Commish For A Day

[dstevensonjr 402]

Welcome to the new VHL, now run under new Dictator Commissioner Doug!

 

The first change made will be a massive expansion of the VHLE. 8 teams is not nearly enough for this prestigious league, and it needs to be a much larger group of teams. I think that 16 teams is a much better number.

 

But in all seriousness, you're going to read a lot of suggestions to "Abolish the E" this week, and I don't think that's the right approach. I do think that it's important to have a league progression system, and I like the 3 tiers. I think that the more important problem to figure out is why there seems to be an issue keeping interest piqued while on the journey to the VHL.

 

TPE Earning & Caps

 

In my experience, it has been daunting to see how much TPE that it takes to be a top level player in the VHL, and how long that it would take to get anywhere near that level from the beginning (assuming you hit the 12 Capped TPE threshold each week, it would take 1.5-2 years or 6-7 seasons to get to 1000 TPE, which would put you in the top 40 players in the VHL). To that end, I propose changes to the TPE system, both in terms of earning ability and earning caps. The key to finding balance between just handing out points and leaving players room to earn more if they choose is important. You don't want to encourage too many people to just coast by with points that are earned without interacting with the league, but you also don't want to make it so that you have to post multiple articles/podcasts a week to be able to earn. In that area, I'd increase the Practice Facility TPE to 5 points from the current 2 so that you can lock in a handful of points from the get go at the start of the week. To ensure that this doesn't become a league where the point claiming is done on the portal only, I'd increase the Capped TPE amount to 18 a week. That would also help offset the shortened season length that will be mentioned below to not hinder players ability to earn quickly.

 

TPE Thresholds

 

I'd also propose changes to the thresholds that it takes to go from the VHLM to the VHLE to the VHL. The current cap in the VHLM is 200, and the cap in the VHLE is 400. I'd propose that the cap for VHLM be lowered to 150, and VHLE be lowered to 300. Giving players a quick chance to progress through the VHLM into the VHLE should keep engagement levels higher when players take that step, which should improve competitiveness and interest in the VHLE. I think that it would be a mistake to just broom an entire league/tier to play at, and would cause a logjam of players that are making the jump from the VHLM to the VHL. Making the E disappear doesn't help solve a problem, it just ignores the issues, and would only cause others. I also thought about a TPE threshold for the VHL, but I'm not sure how you could make that work fairly for players, so I've left that off.

 

Season Length

 

It takes roughly 2.5-3 months to complete a full season at the moment, which means that it takes about a year to get to the VHL from player creation date if you play 2 seasons in the VHLM and 2 seasons in the VHLE. Increasing the amount of games that are simmed per day from the current amount (3 days in sim, roughly 15 games for the VHL) to a bit higher (5 days in sim, roughly 25 games) could increase the speed of the season and shorten the length it takes to complete each one.

 

To summarize, here are the changes that I'd make:

 

Weekly TPE Cap: 12 to 18

Practice Facility TPE: 2 to 5

VHLM TPE Playing Cap: 200 to 150

VHLE TPE Playing Cap: 400 to 300

Sims per day: 3 days to 5 days

 

I think that there are a lot of great things about the VHL as a whole, and so I don't think that huge changes are needed, especially to the league structure. I think that the timeline is the largest part of the struggle to maintain interest in the league, and tinkering with it would go a long way to making a great thing even better!

 

Thanks for reading!