IMPORTANT. PLEASE READ
So it was touched on for the most part before, but now seems like as pertinent a time as any to go into specifics on the things I will be looking to monitor and handle appropriately as judge, jury, and executioner this year. And again, this wont be that important to the vast majority of you that I know wont be any sort of problem or issue.
Im of the opinion that our league has been on a bit of a decline in the past few years. Ill attribute this to a few things. Here are some examples of where I think mistakes were made recently:
-A very select few members played in a cheesy manor (play calling, exploiting game mechanics, lack of defensive matchups leading to the classic slot cheese, ect.). And I think that poisoned the well to an extent and made a few more members play in a similar, specific way to counter cheese. I get why people do that, but its counter-intuitive to fixing the issue. However, some of that blame falls on...
-The commissioners, including (especially) myself. Personally speaking, I found it tough to balance cracking down on these things and being confident in setting strong examples. When it went past the warnings and benchings, it was hard to kick someone because we didnt have alot of reserves, and having a league that was not 32 human players was the worst case scenario in my mind. We had to let things slide more than we wanted to keep the league full. So this season, ive come to terms with having a few CPU teams if needed to preserve some sort of league integrity.
As mentioned, everyone will be getting a clean slate. DM ghosting in previous years will be ignored. TLBB being TLBB is getting a get out of jail free card. So on and so forth. Last year I tried "Hey, dont be a douchebag" as my rule of thumb and attempted to give alot of freedom without so many rules. It didnt work out so well. With that said, these are the things I will have a big problem with:
General cheese. This is too hard to pin down without knowing what the game is like, but everyone will be aware within a few weeks of league play. Spamming certain playcalls, exploiting bugs, exploiting mechanics. If I can type a specific play people are having an issue with into google and the first result is sharkwaters, we're going to have problems. Slot cheese, TE Corners, Crossing routes all stand out in my mind as recent examples
"The DM Rule". Should be pretty obvious. No one is going to catch any trouble missing a week here or there because of scheduling conflicts or for going on vacation. But if its a repeated issue, thats when ill have to step in. On a related topic, being hard to get ahold of on a week to week basis will be looked at in a similar way. Between this thread, PM's, Discord, Steam, even text message, there shouldnt be any big issue in taking 60 seconds to reach out or answer your opponent for the week to get a game going. If FMT is attempting to be the middle man in your scheduling, someone has fucked up.
Stat Padding. No one gives a shit about your QB's touchdown throws in the 4th quarter of a blow out. Grow up.
PJSalt. If you want to cry in the thread after the game, thats fine. Raging because you are losing so you keep running offsides before the play starts or throwing interceptions on purpose. Getting down 21 points at halftime so you start milking the clock at the start of the third. That mostly just flows into...
Being a dick. You know when you're doing it. Stop.
Myself and FMT watch a decent amount of the games on twitch so we'll see alot of the things first hand. If we arent there or the game isnt being streamed, remember that you can always clip a video using the share feature on PS4 if you feel like there is something that needs to be seen. There will be a certain grace period to start as everyone gets settled and understands this years game. Its easy to say something is cheesy in week 2 before everyone figures out the proper counters. Proper warnings and leeway will be given for most things, unless its something especially egregious. Repeated offenses and...
On our end, FMT will be the sole commissioner. I think there were mixed messages in the past with the 3-4 commissioner system and hopefully this helps that! Ill be able to advance the week if need be, though EA says they have an app for that now. Hopefully that all works out! I should also add that I have zero authority over the discord channel and any bans that may happen there. Talk to Brent or "Claude"! Aaaaaaaand all of this became alot longer than I expected it to be. Whoops!
TL;DR:You're desire to win at any cost is not stronger than my desire to keep things going smoothly. Dont try it!
