Shindigs

4 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

Speaking as like a 6tpe/week person I'm not really sure how I feel about this. I don't really know the math on this but my player is 930 TPE and in my 9th total season now. I started my career max earning for my draft season + maybe a season after that, so had 350 TPE at draft. So I've earned like 600 TPE in 8 seasons clicking + a small amount more. With 550 VHLE cap I wouldn't have been in the VHL until like my 3rd season on my player, and if I didn't max earn before the draft I probably wouldn'tve made it to the VHL until like my 5th or something. That's crazy to me, and I'm not sure I like it.

Unless we give nearly infinite cap space with the upcoming cap changes. You'll still realistically need a roughly equal amount of lower TPE players as you do now to be cap compliant. This change won't really affect that, so players who are consistent solid lower end earners with good builds will still more than likely get their call ups at 300+/400+ for cap relief reasons, same as they are now. The people who are mainly impacted by it are the ones that are either of a role that's just too saturated at the time. Or built like a madman and refuse any and all attempts to get them to build in a more sane manner. In either case, that player is being traded to a rebuilder that can absorb them, since they don't care about running a 6/4/1 anyways. Just want picks. That's what a lot of GMs were busying themselves with this off-season, trying to dump 400 TPE forced call ups they couldn't actually use in any meaningful way (or even fit under the cap).

1 hour ago, Nykonax said:

I would much rather play 10 minutes of icetime in a depth role and have a chance to win and have a career in a real league than score points in a meaningless league.

Frosty had seen people talk about the possible cap increase on Discord, so he DMd me about it earlier today with his potential concerns (which was mainly that people might be upset that the E gets a bigger role, when everyone already hates the E). But also with another sentiment that he'd had from a lot of his players. Ones who wished they could play one more season in Bratislava, but simply weren't allowed due to the hard cap. So there are people in that camp too, especially first gens to whom it doesn't matter as much if they put up stats in the VHLM, or E or VHL. Because to them, whichever league they are currently in, is the highest league they have been in. So it still matters to them. But on the flip side we have other players, who like you, don't care for the E at all. I'm sort of in the middle.

I just saw the E as a stop gap on Bo, but that was mainly because I knew before the season started that I was playing 1 season there and then instantly going to the VHL. If I knew there was a possibility I'd make it my home for 2 season, would I have cared more? Honestly, not sure. Maybe? I do find myself caring a lot more about my minors team in the SHL than I ever got the time to do with any of my minor teams here in the VHL. Since I'm on that team for 3 seasons, so I actually have time to get to know my teammates and get invested in winning with them. Something that barely had time to happen in our minors with how much I hopped around.

To be crass about the whole situations though, the reason we have this problem now is because of the E. If we didn't add the E, and add a 9th season as a result of adding the E. We wouldn't be having this issue, so using the E to fix the problem it caused only seems fair. If the 9th season wasn't a thing, all we'd have to do to fix the hybrid impact on the cap is the depreciation change we already did. Done deal, easy. But we have the 9 season situation happening too, and the easy solution is expanding the E cap to fix the roster spot issue, and extending the cap brackets to fix the players who are 400 TPA over the end of the bracket never losing a tier ever due to depreciation. At that point we should have the same amount of concurrent players in the VHL at most times and depreciation actually affecting cap hits of max earners again.

41 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

I'm of the opinion that you should be able to just do welfare and practice facility and eventually end up with a somewhat decent player and career.

That's kind of a casualty of the hybrid change. Unless you're building to strictly be a defense bot, if you're full PF+Welfare, nothing else. That's just not actually possible. If you do the recreate thing of more or less full carryover into max earning for 1-2 seasons and then transition into PF+Welfare with Pension, yeah that makes it still be very much possible in a secondary role (2nd dman, 4th forward). But you'd be able to start taking on the lesser version of that secondary role (6th forward, 4th dman) as early as 400 TPE, same as now. You'd just likely not get expanded to the role your player currently has until later in their career. The reason you were able to do it on this player, was due to being in that lower TPE range in the middle of the meta era where 550 TPE players were superstars. As you weaponized that fact pretty effectively with Vancouver, you essentially forced the league to make that exact kind of earner no longer be able to have that kind of career in the VHL. Lower TPE players are simply much worse comparatively to higher TPE players than they used to be. Because we had to make it that way in response to the meta.

It used to be what, like 90+ core rookies going up against 99 core star players? More or less. So a gap of 9 per.

Now it's 60-70 core rookies up against 85-95 core star players. So a gap of 15-35 per.

The gap is just so much bigger, you can't have much game impact unless you're on a rebuilder, where you're force fed the stats, with that kind of difference. It's why running 3 dman setups is completely viable now. The 60-70 stat filler you put next to your star is so much lower stats that they might as well be a bot at that point, cause they don't get to do anything. The only chance to be useful in that role is to full send into DF to hit 80 and then at least you can do *something*.

Just now, Arce said:

Yup! You had discussed this with a few of us in the Moscow LR some time ago, and we have randomly brought it up time and time again. I figured it was time to re-surface it here. I'd be fine with it being 500, or even 550. You figure most players if not almost all should be in the VHL by that mark. But even if we set it to around 500, all of these guys would have had homes in the E if not the VHL. Bentley and Young should have had VHL teams IMO anyway. It makes it an option for someone on the fence, would you like one more season to potentially dominate the E if your build is right? You and your GM can make the call.

I did also post it in another BOG thread, but it didn't really get any traction there, since it kinda got buried.

1 minute ago, Arce said:

Should this in turn affect the VHLM in anyway, 200 -> 250? I don't think that it's absolutely necessary by any means but if we were to increase the M cap it shouldn't be more than 50. Otherwise it could stay as is since it is meant to be a stepping stone and building experience for our new members.

I could see and argument for both sides. But I personally really liked the 200 cap making it so that players with good builds can actually start contributing as early as 100 TPE in the M with the 200 cap. It lets people who put in that extra earning start seeing the fruits of their labor early enough to not be disheartened. So I think the M on the whole is in a good spot with the cap, it also allows omega max earners to skip it if they want to, which I think is healthy for the M as well as for giving those recreates a new kind of minors experience than the M experience they've already had.

I've proposed the idea elsewhere, so obviously I agree with it. But 450 isn't enough. I'd say as high as 550 would be reasonable still. Does this mean some players *can* play their whole career and never hit the VHL? Yes! Does this already happen? Yes! Could they talk to their VHL GM and still get called up as early as 300 if there is roster space and they'd prefer to play a depth role in the VHL? Yes!

Like Spartan touched upon, this would have to be combined with the ELC change we've discussed elsewhere to make sure you still can get that 1 guaranteed ELC season. Or well it does *have* to. Remember this doesn't change how early a player can make the VHL at all. It only affect how late a player can make the VHL. If you're a max earner and want to get called up the same as now. There is no difference at all. In fact, this would coincidentally fix the issue where we have max earners who are considering stopping earning at the end of their draft season to stay sub 400 and be allowed to do another VHLE season. If the cap just wasn't 400, that would be completely irrelevant as they wouldn't have to do that and would still fly past 550 during that next season anyways, so they wouldn't get an "extra" cheese season down to manipulate their depreciation for free.

With the hybrid changes players at 500-600 TPE (except goalies ofc) are largely worse (unless they have min/maxed builds) than 400 TPE players were pre-hybrid which was when the VHLE cutoff was set. So the cap doesn't necessarily make sense for that reason alone.

As for the fairness within the VHLE:

The upper is a potato build ~550 TPE Hybrid player, the exact kind of player that would struggle to find a team in FA despite being active. The lower is a ~330 TPE Hybrid player with an optimal VHLE build. The latter is a better player in the sim, and it isn't even really close.

So what's my point? My point is that in the 300-550 bracket we're in an area where we have pretty "meh" scaling, and as a result the difference between a good and a bad build is more relevant than the difference between 300 and 550 TPE. If a player has 200 TPE in the VHLE, they are either a skipper who will be 400 by the end of the season anyways, or they are IA, or they are at worst a Welfare+ at the end of their 1½ season who will also be around 330 at the end of that season, or a max earning 1st gen that will be at like 360 by the end of that season. Either way, it's not that big a gap. For the most part you spend your VHLE time going from 60 SC/DF to 70 SC/DF and taking your SK/PH from 50->60-70 which is actually a smaller raw attribute gap than between the lowest and highest VHLM players due to the 30-200 range having better TPE scaling in general.

With the amount of concurrent draft classes in the league going up from 8 to 9 we'll simply have more Welfare forwards than we can feasibly fit on VHL rosters. They would be much better off playing big roles and rolling in stats and being difference makers in the VHLE (actually giving the league a real, undeniable, purpose) than being stuck in FA not feeling like they have a place to go. Because if we had that situation happen this season, imagine what it will be like when we have a whole extra draft class of players in the same situation every season going forward.

No amount of incentives to VHL GMs and cap massaging will really put a dent in that. We simply won't have the room for them on VHL rosters, unless we completely restructure the cap and roster rules to force 9/4/1. But do we really want that? Do we want players putting in like 10 minutes of ice time at the VHL level more than them being 100+ point 25 minute superstars at the VHLE level? If so why do we even have the VHLE at that point? And why do we call it a "competitive" league, if we'd rather have their star players be depth pieces that get no playtime in the VHL?

Now that's a pretty stacked looking team. Not sure if he was up or not in your group, but Murdock in net is looking to be a great sleeper pick for goalie despite technically being a rookie in most groups.

14 minutes ago, FrostBeard said:

It is however really tough because as a GM you have know HOW to balance your own GM expectations and player expectations. It should always be about ways how we, GMs, can make sure that player is having a wonderful and best possible VHL experience.

Yeah, this is the key thing. Not everyone wants/should be a max earner. It's about finding what's most enjoyable to that person, even if that might not line up with what you'd like them to want as a GM. Just have to work with what you have and make the best of it.

It's completely pointless to push a player into max earning if that will just burn them out in weeks/months, when them doing Welfare+ would have made them *not* burn out and still earn very similar amounts. A consistent Welfare+ player out-earns an inconsistent max earner over a full career almost every time.

22 hours ago, FrostBeard said:

certain GMs will only care about the way to success for the team and cetain ones the best for their players

The irony of that being that they are literally the same thing. If you treat your players like human beings and go the extra mile to help them. Not only will they naturally be more successful, they will specifically *want* to be successful to repay you for what you've done for them. They will want to play for your team, because it's your team. Having the mindset that what's best for your players vs. what's best for your team are two different things is just so short sighted. Since sustained success requires your players to grow and thrive. Not to mention sharing the LR with people you know and respect is a hell of a lot more fun than a bunch of people you don't know, but who certainly have a lot of TPE.

That's what I built Vegas on, I traded away all my 1st round picks to get 2nd/3rd/4th round picks letting me reach out to people who had all the potential in the world, but hadn't learned how the league works yet. What's the point in drafting as many 200 TPE recreates as you can? You won't teach them anything, they won't get better as time goes along, and you won't be able to significantly change their league experience. Whereas if you instead focus your resources on first gens that you actually can make a difference for (or lower earning recreates that may have had a similar experience to what's outlined in this thread) you can actually do something.

14 hours ago, nurx said:

This is the main thing. If a player is a welfare earner right now I think it is our job as GMs to push them to being welfare+ earners. Let's be honest here most people who are clicking the welfare and PF buttons are willing to go in and answer 6 questions or go and do trivia. What if they do both? That is 8 capped TPE per week. Why are we as GMs not pushing pressers and trivia harder? What about reviewing? There are so many ways to earn TPE in this league and the fact that we aren't pushing players is the failure.

My starting point for all my players on Vegas was always to explain how Welfare+ works, what the career trajectory is compared to max earning and pure welfare, while doing welfare+, and just let them make an informed decision on how much effort they "need" to put in to reach their goals for their player. For some players they end up only doing welfare+ one or two weeks. Then realize that they just don't want to put in any extra effort at all. For quite a lot of players they do decide that some version of Welfare+, be it 8 per week or 10 per week, is what they are comfortable doing. And some get hooked on earning and go full max earning.

The most demoralizing thing for me when I was a VHLM GM, and still to some degree is, is that I kept seeing the same pattern repeating itself. With the slam dunk 100% players being the exception, so many of the players who I either worked my ass off to keep from going IA and stay doing Welfare. Or who I got invested enough to do Welfare+/Max earning would instantly fall off a cliff once they left the Vegas and went on to their VHLE teams. One of the primary ones being Town's player. He's literally one of the most prominent members in the SBA, but since all the jobs he holds over there to max earn don't actually give him any affiliate claims in the VHL he doesn't do point tasks here. He just does Welfare, but if you tell him about Theme Weeks/uncapped opportunities/Fantasy Zone/Predictions and the like that take 0 effort. He will do them, as long as you remind him to get his Welfare+PF in for the week, he does it. And as long as you give him build advice, he's more than happy to apply TPE that way. But he knows enough about sim leagues to not blindly want to apply TPE himself. Since that is a good way to completely ruin your player for their entire career as a Welfare earner.

What this lead to after he left Vegas was him sitting in the VHLE for almost a whole season at 200 TPA with like 260ish TPE until he finally just stopped doing welfare at all. I was too busy dealing with my own players to keep close tabs on my alumni, there's only so much time and energy I have. So I have to focus it where I "should" be focusing it and trusting that his VHL/E GMs actually do their damn jobs and continue developing him. Well, they didn't. After I noticed what was going on I just reached out to him in DMs and asked if he wanted build help to apply all his banked TPE, and he was more than happy to. Was literally just waiting to have either of his actual GMs talk to him about it at all. (He'd also been traded without being told by the GM who traded him and only getting a welcome message from the new GM, who he though was his VHLE GM. He had to ask me about the specifics of the trade) After the new build and me slightly getting his focus back on the VHL he did go back to doing Welfare again and went on to having a 100+ point season int he VHLE the following season, and from what I can tell on Cologne he actually did get sufficient GM help to stay on top of things. Well, sort of, he was never told to claim the Christmas TPE or the Theme Week. But at least he's doing the weekly earning.

Now on the flip side of that stuff, I do somewhat get it. Unless you've actually been a GM you probably haven't had the absolutely soul crushing experience of having a player completely ignore (or give 1 syllable answers) to any and all attempt to help them, no matter how heartfelt. Or players who will either a) completely ghost you or b) do what you told them in PMs/DMs but won't even show you the common decency of responding to said messages. You can only get your spirit crushed by so many people shitting on your best attempt to help them before you just shut down to protect your own sanity. At some point the likely outcome of dealing with a long-shot Welfare earner and putting your heart into helping them just becomes such a source of stress that you simply stop trying. I was approaching the point where that would be me, it was one of many reasons I stepped down as Vegas GM. Because if you *do* reach that point, you shouldn't be a GM anymore. You're no longer fit for duty in my opinion.

We also kind of have an issue among at least some VHL GMs where they consider their VHLE prospects to be "not their problem" if you will. Part of that is not wanting to step on the toes of the VHLE GMs that by all accounts *should* be guiding them, which I can respect. But part of it is also the mindset that as a VHL GM all you do is compete, you don't develop. That's someone elses job and it's not what you took the position for (Not like you could use your AGM for it or anything). So that's certainly something I'd consider a pretty glaring culture issue in the VHL as well. To go back to the Town example, when I was guiding him on his build. I was asking him what his VHL GMs plans were for his player moving forward, to give more informed feedback on how he might want to build his player to actually be VHL ready (and able to fill the spot he's needed in) once he hits 300-400 TPE. Which was when I found out that neither of his VHL GMs had even talked to him about anything of the sorts at all, ever. That's a problem which would be so easy to solve. I get not having the time/energy to micro manage every single one of your prospects, but not even having a quick chat on how they could go about making your roster? Really? That's not a good look. Do we not see the value in a player that would effectively be a Welfare (with some uncapped) GM player for all intents and purposes, since you'd have complete build control, and he won't actively pursue FA? Isn't that pretty much exactly what you want when the cap is this tight?

Seriously, a huge part of being a GM in a player league is that you're actually dealing with people. So if you don't want to do that, do you even want to be a GM?

Which I'm all for, I think it would also make contract negotiations actually be a lot more fun. Cause at least to me just getting sent the standard ELC of 3m 1m 1m with 0 room for negotiation wasn't exactly a "fun and engaging" experience. Now, if you can't add bonuses after the fact. You actually have to sit down with your GM and look at what role you're expected to play for the team during that ELC and what salary structure fits that. It adds risk on the side of GMs, sure. But giving above minimum value on contracts *should* have risk attached, which the current system doesn't.

I mean S89 1st, that's one hell of an asterisk.

Great to see the two defenders Bo has been looking up to since joining the league finally get a spot where they belong. Congrats on two very impressive careers, and my condolences that @Spartan  FISTED ANALLY BY A CIRCUS MONKEY you both on the one trophy that's missing.

11 hours ago, Spartan said:

Bit late but I'd take my boy Steezy's, would love to write the recap on a Moscow lifer's career  

With a special highlight on how you gave him 0 cups? 

@Spartan Group is finished, Roster Post should be good to go.

I mean the primary reason the FAs are in FA isn't cap. It's roster spots, we have 6 forward on all teams and in the spots where a 1:1 swap between a IA and FA made sense, they've pretty much already happened. Having more cap space won't necessarily help that issue. (but it would if we actually had more dman FA, which we don't) I mean sure, the tanking teams can just stack up on all the clickers for no real reason. That will mean they are on a roster, but it doesn't really fix the issue. Which is that we have so many low TPE forwards with atrocious builds in the league that they can't fit in full 6 forward rosters.

And it's only going to get worse, since we have the 0 retirement season coming up. We need to somehow fit a whole extra draft class worth of players at all times from now on. Since we have 9 concurrent classes in the league instead 8 moving forward. If we're already struggling to get every player on a team now. It will be literally impossible come a few season from now when we've reached full saturation of 9 season players. Changing bonus rules won't magically create more roster spots. Even if we fully swap all current IAs for Active FAs that leaves like 4 free roster spots in the entire league? So that's nowhere near enough, we'll have more than 4 players naturally coming up from the E alone next season. Completely ignoring the actual draft class.

That being said, I'm not against making giving bonuses actually be a double-edged sword that required GMs to plan ahead if they want to do it. Currently it's just free power for players on rebuilders, which Bo got I think it was a 3.5m bonus his rookie season and 1.5m his Sophomore season, which is almost a full 4x5 on top of what someone with normal income could have done. Now since Chicago didn't draft Bo, Toronto did, and they didn't have the cap space. Realistically Bo would have gotten 0 Bonus if we used the rules from here.

The actual solution to us having more players in the 400-550(ish) TPE range than we can fit in the VHL would logically just be to increase the hard cap of the VHLE to that range, that way those players have a place to play where they get to actually be useful players that are part of helping a team win. Rather than a problem that is being forced on VHL teams that, quite frankly, don't need them. Isn't the whole point of the VHLE to solve these kinds of issues? To give the players who aren't quite good enough for the VHL a place to play? So why don't we adjust the VHLE TPE hardcap to actually make it perform that function?

G - Matt Murdock
@ScottyP

@TheNeonShamanyour pick again

13 minutes ago, AJW said:

I edited that like 5 seconds after posting how’d you see that

I'm always watching. 

Just now, AJW said:

G - Dusty Wilson

D - Saul Kotkakoivu

@Bobcat

My man Saul Kotkakoivu is a BEAST

On 1/16/2023 at 11:15 PM, Enorama said:

While we're on the topic, can we remove this line from the rulebook? I'm fairly certain it isn't even being enforced right now.

  

 

Even if we make the OP change, you'd never see a 5th year player making it with their drafting team because that team could not retain them in year 4 due to the cap hit if they're still in the E. Do we want to give some teams benefits for drafting reasonably well in the later rounds?

On this point, I certainly wouldn't be opposed to having it be a blanket 1 ELC season per player no matter what, with 2 ELC seasons no matter what for players you drafted. This won't impact max earners that stay down 1 extra season in the VHLE since they already get 2 anyways. But it would make it so instead of "good" late round clicker picks turning into fodder in trades. You'd actually have a real reason to draft well in the clicker rounds and actually get tangible benefits from trying to keep those players invested and eventually making your roster. Currently a clicker is a clicker is a clicker, basically. If you throw away 2 in a trade at the TDL, you can just replace them with others in FA (or as fodder in another trade) due to there being no inherent value for GMs in holding on to their "own" clickers. Having that extra cap relief season would make it so having homegrown players actually has some value add.

I'd say if anything is an issue rn it's that clickers are so bad we'd rather run more high TPE players at the cost of not having a full roster. Making it even worse by making those high TPE players even stronger by comparison hardly helps with that issue. It just makes it worse. That's exactly what luxury items do.

I don't care about the "rich get richer" argument put that way, cause when you're dealing with competition. That's fine, the whole point of competing is to award those that put in the most effort. But only so long as it isn't to the detriment of the league. Not having full rosters, because not having full rosters arguably gives a competitive advantage IS detrimental to the league. So I don't think we can reasonable make any changes that makes that even more pronounced in the current state of the cap/roster management.

I'm not entirely opposed to the mention of equipment like in the EFL, but that equipment is also boring AF and is essentially their version of depreciation fighters, which we already have. The main purpose of the +3 equipment isn't to get +3, it's to spent +3 worth of an attribute less TPE on increasing it, and having it depreciate as if it was 3 less. So it helps with min/maxing depreciation management more than anything else. Which isn't exciting to the vast majority of members. And just because an "auto buy" which we already have enough of those at this point.

D - Pierre Emile Bouchard

@Bulduray_1

On 1/14/2023 at 12:04 AM, Brandon said:

Moscow Menace Press Conference

Week of Jan 8 - Jan 15

Claim six answers for 2 TPE

 

1. Now that the S86 season is complete, did the playoffs go as you expected? (I got 1 TPE for predictions so you can guess how mine went)

2. What do you think about the recent MOS/DC trade involving DC SUPERSTAR Ronan Lavelle?

3. Do you believe in new years resolutions, and if so, what were yours?

4. Who's your favorite NHL team, and how are they doing this season?

5. With the Moscow roster essentially locked in with cap, where do you think we place in the European Conference?

6. Who do you think will score the most points on Moscow next season?

1. Moscow didn't win. So yeah, about as expected tbf.

2. Pretty MID, only got a blind man out of it.

3. Not really, if you have changes you want to make in your life. Waiting 1 year between them will only slow your improvement.

4. Whoever sucks ass, so usually the Canucks.

5. Barring you starting the season like shit, like you do ever 3 seasons or so. You should win it.

6. It's likely going to be a battle between Lavelle and Pearce, kind of comes down to what the lines are and how everyone works together. You have so much forward depth it's likely you'll have one 90-100 point scorer on the 2nd line and one 110-120 and one 100 point scorer on the 1st. Only Simon knows who will be the chosen one.

Claim 3/4 Week Ending 1/29

Welcome to the S87 DJHL (Daniel Janser Hockey League) Award show! @Daniel Janser

F - Leandro Goncalves

@ScottyP 2x picks again.

3 minutes ago, AJW said:

 

The Jack Reilly Trophy is awarded to the general manager deemed to be the best in the VHLM.

 

Before announcing this award, I would like to first thank all of the VHLM GMs for all the hard work they’ve done this season. We have had a lot of changes to the league in the past two seasons, and you all have been on the ball running your teams and guiding the newer members of our league. You are all amazing and deserve the credit, thank you.

 

@Lemorse7 @jacobcarson877 @Bulduray_1 @nurx @ShawnGlade @badcolethetitan @a_Ferk @Grape @Blazzer

 

This season’s winner of the Jack Reilly Trophy took over their team three seasons ago in S84. They were given a broken down team with not many assets to work with. This GM has since then built their team for success and given their team’s name more attention throughout the league. This general manager is one of the most active in the VHLM and works very well with the new members of the league. A VHLM GM should be patient, hard working, and all around a good teacher. This GM checks all the boxes off and I would now like to congratulate...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who will it be...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is getting suspenseful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm sweating.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 @jacobcarson877 of the San Diego Marlins for winning this season’s Jack Reilly Trophy. Thank you for everything you do Jacob, hold that Founder’s Cup high and proud for us!

 

This concludes the S86 VHLM Awards. Thanks for following along and congratulations to all of this season’s winners!

The minute I leave you go and grab it, not unexpected.  Congrats, well deserved.

F - Nico Pearce

@Bulduray_1