The biggest change in my time in the VHL.

[Shindigs 1,771]

The End of an Era

Well, I haven't been here that long. But I have experienced quite a bit in that time, with the biggest change obviously being the Hybrid Attributes.

 

So that change was actually kinda interesting for me, as when I came into the league one of the first things I did was go on a bit of a crusade against how stupid it was that passing builds just weren't really viable and the "meta" was a thing. It really took away from any chances at having build diversity and also put us all in that awkward spot where we "weren't supposed to" tell new members about the meta. But not doing so meant that we'd let them build themselves into a corner that they realistically couldn't get out of with their players. It wasn't a great experience for anyone (except Vancouver, I guess).

 

My small part in the Change

Fast forward about 1½ season of me being in the league, and for whatever reason Bek was awake super early on a Saturday and we just started talking about the meta in the Moscow LR. This turned into about a 4 hour long talk, and at some point Bek mentioned that a long time ago Beaviss had come to him with this "hybid attribute" system. As soon as I heard about it I was hooked, as it sounded like exactly what we needed. So at some point during this discussion Bek decided to make a new write-up of it and put it forward to the BOG. Around this time Spartan also woke up and joined the discussion, alongside Dooms and eventually Eno (who made the original hybrid system that Beaviss then brought to Bek back in 2019). This random discussion that happened by chance in the Moscow LR was what sparked the idea of the hybrid as being the solution to the problem we were having. Having originally been shot down as it had been framed in a slightly awkward way, and more importantly trying to solve a problem that hadn't actually become a big problem in the VHL yet. The league just wasn't really ready for it back in 2019.

 

There would be occasional updates about the BOGs progress on it over time in the Moscow LR, as well as some pretty useful discussion on it. Since like half the active BOG members are in that LR and the idea to revive the hybrid system had come from there, it only made sense to give some updates back. Overall though the feeling I got from that was that the actual implementation was a long ways out. And I wasn't in the BOG yet at the time, so I had no idea about the specifics of where they were actually at. Then Flyers dropped a .com article around TDL where he said they expected to be done with it in time for it to be implemented that off-season. And within a week or so the post telling us that it was actually going to happen dropped (if my memory isn't off). I was hyped!

 

This lead to that massive chonker of an off-season between S82 and S83 where I spent way too much time playing around with the hybrid attribute spreadsheet to figure out how best to approach things, both for myself with Bo and for me to be able to actually give useful feedback to my players in the VHLM, as I had just landed the Vegas GM gig.

 

The Hybrid Era thus far

So now that we are 1½ seasons into the biggest change in my time in the VHL, how do I feel about the hybrid attributes? I honestly both hate and love them. So why the hate? Simple, really. They make being a VHLM GM harder, and not in a very enjoyable way. When you're dealing with 1st gen players there will always be an absolute wall of info for them to deal with, that lends itself to a lot of confusion and information overload. Then add in trying to explain how the attributes they add to aren't actually what they are called. They are simply a way to add to one or two "real" attributes and what those attributes actually do for them. Overall though, that's a minor gripe.

 

Another issue is the impact on cap management. Simply put players no longer depreciate as much as they did (Bo could have a 1293 TPE peak build and never actually depreciate if he's so inclined), which makes it harder to fit all the talent in the VHL under the cap on "reasonable" teams. Vancouver has acted like the residential cap dump soaker by picking up elite players that simply cannot (for the most part) be on contenders as they do not have the cap space for them. As if no one is depreciating, we just collectively run out of cap. There are a lot of ways to remedy this and they have been discussed in the BOG to figure out the best solution going forward. With the two simplest ones obviously being to either increase the cap, or increase depreciation back to where it used to be. The issue with the latter is that if we do that, we'll screw over a lot of players' plans, if their depreciation just changes mid career. So if we go that route, it would realistically need to be a longer term thing.

 

So that brings us to the good parts. With the first one being that build diversity can and should exist now. Yes, we'll still primarily have teams made up of copy pasted 85SK/85PH/85SC/85DF style players. +/- 3 points in all of them. Because that's just the basic building block of a STHS team at this point. But with Passing having been made so much cheaper, and it now being possible to "gap" DF with Passing, it's miles and miles better than it used to be. With us no longer having 99SC or PA (unless you're Moreau in the latter case). It means it's actually possible to play around with builds where you skew the decision formula in favor of skating > both SC and PA. Which is exactly what Bo does, to some pretty good effect. We even had a pure pass first forward near the top of the rookie point race last season. But with how STHS works, I think you have a pretty hard cap of one passing player per line. And usually it should probably be a Dman, as Dmen just have to pass more than forwards by default. So the reduction in pass based turnovers from the PA attribute just makes more sense on them. I just love that not only pass first has a place, but skate first pass second is a non-troll build that got my player the ROTY and has him up there for Dman production in his sophomore season (so far, he's kinda sucking last week or so).

 

The other upsides, to me, is that a player can be more or less cap efficient. This wasn't *really* a thing before outside of stopping earning in the 500s with the meta build obviously being obnoxious, but all those 500 something meta builds were effectively the same player. That's not the case anymore with the hybrid system. Teams built of players with well made builds can now fit a lot more power under the cap. Than teams with "poorly" built players can. We have players who have builds that cost 1k TPA, but that *could* have been made with 800 TPE, that means you're paying 5.5m for a 4m player. For all intents and purposes. This is one of the main reasons Moscow is so cracked btw, their actual TPA on their players isn't super impressive, but they all have super efficient builds. Letting them have very similar actual STHS attributes to players with significantly more actual TPA. But with a lower cap hit. If capitalizing on that isn't the winning formula going forward in the hybrid era. I'll be very surprised. As this lets players put themselves apart from the rest by being a "better 800 TPE player" than another 800 TPE player. Thus it gives more skill expression for players and GMs alike. A GM who can tell a good cap efficient player apart form one that isn't, will be able to build a better team on a budget. Just as a player can make themselves a bigger difference maker for their team without just throwing TPE at the problem. But rather by making good decisions.

 

Well, that was more than 500 words.

[Daniel Janser 1,983]

23 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

Well, that was more than 500 words.

Just slighlty...

[Shindigs 1,771]

Just now, Daniel Janser said:

Just slighlty...

A smidge. I just tripped and fell and words spilled out of my pockets.

[Nykonax 1,550]

17 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

It wasn't a great experience for anyone (except Vancouver, I guess).

can confirm, was a great experience.

 

I do think passing has pretty decent value now that meta builds can't be made. Pre-meta, the recommended advice was to keep scoring and passing about 10-15 apart. I don't know how legit that advice was regarding STHS, but seemed like it worked well. My player was doing bad so I added some passing then he started doing better, but that's all anecdotal. I also like the point you made about hybrid attributes allowing for efficient building and therefore room for efficient cap management. When the Hybrid sheet released I had this "oh shit" moment when I realised that the same build could be made for varying levels of TPE, and there's a sort of optimization to it. I think it's good and adds some skill and thought to building a player, as well as skill expression as a GM. I think the updating system is a little clunky though, would love to see both the ratios and the attribute result of my update on the same page instead of having to toggle back and forth. Would also probably make it more intuitive for new players/

[Shindigs 1,771]

1 minute ago, Nykonax said:

I think the updating system is a little clunky though, would love to see both the ratios and the attribute result of my update on the same page instead of having to toggle back and forth.

Agreed, I never actually use the portal for it. I do everything in the sheet then just use the portal only to actually apply what I reached in the sheet. Since I have that setup the way I want it with the info I want to see.

[Beketov 8,653]

8 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

I think the updating system is a little clunky though, would love to see both the ratios and the attribute result of my update on the same page instead of having to toggle back and forth. Would also probably make it more intuitive for new players/

There’s probably a balancing act to it. Having them both visible was a bit cluttered looking on desktop and absolutely atrocious on mobile but maybe we keep the toggle for mobile and have both visible in a cleaner way on desktop.

 

Would definitely be open to UI ideas.

[badcolethetitan 806]

40 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

can confirm, was a great experience.

 

I do think passing has pretty decent value now that meta builds can't be made. Pre-meta, the recommended advice was to keep scoring and passing about 10-15 apart. I don't know how legit that advice was regarding STHS, but seemed like it worked well. My player was doing bad so I added some passing then he started doing better, but that's all anecdotal. I also like the point you made about hybrid attributes allowing for efficient building and therefore room for efficient cap management. When the Hybrid sheet released I had this "oh shit" moment when I realised that the same build could be made for varying levels of TPE, and there's a sort of optimization to it. I think it's good and adds some skill and thought to building a player, as well as skill expression as a GM. I think the updating system is a little clunky though, would love to see both the ratios and the attribute result of my update on the same page instead of having to toggle back and forth. Would also probably make it more intuitive for new players/

 

Thank you wise Nykonax

[Nykonax 1,550]

38 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Would definitely be open to UI ideas.

I would suggest just add a toggle for some "advanced update page" where it just brings up whatever cluttered version was mocked up. If it's just cluttered it shouldn't be too bad, since people are opting in for the usability rather than appearance. But if the cluttered version is legitimately unusable on desktop then I can think of more ideas.

[Shindigs 1,771]

15 minutes ago, Beketov said:

There’s probably a balancing act to it. Having them both visible was a bit cluttered looking on desktop and absolutely atrocious on mobile but maybe we keep the toggle for mobile and have both visible in a cleaner way on desktop.

 

Would definitely be open to UI ideas.

My biggest issue is that you can see the resulting attributes in multiple places. Like I get it wanting to show what every attribute adds to. But to me that just throws me for a loop. I prefer the way spartan (kinda) set it up in the sheet where you have Input > Ratios > end attributes. So basically looking exactly like the TPA tool does now, but with the ratio part of the player management page in between.

Something like this would make it a lot easier to work with for me:

[Beketov 8,653]

1 hour ago, Shindigs said:

My biggest issue is that you can see the resulting attributes in multiple places. Like I get it wanting to show what every attribute adds to. But to me that just throws me for a loop. I prefer the way spartan (kinda) set it up in the sheet where you have Input > Ratios > end attributes. So basically looking exactly like the TPA tool does now, but with the ratio part of the player management page in between.

Something like this would make it a lot easier to work with for me:

I do like the colour coding so that it’s easier to spot at a glance what stuff affects the same attribute.

 

That wouldn’t work at all on mobile mind you but I think trying to find one that works perfect on both is possibly just making it worse on both.

[Shindigs 1,771]

1 minute ago, Beketov said:

That wouldn’t work at all on mobile mind you but I think trying to find one that works perfect on both is possibly just making it worse on both.

I would agree with that, they probably need separate ones. I just don't think it's really possible to get one that works in portrait mode on mobile. It will always have to be a very lightweight one. Whereas anything that lightweight won't show you everything you want to know, if given the space you have on PC.

[Shindigs 1,771]

Claim 2 of 2: Electric Boogaloo