Personally, this is what I expected, and hoped for, the trends were consistent from the 25 people selected for early-feedback and testing of the survey through the final 124th respondent, the community is pretty consistent with what they play and what they want to see in the projects. This passion project has grown due to the amount of help I have received over the years, that help has come and gone and without researchers dedicated to maintaining some leagues they will have to be cut, especially if the community isn't playing them.
This does not mean I will be removing leagues from the database, but if they are non-playable they likely will not be as updated or complete. I will have much less time this summer to dedicate to the project so this rescaling effort will allow me to continue to support the core of the database moving forward. I will not be condensing leagues and will aim to still have complete and detailed history data.
Again, I continue to do this due to the support I receive from this small but passionate community. I hope development on EHM continues and I will continue to push hard for that!
Let's get into the results!
The community is clearly split on what to do about promotion/relegation, this question answers itself further in the results due to other changes coming to the database.
Per these results the FPHL, USPHL and NA3HL will be removed from human-playability.
For new leagues I was mostly interested to see what the community would like to see potentially in the future, I think Minnesota HS hockey would be a fun place to start a GM career and we have never attempted a high school league as a starting point so this will be considered for 2023-24.
I was really happy to see this result personally, expect a much faster sim startup with future transfers being removed, we will make sure with the rescale that players actively complete transfers to colleges. This saves me a ton of time keeping these updated. I will also make sure CHL rights are assigned to college preference players for human GM flexibility.
Not a shocker here, the CHL leagues are incredibly popular and core to the game. However, I will be removing the following from human-playability in 2023-24: LNAH, SJHL, MAJHL, MJHL, QJHL, NOJHL, CCHL, SIJHL, GOJHL and USports.
USports transfers will also be eliminated, there was never a lot of these but just one less thing to keep on top of.
This was a pretty surprising result for me, I thought having U18 AAA starting points for a GM career would have been more popular.
This was insightful, it was good to see these international tournaments are appreciated by the community. I will be removing the Asian Winter Games, Southeast Asian Winter Games and NaturEnergie Challenge.
Now we get into the European leagues, no surprise here with the popularity of the top 2 Swedish leagues, however I may consider removing HockeyEttan as playable, I haven't made my final decision here but its a giant league to keep updated, but I know these teams are important to some of you.
For new leagues in Sweden I was mostly posing this question to gain general interest, no new leagues will be added as playable at this time.
The British and Scottish EHM community contains some of my favorite people! I love your passion and growth of the game locally, however it's tough for me to keep these leagues updated due to limited/incomplete data on EP. We still have a dedicated researcher and will keep EIHL only going forward.
No surprise here in the general popularity of the Finnish leagues, despite us never having a dedicated researcher! I will be removing Suomi-Sarja and U20 Mestis for now,
Again just looking for general interest here, no new leagues will be added as playable.
The Slovak community is always looking to help but based on how little the lower and junior leagues are played I can't commit the time to keep these updated. I will keep the top-two leagues only going forward as playable.
For Russia I'll be removing the PVHL and NMHL from human playability.
Russian U18 will not be added as playable.
For Germany I will be removing Oberliga as being playable, despite Nachwacs Liga (U20) not being too popular I will keep it as playable.
No new German leagues will be added as human playable.
Trends continue, the top 2 leagues and juniors are most popular, 2.Liga will be removed from human playability.
No new Czech leagues will be added as human playable.
Similar trends here in Switzerland, MyHL will be removed as human playable.
No new leagues will be added as human playable
I plan on making no changes to Austria
Last question, for the rest of the world I will only keep the following leagues: Danish Metal Ligaen, French Magnus, Latvian Optibet, Norwegian Fjordkraft-ligaen, Polska Hokej Liga, and Slovenian IHL, the rest will be removed from human playability.
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Hope the community finds this helpful and thank you again for the feedback!
