we sound cynical because folks haven't been here long enough to realize we are just being realistic...

Couple of things:
- most of us visit our favorite college hoops teams' message boards daily. These are the places where college hoops fans hang out, and they're the best places to find new HD members. So each of us on this thread at least should start threads there describing this game and providing links to HD. Syracuse fans should go to orangefan.com for example, and UConn fans should post at the boneyard. There's no need to sit idly by if you think Fox has dropped the advertising ball. This would be more effective than a random Facebook page, because on school forums you're making direct contact with fellow fans.

- secondly, the amount of complaining, whining, whimpering, attacking, whining (yeah i already said that), dickheadedness much of the time on this board absolutely scares people away from the game. The threads on updates to recruiting are a complete embarrassment. It reads like a pack of hyenas out on the prowl.

Many, not all, veterans of this game want their cake and eat it too. They want a new crop of HD members, but they want those new members (who might have good ideas) to be quiet and accept the huge diadvantages that are present in Div-1. Me, i can live with it... but new members will tend to bail on this game. Resistance to updates, and attacks on sensible people or ideas will destroy any attempts to improve the populations of each HD world.

Here's a weird stat, and i'm unsure what it means:
In Crum Division 1, we've just completed Season 80... of all the HD members who signed up in January of 2012 or later (around Crum Season 50 or later), none of those "newer" Crum owners has ever won a Div-1 national championship. So no one that signed up in the last 4+ earth years has ever won a Crum Div-1 national championship. Is it that veteran owners are much smarter? Are there disadvantages that are too difficult to get past for newer owners? idk.

Also, in this thread, there were several possibly decent ideas on how to improve the game. Some were dismissed outright with no debate. For example, merging worlds, say Crum and Iba since they're close in turnover. Maybe this makes sense. I'm a Crum guy and might be open to this idea. If i have to move to a different school than Holy Cross, well i might not have a problem with that. Who knows, maybe a Crum-Iba merger would allow us to update the conferences. I could accept that. Anyway, that line of discussion was ended with a simple declarative "that would be a terrible idea"... i mean, c'mon, maybe thinking out of the box like that can work.

Now get off my lawn.

Syracuse fans should go to orangefan.com for example

Now just a second my good man…can't mention SU blogs and leave out Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician

I used to go to that blog a lot and contribute occasionally, and I always thought about trying to refer some guys here, but then I thought about trying to describe it, and decided it sounded too geeky even for guys trolling sports blogs, but that's probably my own insecurities manifesting or something Freudian maybe, but leave my mom out of this...

Posted by npb7768 on 2/28/2016 12:25:00 AM (view original):
Couple of things:
- most of us visit our favorite college hoops teams' message boards daily. These are the places where college hoops fans hang out, and they're the best places to find new HD members. So each of us on this thread at least should start threads there describing this game and providing links to HD. Syracuse fans should go to orangefan.com for example, and UConn fans should post at the boneyard. There's no need to sit idly by if you think Fox has dropped the advertising ball. This would be more effective than a random Facebook page, because on school forums you're making direct contact with fellow fans.

- secondly, the amount of complaining, whining, whimpering, attacking, whining (yeah i already said that), dickheadedness much of the time on this board absolutely scares people away from the game. The threads on updates to recruiting are a complete embarrassment. It reads like a pack of hyenas out on the prowl.

Many, not all, veterans of this game want their cake and eat it too. They want a new crop of HD members, but they want those new members (who might have good ideas) to be quiet and accept the huge diadvantages that are present in Div-1. Me, i can live with it... but new members will tend to bail on this game. Resistance to updates, and attacks on sensible people or ideas will destroy any attempts to improve the populations of each HD world.

Here's a weird stat, and i'm unsure what it means:
In Crum Division 1, we've just completed Season 80... of all the HD members who signed up in January of 2012 or later (around Crum Season 50 or later), none of those "newer" Crum owners has ever won a Div-1 national championship. So no one that signed up in the last 4+ earth years has ever won a Crum Div-1 national championship. Is it that veteran owners are much smarter? Are there disadvantages that are too difficult to get past for newer owners? idk.

Also, in this thread, there were several possibly decent ideas on how to improve the game. Some were dismissed outright with no debate. For example, merging worlds, say Crum and Iba since they're close in turnover. Maybe this makes sense. I'm a Crum guy and might be open to this idea. If i have to move to a different school than Holy Cross, well i might not have a problem with that. Who knows, maybe a Crum-Iba merger would allow us to update the conferences. I could accept that. Anyway, that line of discussion was ended with a simple declarative "that would be a terrible idea"... i mean, c'mon, maybe thinking out of the box like that can work.

Now get off my lawn.

i don't think this is an unreasonable post, but i do want to disagree with one thing. a lot of veteran owners are against the new update - but that is very different from being against leveling the playing field. context is everything - many veterans played at a time when the d1 field was level. mid majors won all the time, and actually, the biggest complaint about d1, was how there were SO many 90/90/90 etc players that so many teams had so many of them... that it felt like "coin flip dynasty".

the amount of change it took to create the current situation, was largely one single change to recruit generation. many of us (like me) would like recruit gen addressed as the #1 issue. i have held this position for the 5 years since the recruit gen debale - because i believe it is the #1 thing that would level the field. how can you suggest people taking that stance, are against leveling the field? no, rather we just know that a level field can be obtained without redoing the whole game - because we lived it, we saw 1 bad change get us here. sure, later, seble also went and broke jobs, which made things even worse. i'm all for undoing that damage, too. i think most vets are.

anyway, i just object to your characterization there, even if it doesn't apply to me. a very small % of folks want the massive disparity out there today, most of the folks you are referring to do not. yes, we disagree on how to even things out - by immediately addressing the single issue which demonstrably put us in the current position, to stop the bleeding - or by completely scrapping all of recruiting EXCEPT for that single change that got us here (recruit gen), and waiting a year for a completely new scheme, which might be better, equally bad, or dramatically worse. that does not equate to wanting new members to be quiet and accept huge disadvantages, we want the opposite, and to characterize it as such qualifies for your "attacks on sensible ideas" which will stymie the growth of this game.

- most of us visit our favorite college hoops teams' message boards daily. These are the places where college hoops fans hang out, and they're the best places to find new HD members. So each of us on this thread at least should start threads there describing this game and providing links to HD. Syracuse fans should go to orangefan.com for example, and UConn fans should post at the boneyard. There's no need to sit idly by if you think Fox has dropped the advertising ball. This would be more effective than a random Facebook page, because on school forums you're making direct contact with fellow fans.

This is a very sound idea ... personally I don't visit the Golden Gopher message board because, frankly, I much prefer the fake Gopher basketball program that the Crum world provides to the real life team. Nevertheless, this is still a good idea even if it is a sad commentary that we, the users, should need to do this.

- secondly, the amount of complaining, whining, whimpering, attacking, whining (yeah i already said that), dickheadedness much of the time on this board absolutely scares people away from the game. The threads on updates to recruiting are a complete embarrassment. It reads like a pack of hyenas out on the prowl.

I don't disagree with this at all.

Many, not all, veterans of this game want their cake and eat it too. They want a new crop of HD members, but they want those new members (who might have good ideas) to be quiet and accept the huge diadvantages that are present in Div-1. Me, i can live with it... but new members will tend to bail on this game. Resistance to updates, and attacks on sensible people or ideas will destroy any attempts to improve the populations of each HD world.

Agree with CBG here in that I think most of us want to reduce or eliminate the disadvantages that currently exist in D1. I also agree with CBG that recruit generation would likely fix many of the imbalance issues at D1. Personally, I am willing to sacrifice advantages I have gained if it makes for a more enjoyable game for the whole. It's currently too easy for the elites to stay elite and too difficult to rebuild ... and the game encourages too much unrealistic cooperation among conference members. I could live with continued use of the auction style recruiting if recruit generation was modified but I still think it's deeply flawed, somewhat boring and contributes to the advantages of the elites, so I am definitely not against the heretofore promised changes to recruiting and think they have to potential to really change the game for the better. IMO if WIS doesn't eventually do something to address the imbalances the game will continue to see the user base decline.

Here's a weird stat, and i'm unsure what it means:
In Crum Division 1, we've just completed Season 80... of all the HD members who signed up in January of 2012 or later (around Crum Season 50 or later), none of those "newer" Crum owners has ever won a Div-1 national championship. So no one that signed up in the last 4+ earth years has ever won a Crum Div-1 national championship. Is it that veteran owners are much smarter? Are there disadvantages that are too difficult to get past for newer owners? idk.

My 2 cents is it just takes time - too long in my opinion - to work the way up the ladder. Look at your own history in Crum ... 18 seasons overall and you're six seasons into a low level D1 program. I don't know how many, if any, BCS schools you qualify to coach at but my guess, if you do, it is probably a major rebuild ... a major rebuild doesn't occur overnight either so maybe another six to eight seasons minimum before you can reasonably expect to field a reasonably competitive team and if you've done a good job maybe you start becoming really competitive (depending a LOT of your schools baseline and the degree of competition around you) ten or seasons in. And once you become really competitive you still have to battle fifteen to twenty other really competitive schools every season in hopes of winning a title ... in short, it's not unrealistic to expect it to take 30 seasons (at a minimum) to win a D1 NT from the time you start in any given world. So the fact that most D1 NT winners in Crum started playing before season 50 makes perfect sense ... it's not that they are all smarter ... they have just played the game long enough to qualify for, or build their teams up to a level that makes them competitive season in and season out ...

Also, in this thread, there were several possibly decent ideas on how to improve the game. Some were dismissed outright with no debate. For example, merging worlds, say Crum and Iba since they're close in turnover. Maybe this makes sense. I'm a Crum guy and might be open to this idea. If i have to move to a different school than Holy Cross, well i might not have a problem with that. Who knows, maybe a Crum-Iba merger would allow us to update the conferences. I could accept that. Anyway, that line of discussion was ended with a simple declarative "that would be a
terrible idea"... i mean, c'mon, maybe thinking out of the box like that can work.

Nothing stops you from continuing the discussion and/or debate though ... I think the biggest problem with so many of the ideas presented isn't that they are "bad" ideas, rather it's that the discussion are all moot. We can talk about contraction, expansion, re-aligning conferences, overhauling recruiting, or tweaking recruit generation all we want but there is very little likelihood that changes (at least the changes that each of us individually want ... because we all want different things) will ever occur or be implemented. So yeah, maybe outside the box thinking could work, but it will never work if WIS is unwilling or unable to implement the idea in the first place.

Exactly correct Possumfiend: "... I think the biggest problem with so many of the ideas presented isn't that they are "bad" ideas, rather it's that the discussion(s) are all moot."
It maybe a good catharsis for members to express their frustrations and desires for improvements, but the reality is WIS has shown very little interest in making any improvements (at least certainly in what one would consider a reasonable amount of time) and zero interest in promotion of the product. To me, it simply becomes an acceptance of the way it is.

it seems with near every major change, the game loses a rather significant portion of the players. The data strikes fear that after the next change, if recruiting is not really 'fixed', the game might drop to unacceptable levels. My main area's of concern:

1 - how much extra time will the new game take?
1a - does the time required 'have' to be a 2-3 hr window on one day when important milestones happen, or are the important window(s) over a longer time frame, say like 8-12 hrs
2 - will recruits get spread out more equally, or simply redistributed due to a new flaw in the game that enough coaches plainly see that more than normal levels of coaches leave?
3 - recruiting always has been the most important part of this game, if it becomes even more important, that is bad

Of all the changes to the engine ever made, the one thing (to me) that really hurt the game was when practice planning changed so a coach's ability to 'shape' the type of player he recruited was decreased, and the computer controlled more of the shape or arc of the player. Under the guise of -potential', which in itself is a good idea, the game really got less interesting, as post potential the recruit's destiny being etched in stone thru the computer generated model, rather than thru the coach's vision for what a recruit 'could be'.

Of all the idea's presented here, the one that I would now support (I used to hate the idea, but more and more I find myself listening) is I would make the game a 50 year game, which would resemble a real life coach's lifetime, starting as a head guy at d3 around age 30 and weaving one's way thru to around age 80. Once done, I'd wipe the slate clean, make coach's like me start over, the computer would add a suffix to show it is the second coming of a coach. IMO one of the reasons d3 and d2 were so healthy was the competition to rise to the top. This would restore that. And this would seem perfectly fair to all the other players, the ones who do not have 50 plus years in the game.

3 other things about the 50 yr idea, in most worlds, 50 years is 7 yrs real life, that is a pretty long time. Second, I would not make this happen all at once for coaches with over 50 years as this would create a mass exodus out of d1, but probably use some sort of random number generator to make it happen for over a 1-3 year real life span, which in game life would give some a 10-20 or so season extra stay, while others could get the boot quick. And 3rd, I have no idea if the game could do it, but some sort of incentive for these graduate coaches to stay playing could be introduced, some sort of gift pack (3 free seasons maybe?).

But this 50 yr idea would free up a few spots in major conferences, re-distubte minor d1 conferences and d2/d3 divisions with some of the best coaches making this game more vibrant and challenging.

I predict the game would suffer a significant number of drops initially. But something is wrong with the game, as the player count continues to slowly slide. I'd guess this issue has the highest odds of long term fixing the game, even though it surely will cause short term losses.

Posted by possumfiend on 2/27/2016 8:03:00 PM (view original):
"We're always looking for ways to market the games, but we're very limited on budget." - developer's chat 9/17/2015

It's difficult to advertise if they don't get much of a budget and they won't get much of a budget if they don't start bringing in more users to increase their revenues and operating income. It's a vicious never ending cycle.

Which is why I said to do it as part of their Fox Sports networks. If the guys doing the college basketball sportscasts and sports news mention it, it is free (if the NCAA will allow it).

Oldresorter : we could restart the world over, but to be honest, as I am one climbing the ladder, or trying to climb it, I think it's not starting over that would help out people trying to get competitive in D1.

1) Start firing going.
2) Make the job process logic, logic. A team A- left by an owner, should drop a letter minimum in prestige so that other teams can apply. You could cap it at C prestige so big six do not drop that much. Once you reach some sort of mid-major talent, you should be able to apply to any low-end D1 team, not just by the prestige random chart.
3) Diminish the value of conference NT wins, so you can compete with big six teams when you recruit.
4) Make top recruits recruitable from everywhere in the world (1-50), make recruits have expectations, start, minutes per game etc.
5) Fix recruit generation.

I think slowly taking care of this would improve the game a lot.
In DIII, you need to make location less important.

DII is probably the less flawled of all divisions.

You could implement new fun features like non-con tournaments challenges, favorite school actually mean something, etc.

"term limits" might work for folks who want them, but only because half the current coaches will quit and there should be lots of open jobs then.

I'm gone if someone artificially takes my A+ job, that I spent 7 IRL years trying to learn how to land, away from me.

**** That.

Posted by hughesjr on 2/28/2016 8:27:00 AM (view original):

Posted by possumfiend on 2/27/2016 8:03:00 PM (view original):
"We're always looking for ways to market the games, but we're very limited on budget." - developer's chat 9/17/2015

It's difficult to advertise if they don't get much of a budget and they won't get much of a budget if they don't start bringing in more users to increase their revenues and operating income. It's a vicious never ending cycle.

Which is why I said to do it as part of their Fox Sports networks. If the guys doing the college basketball sportscasts and sports news mention it, it is free (if the NCAA will allow it).

Understood but I don't think it would be free. WIS is a part of Fox Sports Digital Media ("FSDM") which is a subsidiary of Fox Entertainment Group ("FEG"). Fox Sports Networks ("FSN") is a separate division of FEG. It's easiest to probably think of them as separate businesses even though they operate under the same corporate umbrella. So while no actual check would be cut, or physical cash would be exchanged if WIS started "advertising" on FSN it would still impact both of their operating budgets. FOX accounting would most likely charge the advertising costs against the WIS budget and show it as advertising revenue earned by FSN.

It would seem intuitive that WIS could get a free or cheap plugs on the network, but what is the Network's incentive to do so? FSN makes their money from advertising so if they suddenly start giving away air time for free to other Fox related entities they become a shill for everything Fox owned and where will they ever make their money? And if WIS is given free air time, won't Fox owned Nat Geo, or upcoming FOX feature films like Independence Day, Ice Age, or Planet of the Apes also then want free advertising? Wouldn't the consumer products division start asking for the anchors and broadcasters to display merchandise on the sports desks? And if the network does nothing more than shamelessly plug FOX owned products and give away their advertising space and air time for free, how will they ever set competitive rates and encourage outsiders to advertise with them?

There would also be issues with the sportscasters and announcers themselves. How much do their contracts call for them to advertise everything Fox owned? If they had a good agent it's highly doubtful they are required to advertise everything Fox owned (which they may or may not support or use) without some form of additional compensation or speaking fee.

I guess my point, in a long winded fashion, is I don't think advertising is as simple or free as it might appear on the surface.

I would love to bet that's seble update causes a big exodus from long time coaches. So far it still seems like it's a razorblade to the fingernails to distract us from the gunshot wounds in the chest.

There isn't anything terrible about the current recruiting process that warrants such a huge update, like billy said and some others recruit generation is pretty bad. Jobs are terrible, and big 6 schools have too big an advantage.

And you are all welcome for the forum negativity, I'm not going to be quiet and accept an unwanted dick in my ***.

I agree either dac the solution is not term limits yoy should never keave the school if you are good just because you have been there enough.

Posted by zorzii on 2/28/2016 8:33:00 AM (view original):
Oldresorter : we could restart the world over, but to be honest, as I am one climbing the ladder, or trying to climb it, I think it's not starting over that would help out people trying to get competitive in D1.

1) Start firing going.
2) Make the job process logic, logic. A team A- left by an owner, should drop a letter minimum in prestige so that other teams can apply. You could cap it at C prestige so big six do not drop that much. Once you reach some sort of mid-major talent, you should be able to apply to any low-end D1 team, not just by the prestige random chart.
3) Diminish the value of conference NT wins, so you can compete with big six teams when you recruit.
4) Make top recruits recruitable from everywhere in the world (1-50), make recruits have expectations, start, minutes per game etc.
5) Fix recruit generation.

I think slowly taking care of this would improve the game a lot.
In DIII, you need to make location less important.

DII is probably the less flawled of all divisions.

starting over would only apply to tenured 50 year coaches. Anyone climbing the latter would move to the front of the queue. Not sure if that addresses your concerns or not.

IMO I think this would really fix the firing and hiring issues with many people, the problem is with so few openings, more and more pressure is on those two issues, and NO process will EVER make ANYONE happy other than the guy who gets the job.

Firing in particular, I can't think of a better way to lose coaches - although the 50 year and then start over might lose a fair share right away, once it is in place, IMO it 'might' be the fix people are actually looking for.

Anyhow, hope that helps.