Will

@Will?

Good suggestion I'll look at adding that. 

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

Looks like it got added ❤️

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

Yeah this is something I’ve meant to look at a long time ago. I think you just mean the player page here but on the player management side, this is a bit more ambitious but I’ve always pictured like a weekly ‘checklist’ that shows what capped you’ve done and your options to get the rest. 

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/mubble-fubbles/episodes/MubbleFubbles-Radio-Ep-e2e0suq
 
It’s not great

Good suggestion I'll look at adding that. 

Good suggestion I'll look at adding that. 

Good suggestion I'll look at adding that. 

Good suggestion I'll look at adding that. 

Good suggestion I'll look at adding that. 

This table above shows how many first gen players from the range of the given draft classes went on to surpass 200 TPE (E.g. For the top one, there were 203 first gens taken from the Season 63 Draft Class to the Season 71 Draft Class that surpassed 200 TPE in their VHL career). As you can see, we are at our lowest number for quite some time, in fact you would have to go back to the Season 61-Season 69 cycle (drafts that took place in 2018-2019) for a lower first gen over 200 TPE count and that’s only because the Season 61 Draft Class had just two first gens surpass 200 TPE. There are many reasons why we could be experiencing this dip; many people point to Covid sparking a lot of new players joining and engaging in the league in the mid Season 70’s and we also don’t have quite as many avenues for advertisement as we did in the past, due to some irregularities we had in the past with reddit. But the main thing that we should be doing is instead looking at what we can do with the players that we bring in to do our best to make sure they stick around because, from what I can gather from my research, at our current pace that number is more likely to continue going down in the future than it is to go up.
 
So my first suggestion for helping with this is making the forum site and the portal more accessible for the new VHL user. We have to acknowledge with the scope of our advertising that we are not necessarily going to be recruiting new members to the VHL who are 1) going to be familiar with forum layout or 2) have the patience to stick around and ask how to make a player when they don’t know how to. This is where my first point comes in, we need to make the link to the Create a Player area of the portal catch the eye. As it stands, on the PC version of the website, the only direct link to Create A Player is embedded between several other options at the top of the screen. It’s even worse on mobile where the only direct link to creating a player is hidden behind the sub-menu button. There are two ways that I think you potentially fix this. One is that you amend the Create a Player forum slightly, make it so that clicking on “Create a Player” in the main forum area links you to the Create a Player area of the portal (this is also the method that the SBA use for player creation). The other potential option is making a clickable banner underneath the Create a Player heading that stands out a bit more than “Create a Player” does in the sub-menu, an example of a concept of this can be found below (To point out in advance, there will be quite a few concepts in this piece and that’s what they are, concepts. I’m not saying what I provide is a good banner, but that is where I believe a good banner would be.)
 

 
From there, we move on to making the portal more accessible to the new member. This is probably not what the developers of the portal want to hear but for every step we make towards putting items that use to be forum-based onto the portal, more users will dedicate more of their VHL time on the portal, so we need to increase the amount of information about the VHL that the user can pick up on the portal. I’ve already mentioned in the past about how we should have clearer links to important pages rather than burying them under the manage tab, but I’ve got a few more concepts here. One such example would be a tip that the portal would provide to new members about where to apply their TPE upon creation. We have taken routes to combat the amount of people adding small amounts of TPE to every single attribute on creation with the First-Gen reroll, but why not give these players a warning ahead of time that spreading your attributes in that manner is not going to net the best results for your player so that they are better prepared upon creating their player?
 

 
Another method of interaction with the user could be to have the Player Management screen display how much capped TPE they’ve earned in a given week and provides a link to a pop-up box that gives a quick breakdown on what other capped TPE tasks are available to them. The example below is what could potentially pop up for a member who submitted for welfare (therefore 4 of 10 rather than 4 of 12) and the second is an example of what the pop-up box could show for a VHL.com graphic.
 
 

 

 
 
Finally, a way to potentially help newer users with the VHL Trivia task, the one that is probably the hardest for new members given their recent join date. Why not use the opportunity to link to the VHL Discord so that any struggling user knows where to ask for help with a trivia question?
 

 
So those are my proof of concepts as to how to potentially help improve the First-Gens approach to the VHL. I know that the VHL probably want to make moves to add more currently forum based tasks like Fantasy Zone to the portal, but I really think the thing that should take precedence right now is creating a more new-user friendly version of the portal because, while it’s great and the developers have done a lot of terrific work with it, with how much it has grown it needs to evolve beyond the base structure that Will gave it (a subsection of the VHL for you to update your player) to something that can be engaged with by users who may not be familiar with how the VHL works.
 
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Right, that’s the proof of concept power hour out of the way, now to talk about other things that I think will help first-gen retention.
 
Stop letting people having so many jobs at a time
 
So this might stand out as a weird topic for helping first-gens, but bear with me on this one. I made a podcast talking about making more jobs PT equivalents and one of my listeners to that podcast was a user called SpicyGecko who, at the time, was a pretty promising first-gen user. After listening to the podcast they sent me a message about how they had a problem with people having so many jobs at once and how it reduces a new members ability to actively contribute to the site or try to improve their standing within the league by showing they can do a job well. Given the timing of the message in combination to their activity, it would not surprise me if this played a role in their eventual inactivity. While I do think there are ways that members can contribute to help the site without holding a job, I think the point they make is a valid one, there really is no reason why, especially when we are arguably at the best point in our league’s history when it comes to the number of personnel at our disposal that could actively help the league, some people are allowed to hold onto so many jobs at one time. I don’t see much of an argument for why a specific member in the VHL should not just be limited to one VHL job (e.g. Commissioner, Updater, etc.) and one GM job. Think about it like the VHLM, we try to encourage the members who are on the cusp of 200 TPE who are thinking of staying down to make the move up to the VHLE instead of sticking around the VHLM at a high capped level, so that they give the opportunity to other newer players to demonstrate that they can be good assets to the league. The same logic should work with jobs, if you get a higher-up/higher-regarded job than you’re currently on, by electing to also keep doing your old job on top of that, you’re effectively taking away an opportunity from someone else who could potentially prove that they can do a job for the league, so you should give up your lesser paid job once you take up your newer job. By all means, let them keep the relevant permissions so they can help contribute here and there if they so want to, but lets give more members the opportunity to contribute to the VHL so that maybe one day they can show what they can bring to the league and potentially rise to the same level in the future to that of the members they inherited their jobs from.
 
VHLE Draft Change
 
I’ve mentioned this idea in other point tasks I think a couple of times now, but we’re talking about things that will help boost the first-gen experience and I think this is one of them. Let me hit you with the least surprising thing you’ll hear today: Members in sim leagues like drafts. But what lessens the draft experience is when you have potentially three draft experiences with 48 hours, with two of said drafts not mattering for at least the next two and a half months. Instead, why not change up the experience so the user can experience a draft that would be immediately relevant to their interests the season after their other drafts to maintain their interest in the VHL for a longer period of time? My idea is to make it so that instead of entering the VHLE Draft in the same season as your VHL Draft, you enter it in the first off-season that you enter having surpassed the 200 TPE VHLE limit, basically limiting the draft to players that have exceeded 200 TPE over the last season. I talked about the other positives of such a move here, here and here if you want to read or listen to more of my thoughts on that.
 
More Content Focused Towards Newer Members?
 
So this is one thing that I don’t have a concrete idea for but I’ll bring up the concept of my thought here at least since it’s on my mind. One thing that helps keep newer members attention is seeing themselves acknowledged by their peers on the forum and we’ve had certain things in the VHL in the past that has been geared towards highlighting new members. For example, when I was in the recruitment crew I would run a VHLM Newsletter (unfortunately I can’t find any links to my old pieces since I’m guessing it's now in a hidden forum) that was mainly to give a breakdown of the VHLM and what activities were available that week but I would make sure to give a shoutout to the new members that joined that week. I also did the Draft Rankings (which I’ve kinda just filled since no-one else was doing them as I think they serve a good way of demonstrating to newer members that their earning activities are being noticed) and when STZ was in the recruitment crew, they also offered out graphics to new members of the forum, which is a pretty cool interaction especially given how good STZ’s graphics are. I don’t have anything particularly in mind that could fill that role, but maybe having more pieces of content that focus on members that have just joined would help to boost their activity and engagement with the site further. But this is obviously something that someone could also do off their own back with their graphics/media/podcast (in fact I believe Jardy does shout-out new creates on his podcast on occasion) so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a league job/VSN thing, but more just getting out there that if you want to keep people around, best thing you can do as a member is write about them and tell them how good they are.
 
2000+ words

Hello VHL,
 
Not even gonna bother with a members tag on this one since it's pretty minor stuff but for the sake of transparency I'm announcing it anyway; the @BOG is still tackling bigger problems but we do love to discuss random small stuff too.
 
First up, goalies are just too damn good! Okay that's a bit of an exaggeration but because goalies weren't touched when we nerfed the meta and skaters got a bit worse they have been running away with things a bit more than historically. Save percentages have been climbing, Playoff MVP is almost a foregone conclusion, etc. We could change this with huge sweeping changes to goalie stats and adding hybrid attributes and all that, and that's still on the table for testing as a future option, but it's a bit more complicated than what we realistically need right now. From our testing we can bring goalie stats back down to more of historical averages, without making scoring go too insane, by simply adjusting the goals slider inside the sim. This means the amount of shots won't increase (at least not substantially anyway) but the amount of goals will. As always we aren't going to publicly reveal what our slider settings are but we felt like the league should at least know it's getting adjusted so they aren't confused as to why scoring increases. The slider change will impact all 3 levels of the VHL so the VHLE and VHLM will get it as well for consistency.
 
Second, and this one honestly doesn't come up a ton but it's best to get it in writing: We are formalizing that during the week you re-create you are allowed to max earn (that's 12 capped TPE per week) on both your retiring player and your new player. The caveat to this is that you still cannot claim the same task multiple times. So for example if you have job pay and a media spot on your retiring player in a given week and you re-create you cannot claim that same job pay or media spot on the new player. You can write a new media spot, it doesn't need to be a different kind of task, but it needs to be a new task. Does that make sense? We've kinda been doing this for a bit anyway but there was some confusion around it so we figured it was best to clarify. Also, before anyone asks, for multi-week claims you can still use the same task but need to use a new claim week. So for example if you have a 2000 word media spot and you claim week 1 on your retiring player you can claim week 2 during the same week on your new player and then have 2 weeks left. Each claim effectively is just treated as a new task, the same as it is any other time.
 
Like I said, minor stuff but there it is, enjoy.
 
 - @Commissioner

I stand with Ahma! Back to team Nordic! 

This is something I have very strong feelings about and to be frank, I'm offended and insulted by it.
 
Why is the VHL World Cup Team Scandinavia referred as such, when it should be Team NORDIC. Finland is not a Scandinavian country, despite how many arrogant people may claim so and refer to it as so.
 
Finland is NOT a part of Scandinavia! Scandinavia originally refers to the Scandinavian Peninsula, which consists of Denmark, Norway and Sweden (note: NOT Finland).
 
I'm Finnish. We call ourselves in my beautiful native tongue, Suomen kieli, Pohjoismaa (meaning Nordic) when we refer to the group of countries in Northern Europe. No Finnish person never ever calls themselves "scandinavian" it's always "nordic". Me ollaan osa Pohjoismaita.
 
I remember years ago back in the S50's or S60's it was incorrectly called Team Scandinavia. I then talked to, pretty sure it was then commissioner, @Will among other higher ups to change the name to Team Nordic. Unfortunately, after some time it was, for some god forsaken reason, changed back to Scandinavia, and remains as to this day despite me privately complaining about in the past.
 
But fortunately the fix is simple, fix the incorrect name! And the name is already correct in the Discord server, which is GREAT.
 
Thank you
A proud Finnish man, signing off.
 
 
 
GO TEAM NORDIC!

Review: Great recap of the final series and interesting idea on the off-season free week. I think it's a valid idea, I don't necessarily think that it would help retention or keep someone from losing interest but I think you raise a good idea of it getting harder to find things to write about and just giving everyone a little break in the off-season.  And nice shoutout to @Tetricide, best of luck with the new position. Overall good quality thought provoking article. 4/5.

Review: Little late on the review but thanks for putting this together, this is a great guide for new and returning members - you're 100% right that there are more TPE opportunities than ever and quite a bit is new or changed so very helpful to have it all in one place. Good use of pictures to help support the guide. Obviously this is mainly for new members so maybe this was by design but the only TPE I can think of that isn't mentioned here is job pay. 10/10

Review: Great recap of the final series and interesting idea on the off-season free week. I think it's a valid idea, I don't necessarily think that it would help retention or keep someone from losing interest but I think you raise a good idea of it getting harder to find things to write about and just giving everyone a little break in the off-season.  And nice shoutout to @Tetricide, best of luck with the new position. Overall good quality thought provoking article. 4/5.

1. Of course, the introduction of Tommy fokin' Shelby 
2. I came here looking for easy questions bro... my unpopular opinion, particularly relevant here, is that I just don't find sports all that interesting to watch or follow. Honestly haven't watched a NHL game in a couple years. Going to a game in person is obviously a different story but I'm definitely not paying for a sportsnet subscription anytime soon. 
3. I guess partly it comes down to personal taste like I think graphics is definitely not fun but overall I feel like reviewing is kind of bottom of the barrel activity. 
 
1. You can go anywhere in the world, where are you and you're player spending the off-season?
2. What's the funnest way to earn TPE? 
3. Whose your VHL hero? 

Review: Great recap of the final series and interesting idea on the off-season free week. I think it's a valid idea, I don't necessarily think that it would help retention or keep someone from losing interest but I think you raise a good idea of it getting harder to find things to write about and just giving everyone a little break in the off-season.  And nice shoutout to @Tetricide, best of luck with the new position. Overall good quality thought provoking article. 4/5.