Beketov

I took a couple of weeks off of ranting because I was simming the WJC and didn't need the points but I'm back now with more old man ranting! Back in my day we had diversity in our builds. Some guys were 2 way forwards, some were assist specialists, some were shutdown D-men, etc. Now, this is probably because none of us, save Scotty, had any lick of a clue as to what we were doing when it came to how STHS functioned. Basically no one had read the manual and the guide that now exists in basically every locker room to instruct where to spend your points wasn't floating around yet. So what happened? Well, I was thinking about it yesterday when discussing diversity with @Beaviss. Ultimately I think we just all kinda learned what does and does not work in the sim engine. For example, @Will's last player John Locke proved you can be a hell of a scorer without wasting any points on passing. Someone before that (Boubabi maybe) realized that spending on Defense, even as a forward, makes you score more for reasons that don't tally make sense. Even before that we realized that skating is kinda essential, as is puck handling. So where has this all led us? Well unfortunately it has led us to a place where all builds are basically the same. only real difference being centres put points into Faceoff while wingers usually put it into checking. Everyone goes for max scoring, Puck Handling, Skating, and Defense (or at least to 90) as those have the biggest impacts. Just look at the top players, you'll see this build everywhere. So, has this made us better or worse as a league? Hard to say. It's nice that we have kinda figured out the system but also worse because now everyone is basically the same which makes things more random and more boring. So how would we change it? Hard to say. Some say lowering our ratings might do it. Others say that we would need to use a different version of the sim. I think probably a combination but I'm not here to give solutions, I'm here to rant. So yeah, discuss. Does it suck that the concept of builds has kinda gone down the toilet or is it cool that we all kinda learned how to game the game? You decide.

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Remind me to send you the original version sometime that had this, it looked awful haha. I am hoping to keep improving on it bit by bit but made did we ever need to get the logo out. I already messed with the colours and added some details on the front that the designer hadn't done.

Matt Thompson, of Vancouver, British Columbia, was born to score. In his youth, Matt's father had joked that he had been born with a hockey stick already clutched in his tiny hand. Clearly this was false but it did nothing to dissuade the youth from pursuing hockey as a passion. Some would even call it a calling in his early days. Matt's first time on skates was when he was 2 years old on a frozen pond behind the home of his grandmother. She had bought him a skating guide to follow around before realizing the toddler found the guide completely unnecessary; a hindrance if anything. It was quickly tossed aside in favour of a hockey stick. Matt's mother insisted on the stick for balance but the youngster had plenty of balance on his own and was a natural on skates without any assistance necessary. This child was born to play and his family recognized it immediately, but would his abilities translate to proper training? There are certainly worse places to grow up playing. Minor Hockey Thompson's minor hockey career started as most would assume given his inherent abilities on the ice. At the age of 5 he was enrolled in tyke level minor hockey with boys his own age to learn the game; ultimately that knowledge seemed to be in his bones. His tyke level counterparts couldn't hold a candle to his speed or stick handling abilities and teammates quickly learned that if they wanted to win it was best to get Matt the puck; even if that was less fun for themselves. This posed a problem for his coaches. Tyke level is for fun, not for competing, and ultimately Matt was simply too good for the other kids to handle. He played only 1 year at the level before being pushed ahead to Novice level at age 6 after scoring 216 points in only 42 games. Catching Matt would prove difficult early on. In novice the challenge was still not present for Matt. His opponents may have been bigger but he was ultimately still faster and getting the puck off his stick proved impossible or most. Matt took pride in his abilities to destroy opponents, refusing to slow down even when he had already scored more than enough times to humiliate the other team. Once again, coaches were not pleased and he spent only 2 years in the level; moving up to Atom level at age 8 to play against 10 year olds. Atom, Peewee, and Bantom would all follow the same trend in the years to come. Regardless of who was placed against Matt, be it on defense or in net, they were no competition. He quickly earned the nickname “Tommy Gun” because of his ability to mow down the opposition without slowing down. He would ultimately spend 2 years in each of these higher levels, amassing a total of 1890 points in 378 games over 9 years in minor hockey before moving onto Midget AAA level at only 15. Midget AAA would prove to be a small amount for difficult for Thompson playing against 17 and 18 year olds who were far larger and stronger than the opponents he had previously played against. His production with the Fraser Valley Thunderbirds would be lower than usual with 132 points in 42 games but that would still prove to be more than enough to garner the attention of WHL scouts. Major Junior Hockey At 16 years of age Matt Thompson was drafted in the first round of the WHL draft by the Medicine Hat Tigers and found himself in a level of competition that he had never before seen. Hits were hard, skaters were fast, goalies were faster still. Shifts were short and opportunities for big plays were few and far between. Matt was young on a veteran team by WHL standards. No one was expecting a spectacular season out of him but he did perform respectfully averaging just over a point per game during the regular season and playing in all but 2 games. This pace would continue over the course of 2 years with the Tigers, though not leading the team to the playoffs in either year unfortunately. Times were tough for the Tigers but for Matt, worse was yet to come. In Matt's third season, at the age of 18, that would all change. His scoring levels improved slightly, as did that of his teammates, and the Tigers roared into the playoffs in third place and found themselves performing quite well leading to a birth in the WHL Finals. Thompson's playoff performance, however, was less than stellar, scoring only 4 times in the opening three rounds. In an effort to push himself for better and lead his team to a Memorial cup berth, Thompson fought harder than ever, leading ultimately to disaster for the young Thompson during this final playoff round. In game 6 with the Tigers on the brink of losing the championship Matt went knee on knee with an opposing player in the neutral zone and knew something was wrong immediately. He couldn't stand to get off the ice and had to hear the final score, a Tigers loss, from the back of an ambulance. Injured and Out? The prognosis for Matt's knee was not promising to say the least. Kneecap shattered, ligaments torn. After months of training he could walk again but skating was excruciating. As the notes from doctors kept getting worse, the notes from NHL scouts started to dry up. Where once he had interest from 16 NHL teams, less than 4 continued contacting Thompson through the summer. By the time the NHL draft rolled around the 18 year old didn't have much hope and decided to stay home rather than make the trip to the draft floor: a wise choice given that no team took a shot on him. It was a long summer for the teen. Hockey had been his entire life. He had no other aspirations, no other hopes or dreams. No other options at all; or so it seemed. Whilst browsing for different careers Matt stumbled upon the VHLM; a minor league for the VHL. It wasn't the NHL for sure but the VHLM allowed players to sign to any team that would take them on for partial seasons before being drafted. What did he have to lose? He quickly applied and was offered a position on the Yukon Rushes' fourth line. Not the minutes he was used to for sure but they were a strong team looking toward a deep playoff push to Thompson happily accepted. Thompson Rushed at the opportunity VHLM That strong playoff push did in fact come. Thompson, unfortunately, was still strengthening his knee with low minutes and thus didn't score until late in the playoffs (and not at all in his 20 regular season games) but it was no matter. The Rush walked away with the championship and Thompson walked into the VHLM draft with a stronger knee and a ring on his finger. There was no waiting around for his name this time. Thompson was picked up 7th overall by the Ottawa Lynx and was tasked with leading a young team with high hopes but low expectations. Many doubted the team could pull off any kind of upset, especially with the Saskatoon Wild being stacked in that particular year. Not stepping back from the challenge the Lynx fought hard all season and Thompson ultimately finished just below a point per game with 35 goals and 28 assists for 63 points. In the playoffs the Lynx surprised everyone and made it all the way to game 7 of the Founder's Cup final against the Saskatoon Wild. Unfortunately their luck would finally run out as the Wild would ultimately win game 7 by 1 goal. Thompson finished the playoffs with 10 points in 13 games and set his sights upon the VHL. The Lynx were left to watch another team celebrate but Thompson was far from done. VHL With his knee healed, ultimately proving all his doubters wrong, Thompson entered the Season 61 VHL entry draft. If he had been surprised by the short wait in the VHLM, the VHL draft downright floored the forward as he was selected first overall by the Seattle Bears. Thompson (Centre), Gate (Right), and Cast (Left): the top three picks in the S61 Entry Draft. While exciting to be drafted so early, this did present one challenge: a rebuilding team. Thus far in his VHL career Thompson had played on contending teams and was not used to being relied on so heavily. He had a respectful rookie season, finishing 4th in rookie scoring with 56 points in 72 games but an abysmal -69 and only 101 hits; not great numbers for someone who was going to be needed on both ends of the ice. Heading into his sophomore season Thompson vowed to bring back the abilities he knew he had but also play a better defensive game than he ever had before. The 20 year old hit the gym hard and bulked up to make sure that his defensive game was up to snuff with how offensive he planned on being. Thus far, it seems to have been successful. Though a scoring title seems unlikely with the pace of one Podrick Cast, Thompson currently sits second in league scoring with 140 points in 67 games; well over double his production from season 61. He has also played much better defensively sitting at +36 and 259 hits as of now. Awards are not yet prepared but in all likelihood Thompson will be bringing home the Funk award for Most Improved if nothing else; though his sights remain set on a ring with the Bears looking to make the playoffs. With 6 full seasons left in the VHL it's anyone's guess for sure how Matt “Tommy Gun” Thompson's career will pan out. What teams may he choose to play on? Will he win any awards or cups? Will he one day grace the Hall of Fame? All of this remains uncertain but for now the young player from Vancouver is doing everything in his power to make sure that Seattle did not make a mistake in drafting him as all the NHL teams did in not picking him up.

I realize I cam off a bit harsh. As a Halgonian I have a bit too much pride in our history to have it seem like that was supposed to be the bluenose haha

This is false. The logo is designed to represent an old Steam ship that immigrants arriving at Pier 21 would have been on. The Bluenose is unrelated.

Fuck Toronto and Vancouver, come hang out in NS with the blue team. Maybe your allure could bring @Will to the big city haha

What you didn’t consider when bashing Smirnov and I for +/- is that we both play on 3/4 lines. So basically every goal against we’re on the ice for. By comparison, Cast, Preencarnacion, and Canmore all play on 2/4 lines. Not gonna lie, kinda burns to be the only player that stands a chance of passing Cast in goals and to just be bashed for my +/- without really any other notes. Oh well, you are driving when you do these so I can’t expect you to have all the numbers in front of you. And like you said my page wouldn’t load for whatever reason. Also, making the cap easier to allow superstar teams wouldn’t exactly fix the problem of too few teams competing. If we stack the best players on one team we just get one stronger team. The hometown bonus thing is interesting though. Also, 3 rebuilding out of 8. Not sure why you kept saying 7?

Just a note from this point onward: This special PT is now closed to anyone that does not qualify under the previous rules of having completed a PT last week before this went up. If you have made a claim already but not done your PT you may do so his week but no further claims will be accepted and any further PT’s done will not receive bonus TPE.

Player Name: Matt Thompson VHL Team: Seattle Bears Cash you have: $12M Purchase Name: Two Attribute Points Cost of Purchase: $5M Cash Left: $7M Please note I'm capable of adding this to my own player in the portal (since it needs to be done manually) so I shall do so. I'll add an update of 0 TPE to keep a record.

Reading this I can’t help but feel like my push for builder was far too early, now my article is woefully far behind in what’s actually been done. Oh well haha. Maybe one day when we’re caught up on HOF articles we’ll start updating some builder ones with recent stuff. Also, for what it’s worth, the portal was a brainchild combo of @Devise, @Will, and I. Devise originally came up with the concept of having everything on the site be automated and done more in the sense of a game where you can add points and mess with your player and such on an easy level. I designed a basic concept to go along with this and added news and game stats and stuff of the sort; expecting them to just link back to the index mostly. Will took that concept and has run with it adding more than we initially thought up and then some. I stand by what I said prior to release: the player management update was the single largest change the VHL has seen in 11 years and we aren’t stopping.

You can’t compare our sim to an NHL sim though, they are apples and oranges. NHL things are set in stone based off the players, they aren’t fluid. It’s easy to balance out builds when you can set them however you’d like. Ours are every changing, they are fluid. Even if, and that’s a big if, the meta shifted at all it would be temporary because eventually everyone gets better. Doesn’t matter where we start, we all improve over 8 seasons and if you want your player to improve with you it’s likely you end up in the same builds. Something like a proper 2 way forward or shut down D doesn’t happen much because we don’t have the stats to back them up at all. I’m not saying I don’t understand your viewpoint, I’m saying that realistically everyone will get to the same place anyway. At most your delaying the inevitable which is fine in theory but in practice it means a scale so harsh that people don’t feel rewarded for their work. If I’m putting in a full capped week and can’t get even a point for it does that really feel rewarding? That’s the kind of scale we’d need if you want to stop people maxing stats. As it stands our scale already takes 185 TPA to max a single stat; 15 and a half weeks of only working on 1 attribute to max. And no, just removing the 50-60 wouldn’t fix that problem. Any scale under 70 means a scale is required if you plan to add your starting 30 all to one place. Unless we set our starting stats lower anyway.

My problem with that has always been and will always be that it’ll confuse new members early. If you pump all your starting TPE into 1 stat you should be able to get it there without touching the update scale. Think about it this way. If you’re completely green coming in here and just want to make a scorer you’re going to put your starting TPE all in scoring. Right now that’s fine. With that scale you suddenly see that you didn’t get 30 points in scoring, instead you got only 20. That’s off-putting to people who don’t understand what’s happening. And again, we would still need to test to see if this would even change anything. Like I said, it would be applied to everyone so if everyone is shifted the same amount the likelihood is that nothing will change. Plus there’s the fact that as much as we want build diversity, we aren’t likely to ever get it without actual archetypes and limitations. We know how STHS functions, we know how to make good players. There’s very little incentive to work outside of the confines of what works.

Why do you think you should be able to contribute to 1 stat your entire career? Honestly 99 scoring doesn’t even mean much on its own. Without high luck handling, skating, and defense it’s worthless. As for the rest, I don’t think 99 breaks the algorithm as is but it does mess with it a lot with later versions which is likely what that GM league uses. When we’ve tried V2 it was a shitshow because of our high stats but they run fine in V1.

Not an actual review, just a comment. Jersey changes can be tricky. This is done relatively well, mostly because it was a face on shot which helps a lot. It does look like you added a drop shadow, try to avoid that. It adds weird shadows behind the logo that wouldn’t naturally be there. The contrast also doesn’t match up which isn’t help. Notice how the black on his sleeves is black but the black in the logo is more grey? In a real photo those levels would match so watch out for it. Honestly though for the first time changing a logo I’ve seen worse.

It would definitely require a reset of the record books as we’ve been running this way for so long but I’ve never been opposed to that. I just don’t know how much harsher we can make the update scale before it gets ridiculous. To get the last 4 points it already takes 3.5 full capped weeks. It would require some testing for sure to even see how much it would reaslitically do. For example the VHLM still clearly as it’s god tier players compared to everyone else and they have those lower stats so is scaling that up going to do anything? I guess it all comes down to the meta right. Theoretically NHL players cap out in stats around 80 whereas we constantly have people at 99 but that’s just where our meta sits. If we shift everything so that players basically can’t hit 90 without it being ridiculous that will justify become the new meta and everyone will be the same once again. I guess my point is that if everyone is reduced, effectively no one is reduced. Ultimately the bigger issue I think is that the scoring algorithm in STHS can be rather broken to say the least. I have 95 scoring and 40 passing yet more assists than goals by a decent margin. We figured out a couple player generations back more or less the exact stats that are relevant to make a good player. If we can get those stats to 99 or 80 it won’t really matter because everyone still knows what they are. I’m not sure if the algorithm in V2 or V3 is any better but they have their own problems. Mind you, those problems might be alleviated with stats being lower. Its worth testing if I have the time but as it stands, with our current version, I don’t believe it would change much to have lower stats because everyone would be lower. Would likely just create less separation between the good and the great.

I’ve never understood the want for randomness. As for lower stats, it’s true but aside from making a ridiculous update scale or starting everything at 0 or something people will inevitably get high numbers. I already have several at 90 and 1 at 95 in my 2nd season.

TPE has a tendency to mean more at lower amounts. The difference between 100 and 200 is substantial but once you’re talking 500 and 600 or 900 and 1000 it’s more or less inconsequential.

Welcome to my world 2 seasons ago when I was capped every week and @street was still staying ahead of me haha. Uncapped opportunities (and luck within them) go a long way.

No mistake on my first VHLM season. I signed with a stacked team to win a cup and played mediocre minutes and terribly at that.

I have now officially doubled my production from last season in every stat except Shots Blocked. Couple more games like this and maybe I’d be able to catch up in the race for the Brooks, though I don’t expect to.

There is a very realistic chance of the entire first round being over 200 TPE, they are already all over 150. I don’t think we have ever seen this before, it’s a little frightening. Clearly we’re handing out too much free TPE these days. Back in my day we had to earn it! And walk 5 miles in the snow to school, up hill both ways... what was I talking about.