Coach deen wrote: "I don't believe you can decide in advance how many seasons Norbert will need. Yes, it may need more than 2 seasons, but I would be willing to bet if it does we will have more seasons...BUT, if Norbert can get what he needs in just 2 or 3 seasons why continue? Honestly I think he's the only one that will know if and/or when the game is getting the results he wants..."

This engine update should be what WE as coaches want - not what Norbert wants. JConte created an update with what he wanted and we got a POS. The coaches that will be giving a critique of the new engine to help make it better have combined experience palying this game of 100,000 x more seasons experience than Norbert. Norbert has been willing to listen to our comments and attempt to create a game the playing (and paying) public would like to play. 

As jibe said "If I read correctly norbert is projecting a 2 season beta. I believe this is far too short. 5-8 seasons seems more reasonable. As a paying customer I'd like to not have to pay to beta test again. . . We've waited this long. But I have no desire to play another game that hasn't had the bugs worked out enough in test play."

It would be much better to play more seasons than necessary now to work out all bugs than quit to soon and again have an inferior product for the future.

Posted by katzphang88 on 1/15/2013 11:49:00 PM (view original):
Coach deen wrote: "I don't believe you can decide in advance how many seasons Norbert will need. Yes, it may need more than 2 seasons, but I would be willing to bet if it does we will have more seasons...BUT, if Norbert can get what he needs in just 2 or 3 seasons why continue? Honestly I think he's the only one that will know if and/or when the game is getting the results he wants..."

This engine update should be what WE as coaches want - not what Norbert wants. JConte created an update with what he wanted and we got a POS. The coaches that will be giving a critique of the new engine to help make it better have combined experience palying this game of 100,000 x more seasons experience than Norbert. Norbert has been willing to listen to our comments and attempt to create a game the playing (and paying) public would like to play. 

As jibe said "If I read correctly norbert is projecting a 2 season beta. I believe this is far too short. 5-8 seasons seems more reasonable. As a paying customer I'd like to not have to pay to beta test again. . . We've waited this long. But I have no desire to play another game that hasn't had the bugs worked out enough in test play."

It would be much better to play more seasons than necessary now to work out all bugs than quit to soon and again have an inferior product for the future.

a 1,000,000

Well ... I would expect several things:

1. The beta will have to have some kind of compressed schedule. In case you haven't noticed, a season in GD takes more than a month .. a 5 month (non-compressed) beta would mean a 6 month period before the update happens. I do not see any way that happens.

2. There is NO WAY that the coaches will agree on what is good or not ... the "what WE want" part of this equation.

3. If there is a 5-8 season (non-compressed) beta, everyone is paying for 5-8 seasons of the old engine with their real teams. You are, in essence then, paying to beta test the new engine. You are paying for your real teams.

Several aspects of the game are not changing .. for example, recruiting is not changing, therefore why would we need to test recruiting?

I, for one, would be very upset with a long beta period where the real teams and worlds (that I am paying for) are rendered worthless.

I have not followed all of Norberts previous posts about the update, but from this thread it appears there is still debate about how long the beta should be.  My vote is "do it right the first time".  As coaches, we will not be able to agree on what is best, so it is Norbert's job to gather our input and then make a decision.  He has business issues to contend with that we do not know the details of.

Regarding the beta itself, I would hope for extremely short recruiting (only to populate teams, not to test recruiting)...so 1 or two days of hourly cycles maybe.  I think we do need playoffs and bowl games, because that is where you get the high caliber teams meeting each other regularly....vs playing against a lot of SIMS.  I'm thinking the entire season cycle of normally 35 days could be done in more like 12.

When we come out of this effort, we ALL (including WIS and coaches) should have a game that is freaking awesome!!  There will be those who don't like the game or don't like aspects of it, and that is to be expected.  But the vast majority of current paying customers should be very happy with the outcome, otherwise this is all just a big waste of time.

Posted by harriswb3 on 1/16/2013 7:38:00 AM (view original):
I have not followed all of Norberts previous posts about the update, but from this thread it appears there is still debate about how long the beta should be.  My vote is "do it right the first time".  As coaches, we will not be able to agree on what is best, so it is Norbert's job to gather our input and then make a decision.  He has business issues to contend with that we do not know the details of.

Regarding the beta itself, I would hope for extremely short recruiting (only to populate teams, not to test recruiting)...so 1 or two days of hourly cycles maybe.  I think we do need playoffs and bowl games, because that is where you get the high caliber teams meeting each other regularly....vs playing against a lot of SIMS.  I'm thinking the entire season cycle of normally 35 days could be done in more like 12.

When we come out of this effort, we ALL (including WIS and coaches) should have a game that is freaking awesome!!  There will be those who don't like the game or don't like aspects of it, and that is to be expected.  But the vast majority of current paying customers should be very happy with the outcome, otherwise this is all just a big waste of time.

I'd be surprised if there were any SIMs. Maybe a couple, but there won't be 300+ like the normal worlds have.

I think a compressed everything is the way to go. Compress recruiting definitely, compress the season, and then maybe run 2 bowl/PO rounds a day.

Hughesjr is right in most points as well. We will not all agree on everything- however, everything should have general approval. We need to get what we want, we've been playing the game the developers wanted for too long.

Posted by katzphang88 on 1/15/2013 11:49:00 PM (view original):
Coach deen wrote: "I don't believe you can decide in advance how many seasons Norbert will need. Yes, it may need more than 2 seasons, but I would be willing to bet if it does we will have more seasons...BUT, if Norbert can get what he needs in just 2 or 3 seasons why continue? Honestly I think he's the only one that will know if and/or when the game is getting the results he wants..."

This engine update should be what WE as coaches want - not what Norbert wants. JConte created an update with what he wanted and we got a POS. The coaches that will be giving a critique of the new engine to help make it better have combined experience palying this game of 100,000 x more seasons experience than Norbert. Norbert has been willing to listen to our comments and attempt to create a game the playing (and paying) public would like to play. 

As jibe said "If I read correctly norbert is projecting a 2 season beta. I believe this is far too short. 5-8 seasons seems more reasonable. As a paying customer I'd like to not have to pay to beta test again. . . We've waited this long. But I have no desire to play another game that hasn't had the bugs worked out enough in test play."

It would be much better to play more seasons than necessary now to work out all bugs than quit to soon and again have an inferior product for the future.

I agree that it should be what WE want, but I also believe that we need to trust Norbert to know when we're there. Like others have said, we'll never all agree on what we want and the one that will be forced to decide what the majority wants will be Norbert...

It would probably be best if the testing is done in one of the current worlds. To me a big part of the enjoyment is from start to finish and if we're just given "stock" teams, how much better is that then taking on Sim recruits? We all know how bad "walk ons" can be. My two cents would be either pick a world to do this or transfer one of our teams into the fictitious world for the first season. I would think that a couple of seasons would be plenty and I don't feel that we should have to pay for this one season or two.

Posted by starfinder77 on 1/16/2013 8:02:00 PM (view original):
It would probably be best if the testing is done in one of the current worlds. To me a big part of the enjoyment is from start to finish and if we're just given "stock" teams, how much better is that then taking on Sim recruits? We all know how bad "walk ons" can be. My two cents would be either pick a world to do this or transfer one of our teams into the fictitious world for the first season. I would think that a couple of seasons would be plenty and I don't feel that we should have to pay for this one season or two.

No, it needs to be a seperate world, although "transferring" (for lack of a better word) teams will work. But using Leahy, Hayes, or whatever would not be wise, or viable.

It has been more than two years since JConte pulled the hoax and redid the engine. If I have to wait two + two extra seasons to beta test and get it right, I can do that. Investing for two more months until it rolls to all the worlds is a small investment compared to the two years I have invested already.

Posted by katzphang88 on 1/17/2013 3:59:00 PM (view original):
It has been more than two years since JConte pulled the hoax and redid the engine. If I have to wait two + two extra seasons to beta test and get it right, I can do that. Investing for two more months until it rolls to all the worlds is a small investment compared to the two years I have invested already.

8 seasons is 9 months, not 2 months

how do we volunteer to do beta?

Posted by hughesjr on 1/17/2013 4:11:00 PM (view original):

Posted by katzphang88 on 1/17/2013 3:59:00 PM (view original):
It has been more than two years since JConte pulled the hoax and redid the engine. If I have to wait two + two extra seasons to beta test and get it right, I can do that. Investing for two more months until it rolls to all the worlds is a small investment compared to the two years I have invested already.

8 seasons is 9 months, not 2 months

I'd play the beta for 9 months if it was free and full of human coaches, just to get it right!

Norbert:

Maybe this has been asked before, but is it possible to include the beta test teams in the SimMatchup or similar engine so we could run multiple games against the opponents of our choosing?

Posted by dream76 on 1/17/2013 11:47:00 PM (view original):
Norbert:

Maybe this has been asked before, but is it possible to include the beta test teams in the SimMatchup or similar engine so we could run multiple games against the opponents of our choosing?

I've put together a test page that you can run two teams (or the same team) against each other in a test game and get results.  This will be available during beta.  It currently does not save game results as I don't want to fill the database with data, so if there are any funky results, the user will need to copy and paste them to save them and post them.  But it should give you a good overall sense of the engine results and will allow you to try different settings and playbooks without waiting for scheduled games.

Posted by caesari on 1/16/2013 8:12:00 AM (view original):

Posted by harriswb3 on 1/16/2013 7:38:00 AM (view original):
I have not followed all of Norberts previous posts about the update, but from this thread it appears there is still debate about how long the beta should be.  My vote is "do it right the first time".  As coaches, we will not be able to agree on what is best, so it is Norbert's job to gather our input and then make a decision.  He has business issues to contend with that we do not know the details of.

Regarding the beta itself, I would hope for extremely short recruiting (only to populate teams, not to test recruiting)...so 1 or two days of hourly cycles maybe.  I think we do need playoffs and bowl games, because that is where you get the high caliber teams meeting each other regularly....vs playing against a lot of SIMS.  I'm thinking the entire season cycle of normally 35 days could be done in more like 12.

When we come out of this effort, we ALL (including WIS and coaches) should have a game that is freaking awesome!!  There will be those who don't like the game or don't like aspects of it, and that is to be expected.  But the vast majority of current paying customers should be very happy with the outcome, otherwise this is all just a big waste of time.

I'd be surprised if there were any SIMs. Maybe a couple, but there won't be 300+ like the normal worlds have.

I think a compressed everything is the way to go. Compress recruiting definitely, compress the season, and then maybe run 2 bowl/PO rounds a day.

Hughesjr is right in most points as well. We will not all agree on everything- however, everything should have general approval. We need to get what we want, we've been playing the game the developers wanted for too long.

There should be several SIM teams. Maybe not 300 but we need to test results vs SIMs as well.