Game Matrix

[MartindalexC]

Yo, welcome to the next installment of me whining. Today's topic is game matrix/matrices, can we please get one? It makes reading games not a ball busting chore, plus it is much faster based on the fact that you won't have to deal with the crippling load time of the website (seriously guys what gives? It isn't the mid 2000s cache that shit already).

 

No idea what a game matrix is? No problem famalam, feast your eyes on this...

Basically it gives you a quick visual overview of how each team is doing, showing individual head to heads. Simple, intuitive, quick and well made. 

How do we do that now? NHLgamer -> leagues -> elite -> Wait a few seconds -> Schedule drop down box, select team -> Wait for swooshing random stuff that doesn't add anything of note -> yay, you're in one team's schedule, but that's it. You can search theirs to see matchups but you can't see other head to heads without wasting a further 10-15s on, quite honestly, pointless waiting. Solution?

MATRICES!

Boi, in my midnight stupor of cs rage and procrastination from my dissertation (seriously, who doesn't love talking about semantic memory lateralisation / localisation within the pre-frontal cortex / parietal lobes while factoring in semantic relatedness? This fucker thats who) I decided to take on the 'daunting task'. Truth be told I just wanted to make it for NOR and teams around, but when I realised how simple it would be I decided to batten down the hatches and go full hog, momma didn't raise no bitch I tell you. 

Instructions: Read from left to right, starting on the team (Y axis) you want to compare against others. Follow the row of the team across the bottom (X axis) to see their result(s) against 'x' opponent. E.g.: If I want to see how Carlsberg did against Sjukstugan, I start at either CAR or 112 on the left hand axis, then follow the row across until I meet the column of either 112 or CAR respectively. Sounds simple? That's because it is. 

Red = Double loss

Blue = Win and loss

Green = Double win

 

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**Disclaimers: It's 4am right now, momma did raise a sleepy fuck. So bare in mind this is a 1st draft of the idea, take it as a proof of concept if you will. Some results are straight up missing (looking at you NN and SSG / TIK). Thirdly, I discovered a bug in the system (?) that when a game is still needing stats or press conferences it doesn't show up as an OT game in the schedule, even if it was. Just an observation, don't crucify me but that really shouldn't be there. Soooo some 'OT's may be missing from some matchups.

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Hopefully people can see the usefulness in something like this going forward for future ecls. For instance you can see that the elite division has engaged in some sort of 4D underwater low gravity rock paper dildo where NL > KAT > MUK > WRT , therefore NL > WRT naturally. 

All in all this matrix took me roughly two hours to compile, that's with manual retrieval of stats, something that would be fixed if this was to be a feature on the site somewhere as it would be automatic once games are submitted. In addition to this the code used to make this for elite could ofc be ported across so that pro / lite divisions can have their teams substituted in. 

Either way, let's go and make stats great again! 

MSGA

 

 

Edited November 16, 2017 by MartindalexC

[Kenu]

Thanks Connor, I like it. Should be doable. It's officially on the planning board now. (Not going to be done by ECL 5, but you already knew that)

 

Regarding the loading times, please give us some more information, such as:

- Is it specifically on some pages or all pages, or perhaps everywhere except the forums?

- Is it always slow?

I've noticed some slowdowns from time to time, but I've thought that's my internet being annoying (apart from the actual obvious problems that we've had in the past). The website is cached on Cloudflare (not everything can be cached though, as you would be getting old data if it was).

 

Also thanks for pointing out the OT-bug. There's a lot of annoying stuff revolving around the pending game status. Need to change that logic.

[Mikka]

At least for me the playercards load forever but other pages load kinda slow too compared to other sites

Edited November 8, 2017 by Ebinmikka31

[MartindalexC]

6 hours ago, Kenu said:

Thanks Connor, I like it. Should be doable. It's officially on the planning board now. (Not going to be done by ECL 5, but you already knew that)

 

Regarding the loading times, please give us some more information, such as:

- Is it specifically on some pages or all pages, or perhaps everywhere except the forums?

- Is it always slow?

I've noticed some slowdowns from time to time, but I've thought that's my internet being annoying (apart from the actual obvious problems that we've had in the past). The website is cached on Cloudflare (not everything can be cached though, as you would be getting old data if it was).

 

Also thanks for pointing out the OT-bug. There's a lot of annoying stuff revolving around the pending game status. Need to change that logic.

Community section runs fine. https://nhlgamer.com though visibly takes longer to load based on this coming through whenever you click on something that changes the page to a new one, like literally everything, if I'm in the elite area and click standings the load symbol pops up. Why not to save the time and preload all pages associated with each respective league based on the previous choice you made? Sure it'll take a bit longer to begin with but it saves time when you're actually in, as opposed to wasting .5 / 1 second each click you do. 

Also another bug I've just found, if you click on elite, then teams, then try to go to the schedule it appears blank as it loses this part of the link: regular&platformID=1 in between gametype= / &show=schedule (https://nhlgamer.com/league.php?leagueID=23&gameType=&show=schedule).

From what I can see it seems as though the graphical element is bottlenecking how fast the page can physically load, ergo the page can only be shown once the element has finished doing it's transition. 

 

All of this is kinda leading to my main point now though that, while I acknowledge that currently (and most likely historically) I've been this site's biggest critic probably, there just seems to be absolutely zero real improvements coming. I get that you guys are all secretive and don't want to release anything until it's perfect, a mentality that companies irl try to acheive (e.g.: Valve), however the companies that do that tend to have a history of delivering good product (e.g.: Valve again and the plethora of games they have made). It basically comes down to the idea that you need to show people that you can do it, otherwise you can't really blame them for not being "patient" months down the line when nothing of note arrives.

I realise I'm going full on here and it could be construed as a vitriolic act, but realise I'm only doing this because I want this site to be better, not because I get off on shitting on things although that is usually fun I'll admit. 

So let's get into it, there will be two distinct sections, one where I talk about what I elluded to previously, and one where I talk about general stuff that, imo, is still missing. 

 

Content? 

You guys (mod and admins) toe the line "be patient" whenever people get riled and directly ask why "X" isn't in yet, or why "Y" isn't talked about. Which is fine, I understand not wanting to share everything in case something invariably gets put behind schedule and subsequently shelved in favour of newer more useful things. I get that. It means you don't get peoples' hope up only to dash them based on working timelines. Whatever. The problem is, what actual content have you submitted that makes playing in the leagues (as a player and gm) more comfortable? EA API is absolutely one but unless I'm missing something, that is it. And shit that was back in March (8 months ago) what tangible feature has been added since that point that actively makes our lives easier? For comparison sake Valve is shat on when they take over 6months to do a reskin of a map in csgo / add in a new operation. The difference being in this comparison is that you kinda know what valve is doing and that they're just incredibly slow at it, additionally you also know at the very least the resulting product will be decent enough.

This

Is

Not

Content

Don't get me wrong it's nice to have, I'm not debating that. I am however debating the reasoning behind making a push to make the site all nice looking complete with swooshy elements and plenty of articles that will indubitably look good to outsiders, however what real use do we the players of the tournament have for it? You even had that writers group thing go up and we've actually lost content compared to previous tournaments, despite having more 'writers' than ever. Previous ecls had a "who's hot and who's not" for example. 

I'm not saying making a push for having a creative contingent of the site is wrong, I am saying though that you have stated multiple times that the real bottleneck of upgrading the site is you and Lurkins' availability, so why not make a public push to recruit web developers? Atleast on the same level as the push to get more writers. Otherwise what's the point in crying wolf all this time if you seemingly are not even trying to fix the problem. (Not saying you aren't, but I don't think you can fault me on coming to this conclusion).

What is missing?

Standings scoreboard - 

• PK % on the standings
• No last ten games snapshot (e.g.: 9-0-1)
• No pp chances / goals counter
• If you're tracking shots, why not just place s/g instead, much more palatable imo
• G/g ga/g differential perhaps
• toa (time on attack)
• OT wins

These vary in necessity, PK really should be there whilst the g/g ga/g differential is something that makes it easier to compare. But we shouldn't sacrifice looks for functionality, aesthetics are fine and all but we (the players) actually have to use this stuff for reasons outside of "oh look at that, that animation is nice". So maybe add two standings (one 'default' that is nice and pretty and simple and shit, with the second being called "enhanced" where it shows all the extra stuff that is clearly there, but would make the first standings page look crowded. NHL.com does this, for instance their standings page  is nice and clean and gets the general job done, then if you're not satisfied with the info from it and want to get a better look at each team you can go to their stats page to see, well, more stats. 

Match input - 

• I've said this time and time again, but having the usernames as well as the names of the players when adding in stats would be pretty helpful... you guys know this, I've said it like 50 times even going back to the testing of the first stats page way back when

Score Ticker -

• Ability to sort based on elite / pro / lite, at the very least the games should be colour coded so ease of viewing, multiple others have suggested this

 

These are just a few things off the top of my head that I can remember right now, I'm sure others have stated additional changes / additions that they would like to see added. Overall though @Kenu I hope you don't take this as an attack and more as a harsh critique of the site and the way (from an outside perspective) it seems to conduct itself. Plus it should be noted that in places I am intentionally being extremely nitpicky. I should also not need to clarify that this is just my opinion and that it could just be that I'm irrationally annoyed with all this and everyone else is cool with how the site is coming along, but if I'm being completely frank I think there is still a ways to go before people should become complacent. Afterall, I know atleast one other website is looking to start their own 6s league so let's not end up sitting on our laurels and end up getting potentially supplanted because of it.

Edited November 8, 2017 by MartindalexC

[l-Furyan-l]

Okay @MartindalexC, I've been sitting on the sidelines for most of the posts where you put down NHLGamer but there are a few things I felt the need to adress here. To make it easier for myself, I am going to stay mostly within the parameters of "content" as I cant really comment on the parts that relates to coding.

"Write what you know", as the saying goes.

First of all, the continous comparison to Valve throughout your post is not only grossly unfair (a company valued at 2-4 billion dollars with hundreds, if not thousands, of staffers vs. 10 guys who are - at best - available at different times of the day, outside of working regular jobs and spending time with families/partners/kids), it is also flawed in the sense that with Valve you are paying quite a substantial amount of money for specific products which absolutely puts you in a position where you can demand better if the specific products you payed for arent living up to the billing. Note that I am not saying that you don't have the right to demand excellence from us as well, having a critical voice is often good to keep you on your toes, it is just that your tone is perceived by most us as quite demeaning as you are seemingly suggesting that we are not doing our absolutely darndest to make this an enjoyable place to be. That isn't exactly inspiring.  

What you are looking at right now with NHLGamer is a free-to-use "product" that is currently being run by a limited staff, on their free time, fueled by nothing other than the passion for hockey gaming and the urge to create something cool for both regular users and complete newcomers to the NHLGamer community. Maybe that balance has been shifted towards newcomers a bit lately, it is actually possible. We have seen quite the increase in our membership totals so perhaps the correlation is that the more time and focus spent on welcoming newcomers, the more members are enticed to join. Does that mean the focus will not shift back to putting our core, regular members in focus? Absolutely NOT. Never, in my opinion. The core community is just that, core, and should never be forgotten.

I do think you are coming at this very much from your point of view as a member of the core community who's been around for years. That makes sense, what other view would you have? I was the same when I came here. If you look at some of the error report threads from back in 15/16 I was one of the more vocal guys in pointing out errors and stuff. While that is valuable information and will continue to be helpful, you know what is tremendously more helpful? Actually joining up to work on the website. I saw plenty of flaws in the website (one of them being the lack of "journalistic" content) so I decided to join up to help create some. You seem to be a man with a very specific vision for how the website should be run, you are most welcome to join on a Skype call with the rest of the Staff to tell us how you can help out in making the website better than it currently is.

Moving on, you are mostly right that there hasn't been any major features added to the website since the website re-modeling and API addition in March (even though I would argue giving hundreds of Russians the ability to participate in 6v6 gaming on NHLGamer is a pretty major one) but that is mostly because the Staff have been focusing on various other ways of improving the NHLGamer experience. We have been talking to sponsors (which we managed to get for the Summer Cup), expanding our presence in social media and news outlets and finally partnering up with major players in the gaming landscape to create tournaments with cash prizes involved. Now, I get that this maybe isn't the priority that you personally would have wanted, but with a limited staff we can only do so much and be in so many places at once before we crumble.

Furthermore, the links you posted are ABSOLUTELY content. Again, maybe not the content you personally would have gone for, but it is content and to call it anything other than what it is, is quite insulting to the people who have spent days or hours or in the case with the video, WEEKS, on creating it. Having the site look nice and having articles that "look good to outsiders" isn't in any way, shape or form an attempt to steer the project away from improving the experience for the regular ECL player to instead having just "surface shit" as you make it sound, it is simply a case of the coding making the site look nice and the articles perhaps being more journalistically styled than player-to-player due to the writer behind them prefering to write it that way. Again, I respect if this isn't your cup of tea or if you feel that our focus should be shifted to other areas, but there needs to be an aspect of fun involved in creating stuff for the website because if you just expect people to "grunt" through the work like you might at a regular everyday job, you'd soon find the Staffs numbers dwindling even further down.

As for the "writers room thing", you know why I created that article (if you'll allow me to get a bit personal)? It was because I wanted and needed help. I created the article in combination with Max because we both felt like we needed help with writing articles that could be fun for the community to read (again, the initiative stemmed from a want to create enjoyment within the community) because we both found it increasingly difficult to juggle the 4-8+ hours it sometimes takes creating a proper article with our everyday lives. Again, it was not an attempt to take focus away from anything else, it was a simple call for help because many of us had previously worked ourselves to exhaustion trying to create things for the community.

You know how many people expressed an interest in helping out with the Writers Room? 4. You know how many have written more than a single article? 1. Actually I am just in the process of editing that writers work and you will most likely see the first parts of his 6-part series released next week. You say we have lost content from previous ECLs. Maybe we have. Speaking for myself, I simply havent had the time I used to, to produce proper content (or not-content, as you called it) this ECL. When I created and wrote all of the "Whos hot and Whos not", they each took 8-10 hours (if not more) to research, write and release. Having a writers room would have cut down on that, but sadly it was not to be.

Maybe I am drifting off topic, apologies if so. I do think your post has merit even if I disagree with how you voice your concerns.

I just very much take offense to the picture you are trying to paint where you make it seem that the Staff isnt doing enough... when I know that more than one of us have invested considerable sums of money in the project, not to mention enough time to work ourselves into the wall a few times over just trying to create the best possible NHLGamer website we can.

Now, about that Skype call...?

[MartindalexC]

@The_Alpha_Furyan

Is it that unfair? Per this clip (the immediate ~5s, not the whole video) the spokeswoman (?) states that Valve had only employed around 12 people in total to run the development of CSGO. Since Valve as a company is pretty tight-knit with this kind of stuff it's hard to find a definitive number but in all liklihood it is probably still around the same number to this day. Csgo can also be bought for 5 bucks so the point about "paying a substantial amount" of money is kinda moot, especially as people within the cs community use that figure as a means to discredit someone's criticism of how valve handles updates, citing 'you didn't pay that much anyway for the game so stop complaining'. Large scale they make bank of course, no debate there. 

That's the thing though, I couldn't give a fuck about making this place 'enjoyable', I wouldn't even care if people were randomly throwing shit around and calling eachother cunts , I just want the underlying site and infrastructure to be as good as possible. My main gripe is with the priorities you guys seem to take (if anything this is directed at @Kenu more so than anyone else) as you, and by extension anyone part of the 'content crew', have stated you don't have the access or abilities to change the code so you do your best in the only way you can, by making 'content' and fairplay to you for that, I can't say anything wrong about that, nor will I. 

You are right however, what you do is content creation, however the point I was trying to make in a very roundabout way was that that kind of stuff is nice and useful to bringing in new players I guess. Unfortunately it does not really advance the quality of the system it is trying to sell. The best way I can put is if you made a product and wanted to sell it, surely you would use most (if not all) of the revenue from the initial sales on advancing the product and making better, as opposed to not investing in R&D and instead just putting all the money into PR. 

My goal also was to contrast how people are told to "be patient", and the only thing we're given (not being hostile here, it's purely an observation) is posts and news articles, to those 'people' that isn't content since that's not what they were looking for, instead they were looking for API improvements, standings stat enhancements et cetera et cetera. If you were in a restaurant and ordered a dish of fried calamari, but were instead given a plate of Haggis and told to eat up because it's what you were waiting for, you would rightfully be annoyed right? Well in this scenario I would be happy because I like Haggis so to me it's fine. Both dishes are still 'content' , but each person had completely different impressions of what they would receive if you understand me. This is where being public about what is happening in the pipeline would help immensely. If I for instance knew that the 'content' coming was just news and general 'reports' I wouldn't even be annoyed because I can see what is gonna happen and not get my hopes up about infrastructure fixes. 

I would love to help, honestly I'm being sincere here. That said I can't code and the only foray I have in web development was a year of a school when I was 13 and pretty much exclusively used abobe fireworks. So with that in mind I genuinely can't really see what I could do outside of 'holding your feet to the fire' so to speak. You saw a flaw / lack thereof in "journalistic content" and had the ability to change that by being that 'journalistic' influence. I see a flaw in the way the league is structured and stats are handled, I don't have the abilities to go in and change it myself, all I can do is recognise the issue. If you have an idea in mind of how I can help that doesn't involve me bitching here then I'm all ears.  

Fairenough. The RCL as an actual addition to the site was good, increases the player base and all that jazz. Should it have been here from the very beginning due to consolehockey's close ties to the Russian community when we first moved to here? Most likely, alas it is better late than never I'll give you that. As for the summer cup though I can't help but feel you guys are trying to run before you can walk. Getting a sponsorship is great, added pr and gives an incentive to users if a prize is given out for the winner. I will say though that giving out a prize for the summer cup was really ridiculous considering it's meant to be a fun tourny and making it give out a prize kinda ruins that. Nevertheless it seems you're obviously trying to increase the scope of ECL and NHLGamer, but these issues that I've talked about have been brought up multiple times over the entire lifespan of this site. Just allow me a moment and cast your mind back to ECL 1, then bring it forward to the current ECL 5. What differences are there in the site in regards to the actual tournament? If I'm being honest it's one change, EA API, that's it, one. It's a good one alright but there's so much more that could've been added that would increase the overall quality of the tournament.

Being real though, the main reason I brought up the 'creative' contingent of the site was to showcase the complete lack of growth and publicity the infrastructure department has seen. I'm sorry if I caused offense by calling what you do, not 'content', but you must understand I was doing it for a very particular reason, not because I don't value what you do or what others do, just there needs to be some sort of channel where we're atleast told "'x'" to with the site is being fixed", "'Y' is coming soon", "'Z'" is in the works but may be a bit just yet" for instance. At the moment as I've stated multiple times, content and 'content' () are refered to as the same things here, when in reality they are completely different things.

I hope I have cleared up my argument (although reading back now I feel I've made it more obtuse), and I'll say sure to the skype call if you use discord instead because hot damn is skype bad 

Edited November 8, 2017 by MartindalexC

[l-Furyan-l]

@MartindalexC , I dont disagree enough with any particular point in your post to write a lengthy reply. Well written post, you present your argument well.

[Kenu]

@The_Alpha_Furyan pretty much summed up most things I want to say here, but I'll add a few words.

The Valve example is pretty radical though. Yes, absolutely, one can achieve great things with a small team - for sure! Do we have 12 full-time paid employees? Nope. 6? Nope. 3? Nope. 1? Nope.

I think it's counterproductive to throw people under the bus and I won't, but sadly being listed as a member of something doesn't mean the workload is shared evenly. Sometimes people take expected breaks, sometimes unexpected. I wish I could say I spent 50% of my time developing. The amount of messages from our users to me on the forums, email, PSN, WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook etc etc is in itself almost enough for a full-time job. What we've done now is aimed to funnel it into a help desk, so more of our staff members can look at things and free my hands, but evidently this transition process takes time.

I agree about most of the things you said and how things should be handled and believe me, these are things I'm well aware of (though a reminder is sometimes in place, honestly) and as a person that demands very much of myself, sometimes eat at me. I definitely agree that we can work on our transparency and communication, to lift the illusion of nothing happening. Sometimes it's just a lot of invisible work that will make sense in the end, but until details are finalized, it's worthless and possibly can't even be discussed.

On the tech side we haven't been flexing too much with fresh stuff lately, agreed. What we have done though, is made notable progress in the scene here in Finland and in the process developed some very good contacts and shown that we can produce a good high-quality live event for the top versus players. Continuing this work will help us produce more of these, eventually 6vs6 and also in other countries. Whether or not these are your cup of tea, I don't know, but I'm for one am proud of what we've accomplished and what we've working towards.

Now, back to the tech part. We do indeed need some more hands on that. I actually brought in a guy (close friend of mine) and introduced him to what's under the hood. He tried hard to help out, but he was unable to be effective with it, while doing his other projects and taking care of his kids and family.

I'm aware of some other candidates that could have the talent to help out, but I either need to trust that person with my life, or we need to (and we really do) work a bit with the architecture to allow access to smaller parts of the system and develop that way, instead of allowing access to absolutely everything. @Lurkins and I have certainly put the website on its knees a few times by being a bit sloppy in the wrong files and I wouldn't wish that on anyone else. Not to mention that a person with an ill intent could really do some damage with too much access.

Concerning the "be patient", I completely understand that someone saying that doesn't exactly help at all. I try to avoid such things, but I know I can be annoyingly diplomatic about certain things and not say too much. The fact is though, that some of us work on this stuff for hours and hours and sacrifice sleep and other things to get this ship to where we want it (that definitely includes technology) and it's hard not to take it personally sometimes when people make blunt comments without knowing how much work is put into this. You've made a good point though - how could you, as it's not really documented?

I really do appreciate your feedback and ideas @MartindalexC. I think it's a good idea to have a private talk and see how you could be able to help out.