To be back on topic, I'm worried that us americans will get beat by the Japs, and (to an extent) the Europeans. Many of the Americans going to Worlds are good, but the Japanese are notorious for their skill. The Europeans seem good as well, especially the Germans. I think everyone should work on figuring out teams for each other (avoid giving each other teams unless nessesary, you know why...) and practicing against each other. One of the reasons why Americans lost against the Japanese was that the Americans were uptight about their teams to each other, when they could have shown each other their teams and found flaws in them.
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- Thread starter makiri
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im guessing that because hes standing next to a girl lolI have a normal non-goofy pose marriland photo!! yay~
hahahaha... actually, no. I cheated and asked him to pose normally. He was disappointed a little, but I bribed him with promises of cake at San Diego. Extraordinary Desserts FTW!!
lol, he'd probably do anything for cake. I bet Alakapimp gave him a lil slice to let his 511 EV's get by ;)
Cake's like a Klondike bar: People will go wild for some of those sweets.
Well, especially cake from Extraordinary Desserts... I'll post a native socal/SD guide once it gets closer to the actual world tourney
the spread was actually 31/31/31/21/31/31, which is a perfectly getable emerald spread, if you go through wifi you'll see a ton of metagrosses just like that
thanks nestw for deleting the red eye fiasco... speaking of which, I tried to find a picture where omegadonut looks funny just to get back at him for beating me, but I failed; he's smiling and open eyed in every group shot I have... hahahahahahaha >_<
Two people left early since they had booked their flight for Caturday
The picture was probably taken on Day 2. Two of the Top 16 finishers couldn't stay for day 2.
Hey everyone! I'm finally back online. Congrats to everyone at St. Louis! Long story short I had a minor family emergency and had to leave early Saturday night so I had to drop out of the tourney, but I still got my top 16 spot so I'll be seeing you guys at San Diego! Oh and OmegaDonut I got our 5th round match video saved I'll upload it sometime tomorrow if you still want it. Great seeing you guys there and I had a lot of fun matches.
mattj
blatant Nintendo fanboy
I'm glad everybody got back on topic! Fun times!
BTW, I'm getting interviewed by the St. Louis Post Dispatch Tommorrow. Is anyone else getting interviewed by their local papers? Mention Smogon if you can ;P
Oh yeah, my warstory is up! ^.6
BTW, I'm up for getting my Worlds team publicly rated. It's not like any 1 person could vuild a team to counter every possible team out there :P You just use something good and hope you don't get a really poor matchup...
BTW, I'm getting interviewed by the St. Louis Post Dispatch Tommorrow. Is anyone else getting interviewed by their local papers? Mention Smogon if you can ;P
Oh yeah, my warstory is up! ^.6
BTW, I'm up for getting my Worlds team publicly rated. It's not like any 1 person could vuild a team to counter every possible team out there :P You just use something good and hope you don't get a really poor matchup...
it sucks to be you~
speaking of which, the battle I have saved on my vs recorder is our final bracket battle...
The event made me realize my strategy has some fundamental flaws so I gotta take these next weeks to really plan something out. Not like last time where I waited till the last week and barely had time to train everything...
Also, if they do this best 2 out of 3 stadium format for Worlds then that significantly changes things as well.
Also, if they do this best 2 out of 3 stadium format for Worlds then that significantly changes things as well.
Yes, the Japanese are imo going to do much better than the USA at Worlds; I have never faced a European player before in an actual match so they are sort of the dark horse in my eyes.
I disagree with the bolded part though. We lost because the Japanese players were just flat out better; not because we were "uptight about our teams" but because the Japanese players as a whole beat the USA players. Granted there were a few exceptions like Halordain, but for the most part that's the way it was(IIRC, only 3 USA players made it past the first round). The Japanese had been playing that style of play for at least two years at the time and were much more comfortable with it. We, on the other hand, as a whole didn't know as much about the ins and outs of doubles with teams of 4 only. I used my team that I used against other people, so it's not like we were just hiding away in our houses training to be the very best and not actually testing our stuff. At the end of the day, Japan was better than us as a whole, not because we were bad; they were just better than we were.
drcossack
I'm everywhere, you ain't never there
This is very true. I think that was one of my problems and the reason why I went through MANY revisions when I was making mine. I was trying to figure out how to beat Auto-Hail (*cough* Abomasnow *cough*) and other Weather Teams (not being too worried about Sandstorm, I figured Hippowdon wouldn't see a lot of use), and I did. Trick Room also concerned me, but it's fairly easy to predict that and block it with Taunt.
It was a pain, but I finally settled on a team that could do everything against my biggest threats, while still being able to kick ass. If I didn't have to worry about Item Clause, I'd have an even easier time with my team.
Which, as I'm sure you realize, is the reason I posted. If I didn't care I would be content to think "lol tournaments" as I already did before the VGC. I don't know how it's remotely acceptable to not be consistent here, when you're talking about the money and time the players have to expend that I already referenced.
First, if I were actually in a position to positively impact how these tournaments are run you can bet that I would take it. I'm pretty sure a lot of people who post here at Smogon would love a meaningful job with Nintendo of America or TPCI.
Second, I will remind you that if there is anyone here who has demonstrated that he is willing to devote countless hours of effort and thought into orchestrating competitive pokémon, it's me. It's not a coincidence that creator of the Suspect Test Process that aims to better competitive pokemon is the one who posted the rant you replied to. (I will also take this opportunity to point out that the results of Suspect Test process do indeed stretch to Wi-fi, as Latias started to see use in "standard" Wi-fi battles the day she was given a Stage 2 OU Tag, so any argument that the efforts of myself and the other Tiering Contributors apply only to Shoddy would be invalid.)
Usually when challenging someone to offer a solution to a problem the person expressed disappointment in, it is done to imply that the person is not willing or able to do so and is being a armchair quarterback. It can be an effective tactic, but if the implication was intentional, I again remind you that I am just about the last person on these forums or even any pokemon community who wouldn't be both willing and able to actually do something to benefit competitive pokemon.
So that said, yes, I would try out a 6v6 official tournaments. Your less subtle implication here is that they can take way too long to be feasible for a good tournament. I ask you, what's worse—having pokemon battles that may take 30-40 minutes longer than 2v2 ones to complete, or driving 1300 miles for little more than the hacked intangible pixels I referred to earlier? And do you honestly think that the same people who are willing to drive those 1300 miles for a pokemon tournament are the same people who would even remotely care about a battle taking 30 minutes longer than a doubles one would?
Further, do you think that these people actually prefer doubles to singles? Do you think that Nintendo is actually reaching out to more people and drawing more people in with doubles tourneys than they would if they promoted singles tournaments? There is almost no evidence to support that doubles would actually get them more participants than singles. The cartridges have tried to promote doubles by increasing the number of "mandatory" doubles battles in the game, but besides this, there's nothing that Nintendo's trying to do in the actual games to really promote doubles. The cartoon is an even worse offender in the doubles cause, assuming there even is one—doubles battle are very rare and conducted confusingly when they happen. Doubles-exclusive moves like Helping Hand and Follow Me are rarely if even seen (I vaguely recall an episode about Plusle and Minun that features HH but I'm not going to look it up and remember the episode more for the two pokemon than anything noteworthy or memorable about doubles). None of the movies have even prominently featured doubles to my memory either, at least not to the point where a considerable number of people would actually be attracted to pokemon and the cartridges and therefore doubles tournaments more than they would be if any of the movies were not successful in this ultimate aim of getting people to the tourneys through "non-doubles efforts" (which means everything else but doubles).
In conclusion, if Nintendo's actually been trying to make doubles more popular so that their tournaments that they seem to insist on being doubles are better attended, they're not doing a good job of it. I don't think they're trying, but this of course begs the real question of "why is everything doubles".
To get back on track, if the speed of 1v1 battles were an issue, I would actually use a Doduo or Dodrio mode to speed up the Regional, National and World battles. It's not as if this "technology" hasn't existed for a decade or anything, or that it couldn't be easily utilized on the Regional, National and World level if speed is actually a concern.
And I personally don't think that a 1v1 Stadium Mode is more "Rock Paper Scissors" than 2v2 is. What's more important is that I definitely don't think that this is the reason Nintendo hasn't tried it. I've actually posted on these forums a couple times that best-of-three or -five Stadium Mode battles would go a long way to combating the valid concern of one 3v3 battle deciding an entire match, and this would still allow matches to be completed in a very quick fashion.
Finally, I'm not going to flatter myself by saying I hope someone at Nintendo is reading my posts about this, or that if my ideas are used up it will be unfair to me or something dumb like that, because if I cared about that I wouldn't post them. I will say that it is someone's actual job to come up with ideas like this and try them out. It's also easy for me to criticize the official tourneys from afar, and not even be cognizant of the many good things that do go into the tournaments (or at least not acknowledge them). But I literally don't know if these things have been thought of, and that's what bothers me.
It is a risk everyone knows, and my point is that this is not really going to help them in future tournaments if they want them to be more successful. Everyone knowing this may have hurt the expected turnout if it had been conducted differently, which is something I think or at least hope they've considered.
And, money may be tight for them but it's much tighter for their target audience. Do you think Omega and ipl would have been as keen on trekking 3100 miles last year when gas prices were $4.00 per gallon? Or that the effects of the bad economy didn't still keep families (which I again intentionally use instead of players) from making a three-hour trip for a tourney that son or daughter may not even have a chance to play in?
Also, Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum were wildly successful, considering that Pokemon is Nintendo's best-selling game all time. You'd think that if anyone had the money to be able to try and make more money off of an already huge success through Official Tournaments, it would be NOA, but I'm just guessing here cause I'm not about to actually look up their financials.
I've touched on a lot of this already, agree with most of it, and am glad you at least see the point of these tournaments. I think their numbers would be a lot better if they did singles tournaments, as I've stated. And maybe if those who precommitted were guaranteed a free plushie, while those who did not had a better chance of getting in than those promised the plushie, the effect of this "advertising" would have been better for all parties. Offering something like 500 plushies nationwide or 1,000 for the whole world or something is seriously a drop in the Wailmer Pail for not only Nintendo but NOA and The Pokémon Company as well, given how much Nintendo has made from Pokemon. They don't have to be big plushies at all, even three inches or whatever is good enough for the effect. Like $2,000-$5,000 to manufacture and ship 1,000 free plushies around the world to Regional and National Tournament sites of, say, the starter pokemon of Generation Whatever? That would be made up by just one of every ten people targeted by this marketing scheme buying the Gen five pokemon game (or HGSS to be realistic, or both) that would not otherwise have. Hell, they could even make the plushies be Ho-oh and Lugia dolls to directly promote interest in their next game.
And I just thought of this off the top of my head in like two minutes, with no big ad agency or marketing directive at all. I'm not patting myself on the back or anything of even really insisting it's a great idea, but as I stated above, I honestly wonder if they are thinking of stuff like this, or if they really think a Shiny Milotic is good enough to help advertise the game, or at least a good enough "parting gift" for those who came all the way for literally nothing else.
If you were running the tournaments and were tempted to drop them, you'd probably be fired for even suggesting it. You're giving Smogon way too much credit here for the "ungrateful everyone"—I highly doubt the Sponsors and Nintendo think everyone is ungrateful for their efforts. And what would they care? "We" are going to buy the next game anyway, aren't we? What's it to them if they're able to reach out to just enough new people to offset the cost of them holding these tournaments?
I honestly think you're way off base here, lol. We wrote and write for the site because we knew what we were getting into. We didn't expect money or anything else, and we still don't. The comparison to the chance of getting to play in a tournament is therefore pretty faulty. We didn't set out in 2004 to write articles so that, someday five years later when Smogon is actually a legitimate success, we could ask chaos for the money we deserved five years ago. Wasting time, haha...I'd rather waste time writing articles (or even long posts on internet forums) than spending $100 on gas driving 400 miles for a tournament I won't get into or get anything out of besides some random UU pokemon.
And "metagame that no one but Smogon cares about", that's kind of rich. Keep telling yourself that, and I will keep watching random youtube battles that feature strategies and competitive movesets that originated on Smogon. And that, *gasp* aren't 2v2. Can you tell me the last time you saw a YouTube battle of 2v2? Does anybody play 2v2? Anyone? Seriously? And spare me a "it's because Smogon doesn't promote it" argument, please—you can't blame us for not promoting 2v2 while at the same time continue to think that Nintendo's tournaments are the untouchable be all and end all of competitive pokemon.
And maybe we care a lot more about actually making competitive pokemon better and being the #1 site for competitive pokemon than "yielding more publicity" or trying to make money.
I don't know, ask Aeolus or something. Not in my recent memory have we promised a T-Shirt for winning a tourney, whatever you're referencing happened like three years ago and Aeolus and our Tournament staff have learned form our mistakes and seen the popularity of our Tournaments and Smogon Tours grow at every turn. And we definitely didn't have the funds to be able to offer anything at all, I don't know why you think comparing what we can offer materially to what a company ranked as high as #28 in the Fortune 500 can is a fair comparison, let alone a relevant one. Our progress regardless is far more promising than someone being disqualified for having too many pokeballs in their bag three years ago, then someone else being guilty of a worse infraction just two days ago in the latest tournament but being excused. Which says nothing of the fact that we are literally kids and young adults trying to run these tournaments, where Nintendo and TPCI is made up of professionals who make money for this stuff.
Also, I'm sure OmegaDonut would rather his official title not be sullied by the very real specter of one of his fellow World Championship participants not being blatantly guilty of hacking.
And I hate to say I told you so, but you have forever championed Nintendo and their tournaments and their metagame as king, and faulted us here at Smogon for not following them or promoting 2v2. Aside from my repeated insistence that you personally do this in a reasonable manner, tell me why this latest step in the wrong direction of how Nintendo holds their Official Tournaments should be anything but discouraging to me and the rest of the people here at Smogon who have a say in what we "study". Maybe you shouldn't be such a Nintendo apologist. Maybe you're the one being tricked here into supporting blindly, even after they spit in your face by allowing someone who admitted to the hacking you utterly despise to get in and make it to Worlds while your pristine, unsullied hands did not even get a chance to reach for a Regional Title this year.
edit: actually, don't bother responding to the stuff about us being hypocritical. besides most of it being wrong, it's actually off topic since it has nothing to do with nintendo's tourney and how they could make it better
Deleted User 33526
Banned deucer.
Don't worry, I was able to get 70 straight wins on Pbr against japanese players. Trust me, we have advantage this year.
imperfectluck
Banned deucer.
I bred my own Pokemon and lost critical matches against OmegaDonut when one of my Pokemon could have had better IVs in a crucial stat. I didn't have the time or access to anything that could have improved my situation, while people like Sidd and Alakapimp can Pokesav anything they want in a few minutes. I don't approve of the use of external devices and agree that Alakapimp should have been disqualified as he used a Pokemon that was obviously hacked. As for using singles 6v6 as the standard format, I would much rather see a return of Stadium mode 3v3 which involves much more strategizing and takes much less time to execute, at least until when Nintendo adds an option to remove animations from link battles which would make it more feasible to have 6v6 battles. It is also horribly arrogant in my opinion to think that Smogon is the be all end all of competitive 6v6 battling, stuff like Calm Mind Suicune as a random example of a standard set is hardly groundbreaking stuff by any means. Other competitors at VGC came up with their teams completely without any input from Smogon, myself included.
Hey IPL--
We were both wrong. Scarfed Metagross doesn't outspeed Naive Azelf, and doesn't get beat by it. It ties it. I can't remember exactly, but the fact that my Metagross won the speed tie might've made a difference in our last match.
Does nobody have a video of the Finals matches? I'm trying to remember some of the details for my warstory, and failing.
We were both wrong. Scarfed Metagross doesn't outspeed Naive Azelf, and doesn't get beat by it. It ties it. I can't remember exactly, but the fact that my Metagross won the speed tie might've made a difference in our last match.
Does nobody have a video of the Finals matches? I'm trying to remember some of the details for my warstory, and failing.
Let my start by saying congratulations Omega and good luck to you and the rest of smogon at worlds.
I cannot begin to understand what Nintendo/PUI/whatever the hell the people in charge are called are thinking with these tournaments. I don't get the point of holding these tournaments if the locations are going to be so limited and turning down in Philadelphia's case what like 1000 people from playing. The point of a tournament like this would be to promote the games and trust me, if they did it right it would work. My memory is a little hazy but I'm pretty sure hearing about that Seattle flyquaza tournament and JAA was what got my to get back into Pokemon. I, like I'm sure most people here, loved pokemon when I was a kid, however I stopped playing them because I had outgrown the ingame play. However the chance at winning official tournaments and some awesome prizes gave me a reason to play the games and learn the competative aspects. Pokemon cries out for competitive play, as we all can see by how popular smogon is, and for the most part Nintendo has ignored that aspect. Sure there is shoddy but why would I need to buy anything to keep playing on Shoddy? It wouldn't but these tournaments would. So if you think about all these people like us that want to play in Nintendo's tournaments buying the new games for almost solely that reason you can see why Nintendo would be smart to hold these tournaments. But that beings me back to the original point of why would they limit the entrants and locations so much?
Now on to the hacking debate. I think a big problem is detecting hacking. It sounds like Nintendo had no way of detecting legal hacks that were done properly. If that's the case, it's a tough situation. It is not fair to the people that spent all the extra time breeding for multiple flawless iv's and whatnot only to have someone hack the same thing in a matter of seconds. I don't like idea of legal hacks being fair game. The people that devote themselves to getting the best ivs and putting all the time into their pokemon should have an advantage. Think of it like sports, if you don't put time into training and practice you sholdn't be rewarded by being on equal footing with someone who worked there ass off, natural talent aside (I was gonna use a steroids metaphor but I don't think it fits exactly). Basically Nintendo needs to get their shit together and be able to detect hacks with legal stats too. If that's not an option outline exactly what is and isn't legal so we don't waste our time. How Alaka wasn't dq'd is beyond me. He had illegal stats and was caught which is clearly against the rules. I'll leave it at that.
Doubles vs. singles. I have always liked doubles, maybe not more than singles but I still like it.. I like that it allows strategies obscure like molf, obi mode, etc. However singles is much more prefered by most people and should be the standard. However why only choose one? What's stopping them from having seperate singles and doubles tournys? People always say it's the time, as jump said people were willing to drive crazy distances and spend lot's of money so it would mean that it takes up too much time for nintendo and that time is money. I really fail to see how events like these wouldn't be profitable for nintendo no matter how large they are. Hell I'm sure each and every participant would have even been willing to pay like a $10 entry fee even if it was unprofitavle for nintendo. This kinda reminds me of the mass disappointment when L4D2 was announced. While 99% of games don't have the longtime support that Valve had been giving titles like TF2 it became expected of the company and L4D. Fans were loyal to Valve because of they continued to support games instead of pumping out sequals and priced dlc. While nintendo never promised us tournaments it's plenty reasonable to expect a little support for all our loyalty, even if it's not profitable.
I feel like I wanted to say some more but I'm at a loss. Oh and I feel like some of that might be a little incoherant so my apologies if it is. Once again congrats to Omega and good luck all.
I cannot begin to understand what Nintendo/PUI/whatever the hell the people in charge are called are thinking with these tournaments. I don't get the point of holding these tournaments if the locations are going to be so limited and turning down in Philadelphia's case what like 1000 people from playing. The point of a tournament like this would be to promote the games and trust me, if they did it right it would work. My memory is a little hazy but I'm pretty sure hearing about that Seattle flyquaza tournament and JAA was what got my to get back into Pokemon. I, like I'm sure most people here, loved pokemon when I was a kid, however I stopped playing them because I had outgrown the ingame play. However the chance at winning official tournaments and some awesome prizes gave me a reason to play the games and learn the competative aspects. Pokemon cries out for competitive play, as we all can see by how popular smogon is, and for the most part Nintendo has ignored that aspect. Sure there is shoddy but why would I need to buy anything to keep playing on Shoddy? It wouldn't but these tournaments would. So if you think about all these people like us that want to play in Nintendo's tournaments buying the new games for almost solely that reason you can see why Nintendo would be smart to hold these tournaments. But that beings me back to the original point of why would they limit the entrants and locations so much?
Now on to the hacking debate. I think a big problem is detecting hacking. It sounds like Nintendo had no way of detecting legal hacks that were done properly. If that's the case, it's a tough situation. It is not fair to the people that spent all the extra time breeding for multiple flawless iv's and whatnot only to have someone hack the same thing in a matter of seconds. I don't like idea of legal hacks being fair game. The people that devote themselves to getting the best ivs and putting all the time into their pokemon should have an advantage. Think of it like sports, if you don't put time into training and practice you sholdn't be rewarded by being on equal footing with someone who worked there ass off, natural talent aside (I was gonna use a steroids metaphor but I don't think it fits exactly). Basically Nintendo needs to get their shit together and be able to detect hacks with legal stats too. If that's not an option outline exactly what is and isn't legal so we don't waste our time. How Alaka wasn't dq'd is beyond me. He had illegal stats and was caught which is clearly against the rules. I'll leave it at that.
Doubles vs. singles. I have always liked doubles, maybe not more than singles but I still like it.. I like that it allows strategies obscure like molf, obi mode, etc. However singles is much more prefered by most people and should be the standard. However why only choose one? What's stopping them from having seperate singles and doubles tournys? People always say it's the time, as jump said people were willing to drive crazy distances and spend lot's of money so it would mean that it takes up too much time for nintendo and that time is money. I really fail to see how events like these wouldn't be profitable for nintendo no matter how large they are. Hell I'm sure each and every participant would have even been willing to pay like a $10 entry fee even if it was unprofitavle for nintendo. This kinda reminds me of the mass disappointment when L4D2 was announced. While 99% of games don't have the longtime support that Valve had been giving titles like TF2 it became expected of the company and L4D. Fans were loyal to Valve because of they continued to support games instead of pumping out sequals and priced dlc. While nintendo never promised us tournaments it's plenty reasonable to expect a little support for all our loyalty, even if it's not profitable.
I feel like I wanted to say some more but I'm at a loss. Oh and I feel like some of that might be a little incoherant so my apologies if it is. Once again congrats to Omega and good luck all.
I don't really want to get involved in your argument with FiveKRrunner, but Pokemon is second all time best selling series, with Mario's games being first. It's still a very high selling game series though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises
edit = lol, games that come in bundles are still considered game sales, since it's not like the game doesn't exist or the buyer gets it for free(usually). They still pay extra for it. The link is not game sales of the game solely by itself, which you didn't say explicitly, but I understand what you were trying to say.
Excellent, now all we need is for you to play them and win. Oh wait, never mind, I forgot a world tournament is an entirely different setting and frame of mind than your couch.
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