CIA's Suggestion Thread

[CowboyinAmerica 2,705]

A few things that may be a bit outside the box, but food for thought. Tried to stay away from what others had said as much as possible.

 

1. Tying VHLM teams to the VHL again - I know this is how it was done in the old days, and I know that it was changed somewhere around Season 20. I like the idea though because it puts another number of people with a stake in keeping the VHLM active, which I think is sorely needed right now. That's the actual problem, not where teams are located or anything cosmetic like that. I personally think the VHLM has worth so I wouldn't be in favor of killing it completely, but it does need to be retooled. Of course, this would come with...

 

2. Contraction - I know you're thinking about it already, and I know others are posting it too. I've been against it in the past, but I just want to reiterate that I think it's time. Bringing the league back down to eight would mean more active people on each team, and as somebody who thinks the current playoffs are too long, having semifinals and finals only (4 teams) would make the playoffs actually mean something a bit more.

 

3. End the Two-Player Experiment - We tried it. I didn't like it in the beginning. And now I think there's some empirical evidence to back it up. Having players on multiple teams simply dilutes where people spend their time on the boards, makes people feel like they have to do too much to keep up with both players (causing quicker burnout), and all but kills rivalries in the league. I'm not sure there's a single member here that's having fun with both their players right now. And if there are only eight teams, we should still have the members to fill things up.

 

(My main one, tbh) 4. More Games Simmed Per Day - The regular season can be a slog at times, and while there are ways to encourage engagement during the regular season (such as TPE for posting in game threads), that doesn't kill the main issue at hand. So what if we went from simming roughly 10 games a day to simming roughly 20 games a day? It wouldn't take too much longer for the simmer (only as long as posting a few more game threads), and it would have the benefit of moving through the regular season more quickly to parts where people have more fun.

 

5. Tying to Actual Hockey - The big untapped market for recruiting is people who generally like hockey, but have no idea what a sim league is. That's where we're going to get members. But in order for people to have it stick and think it's worth their while, there needs to be some tether to reality or something they know. So why not play up the hockey fan aspect more? Rather than Pick Ems/Guess the Score for VHL games, why not make it for NHL to draw in those hockey fans? Could trivia be a mix of VHL and hockey in general? Could we develop some sort of lore, if we're leaning into the roleplaying aspect, that explains to newcomers better what the VHL is in relation to the NHL? Think it might be more worthwhile to get people to stay. 

[Will 4,603]

Nice suggestions, I like them all. I can tell you there's a lot of people in the BOG/admins that agree with your points on 2 players so I would expect action on that shortly, and I'm with you on contraction though that's been more difficult to convince people of.

 

I've said before we should at the very least think about double simming on weekends or something like that, to shorten the season up a bit and give more content when the place seems to be most active. But I wouldn't be opposed to going further than that. 

 

I'm not sure how tying the VHLM teams to VHL would work tho, assuming we contracted there'd still be 8 VHL teams vs. 5 VHLM teams so some would have to share somehow. 

[hedgehog337 3,480]

23 hours ago, CowboyinAmerica said:

1. Tying VHLM teams to the VHL again - I know this is how it was done in the old days, and I know that it was changed somewhere around Season 20. I like the idea though because it puts another number of people with a stake in keeping the VHLM active, which I think is sorely needed right now. That's the actual problem, not where teams are located or anything cosmetic like that. I personally think the VHLM has worth so I wouldn't be in favor of killing it completely, but it does need to be retooled. Of course, this would come with...

 

It would be even more interesting if we cut the VHLM draft too. Put every player into the VHL draft and then send em down to affiliate if that's needed.

 

21 minutes ago, Will said:

I'm not sure how tying the VHLM teams to VHL would work tho, assuming we contracted there'd still be 8 VHL teams vs. 5 VHLM teams so some would have to share somehow. 

 

Cut the VHLM to 4 teams too.

Edited November 25, 2017 by hedgehog337