Spartan

Main mentions are for @Seabass and @STZ, general appreciation and respect for both of you to have stuck with me for the better part of a year and a half. Hoping we can send you guys out on a good note this playoffs! Then some general discussion on the recent TDL recreate debate in the VHLM, starts at 13:05 for those who want to skip Moscow specific stuff

Why does this league have an issue with realizing that being friendly =/= being friends? People can be welcoming and available to assist, but no one in this league is going to reach out personally to every other member in the league. I say hello to people who join the Discord, but I would really hope that every one of those people isn't expecting me to constantly reach out to start conversations with them for the duration of their time in the VHL.

They're all coming out of the woodwork now ffs

To be fair I read it as soon as it was posted, so I did see the gist of it and almost replied to it too. That being said....

I can't

*she timed me out one hour. Because I went into her server and asked her to leave and joked about accusing her of sexual assault.

I believe we need a thread team: Nico Pearce - Ryan Vidot - Nils Godlander Nezuko - The Board Game Clue on Skates - Henri le Massif Biggie Cheese - Hard Markinson Callum Murray - Velociraptor Greg Brandt Fuhr David Davis

Critique who you want without breaking conduct rules, I'm just pointing out that you're getting frustrated about something that wasn't even directed to you. I also don't see how me being friendly with someone stops me from pointing out their mistakes. Just doing you a favor and saving you some energy so you can redirect back into productive criticism .

You do realize he wasn't even saying that to you.....right? I'm not sure why you're going off about a line that wasn't even directed to you. Pretty clearly aimed at Tate and not you. Baozi's comment to you was the second part underneath the quote of "mods are a click"

VAN 0-2 in games Nico doesn't record a point, damn. 2-0 when he does.

I spoke to Barzal yesterday, should be fairly soon. I hadn't made it clear to him that payouts can happen before playoffs end. Will be whenever he has time.

Well the difference is that VHLM and VHLE GM's will be applying for VHL GM positions, while VHLE and VHL GM's won't be applying for VHLM positions. For the majority interested in management, the goal is to get to the highest level of competition. In the M though, people are trying to get their first serious gig, or are in the phase of wanting to help new players. The majority of those applications are going to come from newer folks who have recently experienced the M and enjoyed it, or veterans who are coming back and want to get back into team management. Out of the hires under my tenure, Ferk, Moon and Shawn are veteran members (either second player or not first GM position) while Lemorse and Nurx are first-gens with no prior management experience. Perception is one thing, but there's more information behind it to consider.

It is absolutely not. We don't consider VHLM GM positions as "entry level" positions or training positions. VHLM GM is just as difficult as VHL GM'ing, and arguably even more difficult and time consuming due to the nature of the position and the responsibilities of the role. It just happens to be that a lot of people who are VHLM GM's also have a desire to GM at the VHL level, and getting hired to VHLM GM positions gives candidates the ability to display the consistency and responsibility to handle a VHL GM position. The rest of what you've covered seems to be fairly accurate as to the purpose of each league.

Anyways I'm going to bed, see you after the Steelers lose tomorrow

As I said, I understand being frustrated for losing. My history in this league should be enough of a resume, losing 4 VHL finals in a row. I don't think anyone needs to explain bitterness to me. What I'm not going to do, is rush into trying to ban something just because people are naturally upset that the team with recreates won. I mean, if you retire your player just to try and pick a different team that you hope will win a championship in the VHLM, I feel like your priorities are a bit misguided. You lose TPE, your draft class positioning, your first-gen perks of extra uncapped TPE, and tank your draft stock in the VHL/E. If we do start to see weird patterns like this to abuse the system, we'll likely implement rules to prevent it. Just also keep in mind that those users were at the end of their careers in the VHL, their time was up. Their old players would get auto-retired at the end of this season. Instead they retire early and join the brand new draft class, it's what happens every off-season. They can only go to the teams that offer them slots, and this is also the only time in their careers that they can try and coordinate who they play with. For example in S80 when I retired my old player and created Nico Pearce, I coordinated with McWolf and we both joined Halifax. We picked Halifax just because they were locked into a playoff spot and had spots for us to play together. They were nowhere near cup favorites and we didn't go far, but we got the most minutes there and had the chance to play extra games after the regular season, that's basically all that went into our decision. SSK's bot defenseman went -3, 6 human players went -3 or worse. I agree that you want to avoid playing bots on a roster but the bot doesn't seem to be the issue here either.. Also I only saw three players, the McFleury's, coordinate to play together. Saskatoon didn't even offer on the third defenseman Reinhard von Konming or the forward George Constanza. However, I know Kylrad and Nyko are friends and Nyko is an advisor for Mexico City. So there was some sway there for sure, but all 6 recreates certainly didn't coordinate with each other. I'd say that the three McFleury's chose to play with each other and RvK joined Mexico City because of the connection with management. If Saskatoon didn't even offer, they didn't get robbed of those players. You're saying that you don't care about what I'm explaining and then say we're against you. How is this helping anyone? I can't just call the current recreate system a problem because a couple people have said "I don't like that the team won" while ignoring the explanations being given of how the recreates didn't seem to sway the outcome.

I'm all for working to solve problems if they are proven to be problems. I'm not sold that the trade deadline recreates are one in this case, and I'll elaborate on that. But don't let this seem like I don't care about the concern, I just want to make sure that we're identifying issues properly. I presume this is referring to the idea that Mexico City is considered "too strong" because of the recreates planning to join the team. First of all, I am sorry that you guys got swept. That itself is never a good feeling at all and I get the frustration that comes from it. Looking at Mexico City's roster, I spot 6 S87 recreates, which is a fairly large number to all be on one team. Looking at the index, at Mexico City's scoring, this is how much each recreate scored: (Formatted at Goals - Assists - Points) Reinhard von Konmeig - (1-2-3) George Costanza - (1-1-2) Oreo McFleury - (2-0-2) Randy Bobandy - (0-2-2) Reese McFleury - (0-1-1) Skor McFleury - (0-0-0) So that's a total of 4 goals, 6 assists and 10 points between 6 players. Mexico City as a whole team had 15 goals, 29 assists and 44 points. The 6 recreates out of the 16 skaters on the team had 22.72% of the points. It's a decent chunk but I don't think it's the reason you guys lost. I'll admit I was shocked when I looked at Saskatoon's points for a similar point production breakdown to see that as a team, you guys had 3 goals, 6 assists and 9 points. Then I realized that Mexico City's goalie stood on his head and put up a 0.969 SV% with a GAA of 0.75. That is genuinely MVP level performance. Mexico City didn't need to dunk on you guys point-wise, and they didn't even need the recreates to do so. The goalie just shut you guys out while SSK's goalie did not fare nearly as well with a 0.887 SV%. and 3.75 GAA. My initial thoughts after just looking at the rosters and the stats from this series is that it was just one team's goalie playing lights out while the other ones didn't play well at all. Add in the fact that two players in the regular season top 10 for goals, The Mediocre One and Nikolas Kauppi (both first-gens) combined for 7 goals and 13 points. Those two alone produced more than the entire SSK roster. I get that seeing a team fill up with recreates is frustrating but the stat sheet shows their impact was fairly low. The series was just decided by goaltending in my opinion. Feel free to ask questions or point out anything I may have missed. TDL recreate signing has been a hot topic issue in the M for a long time, even before I was an M GM in the early S70's so this isn't new. It's just never gone to the point where rules to restrict their signings are needed.

Clearly we're the best

I don't care, but don't get mad when 1. I forget where I saved the login info or 2. am no longer a commissioner and forget to pass it on Edit to add: I have no intentions of making one for Moscow

We have had discussions with the trivia head that questions that take an excessive amount of effort to figure out shouldn't be included. So hopefully we can eliminate those exceptions you refer to since everyone, except maybe the absolute history nerds, would like to see those gone as well. I'd hope people don't really undersell a point task as too easy, because the intent is to have reviewing, game recaps and trivia to be interchangeable. All three should be similar levels of effort otherwise the tasks become redundant. All of this though, there shouldn't be any issue at all with people receiving assistance from their teammates and GM's/AGM's or even folks in the main discord in the trivia challenge. Should be encouraged even since it means those newer folks are building up lines of communication with others in the league, and then also slowly learning to navigate the forum as well. But really at the end of the day it's just another 1 TPE task. Do whichever one you please.

Let's just be clear that it was difficult for you because as you mentioned, you weren't using the resources available (forums/portal) to find the answers, we don't expect many folks to know the answers off the top of their head. You can also still ask people for help on where to look for these answers.

You realize that answer sharing will get you punished right? Feel free to help people if they need it, just point them in the right direction instead of handing out the answers.

1. I think it was the right call. We had a plan from the beginning of the season to play through the veterans on the team to allow the rookies and sophomores to develop over the course of the season and continue to improve. We're holding the course and it's been going according to plan for the most part. 2. I don't know how it would have worked, but it'd have been nice to acquire Florida Man from Helsinki. We don't have space for him, but I had a great time playing alongside him last season and wish he could get out of Helsinki soon. 3. Frankly I don't think Davos upgraded here outside the contract situation with the goalies. If they liked Booberry more than Davis, then fine, can't blame them for it. But to trade a strong prospect and some picks for a goalie who is signed longer just shows a lack of faith in the organization's ability to keep their stars happy and signed. 4. I'd probably say Helsinki again since Johnson and Tottingham are pretty solid players, and a 2nd is great as well. Burns hasn't played to his potential quite yet and Voss is a solid player, but he is also a pending UFA. I don't think Malmo is ready to be making a push for the cup so the move surprised me. 5. Well he seemed to hold his own for the most part which is pleasant. Just glad we're still winning games and trying to get the best seeding possible for the playoffs. 6. $7.50?

I'm sorry that you feel this way, and I hope that something can change over the rest of the season to improve your perspective of your time in the VHLM. We long knew that Ottawa's old GM was well-liked by the team and that the LR environment was pretty strong. It just goes to show how wide-reaching poor decisions can be, and how many people it can negatively impact. In the meantime, I'm sure Moon and Jason will try their best to get up to speed and try to give you guys the best experience possible for the remaining games you have left!