Sepak Takraw World Cup 2 (Discussion Thread/Sign Up Closed)

[Juvencus]

Hey lol

[Sepak Takraw Int Council]

The entry of Sannyamathland, Qasden, Damukuni and Juvencus are accepted. We are now at 21 Sign up. The number almost reached the previous edition.

And we are also thanking to Oakwood Landing for the sponsorship.

There are 10 days left to sign up a host bid.

[Sharktail]

here the application,we in.

[Rulapanga]

We will join.

Puppet of Dachine.

[Dachine]

We will join.

Puppet of Dachine.

Yes, confirmed.

[Natanians and Nosts]

Wooden-ball weird footvolley

[Sepak Takraw Int Council]

The sign ups of Sharktail, Rulapanga and Natanians and Nots are accepted. This make the entries for this edition become 24.

For the hosting, we will wait until the last day of the sign up (21st August 2021). If there is no host bid until the said day then the overseer, Pemecutan, will take over the hosting. Pemecutan will have to post their hosting bid a day after the host bid is closed. Then we will proceed with host votes.

[Otksarin]

Otksarin Host Bid for STWC2

About Otksarin
Otksarin is a member of The Gothanita Isles, and part of the region of Melayu Archipelago. Otksarin is and continues to be a Sultanate, led by Sultan Abdullah Shah IV, together with the Otksarin Ministerial Council, the highest advisory body to His Majesty. The Sultan, together with leaders of the other members of the Isles, collectively make decisions about international relations and security, while most of the domestic and regional affairs are left to the individual states to handle.
Like many other nations in the region, Otksarin does have a culture of playing Sepak Takraw, though it was only in recent years did more standardization happen across the board. The Otksarin Sepak Takraw Federation (OSTF) is also looking to form a Sepak Takraw domestic league, although in recent years, the OSTF has been talking to Hallikshire Sepak Takraw Council (HSTK) for a joint-domestic league, given the rising interest in the sport in Hallikshire. Although many international sports continue to feature a combined team under The Gothanita Isles, Otksarin is the only member of the Isles who has interests in the sport, and therefore, the team will be flying the Otksarin flag for any Sepak Takraw competitions.

Format of the Competition
Not expecting additional sign-ups, we will proceed with a 6 groups of 4 format. It will be a single round-robin format, with the top 2 and the 4 best 3rd placed teams advancing to a Round of 16. Groups will be determined based on the STWC Coefficient, and the Round of 16 bracket will be done in a group-based seeding similar to the bracket adopted at the 32nd Copa Rushmori, with group stage rematches avoided till the semifinals.

Every game will be played in a best-of-3 Regus format. It will be scorinated with xkoronate 0.3.3, using the testing sepak takraw file. Cutoffs will be held in the evenings in Asian time/mornings in American time (looking at 8-9pm UTC+8 at the moment). Cutoffs will be done daily, an extra day break between the end of group stage and the Round of 16.

Tiebreakers for group stage/knockout seedings are as follows:
1. Wins
2. Head-to-head Wins
3. Head-to-head Regu difference
4. Regu difference
5. Coinflip (OOC: Scorinated Match)

RP Bonus and Skill awarding
Participants of the 1st Sepak Takraw World Cup will need to post a roster to be given the skill points per their coefficient. To make it easier for newer, unranked participants, teams will only have a quarter of their coefficient as a starting advantage. (Eg. Squidroidia has 27.0 coefficient points from STWC1. This will be translated into 6.75 starting skill points should they post a roster.) Additionally, roster bonus of up to 1 RP bonus will be awarded to participating teams.

RP bonus will be given in a more lenient manner, given that the tournament is seen as a sideline to other ongoing tournaments. A similar grading scale to the 13th IAC will be adopted. In general, teams will find it easy to gain around 50-80% of the RP bonus with a decent quality RP, though it might take quite a huge effort to hit the max RP bonus. (NB: I promised to give a full RP scale report for the tournament, haven't got the time to do it, will get to it pretty soon. That might give voters a clearer picture of how I reward RP bonus)

Host Experience
This tournament will be the user's 2nd international competition, after the 13th Independent Associations Championship. The user also has other hosting and scorinating experience, being a member of the IFCF council (as Poafmersia), and having scorinated multiple seasons of football leagues in Poafmersia & The Gothanita Isles.

We are open for any questions.

[Chuying]

Chuying will participate.

[Sepak Takraw Int Council]

Sorry for the delay. Chuying sign up is accepted.

And with this the host bid is officially closed, with only 1 bid from Otksarin. The host bid vote is by now is opened with 2 choices.
1. Accepted Otksarin host bid.
2. Re-open host bid.

The vote will be open until Sunday, 29 August 2021 11:59 PM UTC +8 or 05:59 PM UTC. The vote have to be submitted to STIC official account, Sepak Takraw Int Council. STIC members and STWC past and present participants are eligible to vote.

[Otksarin]

Bid updates:
1) Given that we have additional signups between the posting of my bid and now, I have decided to unilaterally propose 2 formats for 2 sets of numbers, namely 25 teams (the current number), and 28 teams (my optimal number).

Formats
25 teams (less than optimal) - 5 groups of 5, played in a double round-robin format, in the home of the respective home teams. Top 3 teams, as well as the best fourth-placed team, will qualify for a Round of 16, with group stage rematches to be avoided till the semifinals.
28 teams (optimal) - 4 groups of 7, played in a single round-robin format. Top 4 teams of each group to enter the Round of 16, with group stage rematches to be avoided till the semifinals.

Note the differences in both formats. If we stay at the current numbers of 25 teams, we will switch to a double round-robin format. Without a change in numbers, I originally planned to turn the 6 groups of 4 single round-robin into a double round-robin format anyways, to allow for more RPing and accumulation of RP bonus. However, it is less than optimal, and the preferred format will adopt a 4 groups of 7 format, should we get to 28 teams. 5 groups of 5 double round-robin gives 10 matchdays, and 8 matches for each team. Most will likely make it to the 11th cutoff, the Round of 16. 4 groups of 7 single round-robin will give 7 matchdays, and 6 matches for each team. Most will likely make it to the 8th cutoff, the Round of 16.

The formats were proposed to minimise the number of byes for each team in the tournament. Of course, there are other ways in which we could have done it, such as adding a double scorination for the 25 team format, and changing the Round of 16 to a play-in round. I would be open to any additional feedback and suggestions on this over the next week.

With the change in formats, the part about me scaling down the rank coefficient will change slightly. Depending on the number of group stage MDs, the scaling will differ, but it can be sure that an unranked, RPing daily team, will be able to compete with a rostered, but not RPing top team by the end of the group stage.

[Brookstation]

In

[Delaclava]

We will sign up, numbers permitting.

[Melbergia]

Melbergia will also make a debut if even numbers permit.

[Dachine]

Otksarin Host Bid for STWC2

RP Bonus and Skill awarding
Participants of the 1st Sepak Takraw World Cup will need to post a roster to be given the skill points per their coefficient. To make it easier for newer, unranked participants, teams will only have a quarter of their coefficient as a starting advantage. (Eg. Squidroidia has 27.0 coefficient points from STWC1. This will be translated into 6.75 starting skill points should they post a roster.) Additionally, roster bonus of up to 1 RP bonus will be awarded to participating teams.

RP bonus will be given in a more lenient manner, given that the tournament is seen as a sideline to other ongoing tournaments. A similar grading scale to the 13th IAC will be adopted. In general, teams will find it easy to gain around 50-80% of the RP bonus with a decent quality RP, though it might take quite a huge effort to hit the max RP bonus. (NB: I promised to give a full RP scale report for the tournament, haven't got the time to do it, will get to it pretty soon. That might give voters a clearer picture of how I reward RP bonus)

We are open for any questions.

Hello! Can you please explain your method for RP bonus more in depth? For instance, the 1+ RP bonus is for new participants to ST WC, or it is for all participating players, regardless of if they were in the first ST WC or not?

Also, what major tournaments have you hosted? What sport is the '13th Independent Associations Championship' classified as?

[Otksarin]

Hello! Can you please explain your method for RP bonus more in depth? For instance, the 1+ RP bonus is for new participants to ST WC, or it is for all participating players, regardless of if they were in the first ST WC or not?

Also, what major tournaments have you hosted? What sport is the '13th Independent Associations Championship' classified as?

Hi there!

For the part about the awarding of skill points, I will split it into 2 parts:
1) Starting ranks. By typical hosting convention, when we utilise ranks, teams will be given coefficient score based on existing coefficients. In this case, teams who participated in STWC1 will get their coefficient if they posted a roster. In other words, a 100% rank penalty will be done on any team who signs up, and does not post a roster. This is done to encourage participants on posting at least a roster, which is the most basic point of interaction in a co-op RP forum like NS Sports. The idea was inspired by a similar rule employed in the 42nd World Bowl (an American Football/gridiron tournament), hosted by Buffalostan.
2) RP bonus. For posting a Roster, up to 1 MD's worth of RP bonus will be given. RPs will be generous in nature, encouraging consistency and quality over quantity. Like the scale of RP I have given in IAC13, bonuses will be generous and forgiving as possible, aimed at preventing burnout caused by users submitting 2 thousand word RPs every cutoff, while also encouraging users to submit some form of RP every matchday.

For the part of my hosting experience, my main hosting experience is in association football (known to Americans as soccer). The 13th Independent Association Championship (IAC13) is one of the 5 major regional football tournaments (the others being the AOCAF, Copa Rushmori, Campionato Esportiva and the CAFA Cup), seen as second only to the World Cup Committee (WCC) tournaments. Apart from that, I have been a member of the IFCF Council, which oversees the hosting of the IFCF competitions. The IFCF to association football is the LSST to Sepak Takraw. Basically, the domestic club competition. As a member of the IFCF Council, we grade the entries and provide the results of the IFCF competitions. I have been involved since the 4th cycle (we just completed our 7th), scorinating the 4th Rising Stars Cup, 6th Liga B Champions Trophy, and the 7th Challengers Cup, all competition under the IFCF banner.

Hope that answers your question.

[Dachine]

Hope that answers your question.

Yes, it does. Thank you. I wish we didn't have to have all the Discord drama, but...NSS will be what it is.

[Sepak Takraw Int Council]

Sorry for the delay. So the Host voting result is as follow;

Accepted Otksarin Bid: 1
Re-open Bid: 1

And we got a tie. For a tie breaker, Pemecutan as the Supervisor of STIC will cast their vote. And the Pemecutan give their vote to....,
Accepted Otksarin Bid.

Therefore, the final host voting result is;

Accepted Otksarin Bid: 2
Re-open Bid: 1

Congratulations, Otksarin. We will give the authority to you especially for sign up closing. And I'm thanking to everyone who have voted.

[Magnecia]

If numbers permit, then in as a puppet of Sannyamathland.

[Otksarin]

Some pointers:
1) We are at 29 entries. I have no teams at risk of CTEing when group stage starts, so I definitely need one more, or I will drop Magnecia. I don't have puppets to enter, so I would prefer if another entry comes in, because dropping entries isn't always fantastic. The namelist is open till the group draw in 52 hours time. The bounds we can aim for are: 30, 32 (8 groups of 4), 36 (6 groups of 6), 40 (8 groups of 5).
2) I will do the group draw on Wednesday, right after the WLC38 group draw, semi-live on discord should anyone be interested. First MD will be 6th September, allowing 1 week to prepare rosters and all.
3) The format I will use for 30 entries will likely be a double round-robin format with 10 cutoffs for the group stage, but all games will be held in Otksarin. We will use 6 groups of 5, where top 2 and 4 best third-placed teams qualify for the Round of 16.
4) There is a slight change in the formula used. The use of 5.5 attacking mod, taken from the original badminton formula, makes it run the risk of many, many games that exceed 21 points and run into the magical barrier of 25, the typical max. To avoid that, I dropped the attacking modifier to 4.5, which reduces the chance of exceeding 21 points, yet maintains really close scorelines like 18-21, 19-21, 20-22, etc. (For reference, tennis uses 3 for 1 set and 5 for 5 set formula; badminton uses 5.5; table tennis uses 5.5 for singles, 1.5 for single match teams, and 2.5 for Bo5 teams.) The formula update can be found here.

The everything thread will be up in 24 hours. Expect cutoff to be around 1-2pm UTC daily. Or 9-10pm AWST. Or 9-10am EST.

[Britonisea]

I can participate

[Otksarin]

Everything thread is up. Group Stage Draw will be held in around 9.5 hours time, at 12.30pm UTC, on the Discord, should you be interested.

Since Britonisea is the 30th entry, it is considered closed and subsequent entries are waitlisted. I will consider a 32/35/36 team format should there be additional signups between now and the draw, else, we will stick with this format.

[Otksarin]

OP has been updated with draw, fixtures, schedule. MD1 will start on the 6th of September.

[Diahon]

Still accepting applicants?

[Sepak Takraw Int Council]

Still accepting applicants?

As the IC thread is already open and the group drawing have been done then the sign up is already closed. I'm sorry for the inconvenience.