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 Currently a lot of people feel it's disconnected, outdated, and unrepresentative of the site as a whole, so to hear some new users found it useful still is great!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.