The World Cup Discussion Thread (OOC, Version IV)

[United States of Nova Calania]

I'm not accusing the hosts. I want to make sure my KPB rank is enforced and my roster and RPs are graded appropriately.

[United States of Nova Calania]

Currently I'm not having fun

It's okay United States of Nova Calania, I'm losing a lot too. If you're not having fun though, what do you think would make it more fun for you? Personally, having the games being scored is just a bonus for me - I'm never going to win but this event gives me a chance to practice my writing, which I enjoy. Occassionally someone mentions my nation in their role play and I get a warm fuzzy feeling too. It's all random at the end of the day. Does that help? I hope it does.

Technically, a team of my rank with some RPs should qualify. There's always bad luck, so at least 5th place in the standing and failing short to qualify would give me enough fun. Losing all the time, especially against very low ranked or even unranked teams doesn't makes me happy.

[Hapilopper]

Demanding an investigation over your team's bad result sounds pretty accusatory to me.

And if you're in this just to win, you're in it for the wrong reasons. We're all going to face those results. But those losses are just as much an opportunity to write something good and explain why your team lost something you think it should have won.

[Tumbra]

Technically, a team of my rank with some RPs should qualify.

no such thing as "should" qualify

There's always bad luck, so at least 5th place in the standing and failing short to qualify would give me enough fun. Losing all the time, especially against very low ranked or even unranked teams doesn't makes me happy.

lad if your fun comes from winning against other people then this isn't the place for you, and i'm being absolutely serious here

I'm not accusing the hosts. I want to make sure my KPB rank is enforced and my roster and RPs are graded appropriately.

is this not, at the baseline, an accusation of incompetency levelled at the hosts?

genuinely i felt a little bit of sympathy at your bad luck but that sympathy's been wiped out with this behaviour

[Ko-oren]

I'm not accusing the hosts. I want to make sure my KPB rank is enforced and my roster and RPs are graded appropriately.

This is a different tone from your post before. "Can you assure me you got my KPB, roster, and RPs" is very different from "I demand investigation from the WC President and EWCC", the latter sounds a lot like an accusation. I will not make a precedent out of either - investigations or asking the hosts to doublecheck.

You've gotten some good advice here: find the fun in the hobby, be it telling stories, worldbuilding, graphics, you name it. Results aren't a guarantee (look up what happened to Banija, for instance). There are teams every cycle who finish three, four, or even five spots below their pot. It happens. And even then, the cycle is barely halfway done, so any accrued RP bonus might make a difference in the remaining games. You say you want results to go with your effort, I think that's the wrong way of approaching NSS and will lead to a lot of frustration.

[Tumbra]

anyway apropos of nothing, forum reindexing seems to be hitting hard. if you want to view your posts especially on the wc97 rp thread, i recommend going to the bottom of the page, sorting by author, and then you can view all your posts in succession.

visual:

[Aphrilia]

It's okay United States of Nova Calania, I'm losing a lot too. If you're not having fun though, what do you think would make it more fun for you? Personally, having the games being scored is just a bonus for me - I'm never going to win but this event gives me a chance to practice my writing, which I enjoy. Occassionally someone mentions my nation in their role play and I get a warm fuzzy feeling too. It's all random at the end of the day. Does that help? I hope it does.

Technically, a team of my rank with some RPs should qualify. There's always bad luck, so at least 5th place in the standing and failing short to qualify would give me enough fun. Losing all the time, especially against very low ranked or even unranked teams doesn't makes me happy.

This is just me putting my two cents at 10PM.

NSS is an extremely trust-based community when it comes to stuff like scorination. Breaching that trust will lead to punishment. You're the first to bring this up so far in this cycle, and while losing is a bummer, a lot of the other top ranked and/or consistently RPing nations have been losing to lower ranked teams as well. This is all part of how NSS works, there is that randomness accompanying roleplaying and rank. It's one of the three R's of NSS. The hosts always make sure to grade every RP as well as check on every roster and rank because it is their duty to do so. And this is how they gain the trust of the community as a tournament host. There would have been an investigation if this isn't the case. Bad luck happens all the time, and it can vary from one person to the other.

I had a somewhat similar thought process to you when I was still going by Atheara. That my efforts should be shown in the results... And what's worse was that I had a much lower KPB as well as rank than you have now when I acted like that, and I was insufferable to say the least. Results isn't the end all be all, the journey is a major part of what makes NSS unique. The things you want will come in due time, with enough effort and luck. Yes, luck will not always be with you but just enjoy the ride. It's not going to be the end of the world and at the end of it all, the vast majority of us do this for the fun of it.

I will make no further comment on this.

[Sarzonia]

If we want to talk "should" qualify, I'm ranked 38th and right now, I'd miss the proper if qualifying ended today. My team has draws against triple-digit ranked teams representing players who haven't so much as rostered.

Am I disappointed? Sure. Frustrated? Yes. But I'm not taking the approach you are, NC. Randomness is a real thing in competitions like this, and RL sports are often littered with "talented" teams and players that don't live up to their potential like the Dallas Cowboys.

I'm sure if you'd just kept this at "my team's gotten some crap results and I'm frustrated" you'd get commiseration. You're just embarrassing yourself now.

[Valentine Z]

While this might sound unhelpful, sometimes... Things kinda just roll that way. From the same group, we had a Alanis Star 3–3 Chromatika, a match between the lowest KPB and the highest amongst the group. By all accounts, I genuinely feel that Chromatika should have won against my puppet given the RP output (I truly mean this), rank, etc. Sometimes, random luck just decides that it should be a draw or a loss.

In-character, I like to take rosterless or UR nations as true unknowns, as in ones that you don't know what to expect. But that's for my own writing later.

I often times reserve my thoughts on this, but I'll admit that I have gotten too competitive in IBC and other sports in the past. Eventually, what help me was that as long as I'm willing to join (and this site and people being available), there will be future seasons (and possible CoH).

[Loch Dearg]

Easy for me to say, I know, but heyyyyy... There's always a chance at Cup of Harmony if you do manage to get in!

Though of course, I should point out that I'm not jinxing anyone to get knocked out of qualis; there are, after all, more matches to go. So, good luck and all the best to everyone. <3

Just wondering how does qualification for the Cup of Harmony work? Also this is my first World Cup and I'd like to say thanks to everyone who's involved in running this, been really enjoying it so far

[Aphrilia]

Easy for me to say, I know, but heyyyyy... There's always a chance at Cup of Harmony if you do manage to get in!

Though of course, I should point out that I'm not jinxing anyone to get knocked out of qualis; there are, after all, more matches to go. So, good luck and all the best to everyone. <3

Just wondering how does qualification for the Cup of Harmony work? Also this is my first World Cup and I'd like to say thanks to everyone who's involved in running this, been really enjoying it so far

The Cup of Harmony typically happens after WCQ. To enter the competition, you must be invited to it. Consistent RPing should get you an invite, as the CoH is usually for the "best of the rest" that didn't make it in the WC proper. You can choose to accept the invite or not, and the one inviting is the hosts of the CoH.

[Bears Armed]

Sorry, no RP for the WC qualifiers from me today: I moved home yesterday, and I've been too busy settling in & arranging my stuff in the new place... (Also, I don't yet have wi-fi arranged for there so at present I can online get online when I can get to the local library...)

[NSWC Signups]

Asking for Cup of Harmony bids: setting a deadline for Friday 23-Aug-24 22:00 CEST (in three days and two and a half hours!) and hoping to get the vote done by the Playoffs.

[Valentine Z]

Just a heads-up that A LOT of the posts are missing right now. No, not just from searching, but like right now as you're looking through.

Case in point, as of the time of writing, there are definitely a lot of posts between Sarz' post above and mine, and in the RP thread, all the RPs I have written are missing.

EDIT: https://imgur.com/a/SB2VnIf Screenshot for reference in case this gets fixed as soon as I pointed out!

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=553557&start=450 - One page from the WC 97 RP. "Requested Topic Does Not Exist" will show up. So.. yup.

EDIT 2: The admins know, they are investigating. "edit for clarity: We have up-to-date backups, so no posts should be permanently lost. But it might take a while to extract and reintegrate."

[The Archregimancy]

<puts mod hat on>

The techies are working on the problem. Here's the thread in Technical where [violet] has made an announcement:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=554366

I regret I don't have any more information that that, or a time-frame for post recovery - this is well outside of my purview - but the above thread is the best place to go looking for further announcements.

[Hapilopper]

So... is this thing on? Can we get back to brass tacks?

[Sarzonia]

Still seems rather spotty to me.

[Valentine Z]

From what I have checked and manually counted, (most of) 541 posts are accounted for. As of the time of this post and writing.

My understanding and observation was that while the posts themselves disappeared, the number of posts and pages were unaffected, so I was able to use that as reference..

Though of course, please do correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: Yeah nope. Part 4 of my RP is missing. There goes everything I just said. The ones around 20th Aug are missing.

-----

Speaking purely as an user without asking the admins yet, my own personal thought is to wait until this whole thing is over, because I'm not sure what adding further posts will do to a thread while they are still restoring.

[Hapilopper]

Speaking purely as an user without asking the admins yet, my own personal thought is to wait until this whole thing is over, because I'm not sure what adding further posts will do to a thread while they are still restoring.

I'll agree with this. I'll be in favor of holding off on further RPs until we get an all-clear from technicians or whoever is in the know.

[Tinhampton]

RE the above:

Is there a risk that any posts made from this moment on will be lost in the process of recovering the August 20th posts?

No.

[Kamijiro]

Are we going to delay the cutoff? I can't see the most recent matchdays anymore.

[Eastfield Lodge]

I couldn't log in to the forums to post this yesterday, but as mentioned on Discord, this is an official host announcement that the next cutoff will be pushed back 24 hours to Friday. This is provisional and may be extended further depending on technical developments.

[Valentine Z]

Just to add on a bit more, the WC97 results also has the recent results missing, which I assume the admins know (they are aware of the more recent ones missing, working on it).

Also can confirm that thing with post counts still being correct. The result post has 15 posts as per the top right stats, but only 13 posts are visible. Unfortunately, I refreshed the screen so I couldn't see the most recent scores so that I can post it here for reference purposes.

[Pasarga]

Host Announcement

Due to the ongoing technical issues the WCQ are delayed until such a time as the board is once more stable and the missing posts are restored, at such a time there will be a 48 hour warning for the next intended cutoff.

[Sarzonia]

I think that's the most sensible way to approach this latest outage.

We can't fully move forward until the technical crap gets sorted and we have no way of knowing when that will be.