Shindigs

Your choice of subject matter clearly makes you both a gentleman and a scholar of the highest degree. But putting your impeccable taste in board games aside. What I'd really love to see to just take it to the next level is to use lighting effect to make the box, stick and skates feel like they are really in there. You use the purple gradient to add interest to the background. So why not add a layer where you give purple highlights to the game, stick and skates. Making it really feel like they are right there, being lit up by the artificial purple light source on the left? So I'd give it a 11/10 for the content and 7/10 for the execution, mostly because it makes it easier to average it to a nice and even 9/10. This rating may or may not be slightly biased.

Really like the desaturated look and feel of it. The font choice really blends with that and gives almost an old-school newspaper feel/faded photography vibe that ties together the whole sig in a very nice way. My only gripe is going to be what is almost always my issue. Readability. The "STORM" part blends in too well. Leading to a case where if I didn't know the player's name I'd just read the Zetter and nearly have my eyes fooled into thinking the storm part was just effects, rather than a continuation of the name. As is the norm, though. I have no clue how you'd fix it without ruining the overall faded look and feel of the sig. So I'd give it a solid 8.5/10 Why: Knocking off 1 for the readability and 0.5 because the effect (that I can't remember the name of) you applied to the background, because it feels like it's slightly too harsh in some areas (face just left of the player's face, top right corner). They end up drawing the eyes away from what you arguably should be looking at. But again that's like stupid levels of nitpicking which honestly just reinforces how good it is in my opinion. I basically refuse to give 10/10s on principle (unless it's a meme graphic and the meme is 10/10) because rating something 10/10 just because I love it subjectively, completely ruins the point of constructive feedback. Like what can you even gain from "It's perfect" other than some pride?

Oh, I only found the other VHLM one when looking in the assets thread IIRC?

No worries at all, I just like interacting with the reviews that make me consider something that I didn't. For me there are some graphics that I make with the intent to make it look as good as I can within the style of choice. My first one ever here and my sig comes to mind. Then there are ones that are just straight up memes. This one was mostly made to have a Clue sellout add to go with all the references I made to putting Clue Glue™ on Bo's stick that week. But I like holding myself to high standards, even when it isn't necessarily reasonable to do so. So I still want to make not just my serious, but also my meme graphics better. Also @bigAL but quoting both would just wall-o-text to the extreme.

Yeah, the problem is that to make it an actual limitation you'd need the gap to be so small that you'd be unable to really make the decision formula work. With there being no control over the sim itself it's just a pain to deal with this issue. The possibly least popular solution would be to enforce a league wide hardcap on scoring below 99 at some value that through testing is found to give a less toxic level of shot inflation. That might actually level things out. But I don't see people being very happy with it. And finding the right timing to do it without absolutely screwing currently VHL players is basically impossible. You'd essentially need to make it only apply to newer players and let the existing ones be grandfathered in, which would create a ultra-fucked period where anyone who is already a meta forward becomes even better by comparison until they retire. Really the meta build is just super hard to deal with in any reasonable manner, from what I can tell.

In keeping with your TPE speedrunning shenanigans. I'm just going to go ahead and respond to the wrong team's presser. 1. i) Obviously Clue, the board game. ii) Since it obviously won't be Clue, the board game. I will predict a hard no on this one. 2. The Clue one, for sure. 3. Not Clue, surprisingly. But I mean come on Alex is giving the rest of the league nightmares. 4. The Board Game Clue on Skates, obviously. 5. I'm not. But I am in the LR, and the best thing about the locker room is #TeamClue. But a close second is yelling at bots. 6. Clue Glue™ which also isn't in the store, which makes it a very fitting answer imho.

Yeah I'm not saying I'm sold on passing as a key attribute to push all the way to the sky. More of a "how about we get 70 passing instead of <insert other secondary attribute>. Scoring and Defense being disgustingly good is basically just a fact. There is no reason for anyone to ever skip Defense and the only reason to skip scoring is for stylistic reasons, for the most part. Because you're gonna 99 some attributes, Def is one. So what else would you 99 that is better than Scoring? Realistically nothing. The part where you get some individual room for creativity and expression of what/who your player is, comes after that. So I'm mostly trying to make a point at maybe going 70 in some attributes that were previously left alone. Unless the effect of leadership can only increase your performance up to that of 99 from below 99 (which is a possible way for it to be coded) then that is a potentially interesting way of going about things, while creating a somewhat unique team identity. Hell, even if it can't push it above 99 equivalent. Maybe the offset to attribute decay from the players getting tired might even give it non-negligible value. Alternatively just enforce some kind of limit to how much higher you are allowed to put any one attribute over others. Because let's be real, making a 40-99 makes basically no sense from a realism standpoint. No one is that one-dimensional at an Elite level. If when you increase your attributes in "Manage Player" there was an enforced limit that said you simply could not up your highest attribute to more than x higher than your 2nd highest attribute, and your 2nd highest couldn't be more than x higher than your 3rd highest etc. Then you'd at the very least limit how quickly someone can become a "meta forward", and they would be forced to skill up at least one or two (depending on x value) "secondary" attribute(s) to reasonable levels before it even becomes possible to cap both Sco and Def. Plus you'd end up with players that don't look 100% one-dimensional. The argument against this is that it forces us to build our players a certain way. But the meta already does that, just in an unofficial manner. So I don't really see that as a counter argument, but there may be some other issue with that solution that I'm not seeing cause of bias?

It's a secret.

The change of scenery was just what @nurx player needed. Hope he can be the catalyst to turn your season around in the E. Since we're in a tight race for not being the worst in the M I sadly can't wish Marcel any luck, because we need that luck in Miami.

If it's in the game. it isn't in our game! Someone should probably make the M version of that logo too at some point. Preferably as a vector graphic, and I don't have Illustrator so imma pass on that one.

Yeah, but my thinking is more of the lines like. Okay the meta forwards (and I guess dmen) are gonna go ham. But at some point you do reach the diminishing returns on adding more scorers (unless everything is fucked). So then it becomes the question of "how do we maximize the possession of our meta forwards". That's where the interesting part comes in to me. How do we figure out and find the optimal 3rd guy to probably put with 2 meta forwards and 1 scoring dman. Does 1 playmaking dman make it better? Does something like RJs center make two meta wingers better? It's not really about that 3rd forward and 2nd dman having insane individual stats. That's not "supposed" to happen. It's more about if they can give their meta forward "outlets" even more gross stats. I'm just not in a position to test it in any useful manner. But normally this meta shouldn't be optimal. But because of the insane turnover rates it's probably at least very close to ideal. But man is it going to get stale fast. Another hypothesis I put forward in Nurx' podcast thread was "What happens if everyone on your team has 70 leadership?" A single player in a vacuum it's obviously a pretty shit attribute. But based on what Simon claims it does in the manual. if that formula for leadership=>team morale=>increased performance allows you to effectively "break" the 99 scoring hard cap (big if). Then what kind of scaling could a whole 70 leadership team get? I mean getting to 70 is just 2 weeks of TPE basically, so not the worlds biggest opportunity cost to try out. But it's something that you'd ideally want to try out in a controlled environment with STHS using the same sliders as the VHL and going 1k iteration or so tests on it. Which again, is something I can't do.

Was just looking at the index. Minding my own business, then I saw it out of the corner of my eye; (No not Shia LeBeouf) All the bots have 99 Experience!!! They are learning, run for the hills, hide your kids and so on!

Feel free to share any of the stat stuff we talk about. The more eyes on it the better. I prefer making exceedingly stupid graphics for my TPE. If I was to make an actual MS I'd need so much data that I don't have access to. Or I wouldn't even be able to start doing what I'd like to do with it. So for now that's more of a pipe dream than something planned. Edit: Leadership - The higher the stat, the better his morale and his team morale will be.Morale - Affect all game stats at beginning of game. The higher the stat, the higher the players performance boost will be. (It's combined with the Team Morale) This is straight from the manual for the game. So the interesting thing about Leadership isn't what 1 player having leadership is. The interesting thing, that would require client access with the same slider settings as the VHL (presumably) to test; Is what happens if ALL your players have 70 leadership? How well written is this formula in STHS? How high is the max gain etc. Would it be possible for a full leadership team to get an absolutely stupid boost to scoring? because 99 scoring is the cap, so the real question if you want to Meta build as hard as humanly possible is this: How do you break the 99 cap? If a full team of high(ish) leadership players could have relevant impact on that scaling. It's honestly a very interesting avenue to look at. But outside of controlled sim testing it would be all but impossible to tell.

RIP London, as per usual. Also keep up the good work! Totally not just saying that because my Fantasy TPE relies on that or anything.

The issue is primarily that in STHS your team's best playmaker is, and forever will be, the opposing team. Because they will give you about 2k turnovers per player per season. How on earth is your playmaker supposed to make a dent in the number of pucks fed to your scorer when the opposing team is quite literally falling over themselves to give him the puck before you get a chance to? Also passing without enough scoring is always useless. Just look at Jersey IRL the last few seasons. Their top 6 consisted of 4 playmakers and 1 inconsistent scorer for the most part. Which made the playmakers look like garbage, because they had no one to pass to. So yes, if your team has too much playmaking compared to how much scoring it has, then things kinda should suck. Not to STHS levels, but it *should* suck. The thing that's more relevant is to compare what a triple meta line does compared to 2-1 meta/playmaker etc. Honestly I just want passing to not be useless, and it's not useless. But it's not a primary attribute by any stretch of the imagination. I consider it more an alternative to going checking for a defensive build, at least for defensemen. As it seems like Checking's negative effect of more PIM so far outscales the turnovers it forces, that it quite literally makes your player worse than if you had not spent that TPE at all. But at least based on the performance of the players I'm tracking in the M. 70 passing players have ~11% fewer turnovers than 40 passing ones do for defensemen. Which also means they accidentally pass the opposing team's scorer slightly less. So that's neat.

Both, actually. I made an un-linked layer mask that fit Leo's hand, so I could free transform The Board Game Clue On A Boat around it freely. But in the original image, his ring finger and pinky are both hidden behind the fabric of the dress. Which meant that I had to copy and free transform his middle finger and re-attach it to his missing two fingers. Same goes with the other hand. It only had 2 fingers so I had to copy and free transform them to make it work. Fun fact, Mia's face perfectly overlaps Kate's, the difference in size is a couple of pixels (they have remarkably similar jaw lines, the more you know) Bo's is actually slightly smaller than Leo's was. But yeah they kinda look a bit big regardless of that. It's probably because neither has the exact perfect angle. Mia is looking into the camera, Kate was looking off into the distance. Same with Bo/Leo. But them looking into the camera makes it even more unsettling, so I honestly consider that a plus considering the whole point of my graphics is to make people facepalm. Also, that's a pretty hot rating. Literally.

It might not be capable of human feelings. But give that thing a Ouija Board and it will not stop talking. Very insightful too. I believe that if it wasn't for the shameful lack of board game friendly schools. The Board Game Clue on Skates would have won Scholastic MVP in the M this season.

I had a sneaking suspicion that was the case.

As Miami has been off to a quite horrendous first half of the season. Their top D-pairing. Bo Johansson and Mia Khalifa decided that in order to come to terms with their situation, the only remedy was to re-enact the famous "I'm flying" scene from Titanic. This footage may be upsetting to some, viewer discretion is advised! Though I have to admit, Bo looks really bored and probably wishes he was already playing a session of Clue instead!

I guess I've been reading too much weeb stuff lately and gotten used to the top right to bottom left reading. Didn't even consider it when I made it. But yeah it makes sense. Mostly I think it just came out of me having the text in the previous corporate sellout gig be top right. So I initially started with all the text going top to bottom on the right hand side, but there was just no way to make it fit/still be readable. So I ended up splitting it and putting it in the only other spot that was barely large enough, which was the bottom left. I should have just flipped the Text to top left/bottom right instead. But I was kind of on auto-pilot at that point, so didn't consider it. Overall I should have spent more time on it to be reasonably happy with the result. But it was one of those days where the creativity just wasn't flowing, and as a result things took too long. Leading to me simply running out of time.

Also why isn't he using the Clueston logo? That thing is hot!

Nice to see you getting straight into TPE earning. The logo swap looks pretty alright. For the text, you really need some type of outline etc. for readability. For a complete beginner the logo swap came out surprisingly good though, the jersey being near perfectly flat does really make that a lot easier though. But still!

Oh you absolute Board Game! Did I hear that faint sound whispered on the wind? Why yes, someone did in fact whisper "You just got your endorsement payout for the day from Step-Hasbro™, and it's $56"

I know I joked about us having the worlds dumbest bid war to have each others player get an in-depth scouting report @MubbleFubbles. But now it's actually come to this, since @fonziGG just pulled a massive power move over in the Horcrux TPA bidding war. $42 For an in-depth scouting report of the one, the only "BGCS", The Board Game Clue on Skates!