The World Bowl Discussion Thread (OOC, version II)

[Tumbra]

Amazing hosting by Chrom! Hope to see ya'll again in the next World Bowl!

[World Bowl]

In about a week, I will be getting signups going for the next World Bowl.

In the meantime, what would people think about creating a World Bowl Hall of Fame, that would have the same point structure as is done for the World Baseball Classic?

[Sarzonia]

I like the idea of a World Bowl Hall of Fame, but let's not make it a popularity contest or move the goalposts once guidelines are established

[World Bowl]

World Bowl 42 signups are here!!

[Cassadaigua]

I have decided to withdraw from World Bowl 42.
Drawkland, the VP, will now serve as the President.

I know this is short notice, but I feel that this is for the best.

[World Bowl]

Host voting underway. Check the signup thread, and TG this nation. We're at 31 signups and 1 host bid. Voting will close on Sunday. Be back soon

[Quebec and Shingoryeo]

And with my withdrawal from World Bowl 42, I think my time with the tournament is done.

I know this is relatively short notice, and that I have not been able to RP much if at all over last few cycles. But I know it is inevitable for me retire Quebec and Shingoryeo from World Bowl, as the IC justification for their participation (college all-stars mostly), a practice I have maintained for many cycles, no longer makes sense. Furthermore, I believe that cutting back on some tournaments, while unfortunate, is inevitable to reset my priorities on the NSS.

Please understand that this is by no means on the host. Graint/QoD is someone I dearly respect and trust upon in every capacity and form as cohost and the bid would have gotten my wholehearted YAY if I had a vote. I can also confirm that I have no plan to retire from my commitments to the NSCF and of course, NSS.

Once again, thank you for wonderful times.

[Sarzonia]

I'm planning a storyline surrounding the sudden firing of my coach. It's so sudden in fact that I literally just thought of it this morning.

Suffice it to say, there's a LOT behind the scenes of this dismissal that will make its necessity quite obvious when the truth comes out.

[Buffalostan]

Thanks everyone who responded to the cutoff time poll. It's not been possible to pick a time that will be right for everyone, but there was a cluster of responses in the 7-9pm EDT window. The latter is a bit too late for me, so I'll be putting the cutoff window at 7-8pm EDT.

[Buffalostan]

I've taken the step of listing everyone's style mods in parentheses after their roster links. This is a check, because every single roster lists the style mod in a different place and it can be easy to miss! Those with no modifier listed (that I can see) are listed N/A. They will be scorinated with a modifier of 0. If the modifier I've listed doesn't match what you intended (especially if I've listed you as N/A) please contact me and I will correct this.

[Saint Kanye]

"The Banija Serpent Eagles starting Quarterback for World Bowl 42 is...."

JOHN CENA!

Cavanaugh grinned slightly as he looked at both Dennehy and Pearlman. He knew the player's identity would seemingly stop time for the briefest of seconds, and would set up the cataclysmic blow for the rest of the multiverse.

"His name is..."

ALSO JOHN CENA!!!!

[NSWC Signups]

"The Banija Serpent Eagles starting Quarterback for World Bowl 42 is...."

JOHN CENA!

Cavanaugh grinned slightly as he looked at both Dennehy and Pearlman. He knew the player's identity would seemingly stop time for the briefest of seconds, and would set up the cataclysmic blow for the rest of the multiverse.

"His name is..."

ALSO JOHN CENA!!!!

The crucial part is that you can't see him, so for all we know this could be true

[Sarzonia]

I went back and edited my quoted post since I accidentally misgnedered my attorney in the quoted part.

[Buffalostan]

Apparently a touch of confusion, so just so no one's waiting up, tonight is a scheduled off-day. Semifinals resume as normal tomorrow.

[Buffalostan]

So, with the tournament over, any thoughts?

The scorinator generally produced more realistic results IMO although it was a little disappointing, if I suppose not totally implausible, to get a 3-0 in the playoffs. Random group seeding definitely played its part as all the negative modifier teams seemed to end up in the same group.

The no roster no rank rule wasn't that successful. Allamunnic States still went over .500 and made the playoffs! Great roster turnout otherwise, though I don't think the rule really influenced that.

Too many dead games towards the back end of qualifying. Probably unavoidable but there's a bit of a lurch especially when teams that have RPed well go 1-and-done in the playoffs. I think I have revised my opinion on not wanting shorter group stages and that perhaps a 32 team 8x4 would have been preferable after all!

[Sarzonia]

As the victim of that 3-0 scoreline it was completely realistic given *how* defensive the team I was playing against is.

I was more frustrated with the blowout loss to Bongo Johnson than anything else; the defeat at home to Banija when IRL a team in my position might have at least fought to avoid the play-in round was disappointing, but not as bad. In all cases the results allowed me to create a storyline that set the tone for how I want to RP my quarterback-turned-coach.

I'm not 100 percent sure I'm comfortable with roster penalties even though I understand the reasoning behind them, but one World Bowl is hardly a reliable sample size in my opinion.

[Chromatika]

So, with the tournament over, any thoughts?

The scorinator generally produced more realistic results IMO although it was a little disappointing, if I suppose not totally implausible, to get a 3-0 in the playoffs. Random group seeding definitely played its part as all the negative modifier teams seemed to end up in the same group.

The no roster no rank rule wasn't that successful. Allamunnic States still went over .500 and made the playoffs! Great roster turnout otherwise, though I don't think the rule really influenced that.

Too many dead games towards the back end of qualifying. Probably unavoidable but there's a bit of a lurch especially when teams that have RPed well go 1-and-done in the playoffs. I think I have revised my opinion on not wanting shorter group stages and that perhaps a 32 team 8x4 would have been preferable after all!

I think that no roster = no rank, though admirable in what it's trying to do, can lead to randomness of a completely different nature dictating things.

In my group, though Allamunnic States did sweep Saint Kanye somehow, it was never in doubt who would be the top two teams in the group because we were the only ones with rosters and RPs. In other groups, things were a lot more even because everyone had rosters, and therefore, rank. Though it was advantageous to me, it felt disingenuous to be the only ones skating by.

I think we should cap the rank penalty for not posting a roster, like we've done in the last few WC bids. That way, we're still incentivizing the presence of a roster, but we're not penalizing people for simply being drawn into a group with other users who care. Whether it be 25%, 33%, 50%, or even 66%, there being a better chance for upsets even for users who end up in groups with only a few rosters sounds like the best way to go.

Just my two cents.

[Delaclava]

Overall, it seemed to me that the active teams were the teams that made it through, which is what we want. Since the top three teams from each group qualified, we're looking for any Pot 4 and Pot 5 teams who were rewarded for their participation. Tumbra and SNL RPed well and made their runs to the playoffs; they might have been able to do that anyway without the roster penalty. I don't think there was anyone from those pots who made a big RP push and came up short - aside from New Gesem perhaps, although Squidroidia did roster if little else. Allamunnic States making it through doesn't seem a huge issue to me, as after Saint Kanye and Chromatika, no one was really going for that third spot, it could have been anyone. (And maybe that last part is a problem with a full roster penalty, that randomness Chromatika alluded to.) It's worth playing around there, but at least some roster penalty is the right move in my eyes.

On a separate note, I felt like a lot of the scores I came across were non-intuitive. I consider myself pretty well-versed in American football and yet had to do thorough research for several games to find a logical way to explain many of my scorelines. I don't know what the easy fix is here as I know the scorinator doesn't work possession by possession, that's only my observation.

I didn't necessarily get the sense of dead games, as I got my qualification relatively safe with two games to go yet I was still working to secure an optimal playoff position. Even as I had a bye on the last day, the Banija-Sarzonia fixture had major implications for all three of those teams. I admit I was only fully attuned to the situation of my group, but the concept of "dead games" applies to the seeding and not just the qualification itself, especially with how much seeding for third-placed teams mattered.

[Saint Kanye]

Not bad for our first finals. But Ran did a fine job, hats off to them. And thanks to everyone else for a fun tournament! See you next edition!

Also it looks like we dropped every fourth game, should have scheduled a tune up before the big one /s

[Kohnhead]

I'm very proud of how I did in making the quarters and of course losing to Chromatika.

I disliked the addition of a play-in set with 30 teams, 18/30 teams making it to Buffalostan really felt like too much to me. Imo more than half of the teams should never make it past the group stage because then you get a 3-5 team like South Newlandia making it (obviously no offense to SNL).

I also liked the higher scoring in this World Bowl, I felt like I was getting more realistic scores (meaning higher) despite having a lower style mod and it allowed the good teams to really dominate while we still got the classic Ko-oren 3-0 win.

Agree with Chrom when it comes to the cap penalty, I like roster penalties but in some cases they're a bit too extreme. Drawkland getting blown out by Newmanistan in the first match is an example of this as they were punished severely for missing out on the roster by a day and playing the pot 1 team.

In terms of the Group Stage I thought it was fine, I'd be eh on the 8x4 idea don't really feel that it's necessary however I'm not entirely opposed to it.

Lastly congrats to Ran for winning, commiserations to STK and big thanks to Buffalostan for a well done hosting job.

[Saint Kanye]

2-nil when?

[Drawkland]

On a separate note, I felt like a lot of the scores I came across were non-intuitive. I consider myself pretty well-versed in American football and yet had to do thorough research for several games to find a logical way to explain many of my scorelines. I don't know what the easy fix is here as I know the scorinator doesn't work possession by possession, that's only my observation.

Sure they're intuitive, if you're planning to RP your team kicking 6 field goals per game

[Tumbra]

And with that, that's my involvement in the World Bowl over. I don't have the time nor energy to finish up the storyline; but in a nutshell, what I'd planned was for my old head coach to be pardoned for impersonating a public servant; then unfortunately he'd be swept up in one of those temporal tornadoes. And he'd never be seen again.

Thanks to everyone for reading through my roleplays, if you did; thanks to Ran in particular for making my second and last cycle extremely fun; and thanks to Buffalo for hosting. I really enjoyed it; but due to RL stuff I'm scaling back the number of things I'm involved in, and this was the first to go.

[Saint Kanye]

Aww, your RPs are great and they'll be missed. But well, RL comes first, so I understand and respect your decision.

[Sarzonia]

2-nil when?

I think they're referring to 3-0, which Ko-oren beat me by.