[DISCUSSION] About VGC17 Tournaments

[GiMYz]

Bad news for VGC players

If you have Twitter and if you happen to follow any of the most famous top players such as Wolfe Glick, Aaron Zheng or Markus Stadter maybe you already know what i'm going to talk about.

We had comforting news about TPCi increasing the prize pool for each of the upcoming Regional and Continental VGC17 events, as they are trying to encourage players who buy Sun/Moon to approach their official competitive format (pLz no h4te sm0gon play3rs). One of the best ways to do this (apart from having a balanced competitive game, which should be obvious) is also to organize bigger and bigger live events, allowing more players to join, compete but also have fun meeting other people sharing their love for Pokemon.. and this is what TPCi is trying to do, or at least this is what we thought.



Cool uh? Well mmm...

It looks like the first official International event that include TCG and VGC17 (formerly the first Sun/Moon-based tournament) that is set on the 8th of December in London (UK, Europe) will have a ridiculous entry fee of 25£ (30,49 US) for JR/SR players, 40£ (48,79 US / 44 Euros) for Masters. But it's not over yet. The upcoming Regionals that are going to close the VGC16 season in North America will feature this new prize pool structure and they are going to be much more expansive to attend, consequently. Of course the more expensive an entry fee, the less players are tempted to join the event, and furthermore the awards for fewer players partecipating is of course, less.

The first result of this big change has been this:



Only 83 Masters for VGC and 571 for TCG (reason being TCG has a much bigger prize pool, which includes Top64 and it somehow make up for the expensive entry fee). Keep in mind that CP points awarded in this tournament count for the VGC17 season, so it's not like people don't want to play the old 2016 format anymore, because it's still the official format until the 1st of December.

I personally don't mind about entry fees in competitive games, as long as they are reasonable and motivate the players to do their best to win, HOWEVER we are talking about a brand new game, with literally no metagame since we have 2-3 weeks to explore the new mechanics, to time to analyze every new pokemon, to finish the game and to prepare a team to be ready for the date of the event..

..and TPCi is telling us to pay an entry fee like that for a tournament like this?

Think about new players approaching competitive Pokemon for the first time, at least here in Europe. This event could have been a huge chance for TPCi to make people get more involved into VGC but most importantly into these events, which should be an opportunity for every Pokemon fan to actually.. have fun. How will a new player - trying to approach VGC - react after he pays that amount of money just to lose 7 matches in a row?

I myself was thinking about traveling to London to attend the event, but after knowing about that entry fee.. my hype for the 2017 season has drastically gone down.

What do you think about this?

[El Miguel VGC]

I can afford going and still will, but it is a bummer and can be seen as a barrier for beginners! On top that, it extra money for the same experience so it has reason but I can understand the frustration.

[Black117]

Been looking at the frustration and a couple minor arguments on twitter regarding how players are going to "pay" for these events. Can't imagine the players having to pay for an entry fee which is about more than the games themselves, thought most will be forced to do it. Not sure if there will be any "changes" regarding the prize support and entry fees, but the fact players are basically "paying" for the support itself is rather off, and disappointing. Not sure what's going on behind the scenes, or the TOs (and higher ups as well), but this isn't a good way to grow the scene.

I'll leave a video of the situation from Wolfey's channel: