A Gustav 30 in 30, #29: Oh My God! They Killed Kenn-E!

[Gustav 6,469]

 

Yeah, ultimately no one cares about the most popular post in my original thread. This wasn't even about killing the E at first, but I was more than happy to oblige when the discussion took a turn in that direction.

 

 

Gustav 30 in 30 #25 was going to be my only article about the VHLE. I've only played in the E for one season, which I really didn't hate, and it was at the point when I started this series a foregone conclusion for me and BoG that the E was going nowhere. It really wasn't for lack of trying, mind you. From the day the E was conceived, I hated it, but I knew that the number of players we had in the league didn't justify its removal. So, I chose to sit back and make it very clear that my ideal future for the league was one where we hypothetically could delete the E and chose to do so.

 

The first time that perception flipped for me was S89's theme week. Then, the wonderful people up at the blue team decided to ask the wonderful people of the VHL what they would do if they ran it for a day. Of course, in my case, asking what I'd do if you made me commissioner wouldn't have been nearly as smart as just knowing what my answer would be and giving me the TPE to shut up. My response to that question was one of my best media spots ever, one that aggregated roster size data and compared multiple different E-less scenarios to analyze whether we could get rid of the thing. For my model, I purposely made generalizations in ways that would approximate larger VHL roster sizes so any conclusion that the E could be deleted couldn't be claimed to be the result of personal bias. And guess what--I found that it would be just fine. Everyone knew that the size of the VHL's prospect pool had declined since the late S70s, but this did absolutely nothing to stop large parts of the league from maintaining that the VHLE was still necessary. It also did nothing to stop me from agreeing with them if we weren't able to accommodate any overflow from getting rid of it. I really hadn't known the answer to that question for sure up to that point, but I had my answer there and I was ready to take the next step.

 

So, in S91, I followed up with exactly the same analysis and reached exactly the same conclusion. This wasn't unprompted and was even the result of a different theme week. This time, it was about recruitment, and the reason for that was hardly a secret. Right at the start of the S90s, recruitment had been just about entirely nonexistent for a few seasons on end. Draft classes were super thin, and so was the VHLM as it depended almost entirely on recreates. And even though my updated media spot showed practically no difference in VHL numbers from S89 to S91, something it didn't focus on as strongly was a dramatic reduction in VHLM numbers. Recruitment was a controversial topic, some of the reactions weren't so friendly, and it doesn't take too much intellect to realize that a declining VHLM also means a declining VHL eventually.

 

The Board of Gustav went to work on discussing VHLE Society and Its Future the next season in a thread (surprisingly) started by @Beketov. By then, decreasing M numbers had started to hit the VHL more evidently, and the idea of nuking the E had become appealing to much of BoG. There were relatively few disagreements on that topic from a group that had previously instituted the system (I wanted to roll it ALL the way back to a cap of 250 and the old depreciation system with 8-season careers), and the thread wrapped up with a conclusion to kill the E.

 

Until:

 

 

 

Until, that is, recruitment decided to do something. The S93 class had 64 picks to S92's 31, with lots more active players as well. The decision to shut down the E was as made as anything has ever been in the BoG, and it fell apart pretty much immediately after it was made with a successful recruitment drive that filled the M back up and re-justified any "the M has enough players so we don't have to do anything" arguments that had been made in the past.

 

I still hated the E, and the number of players we had in the league had nothing to do with my feelings about it. I was a bit disheartened by the last failure to make things work the way I wanted, and it was still a bit too soon to suggest that we do the apparently unthinkable and get rid of the E, so I decided to propose an alternative.

 

My alternative was very clearly labeled as pure speculation, but I suggested that perhaps VHLM teams could be directly affiliated with VHLE teams. There were lots of intricacies to how this might have worked, but in short, I wanted to pair two M teams to each E team, therefore getting rid of lots of awkward transitions between the M and the E. I reasoned that, under a system like this, first-gen players would be far less confused with one of their drafts eliminated and far less displaced with an organization that could be run all as one community right up until that player went up to the VHL.

 

Interestingly, this took off far more than I thought it would. The thing was, I wasn't super crazy about my idea in the first place and just wanted to test the waters on alternatives to the current system. To me, there were downsides of my way that were very evident as well in that GMs in both the M and the E would find their abilities handcuffed by the other teams involved in the matter. Plus, I still definitely didn't like it as much as just getting rid of the E, but who cares about that when the idea that you might just went out the window?

 

I watched as the thread took off and built up steam and eventually snowballed into something entirely different, which was Bek's idea of having the development league be just one all-encompassing level managed by the same GM, where the upper level could be managed as the GM chose and the lower level would be meant more for newer, lower-TPE players. This was quite a bit simpler than my original idea in the sense that it got rid of having three cooks in the kitchen of one organization, and I didn't hate it at first. A couple things got in the way of the idea that I might support it: one being that I thought inconsistent roster sizes would lead to a more stable upper division at the expense of a bot-filled lower one that wouldn't be friendly to lower-TPE players, and the other being that it was also being floated out there by this point that we could just make things simple by deleting the E and calling it a day.

 

Well, that was interesting. I'd (quite accidentally) relit the flame and gotten the ball rolling again on my single favorite topic. BoG was very interested in the latter affiliation system, in my opinion because (as stated in #22 of this series):

 

Quote

I feel that BoG will generally gravitate toward more disruptive changes, not because they're perceived as any more effective but because people want to be important and do big, exciting things.

 

This led to my thread eventually becoming a poll between the three options that had been covered up until that point, and the results indicated that we may be headed toward a whole new thing that I didn't really like:

 

 

 

Even though deleting the E was simpler and accomplished everything I meant to accomplish from the start in suggesting that we overhaul the system, a couple things about the affiliation system were more appealing to a lot of people. It was touted as promoting league stability, as the natural stopgap between the lower and upper levels would allow the size of the league to ebb and flow without requiring that we adjust the number of teams (despite other concerns of how this would affect the lower level). Plus, having 30-TPE players right up against 400-TPE players was seen as just too much for those 30-TPE players (eventually, test simming would refute this point. Keep in mind that 30 versus 250 under pre-hybrid attributes was quite the difference and it worked fine). 

 

Discussion took off on the affiliation system, and the more ideas people had for it, the more complicated it seemed, until we were at the point where we had something that was going to operate on a huge string of technicalities. I was actually very much checked out by this point, because I'd accepted that it was going to go some way I was going to like less than the E. Later on, though, I clicked back into the thread and saw posts by people like @Berocka and @v.2  (and others I don't remember) opining that the proposed system had become too complicated, it really was less desirable than the E, and we should either just take the simple way out in nuking the E or do nothing at all.

 

Which, it just so happened, I agreed with. I rejoined at this point, but it was mostly just a matter of jumping on board what had become the third entirely different end goal of the discussion. A separate thread was put up where the voting results were now heavily in favor of simple E deletion, and we set that in order very soon after.

 

It really wasn't my doing, but the thread I started was ultimately what ended up getting rid of the E. After the lottery, it was the second time I'd brought up an issue with a league institution, watched BoG fight over it, and eventually saw it disappear entirely once everyone decided they were done fighting. Perhaps that's just the best way to go about things.

 

On a personal note, I'm very glad that I was slow enough with my articles that this happened while I was still writing them. Gustav 30 in 30 was originally going to be mostly a 29 in 30 with a stupid filler article shoved into place of this one, because I could only think of that many ideas, but one more thing just had to happen that was memorable, and here it is. Plus, I haven't seen the behind-the-scenes perspective of this anywhere out in public yet, so it's quite possible that it's the first time lots of you are finding out how it all went down. By itself, I think that's a story worth telling, but it's also a perfect addition to my series.

 

 

 

Read my other articles for the full Gustav experience:

 

#1: Lightning Glory Gonna Be My Name

#2: Can't We All Just Get Along?

#3: Who Needs Cybersecurity Anyway?

#4: The House That I Built

#5: Can We Fix It?

#6: American Beauty

#7: The Kids Are Alright

#8: Dogs In A Pile

#9: I Just Wanna Grill For God's Sake

#10: This Old House

#11: Go Directly to Jail

#12: If You Can Dodge a Color, You Can Dodge a Ball

#13: How I Messed Up Davos

#14: Ello Gov'nor

#15: Weewoo

#16: Jolly Kranchers

#17: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 2

#18: I've Been Everywhere, Man

#19: The Sun Also Rises

#20: Ripple In Still Water

#21: How I Messed Up Davos, Part 3

#22: I Hate the Meta

#23: I Hate the Mods

#24: I Hate Bureaucracy

#25: I Hate the VHLE

#26: Mint Jams

#27: It Ain't Easy Being Green

#28: Art Vandelay

[jacobcarson877 2,563]

Man that thread was a ride. We definitely spent more time saying the same thing in ways that made it seem like we were all arguing, even if we all had the same concept in mind. And as much as I'm glad we got it done, I don't think we've come close to seeing the long-term product that the VHLM will be, and that excites me!

As does the big conclusion to your series!

[Beketov 9,101]

15 hours ago, Gustav said:

The Board of Gustav went to work on discussing VHLE Society and Its Future the next season in a thread (surprisingly) started by @Beketov.

Is it that surprising? I held the opinion from the start that it was necessary but when it wasn’t I would be open to changing things. Up until that point I didn’t see it as a necessary discussion.

 

15 hours ago, Gustav said:

 

I watched as the thread took off and built up steam and eventually snowballed into something entirely different, which was Bek's idea of having the development league be just one all-encompassing level managed by the same GM, where the upper level could be managed as the GM chose and the lower level would be meant more for newer, lower-TPE players. This was quite a bit simpler than my original idea in the sense that it got rid of having three cooks in the kitchen of one organization, and I didn't hate it at first.

I still think the concept is cool; just wound up that reality did not mesh with how I viewed things. If those tests had shown that 400 TPE players crushed everyone else into the sand though I’d still be fighting for it.

[Gustav 6,469]

2 hours ago, Beketov said:

18 hours ago, Gustav said:

 

Is it that surprising? I held the opinion from the start that it was necessary but when it wasn’t I would be open to changing things. Up until that point I didn’t see it as a necessary discussion.

Kinda yeah. I knew this was your opinion on it but I figured that the ball would have started rolling from someone who actively hated it more. 
 

2 hours ago, Beketov said:

I still think the concept is cool; just wound up that reality did not mesh with how I viewed things. If those tests had shown that 400 TPE players crushed everyone else into the sand though I’d still be fighting for it.

I really didn’t mind it at first but the more I thought about all the ways that lower level would have been gutted for the sake of the upper team the less I wanted to deal with it. Not that we couldn’t have worked with that, of course, but I feel like at that point it became a matter of that versus the other option that I liked better anyway and didn’t feature those issues. 
 

I am super glad we test simmed regardless of outcome. I feel like prior to that point, we had a lot of assumptions going both ways about how it would work, and they were ALL unfair with nothing to back them up at the time. 

[Beketov 9,101]

2 hours ago, Gustav said:

Kinda yeah. I knew this was your opinion on it but I figured that the ball would have started rolling from someone who actively hated it more. 

Not to give myself credit I don’t deserve but I feel like that’s what helped the discussion. People who actively hated it, like yourself let’s be honest, kinda just turned to white noise eventually so it would just be “oh look another E hater coming to hate on it.” 

[Gustav 6,469]

42 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Not to give myself credit I don’t deserve but I feel like that’s what helped the discussion. People who actively hated it, like yourself let’s be honest, kinda just turned to white noise eventually so it would just be “oh look another E hater coming to hate on it.” 

 

FWIW I do agree with this. One thing that annoyed me about the "kill the E" argument was that it often came without much to back it up and it was mostly just something that people said because they wanted it. 

 

I like to think I did try to actually back it up when I could, but I would understand not taking it entirely seriously for that reason.

[Beketov 9,101]

20 hours ago, Gustav said:

 

FWIW I do agree with this. One thing that annoyed me about the "kill the E" argument was that it often came without much to back it up and it was mostly just something that people said because they wanted it. 

 

I like to think I did try to actually back it up when I could, but I would understand not taking it entirely seriously for that reason.

You were certainly better than most. Didn't mean I agreed with the opinion but you at least had some options and evidence aside from "trust me bro, just expand everything."

 

I do think if it had com from even you though it still wouldn't have gotten much traction. Really what you did gained the ground that it did because it wasn't formulated as "the E needs to die"; that was kinda just a natural progression of the discussion.