Nationstates Olympic Games Discussion Thread

[Bears Armed]

IMO, a bit more realism in the results.

But suppose that, in RL, Jamaica had decided to economise by making Usain Bolt its only entrant to one iteration of the Summer Olympics? That would have given them [in our terminology] an 'average' of 100, wouldn't it, and being in RL would have to count as 'realism'?

[Todd McCloud]

IMO, a bit more realism in the results.

But suppose that, in RL, Jamaica had decided to economise by making Usain Bolt its only entrant to one iteration of the Summer Olympics? That would have given them [in our terminology] an 'average' of 100, wouldn't it, and being in RL would have to count as 'realism'?

Well, everyone loves Jamaica. Even their worst teams get disney movies (granted it was for the Winter Olympics, but still, lol)

[Todd McCloud]

I think what Kelssek and I are getting at with respect to the violent RP's is that massive disruptions we've had come and go in the past, like Munich-esque terrorist plots, athlete rampages, national armies getting involved, etc can and at times have caused disruptions in what otherwise should be a roleplay event centered around sporting and the Olympiad. Speaking just as myself (I haven't spoken the Kelssek about this yet), but personally things like raucous parties etc are fine with me as they can still generally pertain to the Olympics.

You can always check with us first just to be sure, and we would likely encourage that. Depending on how a particular scenario is pitched, we might accept it, but we've kind of grown sour over violent RP's in Olympiads.

[Electrum]

Firstly, the principle of what it's meant to accomplish is to encourage delegations to have a normal distribution of skill ratings, rather than a U-shaped distribution. As I understand the motive, this is felt to be more realistic. I would argue however that both are equally unrealistic; in theory a RL Olympic delegation would actually have a sloping distribution whereby the number of 0s is highest and 100s are lowest. Why? Because among the entire population, sporting skill probably does have a normal distribution, but Olympic athletes represent a small slice taken at one end of that curve.

I think people's focus is not on the realism of the distribution as a whole, but only the top end where people have the problems (as it is where there is the highest chance of gaining a medal). As you said, in real life, you would probably expect 0s to be the highest and 100s the lowest. The U-shaped distribution make make sense at the 0 end, but does not make sense at the 100 end, with far too many "highest-potential-of-winning-a-medal" athletes for a delegation. Compare this to a normal distribution which MMAB is based off of, it doesn't do such a good job at approximating the 0-end, but it does a good job in approximating 100 end much like in real life. So yes, they are equally unrealistic, but people only care about one end of the spectrum. People should have a fair shot in winning a medal, if they choose to min-max, then there needs to be some way to be fair to those that don't. Plus it's easy to calculate too.

Anyways my question is: Do you worry six weeks might be too long of a schedule? Off the top of my head, I can't think of recent Olympic Games that have gone for that long, so it might be hard to expect people to pay attention for 1.5 months.

[Todd McCloud]

Firstly, the principle of what it's meant to accomplish is to encourage delegations to have a normal distribution of skill ratings, rather than a U-shaped distribution. As I understand the motive, this is felt to be more realistic. I would argue however that both are equally unrealistic; in theory a RL Olympic delegation would actually have a sloping distribution whereby the number of 0s is highest and 100s are lowest. Why? Because among the entire population, sporting skill probably does have a normal distribution, but Olympic athletes represent a small slice taken at one end of that curve.

I think people's focus is not on the realism of the distribution as a whole, but only the top end where people have the problems (as it is where there is the highest chance of gaining a medal). As you said, in real life, you would probably expect 0s to be the highest and 100s the lowest. The U-shaped distribution make make sense at the 0 end, but does not make sense at the 100 end, with far too many "highest-potential-of-winning-a-medal" athletes for a delegation. Compare this to a normal distribution which MMAB is based off of, it doesn't do such a good job at approximating the 0-end, but it does a good job in approximating 100 end much like in real life. So yes, they are equally unrealistic, but people only care about one end of the spectrum. People should have a fair shot in winning a medal, if they choose to min-max, then there needs to be some way to be fair to those that don't. Plus it's easy to calculate too.

Anyways my question is: Do you worry six weeks might be too long of a schedule? Off the top of my head, I can't think of recent Olympic Games that have gone for that long, so it might be hard to expect people to pay attention for 1.5 months.

Considering that (a) there are very few medals (3, sometimes 4) compared to the number of entrants for any given event (b) very few nations if at all have 'run the table' in an event with three or more competitors and (c) there have been many, many cases of athletes with skill modifiers of 0.2 (or 20) and below who have won medals, I like to think that the scorinator and the RP bonuses are excellent equalizers to the min-max quandary.

I know the IX Summer Olympiad lasted nearly 1.5 months, but this was not planned. The main problem here is the distance between Provinsk and Novonaya. In order to properly ensure fans take full advantage and witness the greatest extent of fun and fancy free, it may be best to space the events out a bit. Otherwise people might waste events due to long train travels and, well, we can't have that.

[CoraSpia]

I think people's focus is not on the realism of the distribution as a whole, but only the top end where people have the problems (as it is where there is the highest chance of gaining a medal). As you said, in real life, you would probably expect 0s to be the highest and 100s the lowest. The U-shaped distribution make make sense at the 0 end, but does not make sense at the 100 end, with far too many "highest-potential-of-winning-a-medal" athletes for a delegation. Compare this to a normal distribution which MMAB is based off of, it doesn't do such a good job at approximating the 0-end, but it does a good job in approximating 100 end much like in real life. So yes, they are equally unrealistic, but people only care about one end of the spectrum. People should have a fair shot in winning a medal, if they choose to min-max, then there needs to be some way to be fair to those that don't. Plus it's easy to calculate too.

Anyways my question is: Do you worry six weeks might be too long of a schedule? Off the top of my head, I can't think of recent Olympic Games that have gone for that long, so it might be hard to expect people to pay attention for 1.5 months.

Considering that (a) there are very few medals (3, sometimes 4) compared to the number of entrants for any given event (b) very few nations if at all have 'run the table' in an event with three or more competitors and (c) there have been many, many cases of athletes with skill modifiers of 0.2 (or 20) and below who have won medals, I like to think that the scorinator and the RP bonuses are excellent equalizers to the min-max quandary.

I know the IX Summer Olympiad lasted nearly 1.5 months, but this was not planned. The main problem here is the distance between Provinsk and Novonaya. In order to properly ensure fans take full advantage and witness the greatest extent of fun and fancy free, it may be best to space the events out a bit. Otherwise people might waste events due to long train travels and, well, we can't have that.

Maybe time fluidity could be your friend here? Keep the long time for the IC reasons, but mayby keep it shorter OOCly by combining 2-4 'days' into one.

[Liventia]

I think people's focus is not on the realism of the distribution as a whole, but only the top end where people have the problems (as it is where there is the highest chance of gaining a medal). As you said, in real life, you would probably expect 0s to be the highest and 100s the lowest. The U-shaped distribution make make sense at the 0 end, but does not make sense at the 100 end, with far too many "highest-potential-of-winning-a-medal" athletes for a delegation. Compare this to a normal distribution which MMAB is based off of, it doesn't do such a good job at approximating the 0-end, but it does a good job in approximating 100 end much like in real life. So yes, they are equally unrealistic, but people only care about one end of the spectrum. People should have a fair shot in winning a medal, if they choose to min-max, then there needs to be some way to be fair to those that don't. Plus it's easy to calculate too.

This is my feeling on the MMAB. Additionally, I think that while the MMAB may well be marginal in terms of how it affects results, and it may even be statistically provable to be so, the point is at the very least it's a reassuring thing to have, to prevent people from min-maxing. I myself wasn't sold on it at the start. I didn't use MMAB at the Games of the VIII Olympiad (although I did implement a "you must justify any min-maxing" policy), but have since come round to it and used it at the Summer World Para Games I did last year. It's there almost as a mental deterrent. It puts the question in people's mind, how badly will it affect my bonus/results if I min-max. And we've clearly seen people at least making an effort to reduce min-maxing.

I would strongly urge the candidates to reconsider excluding this from their bid.

[The Sarian]

I am also firmly in favour of MMAB and encourage either the candidates to reconsider or another bid to step forward.

[Eura]

Seconding Liventia on MMAB.

[Gregoryisgodistan]

I think what Kelssek and I are getting at with respect to the violent RP's is that massive disruptions we've had come and go in the past, like Munich-esque terrorist plots, athlete rampages, national armies getting involved, etc can and at times have caused disruptions in what otherwise should be a roleplay event centered around sporting and the Olympiad. Speaking just as myself (I haven't spoken the Kelssek about this yet), but personally things like raucous parties etc are fine with me as they can still generally pertain to the Olympics.

You can always check with us first just to be sure, and we would likely encourage that. Depending on how a particular scenario is pitched, we might accept it, but we've kind of grown sour over violent RP's in Olympiads.

Would this mean things like flag burnings of opposing nations' flags are OK too, assuming the flags were obtained through the legitimate means and we didn't rip one off the pole during the medal ceremony or anything like that? Or are flag burnings even illegal in the host nations to begin with?

And I assume Gregoryisgodistanis who practice violent professions, like soldiers, pervert chasers, enemy crushers, etc. will be allowed in to compete as long as they don't practice their trade while there and kill/dickapitate and castrate/crush anyone?

[West Phoencia]

I think what Kelssek and I are getting at with respect to the violent RP's is that massive disruptions we've had come and go in the past, like Munich-esque terrorist plots, athlete rampages, national armies getting involved, etc can and at times have caused disruptions in what otherwise should be a roleplay event centered around sporting and the Olympiad. Speaking just as myself (I haven't spoken the Kelssek about this yet), but personally things like raucous parties etc are fine with me as they can still generally pertain to the Olympics.

You can always check with us first just to be sure, and we would likely encourage that. Depending on how a particular scenario is pitched, we might accept it, but we've kind of grown sour over violent RP's in Olympiads.

Would this mean things like flag burnings of opposing nations' flags are OK too, assuming the flags were obtained through the legitimate means and we didn't rip one off the pole during the medal ceremony or anything like that? Or are flag burnings even illegal in the host nations to begin with?

And I assume Gregoryisgodistanis who practice violent professions, like soldiers, pervert chasers, enemy crushers, etc. will be allowed in to compete as long as they don't practice their trade while there and kill/dickapitate and castrate/crush anyone?

Flag burnings? Are all your colleges leftist Berklesque? Lol

While there was the horrible tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. They are not a regular occurence for a sporting event that promotes peace and goodwill.

Even nations that hate each other either boycott the event or attend the Olympics and disrespect a said nation like which Israel endures each Olympics due to small minded neighboring nations. North Korea even attends and pretty much seperates itself from most nations but they dont go around threatening to nuke a nation who outdoes them in Table Tennis.

There are multitudes of scenarios one can play. Someone can even rp about a war back home that may affect the players in a non homicidal way.

Nations should receive a rp bonus reduction if they have to revert to overly violent rp. Or that causes direct injury/death to another nations athletes/support staff

[CoraSpia]

Would this mean things like flag burnings of opposing nations' flags are OK too, assuming the flags were obtained through the legitimate means and we didn't rip one off the pole during the medal ceremony or anything like that? Or are flag burnings even illegal in the host nations to begin with?

And I assume Gregoryisgodistanis who practice violent professions, like soldiers, pervert chasers, enemy crushers, etc. will be allowed in to compete as long as they don't practice their trade while there and kill/dickapitate and castrate/crush anyone?

Flag burnings? Are all your colleges leftist Berklesque? Lol

While there was the horrible tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. They are not a regular occurence for a sporting event that promotes peace and goodwill.

Even nations that hate each other either boycott the event or attend the Olympics and disrespect a said nation like which Israel endures each Olympics due to small minded neighboring nations. North Korea even attends and pretty much seperates itself from most nations but they dont go around threatening to nuke a nation who outdoes them in Table Tennis.

There are multitudes of scenarios one can play. Someone can even rp about a war back home that may affect the players in a non homicidal way.

Nations should receive a rp bonus reduction if they have to revert to overly violent rp. Or that causes direct injury/death to another nations athletes/support staff

Well, gregoryisgodistan makes North Korea look internationalist.

[Gregoryisgodistan]

Would this mean things like flag burnings of opposing nations' flags are OK too, assuming the flags were obtained through the legitimate means and we didn't rip one off the pole during the medal ceremony or anything like that? Or are flag burnings even illegal in the host nations to begin with?

And I assume Gregoryisgodistanis who practice violent professions, like soldiers, pervert chasers, enemy crushers, etc. will be allowed in to compete as long as they don't practice their trade while there and kill/dickapitate and castrate/crush anyone?

Flag burnings? Are all your colleges leftist Berklesque? Lol

While there was the horrible tragedy at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. They are not a regular occurence for a sporting event that promotes peace and goodwill.

Even nations that hate each other either boycott the event or attend the Olympics and disrespect a said nation like which Israel endures each Olympics due to small minded neighboring nations. North Korea even attends and pretty much seperates itself from most nations but they dont go around threatening to nuke a nation who outdoes them in Table Tennis.

There are multitudes of scenarios one can play. Someone can even rp about a war back home that may affect the players in a non homicidal way.

Nations should receive a rp bonus reduction if they have to revert to overly violent rp. Or that causes direct injury/death to another nations athletes/support staff

No, we only burn our enemies' flags, not our own. Also, seconding everyone else's comments on MMAB.

[The Archregimancy]

I think people's focus is not on the realism of the distribution as a whole, but only the top end where people have the problems (as it is where there is the highest chance of gaining a medal). As you said, in real life, you would probably expect 0s to be the highest and 100s the lowest. The U-shaped distribution make make sense at the 0 end, but does not make sense at the 100 end, with far too many "highest-potential-of-winning-a-medal" athletes for a delegation. Compare this to a normal distribution which MMAB is based off of, it doesn't do such a good job at approximating the 0-end, but it does a good job in approximating 100 end much like in real life. So yes, they are equally unrealistic, but people only care about one end of the spectrum. People should have a fair shot in winning a medal, if they choose to min-max, then there needs to be some way to be fair to those that don't. Plus it's easy to calculate too.

This is my feeling on the MMAB. Additionally, I think that while the MMAB may well be marginal in terms of how it affects results, and it may even be statistically provable to be so, the point is at the very least it's a reassuring thing to have, to prevent people from min-maxing. I myself wasn't sold on it at the start. I didn't use MMAB at the Games of the VIII Olympiad (although I did implement a "you must justify any min-maxing" policy), but have since come round to it and used it at the Summer World Para Games I did last year. It's there almost as a mental deterrent. It puts the question in people's mind, how badly will it affect my bonus/results if I min-max. And we've clearly seen people at least making an effort to reduce min-maxing.

I would strongly urge the candidates to reconsider excluding this from their bid.

My only concern over the MMAB is that it's potentially an issue for smaller teams where a less even distribution of skill is more natural. Discouraging min-maxing in a team of 150 is entirely understandable; but a team of 2-5 (and here I'm specifically thinking about some of the 'village' teams we've had in the past) is potentially unfairly penalised by the MMAB. In these scenarios it's entirely understandable that a 'nation' might have one world-class athlete and 2-3 crap athletes.

Not everyone wants to field a massive team, but it can be more difficult to ensure an equitable distribution of talent in smaller teams.

In an ideal world, we'd perhaps scale the MMAB against the size of the team. So a team with (hypothetical numbers only) 100-250 athletes would have a stricter MMAB than a team with 50-100 athletes, which would in turn be stricter than a team of 20-50 athletes, with the lowest threshold for teams with 1-20 athletes.

On the practical level, I'm not sure this would prove viable for our already hard-pressed Olympic hosts; but perhaps teams with fewer than a set number of athletes (15-20?) could be exempted from the MMAB? This potentially gives the smaller teams a realistic chance of a medal without overdoing it.

[Electrum]

This is my feeling on the MMAB. Additionally, I think that while the MMAB may well be marginal in terms of how it affects results, and it may even be statistically provable to be so, the point is at the very least it's a reassuring thing to have, to prevent people from min-maxing. I myself wasn't sold on it at the start. I didn't use MMAB at the Games of the VIII Olympiad (although I did implement a "you must justify any min-maxing" policy), but have since come round to it and used it at the Summer World Para Games I did last year. It's there almost as a mental deterrent. It puts the question in people's mind, how badly will it affect my bonus/results if I min-max. And we've clearly seen people at least making an effort to reduce min-maxing.

I would strongly urge the candidates to reconsider excluding this from their bid.

My only concern over the MMAB is that it's potentially an issue for smaller teams where a less even distribution of skill is more natural. Discouraging min-maxing in a team of 150 is entirely understandable; but a team of 2-5 (and here I'm specifically thinking about some of the 'village' teams we've had in the past) is potentially unfairly penalised by the MMAB. In these scenarios it's entirely understandable that a 'nation' might have one world-class athlete and 2-3 crap athletes.

Not everyone wants to field a massive team, but it can be more difficult to ensure an equitable distribution of talent in smaller teams.

In an ideal world, we'd perhaps scale the MMAB against the size of the team. So a team with (hypothetical numbers only) 100-250 athletes would have a stricter MMAB than a team with 50-100 athletes, which would in turn be stricter than a team of 20-50 athletes, with the lowest threshold for teams with 1-20 athletes.

On the practical level, I'm not sure this would prove viable for our already hard-pressed Olympic hosts; but perhaps teams with fewer than a set number of athletes (15-20?) could be exempted from the MMAB? This potentially gives the smaller teams a realistic chance of a medal without overdoing it.

That is a very fair point, and one I noticed when I hosted the Winter Olympics just a few months ago. If Kelssek/Vekaiyu do decide to bring back the MMAB, I wouldn't mind this exemption.

[CoraSpia]

Will their be a signup creator?

[Tinhampton]

What is a signup creator? I'm a n00b to the Olympics

[Eastfield Lodge]

What is a signup creator? I'm a n00b to the Olympics

A program to help you manage your signups - earlier iterations were spreadsheet based, Free Republics then created an application that helped you manage it.

[Kelssek]

Given the unexpected groundswell of support for MMAB, we have decided to alter our bid. All signups whose skill modifiers have a standard deviation below 30 will be given a small bump to their cumulative RP bonus. This threshold is selected based on that used by recent hosts.

Will their be a signup creator?

Having never used it, if it generated a valid signup for last year's Summer Olympics, it should work the same for our bid. Alternatively, I can share the simple spreadsheet I use to calculate averages.

[Free Republics]

Will their be a signup creator?

Having never used it, if it generated a valid signup for last year's Summer Olympics, it should work the same for our bid. Alternatively, I can share the simple spreadsheet I use to calculate averages.

It should generate valid signups for your bid, with the caveats that the demonstration events from my bid last year are not in your bid and that CH made a few changes to the official event list to reduce entry limits for some events (which were to have been ignored by my now-withdrawn bid). While I'm unaware of any bugs in the program, it is unsupported and everybody who uses it should be aware that certain "antivirus" programs may block it from saving your signups. It also only works on Microsoft Windows (though it may or may not run on Windows emulators for other OSes).

[Gregoryisgodistan]

Having never used it, if it generated a valid signup for last year's Summer Olympics, it should work the same for our bid. Alternatively, I can share the simple spreadsheet I use to calculate averages.

It should generate valid signups for your bid, with the caveats that the demonstration events from my bid last year are not in your bid and that CH made a few changes to the official event list to reduce entry limits for some events (which were to have been ignored by my now-withdrawn bid). While I'm unaware of any bugs in the program, it is unsupported and everybody who uses it should be aware that certain "antivirus" programs may block it from saving your signups. It also only works on Microsoft Windows (though it may or may not run on Windows emulators for other OSes).

What are those changes to the official event list? I feel like there should have been an announcement if they're going to be official forever. What were they?

[Free Republics]

It should generate valid signups for your bid, with the caveats that the demonstration events from my bid last year are not in your bid and that CH made a few changes to the official event list to reduce entry limits for some events (which were to have been ignored by my now-withdrawn bid). While I'm unaware of any bugs in the program, it is unsupported and everybody who uses it should be aware that certain "antivirus" programs may block it from saving your signups. It also only works on Microsoft Windows (though it may or may not run on Windows emulators for other OSes).

What are those changes to the official event list? I feel like there should have been an announcement if they're going to be official forever. What were they?

1) A reduction in the number of entries allowed for all badminton events from 3 to 2
2) A reduction in the number of entries allowed for the eventing event (equestrian) from 5 to 4
3) A reduction in the number of entries allowed for artistic gymnastics from 6 to 5.

[Commerce Heights]

It should generate valid signups for your bid, with the caveats that the demonstration events from my bid last year are not in your bid and that CH made a few changes to the official event list to reduce entry limits for some events (which were to have been ignored by my now-withdrawn bid). While I'm unaware of any bugs in the program, it is unsupported and everybody who uses it should be aware that certain "antivirus" programs may block it from saving your signups. It also only works on Microsoft Windows (though it may or may not run on Windows emulators for other OSes).

What are those changes to the official event list? I feel like there should have been an announcement if they're going to be official forever. What were they?

There was an announcement:

I have made some corrections to the non-binding entry limits for events on the base list for the Games of the Olympiad:

• Badminton: Maximum of 2 entries for each event.
• Track Cycling: Women’s Team Pursuit is now for a team of 4 rather than 3.
• Equestrian Eventing: Maximum of 4 individual entries.
• Artistic Gymnastics: Maximum of 5 individual entries.
• Sailing: Women’s Skiff is for a team of 2.
• Tennis: The limit for Mixed Doubles was missing from the list.

These changes are not “official,” since hosts can accept whatever number of entries they want, nor are they “forever,” since future presidents of the Olympic Council will be responsible for updating the list to reflect changes made IRL (such as the further alteration of artistic gymnastics for Tokyo 2020 to a maximum of 6 entries of which only 4 compete in the team event).

[Drawkland]

Would the hosts be willing to include 7ball (or "Sevenball" as the Olympics have preferred to style it) as a demonstration event? It was included last year in both the abandoned and the completed Olympiad last year and was in FFR's bid for this year, as well as had several completed cups outside the Olympics.

There is a file for xkoranate which can be provided if needed.

[West Phoencia]

Would the hosts be willing to include 7ball (or "Sevenball" as the Olympics have preferred to style it) as a demonstration event? It was included last year in both the abandoned and the completed Olympiad last year and was in FFR's bid for this year, as well as had several completed cups outside the Olympics.

There is a file for xkoranate which can be provided if needed.

I do hope Baseball is back as a Demonstration Event. Much more played than underwater hockey.