Posted by Benis on 6/15/2017 6:33:00 PM (view original):
"Speaking of organic segues, Benis - does my assumption about HD's lack of promotion make sense? I honestly think that, even with all its flaws, HD could get to a point where each level consistently has 100+ coaches in every world if it were properly promoted. There are most likely more people like us out there that would be willing to stick with it."

Yeah I think it could. It has before. I do think they need to make more tweaks and improve a few things in order to improve the retention but sure, there are plenty of people who would love this type of game.

Populations from a year ago
It COULD get back to this. But honestly, I don't think WIS cares to do anything or invest resources to do anything at this point.

Therein lies the problem with what both of us are looking for. Hopefully at some point they care enough to make necessary changes and promote the game a bit better, but in the meantime we can keep spinning our wheels on what we think a "healthy HD world" looks like.

Mike - you really do seem very upset. Sorry. I don't think that I'm an argumentative *****; I think I'm awesome. Any time the term "daddy" is referenced when talking about two adult males is just off-putting - am I alone on that one? Also, it's good to see you're no longer digging your heels in, but abandoning your argument completely in favor of name calling isn't exactly a surefire way to set yourself apart from the "lots of stupid around here". Just my two cents! I hope you're having a great day.

"As I said, lots of stupid around here. So are so stupid that they don't realize they're starting arguments for no reason. Lot of that around here."

We finally agree about something.

"Therein lies the problem with what both of us are looking for. Hopefully at some point they care enough to make necessary changes and promote the game a bit better, but in the meantime we can keep spinning our wheels on what we think a "healthy HD world" looks like."

It's pretty simple to me. It's about revenue. More revenue means more investment. More investment means more changes and improvements. More improvements mean a better game. It's very straightforward.

If you have 500 people in a world then it's making money. I don't care if they're all at D2/D3. It's making money. If WIS isn't making money, you won't see the changes you want to see.

i think you guys have it mostly half right, half wrong (no offense to anyone). gomiami is right that d2/d3 need to be attractive long-term options for coaches, because of how difficult getting an elite school is. tons of coaches in this game are primarily d2/d3 coaches, or at least, they used to be. that kept d2/d3 active, which is important for new coaches - nobody wants to pay to play vs sims (well, very small % do). it also allowed new coaches to be introduced to experienced coaches which is vitally important for user adoption. at a minimum, having multiple levels that are viable to stay at long term, is clearly better than having only 1. however, the idea that WIS wants all teams full is off to me. from a financial standpoint, it makes sense *if* you assume the # of worlds is fixed, or are really focused on the reward points cost of more worlds (or other administrative costs related to multiple worlds - which should be fairly minimal, the real cost is users). but really, it is far better to have divisions be maybe half full, i don't know the magic number, but coaches who have no shot at the post season ever are not going to stay - that can't be a ton of the coaches. full conferences are really hard to maintain for the same reason. there need to be enough humans in each world for there to be enough competition, for the game to feel full for those who want it - which the game is really pushing up against. but on the other hand, there can't be so many that the average coach is basically only making the NT on a great season - and that is the case in a full d3 or full d1. far better to have double the worlds that are half full, than half the worlds that are totally full. more reward points hit, sure, but far more sustainable over the long run.

on the other hand, shoe is right that having a strong d1 is critical and that having an easier path to d1 is a good idea - especially when you've already made the d3->d1 journey in the past. having to grind through multiple levels you don't want to play, it just makes no sense to me. flip side... saying you don't want users to park in d2/d3 is a narrow view of what this game can mean to people, and its a poor judgement from a business standpoint.

all who said those numbers in tark were good in any sense, no, they are terrible in every sense. tark has traditionally been one of the strongest worlds, its d1 was roughly tied as strongest or better for basically the entire time i was here. a huge part of that is that it was the first new world in the games' history (except for new worlds that came out one right after another in the beginning), and was also the only 2/day for a long time. the # of long time vets i saw still in tark was probably the highest of any world, before i left when the new recruiting came out. those vets are the primary population, except for the whiny idiots who are upset regardless, who were most appalled by the last two recruiting changes (3.0 and the new engine release / d1 recruit gen rework from the last major update). it is also usually long time users who quit when things change, its normal for a big change to push end-stage players over the hump. having more vets was good for tark for a long time, but also if that is mostly who left, it would make sense why tark would take a bigger hit than other worlds.

also mikeT, don't be such an idiot. on a related but distinct note, in the past 10 years minus the last 10 months or whatever, this is the first time i've ever heard anyone suggest recruiting cycles in 2/day are half the speed as 1/day.

My point is that it wouldn't take much to get the ball rolling, though. Here's a quick sample of what a test Facebook Ad campaign could look like if it started running on Sunday when Phelan new coach sign-ups start:

1. Spend $240 on an ad that targets a national audience with an interest in college basketball. I'd put a conservative industry benchmark for an audience of that at around $1.20 CPM (cost per thousand people reached). Depending on pacing, they would reach roughly 200,000 users.
2. The ad has a 2% click-through rate (also a conservative benchmark based on targeted audiences - it could be much higher). 4,000 people click through to the Hoops Dynasty page.
3. Let's say 7% of users that click through convert (not based on any industry standards, just an estimation based on campaigns I've worked on in the past). That would mean 280 new users would be registering and signing up for a team at the $4.95 first season rate, earning WIS $1,386, a 5.78x ROI, not including the value of retained customers after the first season.

Why they haven't tried something like this yet is lost on me. I understand that's just pennies to a company like Fox, but making some money off of a game with an active user base has got to be better than making little money off of a game with a consistently angry user base. I get that this is kind of a random tangent, but the amount of openings I see in Phelan and Knight make it so that I think about this much more than I probably should.

Posted by mbriese on 6/15/2017 7:14:00 PM (view original):
My point is that it wouldn't take much to get the ball rolling, though. Here's a quick sample of what a test Facebook Ad campaign could look like if it started running on Sunday when Phelan new coach sign-ups start:

1. Spend $240 on an ad that targets a national audience with an interest in college basketball. I'd put a conservative industry benchmark for an audience of that at around $1.20 CPM (cost per thousand people reached). Depending on pacing, they would reach roughly 200,000 users.
2. The ad has a 2% click-through rate (also a conservative benchmark based on targeted audiences - it could be much higher). 4,000 people click through to the Hoops Dynasty page.
3. Let's say 7% of users that click through convert (not based on any industry standards, just an estimation based on campaigns I've worked on in the past). That would mean 280 new users would be registering and signing up for a team at the $4.95 first season rate, earning WIS $1,386, a 5.78x ROI, not including the value of retained customers after the first season.

Why they haven't tried something like this yet is lost on me. I understand that's just pennies to a company like Fox, but making some money off of a game with an active user base has got to be better than making little money off of a game with a consistently angry user base. I get that this is kind of a random tangent, but the amount of openings I see in Phelan and Knight make it so that I think about this much more than I probably should.

mbriese, I said this exact same thing when HD 3.0 was first rolling out that we needed to advertise more, not change the game. That was a response to Mike especially at the time who was very adamant that a "niche" game would not see any significant benefit from the advertising, because there wasn't a large enough population.

Literally all FOX has to do is add a note to their score ticker in the middle of sports shows. How much would that cost them? Probably not a whole lot.

I had a similar breakdown that if 200,000 people see it on the ticker, maybe 5% try the game or some other WIS game. That is 10,000 new users. if only 1% stays and buy a package, you've just brought in 1000 new long term users. If you can maintain that 1000 users every few months, you're doing good.

I agree with Gillespie. Shoe3 is missing the fact that not everyone wants to be shoehorned into DI. I played the game to build a dynasty, not coach Kentucky, and I prefer to do it at the lower levels, because I'm not a fan of baseline prestige. A healthy DI is good for the game, but as Benis said, DII and DII that is not healthy is bad, and a DI that is less than prior years, but better than a depleted DII and DIII is considered healthy these days, then your line of thinking is wrong.

Posted by poncho0091 on 6/15/2017 8:17:00 PM (view original):
I agree with Gillespie. Shoe3 is missing the fact that not everyone wants to be shoehorned into DI. I played the game to build a dynasty, not coach Kentucky, and I prefer to do it at the lower levels, because I'm not a fan of baseline prestige. A healthy DI is good for the game, but as Benis said, DII and DII that is not healthy is bad, and a DI that is less than prior years, but better than a depleted DII and DIII is considered healthy these days, then your line of thinking is wrong.

For D2 and D3,to be healthy, they will need to chamge recruiting and make it something else than luck, location and waiting game.

I agree to your point about the worlds being full Gil. I'm not sure what that magic number is either but its definitely at least 100 at each division IMO. I think if every division was around 120-150 the game would be very strong and stable.

Posted by zorzii on 6/15/2017 8:32:00 PM (view original):

Posted by poncho0091 on 6/15/2017 8:17:00 PM (view original):
I agree with Gillespie. Shoe3 is missing the fact that not everyone wants to be shoehorned into DI. I played the game to build a dynasty, not coach Kentucky, and I prefer to do it at the lower levels, because I'm not a fan of baseline prestige. A healthy DI is good for the game, but as Benis said, DII and DII that is not healthy is bad, and a DI that is less than prior years, but better than a depleted DII and DIII is considered healthy these days, then your line of thinking is wrong.

For D2 and D3,to be healthy, they will need to chamge recruiting and make it something else than luck, location and waiting game.

Recruiting is actually pretty good. It is certainly more than "luck, location and waiting game" for the majority of D2 and D3 coaches, although you could be right that some coaches haven't figured that out yet and still see it as you described it.

Posted by gillispie1 on 6/15/2017 6:59:00 PM (view original):
also mikeT, don't be such an idiot. on a related but distinct note, in the past 10 years minus the last 10 months or whatever, this is the first time i've ever heard anyone suggest recruiting cycles in 2/day are half the speed as 1/day.

Do you really think he can help it??

Like he said, there's a lot of stupid around here.

Posted by l80r20 on 6/16/2017 1:59:00 AM (view original):

Posted by zorzii on 6/15/2017 8:32:00 PM (view original):

Posted by poncho0091 on 6/15/2017 8:17:00 PM (view original):
I agree with Gillespie. Shoe3 is missing the fact that not everyone wants to be shoehorned into DI. I played the game to build a dynasty, not coach Kentucky, and I prefer to do it at the lower levels, because I'm not a fan of baseline prestige. A healthy DI is good for the game, but as Benis said, DII and DII that is not healthy is bad, and a DI that is less than prior years, but better than a depleted DII and DIII is considered healthy these days, then your line of thinking is wrong.

For D2 and D3,to be healthy, they will need to chamge recruiting and make it something else than luck, location and waiting game.

Recruiting is actually pretty good. It is certainly more than "luck, location and waiting game" for the majority of D2 and D3 coaches, although you could be right that some coaches haven't figured that out yet and still see it as you described it.

Nothing to figure out.
D2 : Scout D2, find one near sometimes...
Scout D1 : guess which player won't be taken by D1 team (that's the location part, if you are surrounded, hit lower, if you are almost alone, hit higher, hope your appraisals are lucky when it comes to SIMS).
Wait til the second session, hope not to be on too many late prospects or that they sign quick cause your recruiting can go sour fast. Again no real skills except gaming skills and luck with the odds.

D3 : hit D2 recruiting, find one, maybe two. But don't spend too much on scouting there.

Scout D1 : do the same as D2 but take D2 teams into consideration and wait until the final day of recruiting. Hope luck and location is on your side.

At D2, if I see a D3, it's like nobody is on the recruit... I get the players since they will sign before they can actually sign with a D3 team...

Recruiting is not working. Cap and make signings possible for D2 and D3 always.

zorzii, doesn't it make you nervous that so many coaches have figured out recruiting so much better than you describe? And that your old refrain, "cap," gets no traction?