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For context, the number 75 player in N.A. this season is Nails. That’s where the skill floor is to qualify for worlds is, in theory, and that’s insane.
The competition is getting better so it makes sense it's harder to make it to worlds. It's just a shame they seem to be shrinking the size of the event when I was under the impression VGC was growing in popularity.
@@androsp9105tournaments ARE growing, but TPC clearly can’t keep up so they’re taking action to limit certain things. They don’t want people complaining that multiple worlds championships are logistical nightmares multiple years in a row
You've become so well spoken since your channel first started years ago. Just want to compliment you on how great this video was and made me think of that.
That's not really skill floor, as Freezai explained. Many great players only go to so many events, especially after they qualify and aren't going for stipends.
@@ziggmiceter Yeah no, that won’t be how it is next season, it’s going to be a lot sweatier. Unless someone wins a regionals or top 4 at an IC, most of the top 75 won’t be locked until after NAIC so it won’t really be possible to just hit a few events, earn your worlds invite and call it for the season. I’d bet money we see way more NA players at LAIC and EUIC this year just to stay in the race. And my point about the skill floor is that if you mapped next years system on to this years results, the worst performance that would qualify for worlds is one of the all time great VGC players, Nick “Nails” Navarre, and this season was a lot less try hard than next years will be. It’s not a great sign if you’re pretty good at Pokémon but not amazing. Freezai wouldn’t have qualified last year in this system.
As a TCG player, they basically nailed it with changes for us. Sadly they just applied the same changes to VGC and none of them make sense. I guess since TCG gets 3x-5x competitors of VGC they prioritized us but I’m really sorry to see how much it’s going to crush vgc
Even for TCG, it becomes a problem for those who can't travel. Anyone who can get around the world has an innate advantage over people who can't travel since they have a larger pool of points to pull from due to Internationals being bigger events. Additionally, it disincentivizes anything non-meta to be played at large events, which will make the format feel really stale.
It's sad, there are both grassroots and professional established esports everywhere at this point, that anyone can see what works and what doesn't, yet Pokemon is stuck in the past.
@@androsp9105yea but in those you aren't literally limited by money costs holding back your potential. You go to the arena/studio, sit down, play a match and that's all. Best of the best win
@@androsp9105 Yeah I watch dota but Team Spirit doesn't pay to attend 10 tournaments while other teams play 2 and qualify that way. There's a proper circuit with equal opportunities. Heck make qualifiers online if it allows for an even playing field. Pokémon doesn't even have an Asian International tournament?
Pokemon should take a page out of Capcom’s book and do not only online tourneys for more chances at points, but also giving guaranteed spots at worlds to players who win International/Regional level events. If Wolf Glick for example wins a Regional, he has a guaranteed spot at the world championships. Theoretically that means the best players are getting spots and aren’t ruining the runs of other players at future tournaments. This leads to a worlds of the best pool of players and keeps a good level of worldwide representation with the new future format. Additionally online tourneys should count as much as local level events with their own limit of BFL to help attract new players without the need to travel and give more opportunities to score points. This second suggestion will not work with Gen 9 though since the online is very rough and issues with disconnects have no clear answer.
the first suggestion you said is already a thing, i dont think freezai mentioned it here but regional winners and people who get top 4 at international championships get an auto invite
Fyi online tourneys are awful because of ghosting. The players cup 3 champion got banned for ghosting during the finals of that tourney, and certain regions of the world are notorious for ghosting during big online tourneys. It just ruins competitive integrity.
what’s funny is that they do that with Pokemon Unite, win a major tournament and the team makes it to Worlds, and almost all tournaments are online except for well the major ones like regionals
The bad online is more of a Nintendo online thing in general. Expecting a good online service from them just is foolish. They’ve been bad at it for years and they haven’t really gotten much better but now it’s paid
One in the West and one in ON/QC? That's pretty normal for Canada... Our country is huge and small population and widely spread out. MTG does the same thing, with one Regional Championship in BC/AB and one RC in ON/QC. Does Pokemon restrict you from traveling to the US regionals for points?
@arch6384 I understand that canada is 99% empty space but the fact that you need to spend minimum 5k$ in plane tickets just to have a chance to go to world is shit and odds are It'll be more
Has similar vibes to how event pokemon felt in gens 1-5 when you lived in a country that weren't Japan or the USA. Even in Australia, a wealthy weatern country, we basically got no event pokemon until gen 6. It wasnt the end of the world but it just sucked a bit to have this cools stuff feel locked off for no reason. If internationals become as important to vgc as its being made out, then yeah, it's just not going to be a nice feeling for those that cant afford that kind of travel.
This is 100% a money issue, especially when considering its ONLY the top 6 tournaments. You could get 1st in the 1 regional tournament in your vicinity, take a shot at one international and maybe not do too well, then farm up the league cups in you local area. You'll be at the HUGE disadvantage when compared to the rich kid who just farms international and regionals, by no fault of your own. People have jobs and lives outside of pokemon and this expectation makes ot to where only content creators have a shot because they make their living off of traveling to the tournaments, gaining the revenue and writing it off as a business trip. Regular people are now ineligible to qualify even if they do everything right, and take the massive risk of regionals and internationals. Vacation time is a luxury and to spend that on a chance to get championship points is much easier when you know after a threshold, you get an invite.
How about this: say you want 220 attendees at worlds. Set a very high point bar so that you're sure less than 220 people will clear it. Say 150 people clear it. Give them an invite, plus give bonus invites to the 70 next best players who did not clear the bar. Precisely predictable attendance, the best players can win through skill, wallet impact is smaller, and very little benefit from tearing down others.
Sounds good in theory, but the actual math is difficult for working out what a good bar is. I do think it’s better to at least try and if you screw up and let a few dozen people in maybe that’s fine, maybe there were more exceptional players that year.
Also a worldwide points bar is disproportionate for countries that don’t have IC’s and regionals so they still have to spend tons of money to even have a chance compared to people who are in more fortunate countries.
that's not a solution. 1. you're still making a prediction about some number of points. what if more than 220 people clear it? then you either have more participants, or you need to choose the top x from them. 2. oops, you set the bar too high, and only 50 people cleared it, the rest of the players are still chosen based on being in the top x cut.
One thing you mentioned, that might be worth looking into is the one about wanting to make it more of a *World* Championship, you mentioned how, even though requirements went up, more people in total qualified; but the question is: how evenly distributed was it? Did all regions get a similar level of increase, or did places like North America and Europe get a disproportionately large cut of the increase while regions like Middle East and South Africa saw little to no increase? If they continue to raise Point Requirements might that disproportionately disadvantage people living in parts of the world where going to multiple tournaments is harder, whether because there are fewer Tournament in that part of the world, or because travel is harder and/or more expensive between countries or the simple fact that people don't make as much money, so a $100 plane ticket is way more of an outlay for them?
I can understand that there is a reason behind the choice to limit the number of players, and that we are likely to never get a complete answer as to why. I also get that it's the lack of knowing why is what people are more annoyed about. So... What other option is there? If we increased the points requirement, that will lead to the same issue if forcing people to go to internats. It takes away the unknown luck component and make it a fully 'skill issue, get good' situation... But is that really the solution we want?
My biggest problem with this new system is that unless you get one of the auto invites you won't know if you're safe to book the trip to worlds until after NAIC. If you're top 50 in April or May and you can't make it to NAIC for whatever reason, you might not get your invite despite having an incredible season. If they wanted to keep this new limited invite system, I think would be better to split them up during the season. For example, top 25 after each International not including autos and invites from the previous split. That way TPCi can still keep an accurate forecast for worlds attendance and players can lock their invite and book their trip earlier in the season.
Crazy that finishing 32nd at an international gets you the same number of points as winning a regional. There are absolutely going to be players who don't qualify for worlds because worse players were able to afford to fly to Louisiana and UK and Brazil.
@@danka1167It's a turn based, digital game. Just give a lot more online oppurtunities as replacements/supplements to regionals/internats, unlike athletes they *don't have to physically be there*
@@itztaytay2players already abused online events in the past. Ghosting is a huge issue during GCs and back during the COVID era with Players Cups. The winner of PC 3 was banned for ghosting during the finals, for example. More higher stakes online tours are cool for accessibility but suck because players can't be trusted.
I think that if they want to go with the top cut, the best and most fair solution would be if they'd put a bigger restrictions for events that you attended counts, like only ur best international counts and 2-3 best regionals (so like the amount i feel like an average person would attend) and/or covering the cost of going into a regional/international in some way, like booking a hotel for everyone or getting a plane just for players to get from one continent to another for internationals so money wouldnt matter as much
paying for hundreds of players' travel/accommodation for multiple events skyrockets costs immediately and is pretty clearly infeasible (plus way more people would sign up to play, increasing the issue). I think your first idea is pretty reasonable (presumably they don't want to go too hard on it because the bigger the restriction the less people participate in each event)
My first thought went to "what if you count the points of max 2 internationals", but that would give southern North America a distinct advantage, due to location. Then I thought of lowering the international scores a bit. It seems to generally be x2 ~ x2.5, but if it were a fixed x1.5, the damage would be lessened a lot. This could discourage some from joining the internationals though, so maybe it won't be considered. But then, finally, a combination of sorts presented itself to me. What if the internationals each count as 2 out of 6 tournaments. This way, the fact that internationals give x2 ~ x2.5 points, will make them pretty equal. Say you got 17-32 in two regionals and one internationals, two regionals give 250 points total (with placement), but the internationals give 350 and fills the same two spots in your tournament list, perfect solution
With 108 shrinking to 75 that feels like enough competition that this feels impactful. It actually scales up the already not insignificant amount of time and money you had to put into playing tournaments and while only having the top 6 finishes count helps you still benefit from more than 6 tournaments. From a company perspective, and with a potential goal of a smaller group with better treatment (if they know how many to prep for they can be well prepared and put on a great experience) I like the idea of just 75. But there is a real middle ground and what they have so far suggests this could be a good one. But if the very top end community starts to become (more) toxic because of this I could see competition shrink over time. Personally, I had considered trying to qualify for worlds but some career developments limited my travel potential this year. This change is enough of a damper I don't think I'll ever revisit that goal with the top cut format
I think the only realistic alternative would be something like: anyone who makes top 2 at a regional or top 8 at an international goes to worlds. That would give you a predictable number of entrants while at least giving everyone a concrete goal to strive for. You'd have to have a procedure for if someone "qualifies twice" but there should be options for that.
Yeah the repeat qualifiers are a big issue. Wolfey was in 3 regional finals in the 2024 season out of 12-15(?) so he took like 10% of the NA qualifications if your system was put in place this past year and it would get messy tho I like it conceptually.
@@flatbread42 In this type of scenario, the qualification would usually passed on to the next highest ranked person in the tournament (e.g. #16). They'd probably need to keep track of one or more tiebreaker scores on top of the usual Win/Lose score, but a system like this seems very feasible.
for the procedure, make it like chess: this year, Fabiano Caruana qualified for the candidates 5 different ways (tourneys and elo) and only one of them counted. i don't remember how it was selected, if he specifically chose a tournament to keep some body else out or if it was fide's decision, but at least it solves the problem of not knowing what size venue you need and allows for some form of consistency
I think that logistically, it makes more sense to me for TPC to make this change. If I was to make any tweaks to the scoring system, it would be that internationals still give more points than normal tournaments, *but* there would be a seperate online-based set of 3 'international' tournaments (1 for each region) that could also act as a "substitute" of sorts point value-wise: Placements are worth the same as the in-person event, and it takes the best point value for each pair of tournaments to use towards your score. The problem being that they want people to attend the events, not stay home and play online. But ultimately, there is only so much they can do if they are trying to incentivize attendance to the biggest tournaments without cutting out the non-worlds "international" events altogether (which I think is less fun for the viewing audience)
TPCi is treating the circuit like its a big esport that has huge payouts when in fact the top prize for the world champions is 50k and 30k respectively. Its a joke, this incentivizes wallet warrioring and makes a toxic competitive environment. If they bumped the world championship prize to 250k or something like that id have 0 issue with the changes but theyve made big boy changes with little boy payouts
Your first guess is spot on i believe. VGC exploded in popularity in recent years notably with youtubers like wolfey or even yourself doing content and making more people interested in it (which is great ! we shouldnt gatekeep competitive pokemon) and with that the issue is as simple that they cant just allow an undefined number of participants, since it will most likely be more than what they can handle in a physical and also fancy event such as the world championship. The obvious solution is to limit the nb of available places, it solves the issue but also it brings a number of issues like you said (money and privilege issue). I'd honestly say it's just how competition works, look at sports competition and tell me there's no money and privilege involved in that. The solution would be to make it 100% online but then a part of the magic of worlds would be gone. The real solution that i'd propose would be to make alternative online circuits that wouldn't replace worlds so that there's also competition unrelated to money and privilege, maybe make it so people who perform really well on these circuits can get invited too.
so you're absolutely right on how money and privilege influence sports, HOWEVER the amount of money and access is a huge influence on the talent pool of a given sport as a whole; you're not missing out on the best track athletes because they just need a decent pair of shoes and a place to run (and in the USA you're going to have events *somewhere* local-ish, even if its a school covering travel expenses), soccer just needs something approximating nets to play + a ball on top of the shoes and etc. now compare that to hockey, where you mostly just see canadian/nordic/american athletes in on the action, because hockey is wildly expensive compared to basically any other sport and that cuts down on the potential talent pool by a ton. baseball and football have similar issues, but to lesser degrees. ultimately money *is* always going to be a factor to some extent, but realistically in a world where something like EVO is the biggest fighting game tournament in the world that nukes our worlds attendance from orbit (10k competitors in the 8 prize games alone, this doesnt include sponsored side tournaments for other games or spectators or unofficial tournaments...) and you just pay them 170 bucks to play in said tournament for 3 days... idk, couple the Top X change with a minimal boost to rewards (this is where i point out the extra packs for lower-placing day 2ish folks in masters TCG comes at the expense of the younger divisions packs, which is omega cringe) it really feels like TPC just actively wants to cut down on attendance all around and hoped people on twitter would just claim its about making it more "exclusive"
The money issue is valid, but complaining about not having a set stopping point and having to compete against your competitors is wild. Most invite based systems works through relative performance selection, even outside of sports/esports.
It´s not wild, it´s just a system you like v/s other systems. Leagues that work with points can perfectly grant you a spot in playoffs if you win everything pretty early, for example. It´s not that you don´t have to compete against your competitors, it´s that based on the math of the system you already excelled at it enough. But you can prefer something else, of course
I think it's very different when a gatekeep to be able to compete is your own ability to pay for your travels. I played TFT competitively for a bit and the tournments are in a Top X ladder snapshot format. Sure the grind to spam games and get as high of a ladder position as possible was stressful, but after two weeks it was over and you knew if you were in or not, not to mention i didnt have to pay for anything other than time, since the tournaments were also online so i could compete from home. If i had to physically travel to every tft tournament just to have a CHANCE to qualify like the ladder snapshot, I would never have even attempted to play competitively.
@@broidkanymore-zc4lt They should be competing in pokemon though, not in wallet. There are now TFT events you do have to go to on your own dime, but as far as I'm aware of none of those events actually count towards the competitive circuit, because that would be very stupid if a limiter of being able to compete would be being able to afford to travel to las vegas for a tournament.
I think working mainly through points but having regional caps would be far more reasonable, it still gives you an upper bound for the event planning but means that as long as you set a good points threshold it will hopefully never com into play and if it does, It will only be in the strongest regions (which tend to also be the ones where travel is the most possible). This is still not ideal but would be far less of a shitshow
I’m glad you explained what’s going on with the Pokémon scene in 9 minutes even if it’s not all of it because there was another video like yours that was one hour and 30 minutes I’m not saying names but all I got to say is that you did a good job explaining things in a few minutes which I appreciate.
It’s super frustrating that now I essentially have to play in the BO1 closed team sheet cheese matches in order to have a shot at qualifying for worlds. I’m not the best player by any means, never making top 8, but I’m good enough to put up consistent results to at least qualify for worlds by only going to the 6 regionals. Having that peace of mind of “oh, I’ve reached the point threshold I am fine” is super nice and something I wish would stay. But now if you don’t participate in literally every event you are heavily disadvantaged unless you are the top of the top (ex if you are #60 and don’t go to something like NAIC you are more than likely going to lose your spot- ICs are just worth that much). I would’ve much preferred just raising the point threshold. Essentially that’s what the “top x of each region” is doing, but it’s a much more stable way of doing things. That way, if you qualified for worlds, you know that, and you know it can’t be taken away.
like mentioned in the video i think this system works perfectly fine if they only allow your best international performance so you can't stack three to improve chances almost purely with money. i think a lot of people are acting too entitled to a world championship, like this doesn't change the regional tournaments or whatever you can still go to those the same, this only affects the highest stage of the scene and it makes sense aside from being able to have three internationals on your resume
Also something odd to think about, how will they handle the "top performer" automatic invites that will not count against the region limit, like will their placement CP get redistributed or they axed from the winner listing, since their points would be "wasted" for determening other qualifiers
Thinking about it, and I think the bedt way i can think of is to still use the points system as it has been all these yesrs, but for each region, once points are allocated, have or make a way for all participants to do one last "qualifying" tournament for the top x players to move on. This would no longer gatekeep players who have money to go to every international from keeping players who cant from joining, while keeping player counts not insanely high, and also makes the game only luck/skill based and not also money based because some people can join every tournament and grab those fee extra points. Yeah it adds the stress of another tournament but IMO its far more fair.
I think if they want to make this change, the first further change should be "only 1 International result applies to your point total, maximum." Because without that, like you said, anyone who can afford to hit up all three internationals and place high suddenly gets half of their six giving a lot more value than someone who can't afford to do that, which is just inherently unfair to people who don't have the money or time to spare to get to more or less any tour they want and can only afford to go to a smattering of regionals plus a nationals and maybe an international if they're lucky. I'd been wanting to look into making a VGC run at some point once I'm more on my own and financially stable, but now I'm not so sure that I want to if I can get effectively priced out of ever getting to Worlds by people who have enough money to go to every high-points event.
I play tcg competitively (we have the same new system) and this is a huge issue for me. Ive only qualified twice out of the 7 years ive played but i seriously doubt ill ever qualify again. Which makes me wonder if its even worth trying.
My friend and I play tcg and often plan our seasons early on. After naic, we decided this would be a light gap year. We'd play the "local" majors and maybe naic, but wouldn't try for an invite. Then this got announced and naic is father's day... yeah, it's a full gap year, save the money...
can we mention the fact that middle east & south Africa players just can't get to worlds without winning a regional or getting top 4 in an international a top 10/5 (even 1) would work just fine and we need more representation anyways
Limiting to a top 'x' number makes complete logistical sense for organising the event, it's insane they've run worlds for so long without actually knowing how many participants they'd have. But yes, a limit on how many of your placements can count with in person international events being more valuable for points is an equity problem. High point value international online tournaments are probably the best solution, as they remove all the barriers of physical travel and event hosting, and if it was set up well, someone who is unable to attend in person internationals being able to get an equal amount of points from highly competitive online tournaments as they'd get playing to that skill level at physical internationals would be great.
attending regionals/internationals has always been... a wallet thing and luxury that you can take time off work to attend the event and etc. just means the skill ceiling goes higher for worlds. it's the world championship where qualifying should be tooth and nail in a sense.
Quite the opposite, there will be many players gated out of top positions because they can't make it to as many tournaments. Despite their performance they will simply be "Out-moneyed" out of their spot. We won't see the best players. We will see the most financially committed ones. Which is not the same.
For greater context, for VGC Masters, there were over 200 qualifiers in both NA and EU for 2024, essentially this Top 75 bar for both groups will cut the number back to a third of the current situation. Granted, I'm largely supportive of the desire to scale back the number of qualifiers, but I do feel like doing Top X cuts is not the way to go. For one, this reverts the qualifying system back to pre-2016, and for those that may not have been around, one of the most vocal points the community had then was the desire to work towards a CP bar. One unintended consequence I could see occurring is because the number of tickets for major events is limited at the top end, there is a potential danger with players purchasing tickets and not attending, but essentially holding the reservation slot, particularly as the season gets further in. Another big issue is Oceania for me will be warped around players that attend LAIC; with no major International in that Region and only 20 spots, if even a handful of players get points, that severely impacts those unable to travel outside of their respective Region. And typically, Oceania is light on Regional events. And latter Regional events in general may see players not bother to sign up as they become removed from the likelihood of qualifying. I think a compromise that could be worked is have a reasonably challenging CP bar or Top X in a region, whichever is the higher. At the very least, it gives a fundamental breakpoint to qualify for but assuming the bar is well judged, should largely avoid the situation of an unusually high number of qualifiers.
Worlds is in San Francisco next year and if you remember 2016 worlds, there were some huge space constraints and spectators/parental guardians were majorly restricted due to the size of the venue. I bet this is all about a small venue.
so san fran worlds is '26, not '25... we dont actually know '25 worlds yet lol. that said this is absolutely just "we dont want this many competitors period" and they kinda hoped people claiming its about making worlds more exclusive would carry them through people being mad about it (it hasnt, lol)
So this could be an ignorant take on the situation, but why not have points locked to the region the player states they are from, and then have a playoff that seeds based on each regional? I know that this could result in some regions being way more competitive than others, but the same things occur in other sports. Certain conferences or regions are more stacked than others, which means those that make it past those regions have better odds to win worlds. This is not to say players couldn’t compete outside of their region, just that those placements don’t earn them points towards their regional-locked point total/seeding. The top cut of each region could then be invited to a tournament that includes multiple region top cuts, and it is here that the top players are invited to worlds. This would solve the issue of knowing how many players would be at the world championships. I don’t know, this might make things more luck-based than before, but it removes the inequality found in farming every event for points, a luxury not everybody has.
I don’t even think that have to say ‘only your best internats finish counts’ Im wondering if ‘only your best internats finish counts for internats point scale, your other internats finishes count for regular points’ would work?
On the issue of space: since it seems Worlds 2026 is SFO, space is a very relevant issue. The last time worlds was there, there were effectively no spectator badges; it was basically just players, casters, parents(for under 18s), staff and a couple media people like Joe Merck. If they're returning to SFO, for a game that (and I can't stress this enough) has more than doubled in players since 2016, you can see a real problem.
Fixed point bar that guarantees roughly 50-75% of the total field that you want will hit it, but mathematically impossible for more than 100% to get there. (If you want a field of 100, mathematically impossible for more than 100 to qualify this way for example). However many spots are remaining are based on remaining points. You still don't know exactly how many points you need, but as the best players autoqualify earlier, it should make later events very slightly easier and more worth it for chase players.
There could be q limit of 3 best placetment and a classification tournment for people that got draw, like if places 60-80 are all draw then there is a smaller, maybe online, turnment for those 15 last spots I think 3 best placetment limits makes so even if you go to all 3 internationals, there is not many people that will get a good position to acctually give a big advantege over 3 first places in reagionals
I mean I think the issue for me is just how much points the international tournaments are worth. if you top 32 an international that's the same number of points as winning a regional. This means if you have money 3 top 32 finishes puts you in the same conversation as 3 first place finishes and even the most consistently good players wont get that good. I personally dont mind the whole top 75 thing if the only thing that determined CP was event size. like if a reigonal has more attendance than an international than you should get more points because you have to be a better player to make it through all the variance. But instead pokemon has made the most exclusive and expensive tournaments the best for points meaning that if you dont spend enough money you cannot win.
I really think the main issue is just the international points being so out of balance. Giving them a BFL of 1 would help, but still pretty out of balance. Seems better to me to just make international tournaments worth the same points, but count as two finishes. So they still ARE worth twice the points as originally intended, but they don't increase your MAX points at all. They just have double the effect on your 6 BFL average if you do well.
In addition to it being a money issue , this also extends into number of tournaments that can be hosted. Hosting a tournament costs money so you can only hold so many of them. It is frustrating they are “fixing” TPCI tournaments when it has largely been a non-problem instead of whatever the wacko Elite-4 setup they have for Japan and the regions over there by TPC which is a separate entity from TPCI.
Huh, this is interesting. I get the discontent around other areas but I think the only real issue is the economic one about international championships. Hopefully TPCI at least listens to and addresses the concerns about that specifically, because it sucks that comp is suffering from a monetary barrier to entry. Other suggestions such as increasing the number would be nice, but I feel like they chose that number specifically for a reason.
It sincerely seems to me like an issue of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They likely want a predictable bracket size but don’t want to do away with their point system. This just makes for a “feel bad” system IMO, where quantity feels more important than quality. Having a more exclusive event will always benefit those who can travel and try hard, and be less accommodating by definition. But, if the 200+ spots were decided by placement in certain events only, then at least you get your chance on the qualifier event near you if that is all you have the budget/chance to attend.
just make the point diff smaller between regionals and internationals, but have regional/highest placing player from regs get a direct qual. for ints you could do top 4 qualify or something. 30-50 % more points on ints compared to regs is probably fair, and a limit to 3 BFL.
If you're open to criticism, I would recommend making a new thumbnail for this video. I mistook it for a community post, and only clicked because I was curious about the replies. If other people have a similar experience, it could hurt your numbers.
I think the best solution would to put a BFL on internationals to 1 (but keep the BFL across regionals to 6, so you can either have 6 regionals count towards your point total or 5 regionals and a international count towards your point total.) This will still give an advantage to those that can make all three internationals without forcing other top competitors to make the financial and time investment to do the same if they want to qualify for worlds. I always thought an "international" was supposed to gather the best competitors of the region rather than to gather competitors around the globe because I thought thats what worlds is for, so i dont get why the circuit seems to suggest that they want global talent at internationals. As a side tangent, the top X qualification system should have been fine in theory. However, I find the greater issue has to do with how limited the spots are for the level of talent that exists, but that doesnt also consider how hard qualifying from japan probably is given how much more popular the game is there. I wouldnt be surprise if the top level of japan's players were really close in skill and some notable players dont qualify, especially after hearing about the bo1 cts single elim online qualifiers they had with the last year or so. I think, in the end, it doesnt matter as much as people think. 75 from north america, while it cuts some talent deserving of a spot, is more than plenty of opportunities for NA to win worlds. Personally, to no disrespect to the players, I dont think the top 75-150 players in NA would make it too deep into their worlds run and the better players in the world will float to the top in the end. Showing diversity at the single global tournament of the year is more important than proportionate representation of regions by collective skill level, so I think its okay, but definitely there is are flaws when you can count all three internationals to your point total.
With International 32nd place is same than regional 1st. They should limit international to 1 placement. And regional to 5. But give top 4 in international to auto invite (invite total will be increase by 4 x number of IC). that still incentivies people to international.
having to fly to 4 regionals domestically (let's say one is within driving distance) and 1 international event to hit the cap of 6 is already asking quite a lot of players. maybe after the logistics nightmare at last worlds, they just said 'screw it, let's just reduce the number of attendees because we can't figure out how to run the event properly'
It just feels so sad to see the circuit be so restrictive and cutthroat all of a sudden, especially when you consider what other communities managed to pull together. EVO has over 10.000 attending competitors this year, last year it was around 9.000, and they managed it. You mean to tell me that TPC can only handle a fraction of that? Of course individual matches take way longer, but to that degree?
Whether you cap the invite number or raise the point total significantly, either way you are rewarding "wallet warriors". Unless you create some ELO/heuristic to average performance across tournys. But then u discourage people who placed well in a couple events to continue attending more. I dont see any way to make worlds more exclusive without penalizing those without the means to participate as much. That is unfortunate, but there is also an argument that if you spend more time and money traveling and competing, its not a bad idea to give that person a better chance to make worlds. They are literally more invested. And any complaints about rooting against your friends or hoping others lose is unfathomable lol were literally discussing a competitve endeavor in a single player game. If someone complained about that in chess or tennis they would be laughed out of the room. Its kind of crazy for years in pokemon you could have an advantage by being friends with your competitors, which is also a way the same "wallet warriors" get an advantage against someone less integrated in the community. Sorry to rant, dont usually comment but im here early enough to offer an algo boost and the topic is certainly interesting. Appreciate all your content.
Having the same point requirement for everyone is not neccessarily a fair system! If you are in a part of the world where there are fewer contests (fewer ways to get points), then it isn't really fair to compare your points to someone in a region with lots of contests.
I think the best results should consider, at most, one internats, and two nationales. If you go to all three, you've got more chances, but not higher potential payoff
This is like classes graded on a curve, where like only X% of people get the top grade, etc. It feels like the same principle that you’re rooting on your classmates/friends to do worse on tests, and it’s awful.
I don't understand the international issues. Just by making top 16 at all 6 regionals you can get around 1000 points, and if you attend 1 international that's over 1000 points which should be more than enough to secure a place. And if one isn't even confident enough to consistently secure atleast a top 16 spot in a reigional event, i would question the reason they even want to go to worlds in the first place, where you need to compete against the literal best players in the world. Maybe I'm missing something because i play singles so feel free to explain what I'm missing here
Before, players could feasibly grind locals + never make day 2 at regionals/ICs and still make worlds. Now they can't do that. Forcing the player base to travel and removing the CP threshold means your invite is never really secure and means that you're incentivized to go to ICs over regionals. But ICs usually fill up, so it becomes a game of who has the time off + money at registration to commit to 2 or 3 ICs.
The Pokémon Company cutting players like they cut Pokémon and Movelists. Sure hope this balancing works out for them and doesn't come off as another kick in the Key Items to the people that love(d) their games.
What if it was made so that the top X players at each regional or international would automatically get a spot, and "remove" them from the ranking so other players aren't competing against them for a spot. Well, while writing this some problems came to mind: 1. There would need to be some other incentive so players who are already qualified continue to attend events. 2. There may be increased collusion. E.g. a player with a guaranteed spot playing against a friend in a tournament lets them win to boost their points, or maybe even reach a guaranteed spot.
Now on a surface level this isn't a bad thing for TCG because it reduces the huge amount of players that show up to events (especially worlds), HOWEVER there is a problem. Because you can only get points from 6 tournaments, people will likely stop playing anything but the deck that gives them the absolute best chance to win. Non-meta will die with this, and it scares me that something might happen with Pokémon that happened to Yu Gi Oh. In Yu Gi Oh right now you HAVE to spend 1,000 dollars or more on a deck to have a hypothetical chance to win a playmat. Tier Zero Pokémon just won't be fun, and it will pressure so many people out of playing the game due to price constrictions.
I just feel like they should overall increase the prizes. Give more people a refund of the travel and give the best players in the tournament more incentives to travel more. The 6 best performances cap should be enough to prevent people to qualify by sheer amount of tournaments played.
To avoid a total wallet warrior situation, you could use the way dota/cs does its majors. Add a region lock. Sure, it makes it so weaker regions become places pros move to in order to try to eek out more wins, but at least your system also has a 6 best instead of a rolling points system where your placements are weighted by subjective means like in the CS system.
How does this work with other sports? aren't they all "top X" makes the cut (with some tournaments qualifying directly)? The Soccer world cup has the same amount of teams each time, I think the Olympic events also have a pre-determined number of participants for each thing. you can't have 500 people doing 100 meter dashes in groups of eight at the final event. it has to have a set number of people showing up to keep the event manageable. it's always going to come down to a wallet game.
Main difference here is that Soccer/Olympic participants get paid for traveling around. Pokémon requires the player to pay for it. Also, Pokémon doesn't let you wear/use sponsorship items, so that's a huge detriment to attract sponsors for individual players/teams.
surely bfl should limit you to only 1 international... or at least if you've played 2 internationals the second one should have their points downscaled to as if it were a regional
The best 6 limit on tournaments honestly only does so much to limit the benefits of privilege. If you have a bad run in a tournament and you can only make 6, them's the breaks, you're done. But if you can make more? Eh, whatever. That won't make your top six placements anyways! Just go to another tournament and try again. To be clear, this existed before- it was the same for the previous qualification system. If you only have so many tournaments, then one bad run still screws you, and being able to attend more is a huge advantage. But before, being skilled enough meant that regardless of other people getting to Worlds by going to every possible tournament, a solid enough run to hit the bar would get you there if you couldn't try more times. But now, there's a competition between those two groups. Not surprised people are a tad upset.
If I place first in every event I go to I could lose to someone who goes to twice as many events and I handily beat every time I faced them. Is this fair? No way is it fair to make it so that someone who is doing worse but paying money and time to get into more tournaments is a better canidate to crown the best player im the world. An undefeated player could lose to someone with a 50% or worse winrate
@@cryochick9044Well, if you do win a regional you immediately get a Worlds invite (or top 4 in an Internat). I think Freezai failed to include that bit, but adjusting your placements to all seconds at regional and yeah... it'd suck
VGC has always favoured players with more money or time or privelege, with things like hack checks and the DLCs. Players with more money/privelege are already at an advantage as they're able to travel more often. This isn't great to see, but I can't say I'm really that surprised.
As an outsider they seem good changes but boy do they cause a lot of bad side effects. Im wondering about juniors and seniors. They depend fully on their family's resources and willingness.
Also if anyone is wondering how the TCG players are handling this, they hate it too, everyone hates it. Generally we get more players so like NA has 125 slots now. Now I’m in OCE and for TCG, we only have 20 slots and had 125~ players from our region qualify; on top of that the flights to vist the regionals is insane, there are 3 in the country, so if you wanted to hit the cap, you would want to do all 3 in Melbourne and all 3 IC’s out of country, absolutely ridiculous. I was going to try and qualify for worlds next year, but at this rate, I don’t know why I even should. Maybe I’ll go to a regional or 2 but I do not have the funds for decks, sleeves, flights and hotels out of the country for a whole season.
As a vg player, I was wondering around how much a deck costs to build? How often do you need to change your deck or buy new sleeves? I've heard people talking/complaining about the cost of needing several games and DLCs to get the good pokemon for vgc, but I'm curious as to how it is on the TCG side Also nice Topaz pfp :)
@@luminescence716 Decks usually cost anywhere from $50 - 120 USD with sleeves being another $15. Which is actually cheap in general TCG standards. And the decks are basically like a team, most players will bring different decks to different events just how you would change your team. The cost to change decks is usually less then the full deck, since by playing you will naturally have a lot of the cards already since a card thats super common and almost always legal like Ultra ball, will be in most decks, so you may switch decks and still sometimes have like 20 of the same cards from a different decks + the energy which are free to get. Thank you High elder of the Vidyadhara Bailu :)
Why don't Nintendo and TPC pool the billions this franchise pulls to just build their own venue? How hard can it be to make a "stadium" where yo can host events, from Pokemon, to other games under the Nintendo IP as well. They have more money than the government at this rate, so make it happen!
I don’t see the issue. Has anyone seen the pokemon anime? Ash is a literal kid walking around with no car to make it to all of these gyms and tournaments. So players have no excuse for missing 3 internationals
One solution to this would be to limit the BFL to 6 tournaments total with max 1 international. That way there's still a bit of pay to win because if you go to 3 internationals, you get more chances to score, but it limits it so you're not stacking 3 massive international tournaments point totals. Edit: And you talk about it at 7:38... That's what I get for commenting before watching the full video 🤦
Only top 6 is dumb when 16th int is 50 points higher than 1st regional you could place 16th in 3 int and first in 3 regionals and be higher points than someone who wins 6 regionals
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? You mean Gamefreak is **cutting down** the number of slots in the tournament? Wow, who could have seen this coming? Limiting so many from the 'dex of players? That sure is one hell of a 'Dexit'. I mean, jokes aside, I'm moreso surprised people are shocked this is happening. It's Gamefreak lmao. People been telling y'all they were gonna keep cutting back FOR YEARS and people kept buying games that were unfinished at $60. Now they're cutting back from their damn tournaments now LOL. The quality of everything is gonna keep going down.
I dunno how you VGC players have been doing it before, but the TCG has had this issue for a while. Basically, ever since State/Provice/Territory championships got axed and regionals started having consistent Day 2 Swiss, TCG invites have costed tens of thousands of dollars. TCG regionals have had cash prizes for several years now, not sure about VGC. Also, I think the whole "bringing others down with your wins" is part of the point: the TCG has had a HUGE problem with collusion at all levels [probably part of why they got rid of States] and this zero-sum system heavily disincentivizes that. I think the bigger problem is that you can't even know how many tournaments you have to go to. People were already going to over a dozen regionals just for the chance at their invite in the TCG, but now there's no feasible stopping point. People are going to realize that for themselves partway into the season.
That is also in the new system, every regional winner and top 4 of each international is immediately guaranteed a Worlds invite separate from their region's pool of invites
@@itztaytay2 huh, then maybe have slightly more leniency or something so they can get that 75 out of placement alone so that way points are a non factor
Probably would be just as fair to put everyone who ever bought a Pokemon games name into a hat and draw to determine who goes. If your not drawn, clearly a skill issue.
The high point bar comment is interesting because that would have a functionally identical impact. A point bar of 800 would mean that someone could save up all their money to go to an international, place first, and then because lack of funds to go to any other events not make worlds.
Pokémon either needs to focus on making immaculate-quality games to appeal to the casual audience or focus on making competitive as fun and smoothly operated as possible. Pokémon tries to do both and accomplishes neither.
Pokemon is one of the biggest franchises in the world, they have more than enough resources to do both, especially since being friendly towards competitive requires very little effort and doesn’t detract from casual play
this is not really both the same "pokémon". gamefreak makes the game, under (probably way too much) time pressure. they have practically nothing to do with any of what's in this video, they're way too busy for that lol. tpci / play pokémon manage the circuit; it's a different company, different employees etc.. "pokémon" is a huge machine made up of many entities that each do their thing. the quality of the games doesnt really have any correlation with what's talked about here.
@@cryochick9044 Absolutely, brain dead, stupid. Lots of "nostalgic" properties, they don't sell a fraction Pokemon. Both Crash and Spyro remake trilogies had plenty of nostalgia. Crash sold 20Mil, Spyro 10Mil, Pokemon SV sold 24Mil. Almost 2.5X Spyro and 20% more than Crash. This does not include DLC.
i dont even get why people can attend multiple internationals anyway, it seems stupid to have people fly out over the world just to have a chance at worlds.
People like me from the Middle East will now NEVER be able to make it, If before we could maybe go to regionals abroad because there're no tournaments here, now even that is worthless
For context, the number 75 player in N.A. this season is Nails. That’s where the skill floor is to qualify for worlds is, in theory, and that’s insane.
The competition is getting better so it makes sense it's harder to make it to worlds. It's just a shame they seem to be shrinking the size of the event when I was under the impression VGC was growing in popularity.
@@androsp9105tournaments ARE growing, but TPC clearly can’t keep up so they’re taking action to limit certain things.
They don’t want people complaining that multiple worlds championships are logistical nightmares multiple years in a row
You've become so well spoken since your channel first started years ago. Just want to compliment you on how great this video was and made me think of that.
That's not really skill floor, as Freezai explained. Many great players only go to so many events, especially after they qualify and aren't going for stipends.
@@ziggmiceter Yeah no, that won’t be how it is next season, it’s going to be a lot sweatier. Unless someone wins a regionals or top 4 at an IC, most of the top 75 won’t be locked until after NAIC so it won’t really be possible to just hit a few events, earn your worlds invite and call it for the season. I’d bet money we see way more NA players at LAIC and EUIC this year just to stay in the race. And my point about the skill floor is that if you mapped next years system on to this years results, the worst performance that would qualify for worlds is one of the all time great VGC players, Nick “Nails” Navarre, and this season was a lot less try hard than next years will be. It’s not a great sign if you’re pretty good at Pokémon but not amazing. Freezai wouldn’t have qualified last year in this system.
A big thing I've loved about VGC is how cooperative and helpful fellow competitors are to one another, now everyone is incentivised to not do that.
I agree I think vgc is great bc of the community and with it becoming more against other players it could make the community a lot worse
As a TCG player, they basically nailed it with changes for us. Sadly they just applied the same changes to VGC and none of them make sense. I guess since TCG gets 3x-5x competitors of VGC they prioritized us but I’m really sorry to see how much it’s going to crush vgc
Even for TCG, it becomes a problem for those who can't travel. Anyone who can get around the world has an innate advantage over people who can't travel since they have a larger pool of points to pull from due to Internationals being bigger events. Additionally, it disincentivizes anything non-meta to be played at large events, which will make the format feel really stale.
It's sad, there are both grassroots and professional established esports everywhere at this point, that anyone can see what works and what doesn't, yet Pokemon is stuck in the past.
This is how it works in basically every other esport. There's set number of teams that can make it to the dota international or a CS major.
@@androsp9105yea but in those you aren't literally limited by money costs holding back your potential. You go to the arena/studio, sit down, play a match and that's all. Best of the best win
Essentially most of the monetary costs are already covered for by the company or esports org, here in Pokémon it's all on you. You are your own team.
@@androsp9105 Yeah I watch dota but Team Spirit doesn't pay to attend 10 tournaments while other teams play 2 and qualify that way. There's a proper circuit with equal opportunities. Heck make qualifiers online if it allows for an even playing field. Pokémon doesn't even have an Asian International tournament?
@@ViraLCyclopesAren't esports orgs famous for burning through money?
Pokemon should take a page out of Capcom’s book and do not only online tourneys for more chances at points, but also giving guaranteed spots at worlds to players who win International/Regional level events. If Wolf Glick for example wins a Regional, he has a guaranteed spot at the world championships. Theoretically that means the best players are getting spots and aren’t ruining the runs of other players at future tournaments. This leads to a worlds of the best pool of players and keeps a good level of worldwide representation with the new future format. Additionally online tourneys should count as much as local level events with their own limit of BFL to help attract new players without the need to travel and give more opportunities to score points. This second suggestion will not work with Gen 9 though since the online is very rough and issues with disconnects have no clear answer.
the first suggestion you said is already a thing, i dont think freezai mentioned it here but regional winners and people who get top 4 at international championships get an auto invite
Fyi online tourneys are awful because of ghosting. The players cup 3 champion got banned for ghosting during the finals of that tourney, and certain regions of the world are notorious for ghosting during big online tourneys. It just ruins competitive integrity.
what’s funny is that they do that with Pokemon Unite, win a major tournament and the team makes it to Worlds, and almost all tournaments are online except for well the major ones like regionals
You mean other than fixing the game?
The bad online is more of a Nintendo online thing in general. Expecting a good online service from them just is foolish. They’ve been bad at it for years and they haven’t really gotten much better but now it’s paid
As a Canadian player what's frustrating is that of the 2 regionals in my country only one is closer to me then all the regionals happening in Europe
One in the West and one in ON/QC? That's pretty normal for Canada... Our country is huge and small population and widely spread out. MTG does the same thing, with one Regional Championship in BC/AB and one RC in ON/QC.
Does Pokemon restrict you from traveling to the US regionals for points?
That's canada for u. 😂😂 where do u want it? Prince edwards island😂😂😂
@arch6384 I understand that canada is 99% empty space but the fact that you need to spend minimum 5k$ in plane tickets just to have a chance to go to world is shit and odds are It'll be more
Has similar vibes to how event pokemon felt in gens 1-5 when you lived in a country that weren't Japan or the USA. Even in Australia, a wealthy weatern country, we basically got no event pokemon until gen 6. It wasnt the end of the world but it just sucked a bit to have this cools stuff feel locked off for no reason.
If internationals become as important to vgc as its being made out, then yeah, it's just not going to be a nice feeling for those that cant afford that kind of travel.
This is 100% a money issue, especially when considering its ONLY the top 6 tournaments. You could get 1st in the 1 regional tournament in your vicinity, take a shot at one international and maybe not do too well, then farm up the league cups in you local area. You'll be at the HUGE disadvantage when compared to the rich kid who just farms international and regionals, by no fault of your own. People have jobs and lives outside of pokemon and this expectation makes ot to where only content creators have a shot because they make their living off of traveling to the tournaments, gaining the revenue and writing it off as a business trip. Regular people are now ineligible to qualify even if they do everything right, and take the massive risk of regionals and internationals. Vacation time is a luxury and to spend that on a chance to get championship points is much easier when you know after a threshold, you get an invite.
If you win a regional or top 4 an international you immediately get a worlds invite separate from your local pool
@@itztaytay2 Does that not still leave the extra travel costs for worlds?
How about this: say you want 220 attendees at worlds. Set a very high point bar so that you're sure less than 220 people will clear it. Say 150 people clear it. Give them an invite, plus give bonus invites to the 70 next best players who did not clear the bar. Precisely predictable attendance, the best players can win through skill, wallet impact is smaller, and very little benefit from tearing down others.
This is the same as top 220 advancing
@@dragon101woof8 Except that once you pass the point bar, you know for sure you're advancing, so there's no stress.
Sounds good in theory, but the actual math is difficult for working out what a good bar is. I do think it’s better to at least try and if you screw up and let a few dozen people in maybe that’s fine, maybe there were more exceptional players that year.
Also a worldwide points bar is disproportionate for countries that don’t have IC’s and regionals so they still have to spend tons of money to even have a chance compared to people who are in more fortunate countries.
that's not a solution.
1. you're still making a prediction about some number of points. what if more than 220 people clear it? then you either have more participants, or you need to choose the top x from them.
2. oops, you set the bar too high, and only 50 people cleared it, the rest of the players are still chosen based on being in the top x cut.
One thing you mentioned, that might be worth looking into is the one about wanting to make it more of a *World* Championship, you mentioned how, even though requirements went up, more people in total qualified; but the question is: how evenly distributed was it? Did all regions get a similar level of increase, or did places like North America and Europe get a disproportionately large cut of the increase while regions like Middle East and South Africa saw little to no increase? If they continue to raise Point Requirements might that disproportionately disadvantage people living in parts of the world where going to multiple tournaments is harder, whether because there are fewer Tournament in that part of the world, or because travel is harder and/or more expensive between countries or the simple fact that people don't make as much money, so a $100 plane ticket is way more of an outlay for them?
I can understand that there is a reason behind the choice to limit the number of players, and that we are likely to never get a complete answer as to why.
I also get that it's the lack of knowing why is what people are more annoyed about.
So... What other option is there? If we increased the points requirement, that will lead to the same issue if forcing people to go to internats. It takes away the unknown luck component and make it a fully 'skill issue, get good' situation... But is that really the solution we want?
My biggest problem with this new system is that unless you get one of the auto invites you won't know if you're safe to book the trip to worlds until after NAIC. If you're top 50 in April or May and you can't make it to NAIC for whatever reason, you might not get your invite despite having an incredible season. If they wanted to keep this new limited invite system, I think would be better to split them up during the season. For example, top 25 after each International not including autos and invites from the previous split. That way TPCi can still keep an accurate forecast for worlds attendance and players can lock their invite and book their trip earlier in the season.
Crazy that finishing 32nd at an international gets you the same number of points as winning a regional. There are absolutely going to be players who don't qualify for worlds because worse players were able to afford to fly to Louisiana and UK and Brazil.
but also winning a regional or getting top 4 international gets you invited
Esports is expensive, if you guys want to actually legitimise esports as a sport, be prepared to pay up like athletes do
@@danka1167It's a turn based, digital game. Just give a lot more online oppurtunities as replacements/supplements to regionals/internats, unlike athletes they *don't have to physically be there*
@danka1167 TPCi doesn't even pay up so why do they expect us to?
@@itztaytay2players already abused online events in the past. Ghosting is a huge issue during GCs and back during the COVID era with Players Cups. The winner of PC 3 was banned for ghosting during the finals, for example.
More higher stakes online tours are cool for accessibility but suck because players can't be trusted.
I think that if they want to go with the top cut, the best and most fair solution would be if they'd put a bigger restrictions for events that you attended counts, like only ur best international counts and 2-3 best regionals (so like the amount i feel like an average person would attend) and/or covering the cost of going into a regional/international in some way, like booking a hotel for everyone or getting a plane just for players to get from one continent to another for internationals so money wouldnt matter as much
paying for hundreds of players' travel/accommodation for multiple events skyrockets costs immediately and is pretty clearly infeasible (plus way more people would sign up to play, increasing the issue). I think your first idea is pretty reasonable (presumably they don't want to go too hard on it because the bigger the restriction the less people participate in each event)
I agree with your first idea but your second is impossible.
My first thought went to "what if you count the points of max 2 internationals", but that would give southern North America a distinct advantage, due to location.
Then I thought of lowering the international scores a bit. It seems to generally be x2 ~ x2.5, but if it were a fixed x1.5, the damage would be lessened a lot. This could discourage some from joining the internationals though, so maybe it won't be considered.
But then, finally, a combination of sorts presented itself to me. What if the internationals each count as 2 out of 6 tournaments. This way, the fact that internationals give x2 ~ x2.5 points, will make them pretty equal. Say you got 17-32 in two regionals and one internationals, two regionals give 250 points total (with placement), but the internationals give 350 and fills the same two spots in your tournament list, perfect solution
With 108 shrinking to 75 that feels like enough competition that this feels impactful. It actually scales up the already not insignificant amount of time and money you had to put into playing tournaments and while only having the top 6 finishes count helps you still benefit from more than 6 tournaments.
From a company perspective, and with a potential goal of a smaller group with better treatment (if they know how many to prep for they can be well prepared and put on a great experience) I like the idea of just 75. But there is a real middle ground and what they have so far suggests this could be a good one. But if the very top end community starts to become (more) toxic because of this I could see competition shrink over time.
Personally, I had considered trying to qualify for worlds but some career developments limited my travel potential this year. This change is enough of a damper I don't think I'll ever revisit that goal with the top cut format
I think the only realistic alternative would be something like: anyone who makes top 2 at a regional or top 8 at an international goes to worlds. That would give you a predictable number of entrants while at least giving everyone a concrete goal to strive for. You'd have to have a procedure for if someone "qualifies twice" but there should be options for that.
Tbh multiple top cuts can get you the Day 2 qualifications?
Yeah the repeat qualifiers are a big issue. Wolfey was in 3 regional finals in the 2024 season out of 12-15(?) so he took like 10% of the NA qualifications if your system was put in place this past year and it would get messy tho I like it conceptually.
@@flatbread42 In this type of scenario, the qualification would usually passed on to the next highest ranked person in the tournament (e.g. #16). They'd probably need to keep track of one or more tiebreaker scores on top of the usual Win/Lose score, but a system like this seems very feasible.
for the procedure, make it like chess: this year, Fabiano Caruana qualified for the candidates 5 different ways (tourneys and elo) and only one of them counted. i don't remember how it was selected, if he specifically chose a tournament to keep some body else out or if it was fide's decision, but at least it solves the problem of not knowing what size venue you need and allows for some form of consistency
I think that logistically, it makes more sense to me for TPC to make this change.
If I was to make any tweaks to the scoring system, it would be that internationals still give more points than normal tournaments, *but* there would be a seperate online-based set of 3 'international' tournaments (1 for each region) that could also act as a "substitute" of sorts point value-wise: Placements are worth the same as the in-person event, and it takes the best point value for each pair of tournaments to use towards your score. The problem being that they want people to attend the events, not stay home and play online.
But ultimately, there is only so much they can do if they are trying to incentivize attendance to the biggest tournaments without cutting out the non-worlds "international" events altogether (which I think is less fun for the viewing audience)
The online-based tournaments will be on PTCG LIVE.
TPCi is treating the circuit like its a big esport that has huge payouts when in fact the top prize for the world champions is 50k and 30k respectively. Its a joke, this incentivizes wallet warrioring and makes a toxic competitive environment. If they bumped the world championship prize to 250k or something like that id have 0 issue with the changes but theyve made big boy changes with little boy payouts
Fr the only way to be sustainable as a pro pokemon player is to also do youtube or something
Your first guess is spot on i believe. VGC exploded in popularity in recent years notably with youtubers like wolfey or even yourself doing content and making more people interested in it (which is great ! we shouldnt gatekeep competitive pokemon) and with that the issue is as simple that they cant just allow an undefined number of participants, since it will most likely be more than what they can handle in a physical and also fancy event such as the world championship. The obvious solution is to limit the nb of available places, it solves the issue but also it brings a number of issues like you said (money and privilege issue).
I'd honestly say it's just how competition works, look at sports competition and tell me there's no money and privilege involved in that. The solution would be to make it 100% online but then a part of the magic of worlds would be gone. The real solution that i'd propose would be to make alternative online circuits that wouldn't replace worlds so that there's also competition unrelated to money and privilege, maybe make it so people who perform really well on these circuits can get invited too.
so you're absolutely right on how money and privilege influence sports, HOWEVER the amount of money and access is a huge influence on the talent pool of a given sport as a whole; you're not missing out on the best track athletes because they just need a decent pair of shoes and a place to run (and in the USA you're going to have events *somewhere* local-ish, even if its a school covering travel expenses), soccer just needs something approximating nets to play + a ball on top of the shoes and etc.
now compare that to hockey, where you mostly just see canadian/nordic/american athletes in on the action, because hockey is wildly expensive compared to basically any other sport and that cuts down on the potential talent pool by a ton. baseball and football have similar issues, but to lesser degrees.
ultimately money *is* always going to be a factor to some extent, but realistically in a world where something like EVO is the biggest fighting game tournament in the world that nukes our worlds attendance from orbit (10k competitors in the 8 prize games alone, this doesnt include sponsored side tournaments for other games or spectators or unofficial tournaments...) and you just pay them 170 bucks to play in said tournament for 3 days... idk, couple the Top X change with a minimal boost to rewards (this is where i point out the extra packs for lower-placing day 2ish folks in masters TCG comes at the expense of the younger divisions packs, which is omega cringe) it really feels like TPC just actively wants to cut down on attendance all around and hoped people on twitter would just claim its about making it more "exclusive"
The money issue is valid, but complaining about not having a set stopping point and having to compete against your competitors is wild. Most invite based systems works through relative performance selection, even outside of sports/esports.
It´s not wild, it´s just a system you like v/s other systems. Leagues that work with points can perfectly grant you a spot in playoffs if you win everything pretty early, for example. It´s not that you don´t have to compete against your competitors, it´s that based on the math of the system you already excelled at it enough. But you can prefer something else, of course
I think it's very different when a gatekeep to be able to compete is your own ability to pay for your travels. I played TFT competitively for a bit and the tournments are in a Top X ladder snapshot format. Sure the grind to spam games and get as high of a ladder position as possible was stressful, but after two weeks it was over and you knew if you were in or not, not to mention i didnt have to pay for anything other than time, since the tournaments were also online so i could compete from home. If i had to physically travel to every tft tournament just to have a CHANCE to qualify like the ladder snapshot, I would never have even attempted to play competitively.
wow having to compete against my competitors isnt that literally what every competitive game is
If that's the case, they need to have a modified ELO system and not a system solely based on accumulation of points
@@broidkanymore-zc4lt They should be competing in pokemon though, not in wallet. There are now TFT events you do have to go to on your own dime, but as far as I'm aware of none of those events actually count towards the competitive circuit, because that would be very stupid if a limiter of being able to compete would be being able to afford to travel to las vegas for a tournament.
I think working mainly through points but having regional caps would be far more reasonable, it still gives you an upper bound for the event planning but means that as long as you set a good points threshold it will hopefully never com into play and if it does, It will only be in the strongest regions (which tend to also be the ones where travel is the most possible). This is still not ideal but would be far less of a shitshow
I’m glad you explained what’s going on with the Pokémon scene in 9 minutes even if it’s not all of it because there was another video like yours that was one hour and 30 minutes I’m not saying names but all I got to say is that you did a good job explaining things in a few minutes which I appreciate.
It’s super frustrating that now I essentially have to play in the BO1 closed team sheet cheese matches in order to have a shot at qualifying for worlds. I’m not the best player by any means, never making top 8, but I’m good enough to put up consistent results to at least qualify for worlds by only going to the 6 regionals. Having that peace of mind of “oh, I’ve reached the point threshold I am fine” is super nice and something I wish would stay. But now if you don’t participate in literally every event you are heavily disadvantaged unless you are the top of the top (ex if you are #60 and don’t go to something like NAIC you are more than likely going to lose your spot- ICs are just worth that much).
I would’ve much preferred just raising the point threshold. Essentially that’s what the “top x of each region” is doing, but it’s a much more stable way of doing things. That way, if you qualified for worlds, you know that, and you know it can’t be taken away.
Well you said it yourself. It's Worlds. They want the top of the top, not you.
like mentioned in the video i think this system works perfectly fine if they only allow your best international performance so you can't stack three to improve chances almost purely with money.
i think a lot of people are acting too entitled to a world championship, like this doesn't change the regional tournaments or whatever you can still go to those the same, this only affects the highest stage of the scene and it makes sense aside from being able to have three internationals on your resume
Also something odd to think about, how will they handle the "top performer" automatic invites that will not count against the region limit, like will their placement CP get redistributed or they axed from the winner listing, since their points would be "wasted" for determening other qualifiers
Thinking about it, and I think the bedt way i can think of is to still use the points system as it has been all these yesrs, but for each region, once points are allocated, have or make a way for all participants to do one last "qualifying" tournament for the top x players to move on. This would no longer gatekeep players who have money to go to every international from keeping players who cant from joining, while keeping player counts not insanely high, and also makes the game only luck/skill based and not also money based because some people can join every tournament and grab those fee extra points. Yeah it adds the stress of another tournament but IMO its far more fair.
They eliminated the cp race by getting rid of the day 2 invite just to reintroduce it through worlds qualification…wow
I think if they want to make this change, the first further change should be "only 1 International result applies to your point total, maximum." Because without that, like you said, anyone who can afford to hit up all three internationals and place high suddenly gets half of their six giving a lot more value than someone who can't afford to do that, which is just inherently unfair to people who don't have the money or time to spare to get to more or less any tour they want and can only afford to go to a smattering of regionals plus a nationals and maybe an international if they're lucky. I'd been wanting to look into making a VGC run at some point once I'm more on my own and financially stable, but now I'm not so sure that I want to if I can get effectively priced out of ever getting to Worlds by people who have enough money to go to every high-points event.
I play tcg competitively (we have the same new system) and this is a huge issue for me. Ive only qualified twice out of the 7 years ive played but i seriously doubt ill ever qualify again. Which makes me wonder if its even worth trying.
Why not ?
@@FelixX138likely doesn't have the time or money to make it now
@@cryochick9044 :(
My friend and I play tcg and often plan our seasons early on. After naic, we decided this would be a light gap year. We'd play the "local" majors and maybe naic, but wouldn't try for an invite. Then this got announced and naic is father's day... yeah, it's a full gap year, save the money...
can we mention the fact that middle east & south Africa players just can't get to worlds without winning a regional or getting top 4 in an international a top 10/5 (even 1) would work just fine and we need more representation anyways
Limiting to a top 'x' number makes complete logistical sense for organising the event, it's insane they've run worlds for so long without actually knowing how many participants they'd have. But yes, a limit on how many of your placements can count with in person international events being more valuable for points is an equity problem.
High point value international online tournaments are probably the best solution, as they remove all the barriers of physical travel and event hosting, and if it was set up well, someone who is unable to attend in person internationals being able to get an equal amount of points from highly competitive online tournaments as they'd get playing to that skill level at physical internationals would be great.
perhaps an online tournament that is worth as many points as an IRL international? but with a limit of best 2 or 3 tournments count at that level.
attending regionals/internationals has always been... a wallet thing and luxury that you can take time off work to attend the event and etc. just means the skill ceiling goes higher for worlds. it's the world championship where qualifying should be tooth and nail in a sense.
Quite the opposite, there will be many players gated out of top positions because they can't make it to as many tournaments. Despite their performance they will simply be "Out-moneyed" out of their spot.
We won't see the best players. We will see the most financially committed ones.
Which is not the same.
For greater context, for VGC Masters, there were over 200 qualifiers in both NA and EU for 2024, essentially this Top 75 bar for both groups will cut the number back to a third of the current situation. Granted, I'm largely supportive of the desire to scale back the number of qualifiers, but I do feel like doing Top X cuts is not the way to go.
For one, this reverts the qualifying system back to pre-2016, and for those that may not have been around, one of the most vocal points the community had then was the desire to work towards a CP bar.
One unintended consequence I could see occurring is because the number of tickets for major events is limited at the top end, there is a potential danger with players purchasing tickets and not attending, but essentially holding the reservation slot, particularly as the season gets further in. Another big issue is Oceania for me will be warped around players that attend LAIC; with no major International in that Region and only 20 spots, if even a handful of players get points, that severely impacts those unable to travel outside of their respective Region. And typically, Oceania is light on Regional events. And latter Regional events in general may see players not bother to sign up as they become removed from the likelihood of qualifying.
I think a compromise that could be worked is have a reasonably challenging CP bar or Top X in a region, whichever is the higher. At the very least, it gives a fundamental breakpoint to qualify for but assuming the bar is well judged, should largely avoid the situation of an unusually high number of qualifiers.
Worlds is in San Francisco next year and if you remember 2016 worlds, there were some huge space constraints and spectators/parental guardians were majorly restricted due to the size of the venue. I bet this is all about a small venue.
so san fran worlds is '26, not '25... we dont actually know '25 worlds yet lol.
that said this is absolutely just "we dont want this many competitors period" and they kinda hoped people claiming its about making worlds more exclusive would carry them through people being mad about it (it hasnt, lol)
So this could be an ignorant take on the situation, but why not have points locked to the region the player states they are from, and then have a playoff that seeds based on each regional? I know that this could result in some regions being way more competitive than others, but the same things occur in other sports. Certain conferences or regions are more stacked than others, which means those that make it past those regions have better odds to win worlds. This is not to say players couldn’t compete outside of their region, just that those placements don’t earn them points towards their regional-locked point total/seeding. The top cut of each region could then be invited to a tournament that includes multiple region top cuts, and it is here that the top players are invited to worlds. This would solve the issue of knowing how many players would be at the world championships. I don’t know, this might make things more luck-based than before, but it removes the inequality found in farming every event for points, a luxury not everybody has.
I don’t even think that have to say ‘only your best internats finish counts’ Im wondering if ‘only your best internats finish counts for internats point scale, your other internats finishes count for regular points’ would work?
My only gripe is that Internats are required for good standing. If it was a BFL of 1 for ICs, I'd be fine, but it's not.
I wonder if Pokemon will ever implement an ELO system
Freenzai what is your favorite species of rodent?
On the issue of space: since it seems Worlds 2026 is SFO, space is a very relevant issue. The last time worlds was there, there were effectively no spectator badges; it was basically just players, casters, parents(for under 18s), staff and a couple media people like Joe Merck. If they're returning to SFO, for a game that (and I can't stress this enough) has more than doubled in players since 2016, you can see a real problem.
Fixed point bar that guarantees roughly 50-75% of the total field that you want will hit it, but mathematically impossible for more than 100% to get there. (If you want a field of 100, mathematically impossible for more than 100 to qualify this way for example). However many spots are remaining are based on remaining points. You still don't know exactly how many points you need, but as the best players autoqualify earlier, it should make later events very slightly easier and more worth it for chase players.
There could be q limit of 3 best placetment and a classification tournment for people that got draw, like if places 60-80 are all draw then there is a smaller, maybe online, turnment for those 15 last spots
I think 3 best placetment limits makes so even if you go to all 3 internationals, there is not many people that will get a good position to acctually give a big advantege over 3 first places in reagionals
I mean I think the issue for me is just how much points the international tournaments are worth. if you top 32 an international that's the same number of points as winning a regional.
This means if you have money 3 top 32 finishes puts you in the same conversation as 3 first place finishes and even the most consistently good players wont get that good.
I personally dont mind the whole top 75 thing if the only thing that determined CP was event size. like if a reigonal has more attendance than an international than you should get more points because you have to be a better player to make it through all the variance.
But instead pokemon has made the most exclusive and expensive tournaments the best for points meaning that if you dont spend enough money you cannot win.
I really think the main issue is just the international points being so out of balance. Giving them a BFL of 1 would help, but still pretty out of balance. Seems better to me to just make international tournaments worth the same points, but count as two finishes. So they still ARE worth twice the points as originally intended, but they don't increase your MAX points at all. They just have double the effect on your 6 BFL average if you do well.
In addition to it being a money issue , this also extends into number of tournaments that can be hosted. Hosting a tournament costs money so you can only hold so many of them.
It is frustrating they are “fixing” TPCI tournaments when it has largely been a non-problem instead of whatever the wacko Elite-4 setup they have for Japan and the regions over there by TPC which is a separate entity from TPCI.
Huh, this is interesting. I get the discontent around other areas but I think the only real issue is the economic one about international championships. Hopefully TPCI at least listens to and addresses the concerns about that specifically, because it sucks that comp is suffering from a monetary barrier to entry.
Other suggestions such as increasing the number would be nice, but I feel like they chose that number specifically for a reason.
It sincerely seems to me like an issue of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They likely want a predictable bracket size but don’t want to do away with their point system. This just makes for a “feel bad” system IMO, where quantity feels more important than quality.
Having a more exclusive event will always benefit those who can travel and try hard, and be less accommodating by definition. But, if the 200+ spots were decided by placement in certain events only, then at least you get your chance on the qualifier event near you if that is all you have the budget/chance to attend.
just make the point diff smaller between regionals and internationals, but have regional/highest placing player from regs get a direct qual. for ints you could do top 4 qualify or something.
30-50 % more points on ints compared to regs is probably fair, and a limit to 3 BFL.
If you're open to criticism, I would recommend making a new thumbnail for this video. I mistook it for a community post, and only clicked because I was curious about the replies. If other people have a similar experience, it could hurt your numbers.
I think the best solution would to put a BFL on internationals to 1 (but keep the BFL across regionals to 6, so you can either have 6 regionals count towards your point total or 5 regionals and a international count towards your point total.) This will still give an advantage to those that can make all three internationals without forcing other top competitors to make the financial and time investment to do the same if they want to qualify for worlds. I always thought an "international" was supposed to gather the best competitors of the region rather than to gather competitors around the globe because I thought thats what worlds is for, so i dont get why the circuit seems to suggest that they want global talent at internationals.
As a side tangent, the top X qualification system should have been fine in theory. However, I find the greater issue has to do with how limited the spots are for the level of talent that exists, but that doesnt also consider how hard qualifying from japan probably is given how much more popular the game is there. I wouldnt be surprise if the top level of japan's players were really close in skill and some notable players dont qualify, especially after hearing about the bo1 cts single elim online qualifiers they had with the last year or so.
I think, in the end, it doesnt matter as much as people think. 75 from north america, while it cuts some talent deserving of a spot, is more than plenty of opportunities for NA to win worlds. Personally, to no disrespect to the players, I dont think the top 75-150 players in NA would make it too deep into their worlds run and the better players in the world will float to the top in the end. Showing diversity at the single global tournament of the year is more important than proportionate representation of regions by collective skill level, so I think its okay, but definitely there is are flaws when you can count all three internationals to your point total.
My idea is to divide the championship points for NA, LA and EU regions so that you can at least focus on CP for your regions
With International 32nd place is same than regional 1st. They should limit international to 1 placement. And regional to 5. But give top 4 in international to auto invite (invite total will be increase by 4 x number of IC). that still incentivies people to international.
having to fly to 4 regionals domestically (let's say one is within driving distance) and 1 international event to hit the cap of 6 is already asking quite a lot of players. maybe after the logistics nightmare at last worlds, they just said 'screw it, let's just reduce the number of attendees because we can't figure out how to run the event properly'
Reducing the number is exactly why they're making these changes, yeah
Tourneys are acting a little Gary Oak when they should be a bit more Professor Oak
It's always been about money and privilege. Many people can't simply take time off work to play pokemon. This year is no different.
All you need to do is limit it to best 1 international result and best 5 regionals instead of 6 total
It just feels so sad to see the circuit be so restrictive and cutthroat all of a sudden, especially when you consider what other communities managed to pull together.
EVO has over 10.000 attending competitors this year, last year it was around 9.000, and they managed it. You mean to tell me that TPC can only handle a fraction of that? Of course individual matches take way longer, but to that degree?
Whether you cap the invite number or raise the point total significantly, either way you are rewarding "wallet warriors". Unless you create some ELO/heuristic to average performance across tournys. But then u discourage people who placed well in a couple events to continue attending more. I dont see any way to make worlds more exclusive without penalizing those without the means to participate as much. That is unfortunate, but there is also an argument that if you spend more time and money traveling and competing, its not a bad idea to give that person a better chance to make worlds. They are literally more invested.
And any complaints about rooting against your friends or hoping others lose is unfathomable lol were literally discussing a competitve endeavor in a single player game. If someone complained about that in chess or tennis they would be laughed out of the room. Its kind of crazy for years in pokemon you could have an advantage by being friends with your competitors, which is also a way the same "wallet warriors" get an advantage against someone less integrated in the community.
Sorry to rant, dont usually comment but im here early enough to offer an algo boost and the topic is certainly interesting. Appreciate all your content.
Having the same point requirement for everyone is not neccessarily a fair system! If you are in a part of the world where there are fewer contests (fewer ways to get points), then it isn't really fair to compare your points to someone in a region with lots of contests.
I think the best results should consider, at most, one internats, and two nationales. If you go to all three, you've got more chances, but not higher potential payoff
This is like classes graded on a curve, where like only X% of people get the top grade, etc. It feels like the same principle that you’re rooting on your classmates/friends to do worse on tests, and it’s awful.
I don't understand the international issues. Just by making top 16 at all 6 regionals you can get around 1000 points, and if you attend 1 international that's over 1000 points which should be more than enough to secure a place.
And if one isn't even confident enough to consistently secure atleast a top 16 spot in a reigional event, i would question the reason they even want to go to worlds in the first place, where you need to compete against the literal best players in the world.
Maybe I'm missing something because i play singles so feel free to explain what I'm missing here
Even the top players don't do that. It's unrealistic when the game is so influenced by rng
Before, players could feasibly grind locals + never make day 2 at regionals/ICs and still make worlds. Now they can't do that. Forcing the player base to travel and removing the CP threshold means your invite is never really secure and means that you're incentivized to go to ICs over regionals. But ICs usually fill up, so it becomes a game of who has the time off + money at registration to commit to 2 or 3 ICs.
The Pokémon Company cutting players like they cut Pokémon and Movelists.
Sure hope this balancing works out for them and doesn't come off as another kick in the Key Items to the people that love(d) their games.
I’m mad at the new tournament circuit, but because they’re still doing 2v2 4 Pokémon battles instead of 1v1 6 Pokémon battles or 3v3 6 Pokémon battles
Why didn't they just fix the number of points they give out?
What if it was made so that the top X players at each regional or international would automatically get a spot, and "remove" them from the ranking so other players aren't competing against them for a spot.
Well, while writing this some problems came to mind:
1. There would need to be some other incentive so players who are already qualified continue to attend events.
2. There may be increased collusion. E.g. a player with a guaranteed spot playing against a friend in a tournament lets them win to boost their points, or maybe even reach a guaranteed spot.
This system is getting closer and closer to chess
Now on a surface level this isn't a bad thing for TCG because it reduces the huge amount of players that show up to events (especially worlds), HOWEVER there is a problem. Because you can only get points from 6 tournaments, people will likely stop playing anything but the deck that gives them the absolute best chance to win. Non-meta will die with this, and it scares me that something might happen with Pokémon that happened to Yu Gi Oh. In Yu Gi Oh right now you HAVE to spend 1,000 dollars or more on a deck to have a hypothetical chance to win a playmat. Tier Zero Pokémon just won't be fun, and it will pressure so many people out of playing the game due to price constrictions.
I just feel like they should overall increase the prizes. Give more people a refund of the travel and give the best players in the tournament more incentives to travel more. The 6 best performances cap should be enough to prevent people to qualify by sheer amount of tournaments played.
To avoid a total wallet warrior situation, you could use the way dota/cs does its majors. Add a region lock. Sure, it makes it so weaker regions become places pros move to in order to try to eek out more wins, but at least your system also has a 6 best instead of a rolling points system where your placements are weighted by subjective means like in the CS system.
How does this work with other sports? aren't they all "top X" makes the cut (with some tournaments qualifying directly)?
The Soccer world cup has the same amount of teams each time, I think the Olympic events also have a pre-determined number of participants for each thing. you can't have 500 people doing 100 meter dashes in groups of eight at the final event. it has to have a set number of people showing up to keep the event manageable.
it's always going to come down to a wallet game.
Main difference here is that Soccer/Olympic participants get paid for traveling around. Pokémon requires the player to pay for it.
Also, Pokémon doesn't let you wear/use sponsorship items, so that's a huge detriment to attract sponsors for individual players/teams.
surely bfl should limit you to only 1 international... or at least if you've played 2 internationals the second one should have their points downscaled to as if it were a regional
The best 6 limit on tournaments honestly only does so much to limit the benefits of privilege. If you have a bad run in a tournament and you can only make 6, them's the breaks, you're done. But if you can make more? Eh, whatever. That won't make your top six placements anyways! Just go to another tournament and try again. To be clear, this existed before- it was the same for the previous qualification system. If you only have so many tournaments, then one bad run still screws you, and being able to attend more is a huge advantage. But before, being skilled enough meant that regardless of other people getting to Worlds by going to every possible tournament, a solid enough run to hit the bar would get you there if you couldn't try more times. But now, there's a competition between those two groups. Not surprised people are a tad upset.
Would limiting each player to only 1 International reasonably fix this?
As in, each individual can only get points from one International Championship
If I place first in every event I go to I could lose to someone who goes to twice as many events and I handily beat every time I faced them. Is this fair? No way is it fair to make it so that someone who is doing worse but paying money and time to get into more tournaments is a better canidate to crown the best player im the world.
An undefeated player could lose to someone with a 50% or worse winrate
@@cryochick9044Well, if you do win a regional you immediately get a Worlds invite (or top 4 in an Internat). I think Freezai failed to include that bit, but adjusting your placements to all seconds at regional and yeah... it'd suck
VGC has always favoured players with more money or time or privelege, with things like hack checks and the DLCs. Players with more money/privelege are already at an advantage as they're able to travel more often. This isn't great to see, but I can't say I'm really that surprised.
Why are people mad? Bc they don't have an answer as to "Why?"
As an outsider they seem good changes but boy do they cause a lot of bad side effects.
Im wondering about juniors and seniors. They depend fully on their family's resources and willingness.
Also if anyone is wondering how the TCG players are handling this, they hate it too, everyone hates it. Generally we get more players so like NA has 125 slots now. Now I’m in OCE and for TCG, we only have 20 slots and had 125~ players from our region qualify; on top of that the flights to vist the regionals is insane, there are 3 in the country, so if you wanted to hit the cap, you would want to do all 3 in Melbourne and all 3 IC’s out of country, absolutely ridiculous. I was going to try and qualify for worlds next year, but at this rate, I don’t know why I even should. Maybe I’ll go to a regional or 2 but I do not have the funds for decks, sleeves, flights and hotels out of the country for a whole season.
As a vg player, I was wondering around how much a deck costs to build? How often do you need to change your deck or buy new sleeves? I've heard people talking/complaining about the cost of needing several games and DLCs to get the good pokemon for vgc, but I'm curious as to how it is on the TCG side
Also nice Topaz pfp :)
@@luminescence716 Decks usually cost anywhere from $50 - 120 USD with sleeves being another $15. Which is actually cheap in general TCG standards. And the decks are basically like a team, most players will bring different decks to different events just how you would change your team. The cost to change decks is usually less then the full deck, since by playing you will naturally have a lot of the cards already since a card thats super common and almost always legal like Ultra ball, will be in most decks, so you may switch decks and still sometimes have like 20 of the same cards from a different decks + the energy which are free to get.
Thank you High elder of the Vidyadhara Bailu :)
Bad day for Pokemon huh. First this and the Pokemon GO Mega Rayquaza elite raid fiasco.
people mad??? at the pokemon company??? no way
Why don't Nintendo and TPC pool the billions this franchise pulls to just build their own venue? How hard can it be to make a "stadium" where yo can host events, from Pokemon, to other games under the Nintendo IP as well. They have more money than the government at this rate, so make it happen!
🎉
TCGs have always been a battle of credit cards. It's no surprise the tournaments are too.
I don’t see the issue. Has anyone seen the pokemon anime? Ash is a literal kid walking around with no car to make it to all of these gyms and tournaments. So players have no excuse for missing 3 internationals
then call me a pokemon villain cuz i travel by car, plane, and ship 👍👍
Fr, haven't these noobs gotten surf yet. Just cross the Atlantic Ocean and compete in europe. 😡
Instructions unclear. Tried to ride my fish to cross the ocean. I'm drowning. Send help.
The sad news is that Japan still can't participate...
One solution to this would be to limit the BFL to 6 tournaments total with max 1 international. That way there's still a bit of pay to win because if you go to 3 internationals, you get more chances to score, but it limits it so you're not stacking 3 massive international tournaments point totals.
Edit: And you talk about it at 7:38... That's what I get for commenting before watching the full video 🤦
Only top 6 is dumb when 16th int is 50 points higher than 1st regional you could place 16th in 3 int and first in 3 regionals and be higher points than someone who wins 6 regionals
are international winners guaranteed worlds?
Top 4 of each internat is guaranteed a worlds invite separate from their region's pool, as well as every regional winner
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? You mean Gamefreak is **cutting down** the number of slots in the tournament? Wow, who could have seen this coming? Limiting so many from the 'dex of players? That sure is one hell of a 'Dexit'.
I mean, jokes aside, I'm moreso surprised people are shocked this is happening. It's Gamefreak lmao. People been telling y'all they were gonna keep cutting back FOR YEARS and people kept buying games that were unfinished at $60. Now they're cutting back from their damn tournaments now LOL. The quality of everything is gonna keep going down.
I dunno how you VGC players have been doing it before, but the TCG has had this issue for a while. Basically, ever since State/Provice/Territory championships got axed and regionals started having consistent Day 2 Swiss, TCG invites have costed tens of thousands of dollars. TCG regionals have had cash prizes for several years now, not sure about VGC. Also, I think the whole "bringing others down with your wins" is part of the point: the TCG has had a HUGE problem with collusion at all levels [probably part of why they got rid of States] and this zero-sum system heavily disincentivizes that. I think the bigger problem is that you can't even know how many tournaments you have to go to. People were already going to over a dozen regionals just for the chance at their invite in the TCG, but now there's no feasible stopping point. People are going to realize that for themselves partway into the season.
Still kinda bunk that they include South africa by name but offer us no places
Incentivizing players to root for everyone else’s downfall is IMMEDIATELY obviously a horrible idea and everyone can see it
honestly just do away with points and let winners go to worlds. maybe for internats have top 4 proceed and have an additional prize for 1st
That is also in the new system, every regional winner and top 4 of each international is immediately guaranteed a Worlds invite separate from their region's pool of invites
@@itztaytay2 huh, then maybe have slightly more leniency or something so they can get that 75 out of placement alone so that way points are a non factor
Probably would be just as fair to put everyone who ever bought a Pokemon games name into a hat and draw to determine who goes.
If your not drawn, clearly a skill issue.
The high point bar comment is interesting because that would have a functionally identical impact. A point bar of 800 would mean that someone could save up all their money to go to an international, place first, and then because lack of funds to go to any other events not make worlds.
if you win a regional or get top 4 in an international you get invited regardless of how many points you get. It was literally said in the video
Pokémon either needs to focus on making immaculate-quality games to appeal to the casual audience or focus on making competitive as fun and smoothly operated as possible. Pokémon tries to do both and accomplishes neither.
And yet it still sells.
Pokemon is one of the biggest franchises in the world, they have more than enough resources to do both, especially since being friendly towards competitive requires very little effort and doesn’t detract from casual play
this is not really both the same "pokémon". gamefreak makes the game, under (probably way too much) time pressure. they have practically nothing to do with any of what's in this video, they're way too busy for that lol. tpci / play pokémon manage the circuit; it's a different company, different employees etc.. "pokémon" is a huge machine made up of many entities that each do their thing. the quality of the games doesnt really have any correlation with what's talked about here.
@@nahte123456nostalgia
@@cryochick9044 Absolutely, brain dead, stupid. Lots of "nostalgic" properties, they don't sell a fraction Pokemon. Both Crash and Spyro remake trilogies had plenty of nostalgia.
Crash sold 20Mil, Spyro 10Mil, Pokemon SV sold 24Mil. Almost 2.5X Spyro and 20% more than Crash. This does not include DLC.
i dont even get why people can attend multiple internationals anyway, it seems stupid to have people fly out over the world just to have a chance at worlds.
People like me from the Middle East will now NEVER be able to make it,
If before we could maybe go to regionals abroad because there're no tournaments here, now even that is worthless