I started Pro Series back in NHL 14 after @VaPoRiZ decided to start talking about getting "LG on the map". Getting sponsorships and getting more competitive games, at the time he had no idea what he wanted, and honestly I had no idea what I was doing, but I came up with an early concept of Pro Series. He never really had anything to do with the league, but I felt it was important to give him credit for getting me to actually think of a way to make club fun again, and everything thats led to today is his damn fault (joking ofc). At first, no one really believed people would buy-in for a league, everyone knew bFd would win, people can just play club, why would they come here to play? We were able to get 17 teams for the first season despite the uncertainty many expressed (shout out to @officialmark07). Pro Series was fun, it took over club as games weren't scheduled like they are now. Teams entirely stopped searching for "leaderboard" games and started playing LG Pro Series games. The standings system was far from perfect, but it was new, exciting, and felt competitive. At this time 16, out of the 17 teams could have qualified for the playoffs had they met a minimum number of games, far from a competitive atmosphere for the regular season but it still worked. We changed up the standings formula for season 2, and because we attracted more teams the 16 team playoffs seemed more reasonable, however due to the way the standings worked a team that finished 3-24 qualified for the playoffs over 2 teams who played 100+ games and won 30+ of them. Another flaw in the system but maybe some more tweaks could fix it and make pro series better, after all NHL 15 was around the corner and we were all excited for EASHL on next-gen. Then...there was no EASHL on next-gen, we found out very late that it wasn't making the cut, we had all these plans to grow Pro Series, all these teams would come back, we'd have more competitive teams, more money, maybe EA would finally notice us! Unfortunately we were left with NHL 15 on 360, a surprisingly good game, but many teams just moved on to next-gen to play fifa, or whatever else they felt like doing to fill there time. We still continued with Pro Series, had decent turnout, but my desire to change the way Pro Series operated to make it perfected sort of disappeared. EA had taken away my creative drive to solve problems, but we ran 3 relatively successful seasons without many tweaks to the formula. It got boring to some teams, especially the better ones, to the point where one team decided they only wanted to play Pro Series games against Never Unlucky. They forfeited every other matchup until I was forced to make a rule change. We played them 27 times that season. During this time EA had also reached out to the community, I finally had a reasonable chance to introduce EA to the competitive 6s community, and while they were focused on NHL 16 EASHL they needed gamechangers to help them along the way. LG supported me and got me involved due to my involvement ihere, then when 16 finally came out I had a renewed desire to make pro series better than it had been before. I started looking at how other competitive leagues ran their season, and how to make games mean more so teams wouldnt be bored of pro series. One of the biggest flaws with the original system was the requirement of other pro series rosters to be online and ready to play when you are. If only 3 teams were on you'd be waiting around 30 mins until that game was finished for one of them to take your game. Another flaw was if you were any sort of a competent team you'd never be worried about winning or losing a game, because you could just play a few more to get the points back. While it was new this system was fun, I personally remember being excited/even nervous in PS regular season games, but a few seasons in I missed the feeling of caring about the games, and I know others did too. While captain lag but a very bad cloud over NHL 16, I tried to make the best of it. So I came up with the schedule system, play every team twice, and it seemed to be a good idea. It introduced the possibility of FFs for teams not showing up, it was a lot more work for me (you can ask @ImJeff, he had a lot more work too). This system was great until teams started FFing games to manipulate their own seeding near the end of the season. It never explicitly caused another team to miss the playoffs, but it made the end of the season less competitive and kind of a joke overall. Another issue was the sheer amount of games teams had to play. I think our Season 7 total was 64 games per team, the season was entirely too long. With NHL 17 around the corner I tried to find a way to solve the season length and FF issues. Splitting the league into Invite and Open shortened the seasons significantly, which was a huge positive, although Open does still seem to be a bit too long. The FF issues we solved for Invite by avoiding bad bracket draws, since the best teams got to pick their own brackets. In theory this should have avoided any shady shit down the close of the season. Boy was I fucking wrong. Before last nights games I reached out to @FlashDavin specifically to ask him not to try any shady stuff in the last matchup of the season with Rumspringa, and I knew Rumspringa needed help making the playoffs and The Office could have 1st clinched by then. @Gwan had specifically messaged me before they rescheduled their series asking when the last night they could play was, I didn't think anything of it until I realized why he would ask that. Why not just reschedule to whatever day works for you, the games were supposed to be week 1, you had 4 weeks of perfectly reasonable days to choose, why did it have to be the last day? Of course it would be to once again manipulate playoff seeding if either team needed that extra win and the other team could afford to give it up. I felt uncomfortable accusing Flash of thinking in this way, but wanted to make sure he knew that it would 100% piss me off, regardless of what team it affected. (I was under the impression it would affect Adversity as they had a weird tiebreaker advantage in the scenario I saw occurring). Little did I know they had already worked out a plan to fuck my team over, while getting Adversity to shoot themselves in the foot. Its probably best it was my team that got eliminated from the playoffs this time, its probably best the teams involved didn't even have the basic amount of respect to try to hide it by actually playing the games out and just sandbagging, because I've finally fucking had it with this community. Every fucking time I make a change to Pro Series its to avoid some issue that one of the community cancers has caused, this time its legitimately people I thought were friends of mine, people that I actually had some level of respect for. Its not just specific people, its not just specific teams, its a fucking majority of you. Somehow you can't separate the concept of me as a commissioner and me as a player. I said once on stream that you sucked so now this is your fucking chance to get me back, fuck over his team and his whole concept for a league all at once. Well you fucking did it guys. You did this, not me. I'm officially stepping away from running pro series, I'll help @ImJeff run the remainder of the Open season as none of those teams have done anything wrong, but I'm legitimately done fighting for this community. To those who apologized to me, I might forgive you, but no amount of explaining it away will ever make me forget that you don't give 2 shits about me or my time. The 100s of hours I've poured into the league as a commissioner was irrelevant to you because I made a ruling you didn't like, or said your team was shit on stream. TL;DR: 5-6 teams organized a specific set of forfeits to close out the Invite Division Season to ensure their friends made the playoffs and DoG missed the playoffs. Regardless of my team affiliation thats unacceptable and the final straw for me as the person who got this all started 3 years ago.
Also, Composure and Quality Control, you weren't put in a position to do this shit but I genuinely believe you wouldn't have so thanks for that. I genuinely believed that about other people, unfortunately I was wrong.
Nah we wouldn't have done that, we signed up to play good 6s. Not sabatoge teams. Unreal and thank you for all you've built with pro series.
This is great. You're painting yourself to be the victim, poor you. As a neutral party I would try to see why this happened. It doesn't take long to see why the whole league manipulated your system to ensure you didn't make the playoffs. If you could even call it that... It's not like they played your games for you. Anyways, from my unbiased perspective if a few teams did this then it could be seen as an issue with them. When the whole league is willing, and eager (The 2 you think otherwise included) to do it then maybe the problem is you. For 3 years you've been obnoxious to talk to when dealing with NHL. If you want to be the self proclaimed best D-Man, on the self proclaimed best team then you should be able to take criticism when you lose, no? When you won Pro Series you would talk shit. Again, nothing wrong with that, but you'd think someone that could dish it out should be able to receive. Now you're asking yourself. I'm not the only person that talks shit. Correct, you're not. It goes deeper than your personality. If I had to guess I would say the main reason this happened is because of the fact you're a Game Changer. All the top 6s players at the time voted for you to go to Vancouver. You played 6s, and had a decent grasp on the game compared to some other people that were nominated. So you go to Vancouver multiple times over the past few years and lo and behold the game is awful. Now nobody expected one person who isn't even employed by EA to fix the game in a year. However you've done the exact opposite. Since you've gone the game has gotten progressively worse. However, that's still not the main reason people are upset. People are upset because you actually think this game is good, knowing full well it's the worst game to ever have EASHL. If you listened to the people that voted for you instead of telling then they're wrong this wouldn't have happened. So instead, your "friends" taught you a lesson, and you can't take it. That's the end of my logical reasoning for why this happened. Now I'm going to tell you why I am so much better than you at this game since you like to talk shit. Ever since I became the best D in this game in 13 you've looked up to me. You try to copy my shit talking antics of being the best D, and being on the best team. The difference is I could back it up because I was the best D, on the best team, and that wasn't self proclaimed. FL never lost so we wouldn't have allowed ourselves to be kicked out of the playoffs because of our record. Last year CD barely made the playoffs, and this year DoG missed completely. From my elevated view in the playoffs I see 2 constants. The pathetic part is you're quitting Pro Series because you didn't make playoffs. That's our fault though... We need to expect that.
Since there was a somewhat helpful portion of this post, I'll respond. I don't think the game is awful, regardless of what you think I think. The first year I went was during NHL 15 on XB1, I personally think 17 > 16 > 15, if you disagree with that, fine, but realistically my impact is "take info, send to EA, test game w/ people of VERY different skill levels, give feedback based on glorified OTP game on unfinished build of NHL game". Nothing against the people who go to Vancouver, plenty are decent players but its exceptionally difficult to replicate a top 6v6 game there. Would I love to see 12 of the best players there for testing, sure, but the guys who do go are there for reasons as well, and I'm sure flying 30 people out to hear "THE SERVERS CANT HANDLE IT" when a pre-alpha build glitches isn't in their best interest. You voted me in to give my opinions and share issues the community has with the game, I forward the issues that people have, regardless of whether I agree with them. That being said, just because I disagree with you doesn't mean I'm doing it to be some sort of EA shill. I didn't like the 16 beta, at all. Ask CD, by the end of it i was miserable (and it wasn't only due to Lundy). I felt 16 improved slightly with the updates, still not a good game, but better. I had a very opposite opinion to many, that doesn't make me wrong, and it doesn't mean I didn't share others opinions with EA. When 17 beta came out I liked it, when the full game came out I liked it, the major issues with 16 that we don't have as much anymore (auto-poke, board eat pass to name the biggies) are all but gone, tips were overpowered and they were nerfed via a tuner that was from community feedback. I don't have the ability to take the 57th time Girgss says "THE SERVERS CANT HANDLE IT" seriously, I don't have the ability to take "game sucks" as legitimate criticism of the game. When I play this game on 10-15 ping (east server) with DoG I have a lot of fun. The people I play with don't spend all game bitching, even if we get fucked over by a bad bounce, we don't talk about how little fun we're having 100% of the time, and thank god they don't tell me to "FIX THAT" every time something questionable happens. If people want real feedback from me and to ensure I send exactly what they want to EA, reach out to me privately. 9 times out of 10 the "feedback" I get publicly is right after someone loses or when Silky Johnson can't figure out how to score in practice mode. I also appreciate the people who don't only talk to me to find out information/bitch about the game. When I play the game the last thing I want is for people to be constantly nitpicking little things and say "that needs to be fixed". Thats one way to ensure that I'll never want to play the game with you again, if you have legitimate gripes, get them on video and send them to me, or if you can clearly explain them to me in a PM or something that works too.
Mark you sort of talk out of both ends in your post. "Now nobody expected one person who isn't even employed by EA to fix the game in a year," and then you say, "However you've done the exact opposite. Since you've gone the game has gotten progressively worse." Nuge isn't the only gamechanger.... And you talk as if EA only listens to Nuge...
Regardless of how little you like a player its still pretty greasy to manipulate standings like that, let alone in a money league. This is why the NHL community can't have nice things.
NHL community is filled with giant pieces of shit? weird. bunch of teams getting greasy in a money league lol. biggest scumbags I've seen since DDW4
Thanks for ruining PS everyone. Funny because you guys all want end of year tournament this, end of year tournament that. Funny do you know the invite division was probably put in place for Nuge to show EA that the best can play and kind of show interest for the EOY tournament. To show how it could be run at a lower scale. You guys didn't just fuck Nuge and DoG over but you fucked any possibility of any of this. Nuge does a lot more than any of you think and yes he does, I agree think he's a alot better than he is, but that's beside the point. Nuge ran this for competitive NHL. He's arguably the head GameChanger as he is our voice to EA. So if any of you think EASHL is gonna grow competitively you thought wrong, We fucked Nuge(not just his team) this isn't just about his team not making playoffs, it's basically saying fuck you to his 100s of Hours making sure this league is ran properly. I'm not choosing a side or any thing but Pro Series was perfect, invite Divison and open division were perfect. More people playing more people having fun and we don't have to play 64 games to finish out a season. I'm just saying to those 4 teams and all people who want anything to do with competitive NHL..... We shot ourselves in the foot.
nuge does a great job running the league trying to be as fair and unbiased as possible. if anybody else thinks they can run the league than i urge you to try. do not take out your animosity on our team because you have issues with specific people. we all signed up to play competitive 6s. if it was any other team i am sure the whole community would be against nuge to "make it right". regardless of the outcome, i hope it is resolved and handled with class and dignity as i am sure tris will make sure of. make pro series great again.
I carried Mark and Nuge. But tbh we clinched first and didnt see any point in playing the rest of our games. Sorry friends
