International Challenge - Discussion

[bmg]

Brazil cheats the most..did any of you guys see the world cup game last week where one of them faked an injury for 4 minutes and after she had to be taken off on a stretcher she just jumped out of it and ran back onto the field?

[INW]

Can't forget the biased votes against the American gymnastics team in the 2008 Summer Olympics.
China...bahaha, home territory only won them gold.

[Slov]

Brazil cheats the most..did any of you guys see the world cup game last week where one of them faked an injury for 4 minutes and after she had to be taken off on a stretcher she just jumped out of it and ran back onto the field?

lol u obv never watched soccer before ^^

[Phytotron]

I was making a joke.

I figured as much. I was just using it as an example, an example that at least one individual didn't understand....

I didn't play last time, but it is unfair for the US to have more the one team. The players from the US should just decide whether to play for the US or play for the country where their ancestors came from.

I have no opinion or suggestion as to whether the US players should be allowed to split or not (I only offered an easy, practical solution to doing so if they did split). However, the last portion of that comment, dealing with ancestry, is ridiculous. What qualifies as ancestry? Most Americans are of mixed ancestry. Where do you draw the national delineations? Would Mkay play for the Austrians or the Scots? Do you go by maternal or paternal ancestry? Going back, at which arbitrary point in history do you cut it off? What about those times in (in some cases, very recent) history before various nations existed, or had different borders? Like I said, go back far enough and we're all East Africans. It's a pointless, needlessly complicated exercise (although, you guys seem to enjoy that sort of thing).

All that should qualify are birthplace or established residence of the individual participating. Not where your 5th grandparent came from or where you vacationed for a month or lived for a couple years.

This isn't the Olympics. It is a video game.

Right. Your standards and purposes here are a lot lower than that of the Olympics, which, by the way, involves an official ruling body, actual governments, and a foundational premise. You're a bunch of kids playing a video game. Competitions like the Olympics, World Cup, NCAA or pro playoffs, etc., are only models. And arbitrary ones at that. There's no reason why you should be focusing so heavily on the Olympics and portraying that as your only model (and argument) for how this thing should be run.

(And by the way, no, I don't believe that the US, China, India, Indonesia, or Brazil should be allowed to field more than one team in the Olympics. A) Once more, there is a foundational premise to the Olympics that, like other international bodies, has nothing to do with population but with nationhood. B) Where would you arbitrarily place your population cut-off anyway?)

Can't forget the biased votes against the American gymnastics team in the 2008 Summer Olympics.
China...bahaha, home territory only won them gold.

Right, because only Chinese were judges. (Not to mention, the same logic could be used when the US has and will again host the Olympics. Keep that in mind.) If there was any cheating by China, it was in their alleged fielding of underage girls.

Brazil cheats the most..did any of you guys see the world cup game last week where one of them faked an injury for 4 minutes and after she had to be taken off on a stretcher she just jumped out of it and ran back onto the field?

lol u obv never watched soccer before ^^

This Is SportsCenter: Abby Wambach

[Mkay1]

I saw that commercial and though it was hilarious. Good touch .

[syllabear]

Pointless arguing about the Olympics when this tournament was based off the (football) world cup which was held just before the tourny last year...

[Cronix]

Brazil cheats the most..did any of you guys see the world cup game last week where one of them faked an injury for 4 minutes and after she had to be taken off on a stretcher she just jumped out of it and ran back onto the field?

you obv. never saw Italy playing....

[ElmosWorld]

Pointless arguing about the Olympics when this tournament was based off the (football) world cup which was held just before the tourny last year...

Fine then. Does each country get more then one team in the world cup? No.

[INW]

The whole point in this tourney is to slightly mimic the world cup. But don't forget, the point in this game is have fun and win on occasions. In order for the majority of people to have fun, you have to sometime "change the rules".

Tbh, I could careless if this mimics the world cup or the Olympics. As long as the majority of people have fun playing in the tourney, then it is successful.

[Phytotron]

Ah, I didn't realise it had been originally, explicitly based on World Cup organisation. But, is that even so, or, again, was it just thrown out as a reference model?

In any case, like I said earlier, I really don't see why you would need to abide so strictly by the structure and rules of the World Cup, Olympics, or anything else. Use those as models but work out what works for this game and its player makeup. Don't get hung up trying to force a square peg into a round hole.

[Desolate]

It is loosely based off a world cup style of play, featuring two actual tournament days. One is effectively the group stages and the 2nd is the finals, as in the world cup.

The major problem we ran into the last tournament is that allowing people to play for different countries of heritage as well as dividing the US into different teams is that the tournament became too balanced. It simply wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been as many actual Europeans were playing with Americans who have heritage in their country and the competition became a little too close, leading to rather uneventful matches. In my attempt to make the tournament mostly balanced last time, I ended up doing the opposite. That's why I am leaning towards the side of strictly allowing players to play for their own country (or region possibly, as Titan has already been planning), so as to create a more competitive environment and a more enjoyable experience overall.

2nd: Date Discussion

Open sign ups will begin October 3rd, promptly closing on November 4th - the first is directly after the October ladle, while the latter is a few days before the November one. The remaining ~3 weeks before the tournament will be allotted to team captains to get their teams organized and possibly get in some practices as a squad. If a player for a certain country wants to join their country's team after this deadline, they must take it up with their team captain, instead of having a guaranteed spot as a substitute. The group stages will be on November 20th while the finals will be played a week later on the 27th.

[Kijutsu]

I could careless

Can you stop posting in every topic seeing as you could "careless" about anything? (Let's forget about the fact that using "careless" as a word in this sentence is completely wrong, and the correct way of saying it is "couldn't care less"..) I'm getting a bit sick of you giving your opinion while you don't care about the progress of any tournament but your 'own', and your opinions are basic to say the least.

We already have tournaments where EVERYONE can participate and make as many teams as they want, this happens to be one where countries participate and battle eachother to have fun *and* see who's the best, imo. Desolate, is USA going to have 1 team or not?

[Slov]

i like the idea of 1 team for each country, but do we have enough players for that? us, uk, germany and maybe few others..

[INW]

I could careless

Can you stop posting in every topic seeing as you could "careless" about anything? (Let's forget about the fact that using "careless" as a word in this sentence is completely wrong, and the correct way of saying it is "couldn't care less"..) I'm getting a bit sick of you giving your opinion while you don't care about the progress of any tournament but your 'own', and your opinions are basic to say the least.

This is like the second time?

Nice troll.

[Kijutsu]

i like the idea of 1 team for each country, but do we have enough players for that? us, uk, germany and maybe few others..

A good compromise would be letting some americans of (hopefully relevant) heritage fill up teams that aren't complete, that way more of them can participate without letting them have more than 1 team.