Posted by emy1013 on 4/29/2013 12:58:00 AM (view original):
As far as the ratings thing, why shouldn't D3 players have those ratings?  90+ ratings are for the elite players, the D1 players.  If a 50 Reb rating was a badass rating for a D3 player, coaches would adjust.  It's all relative.  As it stands now, in the current game, there are players in D2 and D3 with ratings that are WAY too high for that level, if you're being realistic for what the ratings should REALLY be.  You shouldn't see D2 guys pushing an 800 overall rating, but they show up all the time.  There are D3 players right now who should be on the low end D1 teams, let alone D2 squads.  The ratings are all relative and if 50 became the new 90 for D3 and 70 became the new 90 for D2 (which is honestly about what it should be), coaches WOULD adjust.  Those that didn't would just get left behind.  Yes, it's nice to see your D3 player with two or three categories in the 90's, but is it realistic?  Really?  I mean, really?  If you're REALLY being honest about the game, that guy is a high end D2, low end D1 guy "in real life".  Sure it might not look pretty to have a D3 guy capped out in the high 50's, low 60's for a rating, but that's what most D3 players realistically are, not 90's.

emy i would love to see that, i cant count the number of times ive petitioned seble to lower the ratings across the board. but thats the key - across the board. in my example, with current d3 recruit gen, that 50 reb guy is terrible because other d3 teams are *so* much better, the guy recruiting that dude would not be happy. to say, "what if all players were like that?" is really changing the question, i wasnt saying that would be a bad thing, at all. but lets talk about that anyway.

its the same problem we have in d1. the ceiling is so high, but theres not much in there to cushion the fall. its one thing to have elite players, but not 15 full teams worth, and then a huge dropoff in talent, with just a few exceptions sprinkled here and there. its basically star-or-walkon at most, not all, top programs. those fringe players in between do exist but there just arent that many, with lots of coaches looking for them, theres not nearly enough to go around, and i think thats a huge part of why the worlds had to constrict so severely. 

anyway, i think its stupid a flat 80 ath, spd, bh, pass guard, with little else by way of ratings, is not considered a "good" pg in d1. but when they have to play against some of the PGs out there today, it makes sense why nobody wants them. the problem is when seble changed recruit generation, to create more spacing, the guys like the PG i mention there, didnt get any better! in one sense, they got worse, the number of insanely good players is higher, now, which relatively, makes them worse. now, if you nuked away those top 20 teams, and everyone had to fight for what was left - theres actually a pretty good slope down from guys slightly better than the PG i mention to guys slightly worse (theres not nearly enough there for 300 human teams, but still). so, i agree with you more than you make it out to be here - as i said, i could see full worlds working better (i still think there are major issues with people being able to maintain when they get killed so bad) if they totally redid recruit generation. which is sort of what you are suggesting. with recruit generation as it is today, and how it has been in the past, theres no way, the gap between the haves and have nots is WAY too big and clearly the large majority of coaches dont like that model. there are just too many totally useless players, the only thing that keeps the game going right now IMO is that we basically have a third of the recruits we need for a full world to be productive, but, we also have about a third of the coaches to make a full world. so it kind of balances out, two wrongs make a right, here.

Posted by girt25 on 4/30/2013 1:29:00 PM (view original):
OR has said this forever, and it's been echoed here: A totally full world would not be a good thing. People need to feel like they have a better chance to win. No one wants to be the 3-13 team in their conference. That doesn't mean it's catering to those who need "instant gratification", it's just a basic understanding of how humans interact. Having a certain # of sims in each world serves a valuable purpose.

Fuller worlds would be good. Totally full worlds would not.

(And that of course doesn't address the massive collateral damage caused by trying to eliminate worlds, which is the bigger problem.)

Don't really care who has been stating it forever (like one person's "opinion" counts any more than another's), or who is echoing what, but the fact that coaches are constantly gravitating towards full conferences, and the fact that newer coaches are almost always advised to find full conferences due to it being a "better experience", leads me to believe that echo is not only false, but flat out wrong.

You say nobody wants to be that 3-13 team in a conference and yet we see all the time, coaches advertising to fill their conferences, or vets advising new coaches towards joining a fuller conference, telling them that it's much better to play in a conference full of humans than a conference full of Sims.  A better experience, they tell them.  Much funner, and much easier to learn the game.  Vet coaches banding together to form twelve team super conferences.  Well, guess what?  Someone is going to be that 3-13 team in a full conference.  Happens ALL the time, those coaches steering newbies towards the full conferences, and it's got nothing to do with how humans interact.  So tell me, how does that work?  How does advising new coaches to go to full conferences help anyone avoid being that 3-13 team?  It doesn't and you know it.  Save the sociology lesson for somewhere else, because it doesn't apply here.

Really, has it come to this, that we're worried about hurting someone's feelings because they couldn't be immediately successful and then successful every year thereafter? Really? Are we really that worried about someone having a losing record? That doesn't sound like human interaction to me, that sounds like the pussification of HD. Maybe WIS should mail everyone a blue ribbon after the season is over, just so they don't feel quite so bad about having that 3-13 record.
 
Of course WIS isn't going to contract worlds at this point.  There's no good way to do it without ******* off too many coaches.  That was a "wish" of mine.  But for you to sit there and say that full worlds are not a good thing is just your opinion stated as fact, and one that I think happens to be untrue.  The first couple seasons of Tark showed that.  A full D3 for each of (at least) the first three seasons, and guess what, coaches LOVED it.  If a coach can't handle being that 3-13 team, let them quit.  Replace them with a coach who doesn't mind, simply because they know if they work at it, they'll improve and someone else will be that 3-13 team.  THOSE are the type of coaches we need, not the ones that get their feelings hurt the first time they run into any kind of difficulties.  Get a world full of coaches like THAT, and you'll have the funnest, most competitive world ever.  Now, realistically that will probably never happen, simply because WIS doesn't advertise enough to bring in enough new faces, but a world like THAT would be the best world HD has ever had.  One where all the coaches are competitive in nature, don't run at the first sign of trouble, and are willing to work through their difficulties.  THAT'S the kind of world I want to be a part of.

Bottom line is this, just because OR has said something forever, doesn't make it right, just as my disagreeing with that doesn't make my opinion right or wrong.  Neither is more or less valid than the other.  But for you to sit there and try to state as fact, that a full world wouldn't be good because of a "basic understanding of human interaction" smacks of an ego the size of Rhode Island.  You say it wouldn't be good, I say it would.  Prove me wrong. 

Posted by arssanguinus on 4/28/2013 2:15:00 PM (view original):
If you were going to do that, just pay to give them several more programmers dedicated to just HD.  Or open a permenant test world where proposed changes are tried out,

+1!

in light of emy's recent comment on another thread, I resurrect thee...

I am not sure consolidation will achieve the result you want.  One of the interesting stats that came out of the World Population thread is that there are between 115 and 150 DI coaches in each World.

I think what that is telling us, is there are only about 150 desirable jobs in DI.  So even if you consolidate worlds, are coaches going to want those other 200 less desirable jobs (maybe some but probably not many of them).

I am opposed to all Human Cached worlds. Consolidation as presented is not a real possibility. It would just tee off too many people. How about a different approach! Just close a couple worlds to new membership. New coaches coming in don't normally care what world they are coming into. All the coaches in the closed world's can play as long a they want in that world.

It would populate more worlds and not tee off to many people. Yes the closed worlds might be around along time,  but who cares? You are only populating the open worlds. If you ever need the closed worlds, just open them up again.

i think full worlds would be a challenge for coaches to enjoy, too. that is generic - but especially under the circumstances of today. in general, i think the reason full conferences make it is quite frequently those folks are sending more than a "fair share" of teams to the NT. guys on the bottom often have the consolation prize of a low NT seed or a PIT bit. in a 12 man conference, where you got the average 2 NT bids and 1 PIT bid, i think that would go over poorly.

in the olden days, i could see a d1 world supporting 200 coaches, maybe even a bit more, while being stable. today, there are so few recruits to go around, a d1 world can support low 100s of coaches, based on recruit gen. if you combined two 120 man d1 worlds, i suspect you'd be down to 150 or so within a few months. they'd have to have a version of the game that was much more friendly to a larger population than today's game is, to ever move forward with the radical proposal in this thread.

that said, i could get behind a modest consolidation, like 10->8 worlds, if the version of the game ever reaches a point where its not a total cluster f*** like it is today.