The World Cup Discussion Thread (OOC, Version IV)

[Kelssek]

I have devised a survey that I hope will give a more systematic view of what the general attitude towards some of the issues being raised is. It shouldn't take too much time to complete, so please fill it out and let me know if there are any problems.

I'll leave it up until Friday, which should be enough time to get some responses. And if you find yourself writing more than a couple of sentences in the free-response, it'd probably be better posted here.

[Oberour Ar Moro]

I want to draw attention to two thoughts that I want to make sure don't get covered up by the rest of the discussion. Emphasis mine:

I have had ideas to try and encourage a bare minimum of participation, however--namely "you don't get to use your rank until you post a roster." I feel that it's fair to expect that as the absolute bare minimum for participation, as a roster at least gives your opponents the tools to craft a narrative even if you yourself can't or won't.

I'm very much in favour of RP carryover, but I feel a better system might be if it takes your best, say, half or 75% of matchdays rather than averaging all of them. Someone who RPs 75% of the time is essentially Active:tm: and should get the rewards for that. Someone who RPs all the time still gets their worst RPs taken off the record. Someone who only sporadically RPs gets a more significant chunk of the pie on offer.

I feel like these two ideas alone would help several of the issues we're facing. Though I feel like "you don't get to use all your rank, only 50%, until you post a roster" would be more than acceptable in my eyes.

[Recuecn]

It seems like most people (except Farf) are generally okay with play-offs, which will then make cycles shorter, which will in turn reduce burnout, make cycles faster, allow time for other sports and events, and generally start an upward spiral.

I'd also be totally down to try other innovative ideas (Casaran, imposing a word limit, withholding rank for rosterless nations, etc).

As a separate point, I also think that the community could take it easier on hosts, who are doing a difficult, thankless job (the last BoF draw jumps to mind here). It seems hosts always announce mistakes with dread, since no matter how well they've handled it, they can expect a hostile response. We're not particularly welcoming to new or old hosts, yet at the same time, we're surprised that there seems to be a shrinking host pool. If more people wanted to host, bids would go up sooner and the cycle would speed up as well.

[Sarzonia]

I agree wholeheartedly with Recucen about the community reactions to host mistakes and decisions in general.

That contributes to the reluctance of some people to host events on here.

[Commonwealth of Baker Park]

I want to draw attention to two thoughts that I want to make sure don't get covered up by the rest of the discussion. Emphasis mine:

I have had ideas to try and encourage a bare minimum of participation, however--namely "you don't get to use your rank until you post a roster." I feel that it's fair to expect that as the absolute bare minimum for participation, as a roster at least gives your opponents the tools to craft a narrative even if you yourself can't or won't.

I feel like these two ideas alone would help several of the issues we're facing. Though I feel like "you don't get to use all your rank, only 50%, until you post a roster" would be more than acceptable in my eyes.

I want to use OAM's thought here to amplify my 3 things:
--someone would have to check the threads, but I'm confident that ~75% of the entries for the last 4-5 cycles were committed within the first 4 weeks of the signups being posted. Hard deadlines rather than hard caps might be something to explore. Yes there are CTE's but there are also a significant number of puppets to ensure good size fields if it was made 28-30 days for entries. As mentioned above, bidders would pull together their plan against a hard deadline. I intended to bid for the BOF last cycle before Cass approached me about doing the WC instead, and would've had a bid up pretty soon after signups started.
--in my co-hosting experiences, it's been commonly understood that posting a roster is generally the same as one day's worth of RP, so the idea of tying that to the ranking points--and I think 50% is a fair penalty--shouldn't be ignored as a step in addressing Issue 2.
--this BOF class will probably rise faster through the rankings than others I've seen in my time here, b/c more of them have put in really good RP and an unusually large number of them will probably be in the COH. An adjustment to the KPB formula as it applies to the BOF (and the COH) might be something to warrant serious consideration.

Finally, as to the point about overlap, I totally anticipated this when I went ahead with my Horse Racing scheme, but decided the working out of the format was worth it. But I think enforced deadlines for the WC would be to the advantage of many secondary sports.

And I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments by Sarz and Recu about hosting mistakes--no one is deliberately sabotaging the community, and now more than ever, we have to understand there's a LOT of shit going on in people's lives.

[Barunia]

With all the talk of ranks and RP bonus, something occurred to me: We have no standardised scale for use as an RP bonus. How much a top-scoring RP gets is entirely up to the host. That might sound like a good thing, but there's a few problems with that.

The first is the relationship to rank. Unlike RP, Rank is fixed, according to the KPB formula. A team will essentially get a certain number of points per win, even if that isn't added into the scorinator on a game by game basis. But RP bonus isn't related to that at all. Which means that depending on what scale the host uses, an RP could be worth a tenth of a match's KPB, or 1000 times that value. To use an example, Vilita, ranked #1, currently has 55 KPB points. Say the host uses a scale of 0 to 1. A new nation, even picking up max points everyday, isn't going to be getting enough points added to their value in the scorinator to consider matching Vilita, even if they do nothing for 2 cycles. At the other extreme, if we use a scale of 0-100, then one good RP and the new nation is blowing top seeds out of the water.
These are both extreme examples, and I doubt any competent host would use them. But it begs the question; if these aren't reasonable scales, then what is?

The second problem is related to what other have been talking about above; host's confidence. Certainly for me, while hosting the last Rugby 7s WC I did worry about my chosen scale, and whether team's were getting enough bonus, or if I was being too generous. Add to that the complexity of the world cup itself, and the last thing host's need is the worry about whether they've not made a mistake in their scale. Sure, participant's complaining about every upset doesn't help matters, but removing a possible source of contention would help.

The third problem is a lack of understanding of the mathematics. I would say most hosts don't really know how xkoronate calculates its figures. Just how much effect does adding 10 points to the skill level have? Is 0.01 worth anything? I don't know, and I doubt anyone other than CH really does either. Trying to work out a decent scale then is a difficult task.

My suggestion: Set a standardised scale, tied to the value of KPB. Hosts are still free to grade RPs to that scale, so it's not removing their choices. But what is does is provide a level playing field: new players know how much RP might be needed to take on the top teams, and old hands have an understanding of how secure their ranks are.

On another note, absolutely opposed to the idea of regionals providing KPB. We don't need to be punishing nations who aren't in the big 3.

[Savojarna]

As a separate point, I also think that the community could take it easier on hosts, who are doing a difficult, thankless job (the last BoF draw jumps to mind here). It seems hosts always announce mistakes with dread, since no matter how well they've handled it, they can expect a hostile response. We're not particularly welcoming to new or old hosts, yet at the same time, we're surprised that there seems to be a shrinking host pool. If more people wanted to host, bids would go up sooner and the cycle would speed up as well.

THIS. I consider myself a decent enough host that I am about to dare touching the big football events (I'm considering the next Copa to get my footballing feet wet), but also, all of my hosting adventures so far have contained an error or two. Sometimes it wasn't even just my error, although it could of course have been avoided with due diligence - me starting the WCoH without two originally signed-up nations was because the list in the signup post had missed them as well. Mistakes happen, and we shouldn't be as strongly condemning people for it. This also ties into my earlier point about RP bonus - I can't be the only host that had no idea how RP bonus works commonly, but was too scared to ask because I wanted to seem competent.

EDIT post Barunia's post:
- RP bonus scales. When I have bid for the WCoH last time, my bid included a scale of RP vs rank, i.e. I had noted how long I intended it to take for an unranked nation to match the pre-WCoH rank of the number one nation. IIRC, it was "by the time of knock-outs, an unranked nation should catch up to a rosterless top seed". This could be something to consider in bids, to have hosts say "RP bonus can match an unranked top seed at matchday X", although I do see the worries that this would lead to an arms race (although, if the community considers more RP bonus good, I don't think that's a problem; if the community doesn't think it's good, they will vote for a more rank-reliant bid).
- On regionals, as I support the "KPB for regionals" idea - with the IAC established, there isn't a problem with not being in the Top 3. Everyone gets to play in a regional if they want to.

[Kelssek]

With all the talk of ranks and RP bonus, something occurred to me: We have no standardised scale for use as an RP bonus. How much a top-scoring RP gets is entirely up to the host. That might sound like a good thing, but there's a few problems with that.

To be clear, you are talking about effect of RP bonus when you say "scale", correct? I am assuming you are, but if you're not, at least this post should still be informative.

These are both extreme examples, and I doubt any competent host would use them. But it begs the question; if these aren't reasonable scales, then what is?

I don't think there should or can be a definite answer. How much effect RP bonus should have is ultimately down to community norms. In fact, we've argued about how much randomness there should be too. This is why it should be left up to hosts.

the last thing host's need is the worry about whether they've not made a mistake in their scale. Sure, participant's complaining about every upset doesn't help matters, but removing a possible source of contention would help.

If you've proposed/decided that RP effect will be set to 20%, or that each scorination window allows you to gain x skill points, then the only mistake that can be made is setting the skill or RP bonus setting incorrectly. A problem only really comes about with the current fashion for applying RP bonus as an actual increase in skill points, if you find out halfway when you're running a tournament that giving people up to 5 skill points per day as RP bonus distorts things massively. If you set RP bonus to 20% and do it through that function of xkoranate, this is a non-issue, the tradeoff being that you don't know the tournament-level effect (although you know its effect on any given match quite precisely: 20%). If you're the host, you've been trusted to handle this issue. If you find out that the bonus is too much or too little, tweak the settings. Unless it was a key sticking point in a contested bid, in which case I'd explain the issue publicly (but still make the adjustment).

Ultimately, the unknown factor is randomness, and that's a feature, not a bug. Don't forget the randomness is key. Leicester actually can win the league, Hamburg actually can get relegated, all those number one draft picks didn't do anything for the Edmonton Oilers. The game is played on the field, not the spreadsheet.

The third problem is a lack of understanding of the mathematics. I would say most hosts don't really know how xkoronate calculates its figures. Just how much effect does adding 10 points to the skill level have? Is 0.01 worth anything? I don't know, and I doubt anyone other than CH really does either. Trying to work out a decent scale then is a difficult task.

In terms of what effect RP bonus will have relative to rank, I actually think it's pretty obvious. If you're applying RP bonus directly to skill, you know exactly the relative effects of bonus and rank.

Take this example based on a real non-current KPB ranking. The 1st place team is 52.50, and 99th place team is 10.20. If you are giving up to 5 points per MD, then if 99thplaceland gets full bonus every day and 1stplaceia doesn't RP at all, after 9 matchdays 99thplaceland actually expects to beat 1stplaceia. Because you know their skills would be 52.50 vs. 55.20 (9*5+10.20)
And I should be clear, this is entirely hypothetical, the extent of RP bonus in the current World Cup is not 5 per MD.

My suggestion: Set a standardised scale, tied to the value of KPB. Hosts are still free to grade RPs to that scale, so it's not removing their choices. But what is does is provide a level playing field: new players know how much RP might be needed to take on the top teams, and old hands have an understanding of how secure their ranks are.

If you're proposing that the effect of RP bonus should be fixed by the WCC constitution, to that I say, no no no no no no.

Everyone gets to play in a regional if they want to.

Can I just point out this becomes a have to that puts you at a disadvantage if that's not your jam? NS Sports people might also want to RP in their own regions instead of the Independents Cup. Is it too much to ask that people in AO, Rushmore & Esportiva give other regions the same regard they evidently give to their own regions, especially in regards to a World Cup that's supposed to open to everyone on Nationstates?

I appreciate that those three regions dominate this community so some deference to what they want to do is fine. But they shouldn't be getting in the way of the World Cup and other NS Sports-wide things like every event that isn't soccer. A little while ago to get the ball rolling on the current WC cycle, I asked "isn't it taking a bit long for signups to start?" and the response was "regionals aren't done yet". I believe it's in this thread, actually. It'd become an informal thing that World Cup alternates with regionals and they shouldn't overlap. I think by now it's agreed that let's stop doing that?

[Barunia]

@ Kelssek: No, by RP scale, I mean the grade giving for the RP and entered into the skill column of xkoronate, which is how I do it, was told to do it, and as far as I know is how most people do it. I’ve not heard of the bonus function of xkoronate being used outside the olympics.

PS: I might have more to add later. I only skimmed your post, but it’s 1am here and I relly should be in bed, not on NS

[Qusmo]

Hello, all. I know I'm not active in WCC events anymore, & I have to admit I haven't been able to keep up with all the discussion over the past few days, but I do still have a few thoughts.

I was active in WCC competition for over a RL year, from April 2018 to August 2019; that stretches from the beginning of WC80Q to the end of WC83Q. So, about a year & a half translated into about three & a half cycles. There's been a lot of talk about the fact that no one who first signed up to participate in the WCC after WC68Q has ever won the World Cup. I've heard some say that that's just because a lot of promising RPers just stopped; if they had kept with it, they would've had every chance of advancing farther or even winning the World Cup. Well, I feel as though that's part of the problem; not everyone can just keep RPing for years on end.

From my own personal experience, I was eager to keep RPing, to share stories, to expand collaborations, to develop arcs, everything, but I went to college last fall, & as much as I enjoy Qusmo, I certainly was going to prioritize my time at college over my time here. Other people have life events & life circumstances change over the course of several years, too; even if they're excellent RPers, & have a ton of luck, & ascend up the rankings rapidly per cycle, the fact that cycles take so long make it much more likely that people won't be able to keep going – not necessarily for any NS reason, but just because things change, & they can't anymore. I think that, so long as it's possible & we have the hosts to do it (& I agree with the many who've reminded us that we ought to treat our hosts with more courtesy & respect), we ought to speed up the cycles from where we are now, so that people can actually have a shot at reaching the WC, advancing through the knockouts, or even winning the whole thing before they just don't have the time for the site anymore.

Apart from WCC tournaments, there's also been a lot of talk about regional tournaments. It's been suggested that we ought to consider doing away with them outright; I don't agree. (Hot take, I know.) I feel that regional competitions help forge closer bonds between regions. Even though I participated in the CR when I was active here, I played against opposition from AO more often than I did opposition from Rushmore. As a result, a lot of my collaborations & rivalries were with users & teams from other regions, particularly AO. Regional competitions gave me a great chance to interact with other people from my own region & form stronger bonds to my region. Without regionals, there's less of an impetus to RP within the context of one's own region. Certainly, people will still do it, but I feel like something that makes the sporting regions unique & rich would be lost if we lost regional competitions. When we talk of binning regionals, we also have to remember that regionals are a great pipeline for hosts. If we're considering proposals that might add to much we ask of hosts, or how often we ask them, it doesn't make sense to me that we'd get rid of a way for potential new hosts to gain experience so that they can do so again in the future.

Also, I have to say I'm not in favor of adding KPBs to regional tournaments. As many have pointed out already, it's an inherently unfair system; AO isn't Esportiva, so should we give the AOCAF Cup more weight than the CE? & if we do that, do we codify that imbalance, even if AO might otherwise decline in the future & Esportiva might otherwise experience a resurgence? I think a good point's been raised about the IAC, too; yes, it's a catch-all for all the other regions, but those other regions might have their own tournaments, too. & if a region like Sonnel, or The North Pacific, or any other region wants to create its own regional championships, how well can those realistically go if users have to enter an entirely different regional competition just to get KPB points? If someone wants to create the next great sporting region - just like Esportiva once was, & Rushmore before that - how can they create a Big Four if a Big Three Plus All Those Others is codified in the ranks?

However, I think the biggest reason not to give KPBs for regionals is that I fear they'll fundamentally change the nature of regionals. There are plenty of users who are active in WCC competition but not regionals, even with the IAC. There are plenty more who enter regionals but don't regularly RP nearly as much as they would for WCC events. I think that's just fine. After grueling campaigns, where I tried to RP every day of both qualifiers & the Cup of Harmony or the World Cup, it was nice to have a low-pressure atmosphere, where I could RP if I wanted to - & usually did - but I didn't have the stress of potentially losing out on KPB points if I didn't do great. (That was especially the case because cycles were few & far between, so I needed all I could get if I wanted to advance & go farther before leaving for college.) Users shouldn't feel forced to RP, or even participate, in non-WCC tournaments for fear of dropping a pot in WCQ or performing worse in the next WCC cycle as a result. So many of us have already recognized that burnout is a real issue in this community; making more events more high-stakes sounds like the opposite of a solution to me.

I've held back from the discussion because I realize I'm not a critical stakeholder here; however, I did want to add my two cents, just because I think we have to keep those perspectives in mind. There's been so much feedback lately towards making this community a better & more sustainable place, especially for those who are newer members; I just want to add my own input to hopefully help just a bit towards that end.

[Ethane]

NS Sports used to be enjoyable for me, but now I find there is too much pressure to RP to a level higher than necessary. Look at the WC - some of the RPs I have put out I'm lie meh about, and did them not out of enjoyment or interest but out of obligation. I'm helped by the fact I have a relatively high rank - if that's all you can do and you're a newcomer you have little chance.

I think an idea would be to use RP bonus differently (I'm interested in what people think, if this would work etc, NOT proposing this yet).

What if we were to average out RP? Say, average out the past 5 RPs, and use that as your bonus to the rank. Eg someone RPs MD 1, 3, 7, 10, 11 at an average of 3 would have 3x no. of RPs in tournament (or x5, depending on how much you want to benefit nations who haven't RPd recently but have RPd).

This could also be combined with an idea of diminishing returns on RPs to not overly deter active nations. In this scenario, lets say there are two nations who are both RPing at an average of 3/5 across their past 5 RPs. Without diminishing returns, both nations would have an RP bonus of 3x5 so 15. (If you want to balance this against rank, the hosts could decide upon a ratio, so if the highest rank is 60, and you wanted a proportion of 1/3 rank, 2/3 RP, then you could scale up the RP bonus to 120 for a total of 180).

With diminishing returns you could take take off 1/10th of the remaining bonus (or whatever figure was decided upon). So the active RPer would have a bonus of 3 times 5 then scaled up, while the less active RPer wold have average of diminished RP times 5.

If someone only does 1 RP, this would then also be averaged out over 5 days, so 0.6 bonus scaled up.

This promotes recent RPing, but also allows for a more generous counting of less active RPers (with or without diminishing returns). And the period which the average is calculated over could be adjusted to count for top scoring RPs across the tournament, or most recent, or random. Or 3 RPs, or 2 RPs or whatever people think would work best.

I'd need someone more mathematically inclined to figure out if this would help/work, and the community to figure out if this would help with RP problems as well (eg, would diminishing returns help with burnout or make it worse).

This is something I've thought about proposing in a host bid before. Might have been suggested before as well. Sorry if this is unclear.

What do people think? I'll get back to this tomorrow to look at responses.

[Liventia]

This, though, I think is not one of them - if you make the World Cup a constant conveyor belt of always happening or being about to happen, it has the potential to make burnout *worse* rather than better. I'd be particularly worried about its impact on other non-soccer sports, particularly as someone from the side of NS Sports that tends to view the soccer World Cup as "that juggernaut that comes along every few months, hoovers up everyone's attention, and ruins all my plans", and I do sincerely think some downtime is needed in the schedule.

At risk of becoming a broken record on this matter, I'm going to raise this point again - I would be extremely against making the World Cup something that is constantly happening and sucking oxygen away from other sports (and it would do, from experience - even the appearance of the signups thread focuses everyone's bandwidth on the fact the World Cup is now happening and away from other events) and proposal 3b) would be completely disastrous for sports that rely on people RPing them during their downtime for other events.

I'd also like to remind people that the World Cup, and soccer in general, doesn't exist in a vacuum - after all, the name of the forum is "NS Sports", not "NS World Cup and some other stuff".

Just popping in to highlight this point by Plough. Please consider the rest of the forum in your discussions.

[Sylestone]

At risk of becoming a broken record on this matter, I'm going to raise this point again - I would be extremely against making the World Cup something that is constantly happening and sucking oxygen away from other sports (and it would do, from experience - even the appearance of the signups thread focuses everyone's bandwidth on the fact the World Cup is now happening and away from other events) and proposal 3b) would be completely disastrous for sports that rely on people RPing them during their downtime for other events.

I'd also like to remind people that the World Cup, and soccer in general, doesn't exist in a vacuum - after all, the name of the forum is "NS Sports", not "NS World Cup and some other stuff".

Just popping in to highlight this point by Plough. Please consider the rest of the forum in your discussions.

I also would like to solidify this point. However, more WC’s would be good, too. Maybe we can hold three WC’s a year, but with much shorter qualifiers?

[Kelssek]

@ Kelssek: No, by RP scale, I mean the grade giving for the RP and entered into the skill column of xkoronate, which is how I do it, was told to do it, and as far as I know is how most people do it. I’ve not heard of the bonus function of xkoronate being used outside the olympics.

That's news to me, actually. This is my first time doing the system where RP bonus is directly a skill boost. For what it's worth, you've been in a Rugby World Cup and a World Cup of Hockey run with the built-in xkoranate RP bonus system - I would know.

As I alluded to in my last post, they're different methods of doing the same thing, and fixing the amount of RP bonus as applied to the skill rating would be functionally the same as a rule like "the RP bonus effect in xkoranate must be 15%".

[Cassadaigua]

Just popping in to highlight this point by Plough. Please consider the rest of the forum in your discussions.

The way I see it, the discussion of moving the World Cup to a double matchday scorination every other day could not be any better for tournaments like the World Baseball Classic, World Bowl, or any other. These tournaments are often scheduled around the World Cup. With the World Cup adopting a system of 2MD's every 48 hours, tournaments like the WBC or similar can run side by side with the World Cup, and have their own schedule which could also be on an every other day basis, if needed.

[Sylestone]

Just popping in to highlight this point by Plough. Please consider the rest of the forum in your discussions.

The way I see it, the discussion of moving the World Cup to a double matchday scorination every other day could not be any better for tournaments like the World Baseball Classic, World Bowl, or any other. These tournaments are often scheduled around the World Cup. With the World Cup adopting a system of 2MD's every 48 hours, tournaments like the WBC or similar can run side by side with the World Cup, and have their own schedule which could also be on an every other day basis, if needed.

This is true, but what I think Liventia is saying is that activity is nowhere near as high when the World Cup is on.

[The Plough Islands]

The way I see it, the discussion of moving the World Cup to a double matchday scorination every other day could not be any better for tournaments like the World Baseball Classic, World Bowl, or any other. These tournaments are often scheduled around the World Cup. With the World Cup adopting a system of 2MD's every 48 hours, tournaments like the WBC or similar can run side by side with the World Cup, and have their own schedule which could also be on an every other day basis, if needed.

I do understand this line of thinking, but what I've observed is that the World Cup tends to take precedence for a lot of users and where tournaments are running alongside each other, they will devote the majority of their RPing energy to the World Cup.

As much as this would make the issue easier to resolve, it's not a linear equation of fitting roleplay writing time into a schedule - a lot of people, and I'm one of them, just don't have the mental bandwidth to focus on more than one competition at once, and it's virtually always the smaller events that suffer where people have to make that choice.

[Audioslavia]

Audio the dude here, not Audio the mod.

It’s important to mention that every system we have at our disposal has pros and cons. They are each demonstrably as viable as the other.

Having no playoffs necessitates having only ten or fifteen groups of teams, which makes for marathon qualifying sessions.
Having playoffs means we get to have smaller groups and shorter qualifying, but with a lottery at the end for those teams not strong enough to win it.

These are both viable options.

Using NSFS to scorinate gives a big advantage to teams with more KPB points which, when you consider that a graph of the KPB rankings already looks like a hockey stick, makes it prohibitively difficult for middling teams to make progress.
Using SQIS to scorinate takes the thumb off the scale and is fairer for middling nations, but makes things more random at the top.

These are both viable options.

Double matchday scorinations are a more realistic portrayal of how qualifying works in real life, and halve the amount of deadlines to write to for those of us with busier lives outside of NS.
Single matchday scorinations are how we’ve done things for 17 years, and allow us to concentrate on one game at a time.

These are both viable options.

Having more World Cups per year is good for younger users and newcomers who are excited to participate, but football’s general popularity means that this gives the rest of the sports forum less room to manoeuvre.
Having fewer World Cups per year puts the pressure on everyone to RP when it *does* come around, which leads to burnout. It also means newcomers have to wait around 18 months before they’ve even had the chance to be competitive. Having only 2-2.5 cups per year renders any exploration of the history of the World Cup completely worthless.

These are both viable options.

Having soft-capped RP bonuses which are easier to max out makes RPing less intensive, but removes the ability for someone to *do something* about their low ranking, other than just turn up at the right time and place, which causes the rankings to stagnate.
Having higher-capped RP bonuses puts the pressure on to RP, which causes burnout.

These are both viable options.

The 48 team World Cup is fine. The 32-team version is fine. Big CoHs and small CoHs are both fine. Casaran is fine. Making errors while hosting is fine. Being good at hosting is fine.

At the end of this conversation about the various systems available to us, after making your piece heard, some of you may need to accept that you hold a minority opinion about one or more of the above topics. Plough and Liv are right in that we should be mindful of how dominant the World Cup is, and how repeating the various arguments about its systems over and over doesn't help. If a World Cup uses the ‘wrong’ scorinator or has the ‘wrong’ bonus system in your opinion, you’ll find it much more fun to put your beliefs during World Cup season. While long debates about the merits of one system over another are fun, they can get repetitive.

That's my 'I'm kind of fine with everything to be honest, I just want everyone to have fun' bit done. It ended up sounding more sanctimonious than I was expecting...

[Zwangzug]

Cup of Harmony 77 Host Announcement

Telegram invitations are currently on their way; we would like invited teams to confirm their participation by Friday at 23:59 UTC so that we can conduct the draw on Saturday and begin early next week. The thread is here, if you've missed it. Currently, we anticipate 64 teams, for 16 groups of 4. (And the powers-of-two fans in Zwangzug will be very happy.)

Thanks, Zwang and Kel.

[Farfadillis]

World Cup 85 Host Announcement

First, commiserations to those that failed to make it. Second, congratulations to those that did. We look forward to seeing you at the World Cup proper.

Anyway, the group draw will be conducted live on Discord this Thursday at 22:00 UYT. MD1 will be on Monday. ICly, if the draw goes smoothly, then it was held in Mriin. If it doesn't, it was held in Farfadillis. That is all.

[Free Republics]

Just popping in to highlight this point by Plough. Please consider the rest of the forum in your discussions.

The way I see it, the discussion of moving the World Cup to a double matchday scorination every other day could not be any better for tournaments like the World Baseball Classic, World Bowl, or any other. These tournaments are often scheduled around the World Cup. With the World Cup adopting a system of 2MD's every 48 hours, tournaments like the WBC or similar can run side by side with the World Cup, and have their own schedule which could also be on an every other day basis, if needed.

In addition, most tournaments historically run once per World Cup cycle so running more frequent World Cups means running more frequent WBCs, World Bowls, IBCs, WCoHs, NSCFs, Rugby tournaments, etc. while running less frequent World Cups means long periods where there are no events running because everybody's waiting for the World Cup which means people get out of the habit of RPing or forget what their RPs were supposed to be about.

I don't think there is really a good argument against more frequent World Cups. Slowing the World Cup down (at least to less than 4 cycles per year) slows everything else down, reduces RP, burns people out, makes it harder to climb the ranks and is generally bad period. While the real world turning into a dystopian hellscape seems to have temporarily increased activity, the trend before the past few months was towards decline (steep around 5-6 years ago but the pace of the decline had been slowing because it wasn't possible to continue at the previous rate).

I've sort of laid out what I think needs to be done to speed up the World Cup on Discord but I'll say it here for the record (and for the benefit of those who don't use Discord). The signup thread for the following World Cup needs to be posted in a timely manner (i.e. no later than 1-2 weeks after the World Cup champion is crowned) with a deadline for bids set for 2 weeks after the signup thread opens. If there's a valid bid for either tournament at the end of those 2 weeks, it goes to vote. This makes hosts more comfortable coming forward with bids that would probably lose a contested vote but would be preferred by a majority to a further delay. Holding a vote for the BoF when there's a bid but no WC bid buys more time for WC bids while allowing the BoF to proceed on schedule. Holding a vote for the WC while there's no BoF bid potentially expands the pool of BoF bidders (if there's a contested WC bid, WC bidders are extremely reluctant to also bid for the BoF because doing so could hurt their WC bid with voters who "don't want the same person hosting 2 tournaments"). The votes need to be held in a timely manner. If the WCC president is unable to hold them in a timely manner, they should take a moment to inform the VP (or if the VP is a bidder, some trusted 3rd party) and ask them to temporarily act as president to ensure things continue moving on schedule. The worst case scenario for doing all of this is that we end up with nobody bidding for the WC or for the BoF which... basically puts us in the exact same place we've been in lately in terms of frequency of WCs.

I don't think the other things people have brought up (NSFS vs SQIS, playoffs vs no playoffs, length of qualifying, how many MDs scored at a time, size of the WC finals field or limiting the length of RPs) are relevant to speeding up the pace of World Cups. These are questions for potential hosts to consider including in their bids (well other than the size of the WC finals field which requires an amendment) and voters may vote for or against bids based upon how they feel about them. If I'm an active member of the EWCC at the time it is proposed, I would vote against any amendment legislating that hosts must host the tournament in a specific way or must not host the tournament in a specific way. If you disagree with the way hosts propose to run the tournament, you are free to vote against the bid. If you feel strongly that a certain idea should be tried, you should bid for the tournament yourself (after hosting some other tournaments to gain the necessary experience and, where necessary, with a more experienced bidding partner). If you feel strongly that none of the bids are acceptable, I encourage you to consider launching your own bid rather than voting to reopen.

I am strongly opposed to limiting the length of RPs. I think its wrong for the hosts of the WC to restrict what those participating in the tournament can RP about (other than cases where somebody is blatantly violating other people's RP permissions). My own philosophy regarding bonuses is that there should be a normal distribution of bonuses with the best RPs getting close to max bonus, average RPs getting about half of max bonus and one liners and other very bad RPs getting a very small bonus. I also try to be, as much as possible, neutral regarding different styles of RP or whether the RP is directly related to the tournament. I believe its most fair for the bonus you get from RPs to mirror how much you put into them (and of course rank and randomness should both play a role as well). I haven't normalized bonuses onto a curve in the past though I do think that would be something worth trying out, particularly in a tournament like the NSWC where there are lots of RPs per day. That said, the distribution of bonuses when I've hosted tournaments has usually resembled a normal curve anyway. I do think its helpful for voters to know how bidders feel about this though if it were known that the hosts won't reward exceptional RPs relative to average RPs that would probably discourage some from putting in the extra effort on RPs.

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On another note, since I've qualified for the World Cup, I'll be returning for the WC finals as I said on Discord last night. The fact that I literally rank coasted into the finals in the most RPed World Cup ever is probably a good argument against NSFS and in favor of SQIS but it happened. I'll make a decision regarding my future involvement here by the end of the WC finals and the ending to the RP story I had started a few months ago will depend upon my future plans.

[Jeckland]

Congratulations to everyone who qualified for the World Cup! Here's the World Cup finalists by region:

Atlantian Oceania - 15: Ko-oren, Siovanija And Teusland, Equestria, 95X, Starblaydia, Valanora, Vilita, Qasden, Turori, Audioslavia, Commonwealth of Baker Park, Banija, Sarzonia, Mriin, Farfadillis

Rushmore - 5: Cassadaigua, Pasarga, Eura, Taeshan, Nephara

Esportiva - 3: Brenecia, Kita-Hinode, Hampton Island

Independents - 9: The Holy Empire (The Dreamed Realm), Kelssek (The East Pacific), Free Republics (Lunia), HUElavia (The South Pacific), Recuecn (The West Pacific), Drawkland (Sonnel), Terre Septentrionale (North Eurasia), Main Nation Ministry (The Ministry of Regions), Zwangzug (Wrigley)

[Sarzonia]

With all the talk of ranks and RP bonus, something occurred to me: We have no standardised scale for use as an RP bonus.

Having a standardised scale for RPing runs the risk of completely eliminating the subjective nature of a host's work in evaluating RPs. That's not the direction we should go in.

There may be certain RP'ers whose stuff is consistently viewed as top notch. There may be RP'ers whose work is... a bit less impressive. But not everyone has the same opinions about the same RP'er.

There are quite a few people here whose work I thoroughly enjoy. I know of people here who think my RP'ing is absolute shit. Not everyone's work is for everyone else and that's part of life too.

[Banija]

Congratulations to everyone who qualified for the World Cup! Here's the World Cup finalists by region:

Atlantian Oceania - 15: Ko-oren, Siovanija And Teusland, Equestria, 95X, Starblaydia, Valanora, Vilita, Qasden, Turori, Audioslavia, Commonwealth of Baker Park, Banija, Sarzonia, Mriin, Farfadillis

Rushmore - 5: Cassadaigua, Pasarga, Eura, Taeshan, Nephara

Esportiva - 3: Brenecia, Kita-Hinode, Hampton Island

Independents - 9: The Holy Empire (The Dreamed Realm), Kelssek (The East Pacific), Free Republics (Lunia), HUElavia (The South Pacific), Recuecn (The West Pacific), Drawkland (Sonnel), Terre Septentrionale (North Eurasia), Main Nation Ministry (The Ministry of Regions), Zwangzug (Wrigley)

Thanks for compiling this list!

[Darmen]

On the topic of NSFS versus SQIS, I'd like to remind people that there are two other formulas, SGIS and the World Cup 68 formula, which offer alternatives.