MAPGA - MAKE ACTIVE PLAYERS GREAT AGAIN

[Quik 4,113]

I can definitely see arguments for both sides. Personally, I agree with @Beketov that there's no appetite at this time to remove/reduce welfare, considering how much of the community relies on it and the overall benefit outweighing the negatives.

 

I do wonder if maybe having a cap on welfare TPE during a career may be worth looking into. If we hard capped welfare at, say, 200 TPE during a career, that would still work out to 50 weeks, which, on an average of 8-8.5 wks/season works out to approx. 6 seasons worth of claims in a career that can be as long as 9.5 seasons. Means that in order to keep making a difference in the depreciation seasons, the user would need to start submitting PTs, or they could also retire early and start over. Either way, this could be a bit of a solution, and also be more realistic in the "Welfare" sense.

 

*This would also not apply to pensioners like @der meister who have spent years in the league on previous players.

[Gustav 6,406]

Some general comments:

 

On 11/10/2020 at 1:41 PM, jRuutu said:

Right now if you want to be top of your draft class in TPE - you need to pay for it. I believe the main reason is that those who in the past donated did not get enough bang for their buck as users who were lucky/active were able to keep up with the donating users by doing various activities. What is the easiest way to do something to it? Take TPE opportunities away from everybody, so donating is more valuable. That has happened.

 

Anyone who only donates for the TPE is an idiot. Ideally, someone who makes a donation should be doing it to support the league. Now, obviously, the fact that there is a TPE advantage to donating probably means that the league brings in a lot more money than they would if they just said "hey, give us some money if you'd like". I can understand the logic behind this, but 11 TPE a season (assuming you don't buy a free week) isn't going to make the difference between a good player and a bad one. Also, it used to be 17 per season, but that was knocked down along with the other uncapped TPE changes. If that move were a cash grab, the donation system would still work exactly the same way.

 

On 11/10/2020 at 1:41 PM, jRuutu said:

Welfare needs to be weaker, so the ''farm'' is filled with welfare players.

 

I don't want to attack this statement because its meaning is unclear to me, so feel free to correct me on it if I'm interpreting this incorrectly. By saying this, are you saying that welfare claimers--no matter their TPE level--should be forced to play on the farm team? If so, I disagree. Saying "no, you can't play with us because you're not active enough" and putting someone who actively checks the sims and has an interest in the league on Team Irrelevant is going to take away big chunks of our member base. Now, let's say we've got someone who starts the season at 249 TPE on a VHLM team and pops in every week to claim practice facility and welfare and then doesn't even log in until the next week--I would agree that a more active player should be prioritized over them. I'm just not sure it's possible to make any hard rules about this that are actually fair to everyone since I'm not in favor of telling all welfare players as a whole that they can't play on the regular roster.

 

On 11/10/2020 at 1:41 PM, jRuutu said:

Basically, we are in a situation where welfare players get by just fine. That is not right.

 

What constitutes a welfare player for you? Would you say the term applies to all people who claim welfare over a point task? Again, with my above example--only coming in and claiming practice facility and welfare every week will max out your build around 500 TPE, which is good only if you're lucky but never anywhere near the top of the league in production and output. What if you claim welfare but still end up with 8-10 TPE per week because you still stay on top of the smaller tasks? Sure, that's a welfare player--but does that not also constitute activity and an interest in the league? Why should someone like @tfong  or @Garsh, great members who contribute a lot to the league but who don't do many 6-point tasks, a) be told that they aren't "active enough" to play with the others, and b) have welfare cut so they end up in the decent-at-best territory and are forced to do something they don't want to do every week (and possibly burn out as a result) to stay on top of things? For someone who earns 8-10 per week, you're likely maxing out your build around 600-750 TPA or so. Even staying on top of small tasks and taking an active interest in the league will only get you a player in "good" territory. The best players in the league--barring some freaky expansion-team/last-place team number inflation--are ALWAYS max earners and super active people. While I agree that it's a bit demoralizing to see your player get outperformed by someone in the 8-10 range (a feeling I know all too well), all welfare players shouldn't be forced to outright suck as a result.

 

 

So yeah, hard no from me on cutting welfare. The league has an incredibly strong casual member base, and it's actually what keeps us floating. Look at the roster of your team--or any team--and try to figure out what it would look like without welfare. The league would probably be nonexistent, and we absolutely wouldn't have a member base as strong as we have now.

[jRuutu 2,464]

11 hours ago, GustavMattias said:

Some general comments:

 

 

Anyone who only donates for the TPE is an idiot. Ideally, someone who makes a donation should be doing it to support the league. Now, obviously, the fact that there is a TPE advantage to donating probably means that the league brings in a lot more money than they would if they just said "hey, give us some money if you'd like". I can understand the logic behind this, but 11 TPE a season (assuming you don't buy a free week) isn't going to make the difference between a good player and a bad one. Also, it used to be 17 per season, but that was knocked down along with the other uncapped TPE changes. If that move were a cash grab, the donation system would still work exactly the same way.

 

 

I don't want to attack this statement because its meaning is unclear to me, so feel free to correct me on it if I'm interpreting this incorrectly. By saying this, are you saying that welfare claimers--no matter their TPE level--should be forced to play on the farm team? If so, I disagree. Saying "no, you can't play with us because you're not active enough" and putting someone who actively checks the sims and has an interest in the league on Team Irrelevant is going to take away big chunks of our member base. Now, let's say we've got someone who starts the season at 249 TPE on a VHLM team and pops in every week to claim practice facility and welfare and then doesn't even log in until the next week--I would agree that a more active player should be prioritized over them. I'm just not sure it's possible to make any hard rules about this that are actually fair to everyone since I'm not in favor of telling all welfare players as a whole that they can't play on the regular roster.

 

 

What constitutes a welfare player for you? Would you say the term applies to all people who claim welfare over a point task? Again, with my above example--only coming in and claiming practice facility and welfare every week will max out your build around 500 TPE, which is good only if you're lucky but never anywhere near the top of the league in production and output. What if you claim welfare but still end up with 8-10 TPE per week because you still stay on top of the smaller tasks? Sure, that's a welfare player--but does that not also constitute activity and an interest in the league? Why should someone like @tfong  or @Garsh, great members who contribute a lot to the league but who don't do many 6-point tasks, a) be told that they aren't "active enough" to play with the others, and b) have welfare cut so they end up in the decent-at-best territory and are forced to do something they don't want to do every week (and possibly burn out as a result) to stay on top of things? For someone who earns 8-10 per week, you're likely maxing out your build around 600-750 TPA or so. Even staying on top of small tasks and taking an active interest in the league will only get you a player in "good" territory. The best players in the league--barring some freaky expansion-team/last-place team number inflation--are ALWAYS max earners and super active people. While I agree that it's a bit demoralizing to see your player get outperformed by someone in the 8-10 range (a feeling I know all too well), all welfare players shouldn't be forced to outright suck as a result.

 

 

So yeah, hard no from me on cutting welfare. The league has an incredibly strong casual member base, and it's actually what keeps us floating. Look at the roster of your team--or any team--and try to figure out what it would look like without welfare. The league would probably be nonexistent, and we absolutely wouldn't have a member base as strong as we have now.

 

You are interpreting it incorrectly, in my ideal world welfare players would be clearly worse than anyone who earns 12 or close TPE. As a result in the juniors more and more welfare players would be in the farm as those who keep earning more will rather quickly catch up to the welfare players. I'm not asking you to remove welfare completely but in my eyes welfare should be 2-3 TPE. 

 

The welfare players ''only'' being in the good territory argument is less valid if most of the players build the meta build, do you agree? If the hot build is what we all should build already, what difference is there between active and welfare players? What is the point in doing the bigger weekly point tasks if you can get to the ideal place just fine with welfare? If we all know what works and it heavily caters towards the welfare group as there is less attributes to update - isnt it time to do something about it?

 

[NotAVHLM-GM 1,858]

Even though I have not resorted to welfare on this player, I'm really opposed to removing/change it. There already is a 1 tpe penalty a week for pensioners and a 2 tpe penalty cap a week for newer players (or people like @RomanesEuntDomus who came just short and the rules were changed after).

 

But the welfare system is one of the reasons the league flourishes in terms of players here, i would not take away or change this into something meaningless. If you want to be the best, you still have to work for it. If you are satisfied with the lower cap, you can still make a great player, and that's how it should remain.

[Gustav 6,406]

4 hours ago, jRuutu said:

The welfare players ''only'' being in the good territory argument is less valid if most of the players build the meta build, do you agree? If the hot build is what we all should build already, what difference is there between active and welfare players? What is the point in doing the bigger weekly point tasks if you can get to the ideal place just fine with welfare? If we all know what works and it heavily caters towards the welfare group as there is less attributes to update - isnt it time to do something about it?

 

Honestly I'm not sure where this comes from. What I was talking about was assuming everyone does go with the meta--sure, a 500-TPA build can be decent, and it's achievable by a welfare player, but it will take a while for them to get to that point and even when they do there's no guarantee that it will be good. Add on to that the fact that that's the best some people's builds will ever get and I don't see a problem. 

 

There is some overlap when it comes to people who stay on top of the smaller tasks being able to build up to 750 TPA or so, which is certainly good enough to do well (Mikko Aaltonen and Tzuyu are probably the best welfare players in recent memory, but Aaltonen was a max earner before the draft and they both kept up with the smaller tasks very well, something which certainly constitutes "activity" in my book). Sure, it's possible to be a top player without doing a media spot. I get that. But max earners represent the vast majority of top players (regardless of who is and isn't donating, imo) as the top tier is really only barely achievable (and you'd need some degree of luck to get there) for someone who isn't. It doesn't matter what the meta build is, this is where I believe the league currently is build-wise and I feel like it's a decent balance.

 

5 hours ago, jRuutu said:

As a result in the juniors more and more welfare players would be in the farm as those who keep earning more will rather quickly catch up to the welfare players.

 

Sure, and I'm sure you'd agree based on everything that's been said here that a lower-TPE, more enthusiastic, more involved member should be prioritized over a super-casual welfare earner in the minors. But doing this would lead to there being more super-casual welfare members in the minors, taking up playing time and roster space and making it much less possible for new members to get to top-level status in the minors as they've now got half a roster of 200-TPE+ "technically active" players above them who have been technically active on the roster for 2-3 seasons now. With the goal of the VHLM being retention, wouldn't this be hurtful to that? No GM is going to move the casual members down to the junior team (and sure, one could attempt to make rules and such, but where do we draw the line for activity, and aren't people immediately going to try to dodge them anyway?) and the fact that there will be more of them just makes the ladder that much harder to climb. "Catching up" doesn't really happen in the VHLM when the casual people are near the cap. Contrast that with the VHL--look at the Davos roster; Tsujimoto is ahead of or close to a couple casual members despite being 2-3 seasons back.

[RomanesEuntDomus 442]

As some people have pointed out already, I think it's important to make the distinction between completely active (14 TPE a week), doing the easier tasks but not PTs (8-12 TPE a week) and pure Welfare (6 TPE a week). And I would argue that the balance between that seems about right, if you only claim welfare and practice facility then you make less than half of what a fully active player makes so you are at a significant disadvantage. This disadvantage gets smaller the more tasks someone does per week which... is exactly how the system is supposed to work. If someone gets say 10 out of the 14 max TPE per week then he isn't a lazy slob who only takes welfare handouts btw, it means that he is doing at least two weekly tasks on top of Welfare + Practice Facility.

 

One point of concern that is kinda warranted though is that the difference between Welfare and the pure PT-payout is very small. You basically have to do 500 words every week for just 2 TPE extra which really isn't a lot and I can understand where the frustration is coming from here. It can be frustrating to see someone who skips arguably the most work-intensive part of this league make almost the same amount of TPE as you do.

 

I know I complained a bit about not being eligible for the 5 TPE Welfare earlier, but that was more because I was annoyed by how this transition was handled back then and the fact that there was no grandfathering. Generally speaking however, a 5 TPE Welfare seems really high, maybe too high even for proven veteran members. I don't think it's unwarranted to question and criticize that. If I remember correctly, way back in the day people started at 2 TPE Welfare and had to work their way up to 4 TPE Welfare after two active players. That's quite the difference from what seems to be bad in place and not necessarily worse, with both systems having different strengths and weaknesses.

Edited November 12, 2020 by RomanesEuntDomus

[Baozi 1,658]

Why are we attacking donations anyways? Donating costs money and my time spent at work requires effort and time and the TPE gain you get from donating is hardly a make or break point for a player's overall TPE. Since my prior stance on how welfare works is well documented and you're just crazy and overlooking the fact that welfare players aren't comparable to actives, I spend more time on VHL than you, so aside from PTs, you should technically be weaker than me. All you do is submit an article once a week to be on the same level as me, but I spend countless hours here being actually active.

 

Overall content is what it is, a discussion point that has gone on for a long time by various parties. Formatting of the PT is fine, no glaring errors but not much used in terms of bolding or creative writing structure. It does have a graphic/picture so you get the point there. Also not much in terms of supporting facts here to support your statements though either so it kind of comes down to the proverbial "fake news" type info.

 

7.5/10

[mediocrepony 1,216]

On 11/10/2020 at 4:21 PM, der meister said:

Nerfing welfare will make me leave, for one. I put in the work with multiple players in the past but don't have the time to write MS + .com every week. 

don't make him leave pwease