HBD, an untapped human psychology experiment Topic

Recent events have let me to look at the chatter on a lot of worlds waiting to fill.

This site has been in business for 15 years. By now, just about everybody that thinks this product sucks has moved on. WIFS is essentially a captive audience, with revenue that's enough to support it, but not enough to invest in upgrades (don't believe me? do $25 X 32 owners times 150 worlds times 3 seasons a year, and tell me whether you'd even hire one full time programmer to do upgrades if you owned the business)

Further, from day 1, this site has relied on the users to promote the product. Start a league. Fill a league. Run a league. Do it well, and people will come back to the next league you run.

Thus, it amuses me to see
  • WIFS should invest more in upgrades to HBD. Yes, people have and continue to play the same game for 8 years. They come flocking from everywhere if we have an Arizona fall league
  • WIFS should reduce the price. Yes. It's been $25 for 8 years. Let's reduce the price.
  • WIFS opened too many leagues and now it's impossible to fill. No, because there are leagues that have rolled, filled, rolled again, filled again in the time you've been waiting
People, do yourself a favour. Research. When do successful leagues advertise for next season? What league rules are successful in retaining people? What owners kill a league, and should be avoided?

If your commissioner is taking in his or her $5 and not doing the work to recruit, that's on your league. No one else.

10/24/2014 10:40 PM
Very well said.

Sadly the customer base is fading, but I agree with you that these worlds who have been sitting for over 6 weeks and blame WIS really miss the big picture.

Like the world who you approached and one owner said "it's a cool idea, but not in THIS world". Delusional owners...

Everyone thinks some worlds need to be eliminated or merged, yet no one wants it to be THEIR world.

Additionally, in this market, I hate to see owners piling on the commish.
Yes there are definitely some duds out there, but lets face it, ANYONE can take some time and post an ad and help recruit.
Many times a decent commish posts an ad, and NO ONE will bother posting in it or even just simply bumping it.
THESE are the worlds that have sat the longest and complain about everything else being the problem.

I'd like to see the # of worlds shrink from the current total of 174 down to about 125. 
That may still be too many, but it'd be a great start and we could see what kind of difference it made.

The days of  going public and filling in a week or two are over. SEVERAL worlds have gone public and have made NO progress after two, three, or even six weeks.

Then the next great idea "owner swaps" has also run its course for the most part. You've got owners who've added three+ teams in the last 6 months just to help fill their own "real" world. This practice is unsustainable. Eventually we'll be down to 350 owners each running 16 teams to keep all of the worlds filled LOL.

And now the latest gadget move is "EARN WIS CREDITS". We will PAY YOU to play in our world. WOW. How long can that be sustained. Time will tell. 4 worlds on the 1st page are currently offering "incentives". 

There's at least one owner who is pretty savvy and likes to find basket case worlds with a great playoff calibre team available. He then convinces everyone else that he can fill the rest of the spots if owners can kick in some GCs. He's done well so far in the two worlds I've watched him work in, but even that method is growing stale and the progress is starting to slow...
10/25/2014 3:19 AM
I don't think upgrades will bring new users in but an occassional bell/whistle might retain some current users.   You don't need a full-time developer dedicated to HBD to do that.    I think user retention is becoming a problem.    I think most people have found their comfort level in number of teams.   If you lose half a dozen users, for any number of reasons, who carried 3-4 teams, you've lost half a world.   If a new user takes on 3-4 teams immediately, you've got a problem waiting to happen.  So, IMO, bringing in new users to replace long-time users, isn't solving a problem.  It's creating a new set of problems.


Truthfully, the product needs an overhaul.  This would require some work from a developer but I think either of the following(or both) would solve the current problems.
1.   An option to reduce the number of owners per league.  20(2 divisions in each league), 24(3 divisions in each league), 28(2 divisions in each league) or 32.  Obviously, this changes the schedule and playoff set-up.   The commish would need to send support a ticket for division set-up, CS would arrange it and the commish hits the button to start the world.   Players on unassigned teams just become FA.   Once the program changes are made, I don't think this would be too much hands on work for CS.
2.  Traveling teams.   Users "own" their 40 man roster and could move from world to world.   Only to private worlds and only the worlds that would accept them.  I think this would require a lot more CS work and, in fact, will never happen.
10/25/2014 7:46 AM
Idea #1 is actually a great one.

There are plenty of worlds with 20-24 solid, committed owners, but having to worry about 6+ openings every rollover is a problem. Many of those solid, committed owners have only 1-3 teams, and they're as likely to fade away as HBD customers if those worlds just folded as they are take on a new team.
10/25/2014 10:48 AM
It has been interesting to witness the evolution of this product. Innovation to retain users in may ways has come from the users themselves but it appears we have passed a point where user ideas and the impetus to sustain the user base under the current playing structure is sustainable. Idea 1 presented by Mike is a viable solution. Introducing change of this nature I believe would satisfy the user base but it is not the kind of support that we have witnessed or come to expect from WIS. The time is here for WIS to make such a modification and keep the end product alive.  
10/25/2014 10:58 AM
Currently 124 private world openings.   If those worlds wanted to go to the 20, 24, 28, 32 format, there would be 40 openings and only one would need 4(Koufax has 16 openings so they would need 4 more to reach 20).   I could sit down and create schedule, playoff formats in a matter of minutes.

20
4 divisions of 5.
3 games against everyone in the other league(30)
12 games against the other division(60)
18 games against your division(72)

#2 plays #1 from the other division in the 7 game LDS
Winners play in the LCS(Obviously)
WS

It's that simple.
 
10/25/2014 12:02 PM
Um, tec might lose his 4 dollar credit for last under that format.
10/25/2014 12:56 PM
Regardless, whether we think a tweak here and there would help, it is not happening.

And it's of little relevance to your specific league not filling.
10/25/2014 4:07 PM
FWIW, they do know that the product has problems.   I asked that a team be transferred to an owner who had recently taken a "replacement job".   It was denied.  I responded with this:

10/17/2014 8:07 AM MikeT23
I figured as much. I won't argue it because it's not worth it but we've moved into the WS in MG. He won't really be "managing" anything. He's just getting in to ensure a quicker rollover. As you might have noticed, worlds don't roll very quickly these days. This one does because we do proactive things like this. So, in essence, your policy is only delaying rollover in one of the few worlds that isn't struggling.

Thanks


The transfer was done shortly thereafter.    So they're not oblivious to the situation at hand.
10/25/2014 5:59 PM
Or they said "whatever, it's WIFS, do it and move on so we can spend more time in \fox fantasy leagues"
10/25/2014 6:08 PM
Or "What is the strange creature called HBD?   I've never heard of it!!!"
10/25/2014 6:12 PM
In calculating the money they make you didn't included all the other sports leagues and dynasties.
10/26/2014 8:05 AM
Correct. Why would I? You're making the assumption that revenue should be funneled into HBD instead of back to maintaining the product that generated that revenue.

Even if you extrapolate that to "well, you can hire a full time programmer", then the push back is that full time programmer would be split among all WIFS products.
10/26/2014 4:56 PM
Did somebody ask if they'd lower the price? Seems like many worlds are resorting to offering free seasons in order to help fill.

I love Mike's idea of changing the size requirements for worlds. I've always thought that each world needs to be able to make changes w/n the world to make it unique. Changes that only the commish can make and that are permanent. Things like having a DH for both leagues, or having them for none, a player protection draft where you can only protect x number of players each season, similar to the rule 5 but more encompassing, allow worlds to alter the draft order, make it random if they want to reduce tanking, or perhaps random w/n the first 10 or whatever. Basically make each world more customizable.
10/28/2014 5:03 PM
If I were a business, I'd want to know the logic of reducing the price.

As an HBD owner, I think that would kill it.    If I buy something off the dollar menu, it might end up in the trash if I didn't like the first bite.  If I dump $25 on a hamburger, I'm eating it. 
10/28/2014 6:21 PM
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HBD, an untapped human psychology experiment Topic

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