Quote: Originally Posted By seble on 8/27/2009
Those are arguable issues, but would you consider them dealbreaker issues that make the game unplayable? It seems like there is a disconnect between the actual shortcomings of the game and the amount of outrage.

I wouldn't say "unplayable", but some of these issues make the game less appealing than it should be, imo. Please look at the post I made on 5/13/09 that slymonium bumped on page 12. As far as the issues I have talked about in this thread, I can give you suggestions on how to fix all of them.

The suggestions are really good, but most are ancillary type features, things that would make the game better but not really problems with what the game consists of now. But the tone of these forums is that the game is terrible and there is nothing good about it. That's what is frustrating for me. I'm not saying I need people to have a love fest with the game, but I don't understand the negativity of so many posts in this forum.

All I can say is that I would love to put in most or all of your suggestions today, but it unfortunately doesn't work like that. We've lost a few people here and had additional work given to us, so we have to make hard choices about how we spend our time. We'd love to hire 20 more people and have multiple people working on each game at all times, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. So please try to enjoy the game for what it is and continue to post your ideas here for when we're able to work on them.

Quote: Originally Posted By monkee on 8/27/2009

Quote: Originally Posted By seble on 8/27/2009
It seems like there is a disconnect between the actual shortcomings of the game and the amount of outrage.

statement made in earnest and without malice:

Seble I highly recommend that you go back and reread this thread (try to be as objective as possible)

because you will see a repeated pattern where you post, we post our honest thoughts, and then you ignore them for a long period and we get irate

until finally

you post again, we play along again, you dont show up for 6 weeks and we get irate again

it's happened like 3 times over the life of this thread (dont you get it?)

seble look at this - I just looked at the thread - are people negative with the game or is it something else

Quote: Originally Posted By monkee on 5/12/2009
organic stoppage in play so that there are more opportunities for substitution - some TOs = out of bounds, quarterly scheduled official time outs like in real life - this would help make your substitution patterns more exacting and improve mpg targeting

there is a clear cut salary imbalance between offensive and defensive stats (or correspondingly defensive rating doesnt have sufficient impact while costing significantly more)

players from the 60s/70s have better 3pt shooting statistics than the players of the 80s (and they didnt even shoot 3s)

situational setting and substitutions at the end of games

oh and this is for us (not you) to decide: "SimLeague basketball is a very good game"

this is monkee's first post in the thread (of course things decayed from there)

I didn't say every post was negative. I know things started off pretty well. I made a point at the beginning to say that I may not be active in this thread so why did it become so negative?

Quote: Originally Posted By seble on 8/28/2009
I didn't say every post was negative. I know things started off pretty well. I made a point at the beginning to say that I may not be active in this thread so why did it become so negative?

Because NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE, and when people make suggestions, all you do is grandstand and tell us how good YOU think the game is...well guess what....we don't give a damn what you think about the game...we're the ones that pay to play the thing...the litmus test should be what the customer thinks, enjoys, etc....I mean, would it be unfair to say that you lost hundreds, maybe THOUSANDS of NBA sim players from 2003 and 2004...I would love to see the revenue numbers for the NBA sim, I know I never will, but its probably a good laugh.

Name corrections and clarifications aren't too much to ask for, especially when you have multiple players with the same name, and players who changed their names over their careers...that's a good place to start...that would show that you're at least MILDLY INTERESTED in bettering this game.

Is it really too much to ask for you to put the ping pong paddle and/or the Genesis controller down?

You really should be doing nothing short of BEGGING to retain your customer base for the NBA sim...and no, the NBA sim doesn't gross a lot of money, but its because you all have driven MANY (not a few) players a way with your mindless, senseless, illogical changes.

Quote: Originally Posted By slymonium on 8/27/2009

Quote: Originally Posted By zizzo24 on 5/14/2009

While we have your ear I gotta few for you Seble. I don't think it's anything that hasn't been brought up by myself or someone else at some point (except #6):

1) It's been brought up before and I have no idea how hard it would be to implement but I'd love to see in season trades as an option. Just like the hockey and baseball SIM have in place. You can make it a check box option when setting up a league that way the leagues that wish to use it can.

2) Another check box option to have different sized rosters. One for the standard 12 man roster and one for a 15 man roster option. Again not sure if that's an easy change but it would give yet another option for creating leagues.

3) How about the downloadable spreadsheet like the baseball SIM has at season's end. That would be an excellent addition especially for those of us that keep track of the stats for ongoing leagues or for anyone that wants to keep a copy of league's they've been in.

4) It would be great if someday we can tie together seasons like they do in baseball for the ongoing/prog & reg leagues. Just a nice little feature for those of us obsessed with stats.

5) Another one that's already been mentioned but using some sort of draft forum where you can put all the players in a given draft into a queue - kinda like fantasy drafts on various other sites. If done properly it would certainly cut down on confusion and time for leagues that have some sort of draft.

6) Lastly and this should be an easy one. I'd like to request a few name changes:

Ronald/Flip Murray - Can we just call him Flip Murray for all his seasons?

Maurice/Mo Williams - Can we just call him Mo Williams for all his seasons?

Rasho/Radoslav Nesterovic - Can we use one name or the other?

Bison Dele/Brian Williams - is there a way to tie the search engine to list both names when searching for him?

The Eddie Johnson's. Since they play over the same time frame it gets extremely confusing to which one is which. Can we add the "A." to the one that went to Illinois and played from 1981-82 to 1998-99 (Kings, Suns, Sonics, Hornets, Pacers, Rockets). This would help cut down on confusion especially for prog leagues.

The Michael Smith's. They have one season that overlaps and they both have the same middle name (John). But to cut down on potential confusion can we make one of them Michael J. Smith and leave the other one as Michael Smith?

The two Walter Davis's. Can the one that played during the 50's just be called Walt Davis?

The two Dee Brown's. Can the one from the 90's be Dee K. Brown?

The two Jim Paxson's. Can the elder be Jim E. Paxson?

08-09 Mike Dunleavy - can we add the Jr. like his other seasons since his daddy has the exact same name - again cuts down on confusion.

Marc Iavaroni - There's a couple of seasons where he's listed as Mark - probably should be Marc.

Micheal Williams - There's a couple of seasons where he's listed as Michael Williams.

Here's a few more nitpicky name changes - all these guys have inconsistencies with a capital letter missing for their names in the database:

B.J. Armstrong
J.R. Reid
Raef LaFrentz
Shareef Abdur-Rahim
Tariq Abdul-Wahad
Rusty LaRue
Todd MacCulloch
Don MacLean

Thanks for taking the time guys.

Another one.

Let us also not forget the misspelling for all seasons of Darrall Imhoff, which is spelled Darrell Imhoff in the sim, which I sent a ticket about over a year ago, but nobody cares, its just spelling...........

Quote: Originally Posted By seble on 8/28/2009
I didn't say every post was negative. I know things started off pretty well. I made a point at the beginning to say that I may not be active in this thread so why did it become so negative?

isnt it reasonable to think that you could post a few encouraging words more than every 6 or 8 weeks though? it seems like people are making an effort and responding to you when you do post

(also you might consider banning posters who dont buy teams from participating in certain conversations - like those pertaining to the quality of a sim which they arent playing)

Quote: Originally posted by seble on 8/28/2009The suggestions are really good, but most are ancillary type features, things that would make the game better but not really problems with what the game consists of now. But the tone of these forums is that the game is terrible and there is nothing good about it. That's what is frustrating for me. I'm not saying I need people to have a love fest with the game, but I don't understand the negativity of so many posts in this forum.

what thread are you reading? Because I'm reading this thread, and the game isn't terrible, but there are terrible things about the game. The website and it's customer service are terrible. Yes, that means you. Why are you terrible? Because you don't give a damn about the game or its customers. You just try to put a good face on things every 2 months and save some thread of your image or the game's image. Guess what: You can't. not without some major changes in your attitude, and without consistent evidence that that has happened, we'll continue to feel the way we do.

You're free to think what you want about me or our customer service, but to say I don't care about the game or the people who play it is ridiculous.

seble, remember this:

No one asks to see a manager in a restaurant to compliment the food or the waitstaff. A forum given to express opinions is destined to take on a sharply negative tone.

(By the way, referencing zizzo's post from May 14th quoted on this page - I strongly agree with #3 (downloadable spreadsheet) and #5 (draft ticker).)

jweb have you never heard the common phrase "my compliments to the chef"? and isnt it also common practice to reward waiters tips for good service?

not saying you are wrong in theory, studies do show that negative feedback is more likely than positive feedback in most retail settings - it's just that restaurants with the built in tipping mechanism and such arent an apt example

of course studies also show that engaging with displeased customers in a sympathetic and earnest manner has great positive consequence on customer retention

I do apologize for not being more active. I wish I could be. I took over as the lead on Hoops Dynasty in January and that along with several other projects have kept me busy. I could have made more of an effort to pop in here every month or so, but there isn't much new to say.

We're trying to transition NBA over to Casey who is a jack-of-all-trades developer/support person right now. We're all slammed with work right now and every minute spent in the forums is a minute lost to actual development.

I know we're asking for a lot of patience, but we don't have any other choice. We're unable to add more resources and we're already stretched very thin. The only other solution is to shut down one or more of our games, which we absolutely don't want to do.

Unfortunately, at the rate things are going, the lack of owners using it will close the NBA SIM shortly. I know I'm not the only owner who plans to stop playing once their current credits are gone unless there are some significant changes. Even if people don't like those changes, it will show us that at least WIS cares, which we haven't felt like in some time.