League matches and holidays

[Three]

For this next season and going forward, can we please seriously address the issue of having matches on major holidays?



I understand we can't exclude matches on every single nations national days or important days... but we can adjust it to benefit the majority of this games player base. I think the majority of this games population is in North America and Europe. The server is in the United States, or did we move it again?



I'm against having a Sunday off for national holidays for somewhere like Papua New Guinea or another country where one or no players live. However, with a fixed schedule for season 30, I think it isn't too much to ask to post the entire seasons schedule ahead of time with the match time of every game and Sundays crossed off for major population holidays.



USA weekends/days of note I can think of off the top of my head:



Labor Day

Thanksgiving

Christmas

New Years Day

Memorial Day

Independence Day



Easter?

Super Bowl Sunday?



Most of us aren't 13 anymore and have lives outside of spaceships. Family obligations & jobs, etc. really take up holiday weekends and it's an issue that really should be looked at.

[hallucination]

Easter is Bunny day, so I think that'd have to be a yes from a guy named Caerbannog.



--hallu

[Caerbannog]

Christmas and New Years will be off, as they (always?) have been. The other holidays you listed, funny enough, actually usually see a boost in population from what I can remember.

There's always the "I can't show up on superbowl Sunday", and then people do.



The season will take about 12 Sundays (11, if we have 12 squads since I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to play yourself), then an extra six to eight Sundays, depending on the playoff format. If we start August 14th with real season (so pre-season the week before that), according to http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=2011&country=1 we can finish the season before christmas if we play on columbus day, labor day and veterans' day, and halloween. If we pp these weekends, the playoffs will have the christmas break between games.



It's ok to have a life, and even better to post something like this before the season. It's really hard to start ruling these dates out in any realistic fashion though. Some of the US players might rather have halloween off to play with their kids, than have the superbowl sunday off. They might not watch that.



We'd really need to poll everything and only allow for say 4 most popular holidays to be postponed, and even with that people will feel shafted.



So in a nut-shell, I don't know. Plus I'm not sure the majority of the player base is in the US. America? Sure. But the holidays aren't always the same up in Canadaland from what I can tell.

[Three]

How you get the population distribution for what country they hail from may prove to be difficult. I'm not sure enough people would respond to polls. But at least I think your suggestion of a blanket 4 days would be a great start to try out.



Nobody forces us to show up on weekends but it's enough trouble to gear regular weekends around internet spaceships (I know I barely showed this season)... let alone holiday ones.



Oh well. Just my 3 cents on holidays.



Edit: Events could be held on those holidays where we don't have matches if one or more people were willing to hold them.





If possible can we get the entire league schedule ahead of time with matchups and game times? With the fixed schedule this season it looks like it would be easy. That way people have an idea of who they play and when on any given weekend.



It seemed irrelevant to me years ago to know the schedule ahead of time but now it would really help.

[Caerbannog]

[quote name='Three' timestamp='1310595293' post='276404']

How you get the population distribution for what country they hail from may prove to be difficult. I'm not sure enough people would respond to polls. But at least I think your suggestion of a blanket 4 days would be a great start to try out.



Nobody forces us to show up on weekends but it's enough trouble to gear regular weekends around internet spaceships (I know I barely showed this season)... let alone holiday ones.



Oh well. Just my 3 cents on holidays.



Edit: Events could be held on those holidays where we don't have matches if one or more people were willing to hold them.





If possible can we get the entire league schedule ahead of time with matchups and game times? With the fixed schedule this season it looks like it would be easy. That way people have an idea of who they play and when on any given weekend.



It seemed irrelevant to me years ago to know the schedule ahead of time but now it would really help.

[/quote]



My plan is to get the entire schedule up before round one, including the exciting pick of either 3pm or 4pm. 2pm will not have to be used afaik.