Called To The BAR: KRY-LGL World Cup 86 Bid

[Graintfjall]

I do not have a vote. Krytenia, forgive me for asking this twice but it’s a feature of both your bids.

In my experience the vast majority of rosterless teams are those that sign up but lose interest (in some cases CTE). I have been guilty of this myself, because the WC period lasts so long that sometimes the interest you had three months ago isn’t there by the time qualifying rolls around. While it has happened that highly ranked teams coast through qualifying without posting rosters, it’s not so common. So what purpose does the rosterless penalty really serve? Won’t it just penalize teams that have already basically given up, plus occasionally hurting those who want to put together detailed rosters but aren’t able to by the first day? Some players put an awful lot of detail into their rosters and won’t want to post a short or incomplete one just for the sake of avoiding a prohibitive penalty.

It is annoying to play a rosterless team but I am not convinced a rosterless penalty will make that much difference to new players or those who lose interest.

(Amazingly, as I write this, I’m realizing why these words sound familiar: I recall a similar argument eleven years ago!)

[Krytenia]

I do not have a vote. Krytenia, forgive me for asking this twice but it’s a feature of both your bids.

In my experience the vast majority of rosterless teams are those that sign up but lose interest (in some cases CTE). I have been guilty of this myself, because the WC period lasts so long that sometimes the interest you had three months ago isn’t there by the time qualifying rolls around. While it has happened that highly ranked teams coast through qualifying without posting rosters, it’s not so common. So what purpose does the rosterless penalty really serve? Won’t it just penalize teams that have already basically given up, plus occasionally hurting those who want to put together detailed rosters but aren’t able to by the first day? Some players put an awful lot of detail into their rosters and won’t want to post a short or incomplete one just for the sake of avoiding a prohibitive penalty.

It is annoying to play a rosterless team but I am not convinced a rosterless penalty will make that much difference to new players or those who lose interest.

(Amazingly, as I write this, I’m realizing why these words sound familiar: I recall a similar argument eleven years ago!)

In regards to hurting teams with detailed rosters, there will be a large gap between the opening of the roster threads and the implementation of the rosterless penalty - which, I must reiterate, is not MD1. In regards to new teams, BoF teams that have posted a roster in that competition are exempt from the penalty, and those who have given up to the point that they haven't posted a roster are a) not going to notice, much less care, and b) if new and not in the BoF, going to have a KPB of 0 anyway - and half of 0 is 0.

The purpose of the rosterless penalty is to try and address one of the biggest complaints currently in the WCC community - having nothing for an opponent to work off - whilst at the same time attempting to ensure there is no "coast" from a high-ranked team by bringing them into the clutches of the lower seeds KPB-wise. Lower ranked teams will actually be less affected, as their KPB points are lower anyway.

[Graintfjall]

(I will just reply in one thread to cut down on waste!)

It is really one of the biggest complaints? Looking back through the WCDT, and I will grant I have not been back that long nor ever that interested in the perpetual meta-drama the WC generates, but it mainly seems mixed in with standard grousing about results. Even posting a roster only helps one specific type of RPing, that of match reports. If you want to RP a different kind of story a roster is irrelevant. There are plenty of stories you can write without knowing the name of the opposition reserve left back.

I am not hostile to either of your bids but when I look through WC84 [WC85 did not link rosters] virtually all of the rosterless teams were un/low-ranked newbies who had probably given up already, and as we both seem to agree, a rosterless penalty would not matter to them anyway.

[Krytenia]

Delaclava has put it more eloquently than I could.

[Northwest Kalactin]

I don’t have a vote, but may I ask why you chose SQIS over NSFS?

[Legalese]

Sure. It's my personal preference -- NSFS is perfectly fine, but intuitively to me, I prefer having the thresholds being dependent on the ranks of the two teams playing, and not on any other variable. NSFS, with the inclusion of Max Rank, can play around with the thresholds in ways that I just don't like as much. There's also just something that to me, feels more right about ratio-based differentials -- that is, if the team with the smaller rank has 50% of their opponent's rank, they should have the same thresholds across the board regardless of what those ranks are; NSFS uses a form of differential where the absolute difference sets the goal theshold. That's perfectly fine -- I'm perfectly happy with multiple different formulae out there to be used, none of them are perfect -- but I prefer a ratio-based one myself.