Gustav

ABSOLUTE BANGER This has been in the works for way too long now and I'm glad to be working with someone who was also for it so we could push it with more authority. GG to @Spartan for being one of a handful to constructively reason with me on the topic, as well as to @Dil for the implementation work. I can now die happy because I'm not sure how anything else that could be pulled off with me as commish could beat this in terms of (potential) impact. There's a giant list of benefits at the bottom of this article which contains the original proposal from over a year ago (since modified by those with more common sense). You may have seen me hinting that we had some other stuff lined up and that we were waiting for things to fall into place, more or less. Well, these are the things that have fallen into place. Prepare yourselves for further improvements that this system now allows

Welcome to the GM crew and good luck! Also, thanks to @Moon for stepping in on short notice and closing out the season well--you deserve the permanent spot!

Orange juice is the boring standard, but I have to go with it anyway. Goes well with anything breakfast and I just like it in general. Irrational homer take: Sabres. They've somehow started well, so why not believe? Head Hunters by Herbie Hancock. I think I've told this story a few times on the forum before, but I still buy CDs sometimes--I went out to the bookstore and bought that just a couple days before everything shut down COVID-wise and put it on just about every day for the rest of that semester. It was one of the things that kept me going and I still love it today. 1. It's Halloween this week! Do you (or did you) have any plans? 2. What would your player's (or team's) dream scenario be this offseason? 3. What's your too-early pick for next season's champion in the VHL?

Art Vandelay

Love it when people ask if I'm on Discord. I'VE TALKED TO YOU ON DISCORD!

THANK YOU. There's a server that was once really close to my heart (those who know me well will know exactly which one I mean) that, over time and by no one's fault in particular, went from condensed and public to "there's a team channel where everyone on the team talks almost exclusively and there are a ton of channels that no one needs or cares about--also, they're all named really vague and confusing things so you have no idea what's supposed to go where." Guess when that server was my favorite and guess what killed it. It's been a while since I had any affiliation with it, but I still miss the way it was. Cheers to you for having the right idea, because the VHLM is where we need that the most.

Honestly with all the "listen to the new members" talk that floats around the VHLM (and blows up into some weird drama every couple seasons or so), people tend to forget just how much you are the product of your environment here. Anyone new worth having will spend some time trying to gain a sense of how the community works and figuring out how to fit in and be one of the cool ones--and as a VHLM GM, your community is the community and you are one of the cool ones to someone newer. What you put into your team is what you get out of it. So, what do first gens want? First gens don't know what they want. And that's where you come in, because you know what you like about the community and you know how to show that. Find what you love about the community and bring it to your community, and you'll find that you'll be really good at keeping around people who think the same way you do. Some examples of this that I applied in my own time as GM: I liked being able to talk about random things in the league server, so I'd talk about random things in my own server. Stupid irrelevant small talk isn't seen as stupid or irrelevant by someone who comes in hoping to make friends. I think people enjoyed me complaining about work and such, because my players would come into my server to do the same. I liked a lot of the people I'd connected with at that point, so I invited them to my server. I also wanted my players to like these people, so all my stupid small talk happened in public (I hated, and still hate, team-only channels). Many people ended up very active in my server despite never playing for me. I liked my own sense of humor (doesn't everyone like their own sense of humor?) so I chose to speak more confidently, as if I were talking to someone I'd known for longer than a couple hours, rather than toning everything down and being really generic and plain to all the new people. You will determine how they act in your locker room and in the league, not the other way around, so start them off right. I liked that I could form my own opinions on what was going on in the league, and didn't like what I'd seen on some other teams at the time where players were encouraged to take sides in stupid forum drama or try to get themselves with certain people or teams after moving up. There were some teams I really disliked at the time, and even one I would have outright refused to play for, and while I'd say that when asked, I'd never specify what I was talking about because I didn't want someone to be drafted somewhere and be disappointed by it. Players will eventually recognize what there is to look for in the community and be able to find it themselves, but if you don't give them what the community gives you, there's no reason to believe they're going to stay active enough for long enough to find it. And if you do mirror the best parts of the league, someone will find that and think, "oh cool, this is just like what AJ did that one time in the VHLM". As for recreates...it doesn't matter as much. Don't be one of those people who adopts the "all recreates in the VHLM must die" mindset and you'll be fine. I will say, though, that I've been really annoyed in the past when GMs send me obviously copy-pasted lists of questions for their draft scouting, or when someone tries to sign me by asking me to write some stupid hashtag. Recognize that these are people you already know (and, at the very least, these are people who know who you are already), and that a quick and casual "hi, what are your thoughts" is your best possible message.

I feel like the jury is still out on that one because we've only seen a handful of seasons, but I'm also pretty sure the best scorers all...have good scoring (which makes sense at least). It is important to note that a playmaking build is more TPE-efficient (the same amount of investment will get you more improvement in your attributes overall), but if you look at the sample builds I have in my guide you'll find that it isn't wildly different between the two and that would lead me to believe that a scoring build is still the better option. Overall, though, I'd love to see more people exploring what they can do with the hybrid attributes instead of trying to find a new meta within them.

There's a chart in there that was part of the initial hybrid attribute announcement...along with some sample builds showing you what can get you where in terms of the real STHS attributes.

wtf I'm an AGM

LOS ANGELES--Stars players, coaches, and management, along with thousands of city residents, took to the streets openly sobbing Sunday night as VHL leadership announced its latest and most controversial decision to cap off a week of wild excitement in the sim league community. In a letter addressed to the team, league leadership declared the league's premier netminder, Art Vandelay, unfit for full service in S86, labeling his play an "unfair advantage" for LA and ordering him suspended for two games for reasons unclear to the hockey community at large. "I'm 5'6" and I have a beer gut," said Vandelay in an official press release Sunday night. "Obviously I'm not juicing, so what is it? We don't even have a trash can on the bench and I can't exactly deflate a puck." Though league decisions seem to be made WHOLLY ARBITRARILY and WITHOUT WARNING, and fans are left only to speculate, Stars media has wondered if the decision has come on the back of an entirely unfounded smear campaign launched this season by the @MubbleFubbles agency alleging "performance discrimination" on Vandelay's part in games against Chicago. This poster made an appearance on many Chicago streets--and on a known moderator's balcony--after a string of UTTERLY DOMINANT Vandelay performances against the team. Regardless of whether Vandelay saved his good performances for the Phoenix--a ridiculous notion in itself--the league has determined that Vandelay's sheer existence, and ability to play more than others without WIMPING OUT to someone whose name literally starts with a beta, is akin to cheating rather than godlike powers of puck-stopping, and ordered his usage to be decreased in the future, as a team with Vandelay is just too much of a work of art for certain members to comprehend. "It's communism, Jerry! Communism!" said Vandelay in a phone interview with former Malmo (and Davos!) defenseman Jerry Garcia this morning. "I don't come to practice, I don't shower, I don't talk to the media, and no one cares! But the second I do, they hate me, Jerry! I've even got an appearance in a coffee table book that the publisher is pulling back on!" Coffee table book or not, Vandelay's fans consider this just a temporary "delay" in his improvement as LA continues to rocket up the charts of power and respect, and the goaler himself will be ready to overcome said obstacle when the opportunity presents itself.

The huge boom-bust combined with the "no inactives" rule gave the Hounds just a couple players to work with at the start of the season. @a_Ferk wanted to sell, and because there was nothing else that could have been done to realistically put those players in a winning environment, we were fine with that--yes, the Hounds more or less ended up with a free pass for this season, but I personally would have considered it worse if we tried to make those players stick around in a place where they had no hope of winning. So yeah, it's not an ideal situation, but it wasn't Ferk's fault that he was hired into it and I'm excited to see what he can do next season with some assets to work with. I also agree that this is stupid. This is sensible IN THEORY but imagine if we got to the point where there were only a couple teams left who could legally sign a player under that rule. What happens if a handful of members join and even one of the GMs left over is at work? Should we just not let those players go anywhere when they could be signed--and potentially just let them disappear in that time? As much as we expect from our GMs, real life is a thing too and super strict guidelines are fundamentally flawed. I also don't think people who are good at signing players should effectively be punished for it. There will always be some who can pitch better and faster than others, and the fact that it's competitive is a good thing. That doesn't mean that things aren't on the way that will make the VHLM a more fair place and prevent things like these from happening in the future...while still keeping it competitive! The new limits we put on draft picks this past season will already do a lot to prevent teams from tanking hard, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Now, more than arguably ever, there are things lined up that should fundamentally change the VHLM for the better--and I couldn't be more excited to roll them out. We just have to make sure those things are truly ready to be implemented first, but when they are, watch out

Literally 1984

*Gustav noises* Achilles was deserved. I honestly think Ruutu (though not entirely undeserving of punishment, and maybe not with the best examples) made some decent points in the Thunderdome thread that blew up, and that did lead to an actual productive talk behind the scenes. I know that Rory was banned and I've caught wind of why in general, but I wasn't part of the final mod talk on that one and the ban post wasn't super specific, so I can't say fairly one way or another what I think of it. In general I have a lot of issues with the mod team, but I'll say that when it comes to actual, serious, permaban-worthy stuff I'm usually with them. I just can't stand things like petty punishments/micromanagement and that's what I tend to call out. Especially after this past week, TRIVIA. I remember when we didn't have trivia and people were on here like, "it's literally impossible to cap out now", which isn't even true. If you don't like trivia, do something else! In NA...Seattle again. Bana is just on another level most seasons. The EU might be a bit of a hot take, but I'm going with Prague. Acyd has shown that he's capable of running a team well, and they've got a lot of assets built up that could end up combining into something interesting. 1. What are your thoughts on forum drama in general? Entertaining, would rather not see it, healthy, bad for the league, etc.? 2. What's a song that's been wrecked for you, something you used to like but that you've now heard too many times or in an annoying context? 3. What's your most-complimented article of clothing?

I think I'm starting to understand why a lot of people tend to drop off in their own interest during the early stages of their career, and I'm not even talking about the VHLE--that doesn't help, but my argument also has nothing to do with it. Next week, I'll end up with over 700 TPE, and I'll finally start to be in the range of "good" players TPE-wise when the end of next season rolls around. That's not to say that it's impossible to be a good player at a lower TPE level, but it is to say that players usually have to be above 600-some to have a notable impact regardless of their team, and it's taken me about 6-ish months as a top earner to get to that point. Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't read a book if I knew it was going to take me half a year to finish, and I personally also wouldn't buy a video game if it was going to consistently beat me for that amount of time before I started to figure things out. Sure, I'd do something like, say, willingly enter a degree program and spend years of my life on something to earn a thing that will help me spend other years of my life on other things (on Round 2 now!), and I'd pick up another instrument to learn (depending on what you count and to what extent, we're talking Round 3-5), but that's because I'm doing things I care about and I know I have that motivation to keep going. In a world where 50-75% of college students change their major, is it really all that surprising that we see people entering our league and just deciding it isn't for them? I was able to stay in the first place--and I continue to do so--because I made connections with the community early on and our site became just as much a place to visit to see my friends as it was a place to watch my player consistently fail to put up numbers. I really think that's the secret, and there's no formula to it. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, and as long as we're all trying to make those connections happen, that's really all we can do. I could turn this into a whole "this is why the 'every single recreate doesn't belong in the VHLM' argument is stupid" article but it's Sunday, it's a .com article, and I have to be up early tomorrow. Draw the connection yourself.

Honestly I have an opinion, but not an extreme opinion, on the answer sharing stuff. I don't have a problem with it but if the league got together and decided to formally ban it I wouldn't blow up over that. Like you said, it would help if everyone were on the same page. The fact that it was decided somewhere along the way to make a rule, not announce it, and then start enforcing it as if we knew it were on the books is far more BS than any for/against sharing opinion. If that happens in one case and everyone is fine with it, what's stopping it from happening again in a more serious situation? I also feel somewhat obligated as someone with a decent league job to point out this stuff when it happens, because it might not be taken as seriously from someone less established (speaking generally in this case; I don't mean to say that Ricer is a lesser member than me or whatever). At the end of the day it is what it is and I'm glad the thread managed to get its point across.

You mean you don't constantly f5 the forums to read the latest in the "mods and bads" thread?

Never forget the glory days of the SH"V"L.

Bless you

I'm going to give you a bit of advice (not that I expect it to be taken, but please consider it). I have a lot of complaints about how the mod team does things. When I see things like this, it really annoys me because you're antagonizing people and crossing lines and acting like you're being crushed by the powers that be when you're even just respectfully asked to stop. The way Sam and Baozi dealt with you in this case is completely fair IMO. So please, do the rest of us a favor and stop causing issues--because the next time the mod team does do something shitty, I'd rather be able to complain about it without being told I'm doing exactly what you're doing here. Also lmao what? I'm sorry if you've been through some rough stuff but if you'd like to hold a grudge against literally half the world it's time to go outside and meet people.

Art Vandelay

Contrary to popular belief there are some mod-related arguments I generally prefer to stay out of.

When the thunderdome is finally being used for its intended purpose The part about this thread that bothers me the most is @jRuutu's choice of a font that makes the letter W look weirdly different from all the others.

Yes. ALSO YES. Thank you for understanding that both of these things can be true at once. There's this really weird rhetoric I've seen tossed around that anyone who has been in the league for longer than 5 seconds is somehow poison for anyone who hasn't. As much as the VHLM is meant to be a great space for our first-gen players, I LOVE it when someone recreates and puts in their own time and effort into making their team a better place, and that can really make some new kid feel welcome. It's not "stealing fun" from anybody, as long as you're nice. While it isn't true that the VHLM is officially a training place for new GMs, it's easier for a newer member to get a VHLM job than a VHL one, and a lot of people (unfortunately) will take a VHLM job with the goal of moving up. So functionally speaking, you're mostly right, though we don't like it that way.