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Opera_Phantom · 06-30-2021, 09:18 AM

Now that I have spent a few days working on my player and getting to know people in the simulation hockey League I feel like I now have a better idea of what is expected of a player here so I have decided to do a new media stating my impressions on this league. Do not take anything i saw here as "destructive criticism", because i know very well i still do not have the full picture yet, but maybe my new player bias could help in avoiding or changing some stuff that makes the experience harder.

As some of you might know this is sim league stuff is pretty new to me. As a non- North American it was in late 2019 that I have discovered these type of leagues, when I created a player in the international simulation football League. I honestly believe that there is nothing like this currently in Europe so it was a big surprise for me when I discovered that there are thousands of people in simulation games just like this one. To make it even funnier I have met my fair share of American people during my life and none of them told me about these setups.

So, to get a few more bucks (and maybe raise my draft stock) i have decided to tell you about my first impressions about the league, in no particular order. And since the setup here is fairly similar to the ISFL, that is what i will mainly be using as a baseline.

1) Player Creation is nicely done. While i have no idea about what stats do in the sim, i think the creation part is fairly simple. Obviously i requested some feedback on discord to a couple users, but in the end, it was all pretty straight forward. And after checking the excel documents with the archetype pros and cons, everything is very clear on what i should focus on, which is good.

2) I am not really a big fan of the "free agency" process if you sign up after the draft, but i understand the appeal of that. Instead of you being picked on waivers by some team you might not know anyone in, you get to choose, so you can come into the game and play alongside your friends/acquaintances if you want to.

3) Bank stuff looks great. While i still did not use it a lot yet, the fact that you do not nee to rely on an excel sheet is great. I am Head Banker in the ISFL and i love the job to be honest, but having a portal for all the purchases makes it easier on the user base. No idea how banking works on the "inside" though, but it is probably easier for bankers to track stuff using the portal, not sheets.

4) One negative i can find is that tasks are not shared by SHL and SMJHL. It makes it unnecessarily hard on new players to track what they can and can't do for TPE. Is the TPE distribution different for both tasks? If not, why not use the same threads, with different prompts clearly stated? Even if the TPE rewards are different, just put them on the same thread. I am on discord and the bot posts every task, but then i get to the forum and some are not for rookies.

5) Media and tasks, rookie tasks in this case, do they take a lot to get graded? I have no idea if it is common for media to be sitting ungraded for a week, if there is a specific day where graders do all the grading, but from my experience as a PPT member, the quicker, the better. People do things in game and want to see the result as soon as possible, to be able to buy stuff or even because they just want to see their bank account grow.

6) I like the twitter rules. I really do. Only 3 posts, with mandatory #shlhockey tag (makes sense), plus 3 interactions a week and you make enough money to be able to buy weekly training for +3. Seems very reasonable and it is a very easy way for casual earners to at least get TPE in a way that they can really help their team.

For now, that is all i can remember.

Again, just a few thoughts from a new user here, mainly for the media money, so i don't want to rub people the wrong way.

And thank you for all the welcomes.

ACapitalChicago · 06-30-2021, 10:03 AM

Hey there, thanks for writing this! I really love seeing a new person's fresh perspective on the League, it helps us put things in a different perspective to see what we might've missed. I want to specifically comment on two things you said.

06-30-2021, 09:18 AMOpera_Phantom Wrote: 1) Player Creation is nicely done. While i have no idea about what stats do in the sim, i think the creation part is fairly simple. Obviously i requested some feedback on discord to a couple users, but in the end, it was all pretty straight forward. And after checking the excel documents with the archetype pros and cons, everything is very clear on what i should focus on, which is good.

2) I am not really a big fan of the "free agency" process if you sign up after the draft, but i understand the appeal of that. Instead of you being picked on waivers by some team you might not know anyone in, you get to choose, so you can come into the game and play alongside your friends/acquaintances if you want to.

For the first part, that's a bit surprising to hear! Player Creation is one of the big topics we're trying to tackle in J HO right now, and rewriting & reformatting everything is a slog. Currently a lot of people feel it's disconnected, outdated, and unrepresentative of the site as a whole, so to hear some new users found it useful still is great! If you have any other feedback on it we'd be happy to hear it.

As for point #2, I suppose that could be a viable option, but I'd want to get more information from other post-draft FAs and our J GMs before any sort of conversations about changing this happen. I'll admit a large portion of the current process could potentially be chalked up to tradition, the good ol' "We've always done it this way" shtick, but I think you also hit part of why it's good in that it allows people to go where their friends are if they so choose. This has the trade off of minimizing the max TPE you can earn by not signing up pre-draft, however. In the end, this is a for fun league so we can't fault people for wanting to play for their friends. One thing I personally enjoy from the current system is the competitive edge it creates between our J GMs, allowing them some flexibility on who they pick up and how in Free Agency. While this may result in winners and losers, I have faith in our J GMs to always make the best of the highs and the lows they face.

Thanks again for writing this piece! I can't stress how much I love first-impression pieces, so it's cool to see yours! Hope you have a good rest of your day!

S66 Damian Littleton

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Opera_Phantom · 06-30-2021, 10:08 AM

06-30-2021, 10:03 AMACapitalChicago Wrote: Hey there, thanks for writing this! I really love seeing a new person's fresh perspective on the League, it helps us put things in a different perspective to see what we might've missed. I want to specifically comment on two things you said.

06-30-2021, 09:18 AMOpera_Phantom Wrote: 1) Player Creation is nicely done. While i have no idea about what stats do in the sim, i think the creation part is fairly simple. Obviously i requested some feedback on discord to a couple users, but in the end, it was all pretty straight forward. And after checking the excel documents with the archetype pros and cons, everything is very clear on what i should focus on, which is good.

2) I am not really a big fan of the "free agency" process if you sign up after the draft, but i understand the appeal of that. Instead of you being picked on waivers by some team you might not know anyone in, you get to choose, so you can come into the game and play alongside your friends/acquaintances if you want to.

For the first part, that's a bit surprising to hear! Player Creation is one of the big topics we're trying to tackle in J HO right now, and rewriting & reformatting everything is a slog. Currently a lot of people feel it's disconnected, outdated, and unrepresentative of the site as a whole, so to hear some new users found it useful still is great! If you have any other feedback on it we'd be happy to hear it.

As for point #2, I suppose that could be a viable option, but I'd want to get more information from other post-draft FAs and our J GMs before any sort of conversations about changing this happen. I'll admit a large portion of the current process could potentially be chalked up to tradition, the good ol' "We've always done it this way" shtick, but I think you also hit part of why it's good in that it allows people to go where their friends are if they so choose. This has the trade off of minimizing the max TPE you can earn by not signing up pre-draft, however. In the end, this is a for fun league so we can't fault people for wanting to play for their friends. One thing I personally enjoy from the current system is the competitive edge it creates between our J GMs, allowing them some flexibility on who they pick up and how in Free Agency. While this may result in winners and losers, I have faith in our J GMs to always make the best of the highs and the lows they face.

Thanks again for writing this piece! I can't stress how much I love first-impression pieces, so it's cool to see yours! Hope you have a good rest of your day!

Regarding point 1, i might already be biased and find it pretty straight forward because i came from the ISFL, where the process, with slightly different skills, is pretty similar. But as a completely new user there and in sim leagues in general, i remember the player creation was really hard to wrap my head around.

So, if i got to the SHL without that background, i would probably share the idea you told me about.

Segi · 06-30-2021, 11:38 AM

Hey, thanks for posting some feedback. These articles are always interesting to read. Also make sure you fill out the rookie survey and the end of the season survey, once that is available.

06-30-2021, 09:18 AMOpera_Phantom Wrote: 4) One negative i can find is that tasks are not shared by SHL and SMJHL. It makes it unnecessarily hard on new players to track what they can and can't do for TPE. Is the TPE distribution different for both tasks? If not, why not use the same threads, with different prompts clearly stated? Even if the TPE rewards are different, just put them on the same thread. I am on discord and the bot posts every task, but then i get to the forum and some are not for rookies.

5) Media and tasks, rookie tasks in this case, do they take a lot to get graded? I have no idea if it is common for media to be sitting ungraded for a week, if there is a specific day where graders do all the grading, but from my experience as a PPT member, the quicker, the better. People do things in game and want to see the result as soon as possible, to be able to buy stuff or even because they just want to see their bank account grow.

On point 4: I am not 100 % sure on how it originated, but rookies having seperate tasks does have some clear advantages in my opinion. The fact that you have a different smaller group of members doing the tasks lets you gear them more towards the rookie experience and you can repeat more popular ones more often, while the SHL PT team does need to be more creative with their tasks, to not repeat them in years. This needed creativity also inevitably leads to some tasks going more in the direction of in jokes, that rookies had no way of connecting with.

On point 5: People don't only write media to get money, it's also a way to get out opinions and start discussions, like you're doing with yours. When media pieces get graded, they get moved to the graded section and are much less visible, so you don't really want to see your article graded two hours after posting it. Graders do go through the section once a week, so if an article has been posted shortly before the grading process, it's gonna wait on grading for about a week.

***DrunkenTeddy*** · 06-30-2021, 12:20 PM

After the preamble I expected more criticisms, but this mostly sounded positive! Great to hear the experience has been good so far, we are always trying to make it better and I think it has slowly improved year after year. I hope we can keep improving the experience and bring more and more new members on board. Smile

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***golden_apricot*** · 06-30-2021, 12:26 PM

06-30-2021, 12:20 PMDrunkenTeddy Wrote: After the preamble I expected more criticisms,

This is reserved for older members smh teddy

*fishy* · 06-30-2021, 04:13 PM

Quote: 5) Media and tasks, rookie tasks in this case, do they take a lot to get graded? I have no idea if it is common for media to be sitting ungraded for a week, if there is a specific day where graders do all the grading, but from my experience as a PPT member, the quicker, the better. People do things in game and want to see the result as soon as possible, to be able to buy stuff or even because they just want to see their bank account grow.

I can’t speak for the tasks, but as a J media grader I can speak on this. As someone said earlier, media grading is typically done every 5-7 days. We enjoy seeing articles that attract activity and attention, and so we don’t grade according to the date of when the article was posted, but the date of the last comment on the article. So, let’s say an article that was posted 12 days ago is still attracting comments and discussions, it wouldn’t get graded until 1-2 days pass with no activity. With that being said, as grading is typically done every 5 days, it’s quite unlikely that your article would be ungraded for longer than 10 days.

Additionally, if a user posted an article and is in dire need of cash, they’re allowed to go up to -1.5 million in debt with our banking system, and then they’re article would soon get graded and bring them out of the negatives.

I hope this cleared some things up. Welcome to the SHL!

Opera_Phantom · 06-30-2021, 05:07 PM

Thank you all, it cleared some stuff up for me, much appreciated!

Kyamprac · 06-30-2021, 10:53 PM

Nice to see you kickin' around here OP, enjoy Smile

Opera_Phantom · 07-01-2021, 06:02 AM

06-30-2021, 10:53 PMKyamprac Wrote: Nice to see you kickin' around here OP, enjoy

You're fired

Kyamprac · 07-01-2021, 11:33 AM

07-01-2021, 06:02 AMOpera_Phantom Wrote:
06-30-2021, 10:53 PMKyamprac Wrote: Nice to see you kickin' around here OP, enjoy

You're fired

You're not my supervisor

***Rangerjase*** · 07-01-2021, 03:21 PM

Hey Opera welcome to the league!

Glad to see a fellow head banker hanging around! (That's me, I am the head banker!)

Don't worry about how banking works on the inside, we don't have a clue either.

Happy to share more thoughts on this if it peaks your curiosity!

:zoltan:

Grapehead · 07-01-2021, 06:34 PM

06-30-2021, 09:18 AMOpera_Phantom Wrote: 3) Bank stuff looks great. While i still did not use it a lot yet, the fact that you do not nee to rely on an excel sheet is great. I am Head Banker in the ISFL and i love the job to be honest, but having a portal for all the purchases makes it easier on the user base. No idea how banking works on the "inside" though, but it is probably easier for bankers to track stuff using the portal, not sheets.

Oh hey, I used to be the head banker in the ISFL! Do you still use the same spreadsheet we built back then?

***luke*** · 07-01-2021, 07:39 PM

Thank you for your thoughts, its always beneficial to have someone new come in and bring fresh eyes to situations. Especially someone that is experienced in other sim leagues. Some of it is just preference like the Free Agency thing after creation. But the other stuff is solid. The bank was such a big improvement, just makes things so much easier when you dont have to rely on a spreadsheet to do stuff. And posting in threads for trainining, etc. Instead you just click a button. I am also glad you liked twitter, the new system is a couple seasons old and I think its going great. The grading process on my end is easy so I'm glad that the user end is great with the tweets and repleis

Opera_Phantom · 07-02-2021, 02:16 AM

07-01-2021, 06:34 PMGrapehead Wrote:
06-30-2021, 09:18 AMOpera_Phantom Wrote: 3) Bank stuff looks great. While i still did not use it a lot yet, the fact that you do not nee to rely on an excel sheet is great. I am Head Banker in the ISFL and i love the job to be honest, but having a portal for all the purchases makes it easier on the user base. No idea how banking works on the "inside" though, but it is probably easier for bankers to track stuff using the portal, not sheets.

Oh hey, I used to be the head banker in the ISFL! Do you still use the same spreadsheet we built back then?

The basis is still the same yeah lol
It has a few changes, we added some stuff to automate things a bit, but it remains pretty much the same.

Most of the bank threads still active on the forum were created by you

(Last Visit: Monday, April 29th, 2019, 13:28 - You should come back)

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