05-20-2022, 03:17 AMHenrik Wrote: Hopefully FHM 8 comes with some neat new features, a better viewing experience and a better solution for parity.
I wouldn't bet on it. No disrespect to the lads who work on FHM (I really love their work), it's a fucking banger of a game but they're not aiming at us, even if they're aware this is a thing. Their efforts have been towards making the game look nicer and do more stuff you can already do in OOTP since that's probably the gold standard at the moment, with fixes towards whatever's relevant at the time to regular consumers (like the thing going on with the KHL).
Fhm stinks and fhm8 is probably the worst looking game in the series imo
05-21-2022, 08:51 PM(This post was last modified: 05-21-2022, 08:53 PM by mastersheep. Edited 1 time in total.)
05-21-2022, 07:13 PMJobin Wrote:
05-21-2022, 06:45 PMSlashACM Wrote: Because anyone with a functioning brain can see how putting a player at 4C is entirely different than regressing 100s of tpe out of passing
Yeah, one was against the rule book and the other was what Hamilton did.
Neither were against the rulebook when they occurred. Both became illegal afterwards as a result.
Edit: Never mind on this. I mixed up the aggressive forechecker thing with 4C.
I think that one reason why the GM skill gap seems so massive is just how common the whole "Hey, how do you recommend i build my player so that we are all more successful" thing is.
When most of the league operates this way, you very quickly get to see who are the really good at FHM War rooms are, and those that aren't Hell i am the latter as a former CoGM at the SHL level.
To that end, having testing instead of no testing is the best i think. It does give a chance at figuring out if things will go well and how to make changes when it isn't. I am glad we have cut down just HOW complicated we can get it and these last two seasons seem to be showing that yeah, we have more parity now.
Its not perfect sure, but look at the finals. Chicago has only one twice in the FHM era and Atlanta made the finals in a bit of a cinderella run which is awesome.
05-21-2022, 06:29 PMThunfish Wrote: I wouldn't bet on it. No disrespect to the lads who work on FHM (I really love their work), it's a fucking banger of a game but they're not aiming at us, even if they're aware this is a thing. Their efforts have been towards making the game look nicer and do more stuff you can already do in OOTP since that's probably the gold standard at the moment, with fixes towards whatever's relevant at the time to regular consumers (like the thing going on with the KHL).
Fhm stinks and fhm8 is probably the worst looking game in the series imo
Obviously, it still has plenty of room for improvement. It has a lot to learn from OOTP in some aspects - namely importing logos and jerseys and the ability to tweak leagues and delete them after adding them to a save to mention the history simulation option being way too restrictive. But kinda like Pro Wrestling Sim, they're still not at the level they can be but are looking towards getting there and probably will get there eventually, which is commendable.
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05-20-2022, 09:20 PMSlashACM Wrote: I think theres a middle ground between "nah build however you want, I have no advice" and "everyone is 2 way forward". I get adding to certain attributes can help puck possession and certain tactics but every. Single. Fucking. Player. has identical o read and d read
Are you asserting that I should be telling my players the wrong builds? If we are complaining about the time sink of the SHL I don't think it would be very time effective for me to comb through every build on the team and ensure that every build is different.
I feel like the main problem is that you even know what the "correct" build is.
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05-20-2022, 10:59 PMRotticusScott Wrote: Are you asserting that I should be telling my players the wrong builds? If we are complaining about the time sink of the SHL I don't think it would be very time effective for me to comb through every build on the team and ensure that every build is different.
I feel like the main problem is that you even know what the "correct" build is.
There is no "correct" build, just what is going to work best for what the player wants to be. Sorry I could've used a better word.
05-22-2022, 03:29 PM(This post was last modified: 05-22-2022, 03:30 PM by Sleepy.)
05-22-2022, 06:32 AMCitizen of Adraa Wrote:
05-20-2022, 10:59 PMRotticusScott Wrote: Are you asserting that I should be telling my players the wrong builds? If we are complaining about the time sink of the SHL I don't think it would be very time effective for me to comb through every build on the team and ensure that every build is different.
I feel like the main problem is that you even know what the "correct" build is.
Why is that a problem?
Hypothetically, if there is a "correct" build its not a GMs fault for knowing what it is. The GM was just doing their job to try to make the best team or player they can. It shouldn't be their fault for finding what the "correct" build is. They were just trying to win. On the flip side of that coin, I will say that I think GMs who spend excessive time testing are missing the point of what the SHL is. It is a hockey simulation (duh) simulated on, what is essentially, an RNG machine. I GM'd a few teams back when my first player was still kicking around and, while I did do some test simming, it wan't a lot because i didn't have the patience for it. So I stopped.
Now, I will admit I haven't GM'd in the FHM era, but I'm sure I would feel the same about testing now as I did then. The teams I GM'd still saw some moderate success. Maybe we weren't the best team, but we still had success. Test simming isn't required to be successful, per se. Some people are just better at FHM than others, and I feel like that's a truth that not many people want to look at it.
I think what really bothers me about this whole discussion is that there is a lot of bottom lines being drawn about how difficult it is to test sim and how many people dislike it. Frankly, thats a burden GMs place on themselves. There's no rules that say they have to do test sims. If they don't like test sims, just don't do them.
Anyways, back to my original point, It's not the players(GMs) fault if the game(SHL) was easily "cracked" or "broken" by the player, that burden falls on the game creator(HO) to rectify it.
05-22-2022, 06:32 AMCitizen of Adraa Wrote: I feel like the main problem is that you even know what the "correct" build is.
Why is that a problem?
Hypothetically, if there is a "correct" build its not a GMs fault for knowing what it is. The GM was just doing their job to try to make the best team or player they can. It shouldn't be their fault for finding what the "correct" build is. They were just trying to win. On the flip side of that coin, I will say that I think GMs who spend excessive time testing are missing the point of what the SHL is. It is a hockey simulation (duh) simulated on, what is essentially, an RNG machine. I GM'd a few teams back when my first player was still kicking around and, while I did do some test simming, it wan't a lot because i didn't have the patience for it. So I stopped.
Now, I will admit I haven't GM'd in the FHM era, but I'm sure I would feel the same about testing now as I did then. The teams I GM'd still saw some moderate success. Maybe we weren't the best team, but we still had success. Test simming isn't required to be successful, per se. Some people are just better at FHM than others, and I feel like that's a truth that not many people want to look at it.
I think what really bothers me about this whole discussion is that there is a lot of bottom lines being drawn about how difficult it is to test sim and how many people dislike it. Frankly, thats a burden GMs place on themselves. There's no rules that say they have to do test sims. If they don't like test sims, just don't do them.
Anyways, back to my original point, It's not the players(GMs) fault if the game(SHL) was easily "cracked" or "broken" by the player, that burden falls on the game creator(HO) to rectify it.
I think you make a couple of great points here. I also don't fault anyone through trying to win, and finding any way to win. When we get into the territory of using exploits to win I think that's generally frowned upon. Even if it's the sim engines fault, I think there's as much onus on the players (gm or otherwise) to go "damn this passing thing really fucks everything up, let's no do that". The sths passing thing was one, and I think the all aggressive forechecker thing is also in exploit territory no matter how successful or not is was. Yes, HO should step in when possible to make sure nothing is being abused (they kind of did early s50s) but I think there's blame to go around for those who discovered the sim goes bonkers when you lower passing and still decide to go ahead following that exploit.
As for the test simming thing, I understand that thought process of "just don't test sim if you don't want to". I think some teams did go with that philosophy and found themselves left in the dust by teams that did have extensive sim knowledge or had time to test and find that edge.
Ultimately I think the league is plagued by a meta problem. Teams were able to hone in on those builds, those tactics that get them insane results and .900% win percent seasons. Any team that strays from those results find themselves at the bottom of the standings, or bounced in Rd 1 by a team with vastly inferior tpe totals. It's really disheartening to see the same 4 teams win over and over and over again and no matter what edge teams can get in activity or tpe levels they are no match for these same 4. I agree that it's HOs job to do something about it, and I'm not sure I've really seen too much done yet
05-23-2022, 03:14 AM(This post was last modified: 05-23-2022, 03:18 AM by RomanesEuntDomus. Edited 2 times in total.)
05-22-2022, 03:29 PMSleepy Wrote:
05-22-2022, 06:32 AMCitizen of Adraa Wrote: I feel like the main problem is that you even know what the "correct" build is.
Why is that a problem?
Hypothetically, if there is a "correct" build its not a GMs fault for knowing what it is. The GM was just doing their job to try to make the best team or player they can. It shouldn't be their fault for finding what the "correct" build is. They were just trying to win. On the flip side of that coin, I will say that I think GMs who spend excessive time testing are missing the point of what the SHL is. It is a hockey simulation (duh) simulated on, what is essentially, an RNG machine. I GM'd a few teams back when my first player was still kicking around and, while I did do some test simming, it wan't a lot because i didn't have the patience for it. So I stopped.
Now, I will admit I haven't GM'd in the FHM era, but I'm sure I would feel the same about testing now as I did then. The teams I GM'd still saw some moderate success. Maybe we weren't the best team, but we still had success. Test simming isn't required to be successful, per se. Some people are just better at FHM than others, and I feel like that's a truth that not many people want to look at it.
I think what really bothers me about this whole discussion is that there is a lot of bottom lines being drawn about how difficult it is to test sim and how many people dislike it. Frankly, thats a burden GMs place on themselves. There's no rules that say they have to do test sims. If they don't like test sims, just don't do them.
Anyways, back to my original point, It's not the players(GMs) fault if the game(SHL) was easily "cracked" or "broken" by the player, that burden falls on the game creator(HO) to rectify it.
I've criticized Hamilton a bit in my previous post but yeah, it's probably best to move the discussion away from just them. This article (or series of articles) was about much more that makes GMing not fun for a lot of people at the moment.
The problem with test simming and the meta builds, or "correct" builds as you call them, is that the game and this league were never designed to work that way. How does GMing/coaching a team in real life or in most manager games work? You think of some clever new strategy or build, you implement it, use it for a few games to see if it works or not and then adjust. It's a very small and incremental process where it takes a while to see if something works, where the results are often hard to judge and where it's usually not feasible to try the most outlandish and crazy ideas who only have a very small chance of working. You only have a limited number of games to get it right before the season is over or, even worse, you are fired if your attempts fail too many times.
All that goes out the window with the current test-simming world we live in, where you don't have 82 games a season to test what works, but theoretically thousands of them with no consequences at all if you try something that backfires horribly. Being able to sim more games in one night than most GMs will have in their career creates a massively different ecosystem. And if it weren't for that ecosystem, we wouldn't have "meta" builds or "correct" builds or whatever you call them. If everyone just had the games that actually exist in the sim to test their new builds and strategies then we would be much much slower at exposing the weaknesses that the engine has and that every game engine has. But by allowing and embracing test-simming as a normal part of this lead we have essentially created a world where everything is geared towards finding new exploits and weaknesses in the sim, things that were never intended to work but somehow do.
And I'm sorry but the "some GMs are just better at FHM than others" argument is just stupid because this is not supposed to be a GM league, it's a player league. The GMs role should be to enhance the experience of the players on their teams, to create a fun experience for everyone and then of course to also have an effect on how competitive the team is or isn't. It's supposed to be about the players and their contributions, it should matter if you build a 2000 TPE player, recruit three friends to your team and help build up a culture that others want to be a part of. That is the very core that the league used to be all about. But nowadays most of this is largely pointless because none of it matters unless you have a top-tier GM. And ultimately this isn't very fun because the players lose a lot of their agency. They are supposed to build their players in very specific ways and then have to find a way to get on one of the few teams that are even considered contenders going into a season, or spend their prime seasons in mediocrity. "Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" or however you say it is barely possible anymore. In the past you were able to turn a team around by being a great player and role model, you could pull a team from mediocrity to contender status by being the best version of yourself and inspiring others to do the same. You really can't do that anymore, you are left having to pray that your GM is Elite (because just being okay or good doesn't cut it). And if he isn't good enough you are essentially forced to give up on your team and try to join a contender (which is something we shouldn't want from a parity perspective), or stay loyal to your group and just never really have a chance to win anything both individually or as a team.
Also, there were already GMs that were better than others in STHS but the difference was never felt that much for two reasons. First, the engine was simpler and also not really something people would play singleplayer in their free time, so the knowledge gap one could build up by being very experienced in it wasn't nearly as big. And second, even if someone was much better that their competitor, the sim was random enough that the bad team would still win 25% of the time or something like that, whereas nowadays you will have the better team come out on top what feels like 90+% of the time. Yes, being good should obviously be rewarded, but what's the point of a sport were you essentially know who is gonna win even before the event is held or a game is played? It doesn't matter if the team that wins deserves it because they did a good job and built a stronger team, there still needs to be at least an okay-ish chance that the underdog can pull of a win or this is all pointless.
In regards to your last two points: I hate test-simming as much as the next guy as I think I've made clear now, but you can't seriously tell GMs "well if you don't like test-simming then just don't do it". As long as test simming is a part of this league, teams will be forced to participate in it or be left in the dust. Maybe some teams did more of it in the past and not so much of it now or vice versa, but just telling GMs "well you don't have to participate" doesn't work if the issue is systemic, as you basically acknowledge in your last point.
I also disagree that it's not the players (GMs) fault that the game got broken because some of them specifically sought out to do just that. Those exploits weren't uncovered by accident, they were essentially hunted down with brute force both in terms of manpower and technical expertise. But I acknowledge that there is a good faith argument here that still none of this is the players fault if it's the game creator who allowed the exploits to happen and be in the game. But the issue is that we aren't the game creator, the game creator is some video company and we have to use the product that is available to us while not having the technical capabilities to fix these issues ourselves. Of course HO can do more, but they will always be limited by the culture of this league and what is deemed to be okay and what isn't. No matter what they do, it will be very hard for HO to get us anywhere on this as long as the prevailing mindset in this league (or at least among GMs) is "I will do everything to win and use every loophole and exploit I can find as long as it is not specifically illegal". There were always rivalries in this league, people who couldn't stand each other and teams that managed to build dynasties while others never really got anywhere - you can have all these things without going all in on the "Fuck everyone but us" mindset which has crept in over the last 15-20 seasons.
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