Final Week Of The Seasonal Delay

After an eventful week, I want to make some important notes about this final week of "Delay".

Now that the dust has settled(And since my photo shoot is completed @DarthForsberg ), and I have had some quality time to think about the aftermath and the direction we are headed, I feel it is important to ensure we all are on the same page.

First and foremost, we all should acknowledge the efforts put in by one of our own, @frost xi . All this discussion about trace routes and such has sparked a ton of discussion and he was able to correct his own lag issues from his findings. It is some next level shit that I can't even begin to explain. Some people seem to have had success from his findings and if you have not yet heard of what he is has done, check out his thread and give it a try.

http://leaguegaming.com/forums/inde...also-includes-past-posts.223931/#post-1402610

The next thing I'd like to discuss is the Holiday Schedule. Some of you shared your displeasure with playing during the holidays. Looking at the calendar I have come up with a decent idea that wouldn't delay us another two weeks but give us enough of a break over the xmas holidays. Below is a discussion link so you can express what you think in the PA sub forums.

http://leaguegaming.com/forums/inde...you-need-off-during-the-xmas-holidays.224007/



Looking at the month of DEC, the 24th is on a Thursday. The idea I had would be to move the 9 pm game on Dec 24th, to the 9 PM slot on Tuesday Dec 22, therefore having three games on Tuesday. I understand the AHL and CHL do not have three game times like the NHL has, so we will have some discussion with you guys what times would work for you that week to move the Christmas eve game.

With New Years eve being the following Thursday, we would delay the season from Dec 24-Jan 2. Then our final week would resume Jan 3 with a full week of regular game times.

That is the least amount of moves to the actually schedule as well.

The constitution does state that Thanksgiving Thursday will be rescheduled as well. So we will see a three game Tuesday that week too. Just so everyone is clearly, with Canadian Thanksgiving being a preseason week that is the only reason those Monday games were not rescheduled as well.

The final two things I want to mention, and will be discussed this week among the Owners and Managers is the "unlimited" IR as well as the hosting issues. I will be the first to admit I didn't leave myself enough time to get the info out to you guys, which lead to some knee jerk decisions. Obviously having more time to think and see the progress we have made over this first week of delay, I was able to make some better decisions on what we can expect come Nov 1.

The IR system for several seasons has been a nightmare and riddled with abuse. It was so abused, one of my v5 requests is to have the player request option in the action center completely removed. The players complained up and down how the Managers abused the IR system, so we changed the system to empower the players. The abuse we have experienced by the players far out weights the complaints we ever saw from the Managers. Hence another reason why "we do not have nice things". In the future we will see the player's ability to put themselves on IR disappear and we will return to the old way of doing things of players informing the Manager of an IR request. That also makes more sense with the relaxed ECU rules. So instead of using a guy for three games as temp call, I can use him for three games ECU in that week. It allows for a player two basically play six games a week and not take away from his primary team. That could be key come playoff race time.

Logically thinking right now too, a player who goes on IR for the season is looking to escape a single season ban. That is it. It is just one season. So if you go on IR for 9 weeks, or quit and get ban for 9 weeks? Why does it matter? At least if you quit, you are opening a spot up for your team's manager to replace you.

The other side of the coin that can be respected is yes a player only has two official weeks of IR, but with the relaxed ECU rules, that could be extended as well. If a manager has a key player on a good contract, but that player is still riddled by lag, the time off for said player could be extended via ECUs. All that would need to occur is scheduling the guy, using an ECU and not filing strikes for missing games. This is not so unheard of either. We have seen teams in the past do this when a player is gone for a three week vacation, and their two weeks IR is expired.

We all are in this together, and by now, managers should know who they have who may or may not have lag issues. Some guys don't ever get the host lag, so if availability is good, put those guys in the home host games. There are plenty of ways to work together; players and managers to ensure this season with or without lag is successful.

Lastly I will be discussing game night set ups with the Management groups as well. Originally we discussed a free quit out, to find a good host. But after two weeks of testing, do we truly need that? Do we need to have a game be dragged out any longer? Especially after a two week delay, where the Owners have done a ton of testing.

This week I encourage more than ever for teams to play preseason and get comfortable with who can host and not experience Lag. Nov 1st will be our official start, regardless of the lag issue.​