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Published on August 18th, 2012 | by Scott

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What We Learned: 2012 World Championships Edition

During every Pokemon event, we learn a little bit about the game of Pokémon and the community that surrounds that is worth reflecting on. This Masters-centric column will appear following major events and highlight important trends and moments during the previous weekend’s events.

The Cream Rises To The Top

It is no secret to anyone that the luck-oriented nature of some of Pokémon’s mechanics is often lamented and some players often blame their own poor results on luck. I think the results of this year’s Worlds should inspire people who do that sort of thing to take a look in the mirror. In addition Ray Rizzo’s repeat champion, 2-time reigning US National Champion and obvious number one contender Wolfe Glick joined him in the finals. Along with 6th place finisher Matt Coyle, these three players managed to not only make it to Worlds two years in a row but top cut it two years in a row, as well. This is on top of 2011 Senior runner-up Sejun Park making the top cut in his first year in Masters and Joe Pulkowski following up his US Nationals finals appearance with a Worlds top cut, falling only to Ray Rizzo in the round of four. Even Abel Martín Sanz and Guillermo Castilla Diaz were widely considered the two best Spanish players coming into the event, so their appearance in the top 8, replacing their countrymen from 2011, isn’t much of a surprise. I’d wager no one was surprised by Jumpei Yamamoto’s top 8 appearance either, and the Senior division’s entire top cut consisted of big names (Aaron Zheng, Kamran Jahadi, Gavin Michaels, Henry Maxon, and Santa Ito were probably the easiest post-LCQ predictions to make, and Toler Webb, Nitesh Manem, and Jaime Martinez Alonzo shouldn’t have surprised anyone, either).

What I take out of this is two things:

1) Pokémon isn’t quite as luck-based as people want to make it out to be (“luck-influenced” may be the better term), and good players prove they are good players despite Pokémon’s inherent randomness.

2) The format this year was awfully good. As players, what we need from TPCI is a format where the best players can stand out with a reasonable amount of room to be innovative, and I would say that the largely very predictable results by the top players would indicate we got what we needed there, so props to TPCI and to the players on a great performance.

The Timer Rule Is Still Yams

It seems like almost everyone who played in Worlds has their very own timer rule story. Maybe I’m just naive, but I feel like when we’re talking about the rules nearly as much as the game, that’s probably a pretty good sign that something should be done about the rule. There’s already been an article written about it, so I don’t want to go too in-depth here, but TPCI, if you’re reading this, please: we need a clear ruling on time next year. I think it would be best if judges weren’t involved at all with the video game and the timers in the game were adjusted because unlike the TCG, we’re used to the game being the law. There’s a number of ways TPCI could improve the timer situation without resorting to a human judge that usually isn’t experienced with VGC to make decisions. There are a number of changes TPCI could make like reducing the Pokémon-switch timer after a KO, Volt Switch, or U-turn (I do not need 60 seconds to make that decision, especially late in the game when there’s only one Pokémon in reserve and the game could just pick it for me automatically to begin with), reducing the move timer per turn to about 45 seconds (this is unpopular with players), changing the timer system to avoid counting animations against the clock at all, reducing the timer when only one Pokémon is left on your side, hardcoding a +3 turns option like the TCG uses if possible to reduce the incentive of stalling, and increasing the match timer to 20 minutes or so (this would probably be unpopular with TPCI). Right now, far too many matches are being decided by time, with some games as unproven as 4-4 or 4-3, and the disputes about what exactly constitutes “stalling” the timer are changing the results of some matches. The timer is by far the biggest story that shouldn’t be a story of Worlds 2012.

Worlds Probably Isn’t The Best Time To Try A Team For The First Time

As far as I know this is just a point for my good chum Danny Zollner (and probably a few people in LCQ), but it is worth its own, special point because of how outrageously silly it is to use a team for the first time in the most important tournament of the year. While getting someone else’s team the night before and using it for the first time on the big stage after having a month to prepare and flying to Hawaii is particularly unbelievable, the concept behind it is something everyone can learn something from. For even the best players, if you want to be successful you have to come prepared. The top players, for the most part, all used Pokémon and strategies they were very practiced with and team synergies they had refined. It’s tough to compete against that if you’re just getting your feet wet with whatever you’re using.

Worldwide Combat

One of the most interesting parts of Worlds is trying to get some idea about how the different regions in the world stack up against one another. I don’t think there’s any way to get a totally accurate metric of that from one tournament per year, especially with qualification methods and numbers so uneven across the world (Korea and Japan should definitely have more players, Japan and all of Europe needs a better qualification system, and I would argue the US should have more players based on its playerbase as well), but I think there’s definitely enough trends seen at Worlds to talk about this year. While many people are pointing at how well the United States did in this one, a performance I don’t want to discount because I’m proud of how strong my countrymen are, I think you have to look to Korea and Japan first. Sejun Park’s 5-1 in particular was really impressive in only his first year in Masters and as the only representative of his country in the field, while Jumpei Yamamoto’s 4-2 and Satoru Masukata’s 3-3 were pretty respectable for Japan given their fairly difficult schedules. Japan is a country that has a lot of depth as far as elite players go, and I think if they had a comparable number of players in the field to the US they would at least have performed similarly to how we did. We’re a little fortunate in the US that our de facto top three players (Ray Rizzo, Wolfe Glick, Matt Coyle) were able to qualify for the event and make us look our best, while Japan had some of their best players on the sideline due to the strange qualification format and limited spots. Some other countries were missing stars due to suspension like Spain’s Ruben Puig Lecegui and the UK’s Daniel Nolan, who might have shaken things up a little. It is also noteworthy that Worlds is a tournament where information on enemy teams gets passed around pretty quickly, leading to a disadvantage for players from countries with fewer representatives. Don’t underestimate how hard it is for Sejun to go it alone compared to the Americans, who are helping each other out.

The European countries have an opportunity to compete amongst themselves a little more often than any of the other countries in the world do, and the one country that always seems to be among the top for them is Spain, which had the strongest European showing once again in this year’s Worlds. Guillermo Castilla Diaz and Abel Martín Sanz picked up where Albert Bos and Ruben left off last year, netting their country a second consecutive top 4 and top 8 finish in Masters. Jaime Martinez Alonzo also netted Spain its first finals appearance in Seniors, setting them alone with Italy for European countries to have gone so far. The Germans had similar representation to Spain in Worlds this year, but were unable to break over the 3-3 barrier to have a chance at making it to the top cut in spite of having a pretty strong performance as a group. After having two players cut last year, Italy fell off from its 2nd and top 8 performance in 2011, having only Matteo Gini’s 3-3 performance on the books this year, though it’s tough to fault him for mainting a respectable record despite having one of the tournament’s most difficult schedules. The UK has struggled the past few years outside of Daniel Nolan’s performance last year, and without him available no one in the country was able to post a winning record.

I nearly forgot to mention Canada at all, perhaps because it should probably still be feeding into the same system as the United States does, but with its two combatants facing off at 2-3 in the final round, Canada will look to improve upon its first season as a full fledged VGC nation at home next year. I think both of the Canadians in the field this year are strong players, and while Canada has fewer total competitive players than some US Regionals do, they do have some serious threats, so don’t be surprised if you see a Canadian in the Worlds top cut next year if there is another Canadian VGC National next year.

The Nick McCord Factor

What Nick means to those of us in the VGC community is probably not something TPCI will ever really understand, but all of us were ecstatic to see him back. After a 2012 season that felt a little droll and mellow without Eye of the Tiger on repeat for 5 hours and Nick pumping the crowd up, it was really fantastic to have him back for Worlds. I desperately hope TPCI picks up on how much we appreciate having him around and he comes back for Nationals and Worlds in 2013. It just doesn’t feel like Pokémon without him. He puts on a great show.

Gambling Doesn’t Win Championships

If there’s one thing I find is usually fairly reliable in Pokémon, it’s that luck evens out in the end. Usually it takes more than one match and often it takes more than one tournament, but in the end, people who are just hoping the random number generator will give them gold will end up busting as often as they hit the jackpot. With Worlds being the year’s longest tournament with the most games played (12-18 in Swiss, 6-9 to win in Top Cut for 18-27 is slightly more than US Nationals’ range of 18-23 due to its 8 swiss rounds consisting of only a single game), particularly in the best-of-3 Swiss rounds, luck managed to even out before the tournament ended for most players. While those participating in more ordinary play may have ended up a little ahead on the critical hits or the freezes, most of the players using the loathed strategies of spamming Thunder Wave or Swagger to try to RNG themselves out of the jams they played into seemed to wind up around the 2-4/3-3 mark, about where one would expect them to end up, luck being equal. Viewers will notice there weren’t a whole lot of hope plays being made in the top cut games — that’s just not how good players get to the end. Gambling doesn’t win championships: if you want to do the best instead of just okay, you have to play the game the right way.

The Crowd Does Not Want to Watch Table 16

I understand TPCI’s logic in putting the lowest table on TV to avoid scouting the best players. Really, I do: I had to play on TV in round 1, and I’m sure the information disadvantage was working against me all day. With that said, Pokémon is a great spectator video game. It is paced slowly enough that it is easy to follow, has big plays that bring excitement to the crowd, and the variety of countries at Worlds give people rooting interests. Nothing works against all the great things that could come out of that perfect storm than putting matches that are painfully boring and irrelevant that no one wants to watch on the televisions. I can understand not wanting to show table 1, but would it really hurt the event so much to at least show two of the middle tables on TV, so each of the games contain players who are at least doing decently and aren’t eliminated by round 3? Last year I literally fell asleep while I was watching that Italian guy spam Air Cutter Tornadus (I think we were even streaming for Smogon when I did so), and judging by all the whining I have heard, watching Robert Kendall spam Minimize this year was even less interesting (sorry, Pokerob!). I know I’m not in a great position to talk here as the guy who subjected the audience to a super interesting Rain mirror, but could we get some better entertainment for the fans on Saturday, please?

Everyone Still Hates Simultaneous Finals

If I had to think of the single thing people complained about most during the 2011 season, outside of maybe single elimination regionals, the finals at Nationals and Worlds happening concurrently would definitely be #1. Sadly, TPCI either didn’t pick up on this or cares more about their schedule than the community’s enjoyment of the most important battles all season and chose to run the finals simultaneously anyway. It’s really frustrating for those of us who are interested in multiple divisions to not be able to watch each of the battles, especially since, for the second year in a row, both Seniors and Masters finals featured prominent members of the community. It’s really unfair to the Juniors and the Seniors that they play hard all year to get to the World finals and wind up with a fourth of the audience they deserve because Masters is eating the crowd, not to mention they didn’t even get to appear on the stream. It doesn’t even really make sense from Gamespot’s end now that they’re streaming the event: why not run each division back-to-back-to-back and pop a few advertisements between each game? Wouldn’t that make a ton more cash and make the community happy?

Think about it.

Best of 3 LCQ is Best LCQ

While I still think even having a Loser’s Chance Qualifier for Worlds is kind of silly, it is difficult for me to even articulate how much better the format was this year than last year. I don’t think TPCI can do anything more valuable for those of us who play this game than try to make a format where the results are as reliable as possible, and best of three is the simplest way to do that without adding a ton of time to the events. I think the results of the LCQ this year, featuring two players who’ve cut Worlds in the past in Huy Ha and Matt Coyle getting through to Worlds, is a pretty good indicator the system worked well this year. While the people who were already qualified were a factor in this stat, it’s somewhat telling that even with fewer participants than 2011 the LCQers from 2012, where the format was best-of-three, performed as well or better than the 2011 group in spite of having half as many players:

Masters LCQ finishes 2011: 9th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 34th
Masters LCQ finishes 2012: 6th, 9th, 10th, 17th

The LCQ last year featured some awesome players like Trista Medine, Kamaal Harris, and Mike Suleski, so I don’t want to sell that group short because their survival made 2011 Worlds better, but the bottom half of the LCQ group last year was pretty sad. Hopefully TPCI continues this format in the future because it made a big difference in the quality of the players coming out of the LCQ, and the players who qualified normally deserve that level of quality from the LCQ given how much more difficult it is to qualify from a National tournament.

It’s worth noting Seniors definitely got the “right” players through as well, with Henry Maxon (4th), Gavin Michaels (6th), and Santa Ito (7th) coming from their LCQ.

Streaming Is Hard

I want to preface my complaining by saying that I’m really pleased TPCI evidently recognized the need to stream the World finals, and while I’m disappointed they didn’t look for someone with some more Pokémon VGC experience to help them, at least things were done sort of professionally. However…

Here is a crazy concept: In the middle of turns, the crowd needs to be able to see what is going on in the battle, not watching the players’ blank expressions as they watch a battle the audience can’t see. I can only imagine how frustrating it was for players watching the stream to see a Pokémon use Protect, watch the battlers faces for a few seconds, and then wonder why a couple Pokémon are dead as the stream finally pans back to the TV screen while nothing is happening during move selection.

Obviously, there were lots of other big content issues. Metagross is not a Garchomp counter. Skill Swap does not end after any number of turns and “twisted dimensions” always refers to Trick Room. “Hits Like a Truck” is probably not the only description available in the English language. “Salamencey” should not have a y in it, and neither should “Pokeymon”, which is probably the first thing the commentators should have been taught to pronounce correctly. Sandstorm saps 1/16 of a Pokémon’s HP per turn. I could go on and on, but it was pretty tough to listen to at points, and I think everyone who has given any feedback about this at all would attest to being pretty frustrated.

With all that said, I think as someone who has watched some other, more accepted “e-sports” develop their streaming ventures, I should defend the Gamespot stream a little. Yes, it was pretty embarrassingly bad at times, and I couldn’t watch the archive without pausing to laugh a few times even when I knew the “punchlines” were coming from people texting me when the event was live. However, consider this: even in games like League of Legends where the production and presentation of competitive games has been developed for years now, you still get silly gaffs where commentators are saying stuff I know is wrong as a mid-tier player. Of course the commentators are going to say things we know are wrong as people who are among the best people playing this game. The commentators got put in a pretty difficult situation since it was pretty obvious neither of the casters actually play the game (though one of them was much more convincing than the other) and they at least managed to string something together that sort of made sense. It’s a lot harder than it looks. Hopefully TPCI and/or Gamespot builds on this and improves for next year because the idea is sound.

At least TPCI didn’t hire Hulk Hogan again. Body Slam isn’t the best move in the game, brother.

Standards Are Standards For a Reason

Here’s an interesting stat: of the 7 most used Pokémon on GBU this season, Ray Rizzo’s winning team had 6, missing out only on Hitmontop, the 6th most used. I think standards tend to be both over and underestimated, but I hope everyone will look at the teams on both Ray’s and Wolfe’s (more on that later) side of the finals and interpret them appropriately. In Ray’s case, he used a bunch of Pokémon that are widely (correctly, I’d say) considered to be the most generally powerful. It certainly doesn’t mean you have to use all of them to win or that there’s anything inherently “uncreative” about using them. Ray’s team had a lot of nuances that made his Pokémon different from those on similar teams, such as Substitute/Haban Berry/highly Specially Defensive Garchomp, Crunchless Tyranitar, and the way he played his Trick Room option, but ultimately his team was about using the best Pokémon better than his opposition did. Obviously, this is a strategy that works, and I think his victory is proof that the standards are standards for a reason. If players deviate from using Pokémon of this caliber, they better have thought out a good reason for it.

Pick Your Poison

While the standards proved their worth, it was refreshing after a 2011 Worlds that featured almost no variety in team strategy and Pokémon selection (ironically outside of Ray’s team, anyway) to see that 2012 saw a great deal of variety in Pokémon choice and team strategy toward the top of the standings. Providing the counterpoint to Ray’s team, Wolfe Glick’s 2nd-place team both had a Pokémon I can’t remember the last time I saw in a serious tournament match (Exeggutor) and some unique moveset choices (Sunny Day Cresselia, Exeggutor again, Rest Hitmontop, Choice Band Terrakion) that set his team apart from anything else in the Masters field. There was some significant variety elsewhere near the top of the division, too. Some other notables include Sejun Park running Scarf Cresselia, Life Orb Rough Skin Garchomp, and Bisharp, as well as some interesting Pokémon from other trainers like Jumpei Yamamoto’s Choice Band Explosion Metagross and Choice Scarf Salamence and Huy Ha’s Choice Specs Gyarados and Choice Scarf Rotom-Freeze. Each of the weathers got some action near the top of the standings too, with Tyranitar and Garchomp present on several teams, most notably Ray Rizzo’s, and an Excadrill from Joe Pulkowski representing Sand, Wolfe Glick’s Sun options with Sunny Day Cresselia, Harvest Exeggutor, and Heatran, a Rain option from Matt Coyle and myself, and a Hail mode from Huy Ha.

While the Pokémon we expected to be everywhere largely were last weekend, the success of so many different strategies proves that there’s a lot of different ways to win games, even at the highest level. If you do have a good reason for deviating from the most common Pokémon and support what you’re using well enough, you can be very successful.

Kill It With Fire

Perhaps the most (only) insightful thing I heard on Gamespot’s stream was that Scizor was a lot less prevalent than it had looked like it was going to be going into Worlds. I had expected it to tie with Metagross for the most common Steel-type in the tournament, but at least as far as the teams that matter toward the top, that wound up not being very accurate, with Scizor only appearing twice in top cut, on the teams of Matt Coyle (who had a bulky spread with Occa Berry) and one of the Spaniards (though Huy Ha and I both had it at 9 and 10 respectively).

A big reason for this? Cresselia may as well have been a part Fire-type Pokémon during this event, carrying Hidden Power Fire far more than I imagine anyone expected. Notable users include three players in the top 8, Jumpei Yamamto, Abel Martín Sanz (who even had a freaking Fire Gem on it!), and Sejun Park (who had Choice Scarf). Additionally, while Wolfe Glick didn’t have Hidden Power on his Cresselia, he did have Sunny Day to accompany the only top 8 appearance of hard Scizor counter Heatran, which I can say from personal experience made it very difficult to use Scizor against him to any effect. It’s likely that if Scizor’s representation was closer to what we expected throughout the field, it simply dropped its users down in placement due to how heavily it was countered in the Worlds metagame. Predicting little metagame adjustments like these goes a long way toward being successful in these events… or not making these adjustments, in the case of people like me who were still using Scizor without an Occa Berry.

LCQ, Bloodbath

We had all expected the LCQ to be pretty intimidating coming in, and I think it was actually even a little crazier than I had expected. There were upwards of a dozen players who’ve played in Worlds before in the field and a couple times that worth of players who’d gone deep at various Nationals and Regionals, which led to a tournament that had a lot of great match-ups from Mike Suleski vs Jason Fisher-Short in round 1 to Huy Ha vs Duy Ha in the final round. The LCQ is rumored to have been a bit bleak the last time Worlds was in Hawaii, but it was incredibly competitive this time, even including some strong players from countries outside of the United States (unlike last year) such as one of Japan’s top 8 finishers and Anis Haque, who was one round away from giving the Brits another shot at actually having a player with a winning record in Worlds.

A Metagame of Meteors and Metal

While last year around this time we were coming to terms with exactly how much the metagame had centralized around Terrakion, Thundurus, Scrafty, Amoonguss, and their counters, the most noteworthy and consistent parts of the metagame this year are probably the Dragon-type Pokémon and the impact they have on the metagame. Due largely to the power of Draco Meteor, each of the top competitors had at least one Steel-type on their team. While I think we expected this to mostly be Metagross (ex: Ray Rizzo, Abel Martín Sanz, Jumpei Yamamoto) and Scizor (Matt Coyle, Guillermo Castilla Diaz), the variety in top 8 was actually pretty impressive with Heatran (Wolfe Glick), Excadrill (Joe Pulkowski), and Bisharp (Sejun Park) all making appearances. The presence of Dragon-type attackers to pull the Steel-type defenders was pretty overwhelming, with at least one on most teams, capped off by a showdown between Jumpei’s Salamanece and Garchomp vs Ray’s Garchomp and Hydreigon that 7-year old fans everywhere had dreamed about. Latios and Kingdra also left their mark on the tournament. Along with the Steel-types, Cresselia’s omnipresence helped check most of these Pokémon pretty well… outside of the beast that is Hydreigon, anyway.

History Was Made

It has to be emphasized: not only do we have a three-time World Champion in VGC, but Ray Rizzo managed to win in three consecutive years. I remember having a talk with Jason Fisher-Short after Worlds last year about how unbelievable and impressive it was that Ray had managed to win twice in a row with a game as volatile as Pokémon. The best players tend to have consistently impressive results year to year, but to go all the way once requires such careful play and probability management that the idea of managing to pull it off that many times, let alone that many times in a row… I don’t think it’s sunk in for me how special that is yet. I think I speak for most of us when I say I have a heck of a time just trying to win a Regional. Winning Worlds three times in a row… it’s a special accomplishment by an amazing player and a good guy.

Me & You & Pokemon

While we all try to win (but fail because we aren’t Ray Rizzo), the best part about these events is getting to meet people who share the same interest you do from all over the world. While we battled hard throughout the weekend, we were able to take out some time to hang out with people from all over the world and play multibattles, swim, and enjoy the ridiculousness that is getting to go to Hawaii to play Pokémon. If you’re reading this and haven’t attended a World Championship before, I would definitely check it out: no other Pokémon event compares.

Featured photo contributed by dantrain for use on Nugget Bridge.


About the Author

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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