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Henrik · 05-20-2022, 02:34 AM

05-20-2022, 01:12 AMWaters Wrote: This is genuinely sad to read. I’m trying to put this in a way that isn’t overly harsh, but a lot of these quotes about why Hamilton is unbeatable are just not based in reality. They don’t sim from “dusk till dawn”, the GMs work during the day and play 5 hours straight of league with me and gooney at night. They don’t “force players to build a certain way”, players ask their GMs what they should put TPE in, which is extremely common practice. The script thing is genuinely close to izzy’s nefarious programmer in terms of wtf. I hope people stop quitting because of parity and recognize that, like grok put it, there’s a skill gap and they should introspectively figure out why it’s gotten so wide.

05-20-2022, 02:21 AMGwdjohnson Wrote:

Very troubling read if so many people believe this. The general lack of diversity amongst cup winners is very much a valid problem, but YEESH some of these takes

I think a lot of it comes down to frustration. If it isn't aimed at Hamilton, its going to be aimed at someone else. Like Grok mentioned, a lot of people just don't want to admit that someone else is doing a better job than them. I'll freely admit that the management in Hamilton did a much better job than I did during my tenure, and I think that have done probably the best job out of any team in the last 10 seasons or so. But it is very frustrating to watch. They keep making great trades, they keep finding ways to win. In the meantime I'm trying to get my team to win A SERIES in the playoffs with a good team, but no matter how much I test I simply fail to figure it out. Or I try to make a trade and then I see Hallsy post a trade for what I feel like is half the value I offered but got negged on. I dont know how he does it. At times, it absurd. And coming from someone who genuinely tried, its incredibly frustrating. I know its a cliche to say it but I don't think Hamilton should take it personally. The simple truth is we don't know what is going on in your room and we don't know what goes on in your war room, you guys do.

I also think a lot of it comes down to the balkanization that was mentioned. We are all split up into smaller cliques and I see a ton of Us vs Them sentiments. If we all shared a larger LR and interacted more on a daily basis I doubt we see this level of cynicism and dislike towards a team. We all know the internet (specifically, anonymity) breeds some pretty petty behaviours in most of us, that's nothing new. Its just a shame that we have seen it grow so much in our community as of late.

***Gwdjohnson*** · 05-20-2022, 02:58 AM

05-20-2022, 02:34 AMHenrik Wrote:
05-20-2022, 01:12 AMWaters Wrote: This is genuinely sad to read. I’m trying to put this in a way that isn’t overly harsh, but a lot of these quotes about why Hamilton is unbeatable are just not based in reality. They don’t sim from “dusk till dawn”, the GMs work during the day and play 5 hours straight of league with me and gooney at night. They don’t “force players to build a certain way”, players ask their GMs what they should put TPE in, which is extremely common practice. The script thing is genuinely close to izzy’s nefarious programmer in terms of wtf. I hope people stop quitting because of parity and recognize that, like grok put it, there’s a skill gap and they should introspectively figure out why it’s gotten so wide.

05-20-2022, 02:21 AMGwdjohnson Wrote:

Very troubling read if so many people believe this. The general lack of diversity amongst cup winners is very much a valid problem, but YEESH some of these takes

I think a lot of it comes down to frustration. If it isn't aimed at Hamilton, its going to be aimed at someone else. Like Grok mentioned, a lot of people just don't want to admit that someone else is doing a better job than them. I'll freely admit that the management in Hamilton did a much better job than I did during my tenure, and I think that have done probably the best job out of any team in the last 10 seasons or so. But it is very frustrating to watch. They keep making great trades, they keep finding ways to win. In the meantime I'm trying to get my team to win A SERIES in the playoffs with a good team, but no matter how much I test I simply fail to figure it out. Or I try to make a trade and then I see Hallsy post a trade for what I feel like is half the value I offered but got negged on. I dont know how he does it. At times, it absurd. And coming from someone who genuinely tried, its incredibly frustrating. I know its a cliche to say it but I don't think Hamilton should take it personally. The simple truth is we don't know what is going on in your room and we don't know what goes on in your war room, you guys do.

I also think a lot of it comes down to the balkanization that was mentioned. We are all split up into smaller cliques and I see a ton of Us vs Them sentiments. If we all shared a larger LR and interacted more on a daily basis I doubt we see this level of cynicism and dislike towards a team. We all know the internet (specifically, anonymity) breeds some pretty petty behaviours in most of us, that's nothing new. Its just a shame that we have seen it grow so much in our community as of late.

Yeah I wanna make it clear I totally understand people's frustrations with Hamilton's continued success and I would totally understand people's gripes being on a team that hasn't won yet while the same 4 teams are rotating cups. I do hope once we move to FHM8 it balances things out more and we see more variety in cup winners and overall playoff competitiveness.

That being said, I don't think frustration is an excuse for making up false narratives about a team to spread around. Frankly, I think the widespread narrative that things are hopeless because Hamilton are cheating/exploiting is much more damaging to the health of the league than anything Hamilton has actually done in the FHM era. Again I understand people's anger, but what good does it do for the site as a whole to spread lies, especially when it won't accomplish anything except make people feel discouraged and unwilling to care about the site? As someone who's just recently recreated and is now on an up and coming team in Philly I'd hope the site doesn't start declining because of people spreading shit that isn't true.

Sorry if this came off aggressively, I'm talking in general and not about you at all. I agree totally with what you said and I do think that general frustration and the monotonous cycle of the same cup winners is the root cause of this issue.

Henrik · 05-20-2022, 03:17 AM

05-20-2022, 02:58 AMGwdjohnson Wrote: Yeah I wanna make it clear I totally understand people's frustrations with Hamilton's continued success and I would totally understand people's gripes being on a team that hasn't won yet while the same 4 teams are rotating cups. I do hope once we move to FHM8 it balances things out more and we see more variety in cup winners and overall playoff competitiveness.

That being said, I don't think frustration is an excuse for making up false narratives about a team to spread around. Frankly, I think the widespread narrative that things are hopeless because Hamilton are cheating/exploiting is much more damaging to the health of the league than anything Hamilton has actually done in the FHM era. Again I understand people's anger, but what good does it do for the site as a whole to spread lies, especially when it won't accomplish anything except make people feel discouraged and unwilling to care about the site? As someone who's just recently recreated and is now on an up and coming team in Philly I'd hope the site doesn't start declining because of people spreading shit that isn't true.

Sorry if this came off aggressively, I'm talking in general and not about you at all. I agree totally with what you said and I do think that general frustration and the monotonous cycle of the same cup winners is the root cause of this issue.

Didn't come off as aggressive at all and I agree with what you said, its not an excuse. Honestly a little surprised so many GMs mentioned Hamilton specifically in their answer. Its very interesting.

Hopefully FHM 8 comes with some neat new features, a better viewing experience and a better solution for parity.

***Citizen of Adraa*** · 05-20-2022, 04:34 AM

I will point out one thing - thanks to just how much GM turnover happened lately, at least the SHL GM chat has been surprisingly enjoyable lately. This statement will totally get challenged the moment someone does something over the line and an argument begins, but for now, I don't really remember GM chat being a place where people just came in and starting joking around and chatting up shit until now.

**RomanesEuntDomus** · 05-20-2022, 12:06 PM

Great job with the article but also a pretty depressing read... It sadly confirms a lot of the things that I suspected to be big problems but that I could never really verify. Seems like a lot of people are on the same page in regards to those which makes it even funnier how quick people are to appease Hamilton in this thread now just because one or two of people associated with them complained. This is not about whether HAM currently runs some script or not, it's about the general attitude of this team and teams like it it which has gotten us into this mess, which took away so much of the player agency in this league because it isn't about what you do anymore and how you contribute to your teams success, but whether you're lucky enough to end up on one of the few teams with enough hardcore sim knowledge and/or time on their hands to get you a chance at a cup.

This fucking "git gud" or "some GMs are just better than others" attitude doesn't help the ordinary players, they can git as gud as they want but it won't change a thing if they are on the 75% of teams in the league who basically already know going into the season that they won't have a chance to compete. You can earn 2000 TPE, recruit friends and make your LR a much better place and it still won't matter if your GM isn't Elite. It's clearly something that very negatively contributes to peoples enjoyment of the league if what you have to do to be successful is a) having to build your player according to a certain meta, often directly outlined by your GMs in Discord and b) give up on your team if it doesn't have an S-Tier GM and join one of the few who have one instead. Besides, what makes a GM "Elite" is a rather flawed metric to begin with because the definition of the job has changed so much and the ability to test-sim lines and strategies in a vacuum has removed it so far from any sense of realism. Coming up with clever tactics and strategies is one thing, being able to brute-force test as many of them as you want, only limited by your available man hours, is another. GMing in real life doesn't work like that and this game of ours was never intended to be played that way either. Being the best at this kind of technical arms race should not be what makes a GM "Elite".

I'm not gonna let you guys in HAM get away with playing the victim card here. I don't know how things are in HAM right now or what exactly you do in terms of testing, coaching or scripting. This isn't what people are mad about. I think people aren't even necessarily mad about you breaking STHS and forcing us into the switch to FHM either, because that could have been a good thing. What people are mad about is HAM immediately doubling down AFTER the sim-switch, publicly committing to breaking and solving the FHM-engine as well and clearly stating their "fuck everyone but us" attitude and starting the arms race that has led to all the problems we have today. It's that clear disregard for the leagues overall health and the enjoyment of the people in it in favor of your own petty in-sim goals that has soured people on HAM and has made you such a lightning rod. Now claiming "lul we don't even test much anymore" is a hollow defense when all that testing already happened 10 seasons ago.

Oh and one random thing to add in regards to the toxicity/GM chat point: Last season the SHL Awards Committee was considering changing the procedure for the GM and Coach of the Year Awards and make it so that the GMs vote on these Awards in the future and not the Committee, because they have the best knowledge on who does a good job. We expected this to be something that would be popular with the GMs and were pretty surprised to basically get a hard "NO" back from them because basically no one in there trusted their colleagues at all to vote in an impartial and fair manner. There seemed to be no trust or even mutual respect among them at all.

Once again, very nice article with a lot of wisdom in it and I'd like to highlight my two favorite quotes from it again:

Quote:“With the move to FHM, we saw the league shift from being a player league first and foremost to a GM league, where it didn’t really matter what your player [built] or how much you earned. What matters is that the GM can provide the sim knowledge…and help you build a player that fits [their] system, and I think that is 110% the opposite of where this league should be”. - @Henrik

Quote:“One [thing] I would wish for is to literally not allow any testing at all, but the logistics would be a bit worse, but I think it would do a lot of good for the site to be honest, to just bring a lot of the GM role to being mainly about the people and not so much about being neck deep in FHM all the time”. - @spooked

Not much to add to Henrik's quote, I hit on that plenty in that post. But spooked is so spot on about how test-simming is essentially ruining the league, it already started way before FHM and before Hamilton but it seems to have gotten so much worse over the last decade or two. As I've heard HO has taken some steps to try and limit this and while it will be an uphill battle with many possible issues along the way, I really hope to find a way to severely reduce the amount of test-simming that is done or maybe even eliminate it altogether.

***notorioustig*** · 05-20-2022, 01:02 PM

I was going to comment but my victim card just got revoked, how unlucky

*Carpy48* · 05-20-2022, 01:47 PM

I was going to comment too, but @RomanesEuntDomus put it into better words (as usual).

The only thing I can add again is how frustrating it felt to be on the one Great Lakes team that knew they didn't have the slightest chance to make the playoffs despite being the 5th best team in the league at that time. I don't even want to know how that felt for someone GMing such a team. That was partly a divisional problem, but certain teams in that division definitely played a part in it and you can't deny it. I know that many people on other teams have felt like this because this player game has slowly become a GM game. If I didn't enjoy the people in the league more than the actual sim results I would've left a long time ago.

Either way, really good article (all 3 of them)!

***bluesfan55*** · 05-20-2022, 04:18 PM

05-20-2022, 01:02 PMnotorioustig Wrote: I was going to comment but my victim card just got revoked, how unlucky

me too #twinsies

ty to @High Stick King @EvilAllBran and @Ragnar for the sigs

adamantium · 05-20-2022, 04:47 PM

i understand the parity frustrations but having known the guys in hamilton too intimately for upwards of five years i promise you none of them are smart enough to program code that will automatically break fhm

sigs by me bitch

***hhh81*** · 05-20-2022, 06:10 PM

I want to state again I think overall this media is well done.

That being said, I feel that this overstates Hamilton as a nefarious agent in all this. I referenced directly Hamilton breaking STHS in my comments, I think some nuance got lost:

Quote:While I do believe HAM seems to have more knowledge of how the sim works than many other [teams], I don't think it's as nefarious as their previous actions might lead people to believe.

I'm not sure even the strongest Hallsy defenders can debate that HAM has a knowledge edge that 90% or more of the league's GMs flat out don't or can't gain. Again, I don't think this is malicious in the way many people seem to think it is, but it is demoralizing and frustrating for other GMs. I also think y'all are overstating the testing teams like BUF and HAM are doing; the teams doing the most testing are the teams with GMs who either (a) are trying to brute force something that doesn't get results (B) are GMs who have not truly been held to account for their past cheating/attempts to break the sim, or © both. The biggest culprits of "trying to break the sim" aren't the easy targets a lot of people claim them to be. That's a convo I don't think y'all are ready for.

There are serious complaints and concerns that could be levied at GMs like Hamilton, Buffalo, etc regarding civility and the "war gamification" of GMing. I'm surprised to see the discourse around these media pieces haven't focused on the 4th cause Rancidbudgie shared. But hell, that takes a nuanced conversation and I don't come to you people for nuance.

I also notice a pretty clear trend of directly quoting people from San Francisco, a war room the author is a part of, versus some other contributors. That could lead to some bias when coding responses and drawing trends/conclusions.

*slothfacekilla* · 05-20-2022, 07:01 PM

Great article, seems like you put a ton of time into this. It is always interesting to see who gets defensive in these threads.

Beaver · 05-20-2022, 08:23 PM

I think we can all agree this is WBF's fault

SlashACM · 05-20-2022, 08:52 PM

My problem with Hamilton is they've been on a "build your player this certain way with little variation" track since s50. I get wanting to be good in the sim but an entire professional hockey team of players with all the same skills and weaknesses is just so unrealistic it sucks to see it work. I don't think they test any more than any other team but I think they abuse the meta in ways that I wish we had rules to stop

ACapitalChicago · 05-20-2022, 09:01 PM

05-20-2022, 08:52 PMSlashACM Wrote: My problem with Hamilton is they've been on a "build your player this certain way with little variation" track since s50. I get wanting to be good in the sim but an entire professional hockey team of players with all the same skills and weaknesses is just so unrealistic it sucks to see it work. I don't think they test any more than any other team but I think they abuse the meta in ways that I wish we had rules to stop

I think the inevitable response to that is that most teams already contain a majority of players that just ask their management what their build should be instead of making it their own way, which means Hamilton isn't really special in this aspect. That's most likely due to the reality of people not wanting to feel like a burden to their teams and instead choosing to build however their management thinks is best instead of how they themselves want to be. It's not so much a "Build this way or we're getting rid of you" and more a "Hey if you build this way we'll have more success", and that latter sentiment is pretty common across the League

S66 Damian Littleton

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unconfident69 · 05-20-2022, 09:09 PM

Yeah that happens because people (like myself) don’t really know what they’re doing and just say “make me good, don’t really care how.” To blame Hamilton exclusively for that is ridiculous.

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