The reason behind EU locked tournaments and why it is a good thing

Tournaments
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This seems to be a hot topic these days. I have been seeing comments on Twitter about it, people talk about it on streams, comments from one side trigger the other side and naturally people and so on. It hurts me to see people jumping into conclusions and not looking at the facts or see the bigger picture.

For one let me start by saying there is only ONE KI community and we are all part of this, whether you hate or love the current state it is in, whether you play Ranked as a Pro or quit with no honor, we have one thing that connects us all and that is this game which we are lucky enough to play after it came back 20+ years ago and is still being supported by the devs.

Small history of the EU online scene:
The EU scene started with regionals of it’s own. France had their own tournaments online, Italy as well and also the UK. Looking back I think the main reason for EU tournaments is timezone related. Even this last KI Pro League where ITAmaster had to leave the grand final due to work while playing 6 straight hours from midnight until 6am, it just shows you how inconvenient the time difference can be and that eventhough it is an open tournament very few people of the EU are willing to play at these late hours.

This and also the fact that EU is the minor leagues as well. For the average Joe from EU to participating in a beatdown or KIPL can be very intimidating. Face off against the best of the world and getting their asses kicked can be demoralizing as well.

Thus EU online tournaments were born and it was a way for the seperate EU regions to bond and work together as well to bring an 8 bitbeatdown quality style tournament to the masses. I dont think it was ever intention make them EU only but dont think anyone from USA participated from the start since these tournaments would start at 5-6 am USA time. So once every couple of months we would have these and they were a success, we would see regular faces play and watch the stream. New talents would have some sort of platform to play competitively and get that tournament experience. That is why I think for any local scene it is important to just do it and grow from there.

Moneyprizes, KIWC points and offline Majors
As for money and KI World Cup points so far we had a few online tournaments where the host itself (Albefreak from Italy for example) would give donation money to top 3 or so. Also we had a few figurines from the awesome guys at Ultimate Source. Every other tournament didnt have any prizepot at all. There was 1 online event for KIWC points and that was the first EU tournament my team The Dutch Brawlers hosted last year. Brandon was kind enough to sanction a few points to that event as a one time deal.

Most recently we have been working with Stream.me. A streaming platform focussing on the FGC and tournaments. These guys already have a seperate USA players only tournament going on called Krossup. We agreed on to do a similar series for EU players which we are started next month after KI World Cup. They also provided the potbonus of the KOTR tournament in January.

Last year we had two offline majors: Kombo Klash UK, Kombo Klash The Netherlands and next Saturday Kombo Klash France will happen. These were and are open tournaments. Feel free to fly to Europe like some of us have been doing at EVO or KIWC 2016 to compete with us, no restrictions or anything. This will always be the case for future events as well I reckon.

In conclusion
EU tournaments were never intended to exclude ourselfs from the world scene. It just happened to have no USA entrants in the beginning because of our timezones. It has become a springboard for some EU players to grow and learn the game competively so they do better in the other online tournaments (ITAmaster, Valoraxe and LeChatDuNoir for example). Now with money on the line an ever greater tournament experience can be given.

It is also helping us differentiate us from the US tour and gives more options to MS, KIWC, sponsors,anyone who sees potential to grow new competition/regions. I would be in favor of Continent specific leagues with each of their champions facing each other at KIWC, just like any other sports with regional qualifiers. It just opens up more possibilities and in the process will produce new hero’s/talents for the community as a whole.

As for future online tournaments go we will be more than happy to organize worldwide tournaments, actually we were planning to do so but this mini series opportunity came along so we are doing that first. Stay tuned, support your local scene and #playki

So what do you think? Is it good or bad for EU to have focus on their own tournaments for now? Leave a comment below and tell me what you think and why.

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Thank you for your perspective. Thus was a very interesting read

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Having official EU online tournaments would be great! Always wanted to take part at KIPL or 8BBD but playing all Sunday night is just not gonna happen. There are a lot of very good European KI players.

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https://smash.gg/tournament/king-of-the-ring-1 you are more than welcome!

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I have nothing against the EU players hosting their own league of sorts, but I don’t agree with region restrictions on KIWC point-granting events. We don’t do it for our events, so why do it for yours? Yourself and Valoraxe and LeChatNoir have all played in multiple online KIWC events, and that’s great! You were among the best players in some of those weeks, and were rewarded with points according to that achievement. Heck, I learned some of my tech by watching LeChatNoir’s Hisako in one of the Beatdown’s. I love watching the “international” players of KI, whether Japanese or Dutch or French, because they bring something that is new and interesting to the game that I love.

I don’t think that you should cater your events at all to the American players - by all means organize the times and dates and all that stuff to maximize exposure for the European scene. But to just flat out mandate that no American players can compete at all? I don’t think that’s cool, and definitely isn’t in the spirit of “one community”. If an American player wants to play in a tournament at 4am, then let him wreck his sleep cycle and play in your tournament at 4am. I’d love to fight some of the Killers in the European scene, but as it is now I have to manually track them down, because I’m generally not allowed to play them in tournament. I don’t think that really helps the scene on either side of the pond.

The KIWC Regional League idea sounds cool, and I’d actually be up for seeing something like this done in the future. But that structure doesn’t exist now, and so I think the region locks on your events really is just kind of unfair. Why should the US tournament scene prizes be up for grabs for European players, but European tournament scene prizes aren’t up for grabs by US players? The system is two-tiered, regardless of whether or not your intent is to make US players feel excluded.

I think the conversation changes somewhat if KIWC qualifications are taken out of the conversation, but overall I just don’t think it’s great for the overall health of the scene to lock tournaments and events. The time differences will do that already to be honest - formalizing it is just a good way to create an unnecessary “us vs them” mentality.

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We had a latinamerican tourney where there was a US player invited. He won the first prize. Some people were upset because it was supposed to be “latinamerican”. And I remember other player saying “ok, stop complaining, learn and get better in order to beat that player”.
However I do believe that facing better players is what makes us advance, so , eventually expanding isn’t a bad thing.

I Doesn’t mean I’m against regional tourneys, sometimes it helps to check on the level and see which players are doing better in order to compete against even better players from other regions. I think it’s cool. But on the other side, I can understand players from US being upset with the closed EU tourneys considering this does not happen both ways (specially with points and money in the line, don’t know if they cared if there wasn’t any of that because as you mentioned time zones and lag are something you have to deal with online tourneys).

At least you came here to clear this up or explain it from your point of view.

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I’m up at 4 am half the time anyway OsSloth

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:joy: go to bed dude.

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Imma need you to slow down there buddy.

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Normality i would be against region locked tournaments but kross up is already doing that so i support you for figuring out a solution to this alienation.

I hope we can find a means to conjoin different regions to play in one tournament AND regional tournament series/circuits. Having the current NA (North American) kross up circuit and upcoming Euro KI circuit excites me. :sunglasses::+1::+1:

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Of course you would be in favor of Continental events. EU is 20% of the player base and the US is 80%. :smile: It would be easier someone to win in your EU tournament, than someone here winning a tournament in the US.

If there is to be “one” KI community, then all tournaments should be open to everyone.

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On a serious note I agree with storm. If it involves kiwc points it shouldn’t be region locked. Things such as kross up don’t pertain to the kiwc. Self contained events sure no problem. But any kiwc event should be open to anyone. Some Americans probably wouldn’t mind staying up so long if it were worth it. Long as I didn’t have work or class I know I wouldn’t.

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Hey I totally agree on this as well with you and Storm. Like I explained it was not intended to get some KIWC points sanctioned but it happened. If we gonna do a KIWC points tournament is will def be open to every1.

Other than that it is pretty much you got Krossup and we got KOTR now :slight_smile:

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Never realized there were region locked KI tournaments. So, being in Asia I cannot join either one?

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Use this as motivation to build up the Japanese player base. That’s what ki4life did.

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Were it so easy

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