A Kytlerian bid for CoH 87

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

The Soccer Organisation of The Kytler Peninsulae (SO-KP)
in association with The Shrug ASCII Foundation and Purpose Finder Productions
present a Kytlerian bid for Cup of Harmony 87

Recent debate over the purpose of the Cup of Harmony has sparked the realisation that the structure, or even existence, of the tournament are worth reconsidering in the context of what we want its purpose to be.

This Kytlerian bid is built entirely around the notion of defining its purpose as a way to accelerate the upward mobility of active RPers, thus encouraging their ongoing participation and laying a foundation for greater competition depth in future World Cup cycles.

The format
The preferred format is eight four-team single-round-robin groups with the top two advancing to a single-elimination knockout competition, but this is a soft preference held largely on the basis of believing this is the platonic ideal of a soccer tournament format. Secondary preference is for a tournament with four equally-sized groups of between four and six teams (16-24 total).

Regardless of the number of teams, they would be sorted into groups based on their pre-CoH KPB rank, with the highest-ranked teams into Group A, the next highest into Group B, etc. Essentially, each group would be (in the case of an 8x4 competition) one half of what would ordinarily be a draw pot. The knockout stages would follow this same pattern, with Groups A and B paired in the first knockout round, etc.

As a result, teams would spend the majority of the competition playing opponents of similar KPB rank, meaning that RP bonus would be the primary determinant of results and hence accrued KPB points.

Group phase ties on points would be split initially by H2H, then GD, and then a(n IC) coinflip (OOCly, a one-game scorinated match with RP bonuses). This is designed to minimise the impact of goal difference due to its sensitivity to style modifiers.

There would be 48 hours between matchdays in any format used.

The user
The Kytler Peninsulae are a newly re-established nation with a long, mostly-distant sporting history that culminated in hosting the Games of the IX Olympiad (solo, at least officially; the tradition of dual-hosted Olympics began after this). Even that history was not the user's first rodeo; he'd previously been Kaze Progressa and Kura-Pelland, hosting World Cups plural (among other events) with both, and the former is the "KP" in "KPB," having been the lead creator of that ranking system before World Cup 12. Between his three nations, his long list of other enduring NSS contributions include the use of style modifiers at the World Cup, the Baptism of Fire, the initial creation of the International Domestic Soccer Newswires thread, and the MMAB (Min-Max Avoidance Bonus) in the Olympics.

Needless to say, that gives him some gravitas in the idea flotation department at least.

The OOC process
Scorination would use xkoranate 0.3.3 with the NSFS formula used. The core RP bonus would be a cumulative non-degrading one, "pre-boosted" with three MDs of WCQ average RP bonus for that nation (and this WCQ average RP bonus would form the basis of the invite priority list). There would also be a component specifically for the nation's single best RP window of the CoH, valued at 25% of the maximum cumulative bonus (and hence accounting for 20% of the bonus altogether). Weighting specifics are TBC and may depend on the specifics of the CoH entry pool (in particular if there are any particularly high-rank teams that end up in it).

A third-party scorinator would be deployed for any group the Kytlerians were in and any knockout matches they later reached.

The IC nonsense
The Kytler Peninsulae is a Rushmori nation of around 22 million people, most of whom don't live on the titular peninsulae at all but in the "Eastern Corridor" that connects them. Located on the western tip of the Pavolan continent, the country is well located for connections to numerous potential competing countries, most of whom will enter the country via Zube or (Kytler) Bay City's international airports. It has a bunch of stadia - some of which were designed by their user rather than RL architects or "haha plagiarism machine go brrr" - and travel within the country is quite easy due to its relatively compact area.

It is perhaps best known for the Margaret Institute, a research department of the University of Zube that researches sport and its culture.

[Graintfjall]

It's an interesting concept but it seems pretty brutal on the mid ranked nations. If you assume every match is won by the higher ranked team, the third ranked team in the tournament would not get out of the group stage, and the fifth ranked team would lose at the first knockout round. Given it is mainly higher ranked-but-not-highest ranked teams that have expressed a concern about the KPB elements of CoH, they would stand the most to lose from this.

[PotatoFarmers]

Given the RP quality up till the midway mark, how many people (without considering WCC qualifications), would you consider to be eligible for your Cup of Harmony? What are your principles when considering whether someone is worthy of an invite?

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

It's an interesting concept but it seems pretty brutal on the mid ranked nations. If you assume every match is won by the higher ranked team, the third ranked team in the tournament would not get out of the group stage, and the fifth ranked team would lose at the first knockout round. Given it is mainly higher ranked-but-not-highest ranked teams that have expressed a concern about the KPB elements of CoH, they would stand the most to lose from this.

I definitely don't disagree with you (and part of - maybe most of - my reasoning for this format proposal was to see if there'd be concerns like this one floated!) - but I would add that to "assume every match is won by the higher ranked team" is a pretty massive assumption when the entire structure is built around those rank gaps being compressed. You are, entirely right that there'd be some mid-rank nations in the 40s and 50s who'd get a brutal break from this format - but with a little help from Margaret, those teams would be the ones with lower CoH RP bonus. (Assuming, of course, there are any...) Whether that's the kind of CoH people want... well, that's the point of me putting this bid up, against other bids that take a different approach.

Given the RP quality up till the midway mark, how many people (without considering WCC qualifications), would you consider to be eligible for your Cup of Harmony? What are your principles when considering whether someone is worthy of an invite?

On the criteria, I would argue that the most important thing is that nations have RPed to at least a reasonable standard across a broad section of the qualification window (this doesn't have to mean "every window" so much as "not just the start or end"); I believe this is the best indicator of providing the same in the CoH.

I would suspect that 24 teams might be the happy medium in terms of volume, if I had to guess. It's not my favourite because I love 2^n tournaments, but I would guess that we're going to end up in a position where 16 might leave me with some tough cuts and 32 would leave me with some possible reaches.

And come to think of it, six-team groups would take the edge off the randomness factor, and with the entire format being designed around minimising the rank factor for as long as possible, that leaves the third R to play up...

[Ceni]

I'm curious whether you considered a Casaran format for this bid and, if so, why you rejected it. (Asked merely out of curiosity, with no judgment for the answer!)

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

I'm curious whether you considered a Casaran format for this bid and, if so, why you rejected it. (Asked merely out of curiosity, with no judgment for the answer!)

Great question! It either didn't cross my mind or it briefly popped up as "oh maybe, but I'd have to handle a lot of rematch avoidance trickiness manually based on what SNL has said about hosting the Elephant Chess Cup with that format." But I certainly don't hate the idea of a Casaran CoH - not least because it gives everyone the same number of matches, so everyone in it would get their maximum RP opportunity if that was indeed what they're in it for.

Oddly enough I have a non-NSS event I co-host that could shift to that format, so that would give me practice running a Casaran operation before I used one in NSS if I were to use that format for any future tournament I host!

[Graintfjall]

I'm just wondering whether you'd consider, if you're seeding the groups in this way, seeding progression a little differently. For example in the ODI [cricket] tournament, we have a similar approach to group seeding, but more teams advance out of the top seeded group. That's also how the RL World Lacrosse Championship works.

Whether that's the kind of CoH people want... well, that's the point of me putting this bid up, against other bids that take a different approach.

No, I 100% endorse that approaching to bidding!

[The Kytler Peninsulae]

I'm just wondering whether you'd consider, if you're seeding the groups in this way, seeding progression a little differently. For example in the ODI [cricket] tournament, we have a similar approach to group seeding, but more teams advance out of the top seeded group. That's also how the RL World Lacrosse Championship works.

The ODI structure was the inspiration here! (I'm in that tournament after all.) The extra progression spots on the higher-seeded streams would certainly be something I'd contemplate; I mostly dropped this format in undiluted form to gauge the reaction to it, knowing that if that reaction was along the edge-of-Overton-Window lines of "ugh no... but...?" there'd be a possibility to use that foundation and soften its edges with tweaks like you see in that ODI format.

I expect this to be a hypothetical question by way of a conventional bid winning, but if I'm wrong about that, I will consider such tweaks to the format when I host. (This is especially likely if the logical number of entries is not a power of two after all, because that frees up possibilities like, say, 6x4 with the winners of the top four groups advancing directly to the quarter-finals and the other two group winners + each runner-up meeting in the second round for the other four QF spots.)

[Al-Tamazgha]

I like this bid and what it proposes.

Not going to get into the technicalities because there are pros and cons with the originally proposed format, and I believe Gruen/Ceni/etc have raised and KP answered better than I ever had in mind for this bid.

That said, it is clear this bid promises ideas that could be considered into editions of a future CoH or in other sports, where ranking stratification does exist on a higher level than in football due to strong, consistent RP level among upper-rank nations.