Worlds 2015: The Boston Open announced
It has been revealed today on Pokemon.com that, in addition to the main World Championship 2015 event, there will be an open event titled the Boston Open occurring on Saturday, August 22, 2015. Available to both TCG and VGC players, the event will use VGC 2015 standard ruleset. The Masters players are capped at 512 across four 128-person flights and will play out a Top 32 single elimination cut on Sunday morning before finals. After removing the Last Chance Qualifier, which allowed players one last shot at qualifying for the World Championships, this looks to replace the large event for players who have not qualified for the World Championships.
The event will count for Regionals-level Championship Points and count towards the Regionals Best Finish Limit. It will cost four side event tickets, equivalent to $20, to enter.
Boston Open
Rules:
- 512 Master division and 256 Junior and Senior division cap
- Swiss rounds
- Cost: 4 tickets for Masters, 1 ticket for Junior and Senior
- Standard VGC 2015 Rules
Prizing:
- Regional level Championship points based on attendance.
- 1st: $200 Gift Card for the Pokémon Center and 3 Booster Boxes
- 2nd: $100 Gift Card for the Pokémon Center and 2 Booster Boxes
- 3-4th Playmat and 3 Booster Boxes
- 5-8th Playmat and 2 Booster Boxes
- 9-16th Senior and Junior divisions: Worlds Playmat and Booster Box
- 9-32nd Masters division: Worlds Playmat and Booster Box
Read more at the Boston Open page and the full side event schedule for the weekend.
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I just really wish they would announce things like this enough ahead of time, if it is counting as much as a regional.
So, once your at worlds, you get ahead start on the CP for next season, grrrreeeeaaaat, feels like they are rubbing it in who don’t have an invite faces.
you can enter the event regardless of whether you have an invite or not. also, it’s on day 2,
I could be mistaken, but I don’t see how anyone who is playing day 2 could participate in this, unless it’s really late in the evening or something.
if this was announced a month or so ago i would definitely go but now i’ve made plans for other things
Are Japanese and Korean players allowed to play in the Boston Open? If so, how do they affect CP payout? Will it be the same as Wi-Fi where they are skipped over or will there be no pass down?
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The Boston Open
Note: There are no Championship Points awarded for competing in the 2015 Video Game World Championships. If earning Championship Points for 2016 World Championships becomes a higher priority than continuing to compete toward winning the 2015 World Championships, players are welcome to make that choice before play begins on Saturday.
I want to complain about how Year 2000 kids are now in the Masters division. ;_; I didn’t think I was that old.
Mixed thoughts on this:
+ This is great for players attending Worlds and not making Day Two, as they will have a reason to be excited at the event in competitive terms. This means more people, more fun and more battles! Specially for those escalating a division as they will start seeing new faces.
– However, it does put players not attending Worlds (specially those from outside the US, as the trip is more expensive) at an advantage for the 2016 season, as they basically have one more chance to attend a Regional tournament in the season.
Hopefully there will be more Regionals outside of US next season so that BFL enters into play much easier and such advantage is not too much for other players?
Is it fair to assume Boston Open will be Bo3 on Saturday?
My thoughts regardless: As I wrote elsewhere, I think this is a very healthy replacement for the LCQ of past years. LCQ doesn’t really exist in any other competitive games, and although LCQ is hard, it kind of trivializes the seasons people worked so hard for just by having one good run. People have a right to be upset about the timing, something like this probably should have been announced, or at least HINTED at so people could plan accordingly in terms of accommodations. It’s not too late to plan, but it’s still only a month’s notice.
However, I am really irked that people are complaining that Day 2 Worlds players cant compete in this Regional level event. Does anyone not realize how ridiculous that sounds? You’re one day away from playing to be the World Champion/Runner Up and you’d rather play for CP again? This is your entire season you are talking about. You earned that CP to have this opportunity, to win Worlds, or Top 8, whatever your goal was. If your goal was “Make Day 2 worlds” then sure I guess you should be upset, but that only means you have a chance to eclipse your own goals completely. Look at the bigger picture. Paul and Evan are right, if you’re not trying to win Worlds if you make Day 2 then maybe you shouldn’t play.
What about european players? It’s the same as for japanese ones or we’d get some cps for the next season?
Everyone in a CP region is eligible for CP. This means US and Canada, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and South Africa players can all win CP. Players in non-CP regions like Japan, Korea, Russia, China(?) can play for the non-CP prizes.
The only reason people are bothered by it is because other people get a leg-up before them for the next season which could mean the difference between attending worlds the following year. So, unless you’re winning worlds this year (or if there’s a change in the CP structre like a cap), you’ve got a bit of catching up to do already for next season.
Yeah. I reacted rashly about this at first.
This is a good thing. There needs to be a reason for people who aren’t competing to be there. This is much better than the LCQ. And I’m glad it’s there.
It just bothers me that this was announced so late. We had the money to go to Worlds, but we had no reason to go. So we didn’t book a hotel and I didn’t ask for the days off work. This is a great reason for us to go, but now it’s too late to make plans for us to be there, and it’s going to give the people who had already planned to be there, and locals, an unexpected regional that they’re not going to have to spend any extra money to attend. It’s like when everybody freaked out when Kansas City suddenly started doing regionals.
I realize that TPCI is undeniably making things better. I really do appreciate that they’re taking concrete steps to make the circuit better. Just, please, give us more notice. Please.
WHY DOES THIS MATTER AT ALL? A leg up? You know best finish limits exist? You know there are people who went to 9 regionals and didn’t make worlds? My mind is blown at everyone arguing against this. Go find another game to play.
You know literally nothing about next season at all, you are in no position to argue against this.
Wow. Unless mods have been deleting posts, I’ve yet to see a single complain, or people upset/bothered by it. Who is arguing? (apart from jvlog26 post). Also, isn’t it normal for people to discuss and argue… in a discussion forum?
Anyways, I love the idea of another big tournament. It would be great if it started on Sunday before the finals, although I agree it would be logistically hard to pull it off due to the big amount of participants. Oh well.
An issue about trying to argue about the CP given by Boston Open is that we have absolutely no idea what the system structure will even be like in 2016. Depending on the person, and where they live, the points that they can gain from the tourney can mean very little, or a lot. Depending on what they change the invite structure/CP pay out to next year, this one event may mean very little, or a lot. For people who are often unable to max out their BFL for Regionals, someone like me, this is more likely to mean a lot, but there’s no guarantee I’d even do well enough to get points of relevance from this. The only thing that can be said is that this is an opportunity for people to gain CP for next season, but not every competitor who is at the event is allowed to participate.
A player knows for themselves how much they had to go through in order to Worlds. For some people, they pretty much had go out and travel long distances every time they wanted to go to an event. Maybe they made it in with only a small handful of events, but know that there’s no way that they can sustainably repeat such a task. If I was in a location where I travel to events was both a large time and money investment, I would probably be a bit annoyed about things if there was a tourney right in front of me worth points and I wasn’t able to participate in it. Even if the reason for that was that I was playing in Day 2 worlds, because I don’t want to pass up any opportunity I have to gain CP, if I can avoid it. As I know for myself, that I barely made it to Worlds in 2014, and was pretty close to making Day 1 in 2015 but fell short.
“Would you rather play in Day 2 Worlds, or the Boston Open?” obviously everyone would choose to play in Day 2 Worlds. But people are more annoyed at the fact that a situation where that question is asked even exists.
In the end, it feels like an overreaction (fueled by Twitter I guess). Right now we know way too little about what 2016 will have in store for us, so it feels like people are fearing the worst and want to be able to participate in any chance they can get to get a sizable amount of CP for the future circuit.
There’s a storm on Twitter, but it doesn’t matter if we get a CP bar. Y’all are cryin’ over nothin’.
Besides this keeps people playing, since after my nats in June it’s basically been off-season for me.
I hope that there would be minimal changes to the qualifying procedure in the 2016 circuit. I mean we are just adapting to the CP only system only this year onwards. They should take some time for us players to adapt to it.
Other than the obvious cp issue I don’t understand making an event so big when the major focus should be the world championships. I understand not everyone is into watching the event and wants something to do but an important event where cp is important and not only that but a lot of good players playing as well that could change next year’s worlds contestants, something people might want to watch as well. It just makes no sense to me having a big event in the biggest pokemon event.
Will Boston Open matches be streamed or only proper Worlds matches?
I’m pretty excited for this. I didn’t think the LCQ being missing would make as much of an impact on me as it did. I’ve never gone to Worlds with the aim of making it through the LCQ and it has always been a fairly small part of the experience as far as I could tell, but not having that important tournament that held it all together definitely felt weird when I was looking at flights. It was pretty cool to be able to play in an international tournament like that and this will be able to fill that void without somewhat trivializing the work to get to the World Championships with a last minute grinder. This way we get both a big tournament there as well as a full three day Worlds structure. Seems like the best of both worlds.
This debate reminds me of the debate about scouting from earlier in the year. In that debate people tried to argue that there was no competitive advantage to having more prior information about your opponents team they do they about yours, which in my opinion is flatly wrong. That doesn’t change the fact that some small competitive imbalance caused by some players having that advantage is totally worth all the streaming and online content that it is the cost of. In this case I think it is some small disadvantage to day 2 worlds players in the 2016 season, they will have one less tournament available in their season than people not in day 2 worlds. However, how many tournaments you play isn’t really decided by how many are available anymore. That same advantage could be gained by flying to another part of the country or lost by not doing the same. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a disadvantage, and it doesn’t mean people who acknowledge the disadvantage would rather get rid of it than be in day 2 worlds, or in a ridiculous distracting argument don’t want to win worlds. It is also a disadvantage to some players that is totally worth it in the grand scheme of things, just like some people scouting from streams. Having a tournament for the people not qualified for worlds to play in while they are there is great and all of us who make day 2 worlds will just have to suck it up and deal with one less regional in a season where you could play half a dozen if you wanted to.
Thought about this tournament a little more. There’s almost certainly going to be 7 rounds per flight as 65 to 128 players means 7 rounds of Swiss. Unless 256 or fewer players enter, we’ll get 7 rounds of Swiss. Because the Top 8 from each flight is taken for the Top 32 cut, that means you’ll need to go 6-1 to get yourself Top 32 (30 CP). Going 5-2 means you will be in Top 64.
128 Players, 7 Rounds of Swiss
glhf, a worthy bloodbath to replace the lcq
I hope this person doesn’t find a new game to play. I love Pokemon and all the players in the community and I want it to keep growing.
Does anyone know if Swiss will be best-of-one or best-of-three? I know pookar asked already, but I think that’s rather important. Thanks
Saturday
Worlds Swiss Day 2 (est): 9am-3pm
Worlds Top Cut (est): 3:30pm-5:30pm
Boston Open Swiss (7 rounds, Bo3) (est): 11am-6pm
Boston Open Swiss (7 rounds, Bo1) (est): 11am-3pm
Imagine getting streamed for Worlds Quarterfinals or Semifinals and none of your friends are around to cheer you on from the audience. ;_;
I really wish it was possible for Boston Open to start earlier in the day or even start on Friday night. If they do best of three and neither Worlds nor Boston Open has significant delays, everyone in Boston Open who plays until the end won’t be able to watch the Worlds Quarterfinals and Semifinals. If they do best of one Swiss it means players in the Boston Open have to play best of one but at least they have a chance at finishing before Worlds Top Cut. Flighted tournaments have a tendency to have delays so this really is only a chance at making it on time.
I just got back from work and apparently people are whining about having a Pokemon tournament that a ton of people from around the world can openly participate in? But how? This is an awesome opportunity, even if people in day 2 of Worlds can’t compete in it. I’d still be glad that such a tournament exists if I somehow make day 2 and can’t play. You won’t see this type of thing again all year.
That being said, there is one thing that still is looming for next season that came up with this that should at least make people a bit worried:
…so what exactly does this mean? I know there’s a plan to have two tiers of Regionals, so my question is if this is referencing a BFL for Regionals or if there’s now a kicker for more points given for more attendance. If it’s the latter, expect probably the biggest roaring headache that this game and community has seen to date.
Let me clarify: imagine planning on going to an event and going to optimize your CP chance. Imagine the event gets weighted based on how many people show up and imagine how it feels when you chose to go to that event expecting a bigger crowd and it didn’t pull a big crowd. Players should know what type of event they are attending before they make plans to attend it. CP payout should not change (beyond kickers, of course) based on attendance. You’re going to 1) punish / reward people unable to travel a lot for living in certain areas and 2) infuriate people who are traveling and trying to optimize their chances. While the only argument I can think of in favor of this might be that it removes “pay to win”, it’s barely doing anything in that regard and it’s going to cause way, way more damage than it’s worth.
tl;dr please stop whining about good things and start pushing for answers on things that are potentially going to create more whining on twitter for the entirety of the season than we’ve seen today
This reminds me of 2013 where they held two Regional level TCG events at US Nationals so more TCG players could reach the 500 CP bar for Worlds. Hopefully this event is a sign that we’re switching to a CP bar next season. As for the event itself, I’m not sure why so many people hate the idea.
Players who make day 2 should be more excited about playing in the second stage of worlds than another Regional. These players also shouldn’t have trouble getting their invite next season even if other players are getting another “free” regional to play in.
It would’ve been nice if this was announced sooner so more people without invites could’ve justified going,