BOG Update - Feb 22nd

[Advantage 2,899]

Board of Governors Update 

February 22nd, 2021

__________________________________________________________________

 

It has ultimately been a couple months since I updated the league on the happenings inside the Board of Governors.  Now that the Top 75 project has been completed, I will be going back to doing these on a more regular basis, as that project was taking the majority of my VHL time to complete.  We are actively in the playoffs of S75 and there has been a lot of chatter lately on ways we can improve the Victory Hockey League.  Obviously with Gorlab’s recent thread, there has been a lot of discussion on allegations he made and also the possibility of switching to live sims.  I will make it clear that I won’t really be talking about that thread but will say that we are currently discussing the feasibility of doing live sims in the future.  It isn’t a sure thing, but we are taking the feedback that so many members had, and are discussing it.  Otherwise, I will be giving you all an inside look on what has been happening over the last couple of months.  This will be a longer-than-usual update given how long it has been since I posted one, so bear with me as I have a lot to go through.

 

Team Performance Bonuses

One of the more interesting topics that has been discussed revolves around giving teams more incentives to do well.  For example, with this idea every team would receive 17M to start with bonus money being awarded if you make the Playoffs, win the Lotto Tournament, win the Victory Cup, make the Continental Cup Finals, win the Continental Cup and if you win the David Knight Trophy for each year that follows. This money can then be transitioned into buying different tiers of training camp (IE: 20M gets you 15 TPE per player while the 7M option only gets you 5 TPE).

 

This idea was made to put more intrigue into the GM position and also add a new layer into convincing players to come to your team, promoting team culture and also promoting a winning environment as well.  There would be more incentives for teams to want to win, and could help discourage tanking.  This would have zero cap implications as well, which was cleared up in the comments after, and would serve more for the training camp purposes than anything else.

 

The obvious concern that responders seemed to have was whether we really wanted the “rich to get richer.”  One could argue that this is not an example of a huge disparity between the rich and the poor of the league, and could help to convince some teams on the bubble to try and make moves to compete and put their team in a better position to succeed.  However, most responders seemed to feel it wasn’t really worth the extra effort and that perhaps looking into different options like a team theme week where the whole team works on a PT to celebrate the culture and history of the team.  While this really isn’t as relevant to the idea of the training camp alterations, it would serve to promote the team culture and environment that this idea was designed to do.

 

For now the idea seems to have been tabled with the league already running theme weeks, but perhaps it is something we could look at in the future to try and add other layers to the GM process, which I do think is something the league has an interest in doing.

 

Roster Room Potential Issues

About a month ago, one of our administrators brought forth a post regarding concerns over how loaded rosters are going to be, estimating the amount of prospects that will be coming up and also retirees.  This thread was designed to essentially go over different solutions to help solve these roster room issues that this poster was concerned about.  They proposed a few different possibilities like a mandatory third line for every team, the inability to double shift players (a lot of players play on the 1st and 3rd lines right now, for example) and also potentially bringing forth another expansion with two teams being the most likely scenario.

 

The responses actually leaned mostly expansion to start citing the number of potential GM’s looking for jobs plus how well our expansions have gone since Moscow came into the league. However, some poked holes in the statistics that were presented saying they were inaccurate and perhaps not looking at just the quality actives.  

 

Ultimately, this led to a pretty radical proposal which was to bring in a third league to be like an AHL/Affiliate League and leave the VHLM as a juniors system with age limits and TPE limits.  This would allow some players who are around 300-400 TPE who maybe can’t make a top six role or wouldn’t be productive, to get top line minutes on an affiliate team.  It would also create a ton of new jobs and if paired with perhaps an extended career option, shouldn’t really mess with all-time records and statistics.  The poster even brought up how you could partner teams up and run an 8 team affiliate system, which would allow those rosters to be pretty competitive and not barren just because one team maybe doesn’t have as many players representing them in the affiliated league.  Heck, maybe players who played out their full eight season career, could go down there and play until they decide to retire (they would continue to depreciate over that time).  

 

However, ultimately this discussion led to a less radical approach which was to weed out inactives in the VHL, just like the VHLM has been doing.  By doing this, you don’t rush an expansion or radical movement and can first see if the league is still having roster room issues with just active players.  In theory, you could move some of these inactives into a third league if we wanted to try and incorporate the previously mentioned idea, but that’s probably a discussion to be had in the future.  This looks like it could be a hot topic for a while but the immediate move seems to stem around looking to weed out inactives in the main league.

 

Cash Store Rework

The final thread we will be looking at is regarding a player store overhaul which has been a topic of discussion in the BOG for at least a couple of months now.  The overhaul would ultimately change the amount of money certain things cost, like making non-regression fighters cheaper to hopefully see more people use their money for purchases that aren’t the regression fighters.  This would also see potentially new purchase options like extending your career and even more uncapped TPE packages.

 

The main idea behind this is to lower the value of the regression fighters, which at this point, is all people really buy.  Therefore, I do see quite a bit of value in reworking our player store. The majority of people responding seemed to like a lot of the non-regression fighters being lowered in price but the idea of being able to purchase career extensions is still a bit of a hotbed issue where some like it and some don’t.  Therefore, the career extension idea is dead in the water for now, while the focus is now on lessening the value of the regression fighters by altering prices for other purchases and perhaps adding a few enticing options to the store as well.  I will leave it at that for now as there is currently voting going on and further discussion on what changes to make, but this one will definitely be hitting the main pages once a solution is worked out.

 

Post-writing this, the league did announce this change with THIS THREAD!!

Edited February 22, 2021 by Advantage

[bigAL 2,176]

You do such a good job of just summarizing and reporting on the BoG discussions without editorializing or letting your opinion bleed into the report. So well done, I'm glad they're coming back more regularly now.

[Peace 1,562]

On the topic of the 'team performance' boost -- just my honest opinion here -- it goes against everything the league has done to rid of uncapped TPE floating around. Yes, it absolutely awards a winning mindset and that should be paramount for any VHL GM, but it truly punishes the users who are on teams with a perpetual case of 'bad luck' like New York (sorry Esso) or deflates the morale of say Davos or even Toronto if I can use myself as an example. Remember Davos was good on paper at the start of the season, quite a few of us were stunned that they weren't doing as well as maybe some thought they should be doing, but ultimately it led to Gustav deciding to rebuild for another attempt at collecting a roster that will contend.

 

Why should he be punished his roster didn't click?

Why should New York's active players be given less opportunity to grow because a few draft picks have disappeared? 

Toronto had bad chemistry in the LR that dismantled our offense, why should my active players be tossed into the dirt because we're a lottery team (although we'd have a chance to do well in the lottery). 

I don't think there is a single GM in this league that's intentionally 'tanking', and I'm pretty sure there are rules in place that prohibit that anyway, but I absolutely agree the 'rich get richer' approach isn't the correct one to take so I'm glad it was tabled for now.   

[hedgehog337 3,483]

1 hour ago, Advantage said:

Ultimately, this led to a pretty radical proposal which was to bring in a third league to be like an AHL/Affiliate League and leave the VHLM as a juniors system with age limits and TPE limits.  This would allow some players who are around 300-400 TPE who maybe can’t make a top six role or wouldn’t be productive, to get top line minutes on an affiliate team.

 

sounds fun for guys who will get a GM job in an affil team, but other than that...eh? Like a player gonna spend a season or two in minors, then another one or two in affiliate and only then coming up to pros when hes already in prime contract years. To each their own though, either being a God in a lower tier league or playing in pros with lesser stats.

 

1 hour ago, Advantage said:

They proposed a few different possibilities like a mandatory third line for every team, the inability to double shift players (a lot of players play on the 1st and 3rd lines right now, for example)

 

yeah nah. Imagine setting for 20 min per game at most when you're max capping every week.

 

Also, Peace said it all on the team perf boost. I would've loved this during our playoff streak btw but more seriously, like if a team is aging as hell and there is not much ways how to continue to compete without giving up lots of assets to drag this out. I'd much rather sell so my team would be back on track asap and be stronger in like 2 seasons than being a pathetic mediocrity for all of that time just because I was dragging this out for maybe some playoff appearance. So yeah, there's nothing wrong to tank 1-2 seasons at the bottom and then make a splash with fresher faces. Not having much bonus TPE from TC compared to other playoff teams just because team's GM decided to start from the scratch...yeah nah. Also, shit luck matters here as well.

[Advantage 2,899]

6 minutes ago, hedgehog337 said:

 

sounds fun for guys who will get a GM job in an affil team, but other than that...eh? Like a player gonna spend a season or two in minors, then another one or two in affiliate and only then coming up to pros when hes already in prime contract years. To each their own though, either being a God in a lower tier league or playing in pros with lesser

For your part regarding entering in prime, as I said it would be likely combined with extending careers. I'd personally like to see 8 season careers start post vhlm.

[hedgehog337 3,483]

1 minute ago, Advantage said:

For your part regarding entering in prime, as I said it would be likely combined with extending careers. I'd personally like to see 8 season careers start post vhlm.

 

well this makes sense.

[Dom 1,445]

5 minutes ago, Advantage said:

For your part regarding entering in prime, as I said it would be likely combined with extending careers. I'd personally like to see 8 season careers start post vhlm.

I love that idea!

[Banackock 8,138]

I agree with @Peace on the Team Performance Boost. Not long ago we removed a bunch of things to limit the amount of TPE we were throwing around and inflating. I understand the purpose of it - which that is good, but I think it solves an issue by creating a large one. GM’s want to win right now. How long did Riga rebuild for? The answer is shorter than all the other teams that haven’t figured out how to do it yet (one season). We all want to win. The incentives would be an unnecessary bonus and truly an evil in disguise. It’s too large. What happens in situations like Seattle where they’ve won 4 cups in 6 seasons? We’re going to be collecting mad money. Moscow who constantly performs well - or even Vancouver, Calgary, HSK etc who are usually always decent and do win the Victory Cup. Rich get richer is 100% right. The title intrigued me. After that, I was 100% against the idea. Maybe if the amounts were much lower but even then, the league, teams, members are better off without it. 
 

Cash store rework.. I swear I remember a time within the last couple years where the discussion was to make it tougher. Funny because the opposite happened. I am thankful for this. There was little purpose to money and the store. This adds variety, options and more ways to improve somebodies players. I’ve always wanted money to be more valuable in this league and finally it’s become just that. I think this will be beneficial in the long run for all members and hopefully even retention etc. 
 

Roster reworks... expansion out of the options listed. I’m fine with how things are now but this is a 6/4/1 or 2 league.. I’m fine with 2 goalies... another suggestion I would make it taking a look at the minors. Are we able to adjust the cap a little bit? 259 TPE players coming up into the league is a bit of a joke. It honestly harms them more than anything. Super fun playing 6 minutes a night and getting 9 points in 72 games. The league is growing.. the M is not though.. why don’t we raise the cap for VHLM TPE to 350? You could even do TPA but then how badly will those players slaughter lesser ones? I’d make the suggestion that we cap both TPE and TPA but do so at different amounts... TPA = same old 250... but allow players to hit this total and start banking whenever.. and then season they pass 350 TPE (100 banked) is the season they graduate into the VHL? This way they’re going up also at 350-400... a much more acceptable range.. it also may keep things a little more full in the VHLM. Some may see this as a negative but I don’t.. helps the VHL with roster issues, decreases turnover in the VHLM which makes it more competitive + opens ability to potentially expand.. more people = more fun, help.. just makes it matter more + be more “alive”.

 

 

My 3 cents.

Edited February 22, 2021 by Banackock

[Peace 1,562]

48 minutes ago, Banackock said:

I agree with @Peace on the Team Performance Boost.

 

We agree on something? 

Mom! MOM! Get the camera! 

[BOOM 8,817]

41 minutes ago, Peace said:

 

We agree on something? 

Mom! MOM! Get the camera! 

 

You both agreed that I wasn't worth drafting in the top 10....

[BOOM 8,817]

[Advantage 2,899]

1 hour ago, Banackock said:

I agree with @Peace 

 

Roster reworks... expansion out of the options listed. I’m fine with how things are now but this is a 6/4/1 or 2 league.. I’m fine with 2 goalies... another suggestion I would make it taking a look at the minors. Are we able to adjust the cap a little bit? 259 TPE players coming up into the league is a bit of a joke. It honestly harms them more than anything. Super fun playing 6 minutes a night and getting 9 points in 72 games. The league is growing.. the M is not though.. why don’t we raise the cap for VHLM TPE to 350? You could even do TPA but then how badly will those players slaughter lesser ones? I’d make the suggestion that we cap both TPE and TPA but do so at different amounts... TPA = same old 250... but allow players to hit this total and start banking whenever.. and then season they pass 350 TPE (100 banked) is the season they graduate into the VHL? This way they’re going up also at 350-400... a much more acceptable range.. it also may keep things a little more full in the VHLM. Some may see this as a negative but I don’t.. helps the VHL with roster issues, decreases turnover in the VHLM which makes it more competitive + opens ability to potentially expand.. more people = more fun, help.. just makes it matter more + be more “alive”.

 

 

My 3 cents.

How would you feel if we make it so 8 seasons doesn't start till after they get to vhl then? 

[Banackock 8,138]

Just now, Advantage said:

How would you feel if we make it so 8 seasons doesn't start till after they get to vhl then? 

As long as there’s some form of way to moderate it.. 2-3 VHLM seasons max.. or else we’ll have S71 players in the M who haven’t started their 8 yet

[Advantage 2,899]

10 minutes ago, Banackock said:

As long as there’s some form of way to moderate it.. 2-3 VHLM seasons max.. or else we’ll have S71 players in the M who haven’t started their 8 yet

Lol fair I'd say 3 max post vhl draft