Savard wrote: ↑Sun Jul 05, 2020 11:14 amThe "inverted SK" phenomenon is also something that is hard for GMs to accept.
Usually that is down to them thinking SK is something it's not
I will give a very brief example of how and why I use the "inverted SK" in my ratings.
I will start this off by using two players in this example. One of them is Wayne Gretzky, you may have heard of him. The other one is one of my all-time favorites: Jimmy Mann. If you don't know him, click on the links below as March 28th 1980 is a date everyone should know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSla4YgFP3I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf70Cpb2u1E
Jimmy Mann played a total of 293 NHL games, scoring 10 goals and 20 assists.
Wayne Gretzky played a total of 1487 NHL games, scoring 894 goals and 1963 assists.
Suppose we were to create these two players in the Sim and we do that as follows (this is based on a simplified version of the decision making formula):
Jimmy Mann - 50 SK, 50 PA, 50 SC
Wayne Gretzky - 99 SK, 99 PA, 99 SC
STHS Manual wrote:So, a players with 99 in the 5 skills has the same % of chance to shot to the net that a player who has 50 in the 50 skills.
Applied on our examples above we get:
Chance of a shot:
Jimmy Mann - 50 (SC) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Wayne Gretzky - 99 (SC) / 297 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Chance of a pass:
Jimmy Mann - 50 (PA) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Wayne Gretzky - 99 (PA) / 297 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Chance of the player skating with the puck:
Jimmy Mann - 50 (SK) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Wayne Gretzky - 99 (SK) / 297 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Here it becomes important to note that skating with the puck means just that. The player will go full Rico Fata (never go full Rico Fata), bury his head and start skating around with the puck until someone takes it away from him. He wont be skating around looking for someone to pass to, or to get himself into a position to shoot the puck. Skating in the STHS is the most accurate definition of "dead-puck" there has ever been.
In other words, skating is in fact the antithesis of a creative play.
Thus, we can define creativity as the act of either passing or shooting the puck. This is key.
Chance of a creative play:
Jimmy Mann - 100 (PA+SC) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 66%
Wayne Gretzky - 198 (PA+SC) / 297 (SK+PA+SC) = 66%
In other words, these two players are equally creative(!) using these ratings. Now obviously, PH and the level of PA and SC will make Gretzky more adept and accurate with his plays, but this doesn't change the fact that these two players are rated to have the same level of creativity (or hockey sense), which is rather poor when measured in terms of realism.
So, how does inverted SK factor into this? Well, if we want to make certain players more creative than others, we can do that using SK.
In this example we tweak just one thing, the SK of Wayne Gretzky from 99 to 10.
Jimmy Mann - 50 SK, 50 PA, 50 SC
Wayne Gretzky - 10 SK, 99 PA, 99 SC
Chance of a shot:
Jimmy Mann - 50 (SC) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Wayne Gretzky - 99 (SC) / 208 (SK+PA+SC) = 48%
Chance of a pass:
Jimmy Mann - 50 (PA) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Wayne Gretzky - 99 (PA) / 208 (SK+PA+SC) = 48%
Chance of the player skating with the puck:
Jimmy Mann - 50 (SK) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 33%
Wayne Gretzky - 10 (SK) / 208 (SK+PA+SC) = 5%
Chance of a creative play:
Jimmy Mann - 100 (PA+SC) / 150 (SK+PA+SC) = 66%
Wayne Gretzky - 198 (PA+SC) / 208 (SK+PA+SC) = 95%
So suddenly, we now have a player in Wayne Gretzky who will be an offensive threat nearly everytime he touches the puck in the offensive zone. Meanwhile, Jimmy Mann will remain rather scrublike in terms of creativity (but if you invite me to join a 1979-80 NHL retro league, I'm picking Mann over Gretzky every time).
Things are, obviously, a bit more complicated than this, but in terms of the reasoning behind inverted SK, this example illustrates things rather well. Plus, it gives us a chance to talk about Jimmy Mann.