09-12-2023, 04:12 PMst4rface Wrote: Too many comments and I can't reply to them all, but I'll try it in this specific reply. Let me know if I forgot something, because I just red all of them replies. First of all, happy to see some users having similar thoughts as me. Thought that I'm the only one after the first replies.

Why it maybe wasn't a good idea? Each new user is different. One will like the portal, because it's more simple and easier to update your player, while other will still think that it might be a bit hard to understand everything there. I think that staying here for a new user is based on if he really loves the idea of a simulation hockey project where you are living your hockey dream. It wasn't easy for me as well in late S20's to figure everything out, but I did it and kinda enjoyed the struggle of it. And many of other users did. Didn't saw a response to my question why descriptions of received TPE doesn't have an exact link from the place we received them as well (on portal). I am not a dude who makes websites, but isn't that pretty simple? However, it's not like I hate it. I think portal is benefitial to people who uses mobile phones, doesn't have that much time to update their players or are triggered to get them all links together when they have to update their players. Or if they are just here to enjoy sims and wants to do updates faster. For me it was more fun, a bit special and nostalgic. You actually had to put in some time, work and effort. More like a good routine. Loved it. Would be hard to keep both - update threads and portal, but it would've been a nice love gesture to the both sides of users.

What we could've improved instead of this? For example, grading speed. Let's be honest. The previous media I did had a lot of replies and when I asked why it hasn't been graded in a long time, reply was something like this: "It was kind of a popular and everyone was replying there, so we kept it up and didn't grade it, so there's activity on the forum". So activity on the forum is important then, but not with other posts like AC's, Update Threads, Fantasy selections etc.? Those topics and replies on there might create new topics and activti yon other subfroums like Thunderdome later on as well. And I think just a reply in Update Thread is important too. At least we can easily see who is active, who is doing stuff. Forum looks alive. It took like 10 days to 2 weeks or sometjing to get my previous media graded. Okay, I had cash to purchase everything I needed at the time, but if I was a dude who don't have time for media and stuff, but he wants to buy Personal Coaching (28 TPE) in the last weeks of season and he needs that money from media when he created one? I wouldn't be able to do that, because of grading speed. Could we do something with that? Okay, we could wait with PT's getting graded, but media, GFX? TPE from PT's we will get anyway, but when there's low balance and you need that cash?

The next thing we could improve is parity. This has been a hot topic for a while already. Can't remember how it was with STHS, but I think it was more competitive for sure. For example, my Toronto "North Stars" have won a total of 43 games in past four seasons (264 games in total, win rate 16.3%, highest spot in the league in this period - 19th place). Let's go further and continue with Tampa Bay "Barracuda". Their last six seasons - 116 wins in 396 games (29.3% win rate, highest place in this period is 14th place in the league, but two seasons they ended with 17th place, one with 18th and one with 19th). Now Manhattan "Rage" - in last two seasons 12 victories in 132 games (9.1% win rate, last place in an entire league both of those seasons). Yes, it's based on GM's work, the current roster situation, recruitment and more, but isn't there some way to help the bottom of the league be more competitive at least a bit? If team has 4 wins (S71) in 66 games then something ain't right. There might pop up some new inactive players from that situation too. Checked NHL data and I don't see anything like that in real life either. And let's not foget we had "Barracuda" going 0-50 in S54. One option would be before trade deadline to make TOP 10 teams rent one player to bottom teams (15-20). One player who is on the 4th line on the top team could be a 2nd liner on team which is in the last place. At least some victories would come for them. Top teams would need to think about roster improvements too at the end of the season. Don't think players would be mad too. New atmosphere for the end of the season. Easy to explain, harder to do it, but it's still a solid option.

Getting something wrong? Yes - automated stuff makes it a bit more simple and you have a feeling that everything should be easier, better and more safe (without the chance of someone messing up the count of TPE). But there are still people who are adding those TPE for me, right? For example, at my post we have a snip from my portal - I got TPE added by luke and bbjygm. Not going towards them, but they still can mess up the count, so it doesn't change a lot at the end of the day.

Of course, it might just be a nostalgia. I got used to FHM when we changed to it from STHS and I will probably get used to portal as well, but I'm not feeling it fully yet. I see that a lot of users had excitement of this happening, but I'm one of the few who has mixed emotions. Hopefully it works out well and we will have much more active users now though.

So, the thing is - while parity and grading speed are certainly something we can look at, the dev team building the portal does not prevent those things. I don't think making our team of developers (who are contributing volunteer hours of skills that they get paid to use in real life) grade media instead is the most efficient use of their time - there are plenty of other people who can do that job if we need them to. That's not to say that we can't look at the speed of grading, or talk to the media team about hiring more graders, but it's not as if things are getting graded slowly because the dev team is working on the portal instead.

There is some minor overlap between the dev team and head office (Teddy is definitely very active in both of those things, I very (very very) slightly dabble in dev stuff like style updates), but on the whole, these are two different teams with completely different responsibilities and skill sets. Developing a portal is not detracting from those people doing something else. If people want to do dev stuff, that doesn't mean we can just shuffle them around and give them jobs they aren't interested in doing because we think that thing is "more important" - at the end of the day, this is all volunteer work and people are going to want to do the stuff they are good at and are passionate about. By that same token, if we can attract new users by making it easier for them to get started, we will gain new users with new skill sets, many of whom might be able to help out with other site jobs, like grading media. Those issues are important, and we can address them, but it isn't a "this or that" situation. It's two completely different teams, doing two completely different sets of jobs. We didn't decide to build a portal instead of grading media, we didn't allocate resources to the portal that could have gone to media grading instead.

On the parity front, we are simply never going to be able to do anything to completely fix teams actively tanking. Teams in real life cannot tank the way teams here can, because they have financial obligations to sell tickets and put butts in seats, and other concerns that a sim league team simply will never have. We did switch to FHM8, which, while admittedly garbage visually, has resulted in six unique cup winners in the seven seasons since we switched. There will never be a real life equivalent to how aggressively teams tank here, but that's just the nature of the beast. Comparing the SHL to the NHL is always going to be a flawed comparison because while we are all here because we like real hockey, this will never be equivalent to a real life league. We are a league where probably 90% of people want to be Ovechkins and McDavids, that is never going to accurately emulate a league where the Tanner Glasses of the world are happy just to crack a roster. I would argue that we have seen a lot of upsets recently:

Atlanta won the cup as the regular season champs in S66, but their opponent was a seventh place Seattle team, who upset three higher seeded teams to get there. Seattle won the cup as the fifth place regular season team in S67, and on the other side of the bracket, Manhattan fought their way to a final from seventh place in the regular season, and on their way, they beat a third place Atlanta team, and then beat Montreal in the conference final (who were there after being thirteenth in the regular season and beating the second place team). In S68 we saw the same matchup, which again saw Manhattan battling their way to a final after finishing thoroughly middle-of-the-standings during the regular season. In S69, a fifth place Philly team beat a first place Winnipeg team in five games. In S70, a sixth place New England team beat a first place Winnipeg team. Last season, a fifth place Buffalo team beat a first place Winnipeg team in six games. When Winnipeg finally got it done this season, it was from second place, beating the first place team to do it. It's been less than ten seasons since we switched, but in my opinion, we have seen a LOT more in the way of this elusive parity than we saw in the past. But I don't think we're ever going to get to a place where a team that is actively tanking, a team with an average of less than 1k TPE, is going to have some Cinderella run to a cup, and I also think that is okay. The focus (in my opinion) has always been to make things more competitive for the middle of the field, where that randomness can happen, not to put things in a place where a team can put the equivalent of a juniors roster out there and luck into massive success. We want a little randomness, we don't want building a good team to be completely pointless.

Also, there is never going to be a world where we forcibly randomize rosters by making top teams offer their players up as tributes to teams that are tanking (even if we did have fourth lines, which we don't).