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*Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - DarknessRising - 12-09-2020
So I’ve been thinking recently to take a bit of a break away from all my analysis and statistical pieces and maybe look to creative character work, but alas this is not what it is. When thinking about going that route, I realise that I have much more interest expressing feelings about the league and my perspective of it, weighing up things and trying to create a not only a summering of differing sides and views, but a place for constructive feedback, suggestions and logical discussions about it. No bitching or yelling, but actual talking because at the end of the day, that will get us nowhere as league and it is those who speak best, not those who speak loudest, who has a better chance of being heard and understood.
As a result, I want to make sure there is a disclaimer on this. First and foremost, this will always have some sort of bias or a side to the argument since I’m writing it from my experience, conversations and feelings. I may feel strongly about a topic, have experience with it or only talked to people who sit on one side of the fence. Secondly, and probably wrong of me, for the most part if I mention any conversation I had with someone, it is not being brought up as a personal attack, but rather for extra perspective, especially since I have not asked permission or notified anyone what will be in this or future articles of this series. Thirdly, I’m not trying to create a lynch mob and go after a certain person, group, topic etc. with what I write, rather put myself out there more into league affairs, as someone that, personally, seems well liked and diplomatic. Anything I say can be discussed with me here on the forum or my discord DM’s and if there is a major problem, flaw or part of the puzzle missing, I am not above admitting wrong and adding it in and re-evaluating everything, or taking a part out if its seen as too aggressive/private.
So I picked this topic to start with, because quite frankly, it isn’t ground-breaking. It is not something that is an integral part of the league or really an issue that is heavily pushed for. However, just over a month ago now, user Naosu, made a media article titled “Equal Rights for ALL Teams”, the most recent public discussion and push for the premise of addressing the imbalance in teams playing first or last, due to games being streamed by the alphabetical order of the home field team. As Naosu put it, “alphabetically challenged teams” as a result, naming his own team, the Sarasota Sailfish and noting Yellowknife Wraiths have it worse, tend to be at the end of the streams. What does this means in short form? It means a team like Arizona, will have at least half of their games as the first game, as the team that comes first in alphabetical order and half the games being home field advantage, whilst it means the Wraiths will always have at least half of their games as the last on stream.
My Bias/perspective
Before getting to each side of topics, I will quickly go over where I may have bias on the topic and my general view on it before going into detail about why should or why not something should change about it. Let me make it abundantly clear, I am a player for the Yellowknife Wraiths, the most alphabetically challenged team out there. To paint a quick picture of the disparity between Arizona and Yellowknife, I worked out which slot (game 1 or game 7) each week the two teams play.
![[Image: ASjmema.png]](https://i.imgur.com/ASjmema.png)
Again, this deficit is without examining all teams, theoretically the biggest between any two teams. As seen, there is only one time that Arizona have their game after Yellowknife (week 2). Furthermore, since the schedule now with 16 games and 14 teams in the league, you verse your conference teams twice and 4 teams from the other conference, so you have situations like week 7 where Yellowknife verse Arizona, but only at their home. This pretty much sets the scene for the argument in question, should we have some weeks/system to change sim order from just being alphabetical so that teams who are “alphabetically challenged” have more change of appearing first and opening a stream?
I first and foremost think that this topic of debate is a luxury for the league. It is not necessary to change anything in order for the league to run or anything close to that. However, in saying that it is not necessary, to echo Naosu, the upside to users in the teams that will see themselves at the start of a stream is going to be higher than those teams that may now be at the bottom for a change. Looking at where we are at in the season as a Yellowknife player, we will never being in the first half of stream games again this season and on paper, that is disappointing. Yet I understand that next season, depending on schedule, that can very much change, and it will always be that way for all teams. In the middle of the two sides I found myself leaning slightly to experimenting with some change to sim order, which will be discussed in the later parts of this articles after the two sides are talked about.
For Sim Order Changes
Now this might echo some of the comments made in my section about personal bias or perspective on this, but the people for sim order would either be in different time zones or alphabetically challenged teams. Whilst its easy to dismiss them by saying “just wait approximately this amount of time until your team plays” sometimes you just don’t want to have to wait or feel frustrated that because of a name, you always have to be last. Whilst it’s not any person’s fault at all for this system as it keeps it streamlined, efficient and easy to keep track of, there is definitely room during a season to maybe have a week or two buck the system, delighting these users/teams, sometimes it may even take their early games to the end and screw them more, but the effort and thought would be appreciated.
So, how would this look and what do these users want? Well there is two trains of thought that I think are pretty easy to come up with, the simple way that would be easy to do and implement, whilst the harder way makes things fairer but requires much more effort.
1. Easiest way – Have some weeks where the games are shown on stream in reverse-alphabetical order.
Very simple in theory, easy to co-ordinate the order and makes sense. Biggest problem first, if you for instance did this for this season’s week 2 or 3 games, it would actually make Yellowknife’s schedule for which game they are playing worse, changing one of their game 2 slots to game 6. I would imagine the easiest time to implement a change or only one week, would be doing it during colour rush to add to this theme of “going crazy”. New Uniforms, New game times, more things even could be done around this week of the sim to make it almost an event in the middle of the season to add some more excitement to the league before the playoff push. This is the time of the season where sometimes are disheartened knowing they aren’t making playoffs and others are already convinced they are making it, but too early the middle teams to know just how they will fair or to really panic over it. This extra excitement just heaps add another peak time to the league in what I would imagine is a bit of a down trough of excitement around the league. (For reference, colour rush last season was around week 10).
2. Hardest way – Create schedules for game streaming to balance it out more evenly amongst teams.
Even though it will make the rest of what I say moot, this is an option that I cannot see happening or needing to happen, and is by far the most extreme action that could be taken in thinking of a way to change things. What this entails would be like how the NFL schedules games with a prime time and more hyped day, seems like that is Sunday night football, being either the games we play first or save for last, depending if we built the system around allowing teams to be on first or where the last game is the primetime game. Either way, a system that follows that type of route would need to be planned out just like the schedule, and would take a lot of time to pull off, but ultimately would be the most fool-proof method of balancing out sim order and take care of future expansion teams no matter where in the alphabet they fit into.
Against sim Change
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that users within the teams first up in the alphabetical order would be really opposed to changing it occasionally, going with something like the easy option listed above, the real opposition to this comes in the form of the streamers/simmers/graphics employees responsible for putting on the stream. Now, to caption this, I have no experience what so ever with any of these roles, what goes into the roles and what specifically each one does, but going by title alone, I would expect its mainly graphics and streamers that would be affected by this (If anyone in these position currently, in the past or someone like HO who knows how it works, I would love if you would reply on this with a little info about each job to really make it clear to me and others). These users have to crank out streams every 2 days in what is an already stressful job. Adding more workload that changes systems between weeks can add confusion, delays or mistakes that would see them much more criticised and memed about than teams being alphabetically challenged, so is it worth the extra time and effort invested, room for error and headaches for the users involved to just restructure the games that anyone can just watch back later. I would say also that some people only looking for their stats, which just checking the box score once the index is updated is enough for them, so the stream doesn’t matter.Side v Side
Now, I’ve had a pretty good experience relative to this subject that I want to bring up because not only does it address some things directly, it is very topical. Currently, the ISFL streamer is AirCrou (AC), ISFL steam graphics is r0tzuba and the ISFL simmers are ManicMav and r0tzuba, with Tonzy as sim assistant. These people would be great to hear from more on what capacity they think changes can be made as I’m sure most of do not know what their exact work looks like in order for the stream to be complete.Anyway, back to my story, and it was just after Naosu’s articled happened, where in the YK locker room, there was conversations between me, AirCrou and Timeconsumer. And the TL
R of this is that AirCrou’s thought the idea of changing up sim order was bad and impractical in terms of the time taken to change things like the graphics or recording of games, whilst Timeconsumer talked about how he did this when he was the streamer and simmer, choosing whatever games he wanted to run where. What I got out of this is that whilst it may be an inconvenience and take more time to do, it is definitely possible to change sim order once or twice a season without much worry about throwing the entire system out of whack. Whether it be doing games by reverse alphabetical order or streaming Week 16 with dead rubber games first and the playoff spot deciders last, simple changes to sim order can create a lot of happy users or tension building to a climax, has been done before and can be done again.Again, without knowing exactly what each role does and how they undertake it, I don’t see it in my personal view currently as being extremely difficult to do. The simmer would most likely from what I’ve taken conversations as, film each game either individually or all together, but this could be spliced up. The graphics person would have templates for each team, both as away or home (unless they just mirror the one image) and arrange them by who plays first, making it easy to adjust for the order. The streamer, I don’t know what more they do but play the stream so I’m sure I’m missing something important, but that to me seems very easily able to incorporate either a reverse alphabetical order week during colour rush for example or a climatic week 16 where games are structured by importance.
Conclusion
Importantly and I can’t iterate it enough, I don’t have experience in this area and things could be very different to how I described it working in a very basic and most likely extremely broad way. That’s where I think some extra communication from people in these position to the league as a whole about how they work, what they do and what they could potentially do would be great and really open everyone up to what goes on behind the doors. People might worry that maybe somehow this could be abused if its public knowledge but I can’t see that being true, since it would mean the individuals themselves in those position would have to partake in that and none of them have that sort of character or personality in them. At the end of the day, Sim order is not a need but a luxury for the league when people talk about shaking it up and whilst there is definitely users that would appreciate something that would allow them to see their team play earlier than usual, it is really not a big deal if it never changes and stays the way it is. If not clear enough, my personal stance is that there is definitely something that could be done in this space but if it doesn’t happen, I won’t be taking to the forums to yell and scream at the people involved in that type of decision as its just not that important to me, nice yes, but not important and that is where I will end this topic.
What to expect from this series in the future?
Well I have some topics I already want to cover and create a dialogue over, including more polarising topics that are sure to create some potentially heated arguments, so before I do those articles I want to see thoughtful and kind discussions on more trivial topics first before I get to those. I also would take suggestions if anyone thinks there is something worth talking about, interview people even if there is a need for it and just overall be very open to feedback because this is all about starting a discussion and if i'm not for that, then that is extremely hypocritical. For reference, some of the topics I have in mind for the future include Expansion, Sim Errors, HO, Minnesota Grey Ducks, Free Agency and Money/Contracts. Lastly, nothing in this or future articles should be taken or meant as a personal attack or a reason to attack someone. It is strictly my opinion, the sides of the debate given my experiences I’ve been privy to or seen around the league, and weighing up what could happen moving forward from my perspective.Code:
Word count - 2641 + basic tableRE: Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - Lowlycrib - 12-09-2020
Now this is something I can get behind. Playing in San Jose my entire career since S17 has sucked to be consistently at the end of the streams nearly every week
RE: Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - abh89 - 12-09-2020
End of stream teams unite!
RE: Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - Duilio05 - 12-09-2020
Gonna make team named the Aardvarks.
RE: Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - Pat - 12-09-2020
Dumb question but why is it always done in alphabetical order of home team? Is that just how it started out and no one thought to change it?
RE: Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - Asked Madden - 12-10-2020
As a Scotsman Im quite often awake at 1 but not long after. Meaning I've only seen SJS play a handful of times since joining. Mixing up the schedule would be a god send.
RE: Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - 37thchamber - 12-14-2020
(12-09-2020, 06:13 PM)Punter715 Wrote: Dumb question but why is it always done in alphabetical order of home team? Is that just how it started out and no one thought to change it?
I'm guessing that's how they come up in the sim? Seems like the kind of simple logic DDSPF would have built-in.
Didn't realise there was capacity for the simmer/streamer to change the order though, tbf. Never noticed a difference in play order since I'm almost never awake to watch streams anyway.
I suppose this means the real question here should be "is the outcome worth the extra effort required from simmers/streamers?" and frankly, none of us who aren't simmers/streamers are in any position to make statements about that.
RE: *Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - DarknessRising - 12-14-2020
Quote:Punter715
Dumb question but why is it always done in alphabetical order of home team? Is that just how it started out and no one thought to change it?
Quote:37thchamberAs far as i know, its just the way it was decided to be done for ease but that could be completely wrong. If you look in the index at weekly results, the games aren't listed in any order but again, i don't know if that is how games are played if you simmed a whole week.
I'm guessing that's how they come up in the sim? Seems like the kind of simple logic DDSPF would have built-in.
Quote:37thchamberI am under the imrpression that each game is recroded indvidually and then put together to create the stream as well see with the graphics in between. Even if it was all at once, its evident they splice up the stream with graphics so it wouldn't be impossible to splice it up to change order.
Didn't realise there was capacity for the simmer/streamer to change the order though, tbf. Never noticed a difference in play order since I'm almost never awake to watch streams anyway.
Quote:I suppose this means the real question here should be "is the outcome worth the extra effort required from simmers/streamers?" and frankly, none of us who aren't simmers/streamers are in any position to make statements about that.That is definitely the question, is the effort worth it? Alot of people aren't affected or care because they watch everything live, its only a small amount of users that would appreciate their team playing earlier. Though making wk 16 games ordered by importance could create extra tension as the games go. But certainly need simmers/streamers opinions. So uhh, sorry for the tags but @"AirCrou" @JPach @timeconsumer @r0tzbua i would love if you could give your input and perspective on this
RE: *Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - C9Van - 12-14-2020
Yeah was annoying as fuck whilst I was on YKW. I'm not staying up to watch games live when I have work the following morning when I can either just hear we won or lost the following morning or watch the game on youtube the day after.
RE: *Darkness' thoughts on league topics - open dialogue - timeconsumer - 12-14-2020
(12-14-2020, 07:48 AM)DarknessRising Wrote: That is definitely the question, is the effort worth it? Alot of people aren't affected or care because they watch everything live, its only a small amount of users that would appreciate their team playing earlier. Though making wk 16 games ordered by importance could create extra tension as the games go. But certainly need simmers/streamers opinions. So uhh, sorry for the tags but @"AirCrou" @JPach @timeconsumer @r0tzbua i would love if you could give your input and perspective on this
So it was very common until maybe Sweetwater's time for simmers to kinda hand pick the game schedule for a week. Granted at the time we had only like 4 games per week. Anyways, this is where the old phrase "the upset slot" came about when referring to the last game of the evening. It was a common practice for the last game to be a big upset, or just a super close and exciting game with maybe a game winning drive or a goal line stop for a win etc.
My own personal strategy I usually liked to try and layer in games to keep them exciting. I didn't like putting two blowouts in a row if I could avoid it, I'd prefer to stagger them in between closer games. Sometimes for fun I'd screw with people and put a really weak team against a really strong team in "the upset slot" making them think something insane was about to happen, then it was a blowout anyway.
As far as extra effort it took me absolutely zero to pick and choose which games I played and when on the streams. However it would likely be some additional work now with the graphic between games. Even then, just put the scores in a different order or something, idk.