Time Means Change
I was last in the VHL around August of 2020. While everything is still so familiar, many things are not. Sometimes we forget that the world goes on without us. We think things only change when we're around. Unfortunately, that's never the case. I want to touch on the old, the same, and the new in this article.
VHLE
My first reaction when scrolling over the forums was, "What the fuck is the VHLE? Did they make another league for no reason". Well, that's partially true. The VHLE is the middle ground between the M and the L. Sometimes a skater graduating from the VHLM isn't quite ready for the show. Whether their team is stacked in their position, or they went inactive, they have to go somewhere to play at a higher level. Back in my day, we just jumped straight from the VHLM to the VHL. If you only got to play 4th line minutes, then you were damn happy with that. There was always that inactive with 500ish TPE to his name lurking on every team. You know those guys that had more TPE than your average VHLM graduate, so they still had some worth to the team. Everyone had those, and it would have been much better if an active was taking that roster spot up instead. Enter the VHLE. It aimed to provide a league where people could compete with TPE that was outside of the limits of the VHLM, but weren't really ready for the VHL. Whether that's an active that doesn't quite have a roster spot on a VHL team, or an inactive that shouldn't be taking up the roster space. I see the advantage to this league, but in the end couldn't they have just kept things the original way without the need for a whole new league. Was it really that big of a deal?
TPE Usage and Stats
The first thing @Spartan said to me when I got back was, "Hey we completely re-did stats so your builds don't matter anymore". Oh yay. We barely understood how to make good players back then, better confuse us even more. I haven't looked too far into it, but what I've mostly figured out is:
Stats don't go up even close to 99 anymore
There's new HyBrId AtTrIbUtEs
Well, I feel like stats go up to 99 in every game/sim ever so we should have continued that. Alas, they didn't consult my inactive ass. Taking a look at how the hybrid attributes work is pretty cool. It means cool new builds and more considerations need to be taken into account when spending your TPE. I like the new mechanic that hybrid attributes will bring. That being said, I'm still not a fan of the changes because not being able to level a skill/attribute to 99 is dumb. Honestly fuck it, lets go back to making @Josh play the games on NHL 09 and livestreaming each one.
Trivia on the Portal
Amazing. Whoever did this should be proud of themselves. It even automatically awards your TPE instantly when you guess right answer on the trivia. We need to do more things like this. Fantasy zone next?
VHLM Pitches
Yes, I know. The new way is 100% better than the old way and it makes much more sense to do it on the portal. However, I miss that super lame day after creating your very first player where GMs were flooding your notifications with offers. You were so excited. You got to read over the GM/AGM offer that was just barely customized to you. It was stupid and inefficient, but I always enjoyed it. You really felt like your player was a big deal, and it was going to totally matter where you signed. The new way is better, but the old way was more fun .
No New Ways to Earn TPE
I'm sure this league has existed off of graphics and media spots for its entire existence, but isn't it time for something new? I get the point of tasks is to build community content, but you can probably still do that in a more fun way. Maybe playing an hour or two of video games with a few other members could count for a point task. Sure, you wouldn't be generating new OC for the forum, but you'd be building that community that helps retention oh-so-much. Obviously that's a very hasty idea, but the point was to introduce new ways for members to interact with each other.
Kachur
Heh, if you know you know.
The People
It would be wrong of me not to mention all of the friends I made that are still here. There's some people that have gone inactive, but for the most part all of the awesome guys I was entering the league with are still here. It really is great that so much of the community has stuck together around these parts. I can't wait to do some dumb shit with all of you on discord. All of the people who have taken over the important admin roles in the league are very deserving of it. @frescoelmo is still doing some weird kinky shit with elmo, @Spartan is still doing...whatever he does, @dylanjj37 is still rating me 1/10, @Baozi is still horny, @McWolf is inactive, @Doomsday is still patriotic, @Gustav is still memeing, @jacobcarson877is a big weenie, and @Viper is still underage. I'm sure I forgot people so pls don't hate me. All together though, I couldn't really have asked for a better welcome back party.
Thanks for listening to my Twists Talk, and hopefully the league will immediately change everything I just complained about. If they don't I'll just have to get drafted to the Moscow Menance in the first round, immediately go inactive for two and a half years, and then show up one day like nothing ever happened. I don't think poor little Spartan's heart could handle it.
1001 words.
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