Read most of the thread and then slept on it and decided to throw in few thoughts even though I have been away for a while and cannot really say I know how things have been feeling lately.
So when it comes to PTs I always felt like they were mixed bag, sometimes I got good idea and might spend like hour looking for photos and on gimp to get things right for my submission and sometimes it felt like a chore even when it took maybe 5 minutes at most. Still I see no huge problem here, but as we have started to see more CW passes handed to people even when I was still around I think it could be worth exploring if we could give out PT credits (for example add second bank system that keeps track of those) in way where you could earn few credits for jobs that we would not want to give full PT/CW pass and if there is interesting PTs or parts of CW you could still do those and save you credits for later. They might be baseline for some jobs and bonus for good performance for others. This might help a bit with getting more people involved and reducing workload for others, though it definitely wouldn't be some miracle cure to site activity.
Reading about FHM parity it sounds pretty familiar to what I saw and was thinking that one solution I think would be reasonable (and likely not implemented because it doesn't mimic NHL) would be to split up the SHL into two leagues. For example League A would have 12 teams and lower League B 8 teams. Playoffs would be 8 and 4 teams with finalists from league B moving up to League A for next season and last 2 from A relegated to league B. This should in theory lead to more stakes during regular season (as current mid teams would need to fight to either keep or to gain spot on A league) and playoffs spots are harder to get and difference between top and bottom wouldn't be as big as it is now leading hopefully more even games. Some cons would be that it would reduce teams taking part in playoffs (but then again if you are going to lose in 2 or 3 days it doesn't effect people too much) and it would take them form current spots 9-12 which indeed is bit odd considering that spots 13-16 would have their own playoffs. Then there would need to be some system in place to allow teams to drop to B league if they end up blowing up their team but as I'm not sure how easily you could build league like this in FHM8 I doubt I need to explore the idea further at this time. Still maybe different league structures could be worth looking at with fun instead of familiarity being at the core.
05-20-2023, 05:42 AM(This post was last modified: 05-20-2023, 08:11 AM by RomanesEuntDomus. Edited 1 time in total.)
05-19-2023, 11:07 AMluke Wrote: 100% agree. Everyone wants to be more engaged but when there are things to engage them, and put effort into, they don’t.
Like for double media there was a bunch of mid season double media or media week stuff trying to get rolled out but only a couple if not any actually did it
Carpy did the graphics school in order to introduce people to graphics, which is great but after the first season it kinda died out
Graphics contents like you said only had like 4 or 5 people do them.
IIHF has been struggling for a while
I think lespolis is still looking for people to help with events for like 5 seasons now.
It’s gotten to the point of like, there are about 350-375 people on the site. There is enough dedicated people to keep it running, but they get stretched thin, and can’t do all the extra stuff.
Maybe it’s a way we have to rethink events or ways to bring the community together idk. But people have tried events or tried to do contests, but the second you have to put in a bit of effort the number of participants drop off significantly
So many things about this site are about the distribution of limited ressources, and how we optimize those to get the most fun of them. One example for that which I already brought up is available TPE, there will only be a set amount of TPE handed out each season in order to not have inflation, so we want to use those TPE on tasks that people enjoy as much as possible, and any changes to the system or new ideas will have opportunity costs.
I think the willingness to put work into jobs and other tasks that, broadly speaking, help the site run, is another one of those limited ressources. Even if we manage to find more people for jobs by making them appealing, available time as well as personality types will always be a limiting factor. So we only have so much manpower to put into running the site, and should keep evaluating where that manpower is used effectively and where it might be wasted. Of course it's a much more complex issue than that, some tasks are way much demanding than others, some are actually fun and some are chores and so on, but the core of the issue remains the same: Many people invest a lot of personal effort into making this place run and we need to make sure that as little of that effort as possible is wasted.
There is one specific example that comes to mind for me here: Live Streams and Events. For me personally, mostly looking at it from the outside, it's the one element of the site where we have greatly increased the amount of time and effort that go into it from various people in recent years. And I'm wondering if some of that effort and attention is directed away from elsewhere, cannibalizing on other activities, or if it is genuinely created by this new activity and wouldn't be there otherwise. I'm bringing up this specific example because for me personally, it's something that I just don't really care about. Be it due to timezones or just personal preference, I don't care at all about live sims and only very selectively about live streams from Events, with the Draft being the only one that really matters imho. Obviously those events being there doesn't hurt me in the slightest and lots of other people enjoy them, but it makes me wonder if our refocusing on the "live aspect" of this site has taken away some of the attention and care from the asynchronous, on-demand aspects of it. We simply burn a lot of the precious limited manpower we have available among jobholders on daily live-sims and other multi-hour activities, that theoretically could go elsewhere.
This is a very specific example about where for me personally, our resources feel a bit misdirected, which you don't have to agree with, but the general principle applies elsewhere as well and deserves frequent evaluation imho. How much of the work we ask people to put into the side is used effectively, and how much is pointless and goes to waste or could be put to better use for the community elsewhere?
Of course this isn't the only issue and you guys holding jobs are right to say that people can't just cry for more stuff to do, but then not really get involved when stuff is offered. I had similar experiences when on the Awards Committee for example, when people were always quick to complain about them or their teammates not winning, but whenever we asked for the publics input or help, to gives us suggestions for the Littleton trophy, apply for a spot on the committee or to outsource specific Awards to the public completely, suddenly there was always very little feedback or interest. Someone also brought up the GOMHL briefly in this thread and they should definitely deserve as a warning example: It was a league that pretty much everyone enjoyed to the very end, but it died because it was so casual that no one felt the need to take on jobs and administrative positions anymore after a while, so the few people who did run the place burnt out and gave up eventually. We absolutely can't let that happen here, so you are right about the fact that we should also be able to demand certain things from our community and not just point towards the higher ups for solutions.
05-20-2023, 08:45 AM(This post was last modified: 05-20-2023, 09:01 AM by RomanesEuntDomus. Edited 5 times in total.)
05-19-2023, 07:23 PM_Blitz_ Wrote:
But yeah, if you're sitting around in the off-season and you think that those 2 weeks are too long, I encourage you to join an off-season committee, the events team, one of the tournaments in ANY capacity. Join your team's war room as a scout ahead of either or both of the drafts. Join the history department. Be a grader, be an updater. You'll find out that the off-season flies by rather quickly.
I've held a bunch of those jobs for 20+ seasons up until a few months ago, so I hope I'm allowed to speak, oh almighty one?
I think this view is a bit short-sighted. This is not about the off-season being too long, it's about the ratio between season and off-season being off. This season was 4 weeks of regular season, 2 weeks of playoffs and 2-3 weeks of off-season. So we roughly have 9 week seasons + pre-season, which kinda is in limbo and could be counted either as part of the season or off-season depending on your perspective.
- Just by pure numbers, most peoples seasons will end in the first or second round of the playoffs, which is at some point in week 5. This is pretty much exactly at the 50% mark, so even teams that make it into the playoffs and maybe even win a round there, they are only "active" for about 50% of the total season.
- For teams that don't make the playoffs it's even less, they only play for about 40-45% of the season. Yes they are very likely rebuilding, don't have a lot of people on the team and don't care about more games for now because they will lose anyway, but that is a really low number.
- For the teams that make the finals, that number is roughly 66% which isn't super high either, but acceptable.
I actually think that 66% mark is roughly the "activity time" that we should be aiming for not for the last two teams in the playoffs, but the general majority. Most people should have game action for about two thirds of their time here, with the top teams in the playoffs having a bit more, and then about 25-33% of the season as downtime for everyone to recharge. Yes, for most people in this league the community aspect is more important than the fake hockey aspect these days, and that's fine. But we have slowly become a sim league where there is surprisingly little sim leaguing and game action going on for most of the time.
I think there are two relatively easy solutions for this, that don't cut down on peoples well deserved relaxing time. Number one: Simply stretch out the regular season a bit longer. Make it six weeks intead of four. Have a bit fewer games per sim day and adjust the weekly-TPE payouts accordingly to make sure we don't run into any inflation problems. Obviously this comes with some possible downsides, like rebuilds taking longer than they already do, but also additional positives. One of them, for me, is actually about inflation as well.
People used to talk so much about TPE-inflation, but nobody really talks about game-inflation. We used to have 50 game seasons with 6-8 week turnarounds, now we have 4 week seasons and 66 games. The result is that nowadays game days come at you in bulk, with regular three or four game sims, whereas in the past you usually had only one or two games per sim day to look forward to. This inflation has de-valued the individual games, we just follow our players overall progress through the various stat tools but barely bother with the games themselves anymore. Cutting down on the speed with which we rush through the season might help us appreciate things a bit more again. Also, less work for the simmers per game day.
The second suggestion is something that others have already made in here and which I have conveniently left out of all my calculations so far: Increase the importance of IIHF, so that it feels like an actual part of this leagues core game action and not just some addendum that just... happens. I think one way to make this happen is to include IIHF more into the rewards structure of the league. Have more money or TPE-payouts connected to it, have more PTs that are specifically about IIHF, like running our regular set of weekly tasks (written, predictions, primetime) for the two weeks of IIHF as well, stuff like that.
Comments about season length and sim schedule are sticking out to me. I know I don't put much stock into live sims because my schedule doesn't really allow me to watch; maybe I follow along in the LR a bit if people are chatting while watching. We've also seen several issues that required resims the past few seasons, partly because of the time pressure on file workers and simmers. If things didn't have to go live at a specific time, maybe that gives them less pressure and more time to do the work. Could even sim ahead of time, maybe edit the video a bit for less downtime during, and then post later (like SSL). It's still "live" for players though GMs and simmers and such are working ahead of time.
The stark time difference between season length and playoff length is that the importance of playoffs means people want GMs to have time to adjust tactics between every game. Combined with trying to squeeze in tactics between live sims, it's a hard crunch. We end up playing seven games in the time regular season plays 14-18 games. I'm curious if GMs think that is showing in results, or if its actually just a lot of work and pressure without a huge effect. Seems like season could be extended and playoffs shortened (maybe a one week swing for each).
05-20-2023, 08:45 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: I've held a bunch of those jobs for 20+ seasons up until a few months ago, so I hope I'm allowed to speak, oh almighty one?
I do not have time today to get into all of this because I still have a whole lot of scouting to do for the J draft, but I will say that this is a completely unnecessary hostile comment at one of the people without whom we would straight up not have had a season last year. You're free to disagree with whoever you want, obviously, but when you're taking shots at one of the people who keeps the lights on, it really detracts from any other argument you're trying to make.
Blitz is absolutely right that we have a lot of people who seem to have really strong opinions about stuff that they do not have the willingness or ability to actually put any effort into. While people are obviously welcome to have ideas about stuff they don't have time to do themselves, the fact remains that we can have all the good ideas in the world but unless people are able and willing to put the work in, there is only so much the rest of us can do. And the problem with labeling any one part of the site a "waste of effort" is that different people want different things out of the site. I think this thread has, in a brief time, illustrated that very clearly. What is a "pointless waste of effort" to one person may be somebody else's favorite part of the community, and maybe the hardest thing to balance is finding a way to give as many people as possible the things they're looking to get out of the site. Hell, half the time people don't even want to put in the effort to fill out a survey to say what they do want (we haven't gotten the off-season survey out this year yet but every time we do, there are a large number of responses that are half blank because people are putting the minimal effort possible in to get their TPE).
Also, for what it's worth, we have by far the longest season out of any of the affiliate leagues, and I think you may be the first person I've seen asking for us to make it even longer.
That's what I've got for now - the rest of it I'll try and take stock of later once we're through the J draft.
05-20-2023, 10:14 AM(This post was last modified: 05-20-2023, 10:16 AM by RomanesEuntDomus. Edited 1 time in total.)
05-20-2023, 09:40 AMsköldpaddor Wrote: I do not have time today to get into all of this because I still have a whole lot of scouting to do for the J draft, but I will say that this is a completely unnecessary hostile comment at one of the people without whom we would straight up not have had a season last year. You're free to disagree with whoever you want, obviously, but when you're taking shots at one of the people who keeps the lights on, it really detracts from any other argument you're trying to make.
And this kind of gatekeeping in Blitz' post simply doesn't sit right by me, that's why my comment was a bit snarky. Saying that you shouldn't be allowed to criticize things or suggest changes, unless you are literally one of the people running this place in the off-season, is a shitty take that deserves to be called out.
Quote:Also, for what it's worth, we have by far the longest season out of any of the affiliate leagues, and I think you may be the first person I've seen asking for us to make it even longer.
That's what I've got for now - the rest of it I'll try and take stock of later once we're through the J draft.
Maybe we have different scopes of reference, but I don't find that to really be true. I don't think I've ever really heard many people complain about seasons being too long or there being too many games both here when seasons were longer, or in other leagues with longer seasons. When there were complaints they were about the length of the off-season, where I agree with you that we shouldn't shorten that because people need it to get administrative tasks done or recharge, but people were fine with longer regular seasons as long as the simming was reliable. One other well established league that I think can serve as a comparison, even though they aren't an affiliate, is the VHL. Their seasons are about 11 weeks for example, judging by a quick look, so basically the slightly longer timeframe I would suggest. But even one extra week instead of two would go a long way already.
And again, it's not about the length of the season itself, but about the ratio between action and no action. We are a sim league were for most people, there is no simming half of the time. I don't get why we rush so much through the regular season and cram 3 or 4 games into a single day instead of lowering that number a bit and putting more value on the individual game, or have more rest days to lessen the burnout on simmers. Quick sucessive seasons actually contribute to overall burnout imho, because all those annoying seasonal chores repeat in higher frequency than if we went at a slower pace.
SMJHL GMing is not fun in my opinion. Here is why:
Only four seasons means teams will always either be rebuilding or on the verge of a rebuild. It means first round picks just don’t ever get traded.
On top of that, there is too many teams. SMJHL expanded last time simply because SHL did, and that’s not a good reason at all. The draft classes are small enough, and there’s so many teams, that fourth round picks and beyond are basically useless.
So teams maaaaaay be willing to trade a second rounder. Never a first. And a third isn’t worth much, as by then you’re usually drafting people who haven’t logged in since the day they signed up, and you’re only drafting them because you need another player on your roster.
I’ve been a terrible GM in my tenure and haven’t really accomplished anything at all, but having so many teams in the SMJHL and thus having such a shallow draft pool every time has made it near impossible to remain competitive. I feel like by the time I have a strong core, they’re already aging out and I have to start all over again.
Other than that, the league is still fun to me. I like seeing my player and team do well and I enjoy the process of making my player better.
That being said, I also think regression needs a serious overhaul. Basically with this current regression system we are saying players start to regress by the time they’re 24 (SMJHL is treated like juniors, so the player would be 18 after 4 seasons in the SMJHL) which is absurd to me. Let players keep building for a few more seasons before they start regressing. Maybe have regression kick in ten seasons after the player’s first full SHL season.
Sigs by Me, Merica, High Stick King, Rum_Ham, Jess, vulfzilla, enigmatic, and Carpy
05-20-2023, 10:56 AMRagnar Wrote: SMJHL GMing is not fun in my opinion. Here is why:
Only four seasons means teams will always either be rebuilding or on the verge of a rebuild. It means first round picks just don’t ever get traded.
On top of that, there is too many teams. SMJHL expanded last time simply because SHL did, and that’s not a good reason at all. The draft classes are small enough, and there’s so many teams, that fourth round picks and beyond are basically useless.
So teams maaaaaay be willing to trade a second rounder. Never a first. And a third isn’t worth much, as by then you’re usually drafting people who haven’t logged in since the day they signed up, and you’re only drafting them because you need another player on your roster.
I’ve been a terrible GM in my tenure and haven’t really accomplished anything at all, but having so many teams in the SMJHL and thus having such a shallow draft pool every time has made it near impossible to remain competitive. I feel like by the time I have a strong core, they’re already aging out and I have to start all over again.
Other than that, the league is still fun to me. I like seeing my player and team do well and I enjoy the process of making my player better.
That being said, I also think regression needs a serious overhaul. Basically with this current regression system we are saying players start to regress by the time they’re 24 (SMJHL is treated like juniors, so the player would be 18 after 4 seasons in the SMJHL) which is absurd to me. Let players keep building for a few more seasons before they start regressing. Maybe have regression kick in ten seasons after the player’s first full SHL season.
I think the trading thing depends on the season honestly. I traded for 1OA in S67 because I really wanted a specific player, and that's happened a few times during my GM tenure.
Also, the J didn't expand because the SHL did, they expanded because we literally did not have roster spots for people who were creating, teams were completely full (despite the fact that the SHL had just expanded a season earlier and there should have been MORE roster spots). It's dialed back now as people have come out of their pandemic isolation, but I am very much of the opinion that getting rid of fourth lines was a way better solution to that than contracting entire teams.
05-20-2023, 11:13 AM(This post was last modified: 05-20-2023, 11:13 AM by Frenchie. Edited 1 time in total.)
05-20-2023, 10:56 AMRagnar Wrote: we are saying players start to regress by the time they’re 24 (SMJHL is treated like juniors, so the player would be 18 after 4 seasons in the SMJHL) which is absurd to me.
Might be the most trivial part of your reply (the rest I agree with to some extent, but so is J GMing I guess :pepehands: ), but I don't see any junior league having players start at 14. In Canada, you can get exceptional status at 15, but 99% of the league starts at 16 and runs through 20, which would mean regression starting at 27 which kinda makes sense as regression +1 is where you hit your real TPE peak (or so I was told), which means you effectively start being less good at 28 (for comparison's sake). Peak NHL years usually run between 27-31, so it's really not far off.
I get the argument is more about the length of J careers, but we're struggling to get players to go through 4 J seasons because of how stale the experience gets with not being able to apply TPE. It would be an interesting thing to look at, but you'd be looking at a complete overhaul of the system.
05-20-2023, 10:14 AMRomanesEuntDomus Wrote: And this kind of gatekeeping in Blitz' post simply doesn't sit right by me, that's why my comment was a bit snarky. Saying that you shouldn't be allowed to criticize things or suggest changes, unless you are literally one of the people running this place in the off-season, is a shitty take that deserves to be called out.
I don't want to get into a pissing contest here, but nothing Blitz said is gatekeeping? People complaining of how long the offseason is exist, and they're not only 1 or 2. As per what I said previously here, a lot of departments need help during the offseason, and as someone who does SHL scouting, J scouting on top of my regular old HO duties, I can confirm offseason zooms by. The main point of the comment Blitz made was that, not that you couldn't criticize, but that there are alternatives to waiting that would maybe help remediate the feeling of dreadful waiting.
05-20-2023, 11:13 AMFrenchie Wrote: Might be the most trivial part of your reply (the rest I agree with to some extent, but so is J GMing I guess :pepehands: ), but I don't see any junior league having players start at 14. In Canada, you can get exceptional status at 15, but 99% of the league starts at 16 and runs through 20, which would mean regression starting at 27 which kinda makes sense as regression +1 is where you hit your real TPE peak (or so I was told), which means you effectively start being less good at 28 (for comparison's sake). Peak NHL years usually run between 27-31, so it's really not far off.
I get the argument is more about the length of J careers, but we're struggling to get players to go through 4 J seasons because of how stale the experience gets with not being able to apply TPE. It would be an interesting thing to look at, but you'd be looking at a complete overhaul of the system.
Regardless of the simulated age of the simulated player, the fact remains that 90+% of players start to regress after six seasons in the big leagues. I just think that’s too soon.
Sigs by Me, Merica, High Stick King, Rum_Ham, Jess, vulfzilla, enigmatic, and Carpy
I haven't been here nearly as long (going on two years), and for the most part, I still really enjoy interacting with everyone in the LRs I'm a part of, rooting for my team and teammates, and following my player and team's progress. On top of that, being involved in the graphics community here has rekindled the love I have for graphic design that had been lost since I had to get a big boy job and abandon my web dev/graphic design "business" (it was more of a hobby that also made me money) almost 10 years ago. It gives me something to do in the offseasons as well. However, there are a few things that have become frustrating and/or annoying to me. My criticisms are mostly personal complaints through my own observations and experiences so take them for what they are.
First is playoff seeding. It's getting really old playing the same team over and over again in the first round. My player has been in the SHL for seven season now and we have played Chicago in the first round five times, including each of the last four seasons. Some variety would keep things fresh and the opportunity to potentially play against teams with other people I know on them in a playoff setting.
Second is parity. Despite all the changes, it's still NBA-level bad. You can usually count on one hand the teams that have a chance of winning it all. And frankly, it shouldn't be possible for one team to have the highest average TPE forwards, defensemen, and goalies. As RED said, this is a complicated issue. If it were easy to fix, it would have happened already. That said, things have been better the past few seasons, particularly in the Eastern Conference, so there is hope!
Lastly, parity feeds right into the build meta. Again, there's no variety. If teams want to be even remotely competitive, they need to conform to the meta. As a forward, you need to be a two-way player. As a defenseman, you at least have options. Either a shot blocking defensive defenseman or a shooting offensive defenseman. The obvious direction here would be to implement archetypes, but that has never seemed to get any traction. So conform I'll continue to do.
Again, these are merely my personal thoughts and opinions. I still enjoy this league and all the people that keep it running. I plan to keep my current player going until nobody wants him, recreate, and do it all over again!
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