Poll/Thoughts about rebalancing attribute costs.

[Shindigs 1,771]

So I've been going back and forth a bit over in the "passing ded" thread in MS about what could possibly be done about meta builds and the absurd levels of shots produced by the players we make. Honestly most of my ideas were kinda bad and had more or less blatant inherent flaws. But I finally decided to actually use my brain a bit, to produce some promising looking results.

 

I think we can all agree that Scoring and Def are the two best attribute in STHS, and that it isn't even close to anything that comes after them? Yet 1 scoring and 1 defense has the exact same cost as 1 discipline or 1 fighting. That doesn't really make any sense. Why would your most valuable attribute be as cheap as your worst attribute? That's like if a Civic was the same price as a Bentley. Who in their right damn mind would buy a Civic?! No one, except that one dude who just needs to have the V-TEC kick in...yo. But other than that guy it's just not happening. So why do people buy a Civic? Cause the price is right. Can Passing compete with scoring when they are priced 1:1. NOPE, what about at 3:1? Maybe.

 

This also wouldn't actually KILL the meta build, it would just make it so that instead of being able to hit 99/99 SC/DF in your rookie VHL season at like 370, which doesn't make sense in the first place. Why would a rookie (other than maybe McDavid) have ANYTHING at 99? Where's the room to actually grow over your career when then only two attributes that really matter can be maxed that early? At a SC 1 => 3 and DF 1 => 2 base you'd need 925 TPE to max both SC and DF. In other words, you'd need to have all-star TPE to have all-star attributes. Which makes sense.

 

This would also simply make it so god tier players are more rare. Could we argue that Ovi, McJesus and Draisaitl are like the meta forwards of the real world? Maybe not McJesus he passes too much, but he also scores more than is reasonably fair. So close enough. But is it a league wide problem that they are disgustingly good? Nope, because they are rare. Meta forwards in VHL aren't, that's what lets you push things to such a silly level.

 

I'm fairly certain that the issue with scoring being so broken isn't just that scoring is too good. It's that defense is also too good, which causes too many intercepted passes. Which causes actual passes made by your teams to get devalued, as your best playmaker is effectively the opposing team at this point. Because 99 Defense (even 80 Defense in the M) leads to just absolutely outrageous numbers of turnovers. Also if only scoring was made more expensive and Defense was left completely alone. Then it would simply make Defense the most broken attribute instead. Which is why I felt it had to be made more expensive as well, though since everyone should get defense it doesn't need to be as expensive.

 

This change would also open up some interesting possibilities on the player retention side of things. Firstly, one thing that I found to be an issue when creating. As well as a recurring issue with the new players that are trickling in, is that they have no idea that those two attributes are the key attributes. If you are creating and see that scoring and defense both cost more than any other attribute. Quicc maffs tells us that's probably because they are the best attributes. Which gives more instant intuition to what you might want to do with your TPE.

 

The other arguable upside is that it would help alleviate the TPE inflation issue. Currently a lot of ideas that "might" help with retention by dangling some sweet TPE carrots have to be shut down because we already have more TPE than we need to "complete" the meta build in a very early stage in our careers. This increase in required TPE to hit "completion" would open up a lot more leeway in what can be done with TPE carrots without breaking everything further.

 

Anyone is free to weigh in and take the poll ofc. But I'm primarily interested in the boomers telling me why it's dumb and won't work. As your ancient wisdom is invaluable when it comes to stuff like this.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Shindigs

[Dom 1,445]

I do think that we could mess with the TPE costs of some attributes to balance things out but I’d rather see it in an archetype way. I think it would not only balance the meta but also brings back the joy of going with different builds. I voted yes on the poll but I’d dig it deeper than this.

Edited December 13, 2021 by Dom

[Shindigs 1,771]

Just now, Dom said:

I do think that we could mess with the TPE costs of some attributes to balance things out but I’d rather see it in an archetype way. I think it would not only balance the meta but also brings back the joy of going with different builds. I voted yes on the poll but I’d dig it deeper than this.

I mean the deeper the better. In EHM for instance you have three, technically 4 tiers of attribute "costs". Mind you since your players' progression is based on what role they have. You can't personally control it, so it can't be compared 1:1. But there all "Technical" attributes are 1:1 Attribute:Current Ability ratio. If your center role value is 10 or less your Faceoff is the exception, being costed at 1:10. All mentals as well as skating are costed at 1:5 and physicals at 1:2. The issue in that game being, that physicals are less important than both mentals and skating, but more expensive. And 0 impact/negative impact technicals are the same cost as the "meta" technicals. So it's a comparable, but not really a good comparable.

 

The more depth someone could come up with the better, unless it becomes too convoluted. The biggest issue would ofc be that any change like this would at some point require a league wide TPA reset to implement it. Which wouldn't necessarily go down well. Also no clue how much work that would be on the backend.

[Dom 1,445]

5 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

The biggest issue would ofc be that any change like this would at some point require a league wide TPA reset to implement it. Which wouldn't necessarily go down well. Also no clue how much work that would be on the backend.

I think that what could be done to avoid a league wide TPA reset would be to set a draft class that would use the new system and let the lld draft classes finish their career with the current system. For exemple, it could start in S84 and every class after that use the new system.

[Shindigs 1,771]

Just now, Dom said:

I think that what could be done to avoid a league wide TPA reset would be to set a draft class that would use the new system and let the lld draft classes finish their career with the current system. For exemple, it could start in S84 and every class after that use the new system.

That was my original idea when I was throwing around some other ideas in the "passing ded" thread. The issue is that it would create a pretty long window where the grandfathered in players who are already at 99/99 would have an insane competitive advantage for their entire career. Making any new player have significantly lower value until the older players retire.

[Daniel Janser 2,165]

Hi Shindigs,

 

I also voted yes, and have the same concerns about acceptability of your proposed approach. I have heard some people complain (some of them GM's) about the meta and that they wish it would be forbidden. Basically at the moment, most are building the same player whether it is winger, center or defence with a little FO here and a little checking there. 

Also I do not think to disallow the meta is a viable solution... first of all, how do we define meta? Is it only passing 40 and the big four 99? So passing 41 and the usual suspects is fine? What about people like me who level one skill after the other (after having reached a certain level on the preferred ones?), and may have passing 40 at the moment, but have all intentions (but not the TPE yet) to push it to say 70-75? So a general ban of meta is not feasible in my opinion.

 

Yours is the best approach I have read so far imo. 

[Dom 1,445]

Yeah that’s also an issue for sure

[Shindigs 1,771]

Just now, Daniel Janser said:

Hi Shindigs,

 

I also voted yes, and have the same concerns about acceptability of your proposed approach. I have heard some people complain (some of them GM's) about the meta and that they wish it would be forbidden. Basically at the moment, most are building the same player whether it is winger, center or defence with a little FO here and a little checking there. 

Also I do not think to disallow the meta is a viable solution... first of all, how do we define meta? Is it only passing 40 and the big four 99? So passing 41 and the usual suspects is fine? What about people like me who level one skill after the other (after having reached a certain level on the preferred ones?), and may have passing 40 at the moment, but have all intentions (but not the TPE yet) to push it to say 70-75? So a general ban of meta is not feasible in my opinion.

 

Yours is the best approach I have read so far imo. 

Yeah, blanket bans are a) not fun and b) have the exact issue you outline. My biggest issue with the meta, any meta in any game really, isn't that it's really good. it's that it effectively removes choice. So a blanket ban is fighting fire with fire, and that's not really a good solution to me personally. With my proposal you still very much have the option to go the meta build, but it's now a choice to some degree. Whereas currently it really isn't a choice so much as something you need to opt out of for personal reasons, rather than an actual choice between two equal options.

[Gustav 6,405]

1 hour ago, Shindigs said:

Anyone is free to weigh in and take the poll ofc. But I'm primarily interested in the boomers telling me why it's dumb and won't work. As your ancient wisdom is invaluable when it comes to stuff like this.

 

Hi hello it's me here to be a boomer.

 

I think that this is better than doing nothing in terms of addressing the meta issue, but I voted "no" for one reason--I feel like this would benefit top earners the most. If you're earning your 12 a week, you're now going to be able to upgrade DF and SC higher than someone who isn't. Currently, someone building in the 400-500 range can max out an attribute or two without completely wrecking their build. That's good because the league needs to be accessible to everyone. Sure, if your build caps out at 500, you'll never be an all-star...but I think you'd agree with me when I say that this type of person should still be wanted and accepted on big league rosters, right? If I'm at 500 TPE and the most I've got is 80 for SC and DF, there aren't many build-focused GMs who are going to want that. And let's not even get into the fact that performance would end up super polarized and VHLM-like...imagine how the stat leaders would compare to average players if that happens. The rich get way richer than they have any right to be.

 

To bring up a couple things that have been mentioned before in other public threads, probably before you joined...how would you feel about the gap between PA and SC just being limited? For example, either:

• There is a set maximum difference (i.e. PA and SC must be within 20 of each other at all times); or,
• We introduce a "GAP" attribute that lets people spend TPE on the ability to separate PA and SC, up to a certain point? For example, your player starts with a maximum GAP of 5, which can be increased to 30 or something at a higher update scale than other attributes?

[frescoelmo 1,276]

16 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

 

Hi hello it's me here to be a boomer.

 

I think that this is better than doing nothing in terms of addressing the meta issue, but I voted "no" for one reason--I feel like this would benefit top earners the most. If you're earning your 12 a week, you're now going to be able to upgrade DF and SC higher than someone who isn't. Currently, someone building in the 400-500 range can max out an attribute or two without completely wrecking their build. That's good because the league needs to be accessible to everyone. Sure, if your build caps out at 500, you'll never be an all-star...but I think you'd agree with me when I say that this type of person should still be wanted and accepted on big league rosters, right? If I'm at 500 TPE and the most I've got is 80 for SC and DF, there aren't many build-focused GMs who are going to want that. And let's not even get into the fact that performance would end up super polarized and VHLM-like...imagine how the stat leaders would compare to average players if that happens. The rich get way richer than they have any right to be.

 

To bring up a couple things that have been mentioned before in other public threads, probably before you joined...how would you feel about the gap between PA and SC just being limited? For example, either:

• There is a set maximum difference (i.e. PA and SC must be within 20 of each other at all times); or,
• We introduce a "GAP" attribute that lets people spend TPE on the ability to separate PA and SC, up to a certain point? For example, your player starts with a maximum GAP of 5, which can be increased to 30 or something at a higher update scale than other attributes?

 

Wait just a second, people don't earn 12 TPE a week????

[Shindigs 1,771]

2 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

Sure, if your build caps out at 500, you'll never be an all-star...but I think you'd agree with me when I say that this type of person should still be wanted and accepted on big league rosters, right? If I'm at 500 TPE and the most I've got is 80 for SC and DF, there aren't many build-focused GMs who are going to want that.

Yes, in today's meta. Because today everyone and their mom can have 99/99, right? But this will affect everyone, even a max earner won't be able to hit 99/99 until several years into their career. So in that meta, you'd have so few 99/99s concurrently and so many 80/80 and 70/70s that they would realistically be squaring up against the opposing team's 80s and 70s. Today you have all 99 on 99, and in that environment anyone who isn't 99 is basically dead weight, unless Simon loves them.

 

Someone who is way better than me at math and has more access to numbers would need to look at if 99 would even be the meta anymore. How many years into a career is 925 TPE? When does depreciation hit and how hard? How much would it cost you at 3x the current cost to try and offset that depreciation? I'm too new, I literally have no idea. But in my perfect world you'd hit an equilibrium below 99. Where unless someone chooses to actively go for 99, at the cost of losing out on meaningful performance elsewhere. They won't reach it, hard caps are meant to be nearly unreachable. Not the norm of what everyone should reach.

 

8 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

The rich get way richer than they have any right to be.

I agree that this would likely be problematic, unless you hit that depreciation sweet spot where there simply is a limit to just how rich they can get. But at the same time, shouldn't dedication be rewarded? Assuming it becomes hard enough to reach, then by all means if you manage to reach it. Have fun with it. Like all RPGs/sims/etc. the power fantasy is a real part of it, and something to strive for. But I kind of look at it like this, what's worse? Having a league of nothing but McDavids, where you're just jaded to the numbers? Or a league with just a small handful of star players, that leave space for those who previously couldn't shine to do so. If you're a pure playmaker today. You're just worse than a 40/99 in almost all cases. Now all of a sudden a 99 passer is a budget build that can hit its power spike waaay sooner than the meta build. Sure it won't peak as high, but what if at 1/3 the cost of scoring. A pure playmaker can get so much more done in the first half of their career that they can compete for career totals with that "eventual" meta forward? Wouldn't that open it up for people who had no chance to ever be the all-star, to maybe have a shot at it? So sure this probably closes the door on some people, while opening it to others. Maybe the new meta becomes for people who don't max earn to specialize in playmakers as it's the "budget build"? That could be really cool if it actually panned out that way.

 

16 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

There is a set maximum difference (i.e. PA and SC must be within 20 of each other at all times); or,

I made this suggestion in the "passing ded" thread yesterday. The issue is this, you spend 2 week getting passing 2 70. Then you make the meta build. Doesn't really change anything, you need the gap to be so insanely small for this to work, that it would ruin the decision making formula. So I already made that mistake, and figured out why I considered it a mistake.

[Gustav 6,405]

1 minute ago, Shindigs said:

I made this suggestion in the "passing ded" thread yesterday. The issue is this, you spend 2 week getting passing 2 70. Then you make the meta build. Doesn't really change anything, you need the gap to be so insanely small for this to work, that it would ruin the decision making formula. So I already made that mistake, and figured out why I considered it a mistake.

 

According to what?

 

The only real way to confirm this would be through a controlled experiment. I feel like definitively stating that this wouldn't work isn't correct, unless you or someone else has numbers to back it up. I was away all day yesterday and I'm currently a bit short on time, so I haven't looked at the thread yet, but from this comment I'm assuming that you raised the idea and someone told you that it would absolutely NOT work for this reason. Unless they have actual numerical evidence, that's bad science.

 

Before last season, before the full 40/99 thing took full effect, there were some teams that were kind of meta in that their players tended to hover around the 70/99 range rather than the 80/99 or whatever people liked in other places. While a lot of people there probably tried to go with a bigger gap, we didn't have entire teams (and yes, I'm saying teams in the plural sense; it's more than just the one most have in mind) actively planning that out. S70 Moscow may have been the first, then Warsaw for pretty much their entire existence, Malmo for a while recently, Chicago for a while until recently. And a lot of these were good teams who put up good numbers and won cups. But we didn't see differences like we're seeing today. Of course there's a meta--people will always try to find the best build and now that we've successfully turned the VHL into nothing more than a spreadsheet war we'll ALWAYS have teams trying to figure out how to game the system. No system will solve that. But the pre-meta 70/99-ish thing wasn't nearly as bad for the league as going full 40/99. 

 

Long story short, that happened already, and it wasn't unbeatable. S77 VHL or so had maybe 4-5 of these teams who followed the general "bigger gap" correlation and it was a good deal less problematic than S80/81 VHL.

[Shindigs 1,771]

21 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

 

According to what?

 

The only real way to confirm this would be through a controlled experiment. I feel like definitively stating that this wouldn't work isn't correct, unless you or someone else has numbers to back it up. I was away all day yesterday and I'm currently a bit short on time, so I haven't looked at the thread yet, but from this comment I'm assuming that you raised the idea and someone told you that it would absolutely NOT work for this reason. Unless they have actual numerical evidence, that's bad science.

 

Before last season, before the full 40/99 thing took full effect, there were some teams that were kind of meta in that their players tended to hover around the 70/99 range rather than the 80/99 or whatever people liked in other places. While a lot of people there probably tried to go with a bigger gap, we didn't have entire teams (and yes, I'm saying teams in the plural sense; it's more than just the one most have in mind) actively planning that out. S70 Moscow may have been the first, then Warsaw for pretty much their entire existence, Malmo for a while recently, Chicago for a while until recently. And a lot of these were good teams who put up good numbers and won cups. But we didn't see differences like we're seeing today. Of course there's a meta--people will always try to find the best build and now that we've successfully turned the VHL into nothing more than a spreadsheet war we'll ALWAYS have teams trying to figure out how to game the system. No system will solve that. But the pre-meta 70/99-ish thing wasn't nearly as bad for the league as going full 40/99. 

 

Long story short, that happened already, and it wasn't unbeatable. S77 VHL or so had maybe 4-5 of these teams who followed the general "bigger gap" correlation and it was a good deal less problematic than S80/81 VHL.

What I see as the main problem isn't just that 40/99 is absolutely gross. It's that 99 scoring is a requirement. The 20 gap does absolutely nothing to fix that. At that point you still have no choice, you still just go 99 scoring 99 def and leave the brain at the door, with absolutely no meaningful options what so ever. So if you consider the very specific 40-99 to be the only issue. Then yes the forced gap helps, but I see an entire community being forced to go 99 scoring, or know that they are hurting their team for not doing so, a much larger issue. Maybe you're so used to everyone always being 99 scoring that you just consider it normal, and not a problem at this point? I just really don't share that viewpoint. As in real hockey playmakers not only exist, they are more common than scorers. Which is exactly what I try and mirror in my proposed change, as it makes it much easier to make a quick and dirty playmaker. Than to buckle up for the long haul to make an elite sniper. Then you *should* get a player demographic that more closely matches reality, which is kind of the point with a simulation, to simulate reality.

 

My stance isn't really anti-meta as such, I was a bit careless in how I worded that. It's more that I value choice and the ability for players to be creative and experiment without it being so detrimental that they are "wrong" for doing so, off-meta should be a realistic option. Currently I'm very, very aware that if I just gave in and popped 80 Scoring on Bo I would make him a better player, and Miami a better team. But then I'd literally be part of the problem. Not going scoring shouldn't need to be some kind of "stance" you adopt. it should just be a very reasonable option, going from 40/99 to 70/99 doesn't achieve that, so I consider it a band-aid solution at best. Even going to a 3:1 ratio on cost might not do that. But it's certainly going to help make it a more interesting choice to make, at least until someone re-figures the new meta and the cycle continues. But that is just how game balance works, it never stops and always evolves.

[Spartan 4,399]

6 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

As in real hockey playmakers not only exist, they are more common than scorers. Which is exactly what I try and mirror in my proposed change, as it makes it much easier to make a quick and dirty playmaker. Than to buckle up for the long haul to make an elite sniper. 

Idk if anyone has told you this but PA doesn't correlate with assists. SC drives scoring of both goals and assists, but the largest factor for assists comes simply from the situation a player is in. Take Phil Stein on Moscow last season, a pass first player. He played on the first line alongside Paul Atreides and Duncan Idaho, the latter became co-MVP. Aurelian Moreau was also a solid point better as a first pairing defenseman. When you put a player with exceptionally good players, their stats will essentially get padded and they will get more assists. My 40 PA player has 18 assists as a rookie just from touching the puck before someone else scored.

 

I also wouldnt put the most stock into the STHS generated play by play. I think it's just a lot of turnovers to fill the time and generally all made up and not really accurate. I think Dil tried to track it a season or two ago and noted that the amounts were absurdly high, for both giveaways and takeaways. Also don't put much stock into the user manual either regarding how the engine works. When you have four defense pairings, you can't really trust that the developer actually knows how hockey works lol.

[Shindigs 1,771]

18 minutes ago, Spartan said:

When you have four defense pairings, you can't really trust that the developer actually knows how hockey works lol.

Or he's European. Because we run that in Europe.

 

But yeah, it's just a pain when you don't have access to accurate info and have to trust whatever the game throws at you.

 

Though the exact same arguments about the sim/PbP were being thrown around in EHM. Yet if you made decisions based on what the game told you, you largely got the expected results. So I'll take it with a grain of salt.

 

For me with passing I'm more basing it just off what I've seen happen with Bo over the season as well. I started out by just maxing def and had no passing no scoring. I would have to go back and check. But his scoring was in the region of 3 points in the first 10-12 games. After that I went instantly from 40 something passing to 70 because of a 34 TPE week. Now we're at 37 games with 36 points. So either Simon decided to just bless Bo exactly when he upped his passing. Or it actually generates offense. He also has 11% fewer pass intercepts than his Dpartner without passing, so despite passing more he gives it up less.

 

Counter point again being that the PbP just lies. But at that point nothing is real everything is made up and it doesn't matter what attribute we put stuff into. Honestly if the number of turnovers is correct in the PbP it would explain why passing sucks as I mentioned before. If the opposing team coughs the puck up 2k times per player per year. Then who needs passing? You will just have the opposing team be your playmaker by turning it over to you. Which may be bloated due to excessively high defense ratings compared to what the engine is made to have.

 

For example, when I was looking at our 70 def forward versus our 40 def forward. I noticed this super weird thing, our 40 defense forward had only 193 pass based giveaways with the same number of games and comparable icetime to our 70 def forward who had 652. At first I was like WTF? How?! Then I looked at the rest of his numbers. He had 80 pass takeaways, was first to 66 lose pucks. Meanwhile the 70 def guy broke up 488 passes and was first to 366 pucks. Simply put, the low defense forward never got to touch the puck. So he never got to give the puck away. If everyone had lower def, we would (assuming the PbP isn't lying) see less turnovers league wide. If we saw higher passing, we'd see even less turnovers league wide. All of which would devalue scoring as now you'd need to find some other way to get the puck to your scorer than by him being a massive vacuum of doom that just sucks all pucks into him, for the fun of it.

 

So yeah, the sim is garbage. But maybe it's possible to make it less garbage if the most broken attributes weren't so bloated? Maybe they need to go so low that it's just impossible, I totally see that as a likely outcome. But we need someone with STHS and VHL sliders to actually test sim all this stuff so we can make some informed decisions. I have neither one nor the other, which is part of why I'm reaching out with this topic in the hopes that someone who does/can give access would be interested in seeing if any of this might work, engine side.

[Spartan 4,399]

17 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

For me with passing I'm more basing it just off what I've seen happen with Bo over the season as well. I started out by just maxing def and had no passing no scoring. I would have to go back and check. But his scoring was in the region of 3 points in the first 10-12 games. After that I went instantly from 40 something passing to 70 because of a 34 TPE week. Now we're at 37 games with 36 points. So either Simon decided to just bless Bo exactly when he upped his passing. Or it actually generates offense. He also has 11% fewer pass intercepts than his Dpartner without passing, so despite passing more he gives it up less.

What team is Bo on? And also it sort of makes sense that you went from no TPE to some TPE and therefore put up points. I also think PA may give you a false sense of optimism in the VHLM where folks are such low TPE.

 

My old player, Alex Letang, was 80 PA when he was capped in the M and led the league in assists. He also had 70 SC, and played on a team that was pretty top heavy and those top forwards scored a lot of goals. I really think that it was mostly just relative to the talent on the team, and a byproduct of being the best defenseman on the team as well from a TPA perspective.

 

Lastly as much as I'd love to believe that giveaways and takeaways matter in this sim engine, the overall "meta" right now implies that it doesn't. Feel free to look at the VHL teams that have won the cup in the past few seasons and let me know what data you can pull from it, because I wouldn't think Vancouver with their nonexistent passing would be generating more takeaways than giveaways. At the end of the day, they just shoot the puck at the net whenever they can instead of deferring to teammates. More volume = more goals. That seems to be all that our engine really cares about.

[Shindigs 1,771]

35 minutes ago, Spartan said:

What team is Bo on? And also it sort of makes sense that you went from no TPE to some TPE and therefore put up points. I also think PA may give you a false sense of optimism in the VHLM where folks are such low TPE.

Miami, so being carried by talent can be ruled out quite easily But yeah I'm really in a spot where it's just so hard to tell and I'm just trying to see if anything can be done to avoid having to go scoring at some point. I'll say that some of it is just raw icetime. He's playing just over 29 minutes per game, last I checked the point/20 wasn't awe inspiring. But he's also the 2nd highest point producer on the entire team. Only Jeremy D has more point, I think one more player has more goals than him. So honestly I don't even know who he is passing to at this point.

 

37 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Lastly as much as I'd love to believe that giveaways and takeaways matter in this sim engine, the overall "meta" right now implies that it doesn't. Feel free to look at the VHL teams that have won the cup in the past few seasons and let me know what data you can pull from it, because I wouldn't think Vancouver with their nonexistent passing would be generating more takeaways than giveaways. At the end of the day, they just shoot the puck at the net whenever they can instead of deferring to teammates. More volume = more goals. That seems to be all that our engine really cares about.

Yeah, I need to take a look at that at some point. I would be lying if I said I was looking forward to it. Once Nurx has his program written I'll ask him if he wants to parse them. Because the number of hours doing that manually to 3 teams' full seasons would take is making me less than excited.

 

What I'm basically getting at though is that Def is what gives the possession to cause the volume. It's the enabler, the high scoring is the outlet. They feed off each other, hence why I'd target both of them. Not just one.

 

[Ahma 1,428]

if you guys are interested in looking at how pure passing defensemen does in the sim you should check out all of my past players; Diego Jokinen, Alvaro Jokinen, Fernando Jokinen and current David Tavau. Not including Valmount, he was a forward.

[fromtheinside 1,290]

5 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Of course there's a meta--people will always try to find the best build and now that we've successfully turned the VHL into nothing more than a spreadsheet war we'll ALWAYS have teams trying to figure out how to game the system. No system will solve that

 

This.

 

You can rebalance the attribute costs all you want, but at the end of the day people are going to find out what works best and flock to that. We've discussed some ideas in the BoG regarding this stuff, but my main issue is that there's no real way to change anything. We can dress up the costs differently and make archetypes but at the end of the day, certain stats will dominate regardless. I think that's an unfortunate downside to STHS. But unfortunately, it seems like STHS is our best bet in terms of simulation software so here we are. 

 

Nice thread though Shindigs, keep up the good work. I like seeing new users jumping in and being part of the discussion in a healthy manner. Cheers.

[JeffD 648]

7 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Currently, someone building in the 400-500 range can max out an attribute or two without completely wrecking their build. That's good because the league needs to be accessible to everyone.

 

You are right, the league should be accessible.

 

However s it currently stands, or as of last season, we have players just over 500 TPE dominating the league and leading in scoring. This, in my mind, is a problem. In the right situation you can create a dominant player as a welfare+ earner. I think there is a difference between being accessible and that.

[Nykonax 1,563]

10 hours ago, Shindigs said:

I'm fairly certain that the issue with scoring being so broken isn't just that scoring is too good. It's that defense is also too good, which causes too many intercepted passes. Which causes actual passes made by your teams to get devalued, as your best playmaker is effectively the opposing team at this point. Because 99 Defense (even 80 Defense in the M) leads to just absolutely outrageous numbers of turnovers. Also if only scoring was made more expensive and Defense was left completely alone. Then it would simply make Defense the most broken attribute instead. Which is why I felt it had to be made more expensive as well, though since everyone should get defense it doesn't need to be as expensive.

So I think the reason why it's so good is just how STHS is coded. STHS apparently has some sort of decision making formula influenced by your attributes, if you have a higher scoring you shoot more than you pass, makes sense. The other thing is I think that goals in STHS are just some base % chance on each shot. Like if you shoot the puck, there's an x% chance it goes in. So by having players on your team who only shoot, you maximize your %chance of scoring goals. It's not just flat though, think there's some equalizing things and randomness to that chance of scoring on a shot, but this general idea is why I think scoring is so strong. Not sure how defense plays into this, but this is my theory

 

BoG's been discussing this and I'll throw my opinion here too. I don't think the sths meta can be fixed with sliders or anything. I think that the solution is just preventing the forming of all shooting teams somehow. Main problem with meta build is that it's strong when a full team uses it, and it's super cheap cap-wise since it requires low TPE-costs to achieve as you noted.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Nykonax

[Ricer13 2,796]

I think the idea of preventing all scoring teams is probably the smarter way to go about it. You could have a minimum requirement of passing players or even checkers on your roster. Even a minimum of one of each of those types of builds are enough to balance it out. The only issue that arises is if there are no checkers or even passers being made because of the wide spread knowledge of “meta” builds. 

[jRuutu 2,464]

You could also start punishing GM's who push new users towards the ''meta'' build.  You could start punishing GM's who actively build their teams with the meta setup. Call it a violation against spirit of the game. Because lets face it, the new players might not necessarily know about STHS, and not everybody wants to be a ''shooter'' when they join one of these leagues. So someone must be telling them what to do.  These semi-actives are not spending tons of hours studying other builds and looking at the index. Why? Because they are busy and/or lazy. We have a lot of semi-actives here.  We have a lot of semi-actives that go for the meta build. Someone is telling them what to do.

 

Nothing wrong with helping people out, but I think there is a fine line between doing a new user a solid by informing them about everything and ruining the experience, not just for them, but for the league as a whole when more and more start using the meta build.

 

Let's look at some M teams.

 

Houston seems to have quite few scoring first players. 

Las Vegas seems to have quite few scoring first players.

Missisauga seems to have quite few scoring first players.

Ottawa seems to have quite few scoring first players.

Philadelphia seems to have quite few scoring first players.

San Diego seems to have quite few scoring first players.

Saskatoon seems to have quite few scoring first players.

 

That was with a quick look. There are recreates.  But there are also quite few s82 draftees who go straight to scoring. In those teams and in other teams. How is that possible?

 

Are the moderators keeping track of how the GM's interact with their players? For example, if a GM in a M team straight up tells to a user what to update - should that not be a red flag? If the main point of M is to keep people in the league, surely, we should let the new users discover the game themselves without the M GM ''saving'' them the time and effort by saying: put points to x,y, and z? If new users are right away pushed towards the meta, how many times are they going to make the same player? 

[Shindigs 1,771]

6 hours ago, Ricer13 said:

I think the idea of preventing all scoring teams is probably the smarter way to go about it. You could have a minimum requirement of passing players or even checkers on your roster. Even a minimum of one of each of those types of builds are enough to balance it out. The only issue that arises is if there are no checkers or even passers being made because of the wide spread knowledge of “meta” builds. 

Yeah, that (and removing choice) are my two biggest gripes with it. That's why I went with making it prohibitively expensive to make one in the first place. So that doing so becomes a choice and an investment, rather than just "what you do". There are obviously a lot of people who really love making meta forwards and being the goal scorer. Those people should still very much have access to that power fantasy. Not just for their sake, but because the league does need those elite scorers. Just not 8-10 of them per team. But if there are no scorers, there are no outlets to the playmakers and defensive players.

 

Another idea that I was kind of floating around in my head which has some aspects of the 20 difference "rule". Is, what if you had the same with scoring and Def. This would be kind of a pain to implement as it would be possible to sidestep it with some "creative" build orders. But if your player has, say, over 70 scoring then a 20 gap for scoring and def comes into effect. So if you want 99 scoring then you only get to max out def at 79. That way, again, you still get to max out the most overpowered attribute. But there is an opportunity cost to doing so. Then you can actually make a defensive forward, or a playmaking defensively sound center or what have you. Because now those roles do actually have access to at least something that the scoring build does not.

 

Forwards that you might actually descibe as 99/99 scoring/defense IRL are basically limited to... Maybe Barkov and Bergeron? But I wouldn't call either 99 scoring. Just high 90s. So making that a non-represented archetype to benefit others and give them some kind of upside over a meta forward is also an interesting approach to me. It still doesn't get to the "No attribute should be able to reach 99" stance that I personally have. But I know I'm in a minority with that opinion, so it makes no sense for me to assume that part of my idea would get any traction.

[Shindigs 1,771]

9 hours ago, fromtheinside said:

 

This.

 

You can rebalance the attribute costs all you want, but at the end of the day people are going to find out what works best and flock to that. We've discussed some ideas in the BoG regarding this stuff, but my main issue is that there's no real way to change anything. We can dress up the costs differently and make archetypes but at the end of the day, certain stats will dominate regardless. I think that's an unfortunate downside to STHS. But unfortunately, it seems like STHS is our best bet in terms of simulation software so here we are. 

 

Nice thread though Shindigs, keep up the good work. I like seeing new users jumping in and being part of the discussion in a healthy manner. Cheers.

This is inherent in all games though, that's why you have what are referred to as cyclical metas in most competitive PvP games. Yes, something will always be too good. Because balancing everything is impossible. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try. You will fail, that is guaranteed. But in the process of failing you will keep shifting the actual meta and keep the experience evolving for the players. The thing that is meta isn't always the thing that has the highest potential raw output, a lot of the time the meta will be something that is purposefully under costed to shift the meta away from what would be best if that wasn't the case.

 

A fairly recent example from League of Legends is that the Cooldown based Tier 2 boots were barely being bought, because Cooldown is a pretty meh attribute for a lot of champions. So what did Riot do (usually their balancing changes fail, but at least they keep it fresh)? Simple, they knocked the cost of Cooldown Boots down to be the cheapest boots in the game. What happened? All of a sudden all roles that gain value from early movement speed would not only buy Cooldown boots, they would rush it as their first item. So now all of a sudden the beta is to buy something that is 100% not the strongest item for that slot. Just because it's so cheap you can get it earlier than you should. And not because of the main appeal of the attribute on the boots, but because of another tertiary effect it applies. Because early power, even in unexpected forms, can give a massive edge.

 

The above niche is kind of what I hope something like passing could drop into, at least for a while. Because if passing is 1:3 the price of scoring you know that some of the people who don't want to be a shooter, but currently feel forced to build one. Would at least have enough hope that passing will do something, to give it a very fair chance at proving it can compete at that cost. Eventually someone will find what is actually ideal in that new landscape, and that is perfectly fine. How long did it take for people to find the meta build? Is it actually an issue if in that many years we might need to make another balance change to freshen up the meta? I don't see that being an actual reason to not try something, not necessarily this, but just something to at least mitigate the staleness inherent to a potentially non-shifting meta. Another league already had to swap engine because they didn't do that, right?