Joshawott
Why official Pokémon Wi-Fi tournaments are still a load of balls.
by , 24th May 2012 at 11:59 AM (1465 Views)
Some of you might remember that I wrote a blog post last October regarding the first Pokémon Wi-Fi tournament, called "Why the Autumn Wi-Fi Friendly is a load of balls. I was fortunate enough to have a better time with the Winter Wi-Fi Friendly; although I didn't place very high in the rankings. When the Spring Tournament was announced, I thought "I might as well give this a try". I wish I hadn't.
As with the Autumn Wi-Fi Friendly, a lot of the matches I would have won unfortunately ended up with my opponent being a butt-hurt child and disconnecting before the results could be sent to The Pokémon Company International's servers. What does this mean for an honourable person like myself who was willing to take any losses I faced like a proper sportsman? Well, it meant that my rating ended up being a lot lower than it should be. I was annoyed, but decided to shrug it off because well...I don't want to put myself into an early grave over Pokémon do I?
Well today, the Global Battle Union website published the official rankings for the tournament. I was anxious to see how I had performed and if I had improved over the last tournament (I placed somewhere in the 1000s if I remember correctly). To my confusion though, my name was not on the rankings at all. Confused, I loaded up my game to get my rating - which was 1549. Comparing that with the chart, I should have come in 863-865th place - not a very notable rating, but still in the top 1/3rd of all competitors (around 3300 people took part).
I spoke to some other players about it - some have had the same problem, but another explained to me that The Pokémon Company International's policy is to disqualify anyone who has a total number of matches ending in disconnects that is total to the total disconnect rate of the tournament, plus an additional 10%. So that basically means I was disqualified simply because I had the misfortune to be paired up against children who can't take a loss. There was only one instance where a disconnect was due to a problem on my end - because I was playing while Mum was hoovering the hallway and she accidentally unplugged the wireless router.
Now, I have emailed The Pokémon Company International, because although I didn't rank very high, I still participated so I deserve my rating to be on the website. I imagine they'll reply with some automated response that can be summed with "Maybe it was your connection?" which I will call bull too - my internet connection is the fastest in my area by a considerable amount (and I've even changed ISPs since the last Wi-Fi Friendly) and I highly doubt my connection is set to time out whenever I knock out an opponent's Pokémon. Also, I've been playing on my DSi using a WPA Connection - which plays the online modes of Kid Icarus: Uprising on my Nintendo 3DS perfectly (and those who own the game can vouch for how hectic those matches are).
Unfortunately, it seems like a prediction I made in the previous blog post has come true:
Again though, this is another official Wi-Fi tournament which has done nothing but cause me frustration due to immature players and TPCi having a pretty terrible policy regarding them. I certainly hope Black 2, White 2 or even Generation VI sorts out this problem, because at this stage Pokémon Wi-Fi Tournaments are still a load of balls.Wait, as TPCI obviously don't know who disconnected (After all, if they did, would it be so hard to give the DCer the loss and the other player the win?) doesn't that mean perfectly legit players could be banned for the actions of other players?
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