Hey everyone, I have been trying to get to know you all through support tickets, the forums, meetings, emails, site mails, and just about everything else but I wanted to say that one of our long time players, majique hosts a podcast/stream every two weeks and both Chris Cobb, our new Director of Development and myself, the new Product Manager on staff will be guests this week.

Although traditionally a Gridiron Dynasty podcast we'd love to have any and all of the WhatIfSports family come and ask questions and get to us a little better. Feel free to pick our brains, ask questions, or just enjoy the show.

You can enter the show tomorrow through this link:
ENTER BROADCAST STUDIO (starting on 12/3) - remember it starts at 9pm ET.

If you miss the live show majique posts all his shows on his Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChfBbU6nJAy9VZbKdY9yGaw

Thanks again!

Adam

Update: New link

sounds fun guys - I'll be at work during the show but will definitely try to catch it after. Hopefully some SLB guys can get in and ask some questions :)

I’ve been meaning to listen to it, but audio/video items aren’t things I have much time for. If there was a written transcript, I’d be much more able to digest it. I was hoping to make it live for this one, but time didn’t allow for it.

If the above report is correct, that’s very disappointing. I think SLB could bring in more traffic proportionally once it’s brought back up to standard with QoL updates, re-introduction of live play, engine and format updates, and system improvements to things like the fatigue model.

SLB would have a much stronger roi than I think they anticipate because current math is based on current proportion of business, not what SLB could be (once was). There’s a decent untapped market for SLB in addition to the number of SLB players that have migrated to dynasty as SLB got stale that would likely return once SLB was brought up to speed.

At the same time, the fact that no one showed up doesn’t speak very well for us. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

it’s gonna take 6 months for them to catch up for sure, that’s a given. But I’d love for someone to start a thread here with the current fixes/changes/updates that we’d all love to see.


I think that’d be more beneficial than just yelling that they don’t know what they’re doing

I had (and still have) finals that day. Wish I made it now that I heard others from SLB ain’t show up

But I’d love for someone to start a thread here with the current fixes/changes/updates that we’d all love to see.

TomZ had a list that I think would still rate very highly on most owners lists, and I’m confident live play would also rank highly. The proposed full support of progressive leagues would also probably be a hit. Then a handful of small quality of life updates such as fixing salaries, etc

I think a fresh post with the details of the above would be beneficial.

Some thoughts from me:

• Tools for progressive leagues
  • Why: Progressive leagues are great for retention and predictable revenue for WIS. The more progressives, the easier it is for SportsHub to forecast how much they can invest in SLB
  • What, exactly: I'm not sure since I don't play progressives. I would guess league management tools, additional multi-season tracking, better draft tools, a new "league type" (i.e. Open, Theme, Career, Progressive), etc. but others should chime in here
  • Amount of work: A medium amount of work would go a long way
  • Goal: Get more people to play progressives
• Live play
  • Why: Live is super engaging and makes WIS feel like a game
  • What, exactly: Build a new live engine with more controls and better animations
  • Amount of work: A LOT. Not only would the engine need to be rewritten entirely, but any Live implementation should support iOS and Android, or at least mobile web browsers. This would be a real challenge
  • Goal: Get people to spend more time on the site (ad $) and have more concurrent teams
• Fix salaries
  • Why: They are broken
  • What, exactly: Dynamic pricing is a great idea but the execution was flawed. If done correctly, it would go a long way to making the game feel less stagnant
  • Amount of work: Unknown!
  • Goal: Keep the game fresh for existing players
• Various quality of life improvements
  • Why: There are simply a lot of ways to improve the game that have been floated over years but not implemented
  • What, exactly: I'm sure they have an internal list of these already
  • Amount of work: Can be done in small chunks alongside larger initiatives
  • Goal: Bring the game into 2020 — appease long time players and also have features that will attract and retain new players

That is a great list to start off ozo. I'll add some of my own thoughts as well.

I'll start off with saying that I am not a developer, I won't even guess how long or how difficult these changes would be. These are just things that in my own experience I'd love to see improvements.

Tools:

• Phone App
  • I know it may not be top of the list for everyone, but I would love an app for WIS that would simplify my experiences. Even just a "companion" app of sort that didn't have all the sites features, but would allow me to check/update lineups or boxscores, send sitemails, or check forums. I know they just updated the site to be better for mobile, but it's still not a seamless experience on iOS.
• Draft/Commissioner tools
  • I would absolutely love a draft center that would all teams in a progressive to "submit" their rosters/keepers, and have the available players list auto-populate the remaining players. Owners could have the ability to search players in a specific draft class IN THE DRAFT CENTER, rather than having to manually search the available players list and draft center separately.
  • This would also encourage more owners to start/run progressives as the most time consuming/difficult part of a progressive is running the draft and updating the draft boards to ensure a seamless draft. A fantasy football style draft tool would, in my opinion, would be an incredible tool.
• Updated salaries
  • They're broken, every knows it - but nothing has been done for years to correct it.
  • At this point, just resetting to default and then re-implementing an improved dynamic pricing would be my suggestion. Every 4-6 months (can call them seasons...) the salaries should adjusted with the previous sets uses, and should only take OL's into account.
  • This would allow players to go in and out of circulation without certain players becoming unusable over time.

These are just a couple things on my mind

A lot of this is on the features list and information I have gathered from some of the users in the community, so far.

It all seems reasonable, but like you've stated, also a lot of work, so a couple of things just for visibility into my thought process, overall this game needs to be rewritten completely. Although the UI was updated fairly recently, the backend and app layer sit on some pretty old code. So the question is, what can we do in the meantime to make the current game more fun and engaging while the larger effort(s) is tackled. I think the last couple of posts have touched on some of the things we can do. But I love hearing from the community and you all know these games a lot better than I do.... right now....

Thanks,

Adam

At this point we probably aren't too greedy if we can count on a rewrite coming, and perhaps are given an approximate timeframe for said rewrite. Do what you can...anything is better than nothing. One of the last discussions mentioned that dynamic pricing would be reviewed then brought back. That never happened. An end to empty promises would be a good start.

Give us a few new toys to play with in the interim...

I think the best way to attract new players is to improve how they first interact with the site, right now many users play a season or two and quit because they're confused by the bad advice of 1,500 IP and 6,000 PA and annoyed they get beaten down by Open League regulars. Since so many people like the current Open League format, you could keep that as is but add another format. Let's call it Beginner Mode:

Beginner Mode Rules:

• Restrict who's allowed to play
  • Maybe fewer than 20 teams and fewer than 2 championships? If it's only complete beginners I'm not sure these will fill, but you have to keep the sharks out of the kiddie pool.
• Minimums and maximums for IP and PA
  • I'm not sure what the exact numbers should be, but make sure no one has too many or too few. Get new owners pointed in the right direction.
• No deadballers
  • 1920-present should work, lets people draft Ruth, Cobb and other top echelon famous Hall of Famers without getting frustrated because their 50 HR modern favorite player hit 14 HR for the season facing deadball pitchers in Target Field.
• Give credits/advice to owners having trouble
  • I've always found it a bit odd that WIS gives such a high percentage of its credits to the best owners on the site. Not saying you shouldn't reward good players, but the owners really in need of credits are the ones who show up and get killed because they don't know what they're doing. If you had something where any owner who pays for their first team and finishes under a certain win percentage gets a sitemail offering them a free team and some links to the strategy forum, you'd retain a lot more customers,

This is just a rough draft, but because open leagues are usually how new users discover the site, if a higher percentage of them have a positive experience to start a higher percentage will stick around and migrate to the other leagues.

This is a great idea! ^^^^

Agree with what 06GSP said about Open Leagues. I had played a little bit here about 10 years ago, and then when MLB shut down our Fantasy Baseball season this year, about 10 of us hopped in an Open League. Most people got crushed. I understand the numbers are the numbers, but it's hard trying to explain why some guy named Tully Sparks is shutting down a roster of Trouts, Griffeys, and Ripkens. Not everyone who plays is going to take the time to learn about normalization from Day 1. A beginner league like that will let those who want to level up do it without enduring such a rude awakening.

Somewhat similar to that - offering smaller private leagues could let a group of beginners come in without being thrown into an open league. Start with an 8 team option and increase from there. I don't think new owners will take the time to create a Theme League on their first go. They just see the private option that turns into a 24 team OL after 7 days.

One other thought - different frequency for when games sim. That may be a logistical and coding nightmare, I have no idea. But I can attest that my group would have elected for a 5x a day option if possible.