Posted by emy1013 on 2/29/2016 10:40:00 AM (view original):
One thing that I've always personally thought about the cost issue is that if playing this game is making you dig through the couch for change, then it might be time to cut back on a team or three. If you only have a single team and you're "still" scraping for change, then it might be time to step back, take a very deep breath, and re-evaluate your financial priorities.

You're invoking a poor straw man here...literally! Moralizing is beside the point. The issue is that new users are asked to pay full price while others, with advantage of experience, are paying less. They experience that as being unfair. Given a little bit of positive feedback at the outset, noobs might stick around and HD would have a higher retention rate.

Of course, the developers could just sit back and moralize about their customer's life choices, but that will not help HD.

I maybe spend $20 a month or so on this game, and I probably buy my 13 year old a new $50 video game every couple of months. I really don't think money is the issue here. Once you enjoy the game, understand it, you'll get addicted. So it has replay ability.

I'm sure WIS has some statistics on the Demographics of people who play their games. And what percentage of those people play Hoops Dynasty? Which WIS game has the most dependable players?

For some new person to get the full effect of hd they need to play 4-5 seasons that's in the mid 50's price range. Not many people see the "per week" average" why not make it subscription based 100$ a year or 75$ with the option to buy season to season?
Like it or not this game has been passed by with the times, it's very dated and new people are not wanting to join in. Used to be able to wait for one game a day leagues, I havnt been in one of those in years. Two games a day is getting to be really slow to me compare to these ap games. Why not a 4 game a day world or 3 game a day world.

When this game started no one had smart phones and everyone was using dial up to log in. Times have changed so let's change the way we play the game. Much less get an app for this. Put it on the ap store (when you do that I want some free seasons) you want to grow you have to go to the customers

The cost isn't bad- but I think the point made was it's a lot of money initially to even get into the flow of the game. I can't think of many games where I spend 50 (4 seasons) before I can even say if I like it or not.

First... Delaware Valley is in Pennsylvania, not Delaware (sorry Gil).

I think about the only way to get numbers up is to make DIII free to play with no rewards (and put it on the app store). Make the users click a button at the end of each season to renew and get rid of any ghost shippers. Keep the cost of DI and DII the same. This way people who enjoy this kind of game can take the time to learn and I believe most who are successful at DIII would move up to compete against "the best." That is just my guess though.

As far as the impending death of this game, I'm not convinced yet. Let's say everybody pays the bare minimum $10 a season. There are about 300 coaches per world (granted, continuously decreasing), for $3000 brought in each season. Subtract the rewards (just under between $350 and $390 a season at each level depending on how many sims make the tournament and how far the get) and they still make about $1800 - $2000 a season. With the 10 worlds there are about a total 85 seasons a calendar year, so they bring in $170000 a year, probably minimum. I know this is nothing to Fox, but really what cost do they have? Seble's salary and he does more than work on HD. The point is the game still makes money (at least I think it does), so why would they shut it down? And, if they do, then all good things must come to an end I guess, and all of us will go on with our lives and probably be just as happy (and maybe slightly less stressed :) ).

Posted by piman314 on 2/29/2016 10:32:00 PM (view original):
First... Delaware Valley is in Pennsylvania, not Delaware (sorry Gil).

I think about the only way to get numbers up is to make DIII free to play with no rewards (and put it on the app store). Make the users click a button at the end of each season to renew and get rid of any ghost shippers. Keep the cost of DI and DII the same. This way people who enjoy this kind of game can take the time to learn and I believe most who are successful at DIII would move up to compete against "the best." That is just my guess though.

As far as the impending death of this game, I'm not convinced yet. Let's say everybody pays the bare minimum $10 a season. There are about 300 coaches per world (granted, continuously decreasing), for $3000 brought in each season. Subtract the rewards (just under between $350 and $390 a season at each level depending on how many sims make the tournament and how far the get) and they still make about $1800 - $2000 a season. With the 10 worlds there are about a total 85 seasons a calendar year, so they bring in $170000 a year, probably minimum. I know this is nothing to Fox, but really what cost do they have? Seble's salary and he does more than work on HD. The point is the game still makes money (at least I think it does), so why would they shut it down? And, if they do, then all good things must come to an end I guess, and all of us will go on with our lives and probably be just as happy (and maybe slightly less stressed :) ).

where is the egg on face emoji when you need one?

i don't think they will shut HD down yet, the marginal cost to keep it running with no development is fairly low. but the emptiness of the worlds is deeply disturbing. the rate of coaches leaving remains high - and there just aren't enough left to sustain those losses for much longer.

in today's game, folks who want to play mostly humans, do so. they sit in full conferences, play humans in non conf, and end up with zero to a handful of sims on their schedule, as they have for ages. the reality of the game population halving, is not really evident. but we are close to a dangerous tipping point, it seems to me. the game still feels real, making the NT still feels real, because mostly the NT and PIT are human populated. but in, it looks like half of the world, there literally aren't even enough humans for all the post season bids. seeing more and more sims in the post season will really hurt the legitimacy of the game. making the NT has been a meaningful bar of success for ages, and i think it has to be. in some worlds, that's no longer true, with d3 worlds with 75-85 people. if we drop another 20-30 in those worlds, what then, the PIT is mostly sim, the NT is almost half sim? how do you sell new coaches on that?

basically, the loss in coaches has been hidden to the average user, where the effect is felt only in small part - but i think we are near that changing - and that is what scares me. also, keep in mind that WIS makes their money off people who don't do well. what happens when you drop to 50 people in a world, and almost all of them are in the NT? the reward point hit is almost a constant - as we dropped from 180 coaches to 90, we only added maybe 8 sims, from 8 now-empty conferences. that saves WIS 8 teams of 1st round NT credits. it cost them 90 teams of almost paying full price. its not a stretch to suggest that some of these d3 worlds, HD could be losing money on, with their base cost of hosting, development, support, and reward points. there was one with 75 people! that's insane!

i know this has been done before, but i figured i'd do some quick math on the credits / reward points just to see. i don't have all the exact values, like e8, just approximating. did they cut reward points? i thought it scaled more at the top, they must be scaling it at per season values not 5pack rates or something.
round 2 - 5.00.
s16 - 10.00
e8 - 15
f4 - 20
NC - 4K, 9K is 60 bucks/5pack, lets call it 27
champ - 6k, 2/3rds of 5 pack, lets call it 40

so the cost just up to 2nd round is 40 + 27 + 2*20 + 4*15 + 8*10+16*5 = 327

that's not counting the NT 1, PIT, non-making it credits. NT1 is 3bucks, PIT is 1.50, any misc. people get like .75 or something for not making it, as an incentive, or something stupid? i never understood why that even existed. anyway, now plenty of those NT1 and PIT spots are sims, so its hard to count, but lets just assume in worlds with ~80 people, that most are making the post season, and getting at least 2 bucks off per season or something. thats another hundred or so (80 minus the 32 in the 2nd round), so we are up to ~427.

if we assume most folks buy 5 packs, thats 12/season. 80 coaches is then 960. 427 is a pretty large share of that, it only leaves 533 dollars! in 1/day worlds, thats like 260 bucks a month! even if they aren't paying seble for development, you have to pay for the server it runs on, the bandwidth it uses, the support cost of answering tickets and helping with misc. issues of those people, the overhead from the billing side and HR, taxes... i can definitely buy that 260 being a loss. add in any meaningful development effort, it almost has to be. if the game doesn't turn around soon-ish, it really may not be worth them running it at all.

CBG kind of hit a lot of the same points I would have made ... pretty much agree with his take that shut down of HD is certainly not imminent but the decline in the user base is a serious concern for long term sustainability ... CBG also hit the cost considerations besides salaries but don't forget that seble is not the only admin/developer for WIS ... tzentmeyer is the developer for Hardball Dynasty, oriole_fan is the developer for GD, and look at the Ohio Conference in Phelan ... the conference has 11 human coaches, 10 of the 11 have Site Staff user IDs. So it's hard to know exactly how many people are actually employed by WIS but it's clearly more than just seble.

Still, I was just thinking about the idea of tiered pricing myself ... not sure if I'd make D3 free but I could certainly see it being reduced in price, I think then you could make D2 a bit higher priced and D1 could be higher still with the potential for different price points if you wanted a Big 6 team. I then think you could reduce the rewards because I think that a key to attracting and keeping new users is the game stops using the new users to subsidize the game for the established users as they essentially do now. I think something like a free season for the two teams that reach the championship and then maybe some nominal rewards for teams that make the S16 or better ... Also, higher price points to coach at the Big 6 level might provide a natural turn over incentive and open those spots up for more frequently for users down the road ... at any rate I think you made some great points piman ... certainly ideas worth considering to increase the user base.

I hope that everyone hurries up and leaves, so it can just be me alone in each world with superclasses and nothing but terrible nonconference sims on the road....oh the fun we could finally have....

Posted by rogelio on 2/29/2016 10:37:00 AM (view original):

Posted by joco45215 on 2/29/2016 7:35:00 AM (view original):
For us guys who play and struggle we pay full price or get a $1.50 of every now and then. That's the big problem I've gotten bout ten people to sign up in the first few season I played. (Before the two a day worlds) the problem is a beginner doesn't get the experience in just their first season. They won't sign up for more. Not for 45$ or what ever it is to play thru your first recruiting class. The price point is outrageous considering the fan duel experience people can use that 12$ every two weeks and play the online gaming of betting on sports. If they don't hit they are in the same boat we are nothing to show for the money.

As as far as message boards of our favorite basketball teams. Seems like they have fallen off over the years as well. Bearcatnews.com is a shell of its self.

Lower the price point 7$ a season, I'll go back to having 2 to 5 teams instead of the one I suck at now.

This has been my point all along...on a variety of different threads. I don't think WIS needs to lower the cost overall, but it could consider running a $4.95 first season, FreeHD during the RL Tournament, AND add a special one-time, 5 season purchase price for new users. Perhaps take that initial commitment down to the $7 per season that joco mentions (so, $35-$39, rather than $60).

After that, if users consistently fall out of the $$, very few are going to stick around. Since D3 is clogged up with old time coaches that consistently hog most of the D3 NT spots, then that is a barrier to entry for new members. It artificially raises noob's costs and makes their retention very unlikely. So, after 15 seasons at D3, rewards need to diminish to create an incentive for experienced users to move up.

Firings should be increased at upper tier D1 and should be entirely absent below mid-majors. How the hell does it help anyone to fire the coach at UMBD?! If someone wants to pay to suck at UMBD, take their money!!! The spots that need to be opened up via firings are the Big 6 jobs and positions with higher baselines (assuming that system were retained). My personal feeling on the talk about a 50 season perpetuity clause in user IDs is just: no. I'm full of "no" on that. Users should be able to play as they wish, at D1 & D2, but this game desperately needs a noob level...no other place for that than D3.

There is no point in spending any money on advertising until some of those changes to the price structure are made and cosmetic changes are made to facilitate play on a phone. It'd be great, if that huge update were tabled so that some minor updates, the cosmetic change and a new price/rewards scheme could be rolled out quickly. Then web-advertising on Fox's own platforms would make sense during the upcoming tournament. They run a tourney pick'em game...a banner ad on that would capture the right audience.

Rogelio, they've already tried the reduced benefits after X number of seasons at D3 and D2, with no reduction at all for D1. That idea went over like the proverbial "turd in the punch bowl" and got removed quickly. Why you ask? Because most of the long term D3 and D2 coaches that they were actually targeting to get to move said "to hell with it, I've been at Generic State U for so many damn seasons and I'm not giving up then program that I took so long to build". So you still had the log jam in D3 and D2 in regards to NT spots and the ONLY difference was those long term coaches took the discounted hit for rewards points but stayed right where they were at and there ended up being, essentially, no "new" spots for new users to grab in the tournaments.

I hope they made sense, if it didn't here's the short version. They tried reduced credits, long term coaches still didn't move, which did not free up NT bids, and only ****** off the users that had been here the longest. The idea was about as popular as a Muslim at a Donnie Trump rally.

Posted by kmfloyd on 3/1/2016 11:11:00 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.

That excuse simply doesn't fly. They have television stations. All they'd need to do is have there talking heads talk about the game from time to time. Maybe even play them to interact with the WIS community. How much could that really cost?

this was already explained very nicely earlier in the thread, i forget by who, but it really hit the nail on the head.

in short, big businesses have divisions. those divisions are responsible to track their own financial information, and to be financially viable on their own. big companies don't just give free stuff from one division to the other - there may be a discount - but generally, the divisions "pay" each other for services. otherwise, you can't track the true cost and profit of different initiatives within the company.

more importantly, you are forgetting about opportunity cost. advertising is the #1 form of revenue for the TV division of Fox. those slots are basically filled. if they use a filled slot, for WIS, they lose money - and tv is big business compared to little old WIS. the open slots they fill by advertising their own stuff, there might be something there... but they have a TON of products and services that are WAY bigger than WIS, to fill those slots.

anyway, there are a number of other reasons explained better than i would explain them, so i'll leave it at that.

Posted by emy1013 on 3/1/2016 11:07:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rogelio on 2/29/2016 10:37:00 AM (view original):

Posted by joco45215 on 2/29/2016 7:35:00 AM (view original):
For us guys who play and struggle we pay full price or get a $1.50 of every now and then. That's the big problem I've gotten bout ten people to sign up in the first few season I played. (Before the two a day worlds) the problem is a beginner doesn't get the experience in just their first season. They won't sign up for more. Not for 45$ or what ever it is to play thru your first recruiting class. The price point is outrageous considering the fan duel experience people can use that 12$ every two weeks and play the online gaming of betting on sports. If they don't hit they are in the same boat we are nothing to show for the money.

As as far as message boards of our favorite basketball teams. Seems like they have fallen off over the years as well. Bearcatnews.com is a shell of its self.

Lower the price point 7$ a season, I'll go back to having 2 to 5 teams instead of the one I suck at now.

This has been my point all along...on a variety of different threads. I don't think WIS needs to lower the cost overall, but it could consider running a $4.95 first season, FreeHD during the RL Tournament, AND add a special one-time, 5 season purchase price for new users. Perhaps take that initial commitment down to the $7 per season that joco mentions (so, $35-$39, rather than $60).

After that, if users consistently fall out of the $$, very few are going to stick around. Since D3 is clogged up with old time coaches that consistently hog most of the D3 NT spots, then that is a barrier to entry for new members. It artificially raises noob's costs and makes their retention very unlikely. So, after 15 seasons at D3, rewards need to diminish to create an incentive for experienced users to move up.

Firings should be increased at upper tier D1 and should be entirely absent below mid-majors. How the hell does it help anyone to fire the coach at UMBD?! If someone wants to pay to suck at UMBD, take their money!!! The spots that need to be opened up via firings are the Big 6 jobs and positions with higher baselines (assuming that system were retained). My personal feeling on the talk about a 50 season perpetuity clause in user IDs is just: no. I'm full of "no" on that. Users should be able to play as they wish, at D1 & D2, but this game desperately needs a noob level...no other place for that than D3.

There is no point in spending any money on advertising until some of those changes to the price structure are made and cosmetic changes are made to facilitate play on a phone. It'd be great, if that huge update were tabled so that some minor updates, the cosmetic change and a new price/rewards scheme could be rolled out quickly. Then web-advertising on Fox's own platforms would make sense during the upcoming tournament. They run a tourney pick'em game...a banner ad on that would capture the right audience.

Rogelio, they've already tried the reduced benefits after X number of seasons at D3 and D2, with no reduction at all for D1. That idea went over like the proverbial "turd in the punch bowl" and got removed quickly. Why you ask? Because most of the long term D3 and D2 coaches that they were actually targeting to get to move said "to hell with it, I've been at Generic State U for so many damn seasons and I'm not giving up then program that I took so long to build". So you still had the log jam in D3 and D2 in regards to NT spots and the ONLY difference was those long term coaches took the discounted hit for rewards points but stayed right where they were at and there ended up being, essentially, no "new" spots for new users to grab in the tournaments.

I hope they made sense, if it didn't here's the short version. They tried reduced credits, long term coaches still didn't move, which did not free up NT bids, and only ****** off the users that had been here the longest. The idea was about as popular as a Muslim at a Donnie Trump rally.

You and I have had this conversation before, emy. You keep missing the point. WIS applied that to BOTH D3 & D2! They also applied it much earlier than I suggest. I know perfectly well that many coaches despise D1 and choose to stay in D2. I've no idea what misguided notion WIS had when it diminished the credits, but if you target it only at opening D3, then it would work fine.

Here's the other point: if it got "quickly" removed, then it had no opportunity to function!!! Isn't that the obvious? All it could possibly do is irritate users without actually achieving the goal of moving them out of their spot. The POINT is to **** those users off and compel them to either (a) move up to D2; (b) stay where they are and pay slightly more for the privilege (WHICH I AM ASSURED ABOVE ISN'T RELEVANT TO ANYONE'S DECISION TO PLAY!!!); or (c) get ****** off & quit.

I am convinced that in the short run, individuals ***** and moan and make poor choices, but in the long run, larger groups of people, taken as a whole, act rationally.

I started in year 7 and went until around 64, left and found nothing had changed except a cosmetic change here and ther and now scheduling a bunch of sims is a great idea. I only play dIII, so i cannot to speak to the ills of DI, but when whatif was sold to fox by the guys in cincy is when it was the beginning of the end. regardless of changes in the game that ran people off if not for being sold and forgotten about, someeone would have been there to timely workto fix the errors, or just improve things in general. u get out of what u put into things. if nobody is working on the game constantly trying to improve it, it gets stale. The idea of buying it, even if joking, was the smartest thing said, and i don't mean by the consumers, but my someone who will invest the time,money and effort to make this the elite game it started as. People will come, and retention is the key. i don't always need to grow my business by 30%, if i am doing my job well i will retain old customers and as new ones filter in , i make sure they are retained. then minimal growth overt time will be more than enough to grow to that larger number because attrician is eliminated