Everything I hate about the VHL

[Matt_O 897]

So, this week I ran out of multi-week medias to claim so unfortunately here I am. There are plenty of reasons to like the VHL; if there wasn't, I would have left a long time ago. However, there are some aspects that I don't really love. Some of these things aren't the actual leagues fault, and by complaining about these things I'm not trying to lobby for change. I just need some stuff to write about and this seemed like a good idea, so here we go. I got the idea for this article because of the expansion post, which I fell for until I read the replies. I was moments away from angrily going into the Riga discord about it until I realized it was a joke. 

 

One thing I don't like are the people that complain. This is pretty self explanatory, but some of these people really make me angry. My personal least favorites are the people who complain about Simon. They cry that the sim engine is broken because there team that finished in second place lost to the team that finished fourth. In case you haven't noticed, in the real life NHL the "best team" doesn't win the cup all the time. In the last ten years, the presidents trophy winning team has been eliminated in the first round just as many times as they have reached the conference finals (3 times each). The most winning team in decades got swept in the first round. A 16th overall seed won a Stanley Cup. Just because your team finished in first doesn't guarantee you a championship, or even a playoff series win. In college basketball, a 16 seed upset the top overall seed a couple years ago. Keep in mind that upsets in basketball are much harder to pull off then in hockey because of the way the game is played. 

 

Another thing I hate about people complaining is when they complain about not getting jobs. Perhaps even worse is when they complain about other people not getting jobs (I think we know who I am referring too). If you feel like you deserved a job, then apply for the next one and hope you get it. Complaining will just make the commissioners dislike you and hurt your chances at getting the next job. Another thing about jobs I hated were people that would advocate for certain people to get jobs. When I was newer, I would apply for a lot of different jobs. A lot of times I would go into the thread and their would be only be one other application but like seven different people quoting them saying "This guy is amazing!!! They are the greatest person to ever roam this site and they deserve this job more than anyone else on the site!!!!!!!". That just really bothered me. I'm glad that now you aren't allowed to do that because it just made me very angry.

 

I really don't like the new career tasks. I don't know if it's just me, but I just forget about them until it's too late to do them. The only ones I did for Zod were the ones I could do immediately after I created him. The rest of them I forgot about until it was too late. I wish we just went back to the biography and rookie profile for 18 TPE. Not that I really like those, but it just was much easier to do, at least in my opinion.

 

Perhaps one of my least favorite thing about the league is the fact that the top guys somehow seem to get more TPE than everyone else. I'm not saying that these people don't deserve the TPE, because they do. I just don't understand how they get so much. I wrote an article about this a while ago, comparing my old player to HHH. I started with at least 100 more TPE than HHH, but within two seasons he had a 100 TPE lead on me. I capped out nearly every single week, and took advantage of as many uncapped opportunites as I could. I just could not wrap my head around how he gained 200 extra TPE on me in a short period of time, it made absolutely no sense. How did Eno get to 2000 TPE? What did he even do to get that much TPE, how is it possible? This isn't really a league problem, since this is probably just me being angry that I'm not as good as the top members. But it still makes me angry enough to be in this article.

 

I hate the awards. Well, specifically the Scott Boulet. How do you use hits to determine who the top two way forward is? That doesn't even make any sense. I've already written an article about this so I won't go too into detail. But this award just makes me so angry. I think it was designed as an easy way to pad players resumes to get into the hall of fame. A player with no awards doesn't look great, even if they scored tons of points. Throw in a couple Boulets? It helps beef up their trophy case to make a better hall of fame case, but I think the award is bogus. Being a good two way forward is something that can't be reduced down to just hits. A lot of it is the eye test, which is something we don't have.

 

This (hopefully) doesn't apply anymore today, but it used to happen a lot. This was mentioned in gorlabs very famous thunderdome post. If I spent time writing a media spot, only for it to be graded as a 4/6 and be told that it sucks, I would go ballistic. I wasn't around for this era, but I wouldn't be surprised if harsh grading was a reason for people not staying on the site (that could be wrong). People that would be a strict grader remind me of hall monitors from elementary school. I would hate this if it was still around.

 

There might be more things I hate but this is all I got right now. The VHL overall has a lot of good things so these things I'm not really a fan off aren't a huge deal, and a few of them aren't even the leagues fault. 

 

1030 words or something like that

 

[diacope 1,696]

You're welcome for the article idea

[ThePerfectNut 563]

Did he get 2000 TPE without the lottery stuff back in the days? If not, how the hell.

I've been getting as much TPE and uncapped as possible and I only lost around 30 TPE worth cuz of a ban, Im gonna reach 1k in my 6th season probably.

Reaching 2k in 8th is INSANE

[Prout 373]

@Enorama pays updaters off updaters?!?’ 
 

coming next in VHL conspiracy corner staring yours truly 

 

DRIP PIMP PROUT 

 

[Doomsday 4,130]

32 minutes ago, Matt_O said:

If I spent time writing a media spot, only for it to be graded as a 4/6 and be told that it sucks, I would go ballistic. I wasn't around for this era, but I wouldn't be surprised if harsh grading was a reason for people not staying on the site (that could be wrong).

 

As one of the old school graders... it was incredibly difficult to not get full credit for a media spot. You had to either not fulfill all the criteria or be a terrible writer to not get full marks. We're talking write a media spot littered with spelling/grammatical errors, just an absolute dumpster fire of an article to not get the full six. It was very rare for someone to not get six. 

[Gustav 6,414]

Just now, Doomsday said:

As one of the old school graders... it was incredibly difficult to not get full credit for a media spot. You had to either not fulfill all the criteria or be a terrible writer to not get full marks. We're talking write a media spot littered with spelling/grammatical errors, just an absolute dumpster fire of an article to not get the full six. It was very rare for someone to not get six. 

 

"Something something back in the good old days if we missed a comma Jardy would mail us a warning Kaczynski-style" is how us VHL zoomers tend to have it explained to us, so there's a good reason why this misconception exists.

[diamond_ace 3,112]

2 minutes ago, Doomsday said:

 

As one of the old school graders... it was incredibly difficult to not get full credit for a media spot. You had to either not fulfill all the criteria or be a terrible writer to not get full marks. We're talking write a media spot littered with spelling/grammatical errors, just an absolute dumpster fire of an article to not get the full six. It was very rare for someone to not get six. 

Only two people I can remember regularly losing points: GAllen (I think that was his name? The guy who kept creating Art Monk) and JCool. Even then it was usually football leagues. It's just that those two guys wrote at about a 3rd grade level despite being fully grown adults (Monk was like 50 something I think).

[Spartan 4,402]

2 hours ago, Jtv123 said:

Did he get 2000 TPE without the lottery stuff back in the days? If not, how the hell.

I've been getting as much TPE and uncapped as possible and I only lost around 30 TPE worth cuz of a ban, Im gonna reach 1k in my 6th season probably.

Reaching 2k in 8th is INSANE

What sonnet said, plus the old recruitment reward scale was different. It was changed in S71 or S72, increasing the threshold for each "tier." Now your recruits need to hit 500 TPE to receive max rewards, it may have just been 200 or 250 with the old system. Eno pulled in a lot of EHM folks and got a shit ton of TPE from it. Didn't help him win many awards though lol.

[Peace 1,532]

1 hour ago, Sonnet said:

 

Lots of friends recruited who went on to get lots of TPE. 

He also stole wrote all the HoF articles for a certain time IIRC. lol

[Beketov 9,025]

7 hours ago, Matt_O said:

I really don't like the new career tasks. I don't know if it's just me

Having now gone a full career with them: I kinda agree. It was an idea we took because the league wanted an experience that lasted longer than just two articles written immediately and the idea itself may have held weight in theory but in practice I don’t find it works. They are too easily forgettable and make it feel somehow even more like a chore (probably because there’s like 5 instead of 2). I think, like you, I did the first two and forgot the rest. Hell I’m part of the first class to now be able to write the bio (S70) and there’s only 3 of us left active that haven’t retired. It’s super limiting potential content. Might re-evaluate it.

 

7 hours ago, Matt_O said:

How did Eno get to 2000 TPE

Others have basically covered it. Old recruitment rules, HoF articles, and league desperation. We were in full fledged “throw anything at it to survive” mode when Eno joined and he took full advantage of that. We were throwing huge piles of TPE at everything because we were honestly close to dead. Since then most of the avenues to inflate TPE that much have been changed or closed so I wouldn’t use him as much of a metric of what’s possible.

 

7 hours ago, Matt_O said:

I wasn't around for this era, but I wouldn't be surprised if harsh grading was a reason for people not staying on the site

Most graders weren’t really that harsh and it was how sims leagues operated at the time, it’s not like we were different in some way, so you just kinda accepted it. It wasn’t really fun to lose points but anything under 5 was almost never seen and even 5’s were relatively rare. Did it drive a few people away? We’ll never know for sure but I’d wager not many.

 

6 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

 

"Something something back in the good old days if we missed a comma Jardy would mail us a warning Kaczynski-style" is how us VHL zoomers tend to have it explained to us, so there's a good reason why this misconception exists.

I would say 5’s were more common than @Doomsday implies but even then if the next grader came in and gave it a 6 it would round up. Is old fucks like to exaggerate and it did happen that you’d get less than 6 but it definitely wasn’t for simply missing a single comma. I didn’t do MS’ so I’m not completely sure how strict they were but I know with GFX 5’s were relatively common, 4’s and lower were super unlikely.

[Victor 10,942]

For me to get this article to 500 words I would have had to write "the people" 250 times.

[diamond_ace 3,112]

9 minutes ago, Victor said:

For me to get this article to 500 words I would have had to write "the people" 250 times.

This would have been grammatically terrible and I would have given you a 4.

[Victor 10,942]

1 hour ago, diamond_ace said:

This would have been grammatically terrible and I would have given you a 4.

I'd capitalise the T and put a period after "people" though!

[bigAL 2,176]

9 hours ago, Matt_O said:

One thing I don't like are the people that complain

 

9 hours ago, Matt_O said:

Everything I hate about the VHL

[bigAL 2,176]

Haha nah for real this is good stuff. You’ve clearly thought about this and have been around long enough to have solid ideas based on a lot of experience. I’m going to go read up on your other linked rants because I’m also very curious how HHH doubled you in a season. 
 

Edit: lmao “No I can't look through [the update log], I don't want answers, I just want to believe in my head that he's cheating”  You crack me up

Edited April 4, 2021 by bigAL

[diamond_ace 3,112]

6 hours ago, Victor said:

I'd capitalise the T and put a period after "people" though!

Punctuating a sentence fragment like a full sentence doesn't make it a full sentence.

[der meister 3,188]

 

 

[Enorama 2,038]

17 hours ago, Matt_O said:

How did Eno get to 2000 TPE? What did he even do to get that much TPE, how is it possible

 

Update logs for Kastelic are still visible. You can see every single TPE and where it came from. 

[.sniffuM 1,741]

10 hours ago, Beketov said:

Most graders weren’t really that harsh and it was how sims leagues operated at the time, it’s not like we were different in some way, so you just kinda accepted it. It wasn’t really fun to lose points but anything under 5 was almost never seen and even 5’s were relatively rare. Did it drive a few people away? We’ll never know for sure but I’d wager not many.

 

it took me about 2 years of making graphics every week to get my first set of 5.5s to round up to 6. but I wouldn't have it any other way, it really motivated me to keep at it and improve, and I was hyped as hell when I got it for the first time.

Edited April 4, 2021 by .sniffuM

[Victor 10,942]

1 hour ago, .sniffuM said:

 

it took me about 2 years of making graphics every week to get my first set of 5.5s to round up to 6. but I wouldn't have it any other way, it really motivated me to keep at it and improve, and I was hyped as hell when I got it for the first time.

Genuinely believe how great our GFX people were was largely in part due to grading. I hate to say it but people are too kind when someone makes them a sig these days and I don't see much constructive criticism. CnC?

[ROOKIE745 604]

2 hours ago, Enorama said:

 

Update logs for Kastelic are still visible. You can see every single TPE and where it came from. 

Recruits like me helped a lot to XD

[Beketov 9,025]

48 minutes ago, Victor said:

Genuinely believe how great our GFX people were was largely in part due to grading. I hate to say it but people are too kind when someone makes them a sig these days and I don't see much constructive criticism. CnC?

Oh completely. Don't get me wrong, auto-6 was a game changer for the league and I know why we did it but the drive to improve is definitely lower when you know that you'll get the same 6 TPE whether you spend the time to improve or not.

[Matt_O 897]

Week 2 claim