Shindigs

I mean honestly, with a name like that how could he fail? @fonziGG Besides everyone loves a comeback story. Not to mention getting a backstory to explain why your player is who he is on the ice is always nice. For obvious reasons your player's name is one of the ones that have stuck to memory when I'm looking over the PbPs. He is in there with hits and takeaways on Bo so often, it's an absolute pain to play against. So respect for that.

Sounds like a very weird subrace of dwarf. So I take it you're a barbarian with that statline? Based on some old threads I could see you using rage as a bonus action every once in a while. Wait long enough and there's only fuzz left. Especially with onions. But now that you mention it, I've only ever actually heard that use of that word. So didn't realize it wasn't using the other spelling. Either works in the context though, so I'm quite fine with it. Partially quoting this bit to see if a quoted ping also pings someone. Because I'm 99% sure he would love that. But also because obviously you'd need to only be eligible in your first whole year in the M. To avoid late joiners getting boned out of it, while hopefully stopping people just hamming up the M for the TPE. I would agree that anything that inflates TPE isn't great at this point. Obviously I'm a low TPE first gen so I salivate at the though of TPE. But part of what makes the meta what it is. Is that you have too much TPE to spread around, which allows some pretty harmful builds. If every offensive forward has 99 DF you probably have an inflation problem. Or a "Does the T in STHS stand for terrible?" problem. Possibly both. A visual novel. So basically interactive book game. Usually some form of pseudo-dating sim. There are some very sus ones on Steam. Like you can't stream it levels of sus.

Yeah, multiple choice questions sure do help a lot.

Guess you're one of those people who learn subconsciously while sleeping then. Handy A pass is a pass.

If you need any help. I have a clue for you.

I mean the hatred of olives does make you a gentleman and a scholar, and all that. But it doesn't mean all Mediterranean food is bad.

I was so close to commenting on the weirdest typo I'd ever seen @Alexandre. Then I realized it was a speck of dirt on my montor making "closer and closer" read as "closer and closet", which to be fair would have been a grade A typo. But alas, here we are. Always nice to get these little insights into where others players are at, and what their goals are. Helps make the league feel a lot more immersive.

Our insiders in the LV organisation mentioned that the name Clue Moscow Clue Menace Clue was put past @Spartan in the very early stages of this project. But they were sadly shut down.

Or if you're a rebel you get as many as you'd like.

@Domino Good on your for realizing you have a problem and doing what you have to do. Not necessarily an easy thing to do. Wish you the best in your post-VHL adventures.

It's right there on the container in massive font 4 letters. "Slippery when applied directly to ice". It was a silly user error on my end, I got too excited and started applying it to literally everything. You live and you learn, and you learn twice as much with Clue Glue™ (Ingesting Clue Glue™ has no medically proven effect on learning capability, but it does taste good)

Just slipped on some Clue Glue™. It could happen to anyone!

Simon please!

Somtimes it's like that. Then sometimes it's the opposite. Where you're like "Are you sure you ever taught us this?" to which the answer can actually be no.

Approaching Cluefinity, one might say!

I got you. I failed to read your post and voted for 3. So it will all add up in the end. Sadly your vote got changed to italian, mb. But yeah Indian>Mexican>Italian here. I really like spices but I also like making various variations on tortellini and your good ole' bolognese. Also can't help but want a pizza every once in a while. That being said I'm down to eat from any country's cuisine as long as it is well prepared. And by "any" I mean any that aren't British.

@bigAL pretty much the same way I treat pressers. By that time in the week I've already maxed. But it's just fun to interact with the team and, in my case, come up with the dumbest answers imaginable. Also as much as I love throwing @JardyB10 under the bus. Big props for that work with the pressers. Jardy, you're always offensive. So it should probably be against the CoC for you to NOT act a bit like another word that is phonetically identical to CoC. Besides a disturbing majority of my reactions come from comedy that is at best edging the CoC, and I've neither been scorned or warned (yet). But I'm still working on it, senpai. JARDY. WAS. A. MOD?! WHO DID THIS?! I would still like a really big history lesson podcast with Jardy, honestly. Your war stories give so much context. And you make them interesting to listen to, I could not be arsed to read through it. Then it's not got that personal touch as much. Can relate to tangents that just become what I'm talking about instead. Yeah, the whole feeling like you have no way to compete as a 1st gen against instacapped recreates feels pretty awful. Can really make it hard to feel like you matter, no matter how hard you try. I'm in the situation that I still have infinite minutes on Miami, so that's nice at least. But because we don't have any recreates, and other teams are stacked it feels like no matter how hard Bo earns, he will still be so far behind that he just can't reach that same level until late in the season. @Horcrux really did a good job back in her first MS to point out a lot of the things that may help mitigate that exact feeling. That payout system, but more balanced sounds like an amazing way to give players purpose. Something to aim for, that has to be good for retention? Means that even if your team is brutal, there is always something to aim for at the end of the year. Hmm, hearing Al through Jardy's mic again. I mean I like listening to Al. But this may be just slightly too Alception to handle. VHLGMGMEVHLEMGMMGGGM 10/10 content, I'm sold on it Jardy! Also I was playing EHM while listening until this point, so if I missed something I entirely 100% blame Finland. Did someone say feet pics? I was on Discord and it seems like I missed a lot... Cold soggy poutine? That doesn't sound like a poor life-decision at all! Okay, at this point how is Jardy still alive? "I'm kind of a fuzzy eater." NO NO NO NO! JUST NO! "You have to stay CoC friendly" I'll take "Setups for your mom jokes for 500, thanks" Auctionception. Damn it I just wrote it after Jardy said it. Oh Jardy there are some VERY suspicious russian VNs on Steam. But as long as you name all the characters after VHL people it will be hilarious. You just won't be able to stream or post it anywhere, bummer. The power move was indeed successful. Confirmed, Jardy likes it RAW. He said so himself. Probably referring to onions. In my head @bigAL will always just look like weird al. I did listen to the end...Okay I skipped like half of it because I can't listen and type at once and we were having a EHM discussion in the Vegas LR where I am Assistant Team Clue Ambassador. #TeamClue represent. Yell at bots, it's good for you! But not as good as Clue Glue™ This one gets a solid # of "like"/10

Oh yeah, I was thinking about Pacific, not eastern. Used to playing Shadowrun with people who live in Spokane, so I just automatically go to that time difference when there's anything american going on. That audience experience reminds me of something I heard about, The Voice Australia I think? Where one of the contestants was sitting there waiting for their call for 12 hours with no food or water and ended up fainting on stage. So I guess that's just how TV productions roll.

*Makes sad Velociraptor noises* That's midnight for me. Also I'm Swedish so I have literally no idea what the rules are anyways. But have fun everyone!

At least now Riga gets to fight in the shade. Cheering for Justin though, I may or may not be biased due to splitting my awards predictions between Justin and Duncan Idaho, but keep those points up! Also maybe sign an endorsement deal with Clue idk? Heard they are giving out money like it's going out of style an amazing product that I fully endorse!

This sounds like just the thing a certain enterprising corporation with an interest in naming and funding hockey franchises might be highly interested in, don't you think @MubbleFubbles? Also @Will3. Looking forward to the article!

You now have 69 reactions...Nice!

Just ask your AGM. He's got a stash. In a more serious note, the change that I justified with "Bo put Clue Glue™ on his stick" was just dumping 30 TPE in passing over night as I had a bunch of Career TPE and a new week roll over at once. So he went from like 40 to 70 overnight and started getting more points (and significantly less turnovers...usually) So it's a defensive stat that just happens to give him offense. At least that's how I view it.

Regarding the lack of flashiness of Defense. The thing is that the lack of ease of access to the needed stats is an issue, but that's pretty much being discussed to death all over the place. And I've basically said all I need to say on the matter. But there is the fact that in the NHL you HAVE access to all those stats, as well as advanced stats of varying degrees of usefulness. When I play Eastside Hockey Manager, which lacks all of the advanced stats (and some not so advanced stats) I have my own spreadsheet to track my own variations of advanced stats/analytics. So it's not that I'm against analytics, as I use them myself to assess my teams there. But most people do no care about analytics at all. Most NHL fans think elite two-way defensemen are "overpaid" and don't even know their names half the time. How many people know/care about Marc Methot's dependable defensive play giving Erik Karlsson the freedom to absolutely hard carry Ottawa offensively at his peak? Very, very few fans outside of die-hard Ottawa fans (all two of them) know that. Part of the issue is that the things that make an elite defensive player are a) incredibly hard to spot with the eye test unless YOU are an elite defensive defenseman, and you're not, so you don't even know what to look for realistically and b) defensive defenseman stats are usually more about being "the least bad" than the "most good". So even really good defensive stats are still pretty bad, unless you know what to compare it to and put it into context. Most stats that require a lot of context to evaluate will be very misunderstood in any facet of life , not just hockey. There was a super interesting start to a possession tracking script and discussion that I found on the forum on like my 2nd day in the league. Only to see it was ancient and had I think 0 replies. That's how much people care about defensive numbers when they are presented to them on a silver platter. So how are they supposed to even try to care when it takes hours of work or programming knowledge to acquire said stats in the first place? They just won't. The current meta is very strong and I do no have the numbers, or a feasible way to acquire them (yet) to actually start looking at them and analyzing them. But from just a general thought process the current meta *shouldn't* be optimal. If it is then Simon has just completely f'd up the sim to an outrageous degree (likely). But usually, if we distill hockey into pure numbers like in any game. Then we can start applying some general mathematical ideas of scaling that apply to basically any game. Which is that you aim for maximum efficiency of what you have available by minimizing diminishing returns. To put it into a relatively simple example: Team A has 2 elite snipers who *could* score 40 goal (we're using IRL numbers, not Simon numbers), and two elite playmakers. If you put the 2 snipers on the same line, neither will score 40 goals. Because you have two players both trying to shoot as much as possible and only 1 puck. You will hit diminishing returns, and your two 40 goal scorers will realistically, at best, be 35ish goal scorers. You just lost 10 potential goals from stacking them on one line. And you also have an elite playmaker on your second line with no one to pass to. So he won't hit his max potential assists either, so you are effectively double-dipping on diminishing returns. Team B has 2 the exact same players. But play one sniper and one pure playmaker on each line, adding in a checking/defensive forward as the 3rd (because we now have 1 empty slot per line). There is now nothing applying relevant diminishing returns to either scorer (both get 40 goals) and both playmakers have an outlet (get max assists) while also having a checking/def forward (maximizing possession). Team B has more goals due to avoiding diminishing returns, more possession, due to being able to fit a possession specialist on each line. Which means potential for over 40 goals (though the checking forward will obviously "steal" some goals). However, if you can shoot enough, with good enough S%, then all this falls apart and the current meta can actually be ideal. But it *shouldn't* be ideal, as if you have triple scorers on the same line you should be losing out on possession (negative multiplier to total possible shots), losing out on potential shots because all your scorers are having a sausage party on the same line, and so on. This creates a very symbiotic relationship where your checker feeds you passer who feeds you scorer. This makes all roles valuable to a GM that understands this principle. Though if we go back to EHM. Almost everyone playing that game just stacks snipers, playmakers and offensive defensemen. Because they don't know how to read defensive stats, the game doesn't either btw. It gives defensive defensemen GARBAGE average rating, even when they are playing out of their mind. So even the game dev doesn't know what good defense is, which is sad/hilarious depending on how you look at it. So realistically they could reach far better results by mixing in said defensive specialists, than by just going full sausage party. The funny thing is, that since this bias isn't just a VHL thing. It's a "hockey" thing. It means that these defensive players, though better for your competitiveness than adding excessive snipers/passers, will almost universally ask for less pay. Because guess what? If everyone undervalues them, that means their market value is lower. So not ONLY is it ideal from a hockey perspective to add them. They also give you cap discounts. That is the really insane part, to me. When trying to stay in contention as long as possible, having that flexibility is absolutely massive. The same idea carries over onto your D pairings. If you have two offensive defensemen, they will just step on each others toes. BUT if you have 2 defensive defensemen, only one of them can break up each pass. So they ALSO suffer from diminishing returns. This is why you pair one offensive and defensive D. Basically everyone knows that's just "what you do". But not everyone thinks about it as a way of managing diminishing returns, because that's like the most ultra-nerdy way possible to think about it. From this we can conclude that the defensive player, who is the first part of the chain leading to a goal: checker => passer => scorer for fwd, or defensive => offensive => scorer for dmen. Only has real synergistic value if you have all the parts of the chain that come after them. If you are like Miami this season and you have 3 Defensive Defensemen and 3 "hybrid" forwards with Pass=Sco then you have a broken chain. Which devalues the defensive defenseman, as the possession they provide is useless unless you have the offense first, whereas offense without defense works (just not optimally). If we go back to my original comparison of being like any game. Let's take League of Legends (because almost everyone has played it) and let's say that possession is the same as uptime, and uptime is basically your move speed. Passing is essentially attack speed/crit chance and scoring is Attack Damage. If you have a champion with 1000 move speed who literally can't be kited. But it has no attack speed and no AD. IT LOSES, because you have perfect 100% uptime, sure. But you can't DO anything with that uptime. If you have max attack speed but no move speed or AD. You just get kited and tickle them when you do hit them. Useless... If you have insane AD with no attack speed or move speed. You may be able to one-shot someone, but only if they let you get close enough. Hey, this works! Just not perfectly. Whereas if you are a 3 item ADC with movespeed, attack speed/crit and AD in a good mix. They cannot kite you, the multiplicative scaling of attack speed/crit outscales only raw AD, and the AD gives you enough base damage to have something to scale with the attack speed/crit. This is just math, it doesn't matter what your application is. You always stack your "flat damage" which is = scoring in the VHL until it starts hitting diminishing returns, then you add as many multiplicative scaling sources as possible to that, to reach maximum efficiency. Mathematically that should be optimal. If it isn't, it's because Simon screwed up the numbers on Scoring to the point that it has such absurdly high base values that it makes the bonus of our multiplicative scalers irrelevant. The numbers to actually look at this and come up with some kind of relatively objective result would be near impossible to gather for me, though. Alternatively those scalers are there, the passers who are defying the meta being sprinkled into the lineups are the REAL reason the meta works, because without them we have a broken chain. And if those go away and everyone goes full meta, then scoring will eventually drop as their multiplicative scalers, who are currently taken for granted, simply disappear. Goal scorers will always get accidental assists more often than pure passers will get accidental goals. So a lot of the time this will lead to more total points for that scorer, which looks better on paper. But that doesn't make that passer/faceoff man/defensive expert any less important to that meta forward being able to reach maximum stat padding possible. Shit that got out of hand as far as length is concerned. But I just think this is a really interesting topic to dive deep on. So here we are. Hope I brought up something that was interesting to someone.