How Sim Leagues Are Different Today Compared to "The Old Days" [1/2]

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

*WARNING - this is mostly just me rambling and isn't very coherent*

 

"The Old Days" can mean different things to different people. When I first joined the league in Season 25ish, "the old days" meant the true beginning of the league. Those who joined in the 40s-50s will look at the 20s-30s as the old days, ext... With the large number of members who have joined this league in the past 5 seasons or so, I'm going to take a stroll down memory lane (at least how I remember things) and talk about how different the VHL and sim leagues in general are today compared to the days of yesteryear.

 

Instant result culture/need things to do/TPE inflation

I think the biggest change in sim leagues and the VHL is something that isn't specific to sim leagues in general, but really applies to our culture and the internet itself. Now more than ever, there is the need for things to be done instantaneously and for there to be something to do. Sims are demanded every day and there is an actual revolt on our hands if we go more than 1 day without a sim, people demand more things to do to earn TPE, and we want to apply our TPE now and have it reflected in the sim.

 

Back in the day, it was not unexpected for @JardyB10 to go on a weekend bender and go 2 or 3 days without a sim somewhat consistently. Yeah we'd bitch and moan, but this was still seen as acceptable. If our old sim schedule happened today, I feel like half the league would demand action be taken against the simmer. Typing this out also made me remember two other things - there was only ONE SIMMER meaning @JardyB10 had to do the simming for both the VHL and VHLM, and that there was no VHL BOT posting all of the games. This meant that Jardy would post the VHL games and the VHLM Commissioners would post the games individually for the VHLM. This also meant that all transactions for the VHLM basically had to be run through the VHLM Commissoners, as it was easier for two people to message Jardy instead of all the VHLM GMs. Regarding people demanding more things to do, back in the day, the TPE cap was 9 per week, and you basically had to have a league related job in order to hit that cap. You could get 6 from your point task, 1 from a fan 590 or small graphic, and 2 from your job. There was no trivia, no multiple fan590s, and no press conferences. There was competition for these jobs, and you had to actually do them and do them well, or someone would replace you. Regarding the last point, point tasks used to be graded by graders, sort of similar to the reviewers we have now, except they would grade them on a 6 TPE scale and not all of them (especially the graphics, but also the media spots) would get 6 TPE. It would take 2 grades for the TPE to be official. While this usually wasn't a problem and everything would be graded in 2 to 3 days, during periods of inactivity, this meant that it could sometimes take a week for your to actually earn your TPE. This wasn't that much of a problem though, as the actual sim wasn't updated except for maybe two or three times during the regular season and before the start of the playoffs, as once again, everything had to be adjusted manually.

 

Forum versus chat versus chatzy/Discord

Nowadays, I'd say a large majority of the "off topic" (and probably the "on topic") discussion actually takes place off the site and on Discord. Back in the day, none of this stuff was popular. All of our discussion took place on the forum, meaning everyone could see everything at some point. Discussion on individual media spots actually reached the second page more than once a month, and people actually spent time on the site and read things. Eventually, the chat bar on the bottom of the desktop version of the site came into existence, and people started using that to communicate more and more, taking some discussion away from the site. That then evolved to people using chatzy so you could have a conversation with more than one person, and it eventually leads to the Discord we have today, where all VHL discussion and team discussion (no locker rooms on the site are really active anymore except for Moscow's I believe) takes place. Personally, I think this is a net negative, but I know I'm in the minority on this one.

 

Actual dislike between sim leagues

So many of us are aware of the situation between the VHL and SBA. I'm not going to rehash it, except to say that was nothing but a drop in the water between what it used to be like. I can only speak about this with the hockey leagues (so the VHL and SHL). Today, there is virtually no crossover in the two leagues, at they are part of affiliation programs with different sets of leagues that are primarily divided by point task versus money earning leagues. However, the SHL is actually a splinter league of the VHL from what I consider to the be the early days of the league. I do not know the entire story, but members from the VHL split off and created the SHL for some reason, leaving a bad taste in the mouth of VHL leadership. This animosity spread throughout both leagues, and many members were either VHLers or SHLers. There were multiple instances of each league brigading the other over various things. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is when VHL changed the filter for SHL to be "anal" in like...2013 or so? Anyway, the point of this section is that the leagues actually disliked each other compared to how it is today.

 

Simming with Madden/NHL series

This is the only topic that I never saw first hand. Before the VHL, many, if not all, of the hockey and football leagues simmed using either Madden or NHL video games. Short version of why this stopped - way, way, way too much manual work. On top of the input being manual (player creation, updated ratings, etc...) there was much more manual output as well. While being able to watch a handful of games a year (which I think was something that was done, but not 100% sure) would definitely be a plus, I think it's fair to say that sim leagues would be dead if Madden/NHL were still used. STHS isn't perfect, but at least it's workable.

[Fire Tortorella 2,653]

1,000+ words, claiming weeks ending:

11/24

12/1

[Gustav 6,407]

ok boomer

[Gustav 6,407]

59 minutes ago, flyersfan1453 said:

Instant result culture

My update is TWO MINUTES OLD

 

WHY HAS IT NOT BEEN APPROVED YET

[Berocka 2,263]

1 hour ago, flyersfan1453 said:

simmed using either Madden or NHL video games. Short version of why this stopped - way, way, way too much manual work

Yes I can agree that simming through a video game is a lot of manual work.

[Nykonax 1,564]

1 hour ago, GustavMattias said:

ok boomer

fuck i was gonna say this immediately after i read the title

[Renomitsu 934]

Review

It's important to put into perspective how sim leagues have changed over the last few seasons, and this is a good overview that hits some important topics - especially with respect to movement towards automation/shorter update periods. The fact that results can be read instantly and conversations happen universally on a tighter platform (forums vs. Discord) makes conversations move much faster. And while there are valid concerns about TPE inflation, looking back on how hard it was to earn points previously really puts into perspective how seemingly draconian some of the early earning rules were.

 

Great stuff.

[eaglesfan036 4,602]

Don't forgot about how old the old old website when formatting a media spot, you had to do your bold, color, italicize, etc in the correct order when you coded it / did it, otherwise the whole page would just get messed up with random code. Those were the dark times

[Victor 10,940]

7 hours ago, flyersfan1453 said:

I do not know the entire story, but members from the VHL split off and created the SHL

Not really actually- yes, they were briefly VHL members in S1, but they formed the SHL only 2 years after going inactive. And they called on a completely different pool of members- I'd say there were maybe 5 VHLers in their S1 draft, including myself.

 

I wouldn't be able to pinpoint why the animosity started, more just a case of neither league willing to take advice from the other.

[Beketov 9,025]

The first point is probably the most major one for me. I do get that things have changed and we needed to change along with the times but things like auto-6, the portal (which handles our updating, our career stats, our STHS updates, and our game posting among other things), the 12 cap, truly daily sims, etc are all relatively new things. It’s an improvement, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes it does make it frustrating when I’m getting blasted for sims because I haven’t simmed at the usual time. Wasn’t even missed, I was just busy and didn’t get it done at the usual time. There’s outright revolt. Same thing with lines not being updatable right after  trades and stuff. That’s basically the one manual part of the engine left that we haven’t figured out who to automate; trades and waivers. It’s good to remember that while we have automated a lot of the league there is still some manual stuff left so it’s good to cut us doing it some slack every once in awhile.

 

And please stop demanding more tournaments no one pays attention to. Every second off-season is the only time @Devise and I actually get a break.

[eaglesfan036 4,602]

@Beketov

 

sims?