The World Cup Discussion Thread (OOC, Version IV)

[Banija]

It is a time estimate that is not set in stone. But I can promise signups won't open any earlier than what I've set out.

I guess it goes back to pacing. We've been at 2.5 WCs per year for a few years now. Only way to get it back to 3.5 pee year is to hustle the cycles a little bit. I do think an early to mid September kickoff is enough time for a lot of other sports? Maybe not, but IBC and WB signups are already up, I imagine baseball isn't far away, etc... If you think I'm wrong though, please let me know.

As for IFCF. I can't control what they do, and I'm not sure what their goals are in terms of timing, but I feel like the last few cycles they usually cutoff right when World Cups end? Which would give until like October or something for for the next IFCF cutoff? The normal 3 or so months?

But yeah. Please continue to relay concerns about the timeline if you have them. Nothing's finalized, so the more information we have, the better

[The Gothanita Isles]

For the sake of the people who have not caught up with whatever happened in the Discord, basically there was an entire discussion on the number of WCs per year, as well as the interplaying of the WC and the IFCF timeline. There isn't much to report, because well the debate is endless, but honestly, rather than run an isolated debate, we could put this all down and then see what others have to think.

Currently, as everyone may have noticed, the WC is being romped up to around 3-3.5 per year. And it looks like the IFCF isn't getting anywhere faster, for various reasons. It was with these circumstances did a discussion pop up, with regards to "what is the correct timeline football should have on both the international and domestic fronts". There are a few proposals listed. One side of the house is basically sticking to what looks like the current status quo - 1 IFCF per WC. And that would mean we are looking at 3 WCs & 3 IFCFs per year. May evolve to 4 and 4 respectively. The other side of the house is looking at going back to the 2 IFCF per WC model, and thinking about numbers such as 4 IFCFs, 5 IFCFs, and even 6 IFCFs every year. Each has their pros and cons, but I don't want to dwell into that, because that is not my main point here.

The main point of this post, is to propose the speeding up of a WC cycle so as to benefit the entire football scene as a whole. Current "standard" numbers seem to revolve around 150-180 teams, and that would mean that things such as 15-18 groups of 10 may become the norm in the future. With the "double-scorination" format, that means 11 scorinations, considering the first and the last are scored individually. And when you add playoffs, that is 13 scorinations. On a 1/48 hours scale, that is 26 days for 1 cycle. Approximately a month. So then, how to speed up the cycle? A possible method would be smaller groups. But smaller groups may be difficult to handle. 30 groups of 6, for instance, may raise eyebrows given that the disparity in a pot would now greatly increase. Other formats may involve longer playoff stages, something which I believe not many people is a fan off.

The proposal I have aims to reduce the size of groups, while reducing the disparities we currently see in the rankings. This would involve making the World Cup proper more accessible to nations, and that means, a proposal to bring forward the implementation of 48-team World Cup propers. We talk about the two benefits it brings. First, shorter group sizes. 46 qualifiers can mean that formats such as 30 groups of 6 (180 entrants) or 23 groups of 8 (184 entrants) could be implemented. The former uses playoffs, the latter uses a top-2 qualifies method. Both format will reduce the number of scorinations to 9, or 18 days. That would save 1 week in the qualifiers. The second benefit will be to reduce the barriers to entry, which will reduce the KPB disparity caused by the same set of teams qualifying for the World Cup proper again and again.

If anyone is questioning on the format for 48-team World Cup propers, I have 2 suggestions lined out:
1) 12 groups of 4, with either the "4 best runners-up" playing a Round of 16; a Round of 24; or the "8 best third-placed teams" playing a Round of 32.
2) 8 groups of 6, with a Round of 32 for top 4 teams/Round of 16 for top 2 teams. In this case, a double scorination can be used again for the group stage, keeping the number of scorinations for the group stage the same (3).

[Audioslavia]

The entirety of NS Sport grinds to a halt really quickly when we start trying to arrange one tournament around the itinerary of another. The last couple of World Cups have seen a gap of around two months between the posting of the signup thread and the first matchday of the qualifiers. If the signups were posted now we'd be kicking off qualifiers in September.

[Electrum]

As the Olympics host, I can confirm that I intend to finish by first week of September at the latest. As a result, I am fine with Banija's timing, though it seems like everyone else wants the sign ups to start even later due to the IFCF (which is also fine). I ask that when people talk about the discussion of WC/IFCF per year, they consider the other sports as well. I totally realise this comes from a position of selfishness but the Big 5 and other minor sports won't have any breathing room if there is too much soccer going around.

I also think we need to look at ways to reduce burn out - the current levels of effort that people bring to sporting events, while very high, is not a sustainable way we should be doing things. My personal opinion is that we should all either decide to collectively lower our standards when it comes to marking roleplays (so that people who still put in a lot of effort can still receive the bonus they deserve) and look to ways to reduce the time duration of tournaments if we want to more of them. Innovations such as two match days per scorination have really helped in that regard.

[Quebec and Shingoryeo]

I ask that when people talk about the discussion of WC/IFCF per year, they consider the other sports as well. I totally realise this comes from a position of selfishness but the Big 5 and other minor sports won't have any breathing room if there is too much soccer going around.

This is probably the most important thing to think about when making this discussion.

One ought to consider that not everybody roleplays football to the extent we would expect in general. There are some roleplayers who have focused more on other sports in past, and will continue to do so. There are also many who expects IC continuity across various sports because of their roleplaying purposes.

This does not apply in my case in terms of roleplaying standpoint ATM (even though that's happened at various points over my time in NSS), but as someone who have organised competitions across various sports, I would like to emphasise this from organisational standpoint.

[Strike]

1) 48 Team World Cup - Sounds great when you don't think much about it. However I offer this. The RL WC 48 team format doesn't translate awesomely here. It would be effectively putting ALL 48 nations through a two game playoff to decide who gets to be the 32 nations in the world cup proper. Sound familiar? We already have two-game playoffs to decide who gets to the 32 team world cup... However, differently to the real life plan, what we do now which is we give 15-25 nations a guaranteed spot in the WC based on how well they do in qualifying, and then a further 15-30 nations the chance to take those last few spots based on a playoff.

I would argue our format is better. The only problem is that historically the playoffs are these mystical ignored matches that don't count for KPB - and in this discussion KPB is the very issue.

So count them. If your team makes the playoff they get half credit for the "Qualified for the finals" bonus. All of a sudden we've from a ranking standpoint we've effectively got some of the benefit of the 48 team world cup without being (yet) beholden to the awkward format they have as well as without changing from the constitution.


2) IFCF/WC Timing - The fact that IFCF doesnt go quickly is not necessarily a problem the world cup needs to center itself on. There are a number of ways to speed up / simplify the IFCF frequency discussed on discord and hopefully on here soon as well and by implementing those, hopefully the results are achieved as desired.

3) This is all driven by RP. We've had the discussions for generations now - is this a fun tournament where we want folks to write based on the results they achieve - or do they achieve those results based on how much they write? The exponentially increasing importance of RP bonus drives folks to write more content more often. We've already taken a number of strides to address this in the World Cup by introducing Double Matchday scorinations and 48 hour gaps and those have been great (I think).

I do think, however, that if the goal is to over a shorter period of time, reward the top contributing nations and allow them to climb the rankings faster, in lieu of more world cups with an RP bonus cap, just increase the KPB points weighting of CoH performances and increase the RP bonus in that tournament as necessary to balance.


I don't mind the gaps. I don't mind if the cups were faster because as others have mentioned there is plenty of other stuff to do here on the forum that doesnt have to be Football alone

[Tikariot]

I've seen it mentioned several times in various places that one reason why these discussions are happening in the first place is the time it takes to be able to rise in ranks, be it WC or IFCF, for newcomers, who might get discouraged by it. Now in a way it reminds me of Wenger's plan to increase the RL WC frequency to every two years because of all the nations that never qualify, and how that it is an, in my eyes, wrong approach.

Increasing the frequency of WC will still not help with rising through the ranks, because it will still take X amounts of cycles, but at the risk of burning out people and/or harming other non WC competitions, because people feel they have to cut back on those to be able to accommodate the faster WC cycles. Instead maybe there is a way to tweak the KPB award system to increase the rewards for a good CoH run instead and in a way make quality count over quantity? I know that this is very awkwardly phrased and likely could be misunderstood quite a bit, but I can't come up with anything better right now.

[Savojarna]

I agree with Strike's points about a 48 Team WC vs playoffs - if we use the FIFA format. But we wouldn't have to, it could easily be something like 8x6.

As someone who quite likes playoffs (they give you something to play for for a longer time during WCQ) I like the idea of giving partial bonus for playoffs though; I also very much think that CoH points should be buffed if we really want to facilitate rising through ranks.

[Milchama]

Hi Everyone! I'm back!

Some notes from an old newcomer on this very old discussion:

1. Pre NS forums when NS Sports was on Jolt we averaged about 100 per World Cup. That meant that about 33% of nations qualified. That usually meant it took about 3-4 cycles of WC qualifying to qualify for the first time. I personally liked that system because it seemed likely that you could break in and it was not immediate gratification. Qualifying in your first WC cycle was still a major surprise. Then when we switched over to the NS forums the WC has been about 180 (there were a few cycles where every WC we were breaking new sign up records but that seems to have slowed down based on the tenor of this discussion). However, we still had 32 participants which made the percentage of people who qualified much lower. It also made it a lot harder to qualify for the World Cup. Around the 50s I started advocating to expand the World Cup to 40 or 48. Now that FIFA is doing it I think we should expand as well because I think a larger percentage of people qualifying is better. 48 also moves us back to about 33% (I guess a little lower) which is still difficult but doable after a few cycles. That said, I obviously haven't been around the last few years so maybe the harshness of qualifying is better for people but I'd doubt it.

2. On timing: 2.5 cycles per year sounds very low to me but one I've noticed since I've been back this past couple weeks is how much more club football means. When I was around club football was very much a fun side thing and not an important tourney at all. Something like the IFCF did not exist and for any of the various "Champions Leagues" you could just sign up any club team without actually scorinating a league. People care now in a way they did not and having a WC/domestic league double structure to work as a yearly football calendar seems fine. The key is to make sure that newcomers are aware about how things work around here.

3. I don't think football needs to take other sports into consideration. As much as I helped launched the World Baseball Classic off the ground and want to do cricket/curling since those have become my new obsessions in the last few years I know that NS sport will always revolve around the WC and the larger football cycle. There is nothing wrong with that and we can't magically make other sports more popular, unfortunately. People want to RP sports that they like and not RP sports that they don't like. Football is the most popular sport in the world and as long as that's the case it will also be the most popular sport on NS. Having breaks in the WC cycle to do other things if fine/fun.

4. On burnout quickly (since that's basically what happened to me): Finding less intensive RPs is usually the way to go. Also, being able to coast, a little, on rank is fine. Sometimes there's too much (like there's a CoH I won where I forgot it existed and won without RPing) but, in general, RPing less because you're ranked higher should be acceptable and, on some level, encouraged. The other thing is to find gimmicks or ideas to give yourself something interesting. AIF is great at this, he's always thinking of new ways to make his team interesting. I remember the time his team was all whores for some reason. I also remember the World Cup where do to a bureaucratic error, I only had one actual player and some pieces of paper for my roster. We qualified, it was fun. I would also say there is nothing wrong with taking a break for a bit. No reason to be on full throttle all the time.

Anywhoo, glad to see the ole' discussions happening again and wanted to say hi more formally to ya'll. I'm excited to be back!

[Kelssek]

I am in favour of shifting the community norms in a way that we basically say that over and above a certain mediocre level, you get max RP bonus and anything more is entirely for your own self-expression.

When I hosted 1/4th of WC85, I was actually astounded by how much RP was being produced when I was obliged to read it all. Likewise now with IFCF. Each WCQ matchday involved a similar amount of time on the host's part as the Summer Olympics (and I still had to write my own RPs!!). Grading domestic leagues is just as if not more more daunting.

It sounds strange to say, but we are at a point where excessive quantity and quality, and the implicit peer pressure to measure up and compete to do that, is detrimental to the community. There was a couple of "no RP World Cups" a little while ago and the numbers of people signing up to those suggests there are a lot of people out there who do not enter the NS Sports community because they are put off by the seemingly impossible standards and expectations that exist in the "real" World Cup.

(As an occasional Discord lurker I have to say the negative, in-groupy attitude I saw there towards the "no RP" events was really distasteful and in my mind a symptom of exactly this problem)

Increasing the frequency of WC will still not help with rising through the ranks, because it will still take X amounts of cycles, but at the risk of burning out people and/or harming other non WC competitions, because people feel they have to cut back on those to be able to accommodate the faster WC cycles.

This assumes people will feel forced to put in the same effort if the World Cup and IFCF cycles are sped up. Ideally we would get to a place where people put in the same overall effort into more frequent competitions. Or you could think of it as, same effort overall, less effort per World Cup. A lot of this is about social expectations and norms, which is the hard part.

[Strike]

I am in favour of shifting the community norms in a way that we basically say that over and above a certain mediocre level, you get max RP bonus and anything more is entirely for your own self-expression.

I consider this the "Soft Cap" Model and I agree that this is really the best way forward for all of NS Sports (Not just the NSWC) to combat the so called RP Escalation. When I RP I do a lot of digging to portray accurate history and comparing stuff from 15... 10 even 5 years ago to today can be really eye opening how rapid the escalation has been.

Whether you say a medium quality 4 paragraph RP = Max Bonus or you say its 90% there and anything behind that is only getting you at most 10% of the remaining max, i still think its worth pursuing. But I'll venture further. We may already do this! RP Bonus is a mystical art and the cause of RP escalation may not strictly be bonus being applied just bonus seeking. The idea that there is no metric to tell you how much bonus you earn - but if you at least match the length and quality of your opponents you aren't falling behind.

Well, that will stop real fast if a list of who achieved max bonus was released every MD (for example). Because now, your comparison point isn't (Who else wrote the longest, bestest RP) but "Of all the RPs that scored Max bonus last MD, which one fits the length, quality and style of what I reasonably have time to contribute today".

I think to your point a lot more competitions could have a lot more active participation if that were the mindset going into each RP versus the former.

[Chromatika]

Well, that will stop real fast if a list of who achieved max bonus was released every MD (for example). Because now, your comparison point isn't (Who else wrote the longest, bestest RP) but "Of all the RPs that scored Max bonus last MD, which one fits the length, quality and style of what I reasonably have time to contribute today".

Though I agree with this in principle, I am absolutely against listing names of nations that earned max RP. I am not calling out anyone in particular here - in fact I would hope nobody would be this way - but this can lead to "Why in the world was my RP not given max RP bonus when I think I wrote better than country xyz" leading to either conflict with the host or internal strife which can lead to the sentiment of "Why do I even bother".

[Savigliane]

We may already do this! RP Bonus is a mystical art and the cause of RP escalation may not strictly be bonus being applied just bonus seeking. The idea that there is no metric to tell you how much bonus you earn - but if you at least match the length and quality of your opponents you aren't falling behind.

+1 here. A big issue with a lot of currently proposed reforms is that we don't really know how RP Bonus works, or how consistently it's implemented between hosts. It would be good if more hosts at least share RP bonus scales or distributions (maybe after the tournament if there are concerns about affecting the host votes, although those feel overblown) so we can get a better understanding of how they affect tournaments. As an alternative, we could also consider moving away from cumulative RP bonus, as that might alleviate some of the pressure to post every cutoff to "keep up", and shift the emphasis towards quality more.

Increasing the frequency of WC will still not help with rising through the ranks, because it will still take X amounts of cycles, but at the risk of burning out people and/or harming other non WC competitions, because people feel they have to cut back on those to be able to accommodate the faster WC cycles.

The issue with something like 2 WC/year is that it makes each individual World Cup much more important. Even with adjusted KPBs / scorination processes, people will still be at risk of getting Margaret'd. People operate in RL time, not cycles, so one bad cycle would pretty much set you back for a year (and I think would lead to significantly bigger retention issues). Agreed with the later points about looking into different levers wrt the rankings, though (although we should probably be doing that even if we stay around 3 WC/year).

NS sport will always revolve around the WC and the larger football cycle. There is nothing wrong with that and we can't magically make other sports more popular, unfortunately. People want to RP sports that they like and not RP sports that they don't like. Football is the most popular sport in the world and as long as that's the case it will also be the most popular sport on NS.

Not sure this is actually the case - I've heard many people say that they don't actually like football that much, but since there's a perception that the World Cup is so much more important than other tournaments, they still feel obligated to participate if they want to collaborate with others. It's still certainly the most important tournament, but it still needs to be mindful of its effect on NSS as a whole if it's the "main tournament". (There are also some timeline issues with maintaining internal consistency if all the different tournaments run on different timescales, although that's harder to synchronize).

[The Licentian Isles]

It sounds strange to say, but we are at a point where excessive quantity and quality, and the implicit peer pressure to measure up and compete to do that, is detrimental to the community.

Sorry, but as expressed on Discord I really struggle with this way of putting things. I'm not solely blaming you for this wording Kelssek, but I'm gonna call it out just as I and others did there from multiple people. I agree with a lot of what you're saying in principle, but I think this wording is poor. It implies (as a few people were implying on Discord earlier) that people who RP more are at fault for the issues we're seeing now, and this implication was made with regards to both IFCF and WC. As someone who puts a hell of a lot of time into his league, and a decent amount into WC RPs (though not as much as others on both counts), I think it's really souring what is quite an important debate by implying that certain people are at fault.

Nobody has to write novellas to RP in NSS, and that should be made abundantly clear. If new people to the scene don't realise that it's not a necessity, then the solution is to be better about telling them that, whether by soft caps or some other method. The solution is not to, as was suggested on Discord, begin to hard cap people's participation in various tournaments, because all that will do is push established and passionate people away from the community.

[The Sherpa Empire]

The entirety of NS Sport grinds to a halt really quickly when we start trying to arrange one tournament around the itinerary of another.

^This.

Hold the World Cup when World Cup players want to have it.

Two day cut off windows help to keep things manageable for people that RP multiple sports.

It sounds strange to say, but we are at a point where excessive quantity and quality, and the implicit peer pressure to measure up and compete to do that, is detrimental to the community. There was a couple of "no RP World Cups" a little while ago and the numbers of people signing up to those suggests there are a lot of people out there who do not enter the NS Sports community because they are put off by the seemingly impossible standards and expectations that exist in the "real" World Cup.

Maybe when newer players express frustration about how badly they are doing or how hard it is to get into the World Cup, people could try steering them toward regionals or other sports, which they might find more rewarding, instead of just telling them to be patient.

This would give them more time to get comfortable with the format of the forum, and to build confidence in their RP, beyond what they get from the BOF. Maybe some would eventually decide to give the WC another go. Maybe some would just be regionals-only players or would find their niche RPing a different sport.

Some of the "No-RP" crowd might have found IAC more accessible.

[Tumbra]

Speaking of new players finding it difficult to break in, I'd be in favour of expanding the BoF KPB points to three cycles, with no degredation. This'll give new players a small albeit solid base to build off. I'm also (wholly biased of course) in favour of expanding the WC to 48, with 8x6.

EDIT: Agree wholly with Licen. If people are daunted by the task of writing roleplays after comparing them to longer roleplays, reassure them and reassure them again that they don't need to. I write because I want to tell stories. I'd be lying if I said I didn't give two shits about results, but those are just bonuses. It's the story I want to tell, and the opportunities it presents me for collaborating with my friends on this platform, that's more important to me personally — regardless of whether it's domestically or internationally.

If people are having fun doing what they love on this niche subforum on a little corner of the Internet, we really shouldn't stop them. I know I do quite a lot, both domestically and internationally — but that's how I roll. I wouldn't be satisfied wholly otherwise.

[Krytenia]

Speaking of new players finding it difficult to break in, I'd be in favour of expanding the BoF KPB points to three cycles, with no degredation.

I like this idea. After all, It's a bonus you can only earn once.

[Ethane]

Well, that will stop real fast if a list of who achieved max bonus was released every MD (for example). Because now, your comparison point isn't (Who else wrote the longest, bestest RP) but "Of all the RPs that scored Max bonus last MD, which one fits the length, quality and style of what I reasonably have time to contribute today".

I'm a big fan of implementing some form of public RP bonus and trying to demystify RP bonus somewhat. I don't know whether it would work on the level of 'everyone sees everyones' tbh. Still, I think if you allowed some RP bonus disclosure, such as an individual RPer being given their own scores upon request or something like that, it could help manage RP expectations and show what works.

[Graintfjall]

The No RP WC seems questionable evidence given how little all but a tiny minority of users interacted with it. I'm all for new players and I have always said that RP bonus should be a bonus, not required, but this is, as per LE at the very start, a roleplaying forum. A "no roleplaying" thread just isn't a good fit and doesn't seem to offer much evidence that there are lots of potential users being turned off by seeing longer posts in the WCQs. (Had the whole thing been run in F7, or just scorinated within a day or two, I wouldn't have said a word against it.)

What is the evidence for the presumption, which seems to be a starting point of this discussion, that there is "too much" RPing? Or put it another way: if RP bonus is to be scaled back and watered down then there should be a concomitant discussion about rankings.

edit: I've removed the second half of this as on reflection it probably wasn't helpful

[Sarzonia]

I'm very much against the idea of any public RP bonus other than a host providing specific feedback to a player upon request.

When Farfadillis and Krytenia included their spreadsheet showing what RP bonus was assigned to a specific matchday, I was absolutely put off by it. It made me feel like it could potentially hold up lower bonus-earning players for ridicule. It also felt like an implication of my own RPing abilities.

I understand arguments for some standardising of RP grading, but from a former teaching assistant's perspective, there's a level of subjectivity that goes with any kind of grading of assignments. That's sort of what hosts do when they assign a RP bonus.

Sure, there are players here who may very well be almost universally considered elite RPers by everyone, but don't kill subjectivity to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

[Sylestone]

Speaking of new players finding it difficult to break in, I'd be in favour of expanding the BoF KPB points to three cycles, with no degredation. This'll give new players a small albeit solid base to build off. I'm also (wholly biased of course) in favour of expanding the WC to 48, with 8x6.

EDIT: Agree wholly with Licen. If people are daunted by the task of writing roleplays after comparing them to longer roleplays, reassure them and reassure them again that they don't need to. I write because I want to tell stories. I'd be lying if I said I didn't give two shits about results, but those are just bonuses. It's the story I want to tell, and the opportunities it presents me for collaborating with my friends on this platform, that's more important to me personally — regardless of whether it's domestically or internationally.

If people are having fun doing what they love on this niche subforum on a little corner of the Internet, we really shouldn't stop them. I know I do quite a lot, both domestically and internationally — but that's how I roll. I wouldn't be satisfied wholly otherwise.

First off, just want to apologise in advance if none of this makes sense - I woke up pretty early this morning to watch the Euro final and my brain is all over the place.

Agree wholeheartedly with everything Tumbra's saying here. As someone who's still relatively new to the community, I must admit that I was daunted when I first discovered the length and quality of roleplays that many users posted, especially in the World Cup. I tried to meet what I originally thought were expectations and looking back on it, failed rather spectacularly, but I have certainly noticed that my roleplays have continued to improve each cycle, which is certainly something that could be mentioned as I'm not the only user that this has happened to, I am sure. This is something that could be mentioned to people who are concerned about this particular issue that can be backed up very easily with evidence from differing roleplays in recent times compared to when they first started off.
It should also be very important to state that roleplaying should be for the fun of it and not to get results. If you're not enjoying it, then don't feel obliged to do it.

As for the changing of the BoF points, I'm certainly for what has been outlined above as it will reward newcomers just that little bit more. We can also consider maybe slightly increasing how the ranks are calculated from the points, maybe from 1x to 1.5x?
As for the 48-team World Cup, I like the idea, but the issue here that it could well mean that the Cup of Harmony has to come at an expense as it will have a lot fewer participants. As for the format, I think 8x6 would be optimal, with either a round of 16 or a round of 24.

As for the public RP bonuses, I'm all for being able to know your own personal scores. I think that giving and receiving feedback about how to improve your RPs and what you did well should also be made clear, too, as I personally have had feedback in the past and without it, I wouldn't be the RPer I am today. I do think we need to open up a little about this and allow a bit more transparency here, but releasing everyone's RP bonuses is just something that's going to cause competition and division.

Just my two cents

[PotatoFarmers]

3 things:
1) 48 member WC. I understand that VilTur (Strike) made some comments about how the 16x3 format is absolutely ridiculous and that is literally playoffs. I agree! Which is why I counter-proposed a 12x4 or a 8x6 format, both of which would definitely be better in terms of giving others more opportunities.
And I wrote this on the discord. Mathematically, if you are the bottom team in a 6-group team, versus being a bottom team in a 4-group team, you have lower chances of netting 0 points out of there. Which improves the amount of points given to the qualifiers as a whole. Leading to my 2nd point
2) KPB change. If WC now, on average, gives slightly more points to bottom teams, then the door is left wide open for CoH to push themselves up to that level without really disincentivising the bottom-WC teams to play for the CoH instead. We could really use the avenue to bump up scores in the CoH, ensuring that knockout stages are rewarded more handsomely than current. This smoothens the curve towards the 50-odd ranks, making it easier to break into the WC and the top of the multiverse.
3) RP scale. Okay, I am like one of the worst persons to ask, since I have never done international tournament hosting, but I love to use economics to explain RP bonus. I believe that the Law of Diminishing Returns always work here - towards a particular point, the more you RP, the less additional bonus you will get. Which is why I would think that there probably already exists a threshold which could give you a huge margin of the bonuses. And that is why the issue of "discouraging RPing too much" is a non-issue. However, our community shouldn't be giving newcomers the poor impression on this front – in fact, giving people the free flow opportunity to RP anything under the sun is what brings newbies like me here in the first place. Just like what Græntfjall said.

[Savigliane]

Was just curious after the earlier discussion, so I made a sheet with what the post-88 KPBs would look like if we implemented (1) non-decaying BoF ranks and (2) increased CoH weight in the rankings. Here it is (you can play around with the specific weight adjustment in the top left).

[Commonwealth of Baker Park]

thoughts from left field:

IF it's a 3 WC/year schedule that some are aiming for, there are definitely going to have to be hard, drop-dead cutoff dates for signups. You cannot have a two month floating signup period--THEN have the BOF in 16 days then WCQ/WCF pushed into a 30 day period. That ain't gonna fly. Period. Every cycle we keep holding out signups b/c early signups CTE, then we wait for late comers til the 11th hour.

Who can make plans about bidding for BOF/WC if you don't know if it's going to start in 30 days or 75?

I'm not going to keep it under wraps, b/c it's not some state secret, but I fully intend to put in a bid for BOF 76. I was just working on it less than hour ago. Hard deadlines would make it much easier to line up co-hosts, figure out how many cutoff days to plan for, etc.
Which I want to digress into an RP bonus thing right here--I plan to stipulate an estimated MAX total bonus based on the number of cutoff that will occur: if there are going to be 9 cutoffs (+1MD max for a roster) from MD1 to the Final, the MAX will be X.

Back to timing--NSWC is supposed to emulate RL WC timing--at least how it's set up currently--which is an 18 month process. It doesn't have to RP'd that way, but lets not kid ourselves. If that's not the intent, then it doesn't matter if we do 30 groups of six/eight/20--we can get it done in two weeks, right? RL be damned...we could have five WC's per year if we stopped pretending that a 16 or 18 game qualifying is really necessary.

As for IFCF/WC interconnectivity, just run the domestic stuff parallel with WC.

I'm being very snarky here, b/c everyone wants to have it all. We can't have it all. Either fluid time or organized time but not both at once.

[Kelssek]

I think it's really souring what is quite an important debate by implying that certain people are at fault.

There is no "blame" or "fault" of anyone. What I did say at around 15:06 UTC is that for someone new to this, it may be intimidating because of the perception you have to do what the most impressive RPers are doing. Maybe I'm being overly charitable or empathetic to such people.

The other factor is that consciously or otherwise, people fall into the sense of this being a writing competition. Again, those who can put more effort in aren't to be faulted for others getting the feeling of a rat race, yet that's the outcome the collective is left with. The peer pressure isn't even really from those going over and above, it's that "everyone" also *seems* to be pulling their fingers out, and feeling like to fit in and be accepted as a legit participant and a good member of the community you need to do that too or you're undeserving.

The solution is not to, as was suggested on Discord, begin to hard cap people's participation in various tournaments, because all that will do is push established and passionate people away from the community.

I specifically rejected a firm word limit. Maybe I misspoke, or someone else said it. Let me be clear, this is not what I said. I did suggest things such as hosts setting guidelines of "this is what a 10/10 RP looks like" (which should be something most people can easily do) or rules like "the nth word onwards will not count to RP bonus". The solution I see is to lower the bar and/or make it clear(er) where that bar is. It doesn't stop you from writing as much or as deeply as you want, just makes it clear that it gives no additional bonus or a better chance at winning once you get past a certain point.

Also, while I agree it's useful to encourage newbies to put effort into the smaller tournaments where there's more return on investment (so to speak), they should still enter the World Cup, as you need the KPB points if you hope to break into it at some point and there's no point waiting on the sidelines.