Nice read, I think it's important for these points to be heard so that we can get a complete picture and look at this issue from all sides. However, I still largely disagree and think that the benefits of the new rules largely outweigh the risks. Sure, there probably are loopholes in there already and there will be unforeseen circumstances, but the arms race that is test simming has become such a bane on the health of this league and the enjoyment of it's users, that it's still worth it to take these drastic measures despite the possible drawbacks.

To get into some of your points in more details:

Quote:The ban is virtually unenforceable

That's true but that's why the penalty for it is so harsh. Yes, you are unlikely to get caught, but if you are you are absolutely fucked. It's the best detriment we have unfortunately aside from appealing to peoples moral instincts, which maybe isn't as naive as it sounds. Because...

Quote:People are almost certainly going to do it anyway

... over the last few months we've heard even from the people who have been doing a lot of test simming that they don't really enjoy it and only did it because they felt they had to in order to give their team a chance to keep up in that neverending arms race. It sounds like such an unhealthy cycle where people don't actually want to do bad things but feel forced to do them in order to not fall behind, and maybe that's our chance now to break that cycle.

That's the naive, optimistic view, that people stop test simming if we take away that feeling of being forced to do it in order to not let their team down. The colder, more cynical view is that I'd probably still prefer an SHL where a handful of hypercompetitive assholes do test simming in secreat over an SHL where everyone is forced to test sim no matter if they want to or not and the lack of player agency that creates, because the entire league has just become a GM dick measuring contest where the ones that can sink the most time into the game have a huge advantage and the players who aren't GMs don't really have an impact at all.

And lastly, I don't mind people being snitched on here. If you notice someone doing something that is that harmful to the community as a whole for super selfish reasons, by all means snitch on them, they deserve it. What is noble about protecting someone who does such shitty things? It's a shitty view that you can only have if you've watched too many shitty gangster movies?

It's not snitching, it's whistleblowing in my book.

And it's gonna be a crucial part of our toolbox to enforce these rules, the risk of being told on, the risk of someone blowing the whistle. Sure if your teammates find out that you are test-simming they might not tell on you because well, they are your teammates, you are in this together. But who knows, a few seasons down the line some of these people might not be your teammates anymore... Maybe you've even had a falling out with one of them? Will they still keep their mouths shut and protect you then? How sure are you of that? We want the illegal test simmers to ask themselves these very questions, to have a target on their back, to not be able to every quite be at ease. We want to make this kind of cheating such a miserable experience that it just isn't worth it anymore.

Quote:There will be witch hunts

I think the opposite is true actually. We already are in a situation where some teams are seen with so much suspicion that no matter if they actually do something bad or not, every good/surprising result from them leads to accusations and basically witch hunts because everyone assumes test-simming shenanigans at play. We would likely get much less of these witch hunts with test-simming banned for everyone, not more.

Quote:Decompiling isn’t explicitly banned

That part of your post is just depressing. I'd hate it so much if that is the approach that people want to take to this game nowadays, I just hope we can be better than that. But either way, "if we can't ban decompiling then why ban test simming" isn't a very strong argument imho.

Quote:So much TPE could be unwittingly wasted

That's actually a good thing in my eyes. Make builds matter again, make it so that people build different kinds of players, some of which work better than others. The choices we make in regards to our players only have meaning when they actually have consequences, including the possibility of failure. That's much more rewarding than everyone grinding their way towards 2000 TPE and building more or less the same way, wait their turn to be a Superstar for a few seasons using the same mold that everyone before them had been using as well. Having too much information and too much of a meta makes the player building experience worse, not matter.

Quote:Strats are just guesswork now

That's a legitimate concern that I'll concede, but for other reasons than the ones you've mentioned. I see the risk here more in the fact that there clearly is a knowledge gap between teams/GMs at this point even without test simming, and it will be harder for the inexperienced GMs to catch up without test simming as one of their tools. That's why we need publicly available resources and essentially databases where people share their sim knowledge that are available to everyone, and I think it's fair to doubt that we'll get that anytime soon.

What I strongly disagree with is your point of "The role of GM has been reduced, and I think this is a shame."

Hell no! If there's one thing the SHL needs then it's to reduce the role and importance of the GMs, to give more agency back to the players so that their decisions matter again and they aren't just pawns in a GM chess game. This league is a player league first and foremost, of course GMs should still be important but they shouldn't be the sole factor that decides a teams success as they are now.

Quote:RNG and guesswork will have more impact than ever

I usually don't like RNG in video games but in a sports sim like the SHL, it is crucial to have a good amount of it. If the last decade and a half of SHL hockey have shown us anything, its that there hasn't been enough randomness. Things are too predictable. Every season has been pretty much pre-determined, teams more or less knew going into the year where they'd finish in the Standings with almost no surprises, upsets, cinderella runs, chokes etc... The below-average teams knew that they'd have no chance right from the start, making things boring for everyone on those squads, and for the good teams everything before the playoffs was largely meaningless as well because they were guaranteed to make the postseason from the start. Nothing really happened in the regular season aside from individual stat counting. And even in the playoffs, where the fact that you only need a few lucky breaks to beat a much stronger opponent in a series should create a lot more excitement, those upsets rarely ever happened. And when they did, they tended to came from the (alleged) test-simming giants. It's just a broken system that actually needs more randomness and unpredictability.

Quote:Some of us enjoy sim testing

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

Sorry to sound harsh, I don't mean to get personal after the very constructive and interesting post you made, but if your main reason for being in a league like this is that you enjoy breaking games and engines and want to do this here as well, then you can fuck off. We don't want that here, the league is better off without that kind of mindset. Maybe it's too late already because pandoras box has already been opened, but I hope that with enough effort we can still contain this kind of mindset and channel it into areas where it doesn't ruin the fun for everyone.

Quote:Anyone can sim test FHM (when it’s not banned)

I think I touched on all that in my previous points. It's just not true in my opinion that the fact that everyone could theoretically test sim created are more level playing field. Some people are just way more hardcore about this, have more knowledge, more time or more interest, and that shouldn't be the sole deciding factor that determines a teams success, while the players who the league is supposed to be all about are just passengers that are expected to grind away to 2000 TPE to provide their GMs with the tools they need in their personal battle royale, but who can contribute little beyond that.