World Cup '10 - Brainstorming/Information Thread Options

[Zombo]

I had the chance to work with Crash 2 years ago on the format of the inaugural World Cup. Although the next World Cup is still far, we still need to work on it early and make sure it's ready in time.

The purpose of this thread is to share ideas on how the next WC may proceed. Nothing discussed in this thread should be taken as real or final. I would also like to get as many feedback, comments, suggestions as possible from as many communities as possible. Spread this thread around your local community and tell them to send me and Crash your ideas. This is an international event, therefore its format should be enjoyable to everyone.

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IMO, these are the main issues that need to be addressed for the WC

- Communication: the main problem has always been communication. Because of the different communities, language has always been a restriction on the rules we could implement in the tournament. Not only does it limit what we can do in the tournament, it also makes it unfair for teams that don't understand the rules very well. There is also the problem of communication with the judges. Sometimes the judges themselves don't really understand how to judge due to language which results in poor results.

-> Solution: Two things must be done,
-- Full translation of the rules in all languages of participating communities as early as possible. This means we need to finalize the structure of the competition well in advance and ensure that every community has a translated copy of it. This is especially important for asian communities, since their english skills are often poor. Once we have those translations, they should be put on the main site and spread to all communities.

-- Managers who understand English. If you remember, each team has a manager which serves as a spokeperson for that team with the officials (i.e. Crash). In the last WC, we had trouble finding good managers and I remember the Korean team was temporarily managed by Crash himself. It is important for each community to start finding a competent manager who can communicate easily in English. However, that is not the only job of the manager. S/he must also take care of the roster and make important decisions during the competition. Therefore, it would be unfair to demand that the manager speaks English if there is a better candidate at the tactical aspect of the position. Therefore, the manager role could be split into two persons, where one takes care of the actual management, and another as the spokeperson. Ideally, one person can fulfill both roles. Also note that the manager himself could be a spinner in a team. Therefore, one spinner could be doing the actual managing and an extra person is included just to communicate with the officials.

- Judging: we've always had problems with judging. One aspect of it is related to the communication problem above. The other is having a good system. One of the problems is the use of criterion. Because we try to simplify the scheme so that it is understandable by everybody, we use very simple criterion and make their weight all equal. Sometimes a judge has a well-defined opinion of a battle but it doesn't translate very well in the score. Furthermore, the idea of summing up points means judges who tend to give big grade differentials have more power than judges who grade more tightly. One judge who gives a -4 relative score in a battle offsets 4 other judges who give +1 score. The real problem here is that there is no set standard as to what a score represent. There's nothing that says what a score 9/10 is compared to 6/10. Maybe for some judge 7/10 is bad, for another it means good.

-> Solution: There are many ways to fix this, here are a few ideas
-- Use voting: by voting, I mean that each judge's opinion count as 1 only. We remove summing of score. This eliminates any "big difference" bias. The only issue with this is that it doesn't contain any nuance. Maybe 2 judges voted for a spinner but they didn't really feel strongly about their vote, but another judge noticed a very bad mistake and makes him vote against the same spinner with a strong opinion. In this situation, maybe the spinner deserves to lose.

-- Eliminate criterions, use justifications: One idea would be that you cannot really quantify pen spinning. Therefore, judging is best described in words, not numbers. In this sense, judges should just write for each battle who deserves to win and why. The only problem with this kind of system is that it may give too much freedom to the judge to vote however he wants (possibility of corruption) and just write a random justification and say "that's my opinion" and there's nothing you can do about it. Also, the justifications should be written in the judge's own language and we can translate later (or english if possible).

-- Use a relative system: It is much easier to grade 2 videos relative to each other. We can use a +/- system to grade videos. We must make sure all judges understand the standards of the system and truly understand what a +1 means compared to +3 (for example).

-- Spinners give their breakdown: Maybe if the videos came with a breakdown, it would be easier for judges to analyze the combo in great details without spending an immense amount of time. The only problem is that breakdowns require a lot of time to write and might need translation.

- Number of communities: Last time, we had to merge some communities to reduce the number of teams. Ideally we need a system which can accept any number of teams, so that as many communities as possible can participate.

-> Solution: Most solutions require a way to eliminate a large number of teams during a preliminary round.
-- Make a qualification event: We could create a qualification event which takes place before the main event. This could happen as early as Fall '09. One idea I had is to make a big "collab" battle. The collabs would then be graded in some fashion. The top collabs would then be qualified for the main event. The participating spinners could be anyone from each community, not just people who will take part of the final roster, since the final roster is likely to be small (6-8). This could give motivation for communities as a whole to work hard and make the collab to contribute to the qualification of their community. The qualification could apply to all communities or just a subset, with the others being already seeded. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Only after the qualifications should the communities submit their final roster for the main event.

-- No qualification required? It's possible qualification is not even required. We could support 16 teams and I don't think there are much more than 16 communities out there. If there are however, maybe merging needs to occur or those extra teams need to settle on the final spot or something. However, 16 teams is a fairly large number and it would impose some big constraints on the structure of the tournament. I much prefer only 8 teams in the main event because it allows for more interesting structure.

- Time and number of rounds: We must make sure the event does not take too long. One round will take 1 month, since it takes more organization to gather the videos, but also to judge. The problem of the number of rounds is less apparent in a team event than in the WT. This is because not all spinners have to participate in every round. Teams can rely on their depth and rest spinners for certain rounds. It will be an interesting decision for a manager to evaluate whether having one of his top spinners (his "starter") at only 60-80% capacity (because he's been used for several rounds) is better than using a backup spinner at 100% capacity for one round only. Therefore there should be no problem if the WC requires 5 or 6 rounds. Time is the bigger factor.

- Seeding: In the last WC, we used a somewhat arbitrary method of seeding teams by using WT results. The problem is that the events are sparse and the world of PS can change dramatically within 1-2 years. Therefore, I don't think it would be the best idea to use, for instance, the WC08 results to seed the WC10.

-> Solution: seeding could be integrated in the qualification process outlined earlier such that not only the top collabs get qualified, but the ranking of those collabs matter for seeding purposes.

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Here are some things I thought were done well last time and needs to be kept and/or improved upon:

- Team concept: I thought the concept of teams to be well done and needs to be improved upon. We need a better way to seperate the responsabilities of each spinner within a team. This can be achieved through the concept of themes. By having themes which are fixed in advance, teams will have to build their roster based on those themes. This mean spinners should be chosen to cover a wide range of different themes. It also means each spinner will have a different role to accomplish and makes their abilities more meaningful. Not to mention that themes make judging more easy since battles are more likely to match combos of similar style.

During a team vs team battle, the theme for each match in that battle is chosen or determined. THEN, the manager of each team sends their lineup, placing their spinners in the battles with specific themes. This means managers select their spinners which do well in the themes that are present.

-> There are many ways themes could be integrated:
-- Totally fixed themes: suppose each team vs team battle comprises of 3 matches (2 singles, 1 double). Then we know in advance the themes of these matches before the tournament begins and every battle always use the same 3 themes for every battle. The advantage of this is that there is no luck and every team knows exactly what the themes are going to be. It's also easy to understand and simple. The problem is that it doesn't allow for much variety. Each team only need to make sure those 3 themes are covered, which means they are likely to roll with the same roster for every battle.

-- Limited randomness: we could have a longer list of themes, and themes are regrouped in categories. For example, have a category for "technical" themes (speed, smoothness, difficulty, all-around), one for "original" themes (2 handed, 2 pens, stalls, use of body), one for "tricks" themes (infinity, continuous tricks, aerials, busts, backarounds, etc.). Then the three battles have three different categories and we select at random the theme from each category. This allows for some balancing over totally random themes in the sense that you won't pull out 3 themes that are very similar (3 "power tricks" themes like backaround, bust, aerials) and at the same time provides some variety. The problem is making sure everybody understand what each theme means (solved if communication is not a problem) and also that it's still possible for luck. For example, if a team totally suck at backaround but is godly at busts then you hope to draw the bust theme, although you could argue it's your team's fault for lacking depth and making sure you cover all themes.

-- Teams select themes: A list of possible themes is fixed before the WC begins. The two managers of a battle could then decide what the themes are going to be using some sort of mechanism. This could be interesting in the sense that the managers will try to select themes that not only maximizes their own abilities, but minimizes the opponent's, which requires greater analysis of opponents. Example, each manager selects the theme for one battle, and the doubles match always has no theme (just a all-around battle). After the themes are set, the lineups are then decided. As a manager, I would try to select a theme I'm good at and they're not. The problem is that this process might take too much time to resolve and might too complex to use.

- Multiple elimination: I liked the use of pools because it gave more opportunities for teams to participate longer. Since teams have more spinners than needed in a single round, it also gave the chance to every spinner to participate at least once (if their manager is willing, of course).

-- If we go with 8 teams, I would make 2 pools of 4 teams. Each team would then battle every other team in their own pool. This means 3 battles total. Each win is 3 points, tie 1, loss 0. The top 2 teams of each pools would then advance to the semi-finals, and then the finals. In total there would be 5 rounds, thus 5 months, which is reasonable.

-- With 16 teams, we could go with 4 pools and then either top 2 or top 1 of each pool advance to go to quarter/semifinals, for a total of 6 or 5 months. The only problem with 16 teams is that there will be 3 rounds with 64 participating spinners, which is a lot to grade for judges...

-- Double-elimination knockout: In double-elimination, you must be eliminated twice to be out. In this format, the number of rounds is 4 for 8 teams, 5 for 16. I still like pools better though, because each team has the chance to battle more teams.

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Feel free to spread this information around, translating if necessary. Please collect all feedback and send it back to me or Crash.

Also if you have ideas for themes, post them or give them to me.

Thanks for reading!

[danduts]

is Indonesia participating??? if not, how can we participate???

[PenMaster]

hella lots of words there zombo..

the collab battle idea is good, i think it should..

[AyySoLo]

i translated to Chinese and posted on PSH and HKPSA

i can see you are trying to eliminate all luck factors, but imao, luck factor is a big factor in any competition, it makes the event more interesting and dramatic, rather than monotone. So i think a reasonable amount of luck factor is good. Remember how everyone was excited when we were picking matches for WT?

This post has been edited by AyySoLo: Jun 6 2009, 09:27 AM

[chrisPS]

I didn't bother to read the rest (as I am getting sleepy), but I agree that there should be at least a spokesperson who understands English.


but there's gonna be somewhat a difficulty here at this part:

"Also, the justifications should be written in the judge's own language and we can translate later (or english if possible)."


note to all Nothing discussed in this thread should be taken as real or final.

[Glamouraz]

Something like the asia cup would be good.

I think collab battle for finals.

For prelims, maybe a 1-1 or 2-2 battle with reserves.

[Zombo]

i translated to Chinese and posted on PSH and HKPSA

i can see you are trying to eliminate all luck factors, but imao, luck factor is a big factor in any competition, it makes the event more interesting and dramatic, rather than monotone. So i think a reasonable amount of luck factor is good. Remember how everyone was excited when we were picking matches for WT?

there is a difference between luck and hidden information.

luck means no control for the players, hidden information means the lineups are selected secretely then revealed at the same time.

therefore matches still have to be revealed.

is Indonesia participating??? if not, how can we participate???

later there will be registration thread.

[CrAsH]

Hi,

Firstly i think the idea of deciding on teams by the use of collabs is a really good idea and would save a lot of time rather than doing a qualification event. It gives every community a fair chance at their shot of participating.

About the judging, zombo and I discussed a while ago about different solutions to this and one that we came up with was for each community to choose 1 representative of their board who they think is good enough to judge to be one of the judges for the event. The advantage of this is that everybody knows who the judges are this time as there has been a bit of critiscm about it over the past few years.

Zombo is right by saying we should start thinking about organizing the the WC2010 as soon as possible to get everybody prepared for it.

If anybody has any critiscm to say about the past tournaments or any new ideas we could introduce to the next tournaments, dont be afraid to tell us so we can improve the future events.

Thanks,

CrAsH

[hoiboy]

- Communication: the main problem has always been communication. Because of the different communities, language has always been a restriction on the rules we could implement in the tournament. Not only does it limit what we can do in the tournament, it also makes it unfair for teams that don't understand the rules very well. There is also the problem of communication with the judges. Sometimes the judges themselves don't really understand how to judge due to language which results in poor results.

-> Solution: Two things must be done,
-- Full translation of the rules in all languages of participating communities as early as possible. This means we need to finalize the structure of the competition well in advance and ensure that every community has a translated copy of it. This is especially important for asian communities, since their english skills are often poor. Once we have those translations, they should be put on the main site and spread to all communities.

-- Managers who understand English. If you remember, each team has a manager which serves as a spokeperson for that team with the officials (i.e. Crash). In the last WC, we had trouble finding good managers and I remember the Korean team was temporarily managed by Crash himself. It is important for each community to start finding a competent manager who can communicate easily in English. However, that is not the only job of the manager. S/he must also take care of the roster and make important decisions during the competition. Therefore, it would be unfair to demand that the manager speaks English if there is a better candidate at the tactical aspect of the position. Therefore, the manager role could be split into two persons, where one takes care of the actual management, and another as the spokeperson. Ideally, one person can fulfill both roles. Also note that the manager himself could be a spinner in a team. Therefore, one spinner could be doing the actual managing and an extra person is included just to communicate with the officials.

Pertains to my idea of Ambassadors, go betweens between [central government/UPSB] and their board. Guys fluent in English and (the other language, if applicable).

Also, we need a list of possible boards.

- Number of communities: Last time, we had to merge some communities to reduce the number of teams. Ideally we need a system which can accept any number of teams, so that as many communities as possible can participate.

-> Solution: Most solutions require a way to eliminate a large number of teams during a preliminary round.
-- Make a qualification event: We could create a qualification event which takes place before the main event. This could happen as early as Fall '09. One idea I had is to make a big "collab" battle. The collabs would then be graded in some fashion. The top collabs would then be qualified for the main event. The participating spinners could be anyone from each community, not just people who will take part of the final roster, since the final roster is likely to be small (6-8). This could give motivation for communities as a whole to work hard and make the collab to contribute to the qualification of their community. The qualification could apply to all communities or just a subset, with the others being already seeded. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches. Only after the qualifications should the communities submit their final roster for the main event.

-- No qualification required? It's possible qualification is not even required. We could support 16 teams and I don't think there are much more than 16 communities out there. If there are however, maybe merging needs to occur or those extra teams need to settle on the final spot or something. However, 16 teams is a fairly large number and it would impose some big constraints on the structure of the tournament. I much prefer only 8 teams in the main event because it allows for more interesting structure.

This goes to the idea of a "Board Ladder" which could be set up eventually. For '10 though, it sounds like a great solution. Random seeding again? The PS community overall has to be more organized.

- Time and number of rounds: We must make sure the event does not take too long. One round will take 1 month, since it takes more organization to gather the videos, but also to judge. The problem of the number of rounds is less apparent in a team event than in the WT. This is because not all spinners have to participate in every round. Teams can rely on their depth and rest spinners for certain rounds. It will be an interesting decision for a manager to evaluate whether having one of his top spinners (his "starter") at only 60-80% capacity (because he's been used for several rounds) is better than using a backup spinner at 100% capacity for one round only. Therefore there should be no problem if the WC requires 5 or 6 rounds. Time is the bigger factor.

Orgy the top x amount of teams from the pools in a collab battle? Maybe something like what happened in the AC R1.

- Seeding: In the last WC, we used a somewhat arbitrary method of seeding teams by using WT results. The problem is that the events are sparse and the world of PS can change dramatically within 1-2 years. Therefore, I don't think it would be the best idea to use, for instance, the WC08 results to seed the WC10.

-> Solution: seeding could be integrated in the qualification process outlined earlier such that not only the top collabs get qualified, but the ranking of those collabs matter for seeding purposes.

Good temp. solution again, but it won't hold up very well long term etc.

-- Double-elimination knockout: In double-elimination, you must be eliminated twice to be out. In this format, the number of rounds is 4 for 8 teams, 5 for 16. I still like pools better though, because each team has the chance to battle more teams.

I prefer Double Elim because it gives the teams a chance to come back and capitalize on their mistakes.

[AyySoLo]

there is a difference between luck and hidden information.

luck means no control for the players, hidden information means the lineups are selected secretely then revealed at the same time.

therefore matches still have to be revealed.

I'm not talking about revealing the matches, obiously they need to be revealed.
I'm talking about the theme selection, maybe some randomness in there can make the event more interesting.

[Frip]

Kk, just make sure the judges judge in a way where highest and lowest scores are emitted.

[Zombo]

if you translate this somewhere, tell me so that I know which communities are aware of this yet

[Resonance]

I actually like the Themes idea. It gives the WC a more special approach, rather than the normal battles (which are nice, but a change once in a while is always nice)
I also though about different awards than simply "best spinner" (or community in this case). it came to my mind after the argument with Frat during the WT... How about trying to award spinners for creativity? maybe a viewers favorite? I know it'll work better in WTs, but I think it could be used in the WC as well, if we want. Just throwing the idea into the air.

[Pudels Kern]

German translation was posted on GPC by the Dane.

[defect]

Hm, the whole world speaks english. I dont think its necessary to translate the rules or this long text. Its all pretty easy to understand. But asian communities might need translations, i understand that.

[Vikroal]

if you translate this somewhere, tell me so that I know which communities are aware of this yet

Spanish translation has just been posted on SPSC by Vikroal
We'll make you know our ideas if there are some

This post has been edited by Vikroal: Jun 7 2009, 01:09 PM

[Thewave]

I tried to do a similar concept in the UPSBTT but since it didn't turn out as active as I wanted it- I just settled with what I had.
I still think a tag every round with partners rotating could be a nice addition to the WC, something else than just the ordinary single videos each round and makes room for so much more creativity.
Also- if there are so many teams and judging could be a problem since time is of the essence- you could form 2 teams of judges, 1 for each bracket\couple brackets.
This could make room for 16 teams as each judge will still have to judge just 8 teams. You could go even further and enhance this idea by selecting judges for every brackets and have 4 brackets.
This of course requires a nice amount of judges (and knowing how hard acquiring judges can be- this could be a problem).
Also- I liked the 4 teams per brackets or even 5 and from there first (and maybe also second) go on to finals\semi finals.

[Zombo]

the WC had a double battle and 2 single battles

yes exactly, judges are supplied by communities, which means half grade the other half, just like it was done in WC08

[x1213]

if you translate this somewhere, tell me so that I know which communities are aware of this yet

I have posted it in TWPS. (With link to Ayysolo's translation)

[Zombo]

I think I found someone to take care of the organization for JEB, unfortunately that person does not speak English.

I need someone to act as a translator between English and Japanese. PM me if interested.