A cut in prices would help retention, I believe. One problem is that we do not have nearly as many people who are holding 3+ teams.

What if they locked D-III to owners with 3 or fewer seasons where they HAD to move to D-II. It would help the newbies in D-III get their feet wet and add to the competition at D-II and D-I.

Quote: Originally Posted By ermackey on 11/02/2009What if they locked D-III to owners with 3 or fewer seasons where they HAD to move to D-II. It would help the newbies in D-III get their feet wet and add to the competition at D-II and D-I

I don't think this would really accomplish anything. D3 would turn into even more of a ghost town and would alienate people even more. ESPECIALLY if the time frame is only 3 seasons. If I took over a team and had to recruit 5-6 guys, I'd certainly want to see what kind of success they could have as seniors.

There are also people who like having their D3 team and why would WIS want to **** them off?

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acn24, I'm not sure ermackey means to have his preference actually implemented. He may have just been voicing his opinion regarding vet dominance of D3. I happen to disagree with that it's unsportsmanlike. To each his own, and as many have pointed out, those vets HELP D3, not hurt it.

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As my man dogget says, "some opinions are more correct than others". Or something like that.

ermackey, it just seems like you're not coming from a very informed place. There's no question that forcing people to move up from DIII after three seasons would empty out DIII way more than it already has. That's not really an opinion, that's just common sense.

When DIII was full and competitive, it was when a good amount of veterans still held teams there. There was a huge amount of help and assistance given to new coaches, which greatly sped up their learning curve and kept them around.

I just grabbed another DII team, and after seeing that several of the coaches were inexperienced and asking very elemantary questions on our CC, I offered up help. I've been sitemailing with two coaches in the conference over the last week, and I can tell you they've learned more from that than they did in their previous handful of seasons toiling away, in the dark about a lot of things.

The notion that having vets in DII/DIII is bad for those levels is fallacious, and has been disproven by what we've witnessed with our own eyes. DIII right now is a crappy ghost town, I can't fathom how anyone could think this is better than when it was full and competitive.

Yes I see a ton of coaches on d2 and d1 for that matter that really dont belong. In fact I probally dont belong in d1. But considering the others Im middle of the road. Fox needs to advertise on there sports website about the leagues and offer discounted season to new coaches. just my .02

Lowering the price does no good if you don't advertise.

Restoring full reward points at all levels does no good if you don't advertise.

Advertising to attract new customers does no good until the product is fixed. There has been a clamoring for bettter endgame control, etc. It sounds like they're doing that, so wouldn't that trigger a push for new users?

Quote: Originally Posted By ermackey on 11/02/2009What if they locked D-III to owners with 3 or fewer seasons where they HAD to move to D-II. It would help the newbies in D-III get their feet wet and add to the competition at D-II and D-I

I, for one, have never wanted to coach DI. I have six teams in DIII, some for over 35 seasons. Yet, I've never won a DIII title ( I have two titles at DII).

The RL coaches I admire are those who stay at the same small school their entire careers. That's how I've constructed my Dynasty play and I'd have to be forced to leave those schools.

Quote: Originally Posted By ermackey on 11/02/2009What if they locked D-III to owners with 3 or fewer seasons where they HAD to move to D-II. It would help the newbies in D-III get their feet wet and add to the competition at D-II and D-I

Forcing their customers to do anything would be a bad move for WIS.

this is from a ticket on rewards pts I sent in this summer, might give some insight as to what seble thinks, I am almost sure he answered at least part of the ?'s, I think he knows the issues, and sincerely thinks reward pts is a bad answer for d2/d3, I posted back the best arguments I could, he was not swayed:

Date	User
6/1/2009 9:42 AM	oldresorter
2 suggestions: 1 - for the summer only, re-install reward points in d2/d3 - it is a bad time for business anyhow, see what the impact might be? 2 - I would publish a 'rough' timetable for the engine release - fall of 09 would probably be adequate Aug 09 even better - maybe even hold a dev chat where you ask for input and can ask ?'s of the users about the engine????
6/1/2009 4:38 PM	Customer Support
Thank you for the suggestion. Suggestions are compiled and evaluated once a month. They are then prioritized and added to our future feature set lists we use for future updates. Feedback and suggestions are what help us continue to improve our site and our games. Thank you for taking the time to help us improve.
6/1/2009 4:42 PM	oldresorter
in case this is an automatic response, I wanted to make sure seble or whoever else should read it does. I think a timely move for the rewards points 'might' generate some interest I really don't know what an announcement in terms of the engine would do, but it could not hurt. Maybe instead of a chat, a forum thread from seble regarding the engine might help, where seble asks coaches to chime in????
6/2/2009 9:58 AM	Customer Support
, 1. We've done extensive analysis on reward points and the system currently in place is the most fair we could come up with. Under the original system, we were giving out so many reward points that many people were playing completely for free, especially by dominating DIII against newbies. If someone can dominate at DI and play for free then more power to them because the level of competition is much higher. 2. Sometime soon we'll be starting the process of evaluating what needs to be done with the engine. Until that time we can't really make any meaningful estimates on a release.
6/2/2009 10:28 AM	oldresorter
sound good on the engine release (you might still consider a discussion thread on the forum???), I tend to agree with #1, but ..... I would have to wonder if restoring the points would give you fuller worlds and more revenue, you know the argument for it is the guys playing for free stimulate the d2/d3 divisions, such that your paid retention rate, although still somewhat low, is higher than it is now. I for one do not like playing d2/d3 as much as d1, I am honestly asking as someone trying to help? A test for the summer might give you some idea of the validity of the claim that reward pts = more vet participation = more newbie retention???? I honestly don't know the answer, just an idea.
6/2/2009 11:37 AM	Customer Support
We actually made that move in part because indications were that it hurt newbie retention because often they would get destroyed by the guys that had been in DIII for 20 seasons.
6/2/2009 11:53 AM	oldresorter
has it worked (i.e. is the retention rate up)? My observation is the retention rate has not gone up, but I have no facts. When I was playing d3, I often would get a request for help every couple of days, dozens throughout the course of a year. These days, I cannot recall the last request. MANY of the coaches I helped back in the day, are still playing. Worth considering at least.
6/2/2009 2:06 PM	Customer Support
Participation is down, but that's probably due to many factors (poor economy, dislike of recent game changes, poor word of mouth, etc.) . Pretty much everyone is hurting in this economy and we're no exception.

OR, I think you are right on in terms of how it would increase retention rate. Obviously I have no facts to back that up either, but with so few vet coaches in the lower levels you do not have the vet interaction that I remember well from when I joined a few years back. I remember asking questions of many different coaches whose programs I saw as the best in the worlds that I first joined. Without that interaction I highly doubt I am still playing today.

Look at mullycj's recent post: 70% of Smith DIII is SIM. It's simply no fun playing in conferences that are predominately SIM, which must be the case with so many open slots. I stayed in DIII in Smith for 19 seasons. For most of the time I was there, we had 10-12 human coaches. Just before I , it was down to 6 or less. The difference in competitiveness, Coaches Corner discussion, and general fun couldn't be more different.

If I were a newbie, in addition to not having anyone to help teach me the game, its just no fun when you're in a conference that has maybe one or two other human coaches, where you end up with 10-20 SIM games and no Coaches Corner discussion during the entire season.

I'm not sure if WIS is right that rewards points hurt retention rate (I would tend to disagree), but they need to do something to reverse the trend at DIII, and offering reward points might be a good place to start.