Breaking Down A Post That Was Indicative Of The Old SHL vs VHL Rivalry

[MubbleFubbles 1,232]

I couldn't really think of anything good to write about to do with rivalries, so I just found the first post that came to mind when I thought of rivalries, which was Gorlab's "Really?" original post in the Thunderdome that was for the longest time the most replied to thread in the Thunderdome (perhaps even the forum entirely?) which was indicative of the old SHL vs VHL rivalry which it's fair to say has significantly calmed down. 

 

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I just got emailed a New Member survey, and I let this shit fly there, too, but I wanted to air out VHL in the public eye as well. I'm from SHL. I have over 1000 tpe there. I am a boss on SHL. I know exactly what to do to get my player to be good. In VHL? I'm 3 weeks in and still haven't done shit with my player, or this community. 

 

To kick things off, it's pretty crazy in hindsight that this is the leading paragraph from someone who would go on to have an eight year stint in the VHL. I'm not sure at this point in time how the 1000 TPE mark in SHL compared to the VHL. I believe at the minute the mark is quite a bit further apart based on a comment I saw in their league reacting to our implementation of hybrid attributes (one of their users mentioned something about how it would only take 1300 TPE or a figure in that region to make an elite player, which would be fair to assume they thought the TPE earning rate was similar across both leagues when that example would prove it's not since people who add 1300+ TPA are complete morons also do not look at my player page please and thank you). One thing I do seem to remember at the time from a quick check though was that Gorlab was a very good earner in the SHL, so it wasn't a false claim. 

 

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Here's why your trash league is horrid compared to us:

 

 

1) There's no rookie/mentor committee. Like, are you serious? When I signed up and created a player, nobody took 2 seconds to ask me if I had any questions (other than my SHL friend who I put as my recruiter). I was thinking some type of welcoming director or SOMEBODY would like, PM a new member and make sure they know what to do, but there was absolutely nothing.

If SHL was doing this at the time and it was being done well, then yeah, that would definitely have to be given as a point in their favour and was a valid criticism. I can't remember the time-frame exactly, but I presume the reaction to this was what led to the installation of the short-lived mentor system in the VHL. On the topic of new member help though, I've been working on-and-off over the past month or so on making stuff that can potentially help the new user experience better, so if you had any particular issue upon joining the VHL that you don't feel has been addressed yet, feel free to reach out to me in my PMs and I'll see if I can think of something that could help fix that experience.

 

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2) I wrote my player biography, because I somehow found out that's what you're supposed to do, and some needledick takes 7+ days to grade it, and then basically tells me I'm a piece of garbage and gives me half the TPE that other people get, despite me putting a lot of work into that fucker??
 

Who is this piece of shit to tell me my joint isn't good enough and doesn't deserve full marks?? Do you want activity in your league? You've got to be way less strict. This isn't some high school summer program, it's a fucking sim hockey league that people come here for fun, not to be told that their writing isn't good enough and given a D-. I don't even remember who graded my shit, but if he ever tried to tell me something like that IRL he'd be knocked clean out. Jardy come see me anywhere in Saskatoon if you want to catch a fade on his behalf.

So for those who are looking at this wondering what's happening here, back in the day you weren't automatically able to claim TPE for a completed point task upon submission, you had to wait until a couple of graders, who essentially acted like a reviewer but it was a TPE job rather than a separate point task anyone could do, gave critique and a score and then the average score would determine how much TPE you got for the piece. Looking at the scores given to the piece, Bios were rated on four categories, content, grammar, pros and cons and it seemed like Gorlab's biggest issue was that they hadn't submitted pros or cons and just written a 924 word biography, which interestingly would be more than enough for the full score in the current VHL, but Gorlab only got 6 TPE out of 10 as a result. Again, another criticism that turned out to be more than valid, and I'm not just saying that because I don't want to be knocked clean out. I think it took a year or two after this, but the VHL amended their rules so that it was no longer required to wait for a piece to be graded and, in turn, could be auto-claimed for the full TPE if the rubric limits were met. 

 

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3) The GUI of your site is clunky as fuck. I know you're trying to make it look sleek or whatever, but it's shit. The absolute pinnacle of the shitty GUI is this horrid fucking text entry box you need to use to make forum posts / pm someone. The formatting is HORRID. BB Code >>>>>>>>>>> Whatever this shit is. This is like some forumotion, horribly coded garbage. I was typing up a response to the 'New Member Survey' (which was sent to me like 3 weeks after I joined this fucker) AND THE FUCKING TEXT LITERALLY STARTED GOING OUT OF THE TEXTBOX ONTO THE WEBPAGE ITSELF. I damn near died of laughter, but this shit is GARBAGE.

This I can't really provide any context for because I struggle to remember what posting on the VHL was like at this point, but it was certainly a way off from where we are now, as features like tagging wouldn't become a feature until a year later. 

 

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4) I dont even know if this is true, but it seems like GRAPHICS are pretty much what you need to be good at, if you want to get points for your player. I don't do graphics, so fuck off with that. I don't want to do text, because I don't want some fedora-wearing piece of shit to passive aggressively "critique" my writing and find some bullshit excuse as to not deem it worth the full reward.

 

Gorlab doesn't do graphics and fuck off those of you who suggest he does, please ignore this photo in the spoilers tag showing where Gorlab's last eight topics were posted, it's not relevant.

 

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This was probably the only point that Gorlab was definitely wrong on as, even at the time, it was much easier to get a good score in writing than it was in graphics, as unfortunately graphic GOATs like BOOM, STZ and Frank set the standard for what a max TPE graphic was and it was not easy to match up to that. I submitted a few graphics for TPE here during the grading era and I don't think I got a 6 ever. Oh no wait, it's because all of my graphics were in paint wasn't it?

 

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5) I was creating my player, and noticed all the other prospects had a (S40) tag on them, so I put an (S40) on mine, thinking "okay there is a bunch of S40's here, so there is probably a draft coming up soon.". Then, out of the blue like a week after I created a player, I'm magically on the Moscow Shitwolfs??? I posted in their LR and they were apparently in the playoffs or some shit and they needed a 4th liner so they scooped me up??  WHAT???
 

This is what you want your new members to experience? Playing a handful of 4-5 minute games on some random team, out of nowhere, without any type of heads up???  A draft experience is one of the major moments in a sim player's career, and whatever this shit system you have here, where my player can be signed as a FA to play 10 games for a random team before he's drafted to another team, is just straight up horrid. This is like an NHL player getting signed as a FA in the playoffs and then getting drafted ~2 weeks after the playoffs end by another team? The fuck?? Who thinks this shit up??

 

To be honest, it wouldn't have been too crazy to have a team named the Shitwolves in the VHLM given that we had a team called the Screaming Seaman at some point as well. That being said the biggest surprise to me re-reading this was that a VHLM team needed a fourth liner back in the day which I can only imagine was because teams weren't cutting inactives back in the day, because there sure weren't enough active players back then for a team to have so many lines full that they could only offer an SHL God 4th line minutes. The rest is kinda similar to what we have now though, which I think hasn't really been questioned since the C.C Sheldon creation a year and a half ago.

 

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If anybody even tries to argue any of the shit I posted, I'm either going to find Jardy IRL and knock him out, or retire and go back to the SHL full-time. If you are from SHL and I offended you with this post, then sorry.

I feel like neither of these things happened. Gorlab definitely didn't retire from the VHL and I don't believe @JardyB10got knocked out, although maybe he just hid it from us for all these years. I feel like it was Slobo and Bushito who were the ones who were most in favour of trading fades with Gorlab, but I doubt anything came of that either. 

 

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So yeah in short, quite a few people in the SHL did not like the VHL and vice versa, so that's the most prominent rivalry that comes to mind from my time in the league. God I hope I did 500 words I can't be bothered checking. 

Edited February 13, 2023 by MubbleFubbles

[Gustav 6,183]

I remember a LOT of "SHL bad" talk when I first joined. I've never been a member there, so I can't really offer a two-sided perspective, but things have certainly cooled off. If anything it's just another place to play, and it's possible we even help each other out quite a bit with member crossover. I feel like that's cooled off somewhat as well, though.

[JardyB10 4,837]

I still have never met gorlab irl, but I have no doubt I would catch fades like an all-star MLB fielder.

 

Maybe one day we can do a Fuddruckers podcast date for a Christmas stretch goal or something. Plus a charity boxing match?

 

ALSO THE SHL CAN SUCK IT, YEAH!

[Ahma 1,308]

6 hours ago, Gustav said:

but things have certainly cooled off.

i believe it's because shl moved to a different sim engine. they use FHM nowadays I think?

 

but yeah, screw shl. shl is a bunch of nerds, VHL for the cool guys!

[Beketov 8,732]

9 hours ago, Ahma said:

i believe it's because shl moved to a different sim engine. they use FHM nowadays I think?

 

but yeah, screw shl. shl is a bunch of nerds, VHL for the cool guys!

They do but things cooled off a good bit before that anyway. It's just kinda one of those things where back in the day there was intense competition between the different leagues all fighting over a small pool of the same members. Now that fighting doesn't really exist because we've just decided to try and make it easier on people to be in multiple leagues instead of being so focussed on "no, these are OUR members, keep your hands off" kinda mentality. People still have their "primary" league of course but it's way less likely for anyone to be in only one league now.

[N0HBDY 1,028]

I remember my brief stint in the SHL, I joined and from there nothing, I couldn't message or something because I wasn't approved and so I waited for whatever that was to happen, it never did. I joined their discord and asked around but got nothing figured out, I've heard their more forum focused anyways so the discord is dead. No one ever reached out to me there and I left as quickly as I created lol

[Arce 742]

Ah, I remember the old grading days. My first league job! That was a bit ridiculous, and I was always trying to be generous on the ground someone put an effort into their piece, no matter how poorly it was written.