Molholt's Article

[Molholt 2,185]

I don't know what to call this, if it has a theme or anything like that yet... so... sue me?

[Molholt 2,185]

The last time I wrote for the magazine was when I was serving as the editor. Many seasons before that, back when I was pretty new in the league, writing for the magazine was actually one of my first jobs in the league. I wrote suggestions, ideas for improvement and other things that the league could try to improve or change some area of the experience each week. Most of these ideas weren't well received, weren't read by anyone or were met with the "if it ain't broke," mentality. I think the league might be in a place where it is more welcoming to new ideas, fresh takes on old systems, etc. We're in the midst of a massive change to the league, as myself and 9 others will enter the league's next draft with our second players. This was brought about from one of my ideas, which was posted due to a call to action from Devise, who said that not enough people are posting ways to improve or progress the league. I'd wager to say that most people feel like their ideas won't be seriously considered or that they won't get public attention - I'd like to change that. From this point forward, for as long as I'm writing for the magazine, I'd like to bring those ideas to the forefront of the VHL and hopefully shed some more light on them. I imagine that most of these will be my own ideas, but I'm not limiting it to that only. I intend to keep my eye on things posted around the league and also extend a welcome invitation to all to flood my inbox with your ideas for the league. If you've got them fully fleshed out or if they are half-baked, I'll take them all and expand upon them or discuss why I think they would or wouldn't work. 

 

Speaking of half-baked ideas, why don't we jump right into one? The league's update scale, player build variety and TPE inflation have been been hot topics around the VHL for a while now. I've seen new update scales, calls for archetypes and other ideas to change how this functions for the league. I have an idea that might be considered pretty "out there," but could remedy these situations. The idea itself is rooted in my love for the old Out of the Park (OOTP) simulators that are used to sim baseball leagues. The TCBL (which I run) uses a new version of the simulator and a more modern sim league approach, but in the past we used two ratings for every attribute - Current and Potential. In those leagues we let the simulator determine a player's "natural" development (within the simulator), while they could also develop their player with their TPE. The ratings are pretty self-explanatory, but your Potential rating determined what your Current rating could go up to and your Current rating determined how good you actually were at a particular ability. As far as I know, STHS doesn't have a built-in development program that would randomize the natural development of players and I don't think the VHL would be ready for something as radical as randomized development either. However, I think we could implement a development system of our own that could utilize these two ratings. 

 

How I envision this working is VHL players would have Current and Potential ratings for all abilities (which would increase our shallow ability tree). The offseason would be our development time, which would fit right in with the regression that already happens. As a player, I could choose to add to my Potential or my Current ratings however I'd like to approach it. In the offseason, if your player was in the development stages (your first 5 seasons in the VHL), you would progress to your Potential ratings, at say, 50% of the difference. So as an example, if I had raised my Scoring and Skating Potential ratings to 70 during the season and my Current ratings were 40, they would both progress to 55 during that offseason. I could continue to increase the Potential ratings (leading to bigger gains the next season), work on the Current rating (perhaps taking it to 70 myself) or let it progress naturally and work on a different area. For regression, your Potential ratings would be lowered and then your Current ratings would drop to half of that each time. 

 

This would radically change the way players are built. It would also provide some more varied builds as people would have completely different approaches to building their players. This also could give some more life and variety to inactive players, who would continue to develop if they had boosted their Potential ratings above their Current ratings before going inactive. It also doubles the amount of attributes you could add to, which should slow down some of the all 99 ratings players. I don't expect this to be a popular idea, but it's a different approach to the player build and update scale issues, so maybe it'll spark a separate idea or bring something else interesting to that department. If nothing else, hopefully it generates some discussion! Let me know your thoughts in the comments and send me your great ideas to be discussed in the magazine!

[Molholt 2,185]

I've definitely proposed this before, but I'll do it one more time - remove VHLM seasons from your career clock. If you're the type of player in the VHL who earns every TPE available, had a ton of carryover and never takes a week off, this one is not for you. Those players retire at the deadline, or the beginning of a season and after one VHLM season they are ready to jump to the VHL, which is when their career clock begins to count down. Some players, however, are not quite ready for that moment. Those players have two options, stay in the VHLM and develop, until they are VHL ready, while their career clock counts down, or, they can come up earlier than intended and be a lesser rookie due to their TPE totals. World B. Free is a good example here, as he was well under the VHLM TPE cap, yet he did not want to waste a season of his career in the minor leagues so he asked me to call him to the VHL early. I did and it has worked out good for his career, but at the end of the day, he should be able to come to the VHL when he is properly prepared and ready to do so.

 

My proposal is simple, set a higher number on the amount of seasons a player can spend in the VHLM, say, 4 seasons (this works two-fold, because it also stops inactives from staying in the VHLM forever and ruins Sterling's chances of using a second player as a VHLM loophole for an entire career) and then lift VHLM seasons from the career clock entirely. Once a player hits or passes the VHLM TPE cap, then he would go into the VHL and his career would begin. I'm okay with either option in terms of draft year, but I would also have the player be draft eligible once they pass that threshold, however this isn't as important, so if you want to have the draft year be the season after they create, that is fine as well. If you allow the VHLM to not count against the career clock, you allow players to progress at their own rate and also to not feel like missing a week of TPE is the end of the world, or even an entire season. This lets the people who earn TPE at a slower rate to not feel like they have to enter the VHL with less TPE so as to not lose VHL career years. It also lets people who create and then have something come up and go inactive for an entire season to not have to start over and waste all of their previous TPE, so long as they were under the VHLM cap and haven't been gone for 4 seasons, they could pick up right where they left off. 

 

This is sort of how the SBA's NCAA system works and how I had my minor leagues setup in the TCBL as well. I just think that we should encourage our players in the minors to progress at their own rate, within reason, and figure things out at their pace without forcing them into this weird area where they either need to earn X amount of TPE or they will be way behind in their career or they'll miss out on a VHL season by staying down an extra season in the VHLM to be on a comparable level to other rookies who have carryover, work harder, etc. This lets them at least enter the VHL on even footing and hopefully by then they'll be comfortable with the league and active enough to maintain the pace with everyone else. If you have ideas for the VHL, send them my way and I'll write about them, berating you and telling you why they are awful. 

[Molholt 2,185]

What can we do to make the VHL Magazine better? One might argue that with over 300 editions and years of publication, that nothing is wrong with the the VHL magazine. I would agree that there is nothing wrong with the magazine - the writing is great, particularly this piece and STZ does a great job at putting it all together. The participating writers can vary from week to week, but the magazine is consistent and dependable, churning out great content week-to-week. The "problem" is that I don't think enough people read it and engage. If you take the combined statistics for the last three issues of the VHL Magazine, you'll see that it has garnered 20 comments and right around 200 views. That's combining the three magazines and most of that discussion is myself and Jardy also. To compare that readership to previous issues, a great example would be looking back to the May releases of the magazine, which saw Edition 285 receive 27 replies and 409 views, by itself. Even the lower numbers from May and before have something like 15 comments and over 200 views, which would be stellar compared to the recent issues. I'm not sure what happened, but in June of this year, people stopped looking at the magazine as much and the comments dwindled. 

 

So, what can we change? I think the most obvious thing that could change would be the format. As far as I know, the magazine has basically always been written throughout the week, put together by an editor and posted near the end of the week as a PDF that members can access through sites like Dropbox or Issuu. Perhaps people don't like that format anymore, or have issues opening it correctly. It could also be distorting how the magazine looks to them, or be hard to view all within their browser window. It also has all of the articles within one document, which might entice people to read more of them, but it could also mean that people jump to their favorites and overlook other great content. They may also read something good early on and then forget to post about it as they make their way through the rest of the issue. My first thought is to move the magazine onto the forum. This would be similar to other posted media spots, but we'd keep the magazine in its current area, but either the writers or the editor (STZ) would post the articles in that section individually. I see a couple of benefits from this. First off, the articles could be more timely. It is easy to see that sometimes articles are written earlier and then seem irrelevant by the time the magazine comes out. The writers all have different preferred days to write, or write when something happens and it could be nice to have that come out closer to those events or periodically throughout the week. This could provide more consistent content, rather than it all on one day. Second, it lets us see what articles and columns are doing well and which could use improvement. Due to them being separate, I would be able to see if people are reading my article and if they are engaged. If they aren't I can discuss it with the editor and figure out what things I can do to improve the readership. Right now, we're limited by the whole magazine and it is tough to gauge what sections people are most interested in. Third, it would give us more context with the articles and more chances to bump the VHL Magazine area. Right now, the magazine is just posted in topics that are numbered (although this could change in future issues, they could be named the issue number and the lead article to draw more interest). If we posted individual articles, they'd likely need to be titled which could entice users to read them who normally wouldn't. We'd also have multiple topics posted in that area, as compared to right now, which is one topic per week. Each time a new topic is posted it might draw more eyes to the other new topics as well. An additional idea to this, that could also be implemented now, would be to give the VHL Magazine its own tab at the top of the forum. We have tabs for Create a Player, Rules, etc., so why not add one for the VHL Magazine? It might remind users to check out that week's edition more often. 

 

I'd say that we usually don't want to push people off of the website, but we could also look into going to a more website/blog format, instead of the digital magazine. This might cost some money (although I think there should be some from donations) and it would push people away from the forum, which is my biggest detractor from this idea. Although it could give us something unique that most sim leagues wouldn't even consider or be capable of, it would be a lot of work initially and would have comments that are off-site. There is also the option to use "Articles," which I don't know if the VHL still has access to, but it was a feature of IPB4 that I noticed when we first upgraded. It seemed like it was basically a blog system within the forum that allowed members to comment and rate articles that were posted. We could use that system for just VHL Magazine content, but I'm not sure how much versatility that system gives us and I don't know if we still have access to it - I don't see it on the forum anyway (although that extension could just be hidden). 

 

Even if we leave the format alone, I think we have some options for increased visibility. My three most successful issues as editor were actually my last three, and I'm not sure if they are directly related, but I named the topics (Edition 274 | Are Goalies Bad? - an example) and I think that might draw a bit more attention. I also think we can be tagging the people who are submitting content when it posts - so that they are involved in promoting the magazine being live. We can also tag the members who are talked about, so that they see the content and bump the threads as well. I'd like to see the magazine get its own tab at the top of the site, which should increase the magazine's visibility. I think I've seen some, but it is always good to get the announcement from the commissioners that the magazine is posted, that always helps as well. Maybe we have more guest writers as well - add Robbie for an edition, just to mix it up. Let's get more people involved in any way possible. The VHL Magazine is great and I think more people should be reading and engaging with it. 

[STZ 5,360]

So essentially creating the .com sort of forum you had going in TCBL? I think it's interesting as an idea, but I really don't think you would see readership increase (unless you incorporated the @ feature). I mean look at how much readership there are for Media Spots, I'd assume you'd see a very similar response. Still interesting to think about.

[Molholt 2,185]

25 minutes ago, STZ said:

So essentially creating the .com sort of forum you had going in TCBL? I think it's interesting as an idea, but I really don't think you would see readership increase (unless you incorporated the @ feature). I mean look at how much readership there are for Media Spots, I'd assume you'd see a very similar response. Still interesting to think about.

 

I guess it is like that, and that's what the SBA does as well. In my mind, I'd prefer, if it is going to be on the forum, to utilize some feature to set it apart - like the articles feature with IPB. Something to make it easily accessible on the forum, but different than a typical media spot. 

[Will 4,660]

I'll try looking into the articles thing more, I looked before but it seemed complicated and I didn't spend much time on it. Moving the articles to separate site would definitely be possible it would just require a big investment of time. 

[Molholt 2,185]

7 minutes ago, Draper said:

I'll try looking into the articles thing more, I looked before but it seemed complicated and I didn't spend much time on it. Moving the articles to separate site would definitely be possible it would just require a big investment of time. 

 

I don't think it's worth moving them off-site. It's a thought, but at the end of the day we need more discussion on this forum, not disjointed discussion. 

 

I think people just aren't as engaged overall :/

[Molholt 2,185]

Bypass the VHLM

 

It seems like contraction of the VHLM might be a given, and might be coming soon. Frankly, I would welcome it with open arms. I don't like the VHLM and I've never been one to shy away from mentioning that, but having more competitiveness couldn't hurt. I think that with contraction, the league should try to find a way to allow veteran members a way to bypass the VHLM altogether. YEAH! wrote an article this week about all of his bad experiences with the VHLM and his lack of desire to go back through it. The VHLM makes a lot of sense for new members, as they can learn how the league works and get familiar with our systems before entering the VHL. I don't think we need to have that phase for returning and veteran members, if they'd rather go straight through to the VHL. I don't immediately have any great ways to implement this, so let's figure it out as we go.

 

My first thought is just to take whatever carryover a player gets and double it if they want to bypass the VHLM. They'd enter the draft straight away and be eligible for the VHL. This works great for members who have 75 carryover, as they'd have 150 TPE and then, if they retired at the trade deadline like a lot of people do, they'd have half a season to earn TPE that would put them over 200 TPE heading into their rookie season. If you wanted to play your one VHLM season, you'd take the 75 carryover without it being doubled and then earn whatever TPE you could in that time-frame. I think that most active people would earn more TPE by staying down for that season and earning as much TPE as they could, but those who don't like the VHLM as much, or want to get into the VHL as fast as possible, could forego some of that TPE to go straight into the pros.

 

Another idea is just to offer a flat TPE amount to those who want to go straight into the VHL. In the SBA, you can get a bonus chunk of TPE if you enter the draft after your freshman year, 50 TPE. I've never thought this was enough of an incentive, and people never go for it (I don't blame them), but something like that might could work. If you retire and would like to go straight into the pros, we could just give the user 150 TPE if they retire at the beginning of the season or 100 if they retire at the deadline, giving them a bigger boost to kickstart their career. I'd say that carryover would still be added to these totals. So, the 150 TPE option would mean that you wouldn't join the VHLM at all, if you retired in the offseason, your next player could immediately enter the draft and play in the VHL, so if you had max carryover, you'd get the 150 TPE + 75 carryover and start your career with 225 TPE (all of these numbers could be adjusted). If you retired at the deadline, you'd get less of a TPE chunk, 100 in this example, but you'd join the VHLM for half a season, like you do now. Instead of playing another full VHLM season you'd be drafted into the VHL and go straight to the pros. So a player with max carryover would get 100 TPE + 75 carryover, putting them at 175 TPE with a half season to earn TPE before the draft. Again, these numbers could be adjusted but I think a TPE incentive to be able to skip the VHLM might give users the option to bypass the minor league if they'd like, which is more for first-gen development in my opinion. 

 

Another thought would be to give a player 20% of his past TPE and put him straight into the draft. You could cap this number, at say, 225 or 200 TPE, but to get to that level you'd have to have had a player with 1,000 or more TPE that just retired. Sure, if I retired Max I'd get 200 TPE and be put straight into the next available draft with no time in the VHLM, and 200 TPE sounds like a lot - but I'd be skipping out on VHLM Development, Achievement Tracker and cash. I'd sacrifice those things to be able to bypass the minor league and go straight to the pros, but the number would have to be high to incentivize people to do that. I think 20% with a 200 or 250 cap would be good, something that rewards high TPE earning in a career, but also puts players on par or slightly below what an active member could earn by going through the VHLM system. 

 

---

 

All Star Changes

 

We get over 300 games posted each season in the same format - Jardy/Draper/Higgins or someone else will post a thread with a game number, the two teams and the post itself will just say SUMMARY, which will be hyperlinked to the box score of the game. It isn't exactly the most inspiring thing to see, in terms of being excited about the game. However, we have a ton of games so this format makes a lot of sense and has worked well for the entirety of the league's existence. The one area where we should change this format is the All-Star game. Why, when we're trying to hype up the all-star festivities more in recent years, are we posting this game in the same exact format as everything else? We post the same old thread with SUMMARY and a hyperlink. People click the link, check the score and they're mostly done. Sure, some people will flip through some of the stats and the scoring, but we treat it the same way as a normal, regular season game - so why would I give it any more time?

 

The simplest change would just be to present the game as a PBP with the in-game PBP that is provided. Someone signs up to present the game, they are given the PBP and they present it to the league in a thread. People can follow along in real time or read through it after the fact. The box score can be posted at the end, so that it's more about the events of the game and less about the final score. The presenter can dress up the PBP if they'd like to and really just need to focus on the goal scoring or big plays. Even something simple like this would probably bring more life to the game, which sees very little interest, despite more focus being pointed at it in recent years. 

 

Another option, which would be awesome, but it would be a lot of work, would be to input the all-stars into one of the NHL games, preferably the newest iteration and stream it live for the league to watch. The old hockey leagues used to sim using the NHL series, which is way too much work for an entire season, but for one game a season I think it could work. Plus, we have a lot of rollover from all-stars, so after the first season it wouldn't require nearly as much work. It would let the players actually see their player in action, give us something completely different to experience and actually give the VHL and "event" that you would want to be around for live. 

 

My final thought is just to remove the all-star game altogether. We could still vote for the all-stars and keep track of them, but we could just have the honor and not the game. If we're not going to make the game overly special, then why have it at all? 

Edited November 1, 2016 by Molholt

[Molholt 2,185]

Posted two articles, feel free to use them both in this issue - we need more stuff!

[Molholt 2,185]

@STZ you gonna use the other one next time?

[STZ 5,360]

On 06/11/2016 at 9:15 PM, Molholt said:

@STZ you gonna use the other one next time?

 

Yea I will

[Molholt 2,185]

I finally get to write about some of the ideas that others have submitted in this article, something I talked about in my first contribution to the magazine, but hasn't been possible due to lack of suggestions. This time, I have a few. The first one I want to discuss is our very own editor, STZ, and his idea to add more value to being a captain. STZ suggests giving captains of VHL teams a seasonal boost to their leadership ratings. The leadership rating is an editable rating, although no one is entirely sure how valuable it is in the sim. Currently, the main value of a captain is that they are eligible for the Grimm Jonsson Trophy for Top Leader. Each team selects one Captain and two Alternate Captains. STZ suggests giving captains a +15 to their leadership attribute while an alternate would get +5 to their attribute. I really like this idea, honestly. The leadership attribute isn't something that is going to make a player elite, if they aren't already, and isn't going to be game-breaking in any way that I know of, so why not give another bonus to VHL captains? In fact, I could see the leadership attribute becoming more like the Experience attribute, which is currently not available to add TPE to. The VHL could make leadership an attribute that you can't upgrade, like experience, and then reward points for it for captain duties. You could give out 10 points for being a captain (slightly lower than STZ's suggestion), 5 points for being an alternate captain and 10 points for winning the Grimm Jonsson Trophy. You could even give out 5 points for being a Grimm Jonsson finalist (GM vote). Sure, someone like Phil or DollarAndADream might max it out, but those situations would be rare. Instead, you'd have some value to signing a veteran who had been a captain for a long time, just like it is beneficial to have had playoff success as a player to develop your experience rating. I don't see any issues really, with implementing something like this. It would add another element of interest to being a captain and could make the leadership rating more valuable. 

 

I also saw a suggestion from Banackock about adding other means of earning TPE. He had six separate suggestions that I'd like to take a look at. The first was raise the TPE cap slightly and add a weekly training purchase. I wasn't a big fan of this idea. Right now I think the player store is in a pretty good place after the revamp. Money is pretty valuable, especially for veterans looking to dodge regression. I think that adding other ways to spend money, especially on TPE, is the opposite of what they wanted with the new system. It also doesn't seem like anything that adds value to the boards. I think this idea works in the SHL because they have alternatives to earn money outside of contracts, whereas the VHL is limited in your money earning. I like the differences between then SHL and VHL, so I don't think we need this idea here.

 

The second idea was a team task for TPE. This is something we have done before as a seasonal item on special occasions. I'd say it usually goes pretty well and we have had some good results. I think what Banackock is suggesting is a more regular task though, which could also be interesting. I'd like to see something that got teams more involved together. If the team could work on something together, that would be a welcome addition. Maybe we could have the teams come up with a recap of their season each year, which would not only add to our league history, but would be easy for them to do seasonally. Each player could write about their own season, or swap with their teammates. The GMs could cover the inactive guys and the team as a whole and everyone could work together to make it look nice. I think coming up with more team activities is always a good thing.

 

A third suggestion was to add ways to buy TPE with cash through the donation system - I think this is a solid no. The next idea was a weekly activity check, which again is something that I don't think adds any value to the forum or site. It just becomes a TPE grab and isn't necessary here. His next suggestion was to have higher recruitment rewards. I think there is some truth to this, but the recruitment rewards are also pretty good if people would actually recruit. I know, recruiting is hard, but the value is there if you bring in active people.

 

His last suggestion involved buying equipment for TPE. Again, I think our player store is in a good place right now and I don't like adding in ways to buy more TPE. They purposefully moved away from that system and I think that has been a good change.

 

The last thing I would like to talk about is a suggestion I saw from Trifecta. He was trying to come up with a way that fighting and injuries could be involved in the VHL. If we took away the leadership rating, or we were just looking for more ways for users to spend their TPE, adding durability as an adjustable rating and turning on injuries could be a fun change of pace for the VHL. It would also make GMing more interesting - however, we'd need to tune it to where it wasn't constantly happening, but some occasional injuries could be fun. I know it's tough to convince someone that their player missing games would be fun, but I've always liked the idea of having that realism in a sim league. We'd also likely have to adjust the cap to allow for more depth, or allow teams to have some sort of filler depth cap room that is separate from their normal cap, in which they could pick up players with less than 200 TPE or something to fill in for injured players. I also agree that fighting should be bumped way higher, they never happen. That's fine, but if they aren't going to be possible, we should remove the fighting attribute, because it is a waste for members. We used to have rivalry games that helped make use of this ability. We could also allow users to tune their discipline rating at will, letting them turn it all the way down if they wanted. Jardy slightly bumped the fighting sliders when I had Savage, but my player with 99 checking, 99 strength and 99 fighting never once got into a fight - so they need to adjust it or remove it entirely.

 

Thanks for submitting suggestions (to the forums) this week, its been a good time for people trying to make the league better and I hope this helps spread those ideas a little more. Who knows, maybe one of them will be implemented!