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Guest BSDaemon
I often read this board and it seems that there are lots of players who feel that the one thing the league lacks is parity...even though the playoffs are still going on, I've been thinking a lot about next year's NHL94 online league in the Spring and what we can do really have the best, most competitve league out there. Evan and his crew do such a fantastic job of making this site and the league available to us and it's the greatest thing ever. I hope that it just continues to improve and house some of the best NHL94 players on the planet...

A lot of the posts that I read comment on how players feel they are already in a hole when they are a "lower to mid-range team" (Florida, Ottawa, Anaheim, etc.) facing better teams like (Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, etc.)...do you guys think that implementing line changes might make a difference in increasing the parity in the league?

I'm really hoping that we will see all 26 teams used in a Genesis Spring League for 2007, but I'm aware there will be lots of griping from the lower-tier teams in that scenario about how are they supposed to compete against the really good teams. I think the 26-team league is the way to go, it looks great and having 13 teams in each conference makes the playoff race a lot more fun when only 8 of 13 make it in the conference as opposed to this year's 8 of 10. I also think that a longer season schedule emphasises this point even further as teams battling to make the playoffs play eachother more and more. Anyways, I digress...

Would the line changes make enough of a difference with 5 minute periods? I don't know, and I'm not really sure they would make enough difference. I really hope they would, what do you guys think...???

Line changes slow games down. Waiting for a person to make ONE line change is fine... but screweing around with all the lines... that just becomes tedious, especially when having to do it every game.

The league doesn't really lack parity, there's nothing wrong with the league in that regard. If somebody feels like they are in a hole with a crappy team, DONT PICK A CRAPPY TEAM! There were 18 teams in SNES B this season. How many teams are there total in the league? 28 isn't it? That meant nobody had to play with florida, ottawa, anaheim, etc. The only REAL big complaint we had about parity was from somebody who INTENTIONALLY picked a crappy team... so their argument is pretty much null and void. (You can't do something that you KNOW will suck, and then complain about it sucking...)

Really, don't change anything for next year, aside from rules on unplayed games and coach replacement (replace sooner - dont wait for a month to go by!) and a few minor housekeeping issues. The only thing I can see that would make sense to change is MAYBE having a weighted draft lottery for picking teams. I agree that strong players with good teams can be a bad thing, but shouldnt the league champion at least have a legitimate chance of defending his title? Heres a neat idea that goes along with that.... The previous seasons champion has earned the right to pick his team first! A little unfair? Sure... but they earned it! It gives the players of the league an actual reward to be playing for.

Heres another idea... if people REALLY want line changes on, maybe somebody would volunteer to edit the rom so that the line changes are default? Without that happening though, its a bad bad idea. I understand it might be what some people WANT, but you have to make sacrifices because of the nature of online gaming.

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The league doesn't really lack parity, there's nothing wrong with the league in that regard. If somebody feels like they are in a hole with a crappy team, DONT PICK A CRAPPY TEAM!

I think the issue might not only be at the left-hand side of the distribution. I'm watching Chicago in the GENS leagues with interest.

That said, I'm not in favor of line changes, or everyone playing as the same team, or edited ROMs that make players equal.

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i didnt read all but line changes would definately change outcome of games or series and if u think otherwise your just wrong

You probably should read all. The question is not whether or not line changes would change the game, but whether line changes would be more likely to increase parity, or to exaggerate the differences between teams.

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Line changes are a bad idea.

NHL 94 is a very old game & the line change system isn't very good.

I think it would decide games as a accidental line change would lead to breakaways.

As far as parity, I think no line changes evens things out more than having them would. The lower end teams have no depth whatsoever, whereas chicago or boston coud put together 2 or even 3 good lines.

All the whining on here about teams is just that whining.

Look at JotaC with St Louis, just knocked off Chicago & Detroit, 2 powerhouses!!!

The best way to increase parity, is to have a draft & let the newbies & those who missed the playoffs draft 1st. Having said that the elite players will

still destroy the weaker ones regardless of the teams.

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line chages wont fix anything because the third line for Detroit is still just as good as some teams first lines. I think if anything it will only exaggerate the differences in the teams even more.
As far as parity, I think no line changes evens things out more than having them would. The lower end teams have no depth whatsoever, whereas chicago or boston coud put together 2 or even 3 good lines.

I disagree; I believe that line changes increase team parity.

It's true that Boston/Detroit/Chicago/etc. have 2nd lines that are better than the 1st lines of some of the bottom-tier teams (and sometimes 3rd lines that are too), but that's not the important comparison. The important comparison is that the 2nd lines of the top teams are closer in quality to the 2nd lines of the bottom teams than the 1st lines, and the same is true for 3rd lines compared with 2nd lines. For the mathematically inclined, the Standard Deviation of the 1st lines (7.8) is higher than the S.D. of the 2nd lines (6.2), which is higher than the S.D. of the 3rd lines (4.7). This strongly suggests that line changes increase parity.

So let's check an actual example. Boston's top five players average to 84. Anaheim's average to 58. That's a difference of 26. But Boston's second five average to 68 and Anaheim's to 46, for a difference of only 22. And the third lines come in at 57 and 41, for a difference of 16. So in a game where Boston plays Anaheim with no line changes, Boston will be 26 points "better" than Anaheim all game long. But if we imagine a game with line changes where Line 1 plays 50%, Line 2 plays 35% and Line 3 plays 15%, Boston would average only 23 points better over the course of the game.

This holds pretty constant across teams. If I split the teams into two groups - Top Thirteen and Bottom Thirteen - I find that Top Teams have about an 11.5 point ratings advantage over Bottom Teams for the 1st Line, 8 points for the 2nd Line, and 5 points for the 3rd line. So a game with no line changes would be an advantage of 11.5, while a game with line changes as described above (50/35/15) would be an advantage of about 9.4.

This doesn't mean that I endorse line changes for the league. But it does mean that I agree with Jamonica's suspicion that line changes would technically increase parity.

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Guest BSDaemon

First, I don't think they do anything for parity.

Second, even if they did, having them on for an online league is just a bad idea. People have a difficult enough time playing 40 games as it is... there's no good reason to make the games even longer.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice things for online play.

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First, I don't think they do anything for parity.

Second, even if they did, having them on for an online league is just a bad idea. People have a difficult enough time playing 40 games as it is... there's no good reason to make the games even longer.

Sometimes you have to sacrifice things for online play.

I don't disagree with your second point; I'm a proponent of keeping the league settings simple and streamlined for fast gameplay. But in regards to your first point, why don't you think line changes affect parity?

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Guest BSDaemon
I don't disagree with your second point; I'm a proponent of keeping the league settings simple and streamlined for fast gameplay. But in regards to your first point, why don't you think line changes affect parity?

Because as was stated before, for example... Chicago has a top line, and ottawa has a top line. Chicago's 2nd line is pretty darn good... and likely better then even Ottawa's top line. I think if anything, line changes on gives a strong team the advantage in that they have good players always fresh, whereas when ottawa's first line is tired, they are just plain screwed :lol:

I think a low rated, weaker team has more chance of pulling out a win if they are able to keep their best players on the ice at all times, even if the high rated, strong team is able to do so as well.

Also, you can look at this this way:

- Chicago has a team rating of 78 whether they have line changes on or not.

- Ottawa has a team rating of 55 whether they have line changes on or not.

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Guest BSDaemon

To follow up on this... I think despite it making the teams even more one sided with line changes on, the only way a league could handle line changes is if both players were required to keep default lines (to keep from slowing down the game), however I'm sure many people wouldn't like that Idea, as many people edit their top line.

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Because as was stated before, for example... Chicago has a top line, and ottawa has a top line. Chicago's 2nd line is pretty darn good... and likely better then even Ottawa's top line.

I think the important thing isn't that Chicago's 2nd line is better than Ottawa's 1st line (which it definitely is) but that the spread between Chicago's 2nd line (62) and Ottawa's 2nd line (50) is much smaller than the spread between their 1st lines (81 vs. 58). Every minute that the 2nd lines are on the ice, the game is more even.

Also, you can look at this this way:

- Chicago has a team rating of 78 whether they have line changes on or not.

- Ottawa has a team rating of 55 whether they have line changes on or not.

I think this is hard-coded:

http://nhl94.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2147&hl=

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I think if anything, line changes on gives a strong team the advantage in that they have good players always fresh, whereas when ottawa's first line is tired, they are just plain screwed :lol:

I went back to this comment, because it's a good point about players getting tired, and it got me to thinking about a couple of things.

I don't know how the game handles players getting tired, in terms of their ratings. If it's a simple linear degradation, then as players get tired it's possible that the relative performances of the good players vs. the bad players actually does become more significant. For example, you might start out with a 100 player (A) vs. a 60 player (B ). Suppose in an extreme case they were on the ice so long they each lost 60 ratings points, so you've got (A) = 40 and (B ) = 0. It turns out (B ) is clinically dead (but please note I would still start him over Michel Goulet). I imagine (A) having a much more significant advantage at 40-0 than at 100-60.

More generally, maybe that kind of thinking extends to all player ratings, tired or not. It might be that, say, player performance graphed against player rating degrades along a smooth curve, but that there is an inflection point beyond which the degradation rapidly accelerates. Like, suppose it's pretty linear until you get to 55, and then it degrades so rapidly that by the time you get to 45 the players are essentially worthless. If the function is anything like that, it could be that a 20-point spread from 90-70 is much less significant than a 20-point spread from 60-40.

I don't know if this is the case or not; I'm just brainstorming. But they are arguments that line changes might not necessarily increase parity.

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