Worst I've ever seen it. We've had one opening in Cool Pappa Bell for a couple weeks. A guy there said he's in a world that has a few openings that's been inactive since 9/14. We're almost two weeks into rollover in All the Way Mae, a really competitive league (8 different WS winners in last 9 seasons) where we never have more then a few openings, and we had 8 openings this time around.

I imagine it's because we had an influx of people sign up during the lockdown portion of the pandemic and maybe they disappeared now? And probably watered down the leagues. Wonder if we'll have to start merging worlds at some point here.

This time of year it is always harder to fill leagues. I think this is at least partly due to the real life cycle of sports. MLB season is almost over, NLF is in full swing. and NHL/NBA seasons are just getting started. 60-70 openings is the highest we have had for a while but not the worst ever.

I don't know the why, but it feels like we've hit the oversaturation point with owners taking many, many teams. For the past year, it feels like I've had the best luck recruiting owners who already have 4+, maybe 6+ teams. Now I'm starting to lose some of those guys who are paring back to 3 or so of their best/favorite teams. It's tough out there, but it's not impossible.

Yeah, I've noticed signups are taking longer, world chat's are getting quieter, trades seem less common, more abandoned teams, etc.

The game needs a steady supply of new owners to replace the older skewing population of current owners. Where's that going to come from though? I haven't noticed any promotions in a long time (I remember them advertised during the MLB playoffs a few years ago). The onset of Covid delayed the attrition because what else was there to do, but now things have been getting back to normal and the attrition is back. There's so many different types of media and entertainment competing for people's attention (including more advanced sim games) that I'm starting to get concerned the leagues for the teams I've been building up aren't going to last long enough to see their prime.

I think another thing working against HBD is the fact that we can get so many things instantaneously it's subconsciously conditioning more and more people to have very short attention spans. If you're a brand new owner taking over The Durham Dumpsterfires you've got to have an IRL multi-year time horizon before your team hits its stride.

I'm also worried that if that new champions league or something similar gets off the ground it'll cannibalize current leagues.

Hope I'm wrong on all this because I really enjoy the game.

There are several factors. This is a notoriously bad time to recruit. As stated above with the MLB season concluding, interest in baseball is waning as the other sports are taking over the TV channels. Also, long time owners like myself are tired of false promises. The game is being changed with priorities being given to minor changes of no significance while things like an uptick in long term injuries to high health players with little recovery of ratings being pushed to the back burner. Add in the increased randomness of the draft and the huge gap in projections before the draft and after signing draft picks, the difference in performance of players that go from very effective to substantially lower performances, and you have people questioning why they shell out money to play a game that has been changed without any explanation as to how things need to be re-evaluated. Losing people who spend too much money and run far too many teams, puts a strain on a system that doesn't add nearly enough new players while continually chaseing away clientele with little regard. While I like the idea of the game, the complexity, and have enjoy most of my time here, the cost is way too high for the amount of enjoyment that I get from playing at this point.

Honestly, I recruit for a few different worlds and I've noticed huge differences in recruiting difficulty depending on which world we're talking about.

Over in Addicted Users, we'll have 4 new guys lined up within 24 hours every time, (or even quicker - most of the time the longest wait is actually the returning owners), so it'd be easy to say recruiting hasn't gotten bad at all.

But then I have other leagues that wait a week or more to fill, even when they only have a few openings. I honestly think it's just a momentum thing. If a world takes a while to fill, then fewer people are interested the next time and people are more likely to leave, so it creates a bit of a downward spiral

I'm a relative newbie in HBD... I think HBD is great, but it needs an upgrade in its graphic design and user experience. To me, Hoops Dynasty has the best layout and usability.

- currently, setting player rankings in the Amateur Draft is really really bad. It would be tough to design a worse system to rank players, and seems like a deliberate attempt to make it hard. They could design it similar to our "Setting Lineups" page-- we can see ratings, and we can drag and drop. (Unless i'm missing something?). Basically, draft prep, which should be the coolest time in building our future, gives me anxiety and a headache. I end up with tons of notes in a time consuming battle, and i hose it up anyway.

- I wish there was a "GM Roster Management" page where we could see all our rosters at every level, at once. Similar to looking at our Franchise Standings.

- All 4 Lineups in MLB, creation and changes, should be on one page

- Offseason, we should be able to adjust our rosters.

- can we create our own player rating system within HBD itself? For example, Hoops dynasty allows weighted values at each position, which allows our custom ratings right on our roster page.

- Low priority: Available cities (states) should be expanded to any US (Mexican or Canadian) city or possession with over 100k population. Also, minor leagues should have 5 unique affiliated cities with minimum 20k population within one state of the MLB club... this would help keep track of minor league rosters a little better and maybe make it interesting (like maybe i want my Honolulu Low-A to play in Pago Pago, you know? Or a Boston Low-A in Hyannis). An alternative would be to have each level a different color... again something to differentiate between levels. This may be more relevant for people like me over 50 years old, haha.

Generally, key parts to the game like i've described are unnecessarily time-consuming If these were streamlined, it would be easier for newbies to run a bunch of teams.