Better sim times

[BloomeyGB]

Like seriously, it's insane how the EST timezone dictates how games are played. This is a global league, and people should have the right to watch a stream without ending up with some serious sleep deprivation. Personally, I don't remember when I last watched a sim live. Maybe we could have a sim or two, where the starting time is a little more favourable to those who live on the continent of Europe (that's right, Europe isn't a country), as we are the most affected by this. 


Thank you

[Suggs]

As a fellow international user, I don't mind it. I understand that most users are Americans and this is the best time for them. I'm sure that it already is very troublesome for all involved to program themselves to be able to broadcast the games at 8PM EST. Your suggestion is very interesting though and I hope some one takes this into account, it could be a fun experience.
What I would suggest is to watch the games later before entering the forums or turning Discord on. That's what I do when I'm unable to watch the games, be it because I'm sleeping or normal day-to-day time constraints.

[qWest]

I couldn't agree with this more. If we moved the sim times in the league back just two or three hours, we would have a time window that's actually reasonable for all of the US time zones, our European players, and our Australian players.

[ValorX77]

I couldn't agree with this more. If we moved the sim times in the league back just two or three hours, we would have a time window that's actually reasonable for all of the US time zones, our European players, and our Australian players.

I actually wouldn’t mind this

[ReverendOReily]

I live in the EST zone and I fully support this idea. Even if it's only 1-2 game weeks per season, it'd be a nice way to show our league's international members that we care about their enjoyment of the league just as much. Alternatively, a recurring tweak like qWest suggested also sounds like it'd be perfectly viable!

[manicmav36]

Europe isn't a country? Big if true.

[SwankyPants31]

I couldn't agree with this more. If we moved the sim times in the league back just two or three hours, we would have a time window that's actually reasonable for all of the US time zones, our European players, and our Australian players.

Going to play devil's advocate and argue against this one. Full disclosure I'm in PDT.

First off, East Coast obviously has the sweet deal right now. 8 PM is pretty much the perfect time wherever you are, so obviously moving it earlier is an inconvenience for them. This proposal to move it back to 5 PM makes it so that streams start right around when the majority of people are going to be commuting. Speaking from experience, this makes it so that depending on where in the order of games you fall, you might not be able to see your game every week. Not the end of the world, but also less than ideal.

Now moving to the US West Coast, this moves the games from 5 PM to 2 PM. Same thing I mentioned above for the 5 PM slot applies here, so I'm not going to go any further into that. The 2 PM slot, is a major killer for me though. That falls pretty much right in the middle of the afternoon when most people are either going to be in the middle of work or school. It's also too late to watch the games while taking a lunch break. If we move the stream back 3 hours I doubt I'll be able to watch games very often at all, and I'd bet there are other people on the west coast that will be in the same boat.

London/EU gets the short end of the stick, there's no doubt about that. I'm not going to argue that a move from 1 AM to 10 PM is bad for them, because there's just no way to spin that.

Lastly, the Australia time zone. This is another one that I'm not sure makes the stream more accessible. Current stream time is around 10 AM, which isn't ideal but similar to the commuter point I mentioned earlier means that someone working or going to school might be able to see themselves play in the late games since it potentially lines up with taking a lunch break. I can't speak for users in this time zone, but I personally don't see a 7 AM start time sitting well. They do have the advantage in that the "Friday" games would be played on Saturday morning, but for the Monday and Wednesday streams, 7 AM is right about the time people are going to be getting ready for work or commuting.

All in all, to me this seems like it benefits EU users with the tradeoff of being varying degrees of more inconvenient for pretty much everyone else. I don't think we should move all streams back, but like others have said having a rotating schedule might be more of a fair compromise.

[qWest]

I couldn't agree with this more. If we moved the sim times in the league back just two or three hours, we would have a time window that's actually reasonable for all of the US time zones, our European players, and our Australian players.

Going to play devil's advocate and argue against this one. Full disclosure I'm in PDT.

First off, East Coast obviously has the sweet deal right now. 8 PM is pretty much the perfect time wherever you are, so obviously moving it earlier is an inconvenience for them. This proposal to move it back to 5 PM makes it so that streams start right around when the majority of people are going to be commuting. Speaking from experience, this makes it so that depending on where in the order of games you fall, you might not be able to see your game every week. Not the end of the world, but also less than ideal.

Now moving to the US West Coast, this moves the games from 5 PM to 2 PM. Same thing I mentioned above for the 5 PM slot applies here, so I'm not going to go any further into that. The 2 PM slot, is a major killer for me though. That falls pretty much right in the middle of the afternoon when most people are either going to be in the middle of work or school. It's also too late to watch the games while taking a lunch break. If we move the stream back 3 hours I doubt I'll be able to watch games very often at all, and I'd bet there are other people on the west coast that will be in the same boat.

London/EU gets the short end of the stick, there's no doubt about that. I'm not going to argue that a move from 1 AM to 10 PM is bad for them, because there's just no way to spin that.

Lastly, the Australia time zone. This is another one that I'm not sure makes the stream more accessible. Current stream time is around 10 AM, which isn't ideal but similar to the commuter point I mentioned earlier means that someone working or going to school might be able to see themselves play in the late games since it potentially lines up with taking a lunch break. I can't speak for users in this time zone, but I personally don't see a 7 AM start time sitting well. They do have the advantage in that the "Friday" games would be played on Saturday morning, but for the Monday and Wednesday streams, 7 AM is right about the time people are going to be getting ready for work or commuting.

All in all, to me this seems like it benefits EU users with the tradeoff of being varying degrees of more inconvenient for pretty much everyone else. I don't think we should move all streams back, but like others have said having a rotating schedule might be more of a fair compromise.

I understand 3 hours back could be too inconvenient, but I don't think 2 hours back is any worse for any of the US time zones. Only way you're going to make it truly convenient for all US time zones is moving it later which screws EU even more, as you said the current time space currently puts 9-5 commuters on the West Coast in a bad place. Australia time zone is weird to try and fit in, but I think moving it early would make it better and not worse. Of course we'd need to hear from those users on their experience, but I'd have to imagine the possibility of watching the games in the morning before 9-5 hours, like at 7am could be attractive to some. I don't imagine the current 10am-11:15am time slot that the games currently play in fits into many typical schedules.

Overall it's good to see HO reaching out to the users to see what's best for them. Hope you've already responded to the poll there. Would love to see at the very list a rolling schedule and maybe more events and streams moved into the weekend personally for everyone's sake.

[Opera_Phantom]

I couldn't agree with this more. If we moved the sim times in the league back just two or three hours, we would have a time window that's actually reasonable for all of the US time zones, our European players, and our Australian players.

Going to play devil's advocate and argue against this one. Full disclosure I'm in PDT.

First off, East Coast obviously has the sweet deal right now. 8 PM is pretty much the perfect time wherever you are, so obviously moving it earlier is an inconvenience for them. This proposal to move it back to 5 PM makes it so that streams start right around when the majority of people are going to be commuting. Speaking from experience, this makes it so that depending on where in the order of games you fall, you might not be able to see your game every week. Not the end of the world, but also less than ideal.

Now moving to the US West Coast, this moves the games from 5 PM to 2 PM. Same thing I mentioned above for the 5 PM slot applies here, so I'm not going to go any further into that. The 2 PM slot, is a major killer for me though. That falls pretty much right in the middle of the afternoon when most people are either going to be in the middle of work or school. It's also too late to watch the games while taking a lunch break. If we move the stream back 3 hours I doubt I'll be able to watch games very often at all, and I'd bet there are other people on the west coast that will be in the same boat.

London/EU gets the short end of the stick, there's no doubt about that. I'm not going to argue that a move from 1 AM to 10 PM is bad for them, because there's just no way to spin that.

Lastly, the Australia time zone. This is another one that I'm not sure makes the stream more accessible. Current stream time is around 10 AM, which isn't ideal but similar to the commuter point I mentioned earlier means that someone working or going to school might be able to see themselves play in the late games since it potentially lines up with taking a lunch break. I can't speak for users in this time zone, but I personally don't see a 7 AM start time sitting well. They do have the advantage in that the "Friday" games would be played on Saturday morning, but for the Monday and Wednesday streams, 7 AM is right about the time people are going to be getting ready for work or commuting.

All in all, to me this seems like it benefits EU users with the tradeoff of being varying degrees of more inconvenient for pretty much everyone else. I don't think we should move all streams back, but like others have said having a rotating schedule might be more of a fair compromise.

The thing is that some middle ground can be found imo. If we broadcast sims earlier in 3 or 4 games, you make some people happier with that, with everything else remaining the same