My Wings Are Melting!

[jacobcarson877 2,541]

Sorry for the huge image, I am way too lazy to fix it.
 

I have spent a lot of my little VHL time this past week thinking about roster construction. Both Landon and London have a lot of work to do to get to where they deserve to be this season, and perhaps some of it comes down to a lack of foresight. Or maybe simply a lack of understanding overall, partially being my fault, partially just the cards I was handed.

When I made Landon Wolanin I knew virtually nothing about player builds or anything really, I had come off a long and mostly inactive backup goalie career, where I rarely checked in on anyone around me. I may as well have been a first gen, minus the perks.

I had wanted to make a defensive winger, inspired by the likes of Valeri Nichushkin, Nico Sturm and Zach Aston-Reese. For a while I was considering not delving into scoring at all, as I had never really considered that I would become a max earner, or be trying to become the top earner of all time. I didn’t even really know that defense was all that powerful of a stat, nor that the hybrid attributes would come in and shake everything up so early into my career. I quite literally just wanted to be a role player.

 

Skipping to now, I look at the United roster, and the start of Wolanin’s Helsinki debut and I wonder if my perception of positions has been wrong all along. London has fallen behind drastically up the middle of the ice, with Molotov having some unforeseeable and completely understandable setbacks, and a shell-shocked rookie to back him up. Our strength comes from the wings, but with nothing to really hold the line together. We’re passing in circles until someone steals the puck. Most of our salary, and skill is on the wings, which lent me to thinking that we could make do with a leaner centre pairing, but that idea has been brought into question.  

 

I’ve been thinking a lot about systems and identity as I tackle this issue, since our previous cup-winning identity seems to be a thing of the past. I’ve been working on some builds and “classes” to inspire our prospects and roster players to grow with purpose. I haven’t released them yet, as they’ll likely go through a second or third look, but part of my player analysis going forward will likely involve figuring out how they look within the system of the team, rather than simply as individuals.

 

That alone pains me to say, since I have always hoped for a VHL where build diversity could blossom, and with some additional stats and context we could come to appreciate individuality a bit more, but it has also become increasingly clear that the VHL is an optimization puzzle. This is not like real life where a player can simply be better on all accounts than every other player. We are all handed the same cards, and told to play the hand as best as we can. Try as we might there is only so much TPE we can earn, apply and maintain through depreciation.

 

That is one of the things I have come to realize with Landon. The engine seems to genuinely integrate player positioning at least into its box score results, with the players playing at C leading the way, and wingers struggling to hit the top 10. Really only Sogaard, Galvins and myself have established ourselves firmly in the top 10, and all of those have been riding shotgun with another top C. D are a whole different ball game but with 2 or 3 spots being filled by them, and most of the rest C, it gives a bit of insight as to what roster construction should look like. Another reason I picked a winger for Landon was because I didn’t think I would earn enough to be a C. So I wanted to optimize what I did have, and not worry about spending TPE on Face-offs.

 

I’ll be starting to implement some of these ideas in what few ways I can, without being able to do any informal testing (someone please teach me how to STHS I want to SIM ALL DAY EVERY DAY (not using the VHL file of course since I won’t have that and I agree with not allowing/encouraging test sims for the real league for many reasons)) I am mostly left to analyze what little hybrid history we do have and draw statistically insignificant conclusions from that.

 

I think we can all agree that the state of the VHL is that a team lives and dies by its stars. If the stars are better than the other team’s stars, chances are you’ll win. While the middle and lower earners can contribute, they tend to see the most of their effort materialized in watching their star succeed. With the top earners having a decent amount of TPE wiggle room to make great players, and really see very little improvement after 1000-1100TPA, it becomes a game of optimizing the depth to best compliment the stars. This means our players need to be self-aware in their earnings and understand from an early stage how they are going to compliment the team. An 800TPA player built in the same proportions as a 1200TPA player is very rarely going to compete in the same ballpark. But with the right focus, they can compete in certain aspects, and drive their team to succeed.

 

I’m trying to decide whether I want to do a public series on player builds, especially those for lower and mid-level earners, or whether I want to keep it private. I suppose that will primarily depend on how confident I am in my conclusions. The more confident the more likely I’ll be to hide it. Sorry!

If anyone wants to hypothetically teach me how to make an STHS league, and which subscription to buy I would hypothetically love you forever. If any league leaders are against the idea of me testing things using my own non-VHL players in my own non-VHL league then please do so. I just want to learn more about this weird engine of ours.

 

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Edited September 3, 2023 by jacobcarson877

[jacobcarson877 2,541]

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