VGC Autumn Regionals 2015

[Talon87]

The VGC 2016 season kicks off with this, the first of our three regional tournaments. We're a little late to the party this time -- it's actually already begun in most Fall 2015 locations, with only San Jose, CA and Fort Wayne, IN left the weekend of October 17.

I haven't been following too closely, tbh. I'm mostly just posting this thread to share news about the format for this tournament season. From what I can tell, TPCi is breaking things down by season (fall/winter/spring/summer). I believe they did something similar in 2013, with Fall 2013 being BW2 format but the remainder of the VGC 2014 season (Winter 2014, Spring 2014, and Worlds 2014) being the KalosDex format of XY. Well, they haven't made an announcement that the entire VGC 2016 season is going to be ORAS Standard. But they have declared that Autumn 2015 is ORAS Standard. This appears to leave the door open for either Winter 2016 (unlikely) or Spring 2016 (likely) to be a Z-based format.

The other half of why I'm posting this thread was just to give those of us who care anything at all about VGC to go ahead and discuss what we'd like to see in the 2016 format. What do you want allowed, what do you want banned, etc.

But of course, feel free to discuss the actual Autumn 2015 Regional Championships too.

[Talon87]

In 2014, I did a lot of the thread posting here at home when it came to VGC discussion. I didn't keep up with the 2015 season because I didn't have ORAS and life took a very busy turn around this time last year. But it struck me when we didn't have much discussion about Worlds 2015 that something must have been off about the 2015 season. So, I finally went ahead and looked into it ...

... and discovered, much to my not surprise, that VGC 2015 was essentially "BW2 & Mega Kangaskhan." Oh look, it's two genies on every team. Oh look, it's Cresselia and Heatran on every team. I'm not exaggerating either! The breakdown by team:

• Worlds 2015 1st place: Mega Kangaskhan / Heatran / Thundurus / Landorus-T / Cresselia / Amoongus
• Worlds 2015 2nd place: Mega Kangaskhan / Volcarona / Thundurus / Landorus-T / Cresselia / Aegislash
• US Nationals 6th place: Mega Kangaskhan / Heatran / Thundurus / Landorus-T / Milotic / Amoongus

Half of players ran minor permutations on the exact same team, including the world champion, and this team was essentially "BW2 meta meets Mega Kangaskhan." Don't get me wrong. I recognize that there are other XY contributions to the VGC 2015 meta. Movesets, abilities, creatures, and items. I get it. But by and large, these teams not only look like BW2's but from watching the matches they feel like them too.



"Reminiscent of a popular strategy from 2013" ... "reminiscent" my ass! It's clear as day to anyone who remembers Worlds 2013: these teams are 100% 90% copied and pasted from BW2, with the inclusion of (mostly) Mega Kangaskhan and (less so) a few other creatures to round things out for our new meta. "New" ... what a joke.

What's really sad, too, is that outside of the players with emotional attachment to the Gen 5 tournament scene, no one seems to like this format. I understand if a player who went from being a nobody to being a Seniors/Masters tournament winner during the 2012 or 2013 seasons looks back on 2013 lovingly. Those were the years they discovered hangouts like Nugget Bridge. Those were the years they made so many new friends. Those were the years everything was exciting and raw. There's going to be a lot of nostalgia there, absolutely, and I can forgive such players for looking at VGC 2015 and going, "THANK GOD! T_T I missed you so much." .................. But for everybody else, VGC 2013 was a blahfest. Boring legends everywhere. Little room at the top for originality. The code had been cracked and everyone who was anyone knew better than to deviate from what science had shown was the very best team. Sure, if your goal is to win then it makes sense why you'd do this, but for everyone else watching at home, Worlds 2013 was dull and Worlds 2015 was even duller.

Contrast this with Worlds 2014. The world lost their shit over Sejun Park's upset with Pachi-freakin'-risu, but even before then, Worlds 2014 was a really fun event to tune in to. Lots of variety, loads of different teams ... it was fun, it was interesting, to see who would come out on top. VGC 2014 wasn't just the sort of format you want to watch: it was also the sort of format you want to play in. I sunk my teeth into it. So did Jeri, and Roto, and others. Sure, none of us on UPN were particularly great at it, but we all tried to improve and we all had fun doing it.

So with all this stated, if I had to express one hope for VGC 2016, it would be that it doesn't adhere to the Standard Format. NationalDex, be gone! I'm not saying I want to see a return to the KalosDex of VGC 2014 either. I think that risks trading one slave master for another. After all, what's the difference between, "2015 is dumb! Everyone's just repeating what worked for them in 2013!" and the same for 2016 and 2014? Nothing, really. Just fewer hideous legendaries to look at. But what I would like them to do, and what they did do with the KalosDex format of 2014 ... would be for them to implement a brand-new, previously-unannounced format for the 2016 tournament season. Surprise us. Give us something we didn't see coming. Maybe you can make it "NationalDex minus legendaries," and that would introduce enough uncertainty to throw the VGC veterans back into the lab to research what teams work best. Maybe you can do something more surprising like, "Your team members' primary typings must be in adjacent alphabetical order" (e.g. Fighting Fire Flying, not Fighting Flying Grass) or "Everything on your team has to have a 4x weakness to one of the eighteen types." Some meta that is zany and fun and unpredictable. Something that will force new and old alike to research what works well and what doesn't. Something that's likelier to ensure a diverse and uncertain worlds tournament stage.

The game's supposed to be fun. Make it fun, TPCi. And make it fun for us. Don't coddle the 0.1% who perpetually sit on the throne of the VGC world. Make it fun for the 99.9% you're trying to convince to spend their time and money on VGC endeavors instead of something else.

[rotomotorz]

I really wish I could go to one of these regionals and wreck face with my Regigigas team. Hopefully either the ruleset gets changed or someone brings some surprise team during winters/springs/nats. The senior division winner of 2015 brought a Machamp and Mega Charizard and won soundly, even if he used some of the popular Pokemon. Why can't other people do that too

[Jerichi]

I really wouldn't mind it if the meta was dominated by a handful of diverse Pokémon that all did different things but didn't synergize well on a team of six, allowing you two or so slots to fill with niche fillers. But the National Dex Meta just has too many good Pokémon that work too well together.

[Talon87]

Haven't heard who won Fort Wayne yet, but I did learn from this post that the modified Swiss preliminary had eight rounds, which would suggest 2^8 = ~256 contestants showed up to Masters in Fort Wayne last Saturday.

The poster also provides two seemingly contradictory pieces of information:

1. that the cutoff for Top 16 was in the upper middle of the 6-2 bracket and so numerous 6-2s ended up failing to make it on the next round while a few lucky 6-2s did make it
2. that there were only two 7-1s, because 4th place going into the top cut was a 6-2

If the second claim is correct, it suggests far, far fewer than ~256 players. Because with 256 players (8 rounds), you'd have:

End of Round 1:           128, 128
End of Round 2:          64, 128, 64
End of Round 3:         32, 96, 96, 32
End of Round 4:       16, 64, 96, 64, 16
End of Round 5:      8, 40, 80, 80, 40, 8
End of Round 6:    4, 24, 60, 80, 60, 24, 4
End of Round 7:  2, 14, 42, 70, 70, 42, 14, 2
End of Round 8: 1, 8, 28, 56, 70, 56, 28, 8, 1

So we wouldn't expect just two 7-1s: we'd expect about eight of them. While other metrics are used to determine rankings, not just the W-L count, the W-L count is the primary metric. As far as I know, none of these tournaments ever allow a 6-2 to rank ahead of a 7-1 on the basis of the 7-1 having "all easy opponents" while the 6-2 had "two really tough opponents in their two losses." That sort of information can be used to sort out the 6-2s from one another, but I don't think it's ever used to rank a 6-2 ahead of a 7-1.

Anyway, let's not worry about the possible contradiction. The point is, if there were eight rounds of modified Swiss, then there were roughly 256 in attendance. That's pretty crazy. It also means that as far as a Top 16 cutoff goes ...

• 1st is the 8-0
• 2nd thru 9th are the eight 7-1s
• 10th thru 16th are the top seven 6-2s

In other words, only 25% of 6-2s (seven out of twenty-eight) were considered "good enough" to make it on to the next level. 75% of players who 6-2'd were sent home.

This could largely be alleviated by making the top cut be the Top 32 instead of the Top 16 when you have closer to 256 players than 128 players in attendance. If you did Top 32, then only the bottommost five 6-2s would be told, "Sorry. =\" That would still suck to hear, but it'd be a lot better than sending home 75% of the group.

Alternatively, we could step back and look at it like this: "6-2 is the Wild Card bracket. If you really want to move on, you should be good enough to be a 7-1 or an 8-0. Don't bitch at us for sending some 6-2s forward and not you. The fact that we send any 6-2s forward at all is generous on our part." This makes losses less forgiving (which is apparently the status quo! ), but it also saves people a lot of grief if they can get it through their heads that 6-2, as awesome as it is, "isn't good enough" and "sorry :\ , try again next year".

I don't know what the best solution is. All I know is, having ~256 people show up for the Master's division alone is insane. With the field already being so crowded with in-house celebrities, and with every year attracting more and more no-name hopefuls, it seems to me like the grief is only going to get greater as time goes on if nothing else changes.

[rotomotorz]

This is a common criticism of the system as the 6-2s who move on do so out of luck that they fought harder opponents when they lost or beat one person that did really well while one who didn't get in only fought easy opponents. It's not in the player's control at all as to who they face, although the administration at the event tries to balance it as much as possible it's still not that great a system.

[rotomotorz]

http://www.pokemon.com/us/play-pokem...ment-analysis/

So apparently Autumn regionals brought a helluva lot more variety tan expected. That's pretty cool actually. Expert Belt Chandelure new meta

[Talon87]

Originally Posted by rotomotorz

http://www.pokemon.com/us/play-pokem...ment-analysis/

So apparently Autumn regionals brought a helluva lot more variety tan expected. That's pretty cool actually. Expert Belt Chandelure new meta

Ehhhhhh ... the opening two paragraphs of the article say nothing more than, "Anticipating the same six Pokémon to dominate the meta, many players opted for anti-meta teams this regionals." I wouldn't call that a sign of unanticipated variety so much as a sign of the stagnant non-variety that so clogs the meta right now.

Putting it another way: it's a sign of the times when the official site decides to put out an article celebrating "the untried and untrue" strategems used at regionals this fall and can only point to a small handful of anecdotal examples. "Man, that Azumarill! A whopping twelve Top Cutters used it on their teams this autumn!" Yeah: and there were how many Top Cutters again? 90 or so? 1 in 7 isn't bad, but let's look at the numbers for Mega Kangaskhan, Cresselia, and the genies, eh? And then let's see if we really think this fall was that diverse.

It's like ... A, TPCi knows the meta is suffocating right now and so they're doing PR damage control to try and make it seem like things are on the up and up for diversity when in reality we're likely in for at least one additional season of the same old, same old. B, the diversity on hand is so uncommon that they're forced to omit any comparisons with the mainstream creatures' usages. The article mentions things like, "And no one ran Will-o-Wisp on their Rotom-Wash this season!" but is unable to provide juicier taglines like "That's more {unexpected creature to show up in Top Cut} than Cresselia!" Hell: you know it's sad when you try to advertise Cresselia holding a new item is a big deal. Like ... you can't even say, "Wowee! Cresselia's been dethroned by {different species}!" You gotta say instead, "Wow! Old Cresselia is out! New Cresselia is in!" It's ... still Cresselia. And the only difference is that instead of holding any older item (e.g. Leftovers) she might've been holding she's now holding a Kee Berry. Great.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Cynical dissection aside, it is at least nice to think that some of the format's top players are using at least one "unexpected" Pokémon on their teams. And I remain ever optimistic that Z will bring with it a new format filled with new challenges.

One idea off the top of my head: since we have six regions now, maybe a "one creature from each region" format. Would be interesting to see what people come up with when they can't Unova spam (Landorus, Thundurus, Amoongus, Conkeldurr) or Sinnoh spam (Heatran, Cresselia, Rotom) but instead have to think up brand-new cores for a little-explored meta.

Thanks for the article share! Even if I was pretty glass half empty towards it. ^^;

[Heather]

The only question there is is would a Mega Pokemon count for Gen 6 or its own gen (mega lop, for example: 6 or 4?). Of course, such a format, either way, lends itself nicely to a Lightning Bruiser/Mighty Glacier combo that I will never be diligent enough to realize.