Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

The World Championships: Why Bigger is Better.

Status
Not open for further replies.
Maybe I shouldn't have posted those numbers, as it seems to undermine my point.

Oh well.


Lia - I agree with you on most of what you say. Instead of write several paragraphs, hoping you understand; I'll just list them plainly:

Things we agree on (as far as I can tell):
-The LD system is inherently flawed.
-OP in Europe could be better, and deserves attention.
-ALL trips to Worlds from Overseas should come with travel.
-All countries outside of US and Japan would benefit from increased trips to Worlds.
-Reducing the size of worlds is a bad thing.

And what we disagree on (again, as far as I can tell):
-The US and Japan have the best players in the world, and have proven this repeatedly.
-Countries deserve a number of invites based on player population is a good thing.


So you see, we agree on more points than we disagree on.

Now, let's please turn this topic back from the ethnocentric path it's going down, and get back to the topic at hand.
 
Well, lets try this one

Would it be good if the invites without trip come back to get a bigger Worlds?
So on top of payed trips, invites only should be awared?
 
I agree completely

Rainbowgym said:
Well, lets try this one

Would it be good if the invites without trip come back to get a bigger Worlds?
So on top of payed trips, invites only should be awared?
Click to expand...

Yes I don't understand why invites to the World Championship could not be offered without trips attached.

Lets say at a counties national Championship, the top 4 finishers win Invites and trips to worlds, and the top 8 (16 or 32 depending in the size of the event) get invites to compete but not trips included. It would be the players responsibility to get themselves to the World Championships, and the World Tournament could go back to being a large event, and PUI would still be able to drastically cut the financial expense of the World Championships. This would make both PUI and the Players happy.
 
JandPDS said:
Yes I don't understand why invites to the World Championship could not be offered without trips attached.

Lets say at a counties national Championship, the top 4 finishers win Invites and trips to worlds, and the top 8 (16 or 32 depending in the size of the event) get invites to compete but not trips included. It would be the players responsibility to get themselves to the World Championships, and the World Tournament could go back to being a large event, and PUI would still be able to drastically cut the financial expense of the World Championships. This would make both PUI and the Players happy.
Click to expand...

To answer that you have to look to the past years.
2004 many invites were given and not used in the 10- and 11-14 (please be aware INTERNATIONAL there were NO invites given only the National Champion(s) got invite + trip.
And in case a "foreigner" won a neighbourhood Nationals (yes they were open) an extra invite was given to the foreigner. Trip trickled down to the first player of that Nation.
Some Nations had 1 trip per agegroup some 1 trip overal (so they played all ages in 1 group).
There were also invites earned by Ranking (no trips).
Remember this was POP's first Worlds and because of the "invite only" a lot spot stayed open and were filled by the grinder.

2004-2005 in the USA Regionals came with trips+invite, USA Gym Challenges had trip + invite and USA Nationals had them.
International again only 1 trip per agegroup (if you were lucky some countries still had overal 1 trip) with 1 exception, UK had 2 trips per agegroup.
But as "blister" nr 2,3,4 of each agegroup (or nr 2,3,4 overal) were awareded an invite.
International Nationals some open other closed. (closed for WRONG reasons)
So what happened a lot of International players had an invite but not the money to travel to the USA.
I have to remark there were absolute invites used, but most of them in 15+.
In 10- and 11-14 a lot of seats were filled again by the grinder. Filled upto XXX players, which resulted ALL 10- got in, over 20 from 11-14 and only 8 15+.

2005-2006
While you would expect some more imput from the International partners after them running OP for 3 years now. Nothing happened.
Even worse, the International invite structure was cut down with 50%, (so only 2 invites for each agegroup at Nationals) while the USA players had their trips dubbled for Nationals and still got their GC's to earn trips.
Because 10- attendance stayed behind, that group even got 16 trips which was 4x the 2005 amount.
Seats awarded by the grinder were not flexible anymore, it became 8-8-16.
There was only 1 person complaining about the International invite structure cut down, yes ME.
Well my words found ground and the invites were upgraded to their "normal"4 per agegroup again.
Still only 1 trip per agegroup (lucky country) or 1 trip overall (unlucky country).
Remember in the USA beside the bigger National, they also had 50 trips+invites to earn while international we had ZERO.

And I don't even mention the way the International community is screwed by the LD system on each other part of the OP Program.

Now I will go into 'assuming', but I was very correct in many occasions in the past.
But with these numbers in mind and the goal to have a real Worlds tournament, something had to be done.
How can you get more International attendance at Worlds?
I don't think POP expected so many International players using their invites this year, really the International People present was huge.
I do think POP knows very well the LD's are in no way interested in 'investing" in OP than the minimum they are obligated to.
So with arrangements for location 2007 etc, already made before Worlds 2006 the only way to make things a bit equal was to award trips Worldwide. That way at least the younger groups would have more International attendance.

So why no invites?
Well I don't know, it's to early to say untill we see the final structure for 2007.
Things can change due to the "public opinion" so I like to stay on the safe side, but without much hope.
Meaby we do get back some invites, I don't see a reason why this could not be done.
There are several options for the future.

I hope the reactions on this board made POP overthink their decission about the amount of players at Worlds 2007.
I hope there will be options to earn invites without trip ( give it a different name like Worldsaward orso, because they announced invites would come with trip).
But I don't hope it will end up with USA 50+ awards and the rest of the World 1.
Depending on the structure I would vote for something like:
Each Nationals 1 invite+trip per agegroup + 3 Awards (actually an invite but NO trip)
And I could even lobby for the USA Nationals 4 trips + 4 Awards (they do have more players afterall)
Each USA Regionals each agegroup 1 Award. (with a max limit of 8 Regionals
International Regionals are not into account for Awards, sorry but they are "pimped" local tournaments and don't deserve Awards.

I feel that way the community would have a better feeling than it has now.
But that's only my 2 cents.
 
Last edited:
If they're going to hold Worlds in the U.S. every year, the majority of the 15+ Invitees from the U.S. would attend without a paid trip, IMO. If you give everyone outside of the U.S. paid trips+invites, is it possible that we could add players to Worlds with a lesser expense? I mean, the way the invites are handed out now, you're going to have to be consistantly winning, so you're earning prizes, and some of those winnings could go toward paying your way to Worlds in an indirect way. Just a thought.....
 
I agree somewhat with removing travel awards from invites given to winners within the continent (or country) worlds is held in.

Perhaps (some time in the future), Nationals will always give out payed invites to worlds, and ELO Ratings will give out un-payed invites.

I would gladly pay for my trip to Worlds if I was guaranteed a seat (presuming Worlds was in N. America or a 'nice' overseas location). And apparently 300 or so people agree with me. 293 15+ players showed up to the grinder this year, they paid their way to even have a CHANCE to play in worlds, KNOWING that that chance was about 3% that they'd make it.

I think PUI has to face the fact that Worlds is the NUMBER ONE thing people want, and by reducing its size, they are alienating a VERY large section of the playerbase.



Part 2...


I did some work on trying to figure out how invites will be given out this year, and this is what I came up with that makes the most sense:

-Four players recieved invites from worlds 06.
-There are 30 countries with OP. All of them will recieve 1 invite for Nationals.
-The world will be divided into 3 continents, N. America, Europe, and South America/Pacific. Each continent will get 10 invites based on ratings.

Using these numbers, and the OP ratings from last season, the number of players yet to win trips from each country for Worlds 15+ will be thus:

8 US
5 Chile
4 Mexico
3 Argentina
3 Australia
3 Norway
3 UK
3 Belgium
2 Finland
2 Luxembourgh
2 Netherlands
2 Denmark
2 Maylaysia
2 Brazil
1 Every other country
??? Japan

14 countries get multiple invites. 16 get only 1. This does not account for Japan as I have no way to compare their OP in any way to that of the rest of the world. I gave them 1 invite, although they will almost surely get more.

Just something for you to chew on.

TTYL
 
F-S LOL, Luxembourgh only has 2 players total and no Nationals. Those 2 players are playing the Belgium Nationals because there is no OP in Luxembourgh.

And were are the Canadian Players?? Not good enough to end high??

We just have to wait until POP releases information and than try to understand/calculate.
Remember we had invites only by Ranking in the 2003-2004 season.
Also this years LCQ had 100+ players in 11-14 en around 80? in 10-, don't forget those.
 
I know Lia. The chart is just supposed to be a simulation of what would have happened if this system were in place last year. It does not make room for 'special cases' like Luxembourgh.


BTW, the top placing Canadian comes in at 31st in N. America.
 
Well I only like to point you at the fact the rankings are included Worlds 2006, which made some people raise a lot in ranking.

Also you forget that the possibility a foreigns Nation, National Champion might be the one who is ranked high, so the ranking based trip could be easily trickle down to another Nation. (very likely in Europe).

If you want a simulation you must take those point into account, also the LU one.
But that's what I am telling over and over, it's not as straight thinking as some people do.
You have to take more fact into consideration, which makes it complicated.

There has to be a huge change in how OP is delivered Worldwide to make a ranking based invite system fair.

I did hear the number of 16 invites+trip for North America, which seems to me very likely if the "playersbase" is taken into consideration in regards of the spread.
The more I think about ranking based invites, the more I dislike it.
But time will learn, hopefully we will get details soon.
 
I have been involved in several sports ( as an example) and I also believe that the bigger...the better. The more people = more exposure + more press. Anything that wants to succeed, needs both of those to survive. When I talk to most about Pokemon there response is "people still play that?". I love the game, pass it on to my kids and spread the news about the scholarships available and everything. So, I totally agree with what has been said about this subject. The bigger the deal Nintendo makes the Worlds....the bigger deal it will become.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top