focus on addressing some of the major pain points expressed by the community

Ok, while we're at it; HBD wait times for worlds to fill. Always an issue with a majority of worlds both private and Open Public. Don't believe me ? Just look at the chat in any world waiting to fill that's been rolled over a month. There's plenty of them to keep you entertained. An 85-day season is routinely 125-to-150+. There's a current league rolled 4 months ago and still only half filled. Don't talk to me about only after months of waiting merging 2 languishing worlds. I'm in one that's entering its 2nd month of wait and vacancies have doubled along the way and I too will soon bolt which is a shame since it's my longest running league and after a couple seasons of typical newb growing pains I've finally settled into a reasonable growth pattern combining many of the bells-n-whistles. Didn't someone just mention bad biz model ?

But, this isn't just a hollow complaint; it comes with a plan. You should look at the rollover model of the best baseball SIM of the past 40 years; 30 of them I've been a part of. PLZ hit me up for consultation on how it's done correctly. They roll 600 leagues at $89/team ALWAYS on time, and there's an easy fix for their very few vacancies per league that doesn't include extra months of waiting for it to fill and holding up everyone else. Its timely consistency is a big part of the attraction. This here is garbage. I thought I had a 13-season 3-4 real-life years plan for HBD currently in 7 leagues to figure out if I'm gonna be sustainably any good at this, but the extended extra wait times has me reconsidering if it's worth it despite knowing I'm getting better. I will never become resigned to accept that an advertised 85-day season is really on average much much longer.

Posted by jholthus on 10/3/2022 11:50:00 AM (view original):

Posted by YoureKillinM on 10/2/2022 6:48:00 AM (view original):
I hope sometime in the future that Simleague baseball Live play will be either updated or perhaps it'll start working again after the core update? Not sure and no rush but this site was packed back when you could sim live league games as long as both owners were online....it was the best feature on the site at the time.....I think a live feature for most of the different leagues would add value and Moore customers that stick around.

The live play feature is something that has been in discussions as we know the community would like this feature.

"The community would LIKE this feature?"

Let me correct that: The community would GO NUTS if a really good live play feature was brought back. It would revive a ton of leagues.

Admin: Don't think this is an optional feature. If you aren't going to bring this back, don't even bother with revamping the rest of sim league baseball.

I respect the passion of Area51man’s comments, but he doesn’t come close to speaking for the whole of the SLB user base. I, for one, never enjoyed live play and rarely made use of it. It was a fringe feature at best. And would fall very far down the list of things I would prioritize.

Posted by contrarian23 on 4/7/2023 8:21:00 PM (view original):
I respect the passion of Area51man’s comments, but he doesn’t come close to speaking for the whole of the SLB user base. I, for one, never enjoyed live play and rarely made use of it. It was a fringe feature at best. And would fall very far down the list of things I would prioritize.

"Fringe feature" is a massive understatement, my friend. It had its own culture and user base. It would fill leagues rather quickly and you could play a ton of games every day - creating a drive for even more leagues. I know a TON of users left after they shut it down. I left for quite awhile and probably am leaving for good soon. The product, while still decent, is antiquated and admin has abandoned the promised rewrite. This entire site is not a priority to its owners. If a quality live feature was resurrected, I bet there would be at least 25% more leagues overnight - probably more.

The vast majority of leagues at any given time when Live was an option were not “live” leagues. Many leagues allowed live play, which was fine, but the leagues that required live play were a fringe to be sure … and I have been here almost 20 years.

Live is a nice to have, not need to have. It should be nowhere near the top of things to work on for SLB. Bringing back live without addressing the many other issues that need work would be the proverbial lipstick on the pig.

Posted by contrarian23 on 4/8/2023 9:05:00 PM (view original):
The vast majority of leagues at any given time when Live was an option were not “live” leagues. Many leagues allowed live play, which was fine, but the leagues that required live play were a fringe to be sure … and I have been here almost 20 years.

Live is a nice to have, not need to have. It should be nowhere near the top of things to work on for SLB. Bringing back live without addressing the many other issues that need work would be the proverbial lipstick on the pig.

Three things my friend:

#1 - I respect you and your valuable contributions to the game. My rebuttals are with all respect that you are due.

#2 - You are misinformed on the live play. Toward the end, it was fringe - largely because of some programming glitches that were left untouched. We had to resort to a gentleman's agreement in many leagues not to do things in certain situations because of the idiocy of some of glitches. But other than towards the end, it was a really big thing for quite awhile. Live leagues had various minimums on games required to be played live to make the playoffs. Usually that number was around 40 to 60, but there were times where there was a 20-game floor for live. I think you are severely underestimating the impact this feature had during it's peak.

#3 - I agree, that resurrecting live play without fixing other major things would be a misstep. But I also believe that revamping the game without live play would be a misstep. Both need to happen. But as it stands now, they've abandoned the rewrite and have decided to do patchwork on something that is antiquated. That gives this game a very low ceiling.

FWIW, LIVE was got me into this site at all. I’m a relatively new user, and I was very young when I found out about the site. It was basically a computer game to me taking the 2006 Tigers with Pudge, Mags, and Verlander, and simming them against random teams from random years. After a little bit of that, I started jumping around different channels, and that’s where I found out about these custom teams users were playing with, and therefore about SLB. So I’d save up some allowance to spend on here, but mostly used the free monthly exhibition teams until I got a job.

I was a proponent of an app for LIVE play, but the days of mobile gaming is seemingly in the past, so WIS missed a huge chance to get a boost in activity. But it’s how I found out about SLB, so I’d like to see it return.

I respect your perspective Area51Man, but we'll have to agree to disagree. A rewrite without Live would do a lot to improve the game and its user base. A rewrite with Live might do more, though I continue to believe the marginal impact would not be substantial. I certainly would not want WIS to delay or forego an update just because Live wasn't a planned inclusion.

This statement: "Admin: Don't think this is an optional feature. If you aren't going to bring this back, don't even bother with revamping the rest of sim league baseball" does not come close, in my opinion, to representing the majority voice of the SLB community.

Posted by contrarian23 on 4/9/2023 11:51:00 AM (view original):
I respect your perspective Area51Man, but we'll have to agree to disagree. A rewrite without Live would do a lot to improve the game and its user base. A rewrite with Live might do more, though I continue to believe the marginal impact would not be substantial. I certainly would not want WIS to delay or forego an update just because Live wasn't a planned inclusion.

This statement: "Admin: Don't think this is an optional feature. If you aren't going to bring this back, don't even bother with revamping the rest of sim league baseball" does not come close, in my opinion, to representing the majority voice of the SLB community.

It's probably all a moot point, because we will never see a rewrite....just patches......bandaids to cover up old bandaids.

Live was for me the best part of slb, and the only leagues I joined were ones with live minimums.
there were glitches and flaws, and having to maintain an outdated system that supported an old java was a pain, but it was well worth it.
every live game was fast and fun, and the other managers were for the most part a friendly, entertaining and savvy gang.

i have long since given up hope that there will be a return of live play, and I think it’s really too bad and a big loss.
if i were to find out about another platform that offered something like it, I’d be there in a heartbeat.

Want to jump into the chorus of those who hope to see a simleague baseball LIVE feature pushed more toward the top of the priority list. I know several folks who were active back in the live heyday, and it is a shame to see how long it has been since it existed with no real movement on bringing it back except for continued, hollow, empty promises. Since this is not a wishlist, I will respectfully add in a question - is there anything on the horizon in regards to live coming back?

Posted by jholthus on 4/4/2023 10:16:00 AM (view original):

Posted by JMH131 on 4/2/2023 10:17:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jholthus on 3/31/2023 11:45:00 AM (view original):
Hello,

The core rewrite has made some great progress but due to some restructuring within SportsHub we are going to change direction with updates for a time. The plan is to bring out regular, likely smaller updates to the various games but we are looking to focus on addressing some of the major pain points expressed by the community across the different games.

Does this mean that the team is no longer working on the core rewrite, developing the app, etc.? As a legacy user, I love whatif and don’t plan to leave, but I am a bit frustrated because I think whatif has great potential for growth (and profitability). I feel like first Fox and now Sportshub have given up on this site. There’s a vicious cycle of not giving whatif the resources it needs to succeed and then determining it’s not profitable and pulling additional resources.

It does mean that at this time we are pausing going in this direction with the site. The plan is to focus on the games as they are and make adjustments that the communities have expressed would be important.

That's unfortunate. Seems like the plan is to only fix bugs and make small QOL changes. I guess Sportshub is content with suckling on the *** whilst the games waste away into obscurity.

I'm also a little peeved by the continuous promise of updates and transparency that seem to always fail to deliver. 1-2 week regular updates turns to 1-2 month updates, which turns to 1-2 year updates.

I fear my time with WIS is near the end.

NBA update or more Scott? asking for a friend...

Cue the Jeopardy music...

Posted by copernicus on 8/21/2023 10:37:00 PM (view original):
NBA update or more Scott? asking for a friend...

es claro...