Discussion December PTCGO Pokebeach Tournament Suggestions

DashKing

DashKing

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Let me preface this by saying that this is my opinion and suggestions. This is something I would like to happen, but this is my opinion.

I would love to compete in the December Pokebeach. The Pokemon and Pokebeach community is great and helps me improve my player ability. When I first discovered this site, I was really excited about competing in the tournament. However, I quickly realized that I couldn't compete with many people with a bigger card pool than I had. I would love to have continued to collect, but I didn't have enough time for grinding for all of the big ticket cards or specific cards for niche strategies. With less time grinding, I'll have more time to increase my player skill rather than grinding with something like night march. I also noticed that the only way to win was to play meta decks. And while that is perfectly fine, I would love if creativity was encouraged, even if not a premium member. I understand there may be financial obstacles, but I feel that could increase creativity and innovation. My suggestions are as follows:
  1. To help include all types of competitive fans, use a program like TCGOne (a program that gives you all the cards when you log in) in a current format
  2. Give an extra reward to those in the Top 8 with "creative decks" as voted by either writers or readers
  3. Extend the time during weekdays for each round for those working or in school
I feel that with suggestions, the quality of the tournament could increase. Thank you to the management for considering these points. I'd be happy to debate anything from the above with anyone. Thanks again!
 
Hi, @DashKing . I'll be running the tournament for December. I'm glad that you want to participate in the upcoming event next month. Over 96 people apply for entry every month, so there are always lot of people looking forward to it.
  1. While TCGOne is an ambitious program with passion behind it, it doesn't fall under the umbrella of TPCi's branding and all the support that would go behind it. PTCGO follows the flow of the actual TCG fairly accurately with its game play and resource management (randomized packs of cards, etc). Part of the charm of any TCG is the acquisition of resources, either from buying packs (buy a pack IRL and get a pack in game? Woah!), buying singles, or trading. Being given everything from the get go as TCGOne allows wouldn't fit very well within a tournament environment. It also wouldn't be right to offer actual packs as prizes while not using the actual PTCGO software. Doing so would seem to be an action made in bad faith. Back in 2010 we used to have tournaments over Skype, and people still continue to play VG-style brackets using Pokemon Showdown. For the integrity of our events though we must continue to use the official software. While we aren't a sanctioned or official Play! Pokemon event, we strive to keep it as close to the real deal as possible!
  2. Our Creative Deck Awards are only eligible to Premium members who ranked outside of the Top 8. What players win within the Top 8 bracket would be more than they could've earned with a CDA, and with the limited resources available for prizing, we allocate prize support to the most appropriate places.
  3. Each round is open for four days, so that's 96 hours of availability. This is a very generous amount of time that allows our participants to play their matches on their own schedule within that period.
If you have any other questions let me know. You might even have some questions that I can't divulge answers to. We're always open to hear suggestions. Know however that discussions do take place between the TOs on a monthly basis on what we want to do in the future— I won't discuss those plans publicly, though.
 
First of all, congrats to both you and @JGB146 have done a great job transitioning from @PMJ Id like to let you know the work doesnt go unnoticed.

The IRL prizes that you offer, for a free tournament is great, and also balancing Member & non-Member perks...seems worthwhile whatever choice someone makes.

Any thoughts of expanding beyond 96 entries, or is that a sweet spot that gets a tournament done in a month?
 
semurphy444 said:
First of all, congrats to both you and @JGB146 have done a great job transitioning from @PMJ Id like to let you know the work doesnt go unnoticed.

The IRL prizes that you offer, for a free tournament is great, and also balancing Member & non-Member perks...seems worthwhile whatever choice someone makes.

Any thoughts of expanding beyond 96 entries, or is that a sweet spot that gets a tournament done in a month?
Click to expand...

Thanks :)

We have talked about expanding things once or twice. Those talks always end up with other changes ranking higher in priority. The biggest problem with growing the size of the tournament is that we can't grow the prizing accordingly. So as things got larger, top 8 starts to require a 6-1 or better record, which then leads to a lot of people dropping early on. The other side of the coin is that we aren't sure what benefit a larger tournament would really provide. There have only been a few months where the waitlist was large enough to accommodate 128 players, and having a consistent number of entrants is beneficial for tracking things on our end.

I think this will stay on the "to be considered once more pressing things are complete" list for now.
 
I'd personally love to see it go up to 128 if the interest was there to justify it (even if it meant extra elimination rounds or three day rounds or whatever, needing x-1 does seem painful) but until then I guess I'll keep refreshing the day the tournament goes up and hope I'm not one of the unlucky ones.
 
We're going to monitor the size of the wait list over the next few months and see if it is large enough to support a size increase.
 
I think another thing that was brought up the last time a thread like this popped up was the possibility of doing Expanded instead. Especially for months like November, February, May, and August when a new set comes out on their first Fridays, but they don't become legal then until the next month so everyone has to end up playing a whole months worth of a dead format. I think it's also nice to just change things once in a while as well. I still think Standard should be the main format, but I wouldn't mind Expanded over a Standard that is about to change completely within a few weeks after the tournament starting.
 
Could we possibly put a new rule in to make these matches more like the real thing an implement a clock between both competitors. Once an agreed upon time is set and both competitors are present they agree to end the match after 45 minutes (or whatever time length Pokebeach would want) have passed from when they start and the match is done regardless. It just doesn't seem practical to have all these stall/mill decks with Lusamines that can literally drag one game 30 minutes to an a hour in the format that this tournament runs, when irl you wouldn't have time do all these moves.

Of course you would have a little bit of an honor code between both competitors on when they started and when time was up and I probably wouldn't mess with the whole 2 extra hand thing for each competitor because some people would get confused. But at least it would take out someone just recycling through their decks over and over, and it would actually resemble playing irl play.
 
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JGB146 said:
Thanks :)

We have talked about expanding things once or twice. Those talks always end up with other changes ranking higher in priority. The biggest problem with growing the size of the tournament is that we can't grow the prizing accordingly. So as things got larger, top 8 starts to require a 6-1 or better record, which then leads to a lot of people dropping early on. The other side of the coin is that we aren't sure what benefit a larger tournament would really provide. There have only been a few months where the waitlist was large enough to accommodate 128 players, and having a consistent number of entrants is beneficial for tracking things on our end.

I think this will stay on the "to be considered once more pressing things are complete" list for now.
Click to expand...
I also want to add a suggestion. It's always sad when the winner of the last tournament can't get an entry in the next and thus cannot defend his title. What if the champion and/or top 8 get guaranteed entry in the next tournament? That would be much cooler and more competitive.
 
mordacazir said:
I also want to add a suggestion. It's always sad when the winner of the last tournament can't get an entry in the next and thus cannot defend his title. What if the champion and/or top 8 get guaranteed entry in the next tournament? That would be much cooler and more competitive.
Click to expand...

Remember that the winner of the tournament isn't actually determined by the time the next tournament begins - in fact in December the top 8 won't even be officially determined by Jan 1. So the Top 8 maybe would be usually possible, but not the winner entry - and a guaranteed slot for all 8 is a lot more to expect.
 
mordacazir said:
It's always sad when the winner of the last tournament can't get an entry in the next and thus cannot defend his title.
Click to expand...

Anyone who is eligible to play is allowed to play in succession no matter their place. We don't stop a champion from the previous event from jumping into the next one or two they want to participate in.
 
PokeMedic said:
Anyone who is eligible to play is allowed to play in succession no matter their place. We don't stop a champion from the previous event from jumping into the next one or two they want to participate in.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing they're referring to the preference (for non-paid supporters) for those who haven't participated in the most recent round of the tournament in the subsequent round.
 
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