MATCHWRITING IV: The Beast Slayer Returneth...

[jediPREZ]

Are your RELOADED matches done?

Sorry I haven't been around everyone. Updates to come this week.

It's obvious we need to rethink our strategy in terms of matchwriting / matchwriting deadlines / matchwriting in general. I truly apologize to those who finished on time...again.

 

[Justin]

Re: Biron and Justin...

I'm off work tomorrow, so:

SET PHASERS TO FINISH MATCH~!

Also, I have an idea to pass on to you about "match writing strategy" if you want to hear it.

 

[Biron]

Re: Biron and Justin...

I haven't done anything with that match in quite some time, to be honest. I chalk it up to a combination of getting busier and my motivation being murdered by it taking months for house shows to come out. I wrote my original match for the card (JB/JJ) and, if somebody really wants to, they can take Dorchester/Ryan from me. I took it because A.) Nobody else would and B.) I thought we were rolling and that we'd have quick turnaround with the two house shows. Didn't happen so here I sit.

If nobody takes it and Talladega actually goes up, I'll have it done by the weekend of the 24th (busy at work, weekend wedding this week).

 

[jediPREZ]

Re: Biron and Justin...

There's two sides of this coin that we as a group/fed need to figure out in terms of how we're going to approach matchwriting. I completely realize you picked it up after finishing a first one...so I appreciate the effort/resolve at the time. I'm also thankful you were willing to do that.

The problem becomes that once one wheel falls off a show, the second/third shows in order seem to wait on the first show to start anything on their own and it's a perpetual disaster. (myself included) I got to Talladega and realized 4 matches weren't picked up for it after finishing Darlington. I guess in a procrastinator's hobby, scheduling multiple shows is a recipe for perpetual disaster!

Anyway, if anyone can pick up Dorch/Ryan and finish it by the weekend, that's great...if not, it's another match for me to figure out and so it goes. If there's any blame for this all, it's mine since I'm the admin guy.

But with the size of our roster versus the size of our matchwriting stable, it's looking like something's gotta give or be figured out. If anyone wants to start an idea thread under this forum, so we get some discussion going that's great...if not, I'll probably start one up in the near future.

Thanks for the quick responses guys and I'm glad you're still around!

 

[LQJT86C]

Re: Biron and Justin...

Those two BRAWLS were a bad idea. As soon as I saw we had two sizable BRAWLS scheduled before Reloaded, I knew this was going to happen.

This isn't a "Told you so" as much as it is, "These things are easy to predict because it's clear what works and what doesn't around here."

I don't think we need to figure anything out in terms of matchwriting. How many times have we had this league-wide discussion about changing the way we do things? This is like the 5th time in two years, and what happens is we come up with some new system that works for a little while until we circle back to this point. The obvious factor is that it's a procrastinator's hobby, one we should have quit as teenagers but now are grown ass men who just love this sh*t regardless. So while we want to write and all that good stuff, there's 50 other things that take precedent first, and that's just the way it is. We all know that (you especially), and I'm just stating the obvious so it doesn't need to be stated again.

That said, the other more relevant reason why this sh*t fell apart? Too many matches and not enough people willing to write them. We had a real good thing going, where 5 or 6 people were writing a match and a summary in relative quick time. Reloadeds were coming out at a nice pace, Brawls seemed to be going up every week, and even Supercrash went up pretty quick. Then we f*cked ourselves with a bonanza of cards. Let's just sloooowww dowwwwnnn and get back to how things were going. Brawl, Reloaded, Brawl, Reloaded, Brawl, Reloaded, Brawl, Brawl, SUPERCRASH, repeat. Never more than two announced at once.

I just woke up from a 10 hour sleep after staying up two days to prepare/write 20 pages on pension reform, all of which was written in 8 hours. I legit wanna kill myself right now. With that said, if the weekend comes, the Brawl is up, and nobody has taken Ryan/Dorchester, I'll probably be refreshed enough at that point to do it.

But if someone else takes it, just don't take f*cking forever. Ferraro out.

 

[User Poets]

Re: Biron and Justin...

I'd like to point out that I offered to pinch hit for Brawl 2 but never heard a thing...

 

[jediPREZ]

Re: Biron and Justin...

I'd like to point out that I offered to pinch hit for Brawl 2 but never heard a thing...

That's my fault, Pete. I saw that and then forgot. Then I figured the opportunity was gone.

 

[jediPREZ]

Re: Biron and Justin...

Those two BRAWLS were a bad idea. As soon as I saw we had two sizable BRAWLS scheduled before Reloaded, I knew this was going to happen.

This isn't a "Told you so" as much as it is, "These things are easy to predict because it's clear what works and what doesn't around here."

I don't think we need to figure anything out in terms of matchwriting. How many times have we had this league-wide discussion about changing the way we do things? This is like the 5th time in two years, and what happens is we come up with some new system that works for a little while until we circle back to this point. The obvious factor is that it's a procrastinator's hobby, one we should have quit as teenagers but now are grown ass men who just love this sh*t regardless. So while we want to write and all that good stuff, there's 50 other things that take precedent first, and that's just the way it is. We all know that (you especially), and I'm just stating the obvious so it doesn't need to be stated again.

That said, the other more relevant reason why this sh*t fell apart? Too many matches and not enough people willing to write them. We had a real good thing going, where 5 or 6 people were writing a match and a summary in relative quick time. Reloadeds were coming out at a nice pace, Brawls seemed to be going up every week, and even Supercrash went up pretty quick. Then we f*cked ourselves with a bonanza of cards. Let's just sloooowww dowwwwnnn and get back to how things were going. Brawl, Reloaded, Brawl, Reloaded, Brawl, Reloaded, Brawl, Brawl, SUPERCRASH, repeat. Never more than two announced at once.

I just woke up from a 10 hour sleep after staying up two days to prepare/write 20 pages on pension reform, all of which was written in 8 hours. I legit wanna kill myself right now. With that said, if the weekend comes, the Brawl is up, and nobody has taken Ryan/Dorchester, I'll probably be refreshed enough at that point to do it.

But if someone else takes it, just don't take f*cking forever. Ferraro out.

There's alot of truth in this, but at the end of the day it's also suggesting sizing down the roster significantly to address the lack of matchwriting prowess/power. I think we all like where the roster is right now, so how do we accomplish moving quickly with keeping everyone involved?

 

[Nova]

Re: Biron and Justin...

Everyone wants a dog, but no one wants to take it out to poop or feed it.

I haven't exactly waded back into the matchwriting pool since hopping back on-board, and I'll try to be better about this. I don't watch wrestling anymore, so my matches suck and I cover for that by injecting weird gimmicky crap into them. But no one really cares, so that's okay. Also, having been out of it for a couple of years I'm still getting a sense for what this current roster is about, but that will become easier with time.

 

[LQJT86C]

Re: Biron and Justin...

Why don't we do a monthly or bi-monthly Random Rumble, where we throw all the people who are taking up a ton of roster space into the match, and post the results like a list (literally a boxscore, no shortforming or descriptions at all). It keeps people active in big RP threads with almost no work required to post results. As an incentive, all the winners meet at the end of the year in one or two blowoff matches where the winner gets a World Title shot. If not this, then just do more 3 way dances and matches that fit more people while requiring less work from matchwriters.

 

[jediPREZ]

Re: Biron and Justin...

Why don't we do a monthly or bi-monthly Random Rumble, where we throw all the people who are taking up a ton of roster space into the match, and post the results like a list (literally a boxscore, no shortforming or descriptions at all). It keeps people active in big RP threads with almost no work required to post results. As an incentive, all the winners meet at the end of the year in one or two blowoff matches where the winner gets a World Title shot. If not this, then just do more 3 way dances and matches that fit more people while requiring less work from matchwriters.

Maybe I'm out of the loop in this hobby -- but don't "big" RP threads dictate some sort of reward through the impending match written for it? Will people be patient enough for the 'blowoff'?

I think some of our matchwriters hate writing triple threats, while others can handle different match types easily. This is definitely something else to be keen about looking forward.

 

[Justin]

Re: Biron and Justin...

I've said this to a couple of people, and their answers make me frown, but I'll say it here.

I can't get motivated to write for a deadline when you disappear for weeks and months at a time.

As much as we're all adults, and as much as we all have **** to do (work, kids, wives, etc), we're still human beings who tend to put things off until the last possible minute. This is evident by the "laid back" atmosphere of FW as a whole. However, that being said, if the person in charge was around and was making it clear that he wanted the matches in so the show could go up so that we could move forward, I feel like people would be more likely to get off of their asses and get finished.

I know I would.

I've been told "if you badger people, they'll just quit."

Well you know what? **** 'em, let 'em quit.

We've all made a commitment to be here, and we all defer to you, Katz. Those of us who really want to be here are not going to quit if you come online everyday and scream "WHERE's MY ****ING MATCHES?" because we understand that you have to have matches to move forward. And anybody who can't deal with that should either get on the ball and get finished quicker, or quit and go somewhere else.

It sickens me to see a group this large and this talented have to be coddled through every step.

It also sickens me every time somebody tells me how this is just "the way things are" around here. That's a bull**** excuse and it completely de-motivates everyone on the roster who isn't firmly entrenched into having shows once every two months.

If we're all adults here, we should all be able to be held accountable for getting our work done.

If we're not going to be held accountable, then we're just gonna have to get used to having two month breaks between shows.

Another thing, just quit announcing more than one show at a time, it is completely unnecessary. Not that you can't have your ideas booked out for weeks or months in advance, but you don't need to announce three shows all at once, all with the same (or vaguely close) deadlines and match-writing periods. That's just bad management. Book/Announce one show at a time, lets focus on the matters AT HAND, and then move on to the next thing.

This isn't rocket surgery, there are some idiots running efeds a lot more cohesively and timely than NFW.

Last I checked, there aren't too many idiots in NFW.

Just a bunch of lazy, excuse-making faggots. (I put myself in this category)

Anyhow, that's my two cents.

 

[LQJT86C]

Re: Biron and Justin...

Maybe I'm out of the loop in this hobby -- but don't "big" RP threads dictate some sort of reward through the impending match written for it? Will people be patient enough for the 'blowoff'?

I think some of our matchwriters hate writing triple threats, while others can handle different match types easily. This is definitely something else to be keen about looking forward.

That's assuming everyone reads the matches without skipping to the result, but I'll give NFW the benefit of the doubt because we seem to have a fairly large group that actually reads sh*t. I think if the expectation is there that a detailed match won't be written, and that the fun is in RPing for the thread itself (along with the W/L competitive aspect of it), then people would probably accept it. Especially since, if you don't win one, you know you have every month all year to try again. For people who may never win a belt here, they can list things like "3 time Random Rumble winner for Aug 2011, Feb 2012, April 2012" as accomplishments in their character bios, almost like (dare I say) XBox Live achievements. It's just something fun for people to compete in while they wait for cards, or wait to get booked.

Also, I was the one who told Justin people in FWC quit when they get yelled at. It's true! I've been in other leagues where the Prez writes these long diatribes about how the members are terrible for letting the place go to sh*t, and how this place used to be the apple of our eyes and now it's the worm etc etc etc, and I just don't know how seriously people whose geek level is below 49 are going to respond to that. If Katz ever yelled at me for a match and was serious about it, I would probably just laugh or say sorry and go back to masturbating and/or looking for work. We're too old, we're too cynical, and we have too much masturbating to do.

Y'know what our biggest problem is? When sh*t is late, everyone sits on things until other people submit their sh*t, which those people are also sitting on waiting for the OTHER people's sh*t. I've been guilty of it and I know for a FACT many of you have too. It's like some advanced hybrid of procrastination or something.

 

[The Great Eye]

I think the "I'm late, you're late, we're all late" thing is a big problem and the cause of much of the issue. Leagues need a hard "Drop dead" date, a deadline everyone knows they need to hit, or their stuff doesn't make the card, and the show goes up the next day in Box Score/extreme short form mode. While it might be kind of janky compared to the other cards, once people know you're serious about moving the league along with or without their 35 page Match-of-the-Century contender then they get the hint and start making deadlines.

 

[Justin]

I think the "I'm late, you're late, we're all late" thing is a big problem and the cause of much of the issue. Leagues need a hard "Drop dead" date, a deadline everyone knows they need to hit, or their stuff doesn't make the card, and the show goes up the next day in Box Score/extreme short form mode. While it might be kind of janky compared to the other cards, once people know you're serious about moving the league along with or without their 35 page Match-of-the-Century contender then they get the hint and start making deadlines.

QFT

I've seen this work.

I've made it work.

 

[User Poets]

EPW.

Brunk is all "Matches by this day or you get a paragraph."

Yes, the big RP threads deserve a long form match, but the little RP threads deserve cards on time.

 

[Justin]

The first step to any of this is communication.

This fed does not have it.

 

[User Poets]

This fed has a lot of communication, Justin, and a good core who care enough about it to have kept it going for eleven years. What this fed has - like FWC has always had in general - is a roster that skews older and has more responsibilities than just writing for a fed.

Card delays are always a pain in the ass but they've always been cyclical - we go hard for a few months then something happens to derail. I was a more active matchwriter a few months ago, before changing jobs and moving 800 miles away. Katz has always been easy to communicate with but he was out of touch for a week and a half after the hurricane which didn't help matters either.

It's true, when you see that you're not the only one with a match still outstanding you don't work as quickly but the fed isn't - and should never be - the most important thing at the end of the day.

 

[LQJT86C]

The first step to any of this is communication.

This fed does not have it.

We're communicating right now you Tom Selleck lovin' gay son of a b*tch.

 

[DWoods]

*Puffs a cigar*

Pfftt -- NFW sucks. It'll never last.

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