Everything you need to know about the 2025 Pokemon Championship 

From a competition standpoint that makes sense, but the problem with that is that Pokemon really wants as many of the top players are at each internationals as possible. If only one International counts, someone that gets a good placement at the first international is likely to not attend further ones.

Facts!

Yep Michael Kelsch said that he is not able to play any events after april so he have to try to qual for worlds before that and then just months go by where he waits for people to go by him in points

the notes did not show any limit for competitors in Middle East and South Africa, so they probably just got cut from the circuit, real sad for me

*impossible for Africa, actually

@@whereisDEI real sad :(

@@whereisDEIand they call it the world championships

In a nutshell - presently different events award different amounts of Championship points - all regional and international winners get invites to worlds and anyone who amasses 500+ championship points will also be invited. Now all winners still get invites, but as for everyone else they need to be within the top 75 of their region for points.

Yeah, from a viewer perspective we got a podcast without anyone clarifying the content being discussed at the start. Either taking more time to explicitly clarify the changes or adding graphics will help with viewer retention here.

I had to rewatch that because I was so flabbergasted by James’s story

Maybe just have all the players register who have qualified for worlds a month or so(whatever time window the organisers need) before the event and estimate the amount of players who will qualify in the remaining days and make the arrangements accordingly? It's not that hard is it?

​@@Warlord_Megatronlol, close to 800 competitors is a nightmare on logistical issue. Time and place constraint, and ever growing number is always going to be a problem

​@@JaktiLimanwouldn't have that problem if they didn't allow 2k TCG players

You have to be good enough to even hit the CP bar. All this does is disadvantage the people who can't go to every event nor have access to the resources like team building groups that the top players do. They are killing the circuit

of course, now that locals are not enough to qualify for worlds. Competitevely it s a good chance, for "casuals" it s bad, but i don t want a worlds championship without only GOOD players

Absolutely feel you man. Got into it again this January and felt like Worlds 2025 being possible seing my results at regionals and MSS. Well not anymore...cant afford to go to every event

Whats also bad is we don’t know if it’s still single restricted or a double ether

It's not funny. It's in fact, the opposite of funny. :|

I also think that this will affect VGCs growth. This will be really disheartening for a lot of players. Why would you even feel the need to attend events, if you know you wont be top 75 because you cant attend every international? I was really hyped to go to events next season but feel like its kind of useless now. Just a waste of money without a goal to work towards...

@@toni7045 yeah… that’s what I’m trying to say. Itll harm the longterm growth of the game right after we’ve seen so much growth over the past couple years. Sure there will still be players who go to events for fun, but with no achievable end goal it’ll harm the goal in the long term. It doesn’t help that the year this is going to be implemented will likely be a double restricted format which is already less popular than most formats so this could lead to the worst event attendance we’ve had since pre pandemic imo

Pokémon makes way too much money for worlds to be hard. event staff is wildly incompetent sometimes like real bad.

Oh God I hope that doest become a thing. That's so toxic and bad for community moral

@@loura246 agreed

yea I kinda hated the part where James said he registered for an international he had no intentions on going to lol

@@rekskill102 If anything they've made that worse with a rank-limited invite system. I don't think TPCI has thought through this new system and what it incentivizes.

I won't be surprised if things like that start happening. That's just how the cutthroat race works, you use every tool to surpass the others.

Getting rid of the CP bar always results in p2w. Anyone who reaches the bar is good enough for worlds

Not likely to do that since the points for local tournaments got cut in half and you can only have 2 fewer best results.

Pissing off your player base isn't smart ever. This was a dumb decision and a blind person could've seen this coming

@@basedjiren3889 I don't think these changes were made because someone in a board room was like, "Okay, how do we piss a bunch of people off?"

I have to say to everyone who thought they could get into worlds but now wouldn’t bother- this sucks. The anger is justified but what I would like to recognize is the grief that is surely there. The bar has been raised. Has ‘not having a chance at worlds’ stoped you from entering regionals before? The answer could be yes or no but that is your choice as a player. Im not saying a world’s invite is meaningless because it’s not. It’s just that the bar was lower for a while and now it’s not. The game has grown and so has its number of fantastic players, and tpc has realized they don’t want to deal with that amount of players anymore. If yall would have gotten a worlds invite before this rule, yall are seriously gamer and Im so sorry you were robbed of that. But if you think that there are better uses of your time now that worlds is possibly unattainable - then you know yourself, and I trust you that you’re probably right. Im not quite sure if the greif truly begins once your decision on this question is final, or if it starts to end. But I wish you all good luck in your endeavors. Wether you decide to spend least another year climbing the ranks of showdown before you feel confident going live again, watch from a distance, or leave competition behind completely, I wish you luck in your endeavors.

​@serpentmaster1323 the bar was raised in back to back years. They are basically punishing the players for getting better as a whole

Ah thanks, saved me having to watch 40 minutes, I just needed this comment :D

We had an issue with our account but we’ll upload this and any other missing pods as soon as we can!

@@beastcoastpokemon great to hear that, gl w the issues, and thank you for the quick response ^^

@@stoicauritra7147 as a New Orleans local who wants to compete at NAIC 2025 for the fun of participating, I am dreading this change in atmosphere.

I believe the asymmetrical bracket would make it so resistance only impacts one person at most. Everyone with a better record would get a bye the first round. So resistance should only come into play if there are a odd amount of people at the lowest allotted record. And that person would in theory have to face a tougher oppent to start their bracket.

@@spencermiller9466 if you take LA regionals as an example, after round 11 there were four 10-1 players and sixteen 9-2 players rounding out the top cut. So you would need 8 of the 9-2 players to play single elimination games, then you would have effectively a top 16 and standard single elimination from there on. So resistance forces 8 of the players into a single elimination match, and then everyone left has to play an additional single elimination. The current system ended with a 13-1, three 12-2, and ten 11-3, so 6 players were cut due to resistance. And no one had to play a guaranteed single elimination match.

@woodyg5756 see in my head that would play out as the 16 at 9-2 would play a round leaving 8, then play again leaving 4. Those 4 would then be joined by the 4 that were at 10-1 and that would be the top 8

People seem to think casuals will still show up enough to offset the people leaving. They are called casuals for a reason. They MAY go to 2 regionals and their regions IC if they can even get in, they are not the ones traveling to 4-5 regs a year and multiple ICs. This hurts the scene and they don't care

To be clear, i do get that its still very hard to do, and not something you can say, “oh just win a regional.” Im just asking if its still a thing. I dont think it makes a much of a difference regardless, im just curious

@@LanternComicnerd it's still a thing, they increased the latter to top 4

Nice. Def not ideal, but at least it is there if you happen to place well.

No. Their automatic invites are not included. But they would still be in the travel awards pool, unless TPCI/Play Pokémon decides to comp everyone that qualifies for Worlds.

The issue is always the balance of the benefits of attending lots of events and travelling a lot versus doing really good in a few events. Now the updated points structure (they noted the huge drop off after 8th, which is presumably because of this) and best finish limits are supposed to manage this and we will see how it goes. But, as it stands, a person more able to travel (especially for internationals) has a huge advantage with this hard cutoff. The system absolutely needed revamping, and this is a logical way to go for the organizers but it does have some issues if not carefully balanced.

Nah just have all the qualified players register before a certain time period until worlds which allows the organisers to organise the event and estimate the amount of players who will qualify in the remaining days and make arrangements accordingly. They already have the data and everything

But it's not. This new system rewards players for being able to travel everywhere. VGC doesn't have the prizing to all of a sudden decide they want worlds to be exclusive

@@Warlord_Megatron That isn't possible. Events on this scale are organized more than a year in advance. You can't just select the facility and organize everything in a few months. The 2025 World's location would have been contracted months ago, almost certainly before the first 2025 CP were issued. And that is normal and necessary for this scale of events.

You shouldn't punish people for making the established CP bar

More people could also offset the costs of renting out the venue

You have to be somewhat good at the game to even get enough points to cross the points threshold to qualify. Only elitists think it's a good thing to punish the community for getting better

I mean he's won a regional each of the last 4 years, so may come off that way, but pretty sure he knows he'll be fine. With that being said, love the straight up savageness of this comment. 😂

@@basedjiren3889 Somewhat good means should go to worlds. Ok zoomer lmao

@@spencermiller9466 Wish it wasn't true but just the way he came off. Actually agree he will be fine, if he wants to be, but sometimes in long form podcasts like this the mask slips a bit. Meant what I said too, love watching him play and hope he does make worlds every year!