2013-2014 Play! Pokemon Season Rules, Dates Revealed
Lots of news today in relation to next season’s rules. The Pokemon website has revealed a number of things about the next season.
The official changes document has been posted on the Play! website but we have also included links to more specific information where necessary.
First off Regionals, Nationals, and Worlds dates have been revealed, though no information on location has been revealed just yet for the stuff we didn’t already know. You can see those dates here, but they are also as follows:
Fall Regionals
Weekends of October 12th, 19th, 26th
Winter Regionals (2014)
Weekends of January 11th, 18th, 25th
Spring Regionals (2014)
Weekends of April 5th, 12th, 19th
US Nationals
July 4th-6th, 2014
Worlds
August 15th-17th, 2014
Fall Regionals will continue to use Pokemon Black 2 and Pokemon White 2, while further tournaments will transition to Pokemon X and Pokemon Y.
Along with these changes to Regionals dates there has been a restructuring of prizes for the next season. Instead of directly giving you a travel award from your performance at a Regional, your Championship Point standing will determine which prizes you will qualify for. Winning a Regional will now give the first place winner a Nintendo 3DS. All the information related to Championship Points can be found here.
After the Spring Regional Championships, the Championship Point rankings will award Travel Awards and Stipends for North American players to the 2014 U.S. National Championships with the following distribution (per age division):
1st–16th: Travel Award and a $300 Stipend
17th–32th: $700 Travel Stipend
33rd–64th: $350 Travel Stipend
After July 10th, 2014, the final video game Championship Point rankings will be pulled. Accounts must be in good standing and updated by the user to reflect accurate information. At this time, Championship Points earned at the 2013 World Championships will also be added to players’ accounts. The following prizes will be awarded (per age division):
1st–4th in North America: Travel Award to the 2014 World Championships
1st–16th in Europe: Travel Award to the 2014 World Championships
Included are also best finish limits to the number of Regionals that will count towards your Championship Point total. Only 3 of your best Regionals performances will be counted towards Travel Awards/Stipends and Worlds Invites. The Top 16 North American players at the end of the season will receive an invitation to the World Championships, with the Top 32 European players also getting invites to the World Championships. There will also be 4 spots available for Last Chance Qualifier top 4.
What do you think of these changes Nugget Bridge? You can find all the information related to VGC for next season on the Play! Pokemon website.
About the Author
makiri started playing VGC in 2008 and has been an advocate for VGC play since then. With three Regional Championship victories and multiple other high placings, makiri is a seasoned competitor ready to impart knowledge of the game to others.
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I don’t really agree. What we want is Regionals and there’s still absolutely no word on that. I’m expecting only a stupid Nationals marathon again, and then we still won’t qualify the best 16-32 players throughout the year but the best (or luckiest, see also: swiss with small cuts) 16-32 players for a month. The only improvement I see for us so far is that arbitrary adjustments like Birmingham 2013 are less likely to happen again (unless they do double CP for an event because the personnel can’t handle it in time, lol).
Also, what seems to have not been taken into account at all so far is the impact of 2013 Worlds. As it sounds now, people aren’t getting extra invites but they get an arbitrary amount of CP which puts them at an amount that makes them qualify — in other words, they will use up spots in the top X, so it would effectively be a “top X-Y”. (And what happens to Ryosuke, only Pokémon Japan knows, perhaps…)
Some minor notes that I neglected to include:
US Nationals will be in Indianapolis according to the TCG section of the Play! site.
European Nationals will occur May 3rd–June 30th, 2014 according to the TCG section of the Play! site. So have the weekends free I guess.
Hmmm may have missed something but… what are the rules?
I won’t surprised if Europe doesn’t get more live events, but it’d still be disappointing. Hopefully, there’s at least more Wi-Fi events worth more points to normalize the standings a little instead of the only meaningful points coming from the Nationals and hopefully TPCI freezes byes after the Nationals start so it isn’t just “if you did ok at the last Nationals you get a bye at the next one for some reason”, but those are kinda superficial changes… need more real events over there :/
Sounds like same as Worlds for Fall and then ambiguous XY related ruleset for Winter on.
Well, we all want Regional tournaments but I believe they are still a little way off yet. I’m completely ignoring those for the purpose of my statements.
The only slight improvement they can do is increase the weight of the Wi-Fi tournaments and how Byes are distributed at Nationals through them.
Ryosuke still gets the trip and last I hear TPCi was perfectly willing to fly people to Worlds for LCQ. I imagine he just gets an invite, though.
For Europe, I guess the other thing they could do would be to space out the nationals so they aren’t all within about a month of each other and do the fall / winter / spring thing, to more closely emulate the US’ system. It just seems weird to not have a real chance to play for the majority of the year.
I don’t know what I think about having to earn travel awards from CP, but I really enjoy travel stipends awarded to more people. This will benefit people who are able to travel to more regional tournaments. When my dad and I were flying back to GA from worlds, he took a later flight to obtain ~$200 dollars in flight credit so, assuming I place high enough, I could make a profit from going to ft. wayne. Also YESS 3DSs back as prizes!
I’m not going to claim to have the workload of an electrical engineer or compare my workload to others, but I will say that I took these trips while taking a completely full course load (18 credit hours) at University and think that “writing off” 8 hours for free is silly. If you’re taking the trip with a few friends, then that supposes the driving is shared, leaving 6 hours of doing SOMETHING in the car (for me, that was studying). If there are group projects or things of that nature or stuff that requires the internet then organize it so that you leave the correct work to be done in the car. Point about missing work is valid, but again the key is to plan that ahead of time so that week’s work hours are placed during the week. Yes, there are hidden costs to things, but if we’re saying that one’s time is more valuable than playing pokemon then don’t play and don’t complain about the format catering to people who actually value it enough to participate in it. This isn’t really a game where someone can show up to one event and really expect to be contender for the greater season, and I don’t think many people would want it to be that way. The nats stipends will probably be obtainable to someone who cuts two regionals.
As for food and hotel costs, I’ve always been able to find a hotel that provided free breakfast for <$100 a night and sharing that room between four or five people is 20-25 dollars. The rest of the food costs I write off a bit because I would be eating if I was on the trip or if I wasn’t, so I’d say the comparative difference between making food at home/apartment and purchasing it elsewhere (let’s say 4 meals because eating breakfast before leaving Saturday morning) isn’t 30-50, it’s probably closer to 10-20. That puts me between 30-45 for lodging + food, plus whatever it is in gas (going 400 miles away between 5 people in a 20 mpg car at $4 per gallon is about $32 per person round trip, if one happens to be 200 or less it runs less than 20 per person. So, unless all of your closest regionals are more than 500 miles away, don’t have a car, or don’t have friends to go with (which probably happens plenty), one can probably swing the weekend for ~$100. So, perhaps I am geographically gifted to live somewhere where there will probably be three regionals within 500 miles, but we don’t even know the locations yet.
This probably sounds abrasive. Sorry about that.
Say it ain’t so!!!!!!
Seriously, now there’s actually less reason for me to save money to get to Nats. Unless Top Cutting there got me enough CP to qualify for worlds, it feels so pointless. I can only realistically afford to fly to one event, and “afford” is used unbelievably loosely here. But unless I read wrong, even winning Nats won’t guarantee an invite to Worlds, let alone a travel award. The west coast has it bad, and Hawaii might as well be considered a clump of grass shacks without electricity or TCG. At the very least, they could have moved Nats a little more to the west coast since the East Coast is gonna be living it up with Worlds.
Speaking of TCG…. now Premier events have an entrance fee? If they still require a set number of Play points to allow you in, that is very low. Cards cost money too…
Anyways, a lot of the other stuff sounds good, but I think denying Regional winners of travel money is pretty hair-brained.
#endrant
Guys. Can we please all just take a moment and enjoy the fact that its August and we’re discussing this instead of two weeks before the first regional?
Or two months after the first Regional, which is when we found out what CP did last year
Still want to know when that Toronto Regional is though
After initially being pretty happy about the new organization of CP, other details on the upcoming season aren’t too appealing. Probably going over some points people have already made here.
We’re getting way more nats travel money basically being funded by tcg entry fees when tcg already funds our game, we should be pretty yamsing happy.
I don’t like the 9 regionals thing, but will increase attendance to all of them in tcg, thus more entry fees so ill live with it.
I don’t think anyone notices yet but I think it indicates we get two round Swiss along with tcg. A set of Swiss rounds, cut to x% of players for another set of Swiss rounds, then a top 8, unless I misunderstood.
Still not happy with the low number of trips and invited but eh.
Pay 2 win
They didn’t say anything about Americans not being able to attend European nationals. Looks like I am going to be having a 10 event season.
I think a lot of people overlooked the fact that regionals should become a lot more balanced. No beartics or un-EVd mamoswines made top cut at a regional I attended last year, and I intend to keep that trend going.
all I have to say is MN and west are gonna have a hard time getting to compete in these events considering most of them usually occur on the East Coast. Normally a Nationals and our 1 regional most of us can get to would do justice if we did well. That is what the system is trying to find though. The players that do well with what we are given. If that is the case then why do we have to travel all over the U.S. or in Europe’s case all over Europe to earn the worlds invite.
As long as the travel awards are in USD, everything besides the top 16 cut for worlds seems fine.
Yeah, it dawned on me a few minutes ago I’d kind of forgotten about that part of the impact of splitting the Regionals up. All of the events’ depth and difficulty should go up this year because of there always being some players who attend more than one Regional in each part of the season, which should be good for making sure the best stuff actually comes out on top. I’m gonna need to ham up my difficulty ratings this year…
Of course, Blastoise cut 2 of the 3 Regionals I went to, so maybe this isn’t such a good thing for me.
I’m not sure what part of the best finish limit is confusing you (which might be understandable since it both says there is and isn’t one on the info page right now), but no, TPCI is not just going to let players play Pokemon World Tour and finish the season with a thousand championship points and push out everyone else who didn’t pay. I would expect it won’t be that rare for players to play 5 Regionals this year, which is nice for the health of the individual tournaments, but with only the top three finishes counting it’s still going to be up to the players to actually perform well to earn their CP standings.Similarly, it’s not like the top 20 players are going to be a roaming squad at every Regional that prevents everyone else from getting CP, and I would wager things will change very little at most Regionals. You’re dramatizing Regionals pretty fiercely and this post comes off as extremely disingenuous as a result.
The paid trips are completely ingrained in the Championship Points system now, so let’s look at what the function of the CP system is: to get the best players from each region to Worlds (what most of the competitive players want) and to get a decent variety of players to Worlds (what many of the more casual players and TPCI seem to want). I posted about it already, but last year NA’s win % was a little over 1% higher than Europe at World, so if the goal is to have both regions bring a similar segment of players — which it should be — the ratio of invitations should have been skewed slightly more in NA’s favor to bring those numbers in line (though frankly, that’s a small enough difference that the same ratio would probably have been fine). We essentially got 2 more invites this year (presumably I won’t be wasting an invite, and we have four new invites to replace the ones Toler, Wolfe, and Ray got last year) while Europe lost a paid invite (repr4y’s, since Mean’s likely counts against their CP invites, whereas his did not). The result of this, if 2013 Worlds is an accurate indication of the strength of players, is actually that NA’s win % should fall below Europe’s next year, which would imply that we have too many invites relative to them, not the other way around. Every CP invite from NA showed up to Worlds last year and TPCI has to account for Worlds being in the US this year, especially since DC is a lot closer to most of our players than Vancouver was.
I don’t think it’s safe to assume that applies to VG also yet but I noticed it too and would be pretty pumped about it if I was a TCG player. Swiss not working because of Opp Win % and random pairings both being trash is the big legacy flaw of Pokemon’s tournament system, that’d be a step in the right direction if it was applied to us, too.
Sorry, I remembered the ~500 wrong, that was the miles one way, not the total price. The total price is actually about $375. That does assume Atlanta gas prices, which are nearly $4, and a jeep that gets around 14mpg.
On a barely-related note:
In England it’s $10 a gallon, actually.
But more relevantly, this looks like great news! Glad to see we don’t have regionals in Europe, too. I’ll never understand why anyone would want them- it’s just more travel for more, worse events with less prize support… uuhhhh… remind me why you’d want that?If you’re good enough to be at worlds you should be able to top a European nationals easily, so it only favours weaker players with more money and spare time. Just stick to what we’ve got at the moment and it’s fine, really.
Like people have said before, the only real negatives are lack of CP floor and too few invites for the US. But hey, it’s progress. TPCI have really picked it up in the last year and I haven’t ever been prouder to play Pokémon
I was a bit discouraged at the new prize distribution at first, but then I realized it promoted consistency, which is a step in the right direction on multiple levels.
Gonna hope in the back of my mind for surprise state VGC tournaments.
I’m guessing the reason TPCi isn’t giving NA players more paid Worlds trips is because Worlds is in the United States in 2014. Many of the Top NA players are already living in the United States, judging by the Top 12 in CP last year. Budgeting-wise, priority goes to players who qualified in regions other than NA. They probably would have given NA more paid Worlds trips if they didn’t already spread the money out among the Top 64 in CP going into Nats 2014.
I actually like the nine regionals setup because it’s much more flexible with everyone’s schedules. Last year, I’m sure there were players who weren’t able to go to a regional due to exams and other real life commitments around a particular date. Thus, pretty much everyone (other than R Inanimate, because he’s just that good) lost any chance they had at reaching the Top 12 in CP to qualify for Worlds. To be honest, I’m not sure how many of the other 2013 Top 12 CP players last year would’ve still made it like R Inanimate if they weren’t able to go to one of their regionals.
I also think people are blowing the “pay to win” thing out of proportion. How many people will actually be able to go to all nine regionals? Dependent players coming from wealthier families most likely will only go to a few regionals at most because seriously, are there any parents out there who want to take their child to a Pokemon tournament NINE TIMES over the year?
Alright then, what about players who live by themselves? Only the richest of those players who can afford many plane trips (because road-tripping to all nine regionals likely won’t be feasible), who miraculously have almost or all of those weekends free, will be able to do that. I doubt anyone like that actually exists. Even someone like me, who naturally roams around for school and work–which makes going to regionals cheaper and easier than probably almost anyone who doesn’t have a travel award–can’t do that. Even with the perks of being a roaming, working student, I will most likely only go to three regionals at most.
tl;dr the fear over “pay to win” shouldn’t exist. Having more regionals is in line with the idea behind promoting consistency over the course of a season while allowing more people to compete.
Only 4 of the 12 NA invites needed all four events to qualify last year. You mentioned Randy already, Demitri only had 90 CP going into Nats, Gavin and Enosh got enough at Nationals alone, and Zach got 0 CP at Nationals. That leaves Aaron, who blew one Regional as it was, and Stephen and I who were safe by 90 and 111 points, respectively. If you drop one of my high Regionals it comes down to ELO in my case, though I would almost certainly have won there since I was the only one of the people I’d have tied with who cut Nationals.
I may have jumped the gun on saying “instead of Regionals prizes we get CP stuff” when it is very possible Travel Awards/Stipends may still be given at Regionals and Nationals level based on finish at those events. This CP trip stuff may be in addition to the winners and other top finishers from Regionals getting awards or stipends. It doesn’t outright say one way or another (though I am inclined to believe there will only be CP trips) so there is some hope for those of you who may only be able to go to 1 Regional.
Mean probably takes up a European invite but he probably isn’t taking up one of the 16 paid invites. “Championship Points equal to the invitation level” sounds like he gets the minimum CP required to qualify and his trip will come from being a Worlds prize. I guess they can change that, though.
Are you telling me that you assume putting mileage on your car costs literally nothing? The government reimburses businesses in tax exemptions for vehicles (as does TPCi for travel stipends) at a rate of about 53cents/mile. So that’s about $700 if he drives solo, maybe $600 if he drives with a friend who doesn’t feel the need to pitch in for the car.
In regards to the info we were given, I’m mostly irritated at these changes more than anything, though, as it basically gives us no solid ground to stand on. I may have missed it, but did they even provide a number of CP given to top 8 worlds finishers? Having that info is pivotal as the season goes on.
Glad I started playtesting on PTCGO the other night.
Just dropping by to recant most of my arguments. I still think that this system is closer to pay-to-play, but the overall gains in consistency are probably worthwhile. Since players like Scott and TDS ended up on the wrong end of last year’s system, it makes more sense to have something more akin to this year.
I still think top x is garbage. The NA invite totals also seem off to me, but I stayed away from that argument last time, and I don’t intend to get involved this time.
Not super excited about CP from Worlds remaining a secret if it’s intended to stay a secret after the season starts, but continue to think the rest of this is melodrama, especially considering that most of the things people are whining about don’t put them in a worse situation than last year to begin with.
I think there is one big negative we haven’t mentioned yet: it hasn’t gone unnoticed that TCG States, Regionals, and Nationals are pure best-of-three now with the whole two-day thing, whereas I assume we will not be and will continue to be stuck on Sundays. Continue to be real sick of this little brother thing, even though I imagine AZ doesn’t like it any more than I do.
Well, honestly, this isn’t accurate. You can put in the money and show up to as many events as you want and still not win. You’ve still got to be a good and lucky player.