world pop data /discuss Topic

girt25
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What type of videos?
12/28/2010 10:18 PM
aejones
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a few seasons back i made some recruiting videos using a screen capture software
12/29/2010 3:44 AM
mlatsko1
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When WhatIfSports became ThisIsSports, this game jumped the shark.  The recent 'fixes' to recruit generation, etc, aren't the reason we're at this point.  Low-Mid D1 wasn't broken before potential.  Heck, I won a D1 title with Oakland... freakin' Oakland.
12/29/2010 9:55 AM
girt25
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Posted by mlatsko1 on 12/29/2010 9:55:00 AM (view original):
When WhatIfSports became ThisIsSports, this game jumped the shark.  The recent 'fixes' to recruit generation, etc, aren't the reason we're at this point.  Low-Mid D1 wasn't broken before potential.  Heck, I won a D1 title with Oakland... freakin' Oakland.
The introduction of potential didn't hurt low/mid DI, it helped it immensely. There was a huge amount of success among low/mid DI teams after potential was introduced -- it allowed many players whose skills could've previously never caught up to their BCS counterparts to do just that.

The recent change to recruit generation (coupled with the change that made many more categories have low potential) absolutely hammered low/mid DI. After potential was introduced but before the recruit generation changes, there were lots of players that low/mid DI teams could recruit that, in 2-4 season, could develop into a BCS-caliber player. Now those kinds of opportunities are much, much more rare.

mlat, I get that you don't like potential (if I'm reading you correctly), but the notion that the introduction of potential hurt low/mid DI is just totally off base.
12/29/2010 12:22 PM
girt25
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And FWIW, I think potential is a vast improvement over the old system, where every bit of improvement was 100% the same and 100% predictable and linear. You couldn't get meaningful increases starting from low ratings. You couldn't have a guy really explode in one (or more) areas. Potential lent more strategy to recruiting and having to make choices. I could go on and on.

It's not perfect, but imho it's vastly superior to the old, completely linear system, which was just silly.
12/29/2010 12:24 PM
gillispie
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i liked both systems. i do feel potential is better, primarily because the resulting kinds of players were more varied, which to me, meant more importance on planning your team out. when potential was young there were so many teams with so much talent, but it wasn't put together right at all, and with a significantly inferior team (talent wise), that was built right, you could expect to beat them. to me, that is a great part of the game. not that planning your team wasn't important in the old system, but especially for high level d1 talent, there was so little variation in the players, to me it was not nearly as important as team planning is today. i do wish they would make the hard caps soft caps though.

weena - for two minutes, that was quite impressive!

jones - videos? leave it to the younger generation of coaches to do something the rest of us would never dream of. i don't even know how to make a video. i can play one, though :)
12/29/2010 12:38 PM
oldresorter
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My opinion on these numbers may surprise a few, I find it a little hard to blame the new engine release on the drop, looking at those numbers, I probably could use them to justify just about any opinion I wanted.  None of us really knows for sure.

I don't know how many thousands of HS players graduate each year, or ex hs players turn 20 or 25 each year, but new candidates for this game do emerge each season.  The trick is to find those among them who would get a kick out of this and get them involved.

No matter how good or bad the engine is, was, or will be, the key to this game's user numbers is getting new players involved each year, as well as retaining the old.

I think it is a pretty safe assumption that some of the engine changes will cause a loss in old users (not all changes or users but some), hence it is important to do extra promotion around the time big changes to the game occur.

Based on the numbers I see, now seems like such a time for promotion????
12/29/2010 12:58 PM
miz2
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While you're looking for reasons for declining numbers.... never underestimate the power of this forum and the abuse dealt out on these pages for running off new and old players alike.

Even G-Billy, joined the feeding frenzy this week on one guy... makes me sad more often than not to even come here....

12/29/2010 1:26 PM
kannc6
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The key to the health of the game is bringing in new players. The revisions in game play have little effect on that. Fox has not made a commitment to marketing the game and until they do, we will see a continued loss of players as people leave for whatever reason; some game related, some not. I still cant believe I have played this game for 40 seasons. That said a major overhaul is not needed, it would please fewer people than it would tick off
12/29/2010 2:00 PM
coach_billyg
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Posted by oldresorter on 12/29/2010 12:58:00 PM (view original):
My opinion on these numbers may surprise a few, I find it a little hard to blame the new engine release on the drop, looking at those numbers, I probably could use them to justify just about any opinion I wanted.  None of us really knows for sure.

I don't know how many thousands of HS players graduate each year, or ex hs players turn 20 or 25 each year, but new candidates for this game do emerge each season.  The trick is to find those among them who would get a kick out of this and get them involved.

No matter how good or bad the engine is, was, or will be, the key to this game's user numbers is getting new players involved each year, as well as retaining the old.

I think it is a pretty safe assumption that some of the engine changes will cause a loss in old users (not all changes or users but some), hence it is important to do extra promotion around the time big changes to the game occur.

Based on the numbers I see, now seems like such a time for promotion????
OR - of course, interpretation of the numbers is subjective. but i think the drop in d1 numbers is unprecedented - what that means may be subjective. but i think that at least is clear. with the timing of the new engine and this unprecedented drop in d1 numbers, i think it would be hard to conclude anything but a large portion of the d1 crowd is unhappy and left.

i suppose you could also argue the leaving pace hasn't changed - it is the arriving pace that has changed. but with basically no advertising now or ever, i struggle to buy into this. it seems to me that the arriving pace is probably primarily based on word of mouth - and if that factor has dropped, that is probably a bigger cause for concern than anything else.

but if you watch d1 population, which i am sure you do with 9 times the d1 teams i do, i think it is fairly obvious that the turnover has went up a lot. the number of big 6 jobs staying open, the number turning over, is quite alarming. to me, that real experience is just verified by these numbers.
12/29/2010 2:07 PM
coach_billyg
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Posted by kannc6 on 12/29/2010 2:00:00 PM (view original):
The key to the health of the game is bringing in new players. The revisions in game play have little effect on that. Fox has not made a commitment to marketing the game and until they do, we will see a continued loss of players as people leave for whatever reason; some game related, some not. I still cant believe I have played this game for 40 seasons. That said a major overhaul is not needed, it would please fewer people than it would tick off
absolutely bringing in new players is critical. but the thing is, to me, WIS has sucked equally at this pretty much forever. so why now is the drop in d1 so severe? something has to have changed. there was one theory that sounded plausible to me, jetwildcats, that maybe the influx of other coaches from other WIS games has dropped through natural saturation. but that to me would be a slower, steadier kind of loss. this kind of sharp decline, to me, has to correspond to a change, not the natural ebb and flow of the tides, if you will.
12/29/2010 2:12 PM
jetwildcat
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Posted by oldresorter on 12/29/2010 12:58:00 PM (view original):
My opinion on these numbers may surprise a few, I find it a little hard to blame the new engine release on the drop, looking at those numbers, I probably could use them to justify just about any opinion I wanted.  None of us really knows for sure.

I don't know how many thousands of HS players graduate each year, or ex hs players turn 20 or 25 each year, but new candidates for this game do emerge each season.  The trick is to find those among them who would get a kick out of this and get them involved.

No matter how good or bad the engine is, was, or will be, the key to this game's user numbers is getting new players involved each year, as well as retaining the old.

I think it is a pretty safe assumption that some of the engine changes will cause a loss in old users (not all changes or users but some), hence it is important to do extra promotion around the time big changes to the game occur.

Based on the numbers I see, now seems like such a time for promotion????
i think OR and kann, etc. hit on two important points:

-old users will continue to leave the game, perhaps more so around game updates
-what we need to do is attract new users REGARDLESS of why people left
12/29/2010 2:16 PM
jetwildcat
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it would be nice, tho a bit of a pipe dream, if we could also keep track of the number of users (not just number of "coaches")

a drop in number of teams per user could very well have different correlations as a drop in the number of users. perhaps 'the economy' cuts into the teams per user, while major engine changes causes more of a drop in total users but NOT teams per user. perhaps there's a snowball effect with empty worlds causing users to quit but not coaches to drop teams. perhaps the saturation of the game from the rest of WIS is more gradual from a user standpoint. etc.

maybe WIS will give us those numbers if we say please
12/29/2010 2:51 PM
girt25
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Posted by coach_billyg on 12/29/2010 2:12:00 PM (view original):
Posted by kannc6 on 12/29/2010 2:00:00 PM (view original):
The key to the health of the game is bringing in new players. The revisions in game play have little effect on that. Fox has not made a commitment to marketing the game and until they do, we will see a continued loss of players as people leave for whatever reason; some game related, some not. I still cant believe I have played this game for 40 seasons. That said a major overhaul is not needed, it would please fewer people than it would tick off
absolutely bringing in new players is critical. but the thing is, to me, WIS has sucked equally at this pretty much forever. so why now is the drop in d1 so severe? something has to have changed. there was one theory that sounded plausible to me, jetwildcats, that maybe the influx of other coaches from other WIS games has dropped through natural saturation. but that to me would be a slower, steadier kind of loss. this kind of sharp decline, to me, has to correspond to a change, not the natural ebb and flow of the tides, if you will.
My thought exactly.
12/29/2010 2:57 PM
gillispie
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Posted by jetwildcat on 12/29/2010 2:51:00 PM (view original):
it would be nice, tho a bit of a pipe dream, if we could also keep track of the number of users (not just number of "coaches")

a drop in number of teams per user could very well have different correlations as a drop in the number of users. perhaps 'the economy' cuts into the teams per user, while major engine changes causes more of a drop in total users but NOT teams per user. perhaps there's a snowball effect with empty worlds causing users to quit but not coaches to drop teams. perhaps the saturation of the game from the rest of WIS is more gradual from a user standpoint. etc.

maybe WIS will give us those numbers if we say please
maybe I will give you those numbers if you say please :) honestly, you have about a million times better chance of getting it from me than from WIS, as sad as that may be.
12/29/2010 3:02 PM
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