Beketov

I may have had a few too many Guinness...

1. Dump Moon 2. Acquire Holik 3. Profit

We're back on that Camo grind in Infinite Warfare, trying to play with a miserable excuse for a shotgun. Didn't get enough questions this week for a regular CoDCast so I decided to do something a little different and give my basic review of all the suggestions that the league received this week. That means I discuss things from @STZ, @boubabi, @gorlab, @BOOM, @hedgehog337, @HFD, @punkhippie, @Green, @Kendrick, @Smarch, and @ThePenultimateOlympian06 (wtf with the name change?) as well as quickly touching on my own suggestion. I hope you enjoy this slightly weird episode. *For Holik

Hit me up! @eaglesfan036 @The Bread Man @der meister @Phil @tfong @Molholt @Banackock @gorlab @JardyB10 @evrydayimbyfuglien @Jericho @DollarAndADream @Kendrick @mpclardy @hedgehog337 @Devise @Smarch @Will @Streetlite @Green

If I've ever got a free night I'll totally fire up Jackbox and have a VHL stream, could be fun. On a less Twitch gaming related note we could also stream live podcasts to YouTube which could be great for viewer interaction.

Definitely could have them embedded here (I believe we tested this and you need to allow HTML access or something though) to generate some hype from people already on the site. As far as how streaming goes, it's pretty simple. All you really need is a computer and a mic, a webcam helps, and something that will interest people. It takes a bit to build a following and there are obviously ways to increase the quality (that I'd be more than willing to discuss with people) but I think it's a market we haven't tapped that's worth looking into. I do wonder if @boubabi has any experience in making stream overlays? Perhaps if we hired a crew of people with the time to stream frequently (I'd love to do it just not sure how often I could claim it since I can't stream much) and built some matching overlays and stuff we could start things on the right foot quality wise. What kind of things would you want to know about it though since you say you don't know much? I don't have much of a following but I've done it before so I can probably answer most stuff.

That's a discussion that belongs in a completely different section than a trade.

Molholt wasn't a defenseman. I'm also pretty sure he wasn't the only player on the roster haha

20 from Achievement Tracker, 1 per week from the weekly camp (which I haven't bothered doing I'll admit) and whatever you can get from VHLM fantasy. Would probably even out to around 30 TPE for most people. It's not a lot but it's more than I'd get being up (and I'm still earning the same amount myself, I just can't add it in yet) and I'm getting basically the same amount done since the team sucks in the VHL anyway. Some people would rather not waste the year. I look at it as the year is a wash anyway because of where the team is so I'll take the free TPE.

Makes no difference, it's capped at 20 and points gets me 15 so anything above 5 gets me the max anyway (+/- gets me 6). I could change it but it makes no difference anyway. Wat I meant was that I haven't been posting much for the free 1 TPE per week which isn't a lot but it's free.

The auto-retirement starts as soon as you're drafted regardless of when you play your first game. You can earn the achievement tracker more than once though, you just can't if you join partway through the season and are eligible for the next draft (S55 players this year). In my case, for example, instead of going up to Toronto to lose all year I decided it was better to stay down and get the bonus TPE that comes from the VHLM (though I haven't been the best at doing so). Sure, I lose a year of my career but the year was going to be more or less wasted anyway with how deep in a rebuild we are so why kill my stats for it?

Precisely. If we wanted to get people moving to rebuilding teams we would actually want the opposite, a minor boost to TPE or attributes for going to a rebuilding franchise. It becomes complicated at that point though to define what a rebuilding franchise actually means. Plus it could just be a way for people to get a quick boost and then be traded to a competing team. Opens up a lot of possible loopholes.

Not fishy at all, I have the same thing. The way the VHLM operates for players already drafted (thus the S53 class) is that at the start of the season you cannot be above 175 TPE + 25 TPE banked. Also, at no point during the season can you update past 175 TPE or you are auto-called up. You can bank as much as you want during the season so long as you don't actually apply any of it and you were beneath that threshold to start the season. For example, I was at 173 TPE at the start of the VHLM season. I used 2 TPE more after the cutouff date to get me to 175. At that point I stopped using any of my earned TPE and started banking it instead. I can bank as much as I want so long as I don't actually apply any of it. No one with more than 175 TPE applied can stay in the VHLM but as long as the TPE after that point is banked you can stay down.

Roman Sokolov Defenseman Points Goals

There was a lot of almost legal sound mumbo jumbo in the middle there so let me make sure I understand your suggestion: You're proposing a depreciation like effect (I assume much smaller scale) to players that move teams each season? If I'm reading that right I have a few initial worries with it. First off, you include trades in there which isn't necessarily fair. Often times players don't ask to be traded, they are simply included in deals. Should they be punished by having their stats take a hit because their GM decided to go a different direction? Same with stuff like call-ups that really aren't up to the player at all. The only way this works, IMO, is Free Agency. The second main issue I have is that it could actively punish teams in a way. Yes, you would want players sticking it out to not get their attributes dinged but that also makes it MUCH harder to rebuild at all. The VHL is naturally in a constant cycle of teams competing and then rebuilding. If you limit their ability to sell off players for assets (by incentivizing their players to want to stay) then you effectively make those rebuilds last even longer while having the teams with the top players keep them. I think a better way to fix this problem would be to offer the players more incentive to go to rebuilding teams rather than stay on the teams they occupy; whether they are rebuilding or not.

That could be a good way to do it. We definitely need something I think since most teams are either right at the floor (no issue) or butting up against the cap already. Without any kind of increase we end up with all the goalies coming into the market going to teams that are rebuilding which may not be great for their activity levels that will already be iffy enough being backups. This credit gives enough cap space for the teams to bring actual backups in but doesn't open up the possibility for teams to keep 1 starter and load up their roster even more with extra cap space.

As of right now I have not re-signed in Seattle but I am considering all potential options. I want to be with a team that needs a solid starting goalie and plans to try and compete. If that happens to be Seattle I'll re-sign. If it happens to be someone else then we shall see.

I've brought this up before and it garnered some interest but never went anywhere so I'll bring it up again with a little more thought to it. We've tapped many different social media markets for recruiting before. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, we've been to all of them. What we haven't touched is Twitch (or YouTube Gaming but Twitch is bigger). Effectively the VHL is a game, more social and less "video" than most people are used to these days but still effectively a game. So we should be marketing ourselves to sites that cater to gamers. Twitch is probably the largest of that. If we were to have people in the VHL who's job it was to be streamers for the site (pay being their PT for the week and maybe a little extra as long as they stream x amount of hours) we could potentially find a lot of interested people. Obvious game choices are things like the NHL game but basically anything can have a following. All it would really take is to have the site address as part of an overlay (which our GFX community could easily design) and VHL in the channel name. In essence we could create a "streaming team" which is a thing a lot of e-sports companies (even smaller ones, on basically any major game) have. We wouldn't necessarily be telling the chat "hey, go to this site" but it's there anyway and if anyone asks then it's easy for a streamer to interact with the chat and explain. As an added bonus, any donations that happen to be made (wouldn't be much but it's definitely something people do) could go straight back to the league. Streaming from console fully is tricky hardware wise but the XB1 and PS4 both have capabilities built in (which can do the job) and streaming PC games is as simple as having good internet and a free program. Hell it doesn't even have to be games. People like Boubabi and myself have already done live sigs and the art community is potentially there as well. It might not be the largest market in the world but there are a lot of potential members on services like twitch that we are more or less ignoring. I think with the proper push we could potentially bring them in.

I'd have to test to see if the delay would be an issue but I could probably play Jackbox Party Pack on Stream. Only I'd need a copy of the game (which i already have) since viewers (you guys) just join in and play on their phones.

I like the concept of making up donations for those that don't have the funds to donate but I don't like the logic of simply posting to do it. The concept is good in theory but just encourages too much random spam which doesn't help anything. I could go into the locker room and post the entirety of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone 1 word at a time to get 76 944 posts which would be worth quite a hefty amount of free stuff I would imagine but not contribute to the league in any way. In a more realistic example, it would basically be free stuff for updaters (and review staff in a way) who post easily hundreds of times just doing their job every week.

NYA NYA HEL COL

I think at one point we had a locker room for all the VHLM guys at once but I could be wrong. We probably removed it to try and promote them being more active on the actual board but it's definitely Italy something that would be relatively easy to add I would think.

I get by. to be fair I was never banned from the site for a season and I was never AWARDED a season without PT's, rather punished with it, so I wouldn't say I got both in one go.

I'd be okay with this. Could have potentially saved us members like you or Dwyer so I think it's something worth looking into. Obviously no TPE earning (or banking) but you don't lose any career length and making it only available to FA's means that it doesn't complicate rosters. Maybe because of the "vacation" you lose half your banked money (coke and hookers don't come cheap) and maybe like a minor version of depreciation (say 2-3% maybe?) just for the time away from the rink making you a little out of shape. Obvjously consistency should be rewarded but if we can save even a few members by letting them take a break then I don't see the harm.

Hardy har har...