Posted by mchales_army on 12/19/2014 4:38:00 PM (view original):

Posted by jibe on 12/19/2014 12:24:00 PM (view original):

Posted by mchales_army on 12/19/2014 10:14:00 AM (view original):

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/19/2014 9:54:00 AM (view original):
I've not been thru one.   What made it a bad experience?

What made it a bad experience is that his team won 100+ 5 seasons in a row pre merger, and now they are barely a .500 club.
They are old and salary is high, but it's the merger. THAT's what caused it.

Interestingly the team with the best record in that world is in his division and just finished up a rebuild. That same team finished 4th in the division last season.

Sure there's no correlation there either and it is strictly a case of "mergers suck".

So you can speak for me? STFU

To answer mike first of all due to the merger I wasn't able to set my budgets according to what it was the last season in Banks. 

I am also one who enjoys the history of my teams. The player stats are gone and ratings. All history that is tied up with the players is gone. With the teams as well. There is also no HOF and there won't be for many seasons to come. This is a huge part of my enjoyment of the game. The players that I had from pre merger honestly do not even feel like my own.

So hence I rarely check on this team anymore and am making zero effort in day to day of the team.

But really the reason is that my team is old.....

I just saw that you said kind of the same thing in WC of your newly merged world, (merging sucks, this will be my first and last season here) and when owners asked why, you didn't bother to elaborate.

I figured if you wouldn't bother answering the owners in your own world you probably wouldn't here either. I see I was wrong on that.


Budgets were explained to every owner pre-merger. They stay the same as they were pre merger, but if you try to adjust them they revert to 10 (+/-4). I try to make sure everyone is aware of this, but still each merger there are owners who forget or didn't read my sitemail or whatever the reason, mess up their budgeting. that can be frustrating  and I can certainly understand that.

As far as history goes, I am confused as to why this is an issue. I mean I get that many of us enjoy that aspect of the game, but again this was something that was explained to everyone pre merger. It shouldn't have come as a shock. Bottom line to me is that while history is nice it grows old when there is no future. If your world has sat for 4 months how many times can you look at all the historical data? Nobody WANTS to merge, but it beats sitting idle for months on end, and that's the decision many owners are faced with.

I have a follow up question for jibe. Since you said you'd never merge again what would be your stance exactly?
 
Would you be the guy who says I hate the idea of merging but if the rest of you want to merge I'll just pull my team out, or would you be the guy who loves the history of the world so much you will try to block the rest from merging?

I'll answer for him this time!!!

He'll hunt down themergerguy, key his car and kill one of his pets.















Just kidding. 

To mchale,

The budget thing was a surprise to me. I  believe some of the other owners did not understand how it was going to work either. For me it was only 4mil that was affected, but not having that 4 mil really was a detriment to the moves that I could make in off season. When you have arb cases and a high payroll like my team every bit would have helped. i had to make a trade that I didn't want to make b/c of it and signing an extra quality guy for the BP really became impossible.

As for the history, yes it shouldn't be a shock but when it finally comes and players that you had drafted and managed for 12-13 seasons suddenly have no stats, past ratings, awards, etc it is a little bit of a shock. I am a stats guy and that part of this game is very appealing to me. I know new worlds had no history either but I haven't played in new ones. The closest I came was a season 5 world. 

As for holding up a world that desires to merge, at this point in time I would say no I wouldn't hold it up. But I can't say how I would feel if I have a team that has 15 seasons of my time in it in the future. That's as honest as I can be. I hope the 2 worlds that I am planning to keep continue to have solid leadership and committed owners so that I don't even have to cross that bridge.

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/19/2014 10:23:00 AM (view original):
I don't find that to be surprising.   I think mergers solve the immediate problem(worlds aren't playing) but I'm not sure they solve the future problems.   A lot of owners like the result(winning) more than their team.   That changes when other owners in the same situation are added to the mix.    Somebody has to lose when continual 100 win teams clash.

This is very accurate. I know a few owners who "hate the merged world" but they are dominant in them so of course they stay. If it goes the other way than many hate merger even more and bail after year one.

Also part of the issue isn't necessarily "continual 100 wins teams colliding" (although that is certainly a part of it) but the fact is that you lose a bunch of middle of the road and poor teams. So the competition gets tougher all around. When a world has 14 openings, you can bet that most of those 14 aren't very good.

I don't think ANY solution or idea can be expected to "solve future problems". Each proposed solution only solves the immediate problem of a world not playing. The question is which of those ideas gives the owners a better chance at long term stability in their world? 

As tec mentioned GC incentives are nothing more than a bribe and have lost their luster because most have figured out that if a world is offering "incentives" there is probably a bigger issue there.

Owner swaps are unsustainable as well and have pretty much run their course, although a few worlds have successfully filled recently with this ploy. They will have more openings next rollover than they had this time around. Seen it time after time. 



What I always liked about the merger concept is that you (in theory) take a bunch of guys who are committed to their teams and like playing with their fellow owners and you put these committed owners together. In most cases they are pretty successful. But yeah you get a lot of guys who quickly stop loving their team when they stop winning every season like they were accustomed to.

Buckner/Feller is a great example. I put together 21 owners who had been with their team for 10+ seasons. 10 of them had been with their team for 19 or more seasons. 4 of the 21 left after S1, but only one was a guy with 19+ seasons. I bet you'd be hard pressed to find another world with that many owners who have been with their teams as long. 

Ultimately it depends on the worlds and owners being merged. One merger I put together was comprised of a world who had a bad history IMO. At least two times they sat waiting to fill for over 4 months before finally merging the third time. Not surprisingly to me, they had 8 openings after S1, 5 after S2 and 10 after the last rollover. After only 3 seasons, HALF of the original merger owners are gone... By far the worst of the now 13 merged worlds I've put together. Average of the first 6 worlds which are now in S4  or S5 is about 5 openings, which isn't great but better than the individual worlds pre merger.

I'm not crapping on the idea of merging worlds.   I think, at this point, it's a necessity.   And it's one of the reasons I started this thread.   I'd like to know the mindset of someone who is sitting in an idle world, 20% unfilled, for months.    If you want to play, you have to think something is going to happen.   I'm curious what it is.

Here is an idea that goes to the original question.

If your world is not showing any progress in filling anyways, then why not open your world up to newbies?  Maybe advertising your world as a "development world" one step up from public worlds would entice some relative newcomers to join and fill your league.  If the entire league gets on board with the idea, then you could have a number of established owners prepared to "partner up" with one newcomer each, and basically mentor them as the season goes on, or maybe even require a two season commitment from newcomers in exchange for teaching them the ropes.  

It might be an attractive option not only for newcomers, but for players like me...players who have a few seasons under their belt, but just haven't quite figured it out yet.  It may work best in a world that has six or seven owners with multiple WS wins under their belt already to act as the mentors.

Like I said, it was just an idea...and while nobody I'm sure really wants to be playing in what is considered a "development world", it sure as hell would beat sitting with eight openings for a couple of months.

I'm still kind of new in my own estimation, but I've experienced a little bit of everything. At the end of the day to answer the question... I think we all chose a world for one reason or another and don't want to admit that we picked a bad one... so that's why we stay. It's the gambler's mentality I think... eventually it will happen. if we wait long enough. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I sat in a world that I enjoyed my history and the team, but I bailed because no forward consensus was occurring and I felt like the commish was hamstrung and was not able or willing to build a consensus. I sat for 2 months before I bailed. I wanted to bail after 30 days, but I thought I owed it to the world and the other owners to stay that long. I think lots of us don't want to be THAT guy, but eventually somebody has to. Once the first or two people leave, the rest that are going to leave start to trickle out..

I sat in a few others and tried the owner swap thing.... If you do it, I think it should be XYZ guys from your world joining another... and they send XYZ guys over... when I've done that, it's been OK. I don't think any were worlds I would've sought out on my own, but there are some good people in crappy worlds. We all know there are some crappy people in good worlds. Did one swap where half of us went to 3 different worlds. I ended up in a so-so world of owners with an average or below average talent pool. I counted the days to season's end.

Was in a world where we debated going theme... the discussion was solid... but at the end it was about a 60/40 split for staying as is... and I appreciated the discussion because the long-time owners spoke up and they were the majority. I've heard okay things about some of the others that have tried tweaking the rules with a theme... that could be a direction for some folks for sure.

I've done the merge thing...  I really don't understand why people object. If you're in an active world with a great blog, lively HoF discussion, active chat, good talent pool, and at least an average/adequate commish that follows (Mike's suggestions) the obvious stuf, etcf... I believe you wouldn't be in a position to need a merge. It sucks for the good folks/good teams that are in there and I understand you don't wnat to lose what you've built. You've built your team...  you still have your team... don't say it's your team when it's really the stats and the hall of fame... If that's what you want, then I can't really help you there... If you're here for the game, then take your players and push the merge. keep it going. I think the merge objectors are just as much of a problem as the out of their element commishes/bad worlds. I will say that Mchale did a pretty bang up job putting it together. I know everybody has their own experiences. But, he was pretty crystal clear as to what would happen/wouldn't happen... The glitches are unfortunately user-error...  its hard to get 64 or 96 teams on the same page... Not everyone got the message, but I think some folks legitimately missed due to real life stuff and other folks didn't get it. There are probably another 6-10 mergers that should happen at minimum, but probably won't anytime soon.

It doesn't appear as if in this case of a merged world that I alluded to that it worked very well at all. Once again there are 12 openings. I am one of those who moved on. Yes my team struggled to the finish, 82-80. But I've had poor seasons before that were much more enjoyable. Based on 12 openings it might be possible that others did not care for the merger either? 2 days into rollover and they are already talking merger again.

A big theme now is that supply exceeds demand. I am not sure that that statement is entirely true. Mike runs worlds that fill quickly. tec does as well. I am in Pine Tar. It fills quickly and smoothly. I think the supply of good worlds is a huge problem. As is being stated in another thread, who wants to be in worlds where tanking and bad trades have been allowed and you are left with 2-4 mega-dominate teams? I don't even have a problem if that is what you want in an HBD world. That is what public worlds are for. 

I was just yammering on about that topic in the thread below this one.

And, yeah, this is stupid:

California Penal League

2

meteu40

--

12

Just shut that **** down.