There are 62 human owners in D2 Tark. Ten of them are in the California conference....

67 are in D3
115 are in D1

Knight

D1 111
D2 60
D3 81

Wooden

D1 101
D2 91
D3 90

The current version of the game is not going to attract new users. Enter at D3, get beat down by teams recruiting D1 players, not even with players you recruited, in which you feel any investment, and leave.

WIS had feedback from disgruntled new users that complained that, in their first recruiting session, they had no idea how to recruit. WIS decided that the fix was that no one would be able to recruit in season 1. The mistake in that is believing that the new users making that complaint were ever going to stick with this game. Those are not WIS target consumers.

The reality, that I even read proponents of 3.0 admit, is that D2 is not a great game now. That makes the above problem even worse! You first season in D3 is awful; your next 7 seasons in D2 will be tedious. However, D1 is kinda ok...no chance at growth unless some changes are made.

Advancement needs to be quicker. Downtime needs to be shortened. Or, if nothing else, let users play exhibitions when their seasons are done. That, in and of itself, would give new users time to experiment and learn. And not do nothing for 25% of the season.

Two biggest problems, IMO.

Agree with Mike and Rogelio. In addition, when a new user at a crappy D3 team does everything right in recruiting and loses battles they are 70%+ likely to win which prolongs their rebuild, that's an extremely tough pill to swallow. So now you can't move up and are stuck with a miserably bad team for a second season-not a recipe to retain new users.

You have to be really terrible at D3 to not get an auto-promotion to D2. Like 4-23 bad. I'd make it even easier to move to D2. Show up, play a season, move to D2.

Posted by rogelio on 7/14/2017 9:11:00 AM (view original):
The current version of the game is not going to attract new users. Enter at D3, get beat down by teams recruiting D1 players, not even with players you recruited, in which you feel any investment, and leave.

WIS had feedback from disgruntled new users that complained that, in their first recruiting session, they had no idea how to recruit. WIS decided that the fix was that no one would be able to recruit in season 1. The mistake in that is believing that the new users making that complaint were ever going to stick with this game. Those are not WIS target consumers.

The reality, that I even read proponents of 3.0 admit, is that D2 is not a great game now. That makes the above problem even worse! You first season in D3 is awful; your next 7 seasons in D2 will be tedious. However, D1 is kinda ok...no chance at growth unless some changes are made.

Right on. Cap D2, D3, let them recruit during first session, make first job a recruiting one.

Recruiting hooked me. And I was terrible at it. But those were my terrible players. I remember a low ath c for which I threw 3k at and I still like that bad player. At least he rebonded.

Posted by zorzii on 7/14/2017 9:51:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rogelio on 7/14/2017 9:11:00 AM (view original):
The current version of the game is not going to attract new users. Enter at D3, get beat down by teams recruiting D1 players, not even with players you recruited, in which you feel any investment, and leave.

WIS had feedback from disgruntled new users that complained that, in their first recruiting session, they had no idea how to recruit. WIS decided that the fix was that no one would be able to recruit in season 1. The mistake in that is believing that the new users making that complaint were ever going to stick with this game. Those are not WIS target consumers.

The reality, that I even read proponents of 3.0 admit, is that D2 is not a great game now. That makes the above problem even worse! You first season in D3 is awful; your next 7 seasons in D2 will be tedious. However, D1 is kinda ok...no chance at growth unless some changes are made.

Right on. Cap D2, D3, let them recruit during first session, make first job a recruiting one.

Terrible idea that you keep repeating.

n00b vs 110 season vet in close quarter recruiting. That should end well for the n00b, right?

Stop with the noobs, no noob can do anything in this game. Heck, I am really still average and been playing for a bit more than a year. It's a game with a Learning curve. The game is not fun at D3 and D2 because of locations, superteams, and no action in recruiting at all. Fix it. Improve job situations and reduce downtime. Why do you think everyone is going D1? Before, people enjoyed D3, Taggl, Jsa Jsa, Jdno, to name a few, all gone.

I enjoy D3. A lot. So let's be careful with the use of "everyone".

I'll tell you the same thing I told benis. If your business plan is no new users, so why bother making/keeping the game somewhat manageable?, you have a failed business plan.

You want to cap D2/D3? Fine. Move people out of D3 after 3 seasons(abandoned team is SIM-controlled for a full season in order to prevent aliases from taking them) and do the same at D2. Don't let vets park, build dynasties and destroy new users.

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/14/2017 9:57:00 AM (view original):

Posted by zorzii on 7/14/2017 9:51:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rogelio on 7/14/2017 9:11:00 AM (view original):
The current version of the game is not going to attract new users. Enter at D3, get beat down by teams recruiting D1 players, not even with players you recruited, in which you feel any investment, and leave.

WIS had feedback from disgruntled new users that complained that, in their first recruiting session, they had no idea how to recruit. WIS decided that the fix was that no one would be able to recruit in season 1. The mistake in that is believing that the new users making that complaint were ever going to stick with this game. Those are not WIS target consumers.

The reality, that I even read proponents of 3.0 admit, is that D2 is not a great game now. That makes the above problem even worse! You first season in D3 is awful; your next 7 seasons in D2 will be tedious. However, D1 is kinda ok...no chance at growth unless some changes are made.

Right on. Cap D2, D3, let them recruit during first session, make first job a recruiting one.

Terrible idea that you keep repeating.

n00b vs 110 season vet in close quarter recruiting. That should end well for the n00b, right?

Sad to report that I am basically in agreement with Mike. There is no way to bring new players in during the 1st recruiting session. They'd get slaughtered anyhow.

However, the 2 jobs periods need to be condensed to 1 job period prior to session #2. That way new users would be able to recruit during period #2. There would need to be some cleanup (making it possible to rescind offers extended in period #1 by Sim-AI and get back the resources...as was intended), but that would give new coaches some chance to invest in their team.

OTH, I agree with zorzii on capping D2 & D3. Having experienced users signing "D1" quality recruits down to D3 is a MAJOR problem with new user retention. Those caps had to be implemented in the prior version of the game and they need to be implemented now. If every world had 200 D1 human users, then this would not be as much of an issue. Since that will NEVER happen...

Posted by MikeT23 on 7/14/2017 10:39:00 AM (view original):
I enjoy D3. A lot. So let's be careful with the use of "everyone".

I'll tell you the same thing I told benis. If your business plan is no new users, so why bother making/keeping the game somewhat manageable?, you have a failed business plan.

You want to cap D2/D3? Fine. Move people out of D3 after 3 seasons(abandoned team is SIM-controlled for a full season in order to prevent aliases from taking them) and do the same at D2. Don't let vets park, build dynasties and destroy new users.

Mike is being hyperbolic, but I basically agree with the outline of this plan. I have always said the same thing and have never heard anything else that made sense. Experienced D3 users (after, say 4 NT appearances) should see their bonus cash diminish with each successive season. You want to dominate D3, pay for the privilege! It would not be necessary to force sim-control for a season.

All the same, none of that would eliminate the need to cap recruiting into D1. It just makes no sense that obvious D1 talent is paying any attention to D3 effort.