GMs - WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

[Gustav 6,400]

Well, I've come across a thing in Discord that ended up being a "fuck it, we'll do it live" moment. I'm taking this public because I don't think it deserves to stay hidden, and I think it's about time that someone tried to be direct about it. Maybe I shouldn't be doing this tired, but whatever. It's in the thunderdome for a reason.

 

[screenshots and story posted with permission, of course]

 

 

 

 

Yesterday, @Spartan  and I opened a (civil!) dialogue with the VHLM GM crew after gaining the general sense that our league was running short on highly active first-gens and running high on what, to the uninitiated, our league refers to as clickers--players who spend their days clicking buttons on the portal, never completing a forum-based task, and being a drag on their respective teams as (generally speaking) they don't contribute much to the community or to their locker room. I want to make it clear off the bat that I think this discussion has gone well, I got my general point of "you guys should be earning your pay, thank you to those who are, those who aren't should step it up" out there peacefully, and that we found some of the GMs' feedback in that thread helpful. To any one of our GMs reading this--please don't feel the need to defend yourself, because we just went over something like this and I like to think some of what I'm going to talk about has been partially resolved behind the scenes (or, at least, that we got the word out well enough that you get what we want).

 

However, that doesn't excuse any VHLM GM from reading the rest of this thread, because this concerns GMs of all different shapes and colors and I think everyone should be aware of it. Here, we're talking about a player who was, in order:

 

• Signed in the VHLM, multiple seasons before portal waivers (making some recent concerns about our current system invalid in this case)
• Traded in the VHLM
• Drafted to the VHLE
• Drafted to the VHL
• Drafted to the VHLM
• Traded in the VHLE
• Re-signed in the VHLE
• Let go when their VHL contract expired and spent 2 full seasons as a VHL free agent
• Signed with a VHL team

 

...and apparently NOT EVEN ONCE ALONG THE WAY had earning explained properly despite playing for SIX different teams on all three levels of the league. London is team #7, and this player literally just learned how to earn tonight. Some more facts:

 

• Said player's last forum-based claim was in December of 2021, which didn't involve a point task of any sort but was rather a free holiday TPE giveaway
• Player asked in said holiday giveaway thread, about a full month after joining the league, what a PT was (to their credit, a couple people, including one GM, briefly explained)
• Player's only forum-based earning through their own post was one press conference, once, in their very first week. Aside from that, the holiday claim, and one single TPE claimed through predictions, once, this player has earned nothing but welfare, practice facility, and training camp for over a year straight. It's a miracle they're still in the league, especially given that they apparently have never had any real idea how to earn more.
• I am personally not sure why some of this didn't catch on more at the start, but it apparently didn't because the player was surprised to learn that even press conferences exist today.
• Yes, the part about the player having a good build is completely true. It's clear that they have been given some instruction in this regard, and that GMs have been in contact. This isn't someone who's just never left the portal.

 

 

Call it what you want, and play the "first-gens are weird" card all you'd like. What I call it is a complete failure of GMs at every level to provide the single most vital service to a new player, that being their time and respect.

 

 

This kind of thing makes my stomach turn. I could never win anything at any level as a GM, but something that no one can ever take away from me is that I put my heart and soul into making my teams all they could be for my players. Some people can even do that and win, which is incredible. Part of the reason why I stopped GMing is that I felt I wasn't up to my own standard of what I felt a GM should be anymore, but even near the end, when I knew I was lacking in some respects, I'd be pinging my lower earners once in a while and checking in, and I'd try to ping all my players and prospects at the start of the season with a reminder about where to find earning opportunities and an open invitation to come to our press conference at any time. I even automated part of this by having MEE6 ping anyone who accepted a special role every week. Since my tenure as a whole isn't going to go down in the history books as much of anything, though, I'll get off my high horse in this paragraph and move on to what I think this proves about our league.

 

One does not simply play for six teams without learning how to earn. Let's say I count this player's first couple weeks as a "half-learning" experience where things may have been explained, but just didn't stick well--what does that leave us? 0.5 out of 6? We'll throw that into a data set of 6 points--one "half" and five zeros--and take a few numbers out of it:

 

Mean: 0.083

Standard deviation: 0.204

90% confidence interval: 0 --> 0.494

 

I don't think the numbers are realistically this low leaguewide, but until tonight, this player's perspective can be summed up as follows:

 

• "On average, 8% of teams I'll play for will help me earn"
• "I can be 90% sure that at most, only half of the teams in the league will ever help me, and I can be just as confident, if not more, that none of them will"

 

And that isn't a pair of general statements--that's statistics at work. I do feel that this is someone who's come across a series of unfortunate events to a greater extent than many others, but if this is the experience of a clicker, then it's no wonder why we have so many clickers (and it's also no wonder why so many go inactive). I do know that more than zero to 49 percent of our GMs put in the work that they need to, but that's as someone who's formed friendships with most GMs. For someone who isn't, and someone who isn't as established, is it that easy? I already know it's not, but I didn't think it was to the extent that anyone could ever go to six different places and never even once get the right explanation of even the bare minimum of what's happening in the league. It's been OVER A YEAR!

 

I know that most members of the league have disagreements with many of the posts made by Tate before he left--and while I actually am in that group, as anti-mod as I am sometimes, one nail he absolutely managed to hit on the head was that retention efforts should never stop past the VHLM. Do we just feel that we don't need to help our players when they graduate? If we draft a clicker, do we consider that all they'll ever be and hope we can ship them to a tanking team in their graduation year (in the VHL) or hope their earning never speeds up and that they stay down to help me win games as long as I can possibly keep them (in the E)? Does anyone recognize that on the other side of the screen is a real person, with goals and dreams and hobbies and needs of their own, someone who might have joined our community on a bad day, who might want (or even need) to make a few friends to talk to and to have something fun to do to take their mind off of whatever's getting them down--or do we just see a liability that we'd just as soon get rid of as take 3 minutes to talk to? We talk all about how we're into helping the new members, but never recognize that a lot of the time, we're just referring to those new members that it's actually cool to help--those who show their own drive and initiative in reaching out to you to solve their confusion and making your job easy.

 

The VHLM has failed this player. The VHL has failed this player. And the VHLE has clearly failed this player. Every team this player was a part of could have done better, and this doesn't happen by accident to one person, once. It's an indicator that we've got a certain unspoken culture in league management, whether or not any GM in particular is part of it, that very much exists in general and needs to be talked about.

 

And please don't try to tell me that this only pertains to one case. The fact that we had a list of unsigned players not long ago says quite a bit. 

 

I still have no personal issues with any GMs and have cooled off quite a bit since I started writing here (it's good stress relief!). If you feel I've talked about you unfairly here, feel free to reach out so we can hug it out.

 

 

To end on a less holier-than-thou note--what do you think the league could do to do better? I'm going to start by challenging GMs (and welcoming anyone else who would like to join in) to do one simple thing--reach out to a clicker today. Check in, ask what's up, make sure they're aware of opportunities to earn in our league (especially the easy ones!), and make it clear that you're there to help if needed. If you do that, I grant you permission to tell me to fuck off in this thread, in as many insulting words as you'd like.

 

Not claiming, but I should. Good night!

[Bojovnik 487]

tl:dr but Art Vandelay

[AJW 2,156]

Every time I message a clicker, they don't answer back for 10 years and then I cry myself to sleep knowing I was too late and never said goodbye.

[FrostBeard 2,049]

I can say that with full confidernce that is a problem, yes. 

I have been on both ends of the situation - getting traded a player in VHLE and being told the player is unresponsive in Discord and yet it is the absolutely other way and drafting a player and seeing a steady decline in activity due to trying but not having any success in establishing any contact. 

I see it as a rubber string effect - certain GMs will only care about the way to success for the team and cetain ones the best for their players. If you go first route and (I fully mean VHLM and VHLE) believe that team achievement is the way - maybe it is not the place for you to GM. If you believe in mnaking sure that all the decision are for the best of your players, then we walk into the "better" scenario as GMs are focused on helping people achieve their goals. 

After spending 7 seasons in VHLE as a GM, it is a weird place to be. I was lucky to have great AGMs, great players on my team, I had some clickers and I have had plenty of conversations with them about doing Press Conferences to start it off and see how it feels and maybe they are ready to take the next step and go for something more. Most of the cases though I have been left on read. The biggest problem to me seems that GMs feel like drafting a Clicker is a way to have consistency, heck, I have done multiple times, maybe it was not the way to do it. 

I guess I have said absolutely nothing here. What I was trying to say is that currently, VHLE seems overrun by Inactives for that reason GMs might feel like a difference between a clicker and IA is 15 seconds of weekly VHL visit but that is not the case, it is all about communication and making sure that person has all the tools to get more active and better even if that person won't use those tools. 

 

[Beketov 9,004]

8 hours ago, Gustav said:

reach out to a clicker today

Better yet: stop segregating the league by calling them clickers and acting as if they are second class. Welfare and PF have existed for a decade, you know what we used to call them? Members. I get it, from a GM perspective they aren’t going to get as good as quickly as a max earner but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be bothered with.

 

I know this is gonna be a bit “old man yells at cloud” but back in the day welfare earners were looked at as good draft steals, not something to be ignored. You pick one up in a later round knowing their TPE may be lower but if you can teach them the ways of the league you can make a max earner out of someone that other GM’s just overlooked. I’m not sure when that mindset changed and became “they aren’t worth even considering" but I’m guessing sometime in the 70’s when we had expanded enough that depth died in favour of 6-4-1 exclusively again.

 

Ultimately I think the portal is a double edged sword for this, and I’m not exclusively blaming it at all just mentioning it. On the one hand it makes the league easy and accessible to more people and automates repetitive tasks we normally would have had to manually do. On the other hand though it sequesters people away easier, clicking twice and never seeing anyone else. Back in the day when welfare or even updates were on the forum it was much more likely that people would do other things while they were here collecting their welfare and updating their player. They were already here after all so why not chat a bit. In the same vein other people would see their activity, however minimal, and communicate with them. Being able to hide away on the portal and, at best, in a discord LR keeps people from integrating into the larger community.
 

Obviously I’m not suggesting we drop the portal, it’s benefits far outweigh its drawbacks, but we need to do a better job of seeking out those who do not normally join the greater community rather than simply segregating them off as “those clickers we don’t care about”. A member is a member, regardless of how much they earn, and they deserve to receive the same respect as a max earner would.

[FrostBeard 2,049]

6 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Better yet: stop segregating the league by calling them clickers and acting as if they are second class. Welfare and PF have existed for a decade, you know what we used to call them? Members. I get it, from a GM perspective they aren’t going to get as good as quickly as a max earner but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be bothered with.

This is probably the best take I have seen in a long while. To be honest, I have had that problem of calling members clickers in GM/AGM conversations and I did see that mindset change from considering them to some extent less of a "full blown super duper active member". What I do find interesting is that the name "clicker" just happened to arise and being a GM on different levels for around 20 seasons, it seems to be a fairly new thing. 

[hedgehog337 3,483]

to think I was a "clicker" with my first player for the most part 

[Arce 755]

#BlameCole

[Banackock 8,040]

39 minutes ago, hedgehog337 said:

to think I was a "clicker" with my first player for the most part 

I think maybe I was a bit too

[Ricer13 2,794]

You can still have a welfare/practice facility player who does the supplementary point tasks to hit that capped 10 TPE every week. They will still have a very successful career if they can stay consistent with it. I provide this option to any new first gen who doesn’t have the time to do main PTs. 
 

It’s very important at any level to make sure first gen players know all of their options and how to properly do them. 

[youloser1337 1,102]

Wow. Thats unacceptable. I know being a GM is hard. Keeping track of all your players is tough. When I was gm I'd spend time making sure my players were okay and such. It got tough when I got my new job, hence me stepping down. I really hope this person is willing to stay and get a "redo" for his next player.

[frescoelmo 1,275]

@Dillook what you started

[Nykonax 1,563]

11 hours ago, Gustav said:

To end on a less holier-than-thou note--what do you think the league could do to do better? I'm going to start by challenging GMs (and welcoming anyone else who would like to join in) to do one simple thing--reach out to a clicker today. Check in, ask what's up, make sure they're aware of opportunities to earn in our league (especially the easy ones!), and make it clear that you're there to help if needed. If you do that, I grant you permission to tell me to fuck off in this thread, in as many insulting words as you'd like.

@Kylrad would you like to hear about our lord and saviour: point tasks?

[Dil 1,758]

2 hours ago, frescoelmo said:

@Dillook what you started

?

[rory 1,904]

1 hour ago, Nykonax said:

@Kylrad would you like to hear about our lord and saviour: point tasks?

@dylanjj37would you like to hear about our lord and saviour: point tasks?

[nurx 914]

6 hours ago, Beketov said:

I know this is gonna be a bit “old man yells at cloud” but back in the day welfare earners were looked at as good draft steals, not something to be ignored. You pick one up in a later round knowing their TPE may be lower but if you can teach them the ways of the league you can make a max earner out of someone that other GM’s just overlooked. I’m not sure when that mindset changed and became “they aren’t worth even considering" but I’m guessing sometime in the 70’s when we had expanded enough that depth died in favour of 6-4-1 exclusively again.

This is the main thing. If a player is a welfare earner right now I think it is our job as GMs to push them to being welfare+ earners. Let's be honest here most people who are clicking the welfare and PF buttons are willing to go in and answer 6 questions or go and do trivia. What if they do both? That is 8 capped TPE per week. Why are we as GMs not pushing pressers and trivia harder? What about reviewing? There are so many ways to earn TPE in this league and the fact that we aren't pushing players is the failure.

[dylanjj37 340]

2 hours ago, rory said:

@dylanjj37would you like to hear about our lord and saviour: point tasks?

hi rory, who is point tasks? i have never heard of such a thing

[JCarson 722]

5 hours ago, frescoelmo said:

@Dillook what you started

I fully understand you are joking but in all reality he started a conversation with a player he signed and learned a lot about the players experience. As a community we should be ashamed. This shouldn't be a joking matter.  As a London United player I got to see the entire dialogue, what was included above is just a tiny piece of a much larger conversation.  What really should be expressed is a thanks to @Diland @Gustav  for spending time with this player to start the conversation.  I don't expect that the conversation is over but it is at least occurring. 

 

As a first Gen I luckily got the other side of the experience.  Now fully admit that was because my AGM on my first team was my son and there were and still are many times I corner him in his room, or on discord and ask him a series of questions.  (For example about 10 minutes ago I asked how I could find the season 87 award predictions) Sometimes for the second and third time.  Anyone who thinks that you can throw the encyclopedia of information about this league to someone once and that they will catch it all is delusional. And if you think answering every question with check the Forum, its all there, is valid you are still delusional.  There is no way that anyone unfamiliar with the league is going to find anything they are looking for on the Forum without guidance.

 

Consider this some input from a First Gen player who luckily got the opposite experience.

 

[frescoelmo 1,275]

36 minutes ago, JCarson said:

I fully understand you are joking but in all reality he started a conversation with a player he signed and learned a lot about the players experience. As a community we should be ashamed. This shouldn't be a joking matter.  As a London United player I got to see the entire dialogue, what was included above is just a tiny piece of a much larger conversation.  What really should be expressed is a thanks to @Diland @Gustav  for spending time with this player to start the conversation.  I don't expect that the conversation is over but it is at least occurring. 

 

As a first Gen I luckily got the other side of the experience.  Now fully admit that was because my AGM on my first team was my son and there were and still are many times I corner him in his room, or on discord and ask him a series of questions.  (For example about 10 minutes ago I asked how I could find the season 87 award predictions) Sometimes for the second and third time.  Anyone who thinks that you can throw the encyclopedia of information about this league to someone once and that they will catch it all is delusional. And if you think answering every question with check the Forum, its all there, is valid you are still delusional.  There is no way that anyone unfamiliar with the league is going to find anything they are looking for on the Forum without guidance.

 

Consider this some input from a First Gen player who luckily got the opposite experience.

 

 

Damn right I'm joking, this is the thunderdome

 

If you have constructive criticism and/or suggestions to improve the league, see the link below:

 

https://vhlforum.com/forum/165-suggestions-and-complaints/

 

[Aimee 1,119]

1 hour ago, JCarson said:

I fully understand you are joking but in all reality he started a conversation with a player he signed and learned a lot about the players experience. As a community we should be ashamed. This shouldn't be a joking matter.  As a London United player I got to see the entire dialogue, what was included above is just a tiny piece of a much larger conversation.  What really should be expressed is a thanks to @Diland @Gustav  for spending time with this player to start the conversation.  I don't expect that the conversation is over but it is at least occurring. 

 

As a first Gen I luckily got the other side of the experience.  Now fully admit that was because my AGM on my first team was my son and there were and still are many times I corner him in his room, or on discord and ask him a series of questions.  (For example about 10 minutes ago I asked how I could find the season 87 award predictions) Sometimes for the second and third time.  Anyone who thinks that you can throw the encyclopedia of information about this league to someone once and that they will catch it all is delusional. And if you think answering every question with check the Forum, its all there, is valid you are still delusional.  There is no way that anyone unfamiliar with the league is going to find anything they are looking for on the Forum without guidance.

 

Consider this some input from a First Gen player who luckily got the opposite experience.

 

I had a sort of middle ground experience wherein I got dropped into a wholly inactive team with a GM who was barely there and I was so beyond confused. I also knew no one in the league and didn't know where to start beyond what the welcome DMs linked to. And even with those I was confused because I didn't understand the lingo or concept of a sim league. Thankfully I took it upon myself to join the Discord and took up @Shindigs on his offer to ask him questions. He ended up becoming my main source of learning for my first month at least. Even now I'll still pop into our DM and ask him a question if I'm really confused with something or need clarification. 

 

But yes, as a fellow first-gen who is highly active, I think there is a lot that can be done to make sure more new members end up like us.

Edited January 25, 2023 by aimkin

[JardyB10 4,865]

1 hour ago, JCarson said:

Now fully admit that was because my AGM on my first team was my son and there were and still are many times I corner him in his room, or on discord and ask him a series of questions.

This is wholesome as fuck.

 

"My son, if you tell me where I can find the answers for my trivia questions you can stay up an hour past your curfew."

[Baozi 1,658]

I'm moving this to Suggestions/Complaints because I think its a constructive topic that should be there.

[Shindigs 1,771]

22 hours ago, FrostBeard said:

certain GMs will only care about the way to success for the team and cetain ones the best for their players

The irony of that being that they are literally the same thing. If you treat your players like human beings and go the extra mile to help them. Not only will they naturally be more successful, they will specifically *want* to be successful to repay you for what you've done for them. They will want to play for your team, because it's your team. Having the mindset that what's best for your players vs. what's best for your team are two different things is just so short sighted. Since sustained success requires your players to grow and thrive. Not to mention sharing the LR with people you know and respect is a hell of a lot more fun than a bunch of people you don't know, but who certainly have a lot of TPE.

 

That's what I built Vegas on, I traded away all my 1st round picks to get 2nd/3rd/4th round picks letting me reach out to people who had all the potential in the world, but hadn't learned how the league works yet. What's the point in drafting as many 200 TPE recreates as you can? You won't teach them anything, they won't get better as time goes along, and you won't be able to significantly change their league experience. Whereas if you instead focus your resources on first gens that you actually can make a difference for (or lower earning recreates that may have had a similar experience to what's outlined in this thread) you can actually do something.

 

14 hours ago, nurx said:

This is the main thing. If a player is a welfare earner right now I think it is our job as GMs to push them to being welfare+ earners. Let's be honest here most people who are clicking the welfare and PF buttons are willing to go in and answer 6 questions or go and do trivia. What if they do both? That is 8 capped TPE per week. Why are we as GMs not pushing pressers and trivia harder? What about reviewing? There are so many ways to earn TPE in this league and the fact that we aren't pushing players is the failure.

My starting point for all my players on Vegas was always to explain how Welfare+ works, what the career trajectory is compared to max earning and pure welfare, while doing welfare+, and just let them make an informed decision on how much effort they "need" to put in to reach their goals for their player. For some players they end up only doing welfare+ one or two weeks. Then realize that they just don't want to put in any extra effort at all. For quite a lot of players they do decide that some version of Welfare+, be it 8 per week or 10 per week, is what they are comfortable doing. And some get hooked on earning and go full max earning.

 

 

The most demoralizing thing for me when I was a VHLM GM, and still to some degree is, is that I kept seeing the same pattern repeating itself. With the slam dunk 100% players being the exception, so many of the players who I either worked my ass off to keep from going IA and stay doing Welfare. Or who I got invested enough to do Welfare+/Max earning would instantly fall off a cliff once they left the Vegas and went on to their VHLE teams. One of the primary ones being Town's player. He's literally one of the most prominent members in the SBA, but since all the jobs he holds over there to max earn don't actually give him any affiliate claims in the VHL he doesn't do point tasks here. He just does Welfare, but if you tell him about Theme Weeks/uncapped opportunities/Fantasy Zone/Predictions and the like that take 0 effort. He will do them, as long as you remind him to get his Welfare+PF in for the week, he does it. And as long as you give him build advice, he's more than happy to apply TPE that way. But he knows enough about sim leagues to not blindly want to apply TPE himself. Since that is a good way to completely ruin your player for their entire career as a Welfare earner.

 

What this lead to after he left Vegas was him sitting in the VHLE for almost a whole season at 200 TPA with like 260ish TPE until he finally just stopped doing welfare at all. I was too busy dealing with my own players to keep close tabs on my alumni, there's only so much time and energy I have. So I have to focus it where I "should" be focusing it and trusting that his VHL/E GMs actually do their damn jobs and continue developing him. Well, they didn't. After I noticed what was going on I just reached out to him in DMs and asked if he wanted build help to apply all his banked TPE, and he was more than happy to. Was literally just waiting to have either of his actual GMs talk to him about it at all. (He'd also been traded without being told by the GM who traded him and only getting a welcome message from the new GM, who he though was his VHLE GM. He had to ask me about the specifics of the trade) After the new build and me slightly getting his focus back on the VHL he did go back to doing Welfare again and went on to having a 100+ point season int he VHLE the following season, and from what I can tell on Cologne he actually did get sufficient GM help to stay on top of things. Well, sort of, he was never told to claim the Christmas TPE or the Theme Week. But at least he's doing the weekly earning.

 

Now on the flip side of that stuff, I do somewhat get it. Unless you've actually been a GM you probably haven't had the absolutely soul crushing experience of having a player completely ignore (or give 1 syllable answers) to any and all attempt to help them, no matter how heartfelt. Or players who will either a) completely ghost you or b) do what you told them in PMs/DMs but won't even show you the common decency of responding to said messages. You can only get your spirit crushed by so many people shitting on your best attempt to help them before you just shut down to protect your own sanity. At some point the likely outcome of dealing with a long-shot Welfare earner and putting your heart into helping them just becomes such a source of stress that you simply stop trying. I was approaching the point where that would be me, it was one of many reasons I stepped down as Vegas GM. Because if you *do* reach that point, you shouldn't be a GM anymore. You're no longer fit for duty in my opinion.

 

We also kind of have an issue among at least some VHL GMs where they consider their VHLE prospects to be "not their problem" if you will. Part of that is not wanting to step on the toes of the VHLE GMs that by all accounts *should* be guiding them, which I can respect. But part of it is also the mindset that as a VHL GM all you do is compete, you don't develop. That's someone elses job and it's not what you took the position for (Not like you could use your AGM for it or anything). So that's certainly something I'd consider a pretty glaring culture issue in the VHL as well. To go back to the Town example, when I was guiding him on his build. I was asking him what his VHL GMs plans were for his player moving forward, to give more informed feedback on how he might want to build his player to actually be VHL ready (and able to fill the spot he's needed in) once he hits 300-400 TPE. Which was when I found out that neither of his VHL GMs had even talked to him about anything of the sorts at all, ever. That's a problem which would be so easy to solve. I get not having the time/energy to micro manage every single one of your prospects, but not even having a quick chat on how they could go about making your roster? Really? That's not a good look. Do we not see the value in a player that would effectively be a Welfare (with some uncapped) GM player for all intents and purposes, since you'd have complete build control, and he won't actively pursue FA? Isn't that pretty much exactly what you want when the cap is this tight?

 

Seriously, a huge part of being a GM in a player league is that you're actually dealing with people. So if you don't want to do that, do you even want to be a GM?

[FrostBeard 2,049]

1 hour ago, Shindigs said:

The irony of that being that they are literally the same thing. If you treat your players like human beings and go the extra mile to help them. Not only will they naturally be more successful, they will specifically *want* to be successful to repay you for what you've done for them. They will want to play for your team, because it's your team. Having the mindset that what's best for your players vs. what's best for your team are two different things is just so short sighted. Since sustained success requires your players to grow and thrive. Not to mention sharing the LR with people you know and respect is a hell of a lot more fun than a bunch of people you don't know, but who certainly have a lot of TPE.

 

That's what I built Vegas on, I traded away all my 1st round picks to get 2nd/3rd/4th round picks letting me reach out to people who had all the potential in the world, but hadn't learned how the league works yet. What's the point in drafting as many 200 TPE recreates as you can? You won't teach them anything, they won't get better as time goes along, and you won't be able to significantly change their league experience. Whereas if you instead focus your resources on first gens that you actually can make a difference for (or lower earning recreates that may have had a similar experience to what's outlined in this thread) you can actually do something.

That is indeed very true, I fully believe that I have been able to achieve that too but I do see plenty of situations where GMs make a choice between "Hey, we need to compete so no matter what the player wants, I will go and make sure that we win" or "I will do everything what players want and respect their wishes which will mean no competing". 

It is funny because as a GM, I have personally valued every single person highly no matter what and that mindset of making sure that you are always "People-first" mentality actually leads you to wins and championships, just as you said it worked for you in Vegas. 

It is however really tough because as a GM you have know HOW to balance your own GM expectations and player expectations. It should always be about ways how we, GMs, can make sure that player is having a wonderful and best possible VHL experience. 
 

[Shindigs 1,771]

14 minutes ago, FrostBeard said:

It is however really tough because as a GM you have know HOW to balance your own GM expectations and player expectations. It should always be about ways how we, GMs, can make sure that player is having a wonderful and best possible VHL experience.

Yeah, this is the key thing. Not everyone wants/should be a max earner. It's about finding what's most enjoyable to that person, even if that might not line up with what you'd like them to want as a GM. Just have to work with what you have and make the best of it.

 

It's completely pointless to push a player into max earning if that will just burn them out in weeks/months, when them doing Welfare+ would have made them *not* burn out and still earn very similar amounts. A consistent Welfare+ player out-earns an inconsistent max earner over a full career almost every time.