As the other co-host of AOCAF 60, I will say this; I'm extremely wary of public RP grading in WCC tournaments.
That's not to say I'm completely averse to it, mind. Regionals have a much different atmosphere to them, mainly because most users tend to interact with their regionmates than those elsewhere. That's not a criticism, or an accusation of there being regional "cliques"; it's just an observation that you're more likely to interact with your friends down the street than the ones two towns over. As such, there's a lot less scope for negativity in public grading for these tournaments. Expand that to the WCC stage, especially with new users not used to the quirks and foibles of our little corner of the forum, and as Squorn said, there's a lot more chance of these users being disheartened.
Burnout is a worry, true, but it's one with more than one root cause. My advice to people is to find a level you are comfortable with. Be happy in your own writing, and do it for the enjoyment of storylines, characters, and interplay with others. RP bonus is just that; a bonus. It isn't, and never has been, a guarantee of winning. If you're RPing to grind bonus, that's probably not healthy in the long term. Nobody will judge you if you miss an RP cutoff, or if you just decide to write something short. I'd say my RPs usually fall into the "medium" length category: they're rarely essays, but they are equally rarely less than 300-400 words (on that note, IIRC, Casari's 500 word threshold would have been with me in World Cup 29).
More transparency from the hosts in how they intend to grade would be useful, but there is also the caveat that grading RPs is a subjective thing. Certainly people should not be afraid of asking questions on this; we must be mindful, though, not to turn this into a mechanical "this is what we like" kind of thing.
1.5 KPB bonus for playoffs makes sense to me. I think this came up at some point in the recent past and I thought it was a good idea then, too. Similarly, weighting the CoH heavier would also make sense; IMO, there has long been a bit of a glass ceiling around the 16-20 KPB mark that can be quite hard to break out of. It also allows newer users in their first cycle (who I feel the CoH should by rights be a springboard for) the ability to get themselves a better boost, and maybe reduce the time taken to get to the top.
I will also, at this point, reiterate my idea from WC86 that the signup process itself should be shorter (around 21 days max). I feel it would lead to slightly smaller cups - and potentially fewer MDs in qualifying - and it's an area we can condense without either majorly increasing chance of burnout or impinging on other competitions.
The biggest thing though, is that we should at least listen to other ideas. A healthy debate will achieve much more than various sides choosing a hill do die on and digging in, even if we don't all agree on X or Y.
