2000+ Words On How I Think We Can Help Improve The First-Gen Experience

[MubbleFubbles 1,290]

 

This table above shows how many first gen players from the range of the given draft classes went on to surpass 200 TPE (E.g. For the top one, there were 203 first gens taken from the Season 63 Draft Class to the Season 71 Draft Class that surpassed 200 TPE in their VHL career). As you can see, we are at our lowest number for quite some time, in fact you would have to go back to the Season 61-Season 69 cycle (drafts that took place in 2018-2019) for a lower first gen over 200 TPE count and that’s only because the Season 61 Draft Class had just two first gens surpass 200 TPE. There are many reasons why we could be experiencing this dip; many people point to Covid sparking a lot of new players joining and engaging in the league in the mid Season 70’s and we also don’t have quite as many avenues for advertisement as we did in the past, due to some irregularities we had in the past with reddit. But the main thing that we should be doing is instead looking at what we can do with the players that we bring in to do our best to make sure they stick around because, from what I can gather from my research, at our current pace that number is more likely to continue going down in the future than it is to go up.

 

So my first suggestion for helping with this is making the forum site and the portal more accessible for the new VHL user. We have to acknowledge with the scope of our advertising that we are not necessarily going to be recruiting new members to the VHL who are 1) going to be familiar with forum layout or 2) have the patience to stick around and ask how to make a player when they don’t know how to. This is where my first point comes in, we need to make the link to the Create a Player area of the portal catch the eye. As it stands, on the PC version of the website, the only direct link to Create A Player is embedded between several other options at the top of the screen. It’s even worse on mobile where the only direct link to creating a player is hidden behind the sub-menu button. There are two ways that I think you potentially fix this. One is that you amend the Create a Player forum slightly, make it so that clicking on “Create a Player” in the main forum area links you to the Create a Player area of the portal (this is also the method that the SBA use for player creation). The other potential option is making a clickable banner underneath the Create a Player heading that stands out a bit more than “Create a Player” does in the sub-menu, an example of a concept of this can be found below (To point out in advance, there will be quite a few concepts in this piece and that’s what they are, concepts. I’m not saying what I provide is a good banner, but that is where I believe a good banner would be.)

 

 

From there, we move on to making the portal more accessible to the new member. This is probably not what the developers of the portal want to hear but for every step we make towards putting items that use to be forum-based onto the portal, more users will dedicate more of their VHL time on the portal, so we need to increase the amount of information about the VHL that the user can pick up on the portal. I’ve already mentioned in the past about how we should have clearer links to important pages rather than burying them under the manage tab, but I’ve got a few more concepts here. One such example would be a tip that the portal would provide to new members about where to apply their TPE upon creation. We have taken routes to combat the amount of people adding small amounts of TPE to every single attribute on creation with the First-Gen reroll, but why not give these players a warning ahead of time that spreading your attributes in that manner is not going to net the best results for your player so that they are better prepared upon creating their player?

 

 

Another method of interaction with the user could be to have the Player Management screen display how much capped TPE they’ve earned in a given week and provides a link to a pop-up box that gives a quick breakdown on what other capped TPE tasks are available to them. The example below is what could potentially pop up for a member who submitted for welfare (therefore 4 of 10 rather than 4 of 12) and the second is an example of what the pop-up box could show for a VHL.com graphic.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, a way to potentially help newer users with the VHL Trivia task, the one that is probably the hardest for new members given their recent join date. Why not use the opportunity to link to the VHL Discord so that any struggling user knows where to ask for help with a trivia question?

 

 

So those are my proof of concepts as to how to potentially help improve the First-Gens approach to the VHL. I know that the VHL probably want to make moves to add more currently forum based tasks like Fantasy Zone to the portal, but I really think the thing that should take precedence right now is creating a more new-user friendly version of the portal because, while it’s great and the developers have done a lot of terrific work with it, with how much it has grown it needs to evolve beyond the base structure that Will gave it (a subsection of the VHL for you to update your player) to something that can be engaged with by users who may not be familiar with how the VHL works.

 

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Right, that’s the proof of concept power hour out of the way, now to talk about other things that I think will help first-gen retention.

 

Stop letting people having so many jobs at a time

 

So this might stand out as a weird topic for helping first-gens, but bear with me on this one. I made a podcast talking about making more jobs PT equivalents and one of my listeners to that podcast was a user called SpicyGecko who, at the time, was a pretty promising first-gen user. After listening to the podcast they sent me a message about how they had a problem with people having so many jobs at once and how it reduces a new members ability to actively contribute to the site or try to improve their standing within the league by showing they can do a job well. Given the timing of the message in combination to their activity, it would not surprise me if this played a role in their eventual inactivity. While I do think there are ways that members can contribute to help the site without holding a job, I think the point they make is a valid one, there really is no reason why, especially when we are arguably at the best point in our league’s history when it comes to the number of personnel at our disposal that could actively help the league, some people are allowed to hold onto so many jobs at one time. I don’t see much of an argument for why a specific member in the VHL should not just be limited to one VHL job (e.g. Commissioner, Updater, etc.) and one GM job. Think about it like the VHLM, we try to encourage the members who are on the cusp of 200 TPE who are thinking of staying down to make the move up to the VHLE instead of sticking around the VHLM at a high capped level, so that they give the opportunity to other newer players to demonstrate that they can be good assets to the league. The same logic should work with jobs, if you get a higher-up/higher-regarded job than you’re currently on, by electing to also keep doing your old job on top of that, you’re effectively taking away an opportunity from someone else who could potentially prove that they can do a job for the league, so you should give up your lesser paid job once you take up your newer job. By all means, let them keep the relevant permissions so they can help contribute here and there if they so want to, but lets give more members the opportunity to contribute to the VHL so that maybe one day they can show what they can bring to the league and potentially rise to the same level in the future to that of the members they inherited their jobs from.

 

VHLE Draft Change

 

I’ve mentioned this idea in other point tasks I think a couple of times now, but we’re talking about things that will help boost the first-gen experience and I think this is one of them. Let me hit you with the least surprising thing you’ll hear today: Members in sim leagues like drafts. But what lessens the draft experience is when you have potentially three draft experiences with 48 hours, with two of said drafts not mattering for at least the next two and a half months. Instead, why not change up the experience so the user can experience a draft that would be immediately relevant to their interests the season after their other drafts to maintain their interest in the VHL for a longer period of time? My idea is to make it so that instead of entering the VHLE Draft in the same season as your VHL Draft, you enter it in the first off-season that you enter having surpassed the 200 TPE VHLE limit, basically limiting the draft to players that have exceeded 200 TPE over the last season. I talked about the other positives of such a move here, here and here if you want to read or listen to more of my thoughts on that.

 

More Content Focused Towards Newer Members?

 

So this is one thing that I don’t have a concrete idea for but I’ll bring up the concept of my thought here at least since it’s on my mind. One thing that helps keep newer members attention is seeing themselves acknowledged by their peers on the forum and we’ve had certain things in the VHL in the past that has been geared towards highlighting new members. For example, when I was in the recruitment crew I would run a VHLM Newsletter (unfortunately I can’t find any links to my old pieces since I’m guessing it's now in a hidden forum) that was mainly to give a breakdown of the VHLM and what activities were available that week but I would make sure to give a shoutout to the new members that joined that week. I also did the Draft Rankings (which I’ve kinda just filled since no-one else was doing them as I think they serve a good way of demonstrating to newer members that their earning activities are being noticed) and when STZ was in the recruitment crew, they also offered out graphics to new members of the forum, which is a pretty cool interaction especially given how good STZ’s graphics are. I don’t have anything particularly in mind that could fill that role, but maybe having more pieces of content that focus on members that have just joined would help to boost their activity and engagement with the site further. But this is obviously something that someone could also do off their own back with their graphics/media/podcast (in fact I believe Jardy does shout-out new creates on his podcast on occasion) so it doesn’t necessarily have to be a league job/VSN thing, but more just getting out there that if you want to keep people around, best thing you can do as a member is write about them and tell them how good they are.

 

2000+ words

Edited December 6, 2022 by MubbleFubbles

[Gustav 6,407]

I absolutely love all of your web design ideas, and think this definitely deserves a @Dil ping. Even the smallest little changes can make things so much more clear! 

 

I'm not fully on board with a hard limit on jobs (even as someone who doesn't like to have all the jobs in the world at once), although I do believe that "doesn't have a job" should be a good tiebreaker between two deserving candidates. It's something we've followed a couple times in the VHLM.

 

I agree with the VHLE draft idea and I'm trying not to go off on another "here's why I think the VHLE sucks" rant. Three drafts at once is too much, especially since people used to complain about two.

 

I also agree with "more content for newer members", and I'm not saying that you're necessarily saying this, but I don't really care if the proposed way to achieve that is any sort of incentive. At that point, you're doing it for the incentive and not for the new people. There's probably no easy way to just...change the culture of the league like that, but I'd much rather see my new member content from people who actually mean it.

[Garsh 1,190]

To go even further with your idea about helping getting player builds started: What if we had something like a couple "Quick-Start" builds for new players.  Like if they just created and looking at applying their starting TPE  there would be something you could click and it would auto apply the TPE?  I'm talking something really simple 1 build for Offense 1 for Defense and 1 for Goalie.  I'm not exactly sure the best way to fit that on the screen but it's something I just thought of and thought it was at least putting out into the world.

[v.2 1,406]

Amazing work once again! Hope to see most of these implemented.

[Beketov 9,025]

43 minutes ago, Gustav said:

There's probably no easy way to just...change the culture of the league like that, but I'd much rather see my new member content from people who actually mean it.

If you ever figure out how to make people interested in doing things for the betterment of the league instead of personal gain let me know; I've been chasing that dream for at least the last 8-10 years.

[MubbleFubbles 1,290]

15 minutes ago, Garsh said:

To go even further with your idea about helping getting player builds started: What if we had something like a couple "Quick-Start" builds for new players.  Like if they just created and looking at applying their starting TPE  there would be something you could click and it would auto apply the TPE?  I'm talking something really simple 1 build for Offense 1 for Defense and 1 for Goalie.  I'm not exactly sure the best way to fit that on the screen but it's something I just thought of and thought it was at least putting out into the world.

I think that's a good idea yeah! Obviously I'm talking about stuff that I'm not really in a good position to talk about because I don't know coding but maybe potentially you get taken to a screen just after you create and before the player is officially created get to a screen like this which assigns your starting TPE to a set of attributes based on the build you're after (with Custom taking you straight to the Player Management screen). Like something like this could show up if you clicked Scorer perhaps.

 

 

[Beketov 9,025]

Not a bad idea really, have a couple of pre-built starter builds. Mind you how would it adjust for the fact that everyone starts with slightly different amounts of TPE? Even distribution wouldn't exactly be very useful.

[Garsh 1,190]

4 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Not a bad idea really, have a couple of pre-built starter builds. Mind you how would it adjust for the fact that everyone starts with slightly different amounts of TPE? Even distribution wouldn't exactly be very useful.

That's true, i forgot about that, but even if we are applying the base amount that everyone will start with at minimum.

[Triller 1,659]

31 minutes ago, MubbleFubbles said:

I think that's a good idea yeah! Obviously I'm talking about stuff that I'm not really in a good position to talk about because I don't know coding but maybe potentially you get taken to a screen just after you create and before the player is officially created get to a screen like this which assigns your starting TPE to a set of attributes based on the build you're after (with Custom taking you straight to the Player Management screen). Like something like this could show up if you clicked Scorer perhaps.

 

 

This would have been awesome when I started!  Even to adjust for differing starter TPE it could be percentage based to cover everything.  I wish though that attributes that have been widely called "useless" would just be maxed at 99 for everyone or just locked at 0 and hidden.

[MubbleFubbles 1,290]

30 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Not a bad idea really, have a couple of pre-built starter builds. Mind you how would it adjust for the fact that everyone starts with slightly different amounts of TPE? Even distribution wouldn't exactly be very useful.

Yeah my idea was the pre-builts would mainly be used by first-gens (hence why I made it 3 attributes since all of the first-gens catch-up TPE would be divisible by 3, which I don't think would work out too bad as the latest created first-gen (84 TPE) would have 28 in 3 different attributes, which sounds alright as a base although admittedly I haven't really been following VHLM Hybrid builds too much) but I guess we can't rule out recreates using the same system which would skew it a little. 

 

[Arce 755]

You know I think things like this get lost on us veterans since we know how to navigate things so easily, it seems silly to have. But to someone who has never navigated the forum or portal before this would be life changing. It could be what makes a potential member stick around to truly try to get involved. The best part is, most of these seem simple to add. Something easy/simple to make a world of difference to help new members out. The easier, and obvious the better. Great read Mubbles, we could definitely take this and look at more areas to add some improvements on the forum as well in addition to these if any are able to get added.

[Beketov 9,025]

9 hours ago, MubbleFubbles said:

Yeah my idea was the pre-builts would mainly be used by first-gens (hence why I made it 3 attributes since all of the first-gens catch-up TPE would be divisible by 3, which I don't think would work out too bad as the latest created first-gen (84 TPE) would have 28 in 3 different attributes, which sounds alright as a base although admittedly I haven't really been following VHLM Hybrid builds too much) but I guess we can't rule out recreates using the same system which would skew it a little. 

 

Assuming it makes a remotely good player to just have them evenly spaced out like that. I do find it funny that we always suggest not spacing things out which is exactly what that would have to do.

 

We are trying to develop a “first gen flag” for a few other things so in theory we could have that window not appear for anyone re-creating easily enough I imagine. I’m just not sure if it would actually give anyone an okay start or not.

 

Still, it’s a cool idea.

[Shindigs 1,771]

I mean if we're being pedantic you don't even need 3 different builds, as no matter which you pick for the VHLM you'll start with approximately 30 DC, 30 PC and 30 OV in that order. And still be able to build into a league leading player of either type while also fitting inside any and all competent VHLE builds and beyond. There's a reason every player who wanted build advice on Vegas started 30/30/30. It's not perfect 100% min maxed, but it's super easy advice to give and it works incredibly well, as a 30/30/30 90 TPE player will have more or less comparable performance to a 150-200 TPE player with a questionable build.

[Beketov 9,025]

49 minutes ago, Shindigs said:

I mean if we're being pedantic you don't even need 3 different builds, as no matter which you pick for the VHLM you'll start with approximately 30 DC, 30 PC and 30 OV in that order. And still be able to build into a league leading player of either type while also fitting inside any and all competent VHLE builds and beyond. There's a reason every player who wanted build advice on Vegas started 30/30/30. It's not perfect 100% min maxed, but it's super easy advice to give and it works incredibly well, as a 30/30/30 90 TPE player will have more or less comparable performance to a 150-200 TPE player with a questionable build.

Well yes but I’m not sure “all of the above are gonna be built exactly the same way anyway” is exactly the retention message we want haha.

[Shindigs 1,771]

6 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Well yes but I’m not sure “all of the above are gonna be built exactly the same way anyway” is exactly the retention message we want haha.

"The man" is trying to silence the TRUTH yet again.  Lemme get my tin foil hat.

 

More seriously though they do all branch after that, it's just the starting core is kinda the same no matter. Which helps you just "get the points in" then give you plenty of time to decide which direction you want to take it. Without feeling like your day 1 decisions locked you into something you regret.

Edited December 7, 2022 by Shindigs