thanks for the kind words emy. anyway, to your point about seble wishing/hoping... one thing that really put me off, i sent him a ticket about 10 days after the update, because i had made a point to stay away from the early conversation, and he basically went away by the time i had the chance to think through what consequences his changes might have. anyway, somewhere in there i was trying to establish a pattern, so he could try to avoid that pattern, about fatal flaws in major updates that hurt the HD population and turned sentiment very sour - despite loads of good being in those updates. obviously part of that was the new engine rewrite, and the d1 recruit debacle. i explained to him, he made a LOT of change - and most of it actually was fine. the engine rewrite had a few serious kinks with fatigue being insanely severe and what not, but about 80% of the change he made, was done pretty well. but nobody talks about it like that, its all about the major screw up that wrecked d1 populations. with potential era, it was hard caps and freshman all capping out. i was basically arguing that he needed to break it down, because the update he proposed was so massive, its guaranteed to contain a few poison pills.
it just showed the real lack of understanding of what was going on in this community, at the most basic level, when he said he disagreed - that d1 coaches didn't leave over the disaster that was d1 recruit gen - but rather, it was the recession! seriously? there are 3 divisions, one loses a third of all coaches in the span of 8 months or so, the other two are roughly stable. i guess it really could make sense that the recession would destroy d1 coaches, because clearly, those folks who already put hundreds of dollars into the game, are the ones most likely to stop spending when money gets tight - right? no, obviously its the opposite, and still d1 had the massive drop, not d2, not d3. i know hes somewhat ignorant of what its like to really play this game, but i was honestly shocked that he took no responsibility for the huge drop in d1 population that is clearly shown by the numbers.
so, while i think there actually is plenty of good in this update - i also think it doesn't really matter. the mood is too sour, he has no bank of goodwill to draw on from putting out a couple small updates and upping his community action, before what is effectively a hail mary (what else can you call a total re-write of the games' most beloved component, when world pop is taking a dive?). the strategy he took here, from a business standpoint, its just terrible, and it basically doomed him to fail before he started - the update was so big, its guaranteed to contain a couple poison pills, at a time when the community has a very low tolerance for such things. that, to me, is the #1 issue - and none of that at all requires some faith in my predictive prowess in this game.