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Old Blitz League - About, Rules, etc


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(some of this information is out of date)

This league is with the Sega Genesis version of the game.

Basic Idea:

  • Dedicated website with full automated statistics system.
  • Promotion/relegation between "A", "B", and "Farm" leagues
  • "A" league: ~12 teams. "B" league: ~12 teams. "Farm" league: everyone else (instead of a waiting list).
  • Weight bug has been fixed in this ROM, so guys like Lemieux and Bourque are good at checking, and guys like Gretzky and Yzerman are easy to knock down -- if you can catch them!
  • Slightly buffed goalies. Hrudey can now make TWO saves per game!.
  • Rosters are 6 Forwards, 4 D, 2 G.
  • 5-minute periods. No line changes. Penalties On. No offsides (too annoying). Shortened OT (2:30 minutes).
  • You keep half your team between seasons and re-draft the rest, so there are only ~6 draft rounds.
  • League runs 2-3 seasons per year.

Promotion/Relegation:

There will be two main ~12-team leagues, the "A" and "B" leagues.

New players get to play in the "Farm" league until a spot in the A/B leagues open up.

The players are divided up between the A and B leagues. When you are promoted/relegated, you take your team and players (well, half them) with you.

Weight Bug Fix

In Gens, there *was* a bug that made the Weight of a player the main factor in his checking ability; it was backwards, so heavy guys were weak and light guys were wrecking balls.

The game now takes into account both the player's weight AND his checking rating when deciding how good he is at *giving* a check. This is interesting because some relatively light guys end up as very effective checkers based on their checking rating (whereas in the original ROM, the checking rating only influenced the frequency of checking under AI control).

On the other side, a player's *resistance* to a check is based solely on their weight.

The formula for checking effectiveness is: (6 x Weight + 10 x Checking - 13) / 8

The formula for checking resistance is: 1 x Weight

Weight is mapped like so: 3:(164 lbs), 4:(172), 5:(180), 6:(188), 7:(196), 8:(204), 9:(212), 10:(220), 11:(228), 12:(236), 13:(244), 14:(252)

Checking is mapped like so: 0:(25-29), 1:(29-37), 2:(37-47), 3:(47-62), 4:(63-80), 5:(81-98), 6:(99)

Players with a high Checking rating will often be able to check over a player who weighs the same as they do.

Players with a low Checking rating often will not be able to check over a player who weighs the same as they do.

Buffed Goalies

The goalies in '94 are disproportionately weak, too. Two are superhuman, then the decline is really steep from there on out.

So, I beefed up the goalies (other than Belfour and Roy) by increasing the Agility rating by 1 and increasing two of their (glove|stick)(left|right) stats by 1. This increased the rating of most goalies by 6 points. I liked the tough goalies in dmitry's first '06 ROM draft league, so I'd like to bring that back. Close games are more fun.

Full Stats System

You can see some of the variety of stats: Team Stats, Player Stats, Records

Player Retention and Drafting

Here is how I originally thought of doing the draft:

At the end of the season, you rank your players from best to worst, and then I randomly drop between 5 and 7 of them (3 among the top 6). The higher you rank a player on your team, the higher chance you have of keeping him.

Everyone loses the same ranked players, so, for example, everyone will lose their 2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 12th ranked players. Obviously, you must rank your players before I roll the dice to decide which get dropped.

However, the math for this never worked too nicely. For season 2, I just alternated rounds between protection and draft, and will likely do the same for season 3.

"A" and "B" leagues draft together from the same pool of players. It's just easier that way, with promotion/relegation, because you take can your team with you. Unfortunately, it'll slow the draft down...

There is an automated draft website.

I am tempted to do a hybrid draft system, where some rounds are snaked, and some are not, to try to even out the teams a little with each league. Hopefully this will also prevent some coaches from bouncing back and forth between leagues when their skill level puts them consistently near a league's upper or lower end.

"Farm" League Details

My idea for the "Farm" league is that any new coaches can come along and immediately join the league and try to earn their way into the "B" league.

I am not sure how the Farm teams will draft players. They might just get to choose from default teams.

"Farm"s play each other an equal number of times, or at least that is how the schedule is set up.

There will need to be some provision for really good players stuck in "Farm" for a while that will allow them to skip up to "A" so they don't demolish the "B" league and score 200 goals with Dave Gagner.

Coach Replacement

Sigh, it's always an issue. I hope the smaller league size will make finishing games easier, but sometimes your life just doesn't let you meet a commitment you thought you could make (I'm sorry Angelina Jolie, it just wasn't the right time for me. Hope we can still be friends again one day.).

Season Length

The first two seasons had 44 games each. I might go with 40 games in season 3; 11 teams in "A" and in "B", 4 games against the other coaches in your level.

Points: W:2, OTW:1.5, T:1, OTL:0.5

Overtime is shortened to 2:30 minutes.

Games will be released in two batches. Half at the start (2 vs each coach), then the rest a couple weeks later.

The regular season will have a hard final deadline. Make it. There will also be a mid-season checkpoints with penalties that apply to your draft position the next season.

I will try to give the coaches their own pages on the website, where they can list their availability, upcoming vacations, and all that. Please don't just disappear and come back later and be upset that I booted you.

Playoffs

In each league ("A", "B", etc), the top 8 teams make the playoffs. The series are 1st vs 8th, etc. The teams are re-seeded after each round so the strongest team plays the weakest team.

The higher ranked team gets to choose if they want Home ice advantage or Away ice advantage (if they think they play better that way).

Making the playoffs is based on the number of points accumulated throughout the season, minus DNP penalties.

Seeding, however, is based on Points Percentage (points divided by games played. no DNP penalties involved). The reason seeding is based on Pts% is that if I were to reduce someone's seeding based on DNPs, then their opponent would have to face a tougher opponent than they should have to.

Tiebreakers: As on the NHL standings page. Overtime wins counts as wins. I have one modification, though: instead of goal differential (GF-GA), goal ratio (GF/GA) is used.

Trading

There is no mid-season trading. The database doesn't support it properly.

There will be a trading period after each draft / before the season starts. You can trade after the season / before the draft if you want, but you may lose those players to the draft's random player drop.

Anyway, that's it for now!

Thoughts/suggestions/glaring loopholes?

Volunteers to help out? The automated draft system should simplify things, but a ROM guru would be nice.

Some extra rules are here: http://www.blitz94.com/rules.asp

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Player Retention and Drafting

Here is how I originally thought of doing the draft:

At the end of the season, you rank your players from best to worst, and then I randomly drop between 5 and 7 of them (3 among the top 6). The higher you rank a player on your team, the higher chance you have of keeping him.

Everyone loses the same ranked players, so, for example, everyone will lose their 2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 12th ranked players. Obviously, you must rank your players before I roll the dice to decide which get dropped.

lets give this (or something like it) a try!

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Player Retention and Drafting

Here is how I originally thought of doing the draft:

At the end of the season, you rank your players from best to worst, and then I randomly drop between 5 and 7 of them (3 among the top 6). The higher you rank a player on your team, the higher chance you have of keeping him.

Everyone loses the same ranked players, so, for example, everyone will lose their 2nd, 4th, 6th, 9th, 10th, and 12th ranked players. Obviously, you must rank your players before I roll the dice to decide which get dropped.

lets give this (or something like it) a try!

The problem with this idea was that the math never worked particularly well for it. For one, I don't want the top 2 players staying the same between seasons, that's kind of boring. Because of that, a smart person would pick their fav player as their #1... and their 2nd best player as their #3. Anyway, I'll give it a little more thought.. but i think it will just alternate like last year, but free rounds are odd rounds instead of even rounds.

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Thats fine and dandy but having the first round a free round causes chaos for some of us.

so far, apparently only for the 2 guys who won the scoring races...

some guys have already held onto the same guy 2 seasons in a row, too. it's time for change! i decided last season to do protection 1st round so people wouldn't lose their star right away, so now I think it should go the other way. i do feel bad for you, though, since you actually traded for your guy.

Edited by smozoma
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I made a few trades too in order to get Bondra, Bellows and Fuhr in my team. Sure, I wasn't a dominating one-man army force, but my top line did get +50 points each in my season.

Since this was my first Blitz season, I don't really know what to think, except that I'll go with the flow and try to keep the players I'd want to have for the Blues in this upcoming 3rd season.

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Yeah, im sure free first round will hit everyone a little.

Im telling you, you can accomplish the same thing with going protection first then 2 free rounds following it.

But anyways.

Thats the last I'll say about it.

Just be sure to let me know who has first pick so i can trade all my picks to him.

I have a franchise player. He will be with me for more then 1 season!

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god shaftman, will you stop crying :)

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what happens if u arent a returning player like me

do i get a second round pick even though its a protection round??

returning players will be taking over the teams that lost coaches. I think we'll have 4 coach replacements. eventually i'll publish a thread where you can pick your team : )

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I see we have fresh blood hehe

Pretty much any questions you have there will be an answers on these forums.

fresh blood who could you be talking about

tehe

when does the draft start anyways

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So farm league will be a format like last year's Capitalism league?

I think so -- I'll add people as they show up. They'll have to pick teams from the A/B leagues ROM, though. No custom Farm draft/ROM.

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  • 3 months later...

When playing exhibition games, me and my friend Bastovskij, have met people who refuse to play P2P for some reason. I find this annoying since we stand no chance when playing for eg. versus US-players on a public US server, the lag is simply destroying any chance of playing half as good as we really can.

I think there should be a rule about this. Perhaps that you have to accept a P2P-game if your opponent demands it?

// Fitzo

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When playing exhibition games, me and my friend Bastovskij, have met people who refuse to play P2P for some reason. I find this annoying since we stand no chance when playing for eg. versus US-players on a public US server, the lag is simply destroying any chance of playing half as good as we really can.

I think there should be a rule about this. Perhaps that you have to accept a P2P-game if your opponent demands it?

// Fitzo

Hm, I think everyone in Blitz "A" and "B" plays p2p. I haven't played a lot of the guys in Farm, though. People should really install Hamachi or set up port forwarding in their routers... I don't want to make it a rule, though... People probably want to play server just because they don't know how to set up p2p. Might need to help them out either by telling them about Hamachi or how to set up port-forwarding on their router.

If they're too lazy to do that, then might as well just not play them. There's no real harm in missing games in the Farm league (there's no playoffs, etc, it's just a place for people to get experience)

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Hm, I think everyone in Blitz "A" and "B" plays p2p. I haven't played a lot of the guys in Farm, though. People should really install Hamachi or set up port forwarding in their routers... I don't want to make it a rule, though... People probably want to play server just because they don't know how to set up p2p. Might need to help them out either by telling them about Hamachi or how to set up port-forwarding on their router.

If they're too lazy to do that, then might as well just not play them. There's no real harm in missing games in the Farm league (there's no playoffs, etc, it's just a place for people to get experience)

There are some people who can't connect to me while using hamachi (ex. Zalex), while others can. Is this a port fowarding problem on my side or theirs? I noticed that some people I can ping, while others I don't get a response.

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There are some people who can't connect to me while using hamachi (ex. Zalex), while others can. Is this a port fowarding problem on my side or theirs? I noticed that some people I can ping, while others I don't get a response.

I'm not sure, I can't think of a reason that would happen.

Ideally everyone would forward the port on their router, rather than using Hamachi, but I understand that not everyone has access to the settings on their router.

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@ smozoma

All right, it dosn't seem to be a very big problem overall. Good to know! :)

OffT: Me and Bastovskij are going to be available for some hardcore hockey between 6pm - 9pm CET tonight (If Bastis studies isn't getting in the way). If anyone wants to play, especially guys from the farm league, just log on to AIM and add us. Cheers.

Edited by Fitzovich
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  • 6 months later...

Could we add something in the playoff, like a bronze medal game for semi finalists losers? Playoff is the coolest part of the season, i think every players that lose in the semifinals would like to have a second chance.. just for fun :angry:

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Could we add something in the playoff, like a bronze medal game for semi finalists losers? Playoff is the coolest part of the season, i think every players that lose in the semifinals would like to have a second chance.. just for fun :angry:

You can play for bronze if you want, but I can't allow the games to be uploaded to the site because it would give players on the teams additional playoff stats that they shouldn't have.

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