My Issues with the new Welfare/Pension system

[RomanesEuntDomus 442]

My Issues with the new Welfare/Pension system

 

After years of absence I'm back in this league and you know what that means... More complaining and arguing from me, yay! The first topic I wanna adress is the changes to the welfare and pension systems that happened in my absence. I had actually learned about them a year or even longer ago when I first thought about maybe giving the VHL another shot, but then I saw those changes and they were one thing that made me decide against it. But let's take a step back first... So what am I talking about exactly?

 

At some point after I left in 2017, not sure when exactly but it must have been early 2019 or even before that because thats when the thread was last updated, the VHL changed its Welfare and Pension system. It made some adjustments to the payouts but more importantly, the eligibility rules for players changed. So far players had counted towards a members "pension count" if they were above 400 TPE but that mark was raised to 700 TPE with no grandfathering whatsoever. So from one day to another (I would assume, I wasnt there when it happened after all), dozens or even hundreds of players lost their pension claims.

 

That was quite unfortunate for me as someone with three 400+ TPE players but none above 700 TPE. In fact I had two players who capped out above 650 but juuuust missed out on the 700 mark, with one being as high as 684. So I learned that as someone who had been in the league for years, built multiple active players, held GM and Co-GM positions and won a cup in them and also held a bunch of other league jobs, I had no pension eligibility whatsoever. Apparently all my past contributions were simply too bad to count.

 

Now the argument for those changes, from what I can gather, was "Inflation". TPE-inflation had happened in the VHL just as it had happened in other leagues in the past, so league leadership decided that 400 TPE today don't hold the same value as it did a few years ago, so the threshold had to be raised. And there is actually nothing wrong with that argument. If 400 TPE isn't a valid mark anymore where you can count someone as a true active who was involved for most of his career then by all means, change the threshold. But why on Earth was there no grandfathering? Why does this have to apploy to players from S40, S30, hell even going back to the very first seasons of the leagues existence, when inflation wasn't a thing.

 

That's the first of my main issues I have with this: The internal logic of this argument isn't sound at all. Today's VHL has inflated TPE-counts compared to the VHL of the past so... The consequence is to take away stuff from the people who contributed in the past, when there was no inflation? That just doesn't make any sense. And it could have simply been fixed by grandfathering in pre-change players. That way the rule change could have been kept in place to deal with the very real inflation issues, without punishing people from other eras.

 

My second big issue with this that this kind of change invalidates peoples achievements. It sends a pretty clear message that peoples past contributions don't matter if they didn't make it above 700 TPE, which was a mark that was significantly harder to reach back then than it is today. Only the most active people made it above it in the old days, maybe a handful of players per draft class at best. Plenty of very active and involved members, people with site jobs and who contributed to the community in many areas capped out in the 500-700 TPE range. It was a perfectly normal and acceptable TPE-range that made you a legitimate first line player on pretty much every team in the league who could contend for Awards, have HOF-caliber numbers and all that. I would go as far as arguing that 400 TPE in S35 are worth the same, both in terms of effort and sim-impact, as 700 TPE are today.

 

But then you essentially tell people that all this doesn't matter because today, people can make it to 700 TPE much easier because they have plenty of TPE-opportunities available that didn't exist back then? This is a terrible message to send not just in general but particularly for someone who is contemplating a return to the league, as I did starting like a year ago. Seeing your past achievements invalidated in a league like this is really shitty, it's a very disheartening thing that I think could actually cost the league members and probably has done so already, but you never learned of it because it's something that is not gonna be directly visible, say in a case where some decides against a return.

 

Let me make one last thing clear here while I close out this article: I am not asking for handouts, I do not want to be seen as a better player/member than I actually was or some sort of self-perceived legend of the olden days that needs to be gifted TPE. I certainly wasn't and even if I was, I still wouldn't deserve a guaranteed path to my next great player today. In the general TPE-mix of todays VHL, Media Spots and in connection with them Welfare and Pension seem to play a smaller role than they did back in the day, so the pure TPE-effects of this change of systems likely aren't too big and won't hurt me or any other returning member a whole lot.

 

What does hurt the league however are the psychological effects of it, the perceived middle-finger it gives to players of the past as well as the lack of internal consistency of the arguments mentioned that I outlined above. I wanted to write this article because this rule has been one of the major factors that had prevented me from returning earlier which leads me to believe that it has probably been a factor for other people thinking about a return as well. And while I appreciate the efforts of some people in the league leadership to explain their reasoning for the way they handled this change, I ultimately find the arguments they provided unconvincing and lacking in internal logic and also I needed to get to a 1000 words.

 

Thank you to anyone who took the time to work his way through this wall of text! Looking forward to your comments and opinions if you have any

Edited October 26, 2020 by RomanesEuntDomus

[Blazzer 759]

Great article here! I can't say much here because I have not been here long enough to know. But yes the Tpe inflation is so real. The drafts have higher tpe every time. 

 

The move to 700 tpe is definitely due to the inflation as well as u know. But your concern about the veteran players... I think when they made that move, majority of the vet. players would have already started to go IA. 

 

But it's just my thought, could be wrong 

[frescoelmo 1,227]

Don't worry I had the same issue with 700TPE players

 

Or do worry, knowing it won't get you any further

[Beketov 8,720]

1 hour ago, Blazzer said:

But your concern about the veteran players... I think when they made that move, majority of the vet. players would have already started to go IA. 

We looked at all the players claiming Pension at the time. There was I believe 5 who previously qualified (and were actively claiming) that didn’t qualify under the new rules. All of which, I think, now do because they were close.

 

Unfortunately we didn’t consider the old guys that had gone IA but there isn’t usually much consideration for players we don’t think are likely to come back. It’s just especially bad in this case because how how close Romanes was to the cutoff not one but twice.

[Blazzer 759]

43 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Unfortunately we didn’t consider the old guys that had gone IA but there isn’t usually much consideration for players we don’t think are likely to come back. It’s just especially bad in this case because how how close Romanes was to the cutoff not one but twice.

Ohhh I see, it was just unfortunate then I guess. Wrong timing 

[Gustav 6,164]

48 minutes ago, Beketov said:

We looked at all the players claiming Pension at the time. There was I believe 5 who previously qualified (and were actively claiming) that didn’t qualify under the new rules. All of which, I think, now do because they were close.

 

@Ahma would like a word.

 

I agree with this article--even if it doesn't affect many people, why does the fact that 400 TPE doesn't mean much today change anything about what it meant in the days of the 9-TPE cap? And, seeing as it doesn't affect many people, it doesn't seem like a big deal to include them.

[Beketov 8,720]

2 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

why does the fact that 400 TPE doesn't mean much today change anything about what it meant in the days of the 9-TPE cap? And, seeing as it doesn't affect many people, it doesn't seem like a big deal to include them.

Was mostly the optics of the matter (ugh) given how few people were affected by it. It’s basically telling new guys “yeah, you need to hit 700 but this guy hit 400 10 years ago so he’s cool.” 
 

This change was made at a time with a lot of tension between the old crowd and the new guys so there was unfortunately a lot of thought given to how it would look to allow the old crowd to benefit off less TPE, even when it was more difficult to get back in the day.

[Gustav 6,164]

Just now, Beketov said:

rainbow flavoured unicorns

 

[Beketov 8,720]

The joys of being blue, being able to say things others can’t. Like snubbed. It’s the little things in life.

[RomanesEuntDomus 442]

4 minutes ago, Beketov said:

Was mostly the rainbow flavoured unicorns of the matter (ugh) given how few people were affected by it. It’s basically telling new guys “yeah, you need to hit 700 but this guy hit 400 10 years ago so he’s cool.” 
 

This change was made at a time with a lot of tension between the old crowd and the new guys so there was unfortunately a lot of thought given to how it would look to allow the old crowd to benefit off less TPE, even when it was more difficult to get back in the day.

 

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your reasoning for this and to answer my and other peoples concerns. But being told that I was essentially sacrificed to appease someone else doesn't exactly make this better

[Beketov 8,720]

23 minutes ago, RomanesEuntDomus said:

 

I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your reasoning for this and to answer my and other peoples concerns. But being told that I was essentially sacrificed to appease someone else doesn't exactly make this better

Didn’t say it did, just explaining the reasoning at the time.

[Gustav 6,164]

I can see how this might have gone over circa February-ish when every other article was about how the league is being destroyed by the  o l d  b o y s. 

 

Would it really be seen that way now? I think most people have come around to what this article is trying to say.

[bigAL 2,176]

21 minutes ago, GustavMattias said:

I can see how this might have gone over circa February-ish when every other article was about how the league is being destroyed by the  o l d  b o y s. 

 

Would it really be seen that way now? I think most people have come around to what this article is trying to say.

I think especially with @Banackock's "recruitment" drive of the old guard, it can be worth it to grandfather the new-olds into the welfare-pension program. Obviously the goal is full engagement with capping and creating media spots, but that's not always realistic. We can incentivize them to come back by making life easier for them, not harder.

[Banackock 7,761]

25 minutes ago, bigAL said:

I think especially with @Banackock's "recruitment" drive of the old guard, it can be worth it to grandfather the new-olds into the welfare-pension program. Obviously the goal is full engagement with capping and creating media spots, but that's not always realistic. We can incentivize them to come back by making life easier for them, not harder.

Eh what the hell. Different league, different structure. Not their problem it’s different now to then. They fit the mold then, league should grandfather. 
 

Good for quality old members joining back. I’d set some form of date or shit so nothing gets sticky obviously. Issue, you do it for one and you’ll have players hitting 400 TPA currently screaming for it. I guess that’s the purpose is a grandfather rule.

 

I support it. Let’s bring them back. Why the hell not. 

[Ahma 1,299]

2 hours ago, Beketov said:

We looked at all the players claiming Pension at the time. There was I believe 5 who previously qualified (and were actively claiming) that didn’t qualify under the new rules. All of which, I think, now do because they were close.

 

Unfortunately we didn’t consider the old guys that had gone IA but there isn’t usually much consideration for players we don’t think are likely to come back. It’s just especially bad in this case because how how close Romanes was to the cutoff not one but twice.

I'm yet to hit 700 with a 2nd player so I still cannot claim 5 welfare under the new system. Which sucks.