Idea: Division game day lock & game rescheduling tool update

[markalla2]

The lower you go in ECL divisions, the harder it is to schedule games with inexperienced teams & captains. Also, players in the lower divisions play more casually because they more often than not have late nights at work, family and other things in life, meaning team management for captains is much bigger of a task. I don’t have an exact number on how many games are played according to schedule, but wouldn’t it be easier for all parties involved if the games are only allowed to be played on official division game days (Tue, Thu, Sun in Core for example) between 19 - 22 CET? I have witnessed with my own eyes a team declining default schedule and proposing 15:00 CET on a Saturday. And even if we are not talking about the most extreme cases, currently captains are basically allowed to propose anything between Sun-Thu 18:00 – 23:00 CET, no penalties for not answering in time or scheduling matchups on top of another matchup.

My quality-of-life improvement: Each matchup (=two games and a start time of the 1^st game) has a status of “Accepted”, “Proposal pending” or “LA case”. By default, each matchup is “Accepted” as the default date & time. Captains can set a default password & home game server for their team to be viewed by other teams’ captains. The password used for the matchup will be the first game’s home team’s password, set by the official schedule. If there’s no need to reschedule, no need to send any rally-english / google translate DM’s. You can just go ahead & play as the schedule says. If the opponent doesn’t appear in 15 minutes after the scheduled start, you can create an LA case with evidence for WO wins and call it a day. Naturally common sense should be used and if something urgent happens right before puck drop and you can’t play, you can always try and send a message to the other team, but the other team has no obligations to read or answer.

If, however, games need to be rescheduled well ahead of puck drop, there is a Reschedule-button next to the matchups listed in the current Schedule-view. The Reschedule-button is greyed out if there is less than let’s say 2h until puck drop. With the Reschedule-tool, you can only select dates & times from dropdown lists that are:
A) official division game dates (Tue, Thu, Sun for example)
B) start time between 19:00 – 22:00 CET, ½h intervals
C) you cannot select a time that overlaps with other matchups (because matchups are accepted by default)
D) you cannot select a start time that another team has proposed to you or the opposing team (because the matchup status is “Proposal pending”)
You can add up to 5 unique date & time proposals.
Along with the proposal you can add additional information like “we can never start before 20 CET, we got kids” etc. The team receiving the proposal has 12 hours to either accept one of the proposed times or respond with a new proposal set & free text. If a new proposal set is sent, the other team only can only accept/decline it in 12 hours. If declined or not answered, the matchup status turns to “LA case” and LA will figure it out in DMs. So basically every “Reschedule” is a process that takes up to 24hrs before LA jumps in and settles the case.

Benefits for…

LA

• When an LA case is created, you get all the required information immediately
• Teams follow the rules, you know exactly when games will be played

Captains

• currently the amount of effort & time captains put into this (mainly for free of course) is mind-blowing

Team members

• players with different life situations (work, family...) can make plans days or even weeks ahead for the competitive season

I know this sounds like a lot of full-stack development for SportsGamer, but we are paying a rather premium price for playing on this platform and usually there are quality-of-life improvements on such services. Yes, there are downsides too, for example if a starting lineup player can never play on a certain day of the week that happens to be a default game day or a team can never play before 20 CET, but I think having regulation would certainly outweigh the downsides (and currently those examples I gave would have to be negotiated in DMs anyway). The only reason I currently don’t want to be a captain is simply the game scheduling: gathering your own roster’s availability is already a task on its own and, on top of that, you sometimes must negotiate with people you don’t even share a common language to begin with.

I also understand that if you’ve only played in Elite/Pro or never negotiated on a reschedule you must be thinking what on earth is this guy talking about, but it really gets wild down here in Neo-Lite. Teams are filled with more casual players who have late shifts at work, family, other hobbies so team management is much harder and the amount of games to be scheduled isn’t any less. So, in a nutshell, this QoL improvement wouldn’t change anything in Elite/Pro, but it would greatly save captains’ valuable time in Neo-Lite and bring some much-needed clarity on the rules of following the official schedule.

Question for other casual teams with a variety of life situations among roster: How do you keep track of availability? Do you find scheduling games hard? I'd love to hear others' thoughts on this
 

[Zombqvist]

As a former captain I can feel your pain. Scheduling is literally the worst part about organizing a team to play in this league. Although in my experience, communication with opponents has never really been the biggest issue, I'm sure any proposal to improve the system would be welcome by everyone 👍

[Andjovis]

BanTheReschedulingIntoNotDefaultDays

+1

[DobboJ90]

As a former captain i understand the difficulties when trying to organise games. However, in your post you have answered your own question.
 

4 hours ago, markalla2 said:

in the lower divisions play more casually because they more often than not have late nights at work, family and other things in life,
 

And your proposal would be to lock down the game nights? this would only make it harder to organise games and would likely in fact deter teams/players from signing up. For example, someone may have fixed late shifts on tuesday & thursday. if I was that person, knowing i could only play league games 1 night a week maximum, i wouldn't pay for a player license and contribute to the team license for 1 night a week of league games. (in fact i am nearly this person, i work 2 late shifts until 20 CET a week. i would not sign up to play and pay money for the privilege if locked game nights were a thing).

IMO it is fine as it is, its not ideal or a perfect method but i'm not sure it can be made any simpler. This is where it comes down to the captains of the teams to be considerate and negotiable when arranging fixtures. 

the flexibility afforded in the lower leagues to move things around is crucial to the majority of those teams in my opinion and it should be kept as it is.

[markalla2]

5 minuuttia sitten, DobboJ90 kirjoitti:

As a former captain i understand the difficulties when trying to organise games. However, in your post you have answered your own question.
 

And your proposal would be to lock down the game nights? this would only make it harder to organise games and would likely in fact deter teams/players from signing up. For example, someone may have fixed late shifts on tuesday & thursday. if I was that person, knowing i could only play league games 1 night a week maximum, i wouldn't pay for a player license and contribute to the team license for 1 night a week of league games. (in fact i am nearly this person, i work 2 late shifts until 20 CET a week. i would not sign up to play and pay money for the privilege if locked game nights were a thing).

IMO it is fine as it is, its not ideal or a perfect method but i'm not sure it can be made any simpler. This is where it comes down to the captains of the teams to be considerate and negotiable when arranging fixtures. 

the flexibility afforded in the lower leagues to move things around is crucial to the majority of those teams in my opinion and it should be kept as it is.

That's a fair and great point! That could easily be taken into account in the lower divisions by allowing rescheduling to like Sun-Thu 19-22 CET while keeping the other reschedule tool updates I suggested. It would make the process so much smoother for everyone.

[DobboJ90]

I'm all for a smoother process if one can be established, that's for sure. An updated rescheduling tool with some of the ideas you have presented sound like a good way to go, hopefully they can at least be discussed and considered ✌️