! How does an intelligent university graduate with lots of ambition, playing experience, and willingness to work hard sound? If someone from pokemon PMs me, I'll send a cover letter, my resume, and college transcripts. I'm available immediately and willing to relocate on the spot. I will GLADLY be the middle man for the pokemon company, or anything really. . .Just throwing it out there!!! :)

-Guy
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You'll definitely be taken seriously, posting that here... on Pokegym.....

:thumb:
 
King Piplup said:
I know this won't go over well, but had we considered that pay for the employees could come out of the OP Budget and therefore they work with as few people as possible so that they can not have to cut something from the tournament schedule?

Just saying. Flame away.
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I think you're absolutely right. Now can they cut Battle Roads and hire one more person? Seems to be a win-win.
 
As someone who doesn't even know which BRs will be held when (as in, which city), I agree 100% with the desire for information. My work doesn't like it when I unexpectedly need to reserve weekends on short notice, but the only way to ensure I will be able to play in the BRs in my city is to take all weekends for the next 8 or so weeks off. And that's coming from someone who isn't going for CPs this season.
 
psychup2034 said:
We definitely didn't get this information "in time," considering I'm trying to make plans/get a hotel for an event 5 days away without even knowing whether I'll be going or not.

I wouldn't be going to Battle Roads this weekend if they're not worth any Championship Points. It's a lot of money for no substantial reward. I could buy a box with the money I would save on transportation and lodging from going to Battle Roads this weekend.
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Battle Roads are returning to small, league level events. That much is known. You are considering traveling a long enough distance to justify a hotel for exactly what reason??
 
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