My Thoughts On The Changes Since I Left [1/2]

[Tagger 2,722]

While I have only been away from the VHL for around eight months, this may have been one of the most significant eight month spells the league has had in terms of changes made within the league. From point tasks to salary structures to league composition, it seems like pretty much every core concept in the league has had at least subtle changes made to them. To my knowledge, these are all the changes that I’ve seen and my thoughts on them.

 

TPE Changes

 

League Affiliation

While this is something that was only implemented a couple of months ago, this is something that we had discussed implementing nearly two years ago, over a year before the EFL (one of the VHL’s two partner leagues) actually existed. The idea was going to be that ATW (a member of this site who you may remember had the winger LeAndre St-Pierre) along with a few other members (myself included) were to run the Victory Football League, which would have served as a partner league for the Victory Hockey League which would have included traits such as shared point tasks between the two leagues. Ultimately the VFL never got to open as during the development of the league, ATW went AWOL and the project was disbanded. A year later, the EFL opened its doors and while I hadn’t checked the site around the time of its opening, from what I remember being told by others, it allowed VHL members to use their point tasks that they submitted in the VHL over in the EFL in a limited capacity (I believe it was something under the lines of they could use their VHL Point Task for 6 TPE in the EFL, but couldn’t submit for certain other points around the league). I believe allowing this initial version of the rule was a failing on the part of the VHL, as they really stood nothing to gain from this (the only unlikely benefit would have been if the EFL had players who weren’t in the VHL but wanted to write about hockey more than football) while the EFL stood to benefit greatly by offering active members of the VHL community an opportunity to have a decent player in the EFL with very little additional work.

 

Now, the VHL, SBA and the EFL have all combined forces to form a partnership which allows players to use the TPE earned from submitting a PT used in one of those leagues in all three with no extra limitations, and I believe it’s a good move for all three leagues. Writing about your players or goings on around the league can be fun, but there are times when doing multiple pieces over a short space of time can feel like a chore. That is especially the case over multiple leagues as if you want to do information pieces, you must not only write more, but also spend more time doing research, so allowing people more freedom to engage in multiple leagues while lessening the possibility of burning a player out is a great move.

 

Welfare Changes

Prior to my absence, the league had been using basically the same welfare system that it had been using since the day I joined the league. For those unfamiliar with the old scheme of welfare, it was as follows:

 

Welfare – 2 TPE

Pension 1 (Claimable once a VHL member had surpassed 400 TPE with one player) – 3 TPE

Pension 2 (Claimable once a VHL member had surpassed 400 TPE with two players) – 4 TPE

 

The only minor change to that system that I had experienced to that point was allowing players to claim the extra pension as soon as the player reached the 400 TPE milestone as previously the player had to have retired before the member could go on to claim the next level of pension. Now, the value of welfare has dramatically risen from 2 to 4 TPE, with the Pension II plan being increased to 5 TPE which, with no middle ground between welfare and Pension II, also saw the removal of the Pension I plan. For me, I think this is another good change, but I can also see why those who do not like it would feel that way, as the added value of doing a point task is obviously not as big as it was before. Ultimately, I feel it’s important that the league allows players of all levels of commitment to develop a decent player with consistent activity and, whether they can’t submit PT’s on a regular basis due to not having enough time on the site or in fact having too many duties on the site to have the time to do a PT, this increased welfare allows those members that opportunity. I’m also in favour of the reduced gap between welfare and pension. While I can obviously appreciate the commitment of the members that have committed their time to the site, I’ve always been more in favour of members having their commitment rewarded by time-saving measures rather than permanent boosts over newer players and awarding those longer-tenured players double the points of a new member for doing the same thing was perhaps a little too large of a gap.

 

Press Conferences

Those of us who have been in sim leagues for a while know that press conferences are not exactly a new idea (I remember a few sim leagues I was in back around 2010 that had the same point task idea), it’s refreshing to see a new way to earn points for your player that doesn’t necessarily entail a lot of work. Having just launched my first press conference, I can’t exactly speak on how successful it has been, but providing the members continue to be active in asking questions, the point task should continue to be a good addition to the VHL.

 

VHL.com TPE increase

In terms of pure maths, increasing the value of a VHL.com article from 1 TPE to 2 TPE makes perfect sense, as now you’re doing a third of the work of a media spot and getting a third of the pay of a media spot. Since people generally find it easier to come up with short articles on a regular basis, combining this with the increased welfare will hopefully help generate more activity on the site from members who may not have been as inclined to do so earlier.

 

Media Spots Posted in Advance

This is one of those things that’s always been talked about but never really implemented because submitting point tasks were being used as a check-in to a degree, making sure that people regularly contributed to the site. Now though, players are getting rewarded for going above and beyond in any given week by allowing them to use the same article over multiple weeks. As for my opinion, I think any time a change is made that caters to different kinds of members being free to explore different options of submitting for the same activity to fit the time that they can commit to the VHL, then that is a change worth making. Plus, it’s allowing me to claim multiple weeks of PT this week, so how can I complain?!

 

Reviewing System Changes

Once the change was made to remove the requirement that a designated grader reviewed your piece with a score out of six before you could claim points for it, reviews of PTs took a hit that it’s never properly recovered from. This change, which allowed anyone to submit reviews for a PT, garnered some initial interest, but the issues still seem to be present as only three members have reviewed PTs since the start of March. It’s a difficult problem to resolve, but also not a super important one for the health of the league providing people continue to be honest with the effort they put into Point Tasks.

 

Structural Changes

 

Removal of Player Two

Out of all the changes that have been made, I think this is the one that still has the most opponents to it since the decision was made.  Coming on the back of some underwhelming draft classes (namely S44 and S47) and in the lead-up to the Season 51 draft class, arguably the worst class in the league’s history, the VHL needed something to give itself a boost and the idea that was used was to allow players to create a second VHL player.  As expected with such an idea, the interest in being one of the first guys to have a second player was huge, with over 30 members registering their interest in owning a second player when the first opt-in lottery was announced. The concept had its pros and its cons; while the rule allowed some active members who were able to maintain two players to bring extra productive players into the VHL like Rhett DeGrath, Lukas Muller and Torsten Ironside, the added workload hurt the activity of some members who wound up burning out through the pressures of maintaining two active players. There were also problems with maintaining the ethics of the concept; when the idea was originally proposed it was with the idea that players would have the chance to experience playing on two different teams, but there were instances where some, namely GMs, were far more interested in having both players on the same team. That, along with certain instances where GMs tried to wrangle their way around which of their players was the GM player and which one wasn’t led to some logistical problems over the course of the two-player era.

 

The two-player era ended a lot earlier than anyone could have imagined, before even the earliest adopters of the two-player rule had even retired, but GMs are still allowed to make a second player if they so wish. Do I agree with the ruling? It’s a difficult one. I can see where the commissioners were coming from with their decision; the two player rule did see a number of members leave unable to keep up with the workload and I can see that they would want to prevent newer members who haven’t been the VHL long enough to potentially suffer from burnout from having the same problems. At the same time though, there are also those capable of making and maintaining second players and enjoyed it, which did help boost the player count of the league. I think ultimately with the negative impact the rule had on the active member count and putting into consideration the problems the league has had in the not-so-distant past with keeping around newer members, it was perhaps the correct decision. I don’t think that means that the league should rule out any possibilities of ever utilizing some adaptation of the two player rule in the future.

 

Contraction

While I can’t say for sure since I wasn’t around at the time, it seems from checking around the board that while the end of the two player rule has had the most opponents in the months since the decision, the decision to contract was the change that had the most opposition prior to the decision. The good news though is that it seems like since that decision has been made, there haven’t been too many people upset with it and those that were upset were more to do with the contraction of their own team rather than being upset at the decision to contract. Going off the current makeup of the teams, it seems to have had a good effect on the league as well; every team that made the playoffs was a strong contender and not one of the rebuilding teams had to resort to filling their roster with inactive VHLM quality players, a practice that was used way too often in the ten team era (although one or two may have to go that way next season as with at least ten players still existing under the two-player rule, roster talent could see a small dip).

 

And that’s 2000 and I didn’t even get to everything! Check my upcoming VHL.com Article for my thoughts on the new awards.

 

2024 Words, Using for Weeks Commencing 4/9, 4/16, 4/23 and 4/30

[Spade18 1,308]

lol i honestly forgot that we contracted

[Victor 11,028]

Also new update scale and weekly TPE cap.

 

But overall very helpful recap for someone who has been gone for 14ish months, thanks!

[Beketov 9,103]

A nice roundup of the changes. Good to see an older face on board with most of them, at least in most regards. Opened his expecting the old VHLer grumbling of “things changed and I’m mad about it.”

[DollarAndADream 3,357]

Review:

Definitely were some big changes when you were gone. I think for the most part they all went over well and the league benefit from them.