Delay the July 4th Match
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As we know there is currently a scheduled match on the night of July 4th. As this is a relatively major US holiday there seem to be a lot of people who plan to miss or have schedule conflicts both on the weekend of and especially the night of the 4th. I think there is good reason to look at delaying a week. There are otherwise very few subs/ringers to go around to fill the amount missing across the div, which adds strain on the teams even when planning this far ahead.
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we dont need a poll for this im pretty sure theres going to be more people gone than not. just delay it thanks
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i feel like not having a delay for the 4th of july is just going to lead to more headaches and chaos then necessary
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Agreed! If the match on Valentine’s day (a somewhat minor holiday) gets a week delay, July Fourth (the most significant holiday of the Summer) should certainly get one as well.
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please delay it. for me.
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So when I was looking over scheduling dates for our upcoming summer and autumn seasons, I did notice that the 4th of July fell on a Monday. After discussing it with the rest of the HL staff, we initially opted to not give the week off for numerous reasons.
The biggest one by far is that we’re on a very tight schedule. Many players have been feeling the effect this off-season of our time constraints, due to the Bracket Reset as well as the previous Valentine’s Day break. The time between Grands and s12 is 4 weeks, with a 3-week team registration period and 1 week for any qualifiers, which makes for one of the shortest off-seasons.
Currently I have s13, the autumn season, planned for October 3rd–which is the latest I can possibly go without being Christmas week. Season 12 is currently set to end on August 22nd. It would mean that next season will just be as uncomfortable for many teams if we add the break.
We also have to factor in that we have many players competing from out of the states, including Canada, Mexico, and other out of region countries. Valentine’s Day was observed internationally compared to the 4th of July, which is purely an American holiday.
Also where do we draw the line with holidays? Do we include every federal holiday? Every religious holiday? Halloween is also on a Monday this Autumn. The only way we can take Halloween off is if we move the season forward. If we take both Halloween and the 4th of July off, we will have a 3-week off-season with only a 2-week team registration for the Fall. Are players okay with essentially non-stop seasons? I would imagine it would cause quite a bit of burn-out in the long run.
RGL also already has a break planned mid-season for the RGL LAN. This would mean s12 would have two breaks extending the season.
I would like everyone to factor in the consequences that will impact the future seasons! Utilizing subs and rescheduling matches would be the easiest way for teams to accommodate each other while still giving people ample preparation for the Autumn season!
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@TheS4rr said in Delay the July 4th Match:
Agreed! If the match on Valentine’s day (a somewhat minor holiday) gets a week delay, July Fourth (the most significant holiday of the Summer) should certainly get one as well.
It’s worth noting that this is only true for a singular country in NA.
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Yes there are other countries involved in RGL, but i have to imagine a majority of players are within the US. To me it seems kinda silly in general to take breaks for holidays outside of Christmas/equivalent event at that time of year. Taking Valentine’s off and not the 4th is odd though for a league with, what I imagine, a vast majority in the US.
Time schedule though is a much bigger issue though than ranking what holidays get break time. Player breaks are important, especially to me. Its fantastic to mentally reset especially if a season ended up being rough. I’d much rather have the extra time post season rather than in the middle.
Personally, i don’t care. I’m here anyway.
edit: perhaps what might be best is a more relaxed ruleset for default days/ reschedules for that week. also like 99% of people play Sunday , just saying
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It wasn’t only valentine’s day that the match got delayed for… It was for the arguably larger Superbowl game which I would think most RGL gamers probably wanted to watch instead of the former.
Edit: On sunday so people would miss scrims most likely.
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@Constantly Well, Halloween is typically not observed while historically July 4th has been. Get subs is simple to say when you don’t have to convince players to play on a holiday when most other teams are already scrambling to take those that do, and there are a lot of holes to fill.
Its fair to say where do you draw the line… none of us love the smaller off-seasons, but sometimes it’s necessary as well. As a scheduler I believe you have to account for the times a major holiday lands on a Monday, which only happens once every six or so years anyway. It’s poor luck that there are so many this year as is.
As someone said, the valentines skip was unavoidable because of the combination of the superbowl and valentines falling back to back. You can argue that only Americans miss the 4th, but look at how many Americans miss the superbowl lol.
If it has to stay, so be it, but it’s just a nightmare waiting to happen.
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Ultimately, I should preface this as just providing my perspective on this situation and is not meant to be my decision on anything.
More of the issue is how delaying the entire week because of one day creates a cascading effect that makes the offseason shorter and shorter. League-wise, 4-weeks is the length for the offseason that is targeted. When it gets shorter and shorter from this target, this results in less time to register your team for the next season, less time to have weekend scrims to formulate your entire roster, less time to prepare for qualifiers, and less time to relax in between seasons (creates the feeling of a continuous season which may contribute to burnout).
From the perspective of the league staff that helps out to run the format, this creates a further time crunch for them in the offseason to do all their work regarding placements of teams, class restriction guidelines, meetings, etc. A shorter offseason also affects whether a new map cup to test league-ready maps for the rotation can be had.
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Truthfully I don’t see why we can’t have another poll like last time. Just put out an article with the poll explaining what exactly delaying the match by a week would mean for the rest of the season and year. A pros and cons list even. Then just let the players decide what they want by majority.
also just wanna say I love the new transparency and response by the new admin team, off to a great start!
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@Xenagos The U.S. makes up around 60% of the population of NA so I don’t think it matters if it’s only one country. I would also assume that the U.S. probably makes up even more than 60% of RGL players, and most Americans celebrate July 4th in some way or another.
Also with Halloween on Monday, I have often seen it actually celebrated on a different day on the weekend if the actual day falls on a weekday since people don’t normally get off work for that holiday while they do for July 4th.
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@Kastaling said in Delay the July 4th Match:
Truthfully I don’t see why we can’t have another poll like last time. Just put out an article with the poll explaining what exactly delaying the match by a week would mean for the rest of the season and year. A pros and cons list even. Then just let the players decide what they want by majority.
also just wanna say I love the new transparency and response by the new admin team, off to a great start!
Can definitely do that! I really just wanted to make it crystal clear the effect it would have on the off-season. I had several people express their concerns about how short this off-season is
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I really think this year has just been a perfect storm. A lot of Monday holidays that are not usually on a Monday.
The idea of a cascading effect on the league is a little misleading. RGL can determine how long or short the regular season, post season, and offseason are. The players do not determine that. There are a bunch of solutions from a scheduling side that can account for the unusual number of Monday holidays this year. Of course, it is completely up to the admins and you guys are certainly not going to make everyone happy, but I agree with Melon…it’s better to just bite the bullet this year and use this year as a learning experience for future seasons to better account for holiday matches.
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The idea of a cascading effect on the league is a little misleading. RGL can determine how long or short the regular season, post season, and offseason are. The players do not determine that.
Players do help play a role to determine this. The break that was extended in the Spring season was directly voted by players – with the understanding that it would make the offseason shorter in effect through such a decision. This is a cascading effect with how the schedules are set up because when a break is extended, it impacts when the season ends and how long the offseason is.
The seasonal schedules are scheduled entirely around not making the finals of the Autumn/Fall season overlap with the Christmas holidays. Even accounting for such “holidays” in determining schedules will require the regular season, playoffs, or offseasons to be shorter or longer because of the nature of a “week break”. It means that teams are not playing any matches for that week and the season inherently ends later than it would have without that break.
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To bump this thread on a relevant note, when can we expect the survey to go out regarding July 4th for that decision to be made?
Many players have already noted their absences across the div so it would be nice from a planning perspective (and plane tickets etc etc) that this be made sooner rather than later.
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@Melon I’ll be able to get it out sometime around Tuesday.
Been busy with work and other RGL things as well. Tomorrow I work then I immediately come home for my own official as well as being general HL support to help people out during their first week of matches, so Tuesday is when I can reliably work on it.I don’t want it to seem like I’m ghosting the issue–I’m definitely all for addressing it with the survey, and just need an opportunity to get it out!
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@Melon Sorry for the wait! The survey is live right now!
https://rgl.gg/Players/My/Survey.aspx?r=24&s=71The survey will end Wednesday night at 11:59 PM EST! I encourage everyone to complete the survey and have their voices heard!
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@Constantly when will we know if the match will be delayed or not?