Hello Internet. The new season structure is partly out, rest of it will hopefully follow Soon™. The good news: a CP bar for Worlds qualification and likely more events for Europe. The bad news: everything else... This season literally looked amazing upon the first leaks and changed to Hell in a matter of few hours. Guess I'll talk about it a bit.
Nationals and the Bar
Judging from these payouts alone, I'd heavily expect the bar to be at 200, 220 or 250 at the very most. However, if they want to keep Worlds as big as it is and with the whole concept of day 1 instead of the Last-Chance Qualifier, the bar being even lower than 200 is a possibility as well. But well...this is getting a lot funnier as we look into the other sections, hahaha.
Regionals and Mid-Season Showdowns
Looking at Germany, I don't like the concept of arbitrarily having tournaments that will be just as competitive as Regionals but still not having Regionals payouts, so this is not much better than last year's Premier-Challenge Arena Cups. It is pretty much confirmed that Germany will get no more than 4 Regionals during the whole season...and then whatever amount of MSSs with whatever unfair geographical distribution, who knows when we will know! Anyway, not just upgrading them to real Regionals as well can turn out to be quite bad with how competitive this country is. As it is and will be, we will get up to 4 people with fair shots at scoring an invite by winning a Regional each, 4 more second-place finishers who still get in somewhat realistic reach as well and then a whole lot more where those unworthy results can possibly mean anything between everything and nothing.
Premier Challenges
Easiest thing first: Elevated Premier Challenges will be non-existent in Europe, unless Arena Cups for some weird reason have to be PCs again. And then...on to the regular PCs. Every tournament organizer is allowed to host up to 18 PCs throughout the year. The obvious implication is that a specific random village like Karben could possibly blow up more than ever before, with free 180 CP for all regulars that are good players, and then on the other hand the whole north with...literally nothing.
We badly need tournament organizers to be approved almost everywhere in the country, and then we also need those tournament organizers to have venues for doing their thing. Last year, this was probably the hugest unnecessary problem -- TPCi approved a bunch of tournament organizers who had no venues, but ignored the applications of others who readily had venues available. This needs to be fixed immediately.
Another thing I want to specifically talk about is the CP slope here. Last year's payouts were really nice, most notably with half of a win upon reaching top 8. That was a very realistic thing to achieve for everyone who understood the game well enough no matter how many world-level players were present. Now that is no longer the case; getting valuable CP now is all huge luck or absolutely excellent play. With this in mind, I'm very, very worried about attendance numbers. It's not unlikely that places which had a consistent 16+ will boil down to tryhards and absolute locals (as in, less than an hour away) only...and then this all is getting kinda pointless. Might as well just distribute the CP based on who's there how often, who needs it the most and the shit. I wouldn't be surprised if that kind of cheating actually happens eventually.
Special shoutout goes to those people who have comparably easy PCs in reach. Congratulations on your hard-earned Worlds invites, guys!
International Challenges
There's still a lot of shit wrong with them, they simply shouldn't contribute to CP at all. Turns out they still do, more than before even, and movements into and within the top-8 group will be literally all luck. If TPCi's goal is to eventually establish a Japan-Cup-style monstrosity for the whole world, this is the way to do it.
Restoring Samurai Honor
The system is flawed beyond compare, we have discussed that in the previous paragraphs. The other thing I get from it is, you know, the impression that winning matters. I see some remote inspiration from Japanese/Korean systems here, since everything they had for a while was tight on ridiculous levels as well, yet that happened to still not ruin their whole communities but breed some super-strong world warriors. Looking at me personally having always hated to win second places anyway, having the first place to be a "realer" accomplishment isn't the worst thing imaginable. I Wanne Be the Very Best, that's literally the motto of this #PlayPokémon thing and always was.
Last year, to some, had the disadvantage of the whole season just mattering too much to people who didn't have the time or events available. This happens to be gone with the new layout, where something like a Regionals win can give you some humongous momentum at any point in the season. It will not be terrible to miss out on stuff early, because there will still be chances to make up for it, and results can literally come out of nowhere. ...But is that the right way to get people to Worlds? Debatable™. There will never be a system that pleases absolutely everyone anyway, that much is certain.
So what's up with this Samurai meme reference? Easy. I have made a decision that will probably make me look like a fucking idiot, but someone has to do it first before eventually everyone does it. For every event that I place first in, I will reveal the team I used shortly after right here on my blog. Second place, other top cut and so on I don't want to think about now, because you know, not winning is completely shit and unacceptable. *cough*
This season will be nothing for the weak of heart.
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