Hybrid Stats, One Season In

[Hybrid1486 577]

I'm a pretty random dude to be asking such questions, but I'm very interested in change management and this one was a doozy as far as I'm concerned. That said, I wasn't really around for the "meta" and it's been years since I was really following the VHL closely.

 

I'm just curious how everybody feels about the change after one season, knowing that it's too early to really understand the impact but long enough to have an idea about the implementation. Positives? Negatives? Neutral observations?

[MubbleFubbles 1,292]

I'm largely happy with what I've seen through the first season in regards to performance from skaters (feels a lot more in line with where it should be) and I'll be interested to how it looks this season cause last season felt like there were more teams with not many players last season along with more recently drafted or inactive goalies than usual. 

 

Only thing I'd say I'd be hoping to see change next season is that a lot of the goalies were very close together in save percentage (Top 9 of 16 starters separated by 0.03%) despite a fair amount of them being very early on in their career or inactive. Goalies have always been kinda random but it felt like the difference between a potential award-winning goalie and a goalie starting off was a lot greater, but maybe that was a one off and next season the sim leans more towards results that see the goalie TPE have more of an effect.

[Spartan 4,530]

Well a big positive is simply that we've mitigated a known exploit to the sim engine without having to go through the process of changing engines completely. I think that's probably the one that newer members won't really know of, and the current system is all that they will know moving forward.

 

Another is also that we've adjusted scoring league-wide a bit, sharply reducing the number of 100+ point scorers. 10th place on the scoring leaderboard in S82 had 125 points. 1st place in S83 had 122. I think we had multiple teams between S80-S82 with 5-6+ 100 point scorers, which is absolutely insane to think about. Goalies played absolutely horrendously and were generally non-factors for a lot of that time period. We had a goalie win the Slobo and two goalies be considered for the Kanou. It's really helped out those users who willingly create in the most difficult position to play long-term.

 

The biggest negative to me is that absolute ineffectiveness of players in the VHLM, and generally players under like 300 TPE. The actual STHS attributes for those M players look absolutely disgusting, in the 40's and 50's. It's very difficult to get a distinction between PA/SC without about 30-40+ TPE.

 

That does lead to another positive in that people shouldn't be as comfortable sticking around in the VHLM for longer than they should be. With a lower cap, we had people moving out of the M faster anyways, but with builds being so "bad," it's also sort of contributed to people not choosing to cap out at 200 and stick around in the M anymore. Obviously the people who want to stay just for fun will continue to stay down, but your player is just ineffective without more TPE. You can't really build into what you want to be until 300-350 TPE.

 

Final negative for now since this has been a lot, but probably just general confusion about the attributes and seeing progress in your player. A lot of upgrades do not lead to a direct STHS attribute increase and that's definitely frustrating. Some say that it makes TPE worth less, but I feel like it makes TPE even more valuable. The more favorable ratio in the old system obviously makes it more satisfying to upgrade, but it simply made the STHS attributes absolutely ineffective. We fucked with our engine by pumping players full of 99 overall attributes into it, but now we rarely see players with STHS attributes over like 93-94 without significant input. So it's a bit of a negative and a positive as well, users feel like it's a lot more frustrating to be upgrading stuff, but it works a lot better with our engine.

[Shindigs 1,771]

And as someone who actually likes pass first builds. Having a pass first (though still quite heavy in the SC too) Dman put up the most Dman points was a nice change of pace.

 

The counter argument I'd make to VHLM players being bad now is that it means that new players can become actual impact players much faster. At 120 TPE you're already a very solid player, that can very much compete with 200 TPE players. It gives more opportunity to get invested fast. So I don't see it as that much of a problem. More of a perceived thing, we're used to seeing 70s in the M. Now outside of niche builds no one has a 70 in anything. But players are still being quite useful individually and interestingly enough it's made checking really good at the M level. Simply because no one can invest enough in SK/ST/PH to actually fully counter it. Meaning that being a physical player in the M actually has real merit now.

 

So do we still have a "meta" of sorts? Yes, the vast majority of player in the VHL proper have very similar builds. 8x SK/PH/SC/DF with small variations. Maybe 65-70 CK as well if you're into that kinda thing. But we also have the room for people to succeed while doing something else, with Mason Jones pure pass first forward and my skate>pass defenseman both being in top 3 for rookie scoring. Both those builds would have been trolling pre-hybrid. Now they are competitive, at least after 1 season.

[Arce 755]

Considering how Lavelle's rookie season went

 

[Ricer13 2,823]

One positive I am really liking is that now the people who are truly working hard and earning that TPE are getting rewarded for it. If you look at the top 10 in scoring last season the majority of players are up over 1000 TPE. It’s frustrating to work hard and get beat out by players who are 5-600 TPE. This Hybrid strategy has really balanced that out nicely.

 

I do feel like there is still a meta. It’s very easy to build a score first build but it’s not as effective as it was two seasons ago. At least from what we’ve seen in this small sample size. 

Edited June 27, 2022 by Ricer13