jacobcarson877

One more season winding down, and one more final build almost accomplished, at least the depreciable part! This season Woods gave way, and didn’t put up much of a fight when Bocage wanted to be the top dog. It was only fair that the one who started it all would be the one to lead the way for the time being. So for Woods, as much as it has been about offense, it has been a lot more about ensuring positive impact, and reducing negative impact. She’s playing much more boring hockey, but this season isn’t about winning 7-5, it’s about winning 3-2. There’s definitely still some work to be done on that front after some major fumbles against other contenders this week, but it has overall been much better than last season in close games. Still hoping to chase down some modern D-scoring records, and a point per game season is still a helpful campaign in that pursuit, but after some final rounding out of the accessory attributes, it’ll be time to just lock in and trust the process.

The list kept going on and I kept not seeing London's and I was sweating trying to remember what pick I fumbled, and then it ended up being Dil's the whole time!

yeah I can't do swaps in season you'll have to go above my head

Hope you have significantly better luck than I do!

It’s been a while since I manifestoed so I feel like we’re due for another one. Ironically, the last one was also for a Theme Week, so this feels fitting. Last time I talked about the leagues, the league structures, and how the JST, VHLM, VHLE, VHL and International play could all work together to create one big cohesive experience. A lot has changed since then, with the JST struggling to find the players to warrant a tournament, some changes I haven’t gotten to experience in the World Juniors, and well, the complete and utter destruction of the VHLE. I’m not thrilled about how it all turned out, and I know I certainly wanted to feel better about it. I leapt for a VHLM role, and honestly beyond the first couple weeks, there hasn’t been a ton to do. I swap my wonderful goaltenders to roughly split them starts, sign a few random Free Agents coming back from Inactivity, remind my players to earn and give them enough build advice to let them run for a few weeks, and then rinse and repeat. Recruitment seems to have some morale again, at the very least, and while I’m not going to be hopping on Reddit as a platform, it is ironically the place I found the VHL. I can’t even remember what I was looking for, but I must’ve just come across it looking something else up. But Reddit always brought in great members and I’d love to see that as a real avenue again. So what am I going to manifesto about this time? Well, it’s not going to be as dramatic and out there as the last one, even though I’d still love to see a world where those measure were put in place. This time we’re going to be talking about league parity, particularly when it comes to Trading, the Draft, and the Salary Cap. THE STATE OF AFFAIRS If we look at the last chunk of seasons, there are some noticeable trends. Teams that rebuild when they have assets, retain more value and have shorter rebuilds. Teams that don’t, can very easily get caught in essentially endless rebuilds. Asset-rich teams can worm their way into getting essentially whatever they want. They hold all the cards, and with the bankrupt teams rotating managers, core players, and losing just about everything, just about every season, there really is no simple solution to a few teams’ plights. There are a couple classes of Draft Picks. The picks between 1 and 3-8, depending on the “depth” of the class are all essentially the same value. Maybe some positional shenanigans, some personal bonds, or returning vs. first generation considerations. Then there are the “rest of the first round” plus maybe 5 more, that make up the Welfare+ to Consistent Welfare group. Finally, in all honesty, there are the rest. We could have a 1 round draft and have about as much drama as we do now. There are certain thresholds well within the bounds of top-earning builds, where progress is meaningless, but also without risk. It’s a tradeoff, but there’s nothing to gain, and nothing to lose. It’s like the game is missing its final level. The league is lopsided, and really there’s no incentive to not be the best or worst team in the league. There’s no incentive as a player to stick through the process with a worse team, and there’s very minimal chance that a team is even going to retain enough talent to get out of the hole. Losing sucks, losing is exhausting, and losing is long, hard, and slow. So teams will sit, in mediocrity with nothing to do but wait and hope. Players will waste half of their careers and then jump ship. GMs will burn out and have literally nothing to do. So in general: Sustained competitiveness should always be a risk and should always result in talent trickling down the pyramid. Every season, every game, should be one where the players and the GMs have every reason to want to win. Non-playoff teams should be given a boost, in a meaningful, and long-term way, such that they are able to get out of the rut, and back into the cycle. Top players should cost a pretty penny, but also be worth the investment, whereas lower TPA players shouldn’t be worthless, and should have a clear path to relevancy. THE SALARY CAP The Salary Cap is 44 million. It was raised to that number to help make sure players got onto teams. It was an emergency measure, during an emergency time. We’re certainly not in an overabundance of VHL players anymore. So simple things first, the VHL Salary Cap needs to drop at least 2, if not 4 million. For some teams, that won’t affect them at all. Maybe we won’t see every player getting a huge bonus on a few teams. Maybe, each team will actually carry a decent, active player. Ideally a couple! While that was the meat of this section, there are some other considerations when it comes to the Salary Cap. First is how teams actually spend their Cap Space. Many teams will pick up a couple strong Duos, or perhaps a strong Trio, and maximize their output by throwing them with the cheapest players they can afford to in-game, and as good as they can afford in-cap. While I was in London, defenders were easy cap to shed, and you could do a ton of damage with 600-800TPA defenders, and some beefy forwards. But, back then you needed a HOF-calibre goaltender if you wanted to go the distance. And a couple HOF-calibre goaltenders would note that you couldn’t get very far very often with that top goaltender and a couple of great defenders and that’s it. But the roster construction meta has changed a bit, and now instead of 4F and a G, as your top players, it’s more of a 3F 2D, or 4F, 1D kind of a meta. Goaltenders are out, as the return on investment after about 700TPA isn’t worth the cap space, and goaltender builds essentially cap out around that point too. And when it comes to your top players, there are plenty to choose from. Anyone above like 900TPA can fit the bill, you might just have to wiggle some combinations around. And the rest of the players, in all due respect, are just there. The dying middle class, is, as I officially announce here for you today, dead. Gone are the 6-10 capped TPE/week players that once blessed Free Agency and my locker rooms every season. Press Conferences and Trivia are a thing of the past, and the 4-5 Capped TPE/week players never reach a threshold where they make a significant impact. Whether that’s from the rate of earning, or the rate of inactivity, or just the fact that they’re getting tossed from one pit of despair team to another, we may never really know. And… Transition! PLAYER BUILDS, (UN?)PARITY, and SALARY BRACKETS So here we are, without a real middle class, and anyone who survives through that slog is just as likely to be the best player as anyone else. The players falling short of that 700-900TPA mark never really get to do anything and never get the loyalty or the role to play their part in a meaningful way. When it comes to in-game results, we only have a couple things we can interface with. Those are primarily the player builds, and the sliders. Sure, GMs will fiddle around and get some minor advantages, but they’re never going to break the bounds of the circumstance they’ve been given. If we look at all of the player stats today, there are about 60 players at a point per game or above, across for the sake of easier math, 140 players. To be pacing for 100 points at about 50 games in, you’d need to be one of the top 15 players as of today, with 69 (nice) points. And we’ll have many more that fall just shy, maybe 10 more. So of 140: 15 break 100 points 25 break 95 points 60 break point per game 80 break 60 points 100 break 50 points and the remaining 40 players won’t cross 50 points. And if you compare that to the TPA levels: 25 will be >1100TPA 35 will be >1000TPA 50 will be >900TPA 65 will be >800TPA 85 will be >700TPA 110 will be >600TPA And the remaining 30 will be 300-600TPA. So the distribution of TPA is pretty well even across the salary brackets, but the scoring doesn’t really represent that. Yes, I understand that there are different positions, and different teams, and different build qualities. This isn’t meant to be a perfect science, but we can say that being in the top salary bracket is essentially being a top 25 scorer, if it were that simple, which I can assure you, it is not. And you could be anywhere 800TPA and above and be about as likely as anyone else to be anything above a point per game. Over a 2 year career, let’s say 100 weeks for easy math, we’re talking about at least 4TPE/week more considering both the additions to the build and the depreciation, and 4 is obviously very conservative of an estimate. So what am I working towards? Well, in general, I think the VHL needs another tier of excellence. And I have no idea whether STHS has that much nuance in it, but I would love to see it try. And assuming I’m right and we can find that next gear, we’d need to appropriately charge teams for it. Building above 800, or even 900TPA should be worth the investment, at least a reasonable amount of the time. There should be a noticeable difference in talent, and a worthy investment from the team. The hybrid attributes are primed to be super high TPA builds, since we’re never going to reach outlandish values in anything valuable in our limited career lengths. Somehow, we have both too much TPE, and also nothing worth the time to spend it on. So I think we need another Salary Bracket. Call it 1200TPA, call it 1300TPA, I don’t know what it would end up being, but there’s a userbase for it, and they deserve to be able to break away from the pack, and inspire others to keep up. But first, we need to revamp player building. PLAYER BUILDS AND THE UPDATE SCALE I’ll start off with a couple things. I’m not touching the skater attributes or their ratios. That is one element that I’m controlling for, and I don’t think they’re the enemy here, I just want to actually have a reason to use them. I’m also going to make the general assumption that at some point down the line, we will make hybrid goalie attributes. We just had a ton of top members make goaltenders and all of them are capping themselves off to conserve cap or just recreating. It’s not good for the league, and this current roster meta is essentially scrapping a whole position. Finally, I throw numbers out as a visual to support the words. The numbers are fake, the words are real. If you don’t like the numbers, read the words. I just say numbers. Okay here we go. As a VHLM GM, it has been exhausting getting players to a competitive level. Do I have a hunch that it’s a slider issue? Yes. Does it support my point anyways? Also yes, so I’m rolling with it. Getting attributes to 70 is wonderful and fantastic and should never change. 1TPE per tick is perfect, and 70 in the 4 most important hybrid attributes gets you some moderately competitive STHS attributes. From there, the update scale climbs exponentially, and it’s bearable for a while, but once you get things to 90, it becomes a nightmare. So most of the VHL gets smushed in together with STHS attributes hanging between 85 and 90, give or take 2 on either side for a slightly better or worse build, and we get boring, sloppy results. It takes weeks to get above that little range, and even then, you’re watching months go by and getting luck-of-the-draw levels of better. Sometimes, it even feels like you’re getting worse! This is where the 900+ TPA is all about the same all ties together, because in the sim, they literally are all about the same, even if the work to get there was noticeably different. The cost must cap at some point, or there will be some optimization that makes investing more not worth the effort. So, in my head, increasing something to 80 follows the same path as it always did. But 81 and above, is all 5TPE per tick. Means that for the max earners, you’re clicking 5-6 buttons every 2 weeks. Jumping about an STHS attribute a week. You’re going to be able to push STHS attributes at the top end back towards 95-97, but you even out for it, because the higher those hybrid attributes are, the more that they drop in depreciation, so the tradeoff for cost of each tick going down is going to be partially comparable with the overall number of ticks a player goes down. This also helps balance out the Jagr vs. TPA debate, where Jagrs right now are disproportionately the best Store Purchase since you get to push a hybrid attribute to 99 and save 10 per tick that it would have gone down. So, in this world, we push TPAs up, maybe have slightly less devastating depreciation, get some separation from the pack, maybe introduce another Salary Cap bracket, and make that 4TPE/week, and likely more, worth the effort. Players are improving until they bank, and depreciation becomes a little more complex than just buying a Jagr every season to go on your anchor of a 99. Oh and of course, make goaltenders a worthy investment of peoples’ time, teams’ salary cap, and of course, our the leaderboards’ ordering. Bonus points for making the best of the best stand out the most on the World Cup stage, and I think we have ourselves a useful addition. But enough about the players, lets get to… LEAGUE PARITY, THE TRADE DEADLINE, and of course THE DRAFT It all comes down to this, my favorite things to talk about. How would I structure the league to incentivize forum content, earning, building, hype, meaning, and of course, optimization? I think it’s easy to see some examples of a couple teams that have been in the pits for a long time. And a couple more that are going to be in the pits about as long. That doesn’t leave us much room for an interesting playoff race, a dynamic trade market, and any incentive to explore Free Agency, or an extension with an eternally losing team past your ELC. I think it’s easy enough to see that the Draft isn’t the answer. If a barely-missing-the-playoffs team is getting roughly as good of a player as the worst team the league has ever seen, how does that help that team get any further ahead? So of course, if we make it so the next tier of players exist, perhaps there will be 1 or 2 players that break free of the pack and are worth tanking for. But to tank, one must essentially have no team. And without a team, you have no assets. And without assets, you can’t pivot, or really make any meaningful changes. So sure, you tanked for your one player, but you need 5 at least, and good ones too, to be a Cup contender. So how are you going to line up 5 glorious picks, in at most 3 seasons to get a little old Cup window of about 2 seasons? Even if you picked first overall every season for 8 seasons, you’ll get just barely get your 5 players in their prime at a time, and you’ve probably lost a couple of them along the way. So the real question, is how do we make it so that teams that are bad, still get good draft picks, but also have assets? Well, the Cap going down would certainly be something to help move some talent down the ranks. And if those top players cost more, you’re probably sending a couple more of those players specifically down the mountain. You make goalies worth investing in, and maybe you get some more TPA in your toolbox. But I’m personally sick of watching the bottom teams sign a bunch of IA players, watch them score 60+ points for simply existing, dealing them to a contender at half price at the deadline, and never getting a draft deep enough that it was worth the effort. There has to be a reason beyond perpetuating the cycle and literally hitting the roster minimums for bottom teams to have players at all. And those bottom teams, might even luck their way into getting some live players! Maybe they even want to see that bottom team escape the bottom! But are they really going to waste a year or more, hoping others might too and start a movement? Yeah probably not right? So what if there was a way to keep active players engaged, give bottom teams a reason to sign, interact with, and maybe even re-sign players, encourage growing and building, and also reward them for it? Oh wait, they figured that one out in 2012, and most notably implemented in the PWHL for their Entry Draft. I’ve talked about it before, I love it, and I will always love it, it’s the Gold Drafting method! Long story short, and I’ll link the long story long version later, but the idea is that the draft picks for those teams that don’t make the playoffs are not assigned in reverse standings order, but by number of points earned after being eliminated from playoff contention. So, the worse a team is, the earlier they get eliminated. Which means more opportunities to earn points. And even if they win at a lower clip, they are bad after all, they should get a high pick more often than other teams. The teams that are in the playoff race until the end may not even get an opportunity to earn any points after they are eliminated, since they may even be eliminated in their final game. But, what this means is that every game matters. The playoffs are about standings positions sure, and not everyone loves the whole conference setup, but I think it’s dodging the real point. Everyone wants their games to matter. If you’re a pretty decent team in a stacked conference, you’re forced to either buy a ton and maybe miss the playoffs, or sell off and try again another day. But what if there was another option? What if your team was really actually a decent team, and you could win some games after being eliminated? Well, then you would be playing for a better draft pick! And hey, that means you can keep your core, and get better next season! And if you’re a bad team, you now have every incentive to win as many games as you can. You’re going to be eliminated, and probably pretty early on. But you’re going to need to keep a team of some sorts if you want to get the top pick. Imagine a final sim. You’ve got one team on one end fighting for the Victory Cup, and on the other end, a team fighting for the first overall pick. Simon does his thing and you get a huge upset, the underdog wins the first overall pick, and the favourite loses the hardware. In our world, that game would be just a stupid game. You’re a player on a bad team. You’re eliminated, it’s going to be a long couple of seasons. But you can actually make a difference. You can win some games, you can earn some TPE. You can literally help bring your team out from the gutter. You mean something, and every day you’re showing up to do something meaningful. That’s Gold Drafting. Players want to win, teams should be incentivized to want to win. Every game should matter, and Draftees shouldn’t be tossed to the wolves. Oh yeah, and here's the link to the best explanation I have found. So imagine with me a VHL where the bottom teams are made up of scrappy players who will steal some games and earn their next start teammate. Top teams are forced to make real, tough decisions, and the cycle will actually turn. Continue to imagine with me the Trade Deadline. Here it is, here’s where I make my TPE. Imagine a top team. Strapped for cash as usual, but instead of throwing pennies at the peasants for their players that are winning them games they never wanted to win, this time you have to convince those teams that they won’t need those wins more than your measly 3rd rounder. Ignore whatever went on this season, with depth players costing a fortune, but imagine with me a world where trades become more and more about timelines, and getting some of those iconic player for player swaps where positions, ages, you name it are interchanged in the most controversial of moves. Bottom teams might even try to buy some failing depth from the top players in an attempt to kickstart their draft pick comeback. There might be an honest threat of top teams’ players being lost to Free Agency, and those contenders may even look to downgrade to sutain their competitive window. And sure, we’re all just imagining here, but this is a thought that is possible, but not like we play today. The game experience is always about incentives and how you can shift them to serve the experience better. We’ve struggled for a while to incentivize effort, creativity, investment, and improving. So to incentivize effort: Plateau the TPE Scale so improvement is valuable for a lot longer without sacrificing the hybrid attribute guardrails. Add a new Cap Bracket for the top earners to separate from the pack. To incentivize creativity: Make the Salary Cap more restrictive so the best laid plans allow for sustained competitiveness. Increase the amount of hybrid attributes one increases in builds to allow for more diversity. Revitalize the goaltending position by introducing Hybrid Attributes for real build strategy. To incentivize investment: Make >1100TPA players noticeably more valuable than their 900TPA counterparts. Make player time, effort, and risk used as a driver of future assets, wins, and satisfaction. Give VHL teams a reason to commit to their cores, and even their depth, as a means to secure a stronger future. To incentivize improvement: Never give anyone a reason to stop all of the above. Providing a clearer, and more streamlined approach to returning to contention. To make supplemental, and Uncapped TPE opportunities dramatically effect the effectiveness of players through increased build strengths. Well, that was certainly 500 words, while tying in at least a significant enough to Trade Deadline, so I hope that was worth the read. It’s been a while since something got me thinking in the VHL as much as this topic has, which of course was inspired by what little work I have been seeing around the forum these days. Some days it feels like the VHL is on the down, and maybe that’s just me getting old around here, but there’s still a lot to fight for, a lot to improve, and a lot that is worth my time. I may not be as obsessed with this as I once was, but it’s nice to get the blood pumping and dumping 4000 some odd words into a Word Document for the first time in a while. I hadn’t really thought much about Theme Week until like 2 hours ago, because I couldn’t come up with any puns, or sneaky misinterpretations to play on. But hey, it all worked out!

YESSIR

HOUSTON BULLS PRESSER! Hello and welcome to this week's Houston Bulls Presser! Answer three questions for 1 capped TPE or six questions for 2 capped TPE! For the Week Ending January 26th, here are your questions! 1. It's Theme Week, and the Theme is "Trade Deadline". What do you plan to post for Theme Week? 2. Got a very busy day ahead of me here. Does your player prefer a busy start to games, or do they prefer to take things slow at first and build the momentum as the game goes along? 3. We've been neck and neck with the Marlins for a little while now for the lead in the Western Conference. How important is it do secure that top spot in the West, or do you prefer to put the energy into the first round of the playoffs? 4. The Season 99 Draft class starts very soon! Do you expect it to be a large one, or will people be saving themselves for the Season 100 Draft Class? 5. There's been a lot of chatter about logos the last week or so. What's one VHL/M logo that you really love, and what's one you wish got changed? 6. Who is one player from another VHLM team that you'd love to play with? To claim TPE: Go to the portal > Manage Player > Claim Capped > Type > Press Conference

Player Name: Jillian Woods Render: Emma Maltais Team: Moscow Menace

I can't take another money league, I'm bankrupt in 2 already lmao, but I do wish I had a sim engine as good as PBE's!

now this is the dedication to forum content we need from everyone

Welcome!

HYPE

FWAT

HOUSTON BULLS PRESSER! Hello and welcome to this week's Houston Bulls Presser! Answer three questions for 1 capped TPE or six questions for 2 capped TPE! For the Week Ending January 19th, here are your questions! 1. We're on something of a hot streak the last few sims! What's been the most important part of our recent success? 2. We're on of the strongest shooting teams, and one of the best defensive teams. What's an idea of something to get our pucks going in the net a little more often? 3. Just finished my last shift at work for the foreseeable future. What should I do with my newfound evenings and weekends? 4. What is your player's favourite thing to have for lunch? 5. What is the gift card that you're always thrilled to get at holidays? 6. We're about 2 weeks into those New Years Resolutions! How're you holding up? To claim TPE: Go to the portal > Manage Player > Claim Capped > Type > Press Conference

It’s a new year, we’re a good chunk of the way through the season, and a good chunk of the way through Jillian Woods’ career. School just started back up again for me today. But all at the same time, it’s back to job searching, the provincial college union is pending a strike, and I’m almost at Woods’ max build. Often, a new year is a welcome opportunity for a blank slate. It doesn’t matter how the last year went, because there’s a new one ahead. But this one feels different so far, with so many things already in motion, but so many things unknown. What is my future in the VHL? Woods had a spectacular season last time around, and is having a great campaign this time too. The depreciation math is mathed, the build is made, the TPE is coming in. We’re almost at autopilot season again. There’s not much for a VHLM GM to be excited about these days, with Recruitment turning a new leaf, and competition being tight and unpredictable. There’s been more updates and store purchases than we’ve really seemed to have been able to keep up with the last couple weeks, and some extra Holiday TPE coming in won’t make it any easier. It’s been sluggish to say the least, and the prospect of banking for the next year doesn’t make that any more exciting. But also, it’s been easy. Job Pay covers most of my earnings. I don’t HAVE to handle the queue by myself. I don’t HAVE to hover over the forum, waiting for new creates, and new claims. I don’t HAVE to have Discord, and the VHL open all the time. I can leave for a couple days, and people know where to find me. Of course I’d love some action, but also, it leaves me room to consider what I still want to do here, and what I want to do when I’m not here. I’ve got plenty of points left to score, some championships left to win, and a Hall of Fame nomination to chase. I’ve got great teammates, a competitive draft class, and momentum on my side to try to be the best of the bunch. I’ve still got lots of experience to pass along, opinions to give, and influence to exude. I’ve got words to write, at least I think I do, and there are still plenty of people left that I love to see out and about. The novelty may be missing, but the foundations I’ve built will get me through. It’s not always going to be exciting, especially in a post-COVID (hopefully?) era, a post VHLE era, and well, a post prime-Jacob era. I’ve earned my pension, I’ve paid my dues. And hey, maybe in my next career I’ll actually claim a Pension, just to see how it feels. But who knows, get me a new batch of rookies and maybe we’ll get Jacob back in his prime, which I hope at least a few people remember as fondly as I do.