The Problem With Small Top Cuts in VGC
We love competitive Pokémon here at Nugget Bridge. We largely think that TPCi has done a great job of improving the tournament system this season by making thoughtful changes such as adding a top cut to North American Regionals, changing the format of the European National tournaments to mirror North American Nationals, and applying a Championship Point system to the Video Game Championships (VGC). Pokémon is never going to get the type of support for competitive play that games like League of Legends, Starcraft, or most fighting games get because competitive players aren’t the primary audience in this case, but I think the changes made to the Play! Pokémon system this year make it pretty clear that the people running Pokémon’s tournament system want our circuit to be as competitive as possible.
One thing that differentiates Pokémon from those other competitive games is that no one is going to make any real money off of Pokémon’s prizes. We play this game in spite of it not having the type of monetary appeal many other games do because we care about it. We like the people we compete with and against, a fairly large group of committed players — in spite of Pokémon’s relatively small VGC playerbase — that has become very chummy. We like the strategy, prediction, and creativity involved in competitive Pokémon, in spite of the game involving more luck than any of us would prefer. Perhaps most of all, we enjoy competing, and a big part of what makes that competition fun is the format of the events. It is part of why Regionals has always felt like a chore on the way to Nationals and, for the best players, on the way to Worlds. Regardless of how much we enjoy the game, the competition part of the game can only be as good of an experience as the format allows it to be. With Pokémon mostly heading in the right direction from a competitive standpoint, one of the most important things to most of the players is ironing out the format of the game’s most important events. With prizes not being a major factor in Pokémon, getting the players to the place in the standings they deserve to be at while letting everyone play a reasonable number of games is the most important part of our tournaments.
In spite of the significant progress TPCi has made this year, it seems that every year there are a handful of needed improvements made to the system that get overshadowed by one or two strange decisions. Once again, all of the positive changes TPCi has made made this year are being overshadowed as we approach the penultimate events of the season by one huge mistake: the decision to force small top cut caps on United States Regionals (8) and, most importantly, on European and North American Nationals (16). Frustratingly, Pokémon VGC endures these smaller top cuts even as Pokémon TCG events, who have had many more years to iron out their qualification system, use the same Swiss system but transition into top cuts that are double our size or larger for the same number of players.
The top cut problem is fundamentally a Swiss problem. Swiss qualification rounds are a colossal improvement over the dark days of full single elimination, but Swiss has two major flaws when applied to Pokémon that require a sizable top cut to mitigate: the vast differences in the difficulty of opponents each player faces and the inherent randomness of a game with as much probability as Pokémon. Small top cuts accent these weaknesses of the Swiss system, greatly reducing the odds of the best players at each event getting to the much more reliable best-of-three rounds. I expect that the reasons for these small top cuts are a combination of TPCi trying to do the most it can with limited time at events while trying to make sure only the best players in tournaments are getting to the end. However, the small top cut sizes right now are often having the opposite impact and are preventing some of the best players from getting the chance to perform in the best-of-three stage that vastly improves the validity of results in a luck-heavy game like Pokémon.
The Role of Swiss in Pokémon
Once the format of only Worlds and then US Nationals, Swiss has expanded to include every live VGC tournament for good reason. Swiss creates a dramatically better experience for players than single elimination did: everyone who attends the event gets to play at least six to eight games and a single strange loss doesn’t eliminate anyone from the event on its own. Pokémon should absolutely continue running the Swiss stage very similarly to how they have in the past, as it is working beautifully and events in 2012 and 2013 are much more enjoyable than they were in 2011 and 2010. Hopefully, the improved format leads to more players coming back to tournaments and buying games. VGC tournaments need to help the game grow first, and the Swiss format helps make growth happen. The need for that growth causes some potential tournament formats other competitive video games use not to be viable, such as truly invitation only events (see US Nationals becoming open to everyone and Worlds inexplicably having a Last Chance Qualifier), but I think as long as events maintain the 6-8 rounds of Swiss that goal is being adequately achieved.
However, Swiss has a job to do for the event beyond just letting everyone play more games. Like the group or pools stage in most other competitive games, the Swiss stage in Pokémon is the qualification system that needs to find a way to send the best players to the bracket stage (top cut). The Swiss system already had a pretty extensive history of failing at this goal, and the top cuts this year being so much smaller than the system is designed for is causing problems to be much more frequent than in the past. The current format for National tournaments is likely going to create even stranger situations than the format for US Regionals did in that regard. Simply put, for a variety of reasons the best players aren’t winding up in the limited top cut slots with enough regularity. US Nationals was already an event that didn’t have enough top cut slots, and mirroring the new, downsized format in Europe with reduced top cut slots rather than increased slots is going to exacerbate that problem. Pokémon tournaments are more fun and competitive for players when more players get a chance to prove their skill in the main event rather than hoping they get through Swiss on what often comes down to an arbitrary tiebreaker like opponent win % or a couple of unfortunate early pairings with other skilled players.
Unlike most other video games, and even Pokémon’s own TCG, we only get to play in four to five official tournaments per year. With so few tournaments per year to draw points from, it is extremely important that each event is organized in a way that allows the best players to come out on top if the results of our circuit are to be reflective of our game’s best players in a each year. Currently, the impact of the random number generator and tournament-induced randomness of match-up difficulty is causing the system itself to have far more impact on the results of the tournament than the players themselves.
The Failings of Swiss: Un Golpe Crítico!
Pokémon is a video game that involves a lot of probability. I want to emphasize all losses to “luck” are not equal, and that a large part of the skill element of Pokémon is executing thoughtful probability management to avoid unnecessary risks. It is fair to say that one of the biggest parts of both battling and team building is doing everything you can to put the odds in your favor. However, Pokémon is also a game where the best you can do most of the time is just that: putting the odds in your favor.No matter how carefully you manage your odds in a tournament, if your opponents are close to your skill level, situations will occur where your opponent can get that timely Rock Slide flinch, Heat Wave burn, Sand Veil activation, Draco Meteor dodge, dreaded fully paralyzed/confused off of Prankster Thunder Wave/Swagger, or any number of other fantastic low probability rolls and change the path of a match — sometimes by too much for the otherwise superior player to recover from. We spend all year trying to dodge bullets, but it is a reality in the game we play that sometimes the bad numbers will come up and the RNG will take a weird game from us; something anyone who has played in a Wi-Fi tournament knows all too well. The luck in Pokémon is something every honest trainer knows is going to be a major factor in each of their tournament runs.
As competitive players, what we want from tournaments is a format that mitigates the impact of this sort of ridiculousness as much as possible. No one wants to be winning or losing all tournaments on this sort of (im)probability, so it is important that the format of tournaments has some cushion room to make it less likely players get “Pokémoned”, as we often say. Mitigating the impact of randomness and giving players more of a chance to fight against it is the single most important reason we want a higher percentage of players top cutting our events and getting into the best of three stage where they have more wiggle room to outplay their opponents. It is also the same reason single elimination best-of-1 in the past was a terrible format players hated.
While the current format of events is much improved, more progress still needs to be made for the final results of events to include the most deserving players. Players are much more likely to pick up two losses from these sort of RNG-influenced shenanigans during 8 rounds of Swiss than they are twice in three games of a top cut match. As such, the heads-up games usually produce the more deserving winner. Best-of-one Swiss tries to adjust for luck a little bit by not immediately eliminating players for losing one game to strangeness, but it fails to do an adequate job, especially with only one X-2 cutting at most events. With only one undefeated player going into the last round of Swiss at most events, for instance, strange luck in the last round of Swiss will almost always eliminate players from contention a round away from a best-of-three scenario. It is important for the validity of a tournament’s results to get as many players as possible into the top cut stage while still offering a tangible reward for doing well in the Swiss stage of the tournament.
With all of the probability in Pokémon, some of us tend to compare Pokémon more to other games of combined chance and skill (such as poker) rather than to most other video games, and I think the parallel works pretty well here. You have more control over your fate in Pokémon than in poker, but winning only 6/8 hands of heads-up in poker instead of 7/8 wouldn’t be something anyone would expect to end their days in a Poker tournament — yet in Pokémon it will be season ending if TPCi doesn’t expand the top cut for the remaining National tournaments. I don’t want to beat the idea of luck in the game over the head too much as we all know it is an obnoxious but inseparable part of our game. Luck is something the players have to do their best to mitigate, but for tournaments to be everything they can be, luck is something the tournament organizers have to help mitigate, too.
The Failings of Swiss: Strength of Schedule
I think the pairing system is by leaps and bounds the biggest problem with using Swiss and a small top cut. While the more conventional type of luck is easy to notice — it’s pretty hard to miss getting ravaged by a critical hit or not being able to move because you’re frozen — the impact of random pairings creating vastly different schedules for each player is harder to notice. Pokémon’s Swiss pairings system is based on a faulty assumption: that every player with the same record has the same skill. This assumption is used both to determine pairings, since you are (usually) randomly paired with someone who has the same record as you, as well as to determine the first tiebreaker of opponent win %, which includes only the win percentage of players at the event in question, rather than a more accurate sample size like the season. I don’t think I need to rip too hard at why a player’s record in a single tournament isn’t very reflective of their overall ability, but I’ll showcase some tournaments where the Swiss placement system did a poor job of placing players based on the skill they’ve shown in other events, which is usually caused by a wonky schedule of opponents.
Somewhat famously, VG Tournament Organizer AlphaZealot has said he doesn’t think players who go X-2 in Swiss events should be top cutting. I think in other types of games’ pool stages, such as in a MOBA or fighting game, not losing more than twice throughout the tournament is often a reasonable expectation for championship teams. However, the Swiss format has some qualities that pool stages in most other games do not. One big one is that Swiss ensures that there is no more than one undefeated player going into the second tier of play, unlike most other games where players or teams are separated into many more groups that can each have an undefeated player or team. Another is that those groups are usually broken up with some sort of seeding system so that the most successful players or teams don’t have to worry about knocking each other out early. Since our format forces most players to take one loss by pairing players with equal records, a tough match-up late in a tournament ensures one of two deserving players is eliminated. While some X-2s cut the European Nationals, in North America with a 16 player top cut, only 8 players cut per flight can cut. This means that if we have a tournament the same size as last year’s US Nationals tournament no more than one 6-2 per flight will cut. Even events that are cutting a decent chunk of 6-2 players, such as the Italian National tournament, have been failing to cut players who have proven that they are among the best in the world in the more reliable best-of-three format in the past because of the small top cut caps.
Milan
While Milan cut enough big name players that no one seems to care, I think it’s actually a really fantastic example of why the capped top cut is bad for the game. The 18th and 19th place finishers wound up being Fransesco Pardini and Guillermo Castilla (Kasty), who you may remember from their top 8 finishes in the 2011 and 2012 World Championships respectively. Given how well Matty (4-2 Swiss/2nd Place Worlds 2011, 3-3 Worlds 2012, 1st Place Milan) and Sekiam (3-3 Worlds 2012, lost top 8 to Matty in Milan) did in the event, I’d say that it is pretty reasonable to extrapolate that Fransesco (4-2 Worlds 2011, top 8) and Guillermo (4-2 Worlds 2012, top 8) would have at least been contenders in the top cut given their similar performances in the tougher Worlds fields in the past. If the top cut had included them, like it would have if the TCG top cut numbers were used instead of the arbitrary VGC cut-off, we might be looking at a somewhat different set of tournament results. All four of those players proved their skill in the vastly superior best-of-3 Swiss stage at Worlds, which tends to be a much better metric of ability than the highly volatile best-of-1 Swiss format National tournaments use. The best-of-1 Swiss format puts players roughly where they should be, but not even close to definitively where they belong, and being a couple spots off here cost these players the chance to continue on. A more precise mechanism like the head-to-head top cut is needed to clean up Swiss’ mistakes, which wasn’t allowed to happen here. While many of the big names did manage to make the top 16 in Milan, it shouldn’t be overlooked that the 17-32 range also included players like Ravi Vazirani (who also went 3-3 at Worlds last year), Lati (who wouldn’t have had to deal with that spirit crushing removal from the top cut due to the TO’s error if it was 32 like it should have been), Billa, and Osirus.
2012 US Nationals
It is strange to see US Nationals’ top cut being reduced given that it is a tournament that has perhaps been the flagship example of Swiss not seeding top cut very well. While 2011 Nationals is perhaps an even better example, with a field of about 60 players leading to a 14 seed (Wolfey) defeating a 16 seed (Dan) in the finals, both of whom were 5-2 in the Swiss rounds, last year has some pretty fantastic ridiculousness to add to it.
The shallower 2012 flight B, which sent some of the best players like Crow, Wolfey, sandman, and Zach forward, also managed to send some players that should not have been in the top cut like CaptKirby, who essentially had never played VGC before, but cut because he had a particularly easy Swiss schedule. That flight left some strong players on the outside who would have been included if Nationals had cut to 64. Cut players in that flight include 2013 #3 CP seed Stephen (6-2) and a former National Champion in OmegaDonut (6-2). The highest seeded 5-3 was 2013 Regional Champion cmoeller22, who had an almost 70% opponent win percentage in spite of not having bye inflation helping him out and is one of the tournament’s best examples of a slanted strength of schedule knocking out a player who deserved to continue.
The deeper, less top-heavy, and bye-filled flight A had a massive amount of cannibalism among the more established players. Without a lot of good match-up data to pull from for other players, on my own I played four people who won Regionals in 2012 or 2013, four people who top cut, and one who got top 4 in Nationals the previous year, which accounted for seven of my eight opponents with some overlap. While I think my experience was probably the most slanted, every round there were a few people who are in the top 50 CP or so this year or who won Regionals last year taking each other out. The result was a top 16 cut from that flight where, looking back at the standings, I don’t even know who a couple of those players are. I think it’s somewhat telling that very few players from those 16 are doing well in 2013 (even the known players, actually): only OneEyedWonderWeasel (14th) and Shiloh (23rd) are currently in this year’s top 32, and if you continue to the top 100, only MangoSol (86th) and Branflakes (91st) are added to the list. We were left with some bigger names getting snubbed at 6-2, with myself at 17th in the flight, Tyler, BadIntent, and HagridTwin all missing, as well as a host of 5-3 players who probably could have beaten most of the players in the top cut if they had more reasonable Swiss schedules including Regional winners JiveTime (who I played round 7 in a game that had to eliminate one of us) and Alaka, TheGr8, 2013 Regionals runner-up Calm Lava, and 2010-11 Worlds participant Metabou. It’s also worth noting neither Huy nor I managed to cut Nationals but ended up qualifying for Worlds through the best-of-three LCQ and finishing a couple more opponent wins from cutting Worlds (9th and 10th, respectively), so we must have been doing something right that year in spite of how Nationals’ Swiss stage played out.
It’s probably worth noting that if it was only 16 players cut last year, we’d have lost the following players to the cut:
- sandman, who finished 2nd at Nationals and proved that finish was no fluke by following it up with a top 4 finish at Worlds.
- TTS, who finished top 4, qualifying for Worlds from US Nationals for the third year in a row.
- theamericandream38, who ended up being some shenanigans in top 8 away from making it to Worlds himself, and who finished 19th at Worlds the year before.
Nationals 2012’s top 32 cut started with the top seed from one flight being paired up with the other flight’s 16 seed, the 2nd with the 15th, etc. Flight 1 ended up getting completely crushed in spite of starting with a much deeper roster of high-end players by a final total of 4 wins to 12 wins in the round of 32. A big part of why I think this happened (beyond people like Wolfe, sandman, Crow, and Zach being likely to have beaten anyone they played against) was the Swiss system being the Swiss system. The pairings are completely random and players don’t face schedules of opponents with even remotely the same level of difficulty, the results of which are painfully evident in flight A in 2012 Nationals. There is a reason most other competitive games use systems like round robin group stages to determine who qualifies for the second stage of events when they aren’t going to cut many players: it is to avoid situations like last year’s Nationals, where scheduling helped contribute to good players having bad records and helped some players who probably finished a bit above their ability making it into top cut. The situation with which 6-2s made it in is also a good example of the Swiss problem with Opponent Win % being based on a single event rather than the entire season, as a bunch of players playing difficult schedules whiffed even when they made it to X-2 while weaker players floated to the top, avoiding the established players as they took each other out.
2013 Virginia Regionals
The worst example from Regionals by far was the Virgina Regional, which is pretty much the most ridiculous example that I can imagine of why we need to expand top cuts. While the top 8 was still better than most Regionals’ top cuts were, as even the lesser known guys here are probably better than their reputations, it left some awfully strong players out who would have outclassed some of the top cut. I’d wager most people who clicked the link already noticed, but three of the four Americans who cut Worlds in 2012 finished in that 9th-16th range which would have been top cut spots in TCG but aren’t in VGC because of our arbitrary top cut cap. Also featured in that range is ryuzaki, who finished 9th at Worlds in 2011 and ended up making it to the finals of the next Regional she attended. While it’s almost too easy to use him as an example, Ray missing a cut anywhere is pretty crazy, but his schedule is among the toughest I can recall at a Regional: he hit three players who are currently in Worlds positions in Cybertron (5-3), Nightblade7000 (6-2), and ryuzaki (6-2), as well as some tough rounds against jio (5-3) and AP Frank (6-2). Once again, the players he faced had much lower than normal overall records because of the battling against each other, and Ray only got a 70% Opponent Win % from the five opponents I just mentioned even though three of them are currently ranked in the top 8 of the country rather than a Regional.
I think it’s pretty obvious that all four of those players deserved to be in the top cut if top cut is supposed to reflect the event’s most skilled players. To be blunt, I think it’s also pretty obvious that if we played a round of 16, the lower seeds would have taken at least half of the games, even with some great players like TDS, Nightblade7000, JiveTime, and dtrain in the cut, but the cut-off cost them the chance to prove it. For Trista and Matt, it might even have cost them Worlds invites, as both of them are sitting pretty close to the edge right now at 8th and 14th, respectively. 5th place overall in CP Cybertron was also sitting at 5-3 in that event after a tough schedule that included an early visit with reigning champion Ray Rizzo. All five of those players (with Wolfe being the unmentioned Worlds player) have proven in a variety of events that they might be the five best players in North America, not just this Regional, but the format was working against them some here.
2012 Missouri Regionals
While not nearly as bad as Virginia, St. Louis was another tournament where I noticed some of the same things happening during as what happened at US Nationals, with a lot of good players facing off in Swiss leading to some weird results. I know I personally hit both eventual winner FonicFrog and Wisconsin winner cmoeller22 in the last two rounds of Swiss. I ended up going 1-1 in these games, but only two of us could cut because of how the pairings worked out. This was a frustrating experience given that FonicFrog’s powerful round 1 top cut opponent was using the always sound TerraCott strategy with a Scarf Blastoise in the back, which collapsed in top cut about as easily as it sounds like it would. Meanwhile, Cory’s day ended without a chance to prove he deserved to finish higher because he had some bad breaks with his opponents, even though I think it’s fairly obvious he’s a better player than some of the players who finished above him… which he proved by winning his next Regional. It is also notable that this was one of the many tournaments where the 8-0 from Swiss lost in the first round of top cut to a 6-2 in two quick and decisive games, showing again that Swiss isn’t doing a very precise job of placing players. There were several other strong players like Shiloh, Smith, and Captain Falcon watching top cut instead of playing in it for a variety of factors in spite of the wonky top cut.
Pokémon isn’t a game where we have a lot of live events, so when we do have tournaments it is important that they get results that reflect the skill level of the players who competed accurately. That didn’t happen well enough at any of these events.
Why The Best Players Need To Get To The Best of Three Stage
The best-of-three stage is an essential part of getting the right results in Pokémon tournaments. It vastly reduces the impact of one game’s worth of luck or gimmickry on the results of a tournament and helps ensure the best player is winning matches. A big part of why Worlds is considered the best tournament of the year by the players isn’t just the prizes it awards or the spectacle of being an international event, it is the best-of-three Swiss format ensuring that the right players are winning most of the matches. While we understand it isn’t always viable to use best-of-three Swiss due to time, getting the top fourth of players into the best-of-three stage so they can battle it out like the TCG players do is a necessary improvement for our tournaments. Players are much less likely to pick up two losses from bad luck during two games of a three game set than during eight rounds of Swiss, and those rounds with the reduced impact of luck are what should be deciding whether or not players are eliminated, not the heavily luck-influenced Swiss stage. While players don’t face opponents of equal difficulty in the top cut stage either, at that point if you’re going to win a tournament you have to be able to beat anyone in a best-of-three anyway, and it is much easier to avoid losing a series than a single game.
As the top cut of Nationals 2012 showed, once we get to the best-of-3 stage the players who overachieved a little during the Swiss stages of the tournament get knocked out pretty quickly. However, the standings still wind up being pretty messed up if that cut is too small. After last year’s Nationals, we’d expected this year we would probably be facing an increase from a 32-player top cut to a 64-player top cut to match the TCG system for a tournament the size of US Nationals. Instead, TPCi is planning on going the other direction and dropping the top cut to 16 for some reason. Unless they plan on seeding Swiss rounds and/or using best-of-three Swiss to mitigate Swiss’ two big problems — which isn’t very feasible, presumably — a reduction in top cut participants is a pretty big mistake because the Swiss qualification stage needs much more error correction than it’s currently being given as a result.
Swiss performs a function as well as it can. It gets lots of players lots of games and gets players closer to where they belong in the standings than single elimination on its own ever did. However, the TCG is right to have a more inclusive top cut stage in a game that has as much probability as Pokémon does, especially when using a qualification system that creates as many anomalies as Swiss does. We want the best players getting to top cut so they can show what they can do, not hoping they get there through arbitrary tiebreakers, in-game luck, the Russian roulette that is Swiss pairings, or to have them miss the cut in spite of having pretty strong tournaments because the organizers have a view on what makes a good top cut that doesn’t coincide with the players’ view. The players who deserve to win will prove it in the top cut even if they have to play an extra round or two of best-of-three, but they can’t win if they aren’t allowed to play.
If you have strong opinion on this, please, post in the thread. Like this post, like the Facebook post about the article, share the Facebook post, retweet the tweet about the article, whatever. This is the sort of thing we need to get as many eyes on as we can because it is important to our community. I’d love to hear more about other people’s experiences with the top cut, too — I tried to keep my personal experience to only a couple mentions here, but I’ve had quite a few tournaments where I felt like people were getting the short end of the stick because of strange pairings or strange incidents of Pokémon occurring during Swiss and I’m sure the rest of you have, too. I hope this doesn’t come off as too hostile to TPCi, but this is a big deal to the players as anything with the game could be, as I imagine will be obvious once this has been around the web for a while. The changes this year have been pretty great for the most part but this, this is a big red mark on an otherwise improved system.
Photo Credits: Robbie M. (Biff). Check out more of his event coverage on his YouTube channel.
About the Author
Scott started playing VGC in 2011. He finished 17th at US Nationals, then lost in the final round of 2011 Worlds LCQ. He finished 10th in the 2012 World Championships and qualified for Worlds again in 2013 after going into US Nationals second in CP. Instead of playing, he commentated at US Nationals and the World Championships in 2013 and 2014. Follow him on Twitter @NBNostrom!
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84 Responses to The Problem With Small Top Cuts in VGC
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I remember someone mentioning the idea where everyone with a certain record or better should make top cut(sorta like golf) would that be able to work at events like Nationals?
Sadly that isn’t likely to work. That would not solve the issue of strength of schedule for one, and second that might lead to awkward player number cuts depending on how many participants are in it. Really, upping the size of Top Cut is one way, or perhaps re-arranging swiss to group pools (ala Crow’s suggestion) is another. If you want to press a point where “only users of x-y get to cut” then that is basically what AlphaZealot is doing right now — primarily all 7-1 with oddities being 8-0 and 6-2 (one of each).
I think all 6-2s is viable at something like Nationals if you have an unevenly sized first round cut as a play-in to a top 32 cut, but I think that’s probably a logistical nightmare because of so many players having time to wander off and slow down the tournament compared to just adding a round or two of top cut and saving the headache.
I think there’s lot of things that have been discussed here that would make the format better individually, and in an ideal world all of them would be used.
Well, this was a very interesting article for me and let me give you a little background on myself before offering up an opinion. I came from the world of competitive Magic and the Massachusetts regional was my first Pokemon tournament ever. I must say, although I heard about how this was the worst run event ever I absolutely feel like Pokemon VGC has one of the worst systems in place for both new players and veterans.
First off, their points system is so useless and accomplishes nothing of significance. They need to develop a system where you have different rewards (byes, etc.) based on your CP and those rewards carry over for the next season. That allows for players that succeed to return back, it motivates new players to chase the dream of doing well, as well as providing incentive to continue playing for everyone. The fact that your points are gone and so are all rewards at the end of a season is a joke. I don’t want to work hard all season to then feel like I accomplished nothing if I didn’t top 8 both my first two regionals in order to get a bye in the third.
Additionally, the issue with a top 8 cut is not an issue at all. I don’t think more than 1-2 players at an X-2 record should top cut no matter how well known they are or how they’ve done in the past. The best players don’t always have the best of days and they lose too. Heck, I finished 6-2 at regionals and lost rounds 7 and 8 to Ben and Nico, respectively while beating some great players in the first 6 rounds. I made top cut because my opponents were amazing every single round. I didn’t have a bye either. I feel like there is a misconception on who is a better player vs someone who is a better player in that moment. I simply don’t think it’s fair that someone who goes 8-0 and someone who goes 6-2 should have the same chance at winning at the end of eight rounds. You may dodge good players to start with, but you won’t dodge them at 5-0, 6-0 etc and honestly, if you intend on winning who you get matched up with shouldn’t be of concern.
I’m by no means backing up the system Pokemon uses now, I just think opening any tournament beyond a top 8 is silly and feels far less rewarding. In my opinion, I feel that Pokemon should have at least 20 large tournaments during the season before nationals and worlds and make every swiss match a best of 3. This allows for more new players to get a chance at joining, it allows for the best players to have a better chance at making top 8 with more opportunities to play and it grows the community on a vast spectrum of experience levels. Also, rewards should be carried over to the new season and there should be more of them. I realize this is a huge overhaul of what’s done now, but opening top cut to beyond 8 is just spoiling people that didn’t happen to do well or couldn’t beat a good opponent that day.
Opening topcut to beyond 8 is meant so that people who got haxed out of games that they should have won can still have a chance to become champion. There are plenty of people at Massachussetts that came in top 16 that also went X-2 just like yourself but didn’t have the opportunity because they had a lower opponents win percentage. You can’t control getting haxed out of a match that you had in the bag but by increasing the topcut it gives other people like yourself a chance to redeem themselves in topcut.
That’s where making the swiss best of 3 comes into play. That’s a far better way to determine who is better than increasing top cut size.
I played a 6-2 vs 8-0 game in top cut this year where I believe I only lost one Pokemon to the 8-0 over two games. Turns out being the better known player and showing I was better in the past did make me the better player by a pretty hefty margin. I don’t think there are any shortages of situations where that’s happened this year — the system doesn’t work.
Pokemon isn’t suddenly going to get a budget that lets them do that many more tournaments, as much as I imagine everyone here would agree that having many more tournaments would improve the system. While I imagine some of the other things suggested in this thread are similarly improbable, that one is probably the farthest into the realm of fantasy I’ve seen.
I agree with you on that point. Of course if we had BO3 swiss matches a smaller topcut would be fine. But time wise having a bigger topcut would be more optimal. Everyone is in agreement of BO3 for swiss but with the way Pokemon has been running tournaments they would probably be more inclined to have a bigger topcut than BO3 swiss.
I’m not saying any of this will ever happen. After all, this is a business and their current methods are far more profitable than anything I suggested. I’m simply offering my experiences from the past where I as a player felt the tournament structure was more fair. It’s hard to find something ideal for everyone. TPCI just doesn’t seem too concerned with VGC. There’s no profit to be made really.
Because the way pokemon is currently set up ELO is arguably better than CP. I’m not saying it’s the perfect system, just it’d be better than only CP. Say 8th and 9th went 6-2, but 8th arbitrarily gets more CP than 9th because it’s a perfect square. In a system where matches are determined semi-randomly that’s silly. Except in the case where 8th got there due to a bye, both players won 6 matches and lost 2 and 8th is only 8th because luck determined he/she got someone with a better tiebreaker record. So is it ok for luck to determine that player gets significantly more CP?
I suppose I should clarify that I’m talking about ELO in our current system. In other systems it may not be valid, but it’s what we have right now so I’m going to use what we’ve got.
As for fencing think of it as using rating instead of National Points. Two As will both seed higher than a B, but if one of the As has National Points and the other does not, the one with points will seed higher. (I believe that’s how it actually works, but can’t quite remember as it’s been a while since I’ve been able to attend a NAC due to scheduling and location issues)
Even though there’s some trade-off (because CP itself is still useful) you have the opposite problem with ELO, though — if you bubble in to top cut and lose you lose ELO for having made the bubble instead of missing it. That’s contributed a lot to my hilariously bad ELO this year, since I made all three top cuts but didn’t win any of them, so I ended every tournament on a loss. Games played being uneven kind of skews the value of ELO… I think it’d be a better fix to break down CP awards more logically, since CP is presumably going to continue determining Worlds invitations anyway so it’d be ideal to find a better way to take that 8th/9th bubble CP crap out of the system somehow. Though I think the 12th/13th bubble CP is even worse…
I know ELO being relevant created issues with people dropping tournaments to protect their rating in TCG, too, though presumably since CP would still be the more important number it wouldn’t so much be an issue for us.
Ah I did forget that it keeps counting after top cut. I suppose that does make the parallel I was going for fall apart. So yeah, fixing the CP breakdown and then ranking based on CP would be pretty ok.
OMG so much love for this article
Personally I’d love to see an increased topcut for both US Nats and for the European circuit too. There are many good players that end up talking about the top 16 bo3 matches rather than playing in the matches they deserve to have a chance at playing in.
Again much love
Lets do this, once all you guys get in top cut just drop out and refuse to play untill they make it a top 32 cut
Rather than argue with points made in this thread that I don’t agree with, I’m just going to detail my opinions on this issue.
I think that the expansion of Top Cut would be one of the better changes to the system in my opinion. While there are other suggestions that many would prefer, such as BO3 Swiss, I think the current format is fine for now if they just expand the Top Cut rather than shrink it. In my opinion, an expanded Top Cut would be beneficial to nearly all participants. Those that did not perform well enough to cut under the current, small Cut would make it, which is the largest selling point for competitive players, and is why most people are advocating for a larger cut. However, I would like to touch on what Firestorm was talking about: a sense of accomplishment. There are a great number of players that go unnoticed because they don’t use Forums and similar mediums, yet are competitive and skilled like the “big names” that we expect to get through. These players have goals and ambitions too, and just making cut alone would a great accomplishment in their eyes, while it may not be for those that have been there before.
Speaking from personal experience, having smaller goals like these is arguably why I’m still playing. Back in 2011, I decided to go to the Nationals LCQ, as Nationals is generally my only realistic option to go to tournaments due to my location. My goal going into this tournament, my first tournament and year of playing VGC, was simply to make it into the Swiss portion of Nationals. For many skilled players, this goal is expected and not satisfactory. After nearly losing in the first round of the LCQ, I ended up winning all of my games and qualifying for Nationals. I was very content back then, and decided to just have fun in Swiss. After all, this is a game, and it should be played for fun-especially when you look at prizes for winning events which pale in comparison to TCG and numerous other games. By making the goals I set, it encouraged me to continue playing, and arguably could have changed my entire life in the process. There is no telling what my life may be like without achieving that goal, as it motivated me to continue playing, and is very important way in my life to have fun. I could go on about how this spiraled into meeting some of my best friends to date, but this isn’t the time or place.
Back to my main point that I’m trying to get across, setting these realistic goals are great for the growth of the game. I assume that we all want to see this game grow, and the best way to keep new players playing, thus expanding the player base, is done through smaller, challenging (for them) goals set by these players for a sense of accomplishment. To expand the Top Cut to allow more players to have this sense of accomplishment would be great for the development of the game. This will likely lead to them coming back, and perhaps even telling friends. By expanding the Top Cut, you give the more established players their chance at the title through the BO3 section, which is commonly agreed upon requires more skill to win, even if they had a few unfortunate losses due to being lucked or having a hard schedule. It also allows the not established players their shot to prove themselves against the established names in a BO3 set, and motivate them to come back again.
In conclusion, Top Cut expanding is likely to benefit everyone. It gives many more players a chance to play a game that the majority of us enjoy playing-which should be one of the most important factors in why one is playing this game-and not only just a chance at playing more, but gives everyone a much more favorable chance at winning. These are just my opinions on the matter, but I do feel like the expanding of Top Cut would be a good solution for now, but there are clearly more preferred systems.
I’m just going to respond to all of your posts though I’m just quoting this segment. I think you’re forgetting two key points when comparing Magic to Pokemon. First off, all of Magic’s rounds are best-of-three. Secondly, you play additional swiss rounds to remove the reliance on opponent’s win percentage so that a smaller top cut size is possible. If both of these could be done in Pokemon (VG), then it would be a decent alternative. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. The video game currently needs to finish in one day. You cannot have best-of-three swiss in this scenario and you especially can’t have 3 additional rounds of best-of-three swiss.
I don’t play Magic and instead am getting this information from discussions that Pokemon TCG players have had about the benefits of the Magic system. There are a few who are pushing hard to get the community to back a more Magic-like tournament. In fact, two-time World Champion Jason Klaczynski is trying to organize a grassroots unsanctioned tournament for this right now. There are certain benefits to swiss + 3 and smaller top cut sizes. However, there’s opposition to it as well. Many don’t think Pokemon is a game meant to be as cutthroat as Magic. Either way, even though it’s slightly more possible for TCGers (two day events), it’s impossible for us.
I don’t think more events will solve the Top 8 issue unless swiss becomes best of three and we play additional rounds to downplay the importance of opponent’s win %.
I would say allowing top cut sizes to be larger is the best way to keep the most parties happy while staying on schedule. I do not think 25% of the field dilutes the accomplishment or prestige of top cut.
There is going to be that one guy that doesn’t follow the plan, and/or they rotate us like those workers that went on strike and #17-32 take the spots.
If the Milwaukee Bucks can make it in the playoffs with a 38-44 record, how the hell can’t we make it in with a 6-2 record. Someone riddle me that one
me
As heated and back and forth this topic has gotten, I must say that these are the kind of topics that get people motivated. Ideally, I would love to see all VGC evens be two days, best of 3 in the swiss, but some people do fear the changes. I know Magic recently got rid of using the ELO system for rankings because it encouraged people not to play by dropping from events to preserve their ranking. They recently switched to a CP like system that really has boosted the size of events significantly. I’d love to see the community grow and prosper and in the end I think that’s what everyone here wants. How that can realistically be achieved to a point where majority is satisfied, I’m not sure.
Thanks for posting this, Scott. You have my full support here – I second pretty much every comment that thinks top cut for Nats should be top 64 and Regionals should be top 16. Accurate top cut has made for some killer high-level player matchups, and I’d love to see that get even better.
So some added info I would have included in the article if I wrote it five days later based on Germany. Most of which I mentioned already when we were discussing the format in the Germany thread starting http://nuggetbridge.com/forums/topic/1185-vgc-13-germany-national-championship-bochum-may-26th-2013-won-by-braindeadprimeape-bcaralarm/?p:
It is a pretty big joke that they can’t even follow the necessary amount of rounds required. How do people expect them to change the tournament format when the tournament organizers can’t even get it right now?
Now that I am home, some thoughts about the points Scott just mentioned about the German Nationals:
There was never any chance for a player without a bye to topcut with 5-2, which can be seen by Massi who went 5-0 and lost to drug_duck (7-0) and Akatsubaki (6-1) leaving him at a 5-2 final record. His tie-breaker was 68,37%, he would have had to have more than 73,47% to be in, though.
Now the math starts: A Tie-breaker of 73,47 means that the opponents of Michilele and Matteo went a combined 36-13. Massi’s opponents went 34-15.
A bye gives you a “flawless” opponent, that means it is equal to beating an opponent who went 7-0, which is of course not possible.
In reality Matteo’s and Michilele’s 6 “real” opponents went 29-13, which means they reached an average of 4,833 / 7 wins. That is equal to a tie-breaker of 69,04% when just factoring in the players they actually played. This is slightly more than Massi’s (68,37%) but you have to keep in mind, that this “real” tiebreaker only factores in the players they played in rounds 2-7, not the first round. I think we can agree that first round opponents have a higher chance to be “bad” than players with 1-0 in round 2. Again, it is just luck and completely random who you play in round 1, not more. If Matteo and Michilele wanted to keep their “real” Tie-breaker of 69,04, their round 1 opponent would have had to get 4,83 wins out of the 7 rounds. The expected value would be 3,5 when not factoring in a round 1 loss/win at all. For Michilele, this is a little bit different to Matteo, because he lost his 1st game (Round 2) and should normally have had worse opponents than Matteo who started 3-0 (or maybe even 4-0). Beating a Tie-breaker of 73,47 is only possible if all your opponents get an averageof 5,14 wins. When factoring in the highest R6 and R7 players you can get to play are 7-0 and 6-1 in the end, like in Massi’s case, that leaves 23 wins for r1-r5 opponents, which is an average of 4,6 wins. That means for example 3 opponents with 5-2 and 2 with 4-3. You can’t afford to have a single opponent that does not go positive to beat the tie-breaker with the bye, because it is highly unlikely that you face 2 more guys who go 6-1 in the end (That schedule would have to include 1 7-0 guy and 3 6-1 guys).
I am not very good at this calculating, but I think if your first opponent goes below 20% win ratio, it is close impossible to top cut with 5-2 considering the chance of your opponents playing each other in the following round, because they would have to win everything but the game versus you.
I hope I didn’t do any major mistakes, I just wanted to show how imba a bye is in this system.
The imbaness of the byes leads to another phenomenon that kicked out the #1 and #2 seed of swiss, Mean and drug_duck. From what I’ve heard, both played very solid and good swiss, doing close to no mistakes and ending with a flawless record. Before I go into detail, one thing that has to be mentioned is that there had to be another round, because drug_duck didn’t do anything wrong, but still got 2nd seed instead of 1st. He had NO POSSIBILITY EVER to become #1 on his own. He did everything he could, beat any opponent they threw at him, but it was not enough, because he had bad luck with his opponents being “worse” than Mean’s.
At the beginning, I tried to show that it is very likely that only people with a bye can top-cut with 5-2. That means the #1 and the #2 seed have to play people with a bye, who turned out to be Italy Nationals Champ and former Worlds Runner-Up Matteo and Michilele who never got anything worse than Top8 in all 3 VGCs he went to. (Top8 Germany and Top4 Italy in 2012, and Top8 in Italy 2013) As we learned, he would continue with this impressing streak and get to Top4 again.
So basically what happened was that both, Matteo and Michilele can be considered better than most of the 6-1 people. A low 6-1 seems to be the better choice over those two champion aspirants. A logical decision would be to intentionally lose the last round when at 6-0, so you would still get a high seed, but a worse opponent, even though this opponent is considered to be “better” by the seeding system.
Imagine all players who were 6-0 in the last round thought about this and came to the conclusion that losing is better than winning in this certain situation.
Imagine all the 6-0 players hit “run” on turn 1.
A system in which a loss is most likely better than a win is a bad system, period.
I don’t see any problem with top cuts.
This comment might not seem relevant to the discussion at hand, but I assure you, the answer to my question makes a huge impact as to what is feasible for the VGC tournament format.
How many VGC Top Cut matches went to Game 3 this season?
I don’t think it was that many, relative to the number of Top Cut matches that happened, but I’d like to see the percentages on this type of thing. I know that in the TCG, there is AT WORST a 50/50 chance of going to game 3. Based on my observations, I think the VGC Game 3 happens less often than that. But I don’t know. So I’m hoping that you guys have some type of statistics about that game 3 probability.
Thanks!
Is it still relevant when you consider the different way each game is timed? Unlike the TCG, you don’t have an overall limit to play all three of your games in. You have 20 minutes for each individual game and very, very few hit time these days.
aint no problem with low cut tops in vgc
It’s be an interesting stat at any rate @ Bullados. I know we don’t have it handy but I’d be interested in figuring it out… wonder if one of the stat nerds like Human, Zach, or kok wants to jump on this one.