Fellow Owners,

In World A we have ben sitting steadily at 10 openings for 2 months.

In World B we have been solid at 8 openings for 3 weeks.

In still a third, World C, we rolled at 6 and haven't budged in 10 days.

I know these worlds are not isolated examples. And I am deeply frustrated by this long time flaw in the HBD pre-season process.

This problem comes up a lot. Sometimes there are temporary fixes like commissioners offering discouts, merit based free seasons or other inducements for new owners to sign on the dotted line. The most frustrating aspect of this game to me--more so than too long spring training, coach hiring or even year long injuries to star players is the interminable wait between seasons far too many worlds are forced to endure.

I'd like to establish a blue ribbon panel that any HBD owner can contribute to right here in the forum. As I see it there are two areas to examine:

1. What can WIS do that is not being done to improve recruitment between seasons and/or what creative enhancements through the HBD software can WIS empower us to have more control of our off-season fates?

2. What can we do as Commissioners and owners that we are not currently doing to get our worlds filing faster? I suspect the greater burden has to fall on the game itself and therefore WIS. But we shouldn't overlook our part either. My hope is that by putting all our ideas in one place focussing on just the one topic--HBD recruitment and filling of our worlds--we might attract the attention of the powers that be. Quite frankly, I've been on the edge of losing complete interest for several years now. I stay because I love the game and the fellowship I find here, but I am an unhappy customer. And it is in the best interests of WIS to fix this broken prtion of the game. If not, one day it will all come crashing down.

So what are your ideas? What innovations in coding or simple policy can we come up with that might help us not only retain disenchanted owners but perhaps bring some of our long lost disenfranchised cohorts back into the fold.?

Think outside the box. Thanks in advance for joining in this thought experiment..

--SERMONAUTHOR

With all due respect, the good worlds still do not have any trouble filling. In Doubleday, we have not sat open for more than 3 days in a long time and that includes as many as 6 openings one season and Opie filled Cooperstown in a day with 12 openings. I personally think that if worlds are having long waits after rollover, it is a sign of a world with too many flaws. Once again, I don't say this to be a jerk. I'm hoping that it is received in some manner as constructive, but if a world is struggling internally, it needs to reevaluate itself internally.

An initial example to get the ball rollIng? Why not?

I've always thought it would be helpful for WIS to allow a certain number of teams, say 3-5 per season, to launch without owners. Each commissioner could flip a switch or button and designate it as a "Ghost Team" ala the infamous Ghost Runners of our near-fogotten sandlot youth.

Why would WIS allow this? They would make less profit, right?

Maybe the prize could be reduced slightly for each ghost team activated. Maybe they allow it because they are bleeding customers and this is an acceptable bandage.

How would the AI work? I don't know. Help me out here. What works in this plan? What doesn't? Offer a fix to make rudderless teams work in our game.

I've seen only one thing that works: An active, committed commissioner who recruits hard. Now, I've commissioned WiS leagues myself, and yeah I know life gets in the way and there are other things you'd rather do and you hope the guys in the league can take care of themselves.

But if you want to actually keep a world healthy, moving along, and active, honest to god the thing that happens is the commish sacrifices some of his own personal time so the other guys can just take care of their teams. It's kinda thankless unless you're the kind of person who takes it on yourself. So god bless the ones who do.

As for AI teams, the only thing I can say is there'd have to be a cap on the number of AI teams allowed. Then it becomes a slippery slope. Do those teams ever fill again? Do new owners want to pick up AI teams? How strong is the AI? Do they compete for players same as Real teams? Does that **** off the Real owners? And then, say you make it only six AI teams allowed, do new owners look at the world and say, oh hell no, six AI teams, I want no part of that?

Well, Damag is definitely more articulate than me. But what he said.

Leagues are a bit like neighborhoods to me - when one property starts to decline, it tends to hasten the rest.
If a league doesn't have a commissioner dedicated to replacing or monitoring wayward owners, then the league becomes damaged goods. And in this environment, that can be a death sentence.

There are still some very good neighborhoods in HBD, as pointed out above, but they aren't that by accident. It's a hard working commish behind it and other involved owners looking out for damaged properties.

I have noticed that the tougher the MWR (assuming the HOA actually enforces it), the quicker the world fills. Tanking is probably the quickest way to ruin a neighborhood.

The pricing model is ridiculous, joining a new league and creating a new team is cost-prohibitive.

They make literally $0 from dormant leagues, but they do literally nothing to optimize supply and demand by lowering the barrier to join. Keeping them filled keeps them churning and keeps the revenue coming in.

One day we will go to log in and the servers are going to be down, because the site is going to end up being shuttered without warning. Enjoy it while it lasts I guess

Speed of world scheduling is almost entirely a function of commissioner recruiting effort (mostly via SiteMails). If you aren't filling, recruiting isn't happening.

Offering financial incentives does not typically attract long-term owners. Good owners will get credits most years, keeping the cost under $80 per year for a decent team. If the world regularly needs financial incentives to fill, many good owners will go elsewhere, as it is a sign that real recruiting isn't taking place.

PSA time: I prioritize worlds that take additional steps to avoid noncompetitive behavior by evaluating:

1. Competitiveness -- Review World Rankings (thx to mchales_army) and performance since. Any regular sub-50 game or 120 win seasons?
2. Minimum Win Requirements (MWR) -- Reduces tanking, which you want. The stronger, the better. Must be enforced, not lip service. Review classified ads for world MWR.
3. Commissioner -- I'd rather this didn't matter, but it does. Commish turnover doesn't make a bad world, but it does raise the odds of delaying scheduling, which effects World Rankings and morale. The main job of the commish is recruiting. This doesn't mean just a pretty classified ad if you have more than a couple vacancies.

What can WIS do:

1. Make sure the SiteMail indicator works and make the default setting that SiteMails generate e-mails (rather than having to opt-in).
2. Enable all owners to view the private world rules pages for any world.
3. Pay commissioners more than the $5 per season credit -- perhaps ramp up the credit based on how fast scheduling happens.
4. Update ballparks and social functionality so that it doesn't feel like a 10+ year old game.
5. Accelerate the merging of worlds unlikely to fill.
6. Build in MWR functionality, customizable by commissioners.

It really is up to the commish to keep the worlds moving. I have a list of guys who either were in my world and expressed an interest in coming back or disappeared mysteriously (we rolled as the site went over to Fanball and I lost four owners, never heard from them). I also send out random invites to owners who I want to join. I don't feel enough commishes do this.

As opie mentions just above, site mail being automatically linked would be tremendous. I feel that many owners don't have that linked and it stifles offseason communication.

Also, update the game.

We're getting a lot of great feedback. Thanks.

We are clearly focussing on the Uber Commissioner angle and the broken windows theory of keeping neighborhoods desirable. All excellent points. I especially like the idea of WIS offering more than a lousy $5 credit. I love the idea of an incentive based program to increase that $5 to as much as a free season. You would get the cream of HBD vets vying for the privilege of being Commish if they made it worth our while.

The Ghost team idea doesn't seem to be attracting much favor here. I think it could work if WIS saw the wisdom through self interest to make it happen. But setting Ghost Teams aside, what other ideas--outrageous or practical--that do not involve the commissioner's role could we innovate and employ--either on our own or with WIS assistance?

Merges. There needs to be at least some merged because this is getting out of hand. Some worlds like Williams, Inside the Park, Perde Martinez, etc. have no chance of filling because there are so many openings and not a lot of effort from the league members. There are currently 206 openings as I’m writing this. 206! The worlds that have no chance of filling need to merge for the better of HBD. This problem is going to keep getting worse and every merger eliminates 32 of those 206 openings.

As sad as mergers are for losing a world's history I agree they can be a good solution. I have been the architect of four mergers and let me tell you they are a logistical nightmare to pull off. They happen in two stages.

1. Owner approval/consunsus from all worlds involved.
2. Moving franchises into the new world structure.

You might think the logistics of trying to keep owners in the same league (AL\NL) and cities as much as possible would be the more difficult task. But I've found trying to convince 50-60 owners on the merits of a merger is by far the more difficult task. One of the main reasons for this is that any two owners in a world can veto a merge. WIS will allow the majority to prevail if there is only one dissenter. When a second says no the merge is dead. And you need to convince the owners of all worlds involved.

I would like to see WIS to allow the majority to win on a motion to merge with 4 being the required number to block. The tyranny of the ultra minority would be eliminated but the integrity of a world strongly op posed would still be served . If we had this one improvement we would see more mergers to help eliminate so many unsupportable worlds. And because this is a simple policy issue as opposed to a coding one it would be simple for CS to make the change.

Why not have the sim run teams if they do not roll in a certain amount of time. To me it makes the most sense.

I hate to say it, but HBD is slowly dying. I run Kinsella (after overeasy disappeared) and I recruit regularly to fill the world and it just takes longer and longer to fill. Used to just fill within a day, then it started taking 3 days, then a week...now it took almost 2 weeks to fill with only 2 openings. We are a solid world with great owners, but most of the really great owners have left, myself almost included.

Why is this, well, when was the last update? How many worlds do we really need at this point? Why havent the silly bugs been fixed? Does WIS even care about this game anymore?

In the past, I knew alot of veteran owners would recruit real life friends, or family, or even other users they knew from this site...I know I did. When they went away that promotion venue was gone.

Sim teams would not really solve anything other than getting your league to start on time. Lets say I have 2 sim teams in my world when it rolls. The next season I have 2 more leave, then all of a sudden I have to fill 4 vacancies...so then we roll with 4 sim teams, and the next season more leave. All of a sudden you have a daunting task of filling a lot of open slots while noone wants to join your league because you have alot of sim teams.

I really have no answer, other than maybe WIS actually fixing these silly bugs, and showing they really do care about this game....oh and get rid of the season ending injuries, they are ridiculous (but thats just my opinion).