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trella · 03-04-2022, 11:04 AM

03-03-2022, 09:58 PMboom Wrote: It’s frustrating to just hit a wall of a playoff series where you have no chance whatsoever. I value being a players’ coach and letting my team dictate the flow of their builds for the most part, but what am I supposed to do when other teams just force their players into builds and run with it and win more games that way?

This x100. I was never comfortable in forcing my players to build a certain way. This is a player league where everyone should be able to build whatever they want, but the current league strips that from you if you want to even have a chance to win. It really sucks, honestly it was one of the reasons I stepped down. I feel like the current iteration of the SHL has so much that goes against the spirit of sim leagues.

Thanks to @karey and @JSS for the sigs!

Former USA Fed Head, Carolina Kraken Co-GM, Tampa Bay Barracuda GM

***Reno*** · 03-04-2022, 12:20 PM

Coming from the perspective of someone who isn't super in depth with league history and politics, I find it slightly concerning when I'm looking at stuff for season predictions and I just see the same three teams at the top and then that wildcard 4th slot.

I will admit I come from spoiled background, entered the league on a stacked Newfoundland team that was a threat my entire time I was there and seeing them just win again I understand we do have some form of issue.

I don't know how to really tackle this and I'm not going to pretend like I do, but I'm curious to see how we can try and rebalance the league without just straight up punishing people for being good with FHM.

GCool · 03-04-2022, 12:40 PM

I've never known a league other than SHL. I 'joined' SBA a few times, played GOMHL but that was designed to be as low-maintenance as possible. This is to say, I don't play in any other of the major simulation sports.

I don't consider the SHL to be in crisis mode. Tensions in the league have definitely been sinusoidal throughout its history. I do think, though, that the peaks/valleys are only getting worse. This is because some of the systemic issues within SHL infrastructure and politics have not changed, and while interest in other things has gone down (lack of media, the agonizing FHM simulations, screenshots of results on Discord that are hardly discussed between most members of opposing teams), it's become more apparent that there isn't much in SHL innovation to ... anticipate.
Until WBF took over as Commissioner, I felt so disconnected from everyone in HO, even if they typed walls of text at me, because I rarely see them interact in lighthearted media and other forum type situations. And this is as a max earner, where arguably I should be engaged on the site a lot, I'd think -- and that really isn't the case. The discourse that usually makes its way to the forum is an argument that's already been decided lest it be spammed with inside jokes first. It's just not fun to be around. I'm sure this exists elsewhere but the transition from purely forum/Chatzy stuff to mostly Discord and sometimes the forum was something I could never really get over, I guess. I'm responding here to actually just ask myself, in stream of consciousness, if it's worth recreating after this.

I'm leaning toward no. I've had fun with Donair but that's only because of which Discord servers I ended up in. The PTs are whatever, I don't really know if people look at other people's players and what goes on in the index, I don't find much to read on here, I dunno. Just seems played out.

PremierBromanov · 03-04-2022, 01:32 PM

I will say that calling ham out was slightly dramatic on my part, but mostly still true. I didn't quit because of HAM, but HAM exacerbates a lot of the things that made me anxious and was just one of many things that lead to being too involved and too anxious for my own good. The biggest reason, which maybe wasnt too clear, was trying to be a leader for a lot of guys I care about and feeling like I just wasn't good enough, especially since I didn't want to have to do that. I digress. I'm sorry for calling you out specifically when there were so many things that lead to my departure. I see your impact more on others, and that impact has an indirect impact on me. Its not even close to being your fault I quit and my media was not clear about that.

Ham isn't the best because they sim the most every season, they're the best because they have build unity across the board. That is, unfortunately, the key to their success. They've once again found the path of least resistance and, as others have noted, that really sucks when it takes like 2 years of your life to get into your career prime. It double sucks when each GM and Co feels like they need to sim 10 hours every weekend to get the most out of their team, when ham has, largely, automated this process in the form of builds. They did a lot of work at one time and now they sit back.

There are many things that could alleviate this, and many of the reasons we choose not to alleviate them is that we like the general concept of those problems. Would we hate it as much if a season lasted a whole week? probably not. But, that longevity is the reason so many of us indulge in this league in the first place. We like the long term, the commitment. Would we hate it as much TPE was 100% free? probably not. But we like the effort, we like the requirement to be good, we like that some players will put in more effort and some will seek to put in far less. I think it's important to identify what we actually like about this league before we settle on solutions. We like Player agency, and we like GM agency as well. People want the freedom to make builds and see results, and GMs need the freedom to build teams and see results. More and more, it seems like there's no connection between the build you create and the stats that result, and no connection between the team you build and the success you see.

I like when GMs finesse a good team, either by trade or by draft. Drafting should matter. Trading should matter. Ironically for me, maybe it doesn't, as long as you can convince people to build the way you want. It leads many people to say "what's the point" and sure, you might say "community is the point" and that's true, but we can get community without even playing.

I have no solutions. you cant stop people from having build consistency, that's the team's and the player's own agency. Maybe FHM8 will fare better for player agency, maybe there's a meta system we can build into the league that will help that as well. But, bottom line is that we have one professional team in a league of amateurs. It doesn't matter what activity you're looking at, that sort of disparity in a league is bad for the amateurs almost every time. Maybe we need a weenie hut jr's league for the rest of us.

DELIRIVM · 03-04-2022, 02:59 PM

Honestly echo a lot of sentiments here. I returned in S54, almost 10 seasons ago, and I found new life in the SHL. Mostly because I was part of very strong locker rooms and have continued to be part of one in Baltimore. But over that time the repetitive nature of who wins, and the amount of work it takes to even be relevant in this league, have ground me down into dust. The forums are a mess of copy pastas and outrages, the sim engine is not good, and it's not fun to watch the same teams win it every year. I can't believe that a year after we go to the EC Finals and I have the most points in the league would be the one where I can just see myself not updating anymore and fading into obscurity.

I don't think we're being alarmist at all by acknowledging that this league is going to start bleeding players more quickly than it has before.

SlashACM · 03-04-2022, 04:07 PM

03-03-2022, 09:58 PMboom Wrote: I don’t regret recreating, I’m really excited about the story I can build with Bordeleau, there’s avenues to go there, but GMing can feel like a slog sometimes. When we were down 2-0 to Texas in these playoffs, I ran some tests. The result was that 40% of the time, we won one game and lost in 5 instead of 4. The rest of the time was sweeps. The same odds happened the year before against Chicago. It’s frustrating to just hit a wall of a playoff series where you have no chance whatsoever. I value being a players’ coach and letting my team dictate the flow of their builds for the most part, but what am I supposed to do when other teams just force their players into builds and run with it and win more games that way?

I’ve wondered here or there if going back to the J would ever be in the cards - it’s not something I’m considering at the moment with how far I’ve worked to get here and I am not throwing away my shot, but there’s some nostalgia there for every team having a shot to go far in the playoffs.

tl;dr: I love love love GMing for the community I get to build and meeting amazing people. I hate the sim. I want this to be fun for the sim and community and will fight like hell for it.

I was disappointed in the responses to either a pt prompt or cw prompt where I asked people to compare sths to fhm. Lots of people saying sths was too random, or they never played on it but HEARD it was too random. I understand playing great all season to get bounced in rnd 1 or 2 is frustrating (trust me, that was NOLA in the late s40s lol) but that's hockey.

I feel like we just don't see that in fhm. Like you said, the 0% win rate in testing (5% to maybe push it to 5) is bullshit. It's gotten worse over time too, I remember being super frustrated in s55 where the buffalo series was a coin flip and I couldn't do ANYTHING to put the series in our favor. But it's gotten wayyyy worse over time, now early in the s60s I was doing testing for Anchorage and there was nothing I could do to get a series win against kel/NF I can't remember. But like 100 tests and not even one series win. That's not even hockey. Just plain fuckin boring

spooked · 03-04-2022, 04:09 PM

03-04-2022, 07:42 AMsve7en Wrote:
03-04-2022, 02:49 AMspooked Wrote: Not to mention J gms have it better than us lol.

That's a take. The jobs are wildly different sure, but to say that the SHL is harder is comical.

Didn't say harder, I said better. Even if the difficulty or time commitment is the same or even if the J is truly more difficult day-to-day, the potential for success and opportunity to improve your team in the J is far far more promising that the SHL, so its just easier to approach/stay motivated for the time you need to in order to be good. You could even go hard for a few seasons to be a contender, and take a couple months off and come back again after and still turn your team around faster than if you took a season "off' at the SHL level. There is so much more flexibility cause the end-to-end process is literal years shorter and has built in seasons where you may want to take it easier while your team rebuilds. If you want to be competitive every season in the J, sure its probably the same, but I never found that to be a good approach to that league in general.

Skeleton Party · 03-05-2022, 09:56 AM

the entire time i have played, as a goalie, my player hasn't mattered. the more we get into fhm, it seems that is true of all players, not just the goalies. the only reason i am continuing on is because i owe it to Manhattan to help with rebuild. i was excited to start another player after cal retired, but im probably not doing that anymore and will just haunt LRs. Its just not worth the effort.

wumaduce · 03-05-2022, 10:47 AM

I've pretty much decided my next player, if there is one, will be a J only player. My heart is barely into the SHL at this point, and if I wasn't a part of a great LR in LAP, and a rookie mentor, I don't know if I would stick around at this point. Over the past couple of weeks, I've written out responses to posts and just shrugged and didn't bother posting. The copy pastas have been an issue for a long time, like calendar years, but they don't go away. FHM had potential, but it hasn't gone very well. I'm hoping HO can fix things and make the league interesting again, but at this point all I really care about is the J and hoping that all of the rookies end up in great situations where they can fall in love with the league, and that they stick around to help the league grow.

Thunfish · 03-05-2022, 10:59 AM

Well, I suppose that's a bit of a spoiler but I'm also considering calling it a day when Harrier retires.

Truth be told that when I joined, I was keener towards meeting and befriending new people from another part of the world, which is something I can gladly say I was able to do. When I ever manage to move from Brazil up north, you can be sure I'll be scheduling some meet-ups and I reckon I wouldn't be able to have done that without the SHL. For as much as I've heard bad things lately, I had tons of fun everywhere I went and I'm thankful that I stuck around.

That said, I don't feel there's much that interests me to keep going after my current player retires. Perhaps playing for Finland, since they were so cool that one time I played with them in the juniors or Switzerland so that I could fulfill that one promise I made to Segi ages ago... that I now can't find because I too got booted from Anaheim's LR (on that note, I'll echo my good friend @SpartanGibbles, that's a stomach blow to the utmost degree - wouldn't have happened if they kept Outlungus alive) but beyond that, I feel like my goals have been pleasantly fulfilled and I'm satisfied with everything enough to move on.

Even if I changed my thoughts and added some new goals, well... my creativity is curtailed by the eventual rough comment here and there, I don't think I even need to mention the bit about competitivity in the league when probably half of the posts here have mentioned it in some way or shape (usually because of Hamilton) and quite frankly, I'm at the point in my life where I should worry about getting a job.

I'm not 100% if I'm officially out of the league after this player's run but I gotta be honest about it, if it wasn't for Manhattan having so many great lads and ladettes, I'd be bored out of my skull.

spooked · 03-05-2022, 01:08 PM

I guess we should all clean ANA logos from our sigs considering we were fired from being alum :(

Gifter of Bikes · 03-05-2022, 11:12 PM

Honestly, the SHL feels more like a chore than something enjoyable. There's no hype around games or events, just an unending, not particularly enjoyable TPE grind that barely makes an impact at high level skills (25 tpe to go up by 1? 40 tpe!?!) The SHL used to be a fun environment with scouting reports, game comments, all sorts of things. Now it's just work, with the biggest change being Championship Week, which feels like it happens every month and is a larger amount of work.

*Redderder15* · 03-06-2022, 12:02 PM

03-04-2022, 04:07 PMSlashACM Wrote:
03-03-2022, 09:58 PMboom Wrote: I don’t regret recreating, I’m really excited about the story I can build with Bordeleau, there’s avenues to go there, but GMing can feel like a slog sometimes. When we were down 2-0 to Texas in these playoffs, I ran some tests. The result was that 40% of the time, we won one game and lost in 5 instead of 4. The rest of the time was sweeps. The same odds happened the year before against Chicago. It’s frustrating to just hit a wall of a playoff series where you have no chance whatsoever. I value being a players’ coach and letting my team dictate the flow of their builds for the most part, but what am I supposed to do when other teams just force their players into builds and run with it and win more games that way?

I’ve wondered here or there if going back to the J would ever be in the cards - it’s not something I’m considering at the moment with how far I’ve worked to get here and I am not throwing away my shot, but there’s some nostalgia there for every team having a shot to go far in the playoffs.

tl;dr: I love love love GMing for the community I get to build and meeting amazing people. I hate the sim. I want this to be fun for the sim and community and will fight like hell for it.

I was disappointed in the responses to either a pt prompt or cw prompt where I asked people to compare sths to fhm. Lots of people saying sths was too random, or they never played on it but HEARD it was too random. I understand playing great all season to get bounced in rnd 1 or 2 is frustrating (trust me, that was NOLA in the late s40s lol) but that's hockey.

I feel like we just don't see that in fhm. Like you said, the 0% win rate in testing (5% to maybe push it to 5) is bullshit. It's gotten worse over time too, I remember being super frustrated in s55 where the buffalo series was a coin flip and I couldn't do ANYTHING to put the series in our favor. But it's gotten wayyyy worse over time, now early in the s60s I was doing testing for Anchorage and there was nothing I could do to get a series win against kel/NF I can't remember. But like 100 tests and not even one series win. That's not even hockey. Just plain fuckin boring

yeah, that's what makes hockey exciting. IRL, the whole hockey community is excited when an upset like CBJ beating TBL in 2019 happens, and its so fun because of all of the implications and the excited CBJ team and fans. It's hard when all numbers are concrete in FHM though, because if a team gets the luck of the draw in a series they had like a 30% chance in, there's no in-game motivation boost or energy boost so they just get shit on in the next round. Prevents any sort of underdog story like MTL last season, and makes playoff predictions the easiest thing ever.

Serpe x 13 · 03-06-2022, 12:24 PM

SHL will always be fun but its healthy to need to take breaks every once and a while; especially for longer tenured members...

Mack · 03-06-2022, 03:45 PM

Click Here To Check Out This Awesome Thread By @ArGarBarGar

[Image: S45_Exhibition__Game_2__West_Kendall_Pla...ota_Ch.gif]

[Image: S45_Exhibition__Game_1__Los_Angeles_Pant...Bay_Ba.gif]

If there is talk about changing the sim engine...

I think if the SHL went to simming on NHL04 on PC and went full visual with the sim it would so much fun for the players. There is so many creative humans here who would just create some amazing stuff if they had access to this. Imagine all the GIFs of huge hits, big fights, top cheese OT Goals...I imagine with all the great mind here and editing skills we would have full on RP movies made.

You may see your lower TPE player lay a big hit that leads to a turnover and a huge a goal for your team. You may not show up on the board with a Goal or Assist but seeing those other plays made may make you feel like you're making more of an impact.

Picture game 7 being simmed live and no one knowing who wins in advance. Having it be like a 30 min sim where you could grab a drink or some food sit back and watch a real game be played out on your big screen. If we could turn off the in game announcers and have the two biggest SHL nerds do Play by Play that would just be the icing on the cake.

You can read more about NHL04 and it's modding community here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/nhl04reb...004-pc-f1/

There is just so much work being done by so many people on this website already. I feel like if all that energy was put towards a sim engine like this with all the visual customization options it could really re-kindle the flame for many. I am sure there will be arguments against this and reasons why it can't be done, I just want to put it out there anyways.

I know some view the sim as not that important and are here just for the social aspect of it but if you really want the passion here I think the sim has to be cool. The current sim engine is not for the masses it's for the few. A few people who enjoy it get to have a more in depth simming compared to simon but for the average player they didn't gain anything. For a few seasons they actually lost something as the index was trash. A sim engine like NHL04 may be less fun (maybe not?) for the few number crunching GM's but it would be more fun for the couple hundred players.

ArGarBarGar YouTube Channel <-- Some great SHL Content Here

Shout out to ArGarBarGar and all the great people who have helped build this site in the past. We stand on their giant shoulders.

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