It was revealed a little while back that you will be able to host your own tournament-like events locally or over wifi using the Global Link in Pokémon Sun/Moon. This feature has never really been included in any form in a Pokémon game. This could make holding tournaments much easier for forums and the like. What are your thoughts on this new feature? I'm pretty excited about it but also cautious. Smash 4 added a tournament mode but it ended up being really lackluster in the end. I hope Pokémon does a better job with their tournaments because I love to compete in some!
What worries me most about this is the connection to the internet and the servers since Pokémon isn't known for the best servers. I do think it will bring more to the game and more to streamers who want to open a tournament for fans, it is a great opportunity for more
I feel like it'll be one of those things that we'd really like and want, but at the end, we won't actually use that much unless for scripted Battle Spot tournaments. It will seem fun but if we really think about it, how much use will we get out of it? Nonetheless, it should be interesting how the tourneys play out and as a league person myself, I'm looking forward to it!
The biggest piece of this for the competitive circuit is being able to truly enforce rules at Premier Challenges in the VGC circuit. In past years, Regionals, Nationals, and other large events got 'tournament software' with locked battle boxes and items checks and stuff, while Premier Challenges you just wrote down your team sheets. For those of us unfamiliar with the "5-move Volcarona" incident in VGC'15, in the top 4 of last year's Nugget Bridge Major, an online international tournament which had 1,327 players, one of the players in top 4 brought identical-looking teams in their battle box and party, with small differences-- in this case, the two Volcarona had five different moves between them: In the first game, the Volcarona used Quiver Dance, Heat Wave, Hidden Power, and Protect, then used Bug Buzz in the second game. While this automatically led to a forfeit by that player, it is impossible to say that incidences like this never happened through the season, where a player took two of similar teams and just switched them up depending on what they were playing against to gain an unfair advantage. The in-game rules themselves at irl tournaments weren't a huge problem in the VGC'15 season due to the doubles rules lining up with the VGC format, but this year we've been essentially playing free battles. Games accidentally being lost to one player accidentally bringing 5 Pokémon, games that go past the usual 15-minute timer, people getting caught as writing "blue orb" as their Kyogre's ability and not being able to use it in Top 8 of premier challenges are not uncommon, and all of these are things that could be avoided in the next few years thanks to this feature. I'm hella excited. :]
I'm pretty pumped for this feature to come out, actually. As has been said by @[member="Nate"] and @[member="Cadbberry"], though, I worry it may not be implemented very well. The possibilities of this feature helping the official competitions of the game are endless, though. It'd make the possibility of making Worlds without having to drive/fly/etc to tournaments that are crazy far away, even if it's extremely fun.
