What is the draw of PBPs?

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

I've seen multiple members around the site suggest that we do more play by plays of games. I know they're more common in other sim leagues, but my question is...why? One of the worst parts of text based sims (whether it's STHS, Front Office Football, or any other sim engine) for more "complicated" sports like hockey and football is that it's very boring to read the play by play output rather than the box score at the end of the game. This is especially true of STHS, which has a very basic play by play available if you go to the full game. In the past, we've done PBPs of playoff games, and basically no one has cared - minimal live reaction and a minimal bump in posting afterwards. I recognize that this was during a different time period in the VHL with a much different member base, but I still don't see the draw of these for the extra work they require.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Beketov 8,960]

I’ve personally always looked at it as not worth the effort. We can sim easily 10+ games in a matter of minutes vs. Doing 1 with PbP that takes multiple hours for a single game. Maybe it’s just me but I’m too busy to even sit around for that and even if I weren’t, as you said, the PbP itself is rather boring. A PbP announcer could certainly fake it to jazz things up a bit but it’s still ultimately a huge undertaking for what I deem minimal gain.

 

Realistically the reason the VHL took off 12 years ago is because we became the first league to run a text based sim instead of running off a video game that needed to be watched and PbP’s by an announcer. This ease of simming is a huge advantage because it means that we can have a pretty decently long season without having to kill our simming team in the process.

[K1NG LINUS 145]

When I was suggesting that @Renomitsu do play by plays for the sims that was entirely based on the 1 really high quality on that he did in the EFL recently. I was mostly joking because that was a one-off and he put an insane amount of work into it to make it so fun to read, which obviously would not be possible for anyone to realistically do on a regular basis. I would be curious to see if there is interest in maybe doing it for game 7s in playoffs or other big games on a very rare basis so that they can be of high quality, and be rare enough that there would be regular interest in them.

 

Also, for anyone that has not seen it, please check out the amazing job that Reno did in the pbp here: http://efl.network/topic/10550-s12-ncaa-national-championship-game/

It's a work of art.

[Renomitsu 934]

I agree that writing a play-by-play is not worthwhile, and I apologize, as my post in the lottery thread was not intended to be taken as such. As with the SBA (but to a lesser extent), the VHL simply sims too many games per day to ask for presentations, and the sim output doesn't give a whole lot to work with in that respect. I do think there needs to be a reason to increase participation in game-day threads, but doing so through sim PBPs probably isn't a viable solution.

 

Even if we were to work with a different sport, I'm not sure the VHL is the right type of league for an intensive PBP posting right now - this is my primary league because I don't want to spend more than a couple of hours a week getting my TPE (even if I'm glad to chat on Discord). But with plenty of new members, I think a few shiny new bells and whistles could improve retention; expansion is one of those bells/whistles but I'd like to think we've done enough of that for a little while.

[Nykonax 1,563]

Tbh, I don't see it working that well in VHL, especially because the STHS pbp is very lacking. It would be cool for the playoffs finals game 7, and VSN could present it, but it seems like doing it anymore than that would be a very time consuming thing to do

[Banackock 7,992]

Lots of people do them and like them in the SHL. Not everything is going to be “worth while” to everyone. Making an amazing graphic and putting in tons of effort to me wouldn’t be worthwhile on this site with some of the shitty graphics I’ve seen earning 6 TPE. 

 

I dont see a strong enough grab here to here to make it worth it, but it does add suspense and league activity during the PBP’s. My activity isn’t what it used to be 20+ seasons ago in the SHL, but back then I remember PBP’s being hard to get because people wanted to do them and earn the TPE and the threads generally had lots of people in them.

 

I liked them. I just don’t see them working much here when a huge portion of our members base maybe doesn’t write and relying on a smaller portion isn’t the best route to take. 

[Banackock 7,992]

2 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

Tbh, I don't see it working that well in VHL, especially because the STHS pbp is very lacking. It would be cool for the playoffs finals game 7, and VSN could present it, but it seems like doing it anymore than that would be a very time consuming thing to do

It’s called being creative and using your imagination to expand something smaller into something more rich. 

 

I have noticed that that the younger you are in todays society, the more lazy the person and brain typically.

 

It would OBVIOUSLY be only playoffs. That’s how SHL rolls. Why do game 43 of the regular season? Who cares enough to stay in the thread and watch? I’d say if VHL were to, make it just the finals. 

[Beketov 8,960]

5 minutes ago, Nykonax said:

It would be cool for the playoffs finals game 7

I’d be more open to it for something like that where you aren’t talking something that happens frequently but could be interesting if done correctly for big games. We would need to figure out a method to get the announcer the game file though without it being leaked. If we output the index for example the box score is gonna be on there for anyone to look at. Easily something we could work out, but something to be brought up.

 

Definitely don’t think it’s something we could frequently do though. Way too much work for little payoff.