The Sky Is Not Falling: Recruitment Sucks and That's OK (For Now)

[Gustav 6,425]

Another season, another theme week...wait, it's a good one? I'm not used to that.

 

I feel like it's been a while since we had forum drama. I think it's actually a little fun to log in and watch people screaming at each other over one thing or another--it's a nice little guilty pleasure that gives me reading material and the chance to say something about the situation that basically just amounts to common sense but in far too many words. It's also no secret that this week's forum drama has surrounded recruitment, from unfounded accusations to people being told to shut up to threads turning into long discussions on proper forum etiquette, it's been an interesting read. And now the blues, in their ever-broadening quest for ULTIMATE CONTROL, ask us to bury actual relevant, interesting, and entirely juicy content with endless threads about how "recruitment is good and we should do more of it." No kidding.

 

We're going to have the whole host of recycled opinions this week. We'll have "let's use Reddit again," we'll have "recruitment doesn't actually do anything," and we'll have everyone's favorite, "it would be nice if we had [exactly what the VHLM GMs do already]." And maybe this week will be valuable. I can see, somewhere in here, the opportunity to uncover some new frontier for the recruitment team. But why list ideas? Everyone's going to do that already and I'm not really part of any spaces myself where the league could reasonably be advertised. I don't, however, want the league to lose sight of realism. Just because we've had a forum thread or two that's created a perceived need for more recruitment--and, believe me, it's worked--we don't need to rush right into it yet. 

 

Which brings me to the main point of my article: if you look at the numbers, the VHL has neither a declining-numbers issue nor a need to grow its user base.

 

I wrote this lovely article two seasons back and I'm still annoyed that barely anyone took the time to read it through and understand it. There's some awesome stuff in there if you agree with my vision for the league--namely, that we should get rid of the VHLE and move back to the way things used to work, when there were only two leagues to deal with and it wasn't normal to have players taking six seasons after the draft to move up. I'm not going to harp on that point too much (although I'd still like to make it), so I'll move on to explaining why I'm bringing it up.

 

It's an article that also serves as a lovely time capsule for the league because it has lots of data on roster sizes as they were in S89. There's a massive spreadsheet in that article that shows you exactly what I mean and that I've updated for S91 (go check it out! It's in the article. You'll have to get around to reading my damn article to find it--see what I did there?). I'll extract a few meaningful numbers from said spreadsheet, and said article, for your viewing enjoyment:

 

Average VHL roster size in S89:

6.1 F | 3.6 D | 1.6 G

 

Average VHL roster size in S91:

6.3 F | 3.8 D | 1.3 G

 

My hypothetical "delete the E and use 8-season careers with a VHLM cap of 250" situation in S89:

6.8 F | 4.1 D | 1.8 G

 

The same situation in S91:

7.6 F | 3.9 D | 1.5 G

 

(Cap is fine in this situation in either season. Currently, the average VHL team has 1.6 inactive players on its roster, which would mean an almost perfect 10-12 actives per team if this were implemented in S91. Delete the E please.)

 

I also appreciated the chance to look at this sheet again because it's occurred to me (sadly after the fact) that I can copy-paste that summary sheet into a separate tab and have a snapshot of how the league looked this season for future reference. It took me a couple hours to bring the sheet up to date, and I don't have it backed up from the original case, but it's in order now for any comparison to S91 that I might eventually need. Maybe you'll see it again in the future!

 

 

You know what this tells us? The VHL has not shrunk even a little bit over the last couple seasons. It also tells us something even nicer. The VHL has not experienced a dramatic (and dangerous) growth rate over the last couple seasons either. That's awesome. In fact, VHL rosters are marginally larger than they used to be, and it appears that there are a few more VHL-ready prospects now than there used to be. That is 100% fine and doesn't indicate a poor job done on the part of recruitment.

 

I think this fits an opinion that I've stated multiple times before just fine--that the current league size should be sustained and that we should work to keep our community the size that we want it to be with recruitment serving mostly to guide it to that level. And that's what is happening. The VHL public can mostly chill out over this issue. We aren't crashing and burning and we aren't going to lose the league just because we're not experiencing the type of recruitment blowup that most of us came into the league in the middle of.

 

"But Gustav," you say, "there hasn't been much recruitment lately! I haven't actually bothered to find out, but I'll hop on the latest trend if it makes me look cool! If I had my way, I'd have all of you shot!"

 

My first answer is all of the above. Complete with a "perhaps we could even shrink the league a tiny little bit so I could have more support for an eventual E nuking. If I had my way, you know what I'd do with it!"

 

My second answer, though, is that you're right--recruitment hasn't been great. And that's something worth keeping an eye on, and that's something that does deserve its own theme week with people bringing up ideas and with the team taking them in for consideration. It's also very true that the VHLM is suffering a bit--our numbers on that sheet are considerably lower than they were in S89, and that's something that could indeed lead to smaller VHL numbers in the future if it persists. Currently, that's something we can deal with. It's even something that I appreciate seeing for my own reasons. And I'm not at all opposed to recruitment for the sake of giving us some first-gens to develop. We could try what we can on Reddit. We could make greater efforts to connect with people right from player creation. We could even--who would ever think?--stop advertising on gaming channels and try to connect with people who actually talk about hockey, or make graphics, or do their own amateur sort of broadcasting that this league isn't all that far off from, instead of making our target audience 12-year-old kids who think we're a gaming community and immediately leave. Wouldn't one or two of those things, or even a certain one in particular, be nice? I like to think it would be great for the league and that recruitment has a wonderful opportunity to grow with this week. It could be a wonderful sort of wake-up call. I'd just rather not see us go the way of overcompensating and end up flooding the league again just because we got yelled at a lot over theme week.

 

Going forward, I think the team could use somewhat of a numbers-oriented approach. We could use someone who tracks league sizes and retention numbers and draft class sizes and figures out when would be smart to recruit and to what extent. A guided approach as to what to do, instead of doing things based on instinct, would be great. It's been alluded to that there's been some inaction on the back end in recent times--and that's absolutely true--but maybe there just isn't that sort of guided approach present. Even keeping track of simple numbers like these would be nice. I believe that with enough tracking of numbers over time, we could reach a very good understanding of how large recruitment needs to make the M for the purposes of growth, shrinkage, or sustainability on the big stage.

 

That's my suggestion for recruitment--get someone to dig into the numbers for you, or start doing it yourself. I suppose it's also my suggestion for the community. The next time you see "RECRUITMENT IS TERRIBLE", think critically about it. Maybe it is! Maybe it isn't, and maybe it's a matter of opinion. Maybe you can look at it as convenient for your own little twisted vision of putting GMs out of work. In any case, I hope this is a valuable contribution to theme week and that what I have to say is taken well.

 

 

1,503 words | 3 weeks | you'll never AI-detector me because my writing style is too stupid for that

[Enorama 2,038]

1 hour ago, Gustav said:

you'll never AI-detector me because my writing style is too stupid for that

 

 

I'm watching you

[Triller 1,663]

This is a well thought out opinion and even though this theme week could bring some great suggestions, it would have been real nice if they were compiled in the thread posted specifically for it.  Unfortunately, they will be lost to the archives and never seen again.  Burried beneath the joke posts and copy paste articles that no one should have to sift through for any reason.

 

Also, add this to the job description or hire someone specific and then pay them any amount of TPE.  It will either be too much or not enough no matter what.

 

2 hours ago, Gustav said:

We could use someone who tracks league sizes and retention numbers and draft class sizes and figures out when would be smart to recruit and to what extent.

 

[Garsh 1,191]

9 hours ago, Gustav said:

I wrote this lovely article two seasons back and... There's some awesome stuff in there

 

 

Some "The brain is the most important organ according to the brain" vibes

[Spartan 4,403]

7 hours ago, Triller said:

it would have been real nice if they were compiled in the thread posted specifically for it.  Unfortunately, they will be lost to the archives and never seen again.  Burried beneath the joke posts and copy paste articles that no one should have to sift through for any reason.

Dunno why you're coming in with this sort of response when we both know there's a newly made channel in the recruitment server to post and discuss community suggestions and thoughts. There's absolutely no reason why you should be feigning outrage here instead of just posting it in that channel for all of the recruitment team to see. It seems like you just wanted an outlet to vent which could be better done in a different spot than in a constructive article that was clearly posted for theme week - hence why it's not in that thread. I'll post this article in that channel on discord.

 

7 hours ago, Triller said:

Also, add this to the job description or hire someone specific and then pay them any amount of TPE.  It will either be too much or not enough no matter what

This has been a job within recruitment for as long as I've been here. RJ had the role and posted weekly draft class rankings for all active classes and also advised various commissioners on population trends to inform league expansion or adjustments. I presume Mubbles was hired for a similar role but per his own admission, has been busier with life recently and doesn't have the time. It was easier to justify a lower pay for RJ since he was one of the few people who had portal API access and just ran scripts weekly that made the job "easier." For anyone else, it'd be a much trickier and time consuming job unless they can set up a file like Gus has and maintain it over time.

[Triller 1,663]

17 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Dunno why you're coming in with this sort of response when we both know there's a newly made channel in the recruitment server to post and discuss community suggestions and thoughts.

What?  No outrage, just saying that thoughts and suggestions are now going to be burried due to this being the theme week topic.  Constructive criticism lost beneath the wave of extremely similar content just like every theme week.  You've only posted this specific article in the discord so far.

 

21 minutes ago, Spartan said:

This has been a job within recruitment for as long as I've been here.

Awesome, so as I suggested.

[Gustav 6,425]

51 minutes ago, Spartan said:

For anyone else, it'd be a much trickier and time consuming job unless they can set up a file like Gus has and maintain it over time.

For the record anyone has access to my file and instructions for working with it are listed in that original article. If recruitment wants it they can have it. 
 

It does take a couple hours to make it entirely accurate, but I feel like that once a season is justified if you’re getting paid for it. Honestly, you could get mostly the same job done a lot faster by just looking at total roster numbers—though this gives you more detail and lets you come up with E-hating arguments. 

[Spartan 4,403]

1 hour ago, Triller said:

What?  No outrage, just saying that thoughts and suggestions are now going to be burried due to this being the theme week topic.  Constructive criticism lost beneath the wave of extremely similar content just like every theme week.  You've only posted this specific article in the discord so far.

Right but you can't say that good thoughts will be buried when you clearly have seen this article and commented on it. Not hard to then send this to the rest of the team. I only posted this article because 1. I'm not on the recruitment team to be doing their work for them, and 2. wanted to specifically post this one because of your comment about good ideas being buried. If I see other good thoughts the rest of the week and notice them not in the recruitment server, I'll try and send them as well. But I'd hope that recruitment members are checking out some of these articles since the Commissioners just crowdsourced some of the brainstorming work recruitment needs to do.

[Triller 1,663]

27 minutes ago, Spartan said:

Right but you can't say that good thoughts will be buried when you clearly have seen this article and commented on it. Not hard to then send this to the rest of the team. I only posted this article because 1. I'm not on the recruitment team to be doing their work for them, and 2. wanted to specifically post this one because of your comment about good ideas being buried. If I see other good thoughts the rest of the week and notice them not in the recruitment server, I'll try and send them as well. But I'd hope that recruitment members are checking out some of these articles since the Commissioners just crowdsourced some of the brainstorming work recruitment needs to do.

I liked this one as well, it's why I commented.  I'd hope that people with good ideas come forward whether it's the theme of the week or not.  Usually theme week submissions are rushed and piggy back on earlier submissions because people now have to have an opinion for the TPE.  This week might be different I guess.

 

Again, liked the article and Gus usually says his posts lack discussion.  I don't have time to quote each paragraph and respond so I hoped that the good ideas don't get lost.

[JCarson 727]

Article Review:  Well I have to say I am not disappointed in any way by this article.  I am always amused by the writings of Gustav.  For the most part it is always well laid out, holds a logical thought pattern and has a level of quantitative analysis that others seem to forget can occur.  Gustav does not disappoint in the article.  Reality is it doesn't matter whether I agree or not this article provides everything it needs to be classified as a good article.

 

Thanks for weighing in on this and providing some context that only your type of analytics can do.  I give this article a 9/10 only because it hasn't received the usual comments that your articles generally garner.  Must mean i missed something so it can't be a perfect 10.

[Gustav 6,425]

Week 2

[Gustav 6,425]

Week 3