I think the whole topic of the engine switch and how it was handled is one that still looms over a lot of other discussions especially for the people that were or still are somewhat frustrated by it. I'm not even sure it is worth re-hashing this discussion at this point because the change has happened and will obviously not be reversed, but I think it's something for everyone to keep in mind at least. This is on both sides, on those who were frustrated with the change to not be bitter about it and give the new status quo a chance even if it's different from what you are used to and have loved for years, and on those that love the change to accept that not everyone was as excited about it as you are and that those critical of it have valid points and aren't just stuck-up boomers.

I would say that I tended to be a bit more critical about the change than most, although I very early on agreed that it was necessary and needed to happen given the flaws we had recently discovered in STHS and the willingness of some people to exploit them. I think the main issue that I and many others have had was not that the change shouldn't have happened, but that it felt rushed and pushed through in a somewhat intransparent manner by what felt like a rather small group of users that were very excited about it and not particularly interested in hearing dissenting voices. If you look at it from both sides, there are good arguments on both the Pro and the Con side:

The Pros:
- The change was necessary due to the exploitable nature of STHS
- FHM is an objectively better engine both in term of mechanics and presentation
- A new engine is obviously exciting and a chance to reinvigorate the league

All these are huge points that even the people who were critical of the change shouldn't sweep aside. Especially the first two made the sim-change more or less unavoidable. It needed to happen eventually, no matter how worried we were about the negatives:

The Cons:
- Parity in the league plummeted, lots of teams became either unbeatable or completely uncompetitive over night
- Lower activity and lower TPE players suffered significantly
- We still don't have an adequate way to present game results even with a lot of work and ressources being invested for months by awesome dedicated people

All these negatives are stuff that should be taken seriously as well. No matter how excited you are about the new engine, you shouldn't ignore how many people are affected by these negative factors and how their enjoyment of the league might have suffered because of them. Again, that doesn't mean that the change shouldn't have happened, but it's warranted to be critical about its circumstances and its effects. Especially since some of these things have been more foreseeable than others.

The severe decline in parity was obvious pretty much from the start and to give some credit, measures have already been taken to adress this. Still, there seems to be a significant portion of people who prefer to think that there is no issue and to just tell everyone who is concerned about parity to "git gud". The lack of an index was an issue that we were aware of even before the sim-change happened but back then we seemed to have been more blue-eyed and naive and thought that this could be rectified within a few weeks. And isn't the fact that something was severely underestimated back when the change happened and has now turned out to be a project that requires hundreds of man hours and the equivalent of thousands of real life dollars to fix, something that warrantes criticism and a problem that shows that peoples concerns and frustrations with the engine-switch were at least somewhat warranted? Add to that the fact that the position of "league boxscore screenshot guy" has been discussed bascially from the moment this issue arose yet it still hasn't been made a thing for whatever reason... It's fair to be critical of those things and the fact that it felt like the negatives were brushed aside, underestimated and not taken seriously by a lot of the people who pushed the engine switch through.

As I already said, this is not meant at all to criticize the awesome people who are currently working so hard to give us an index and who have to deal with the mistakes made by other people before they were brought in to fix them. And generally speaking, I'm also quite happy with the league leadership we have nowadays both at the very top and in the various departments that have been created or overhauled along the way. We have much better leadership and more accountability than we used to and I'm thankful that all you guys do for the league. But every executive decision you make is bound to leave some people behind and in the case of the engine-switch, there might have been a bit of a blind spot with some of you that led to you underestimating the amount of concerns and the number of people affected by this change in a negative way.