Posted by gdog13cavs on 10/9/2016 7:26:00 PM (view original):
I'm relatively new to this game, being only in my fourth season, and had been pretty excited about the release of 3.0. As someone who joined recently, it was obvious that there were some problems that needed to be addressed in order for the game to retain its long term viability. The interface was very dated, and the site support and documentation was all ancient to the point that when I first joined I was afraid the game itself was on its last legs.

As such, I was very happy to see the 3.0 release feature an upgraded interface, which, while still not stellar, at least no longer looks like it's from the 90s. However, the fact that the developers rolled out a major upgrade, and not only did absolutely nothing of substance to provide any guide that could actually help users understand how to operate in the new format (and instead had to rely on a couple of users, to whom I am very grateful), but instead continue to have links to FAQs and other sources that contain incorrect information and, in fact, left everyone hanging immediately after the release by having the lead developer depart without any communication, not just about him leaving but also about anything, at all, is rather mind boggling.

Aside from that, the new recruiting system just might succeed in killing the game, where the complete lack of support has failed to do so. When I joined earlier this year on the free season offer after the NCAA tourney, I recruited three others to join with me, and we had an absolute blast playing the game together. We were all looking forward to the upgrade as something that would hopefully make the game even better. However, after now having actually seen the results of the upgrade, all three of the others are planning on quitting, which likely will lead to me leaving, as well. While I actually like the idea of allowing scouting in season, WIS has turned it into something that feels more like work than a game. If you want to truly maximize your scouting experience, you have to spend way too much time, which at the end of the day yields only a small amount of benefit. Requiring 25x the effort to get a 15% benefit is just ridiculous. This could be justified if, in fact, scouting was actually fun to do. I had been rather looking forward to the notion of "finding" recruits, as it is in theory a cool idea to be able to discover new talent and be able to go after them. However, the implementation is not fun at all. When you find someone, you have no idea even if they are any good or anyone you want to go after because you still have to scout them an additional 2-3 levels just to find out if they are even worth thinking about. How is that fun?

Then, at the end of the day, if you actually do want to go after a player, and recruit them heavily, if anyone else went after them to the point where you are at least relatively close, whether or not that player signs with you its a totally random end game outcome. In a simulation game, this is entirely unacceptable. It would be like if the outcomes of the actual simulated games were instead based solely on a distribution around the point spread rather than built up based on randomly simulated individual possessions. If you wanted to incorporate randomness into the recruiting process, then the randomness should be around how much impact the actual recruiting actions had on the recruit. If the amount of benefit each AP or CV or the like had was allowed to vary (and this variance could be modified by all sorts of things, such as division, prestige, or even the very flawed preferences), then you could still involve some randomness, but enable coaches to respond to the randomness accordingly to add more strategy to the randomness. Then, whoever was ahead at the end of the day would actually get the recruit to sign, much like whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins. As it is, it's like you give the team that's behind a chance to make a 100 foot shot, award it 50 points and let them win the game.

Add to the above that the way the new features were implemented make no sense (how the levels are set for the various game play preferences, not to mention what preferences were actually chosen, are just absurd), and it's hard for me to try to defend to my friends why it's worth staying around to continue playing. I wish I could, because even with all of the flaws, I would personally enjoy the ability to continue playing with them. Honestly, it's really sad that such a good core product has been mismanaged so spectacularly. Hopefully the new devs will be able to start setting things straight, but it might be too late.

I've got about 50 seasons under my belt and I feel much the same way you do about pretty much every topic you covered. Thanks for sharing these thoughts.

Posted by CoachSpud on 10/9/2016 9:01:00 PM (view original):
Ah, let's see ... ignoring your snark ...
"seems to me that cavs impressions as a rather new player are entirely valid in that context - the impression of the game on rather new participants is very important" I would not disagree with that. There are some newcomers who will take the time to learn the game and some who won't. What WIS needs to do is encourage the latter to become the former. Those of us who like the game should be supportive of that entire process, including our forum support.

Spud - your snark to a relative newbie earns snark back

Im dropping to 1 team and at this point I doubt I will be buying any more seaons. This new structure is awful.

I think Cavs post is by far one of the most important posts in this entire thread. Cavs is the current target audience. The vets who don't like the update have been told to suck it up and move on if we don't like it, because there is a presumption that the old game could not retain new players. Cavs is the target audience of this update. He is a new player who had a few seasons under HD2 and now has time under HD3 and immediately he is turned off. What this says is that maybe HD3 will not appeal as much to new players. Yes there are some who will like the update, but it just further enforces the point that HD2.0 was not the issue for retention. As may have been saying for years, you can't expect to build a game and not advertise for multiple years. If you don't advertise, you cannot replace those who eventually leave.

Posted by CoachSpud on 10/9/2016 8:45:00 PM (view original):
That seems like a thoughtful post ... until you start to spot the outright fallacies, such as "Then, at the end of the day, if you actually do want to go after a player, and recruit them heavily, if anyone else went after them to the point where you are at least relatively close, whether or not that player signs with you its a totally random end game outcome." Once you see the spin, the post is just another "I don't like it" post from someone who hasn't taken the time to learn the game, for whatever his reason. I offer thread below as the counterpart, written by those who have taken the time and have learned the game.

https://www.whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx?topicID=495608

shut up, ****.

Posted by poncho0091 on 10/10/2016 12:17:00 AM (view original):
I think Cavs post is by far one of the most important posts in this entire thread. Cavs is the current target audience. The vets who don't like the update have been told to suck it up and move on if we don't like it, because there is a presumption that the old game could not retain new players. Cavs is the target audience of this update. He is a new player who had a few seasons under HD2 and now has time under HD3 and immediately he is turned off. What this says is that maybe HD3 will not appeal as much to new players. Yes there are some who will like the update, but it just further enforces the point that HD2.0 was not the issue for retention. As may have been saying for years, you can't expect to build a game and not advertise for multiple years. If you don't advertise, you cannot replace those who eventually leave.

I couldn't agree more poncho. I am an oldtimer. So I have certain rose colored glasses and a bias for the old times. I even kind of miss the pre-potential days sometimes.

I think his criticisms are valid. Separating Scouting and recruiting is a great idea. But Scouting became very time consuming and not fun. Recruiting has become very odd. B prestige Gardner Webb signed the #1 Overall guy in Allen with only 1 scholarship open. Not sure how that happens.

I think if you are going to have a random element to the signing decision, you need to eliminate some of the unknowns from the things that affect the signing decision. Maybe a constant dial on the recruit saying 71% chance of signing with Wisconsin, 19% chance of Minnesota and 10% chance of Illinois, and it changes as you put in effort. I don't know exactly. But what I do know is that if we're losing the 30 season vets, and we're losing the 3-4 season guys, we're in trouble.

Posted by poncho0091 on 10/10/2016 12:17:00 AM (view original):
I think Cavs post is by far one of the most important posts in this entire thread. Cavs is the current target audience. The vets who don't like the update have been told to suck it up and move on if we don't like it, because there is a presumption that the old game could not retain new players. Cavs is the target audience of this update. He is a new player who had a few seasons under HD2 and now has time under HD3 and immediately he is turned off. What this says is that maybe HD3 will not appeal as much to new players. Yes there are some who will like the update, but it just further enforces the point that HD2.0 was not the issue for retention. As may have been saying for years, you can't expect to build a game and not advertise for multiple years. If you don't advertise, you cannot replace those who eventually leave.

And if our new HD admins are even reading this at all it's probably with their fingers in their ears singing "la la la la la la la la la"

I am sure the dropping numbers have gotten their attention, but their current customers are not their target base...

Posted by poncho0091 on 10/10/2016 12:17:00 AM (view original):
I think Cavs post is by far one of the most important posts in this entire thread. Cavs is the current target audience. The vets who don't like the update have been told to suck it up and move on if we don't like it, because there is a presumption that the old game could not retain new players. Cavs is the target audience of this update. He is a new player who had a few seasons under HD2 and now has time under HD3 and immediately he is turned off. What this says is that maybe HD3 will not appeal as much to new players. Yes there are some who will like the update, but it just further enforces the point that HD2.0 was not the issue for retention. As may have been saying for years, you can't expect to build a game and not advertise for multiple years. If you don't advertise, you cannot replace those who eventually leave.

The target audience is fans of sports simulation and fantasy sports who are not already playing the game. They have filled worlds before on promotions/giveaways, and after 2 seasons they went straight back to where they were. Advertising that game would have been good money after bad.

If you show this game to 100 random game players, 90 of them won't be interested from the start. Text-based sports simulations is a very niche market. Of the 10 who might give it a chance, you want to retain as many as possible. And some of those 10 still aren't going to like it, just because of their own preferences. As I've said before, players have different preferences on how much ambiguity they can handle, how deterministic they want the game to be. But one constant from the business end is that you don't want a large group of players who have "figured it out" clogging up all the top spots. It's not that you don't want their money (for those who are paying something), but you need to adapt the game to keep ahead of them, or it's taken over by whales.

Nobody has vision or real interest in WIS business plan, except WIS and their employees, so this "mass exodus" speculation is a time and energy waster. It's a fact that every major tech update is met with a certain amount of attrition from people who just don't like the change for whatever reason. You have a right to not like it and voice your displeasure. But this kind of doom and gloom thread about how disastrous it's going to be if this or that subset of customers decide to go away is pretty myopic.

Jsa jsa : you are a top coach. Some new players will be like you : really competitive. If they come into 3.0 now, they'll eventually see what we all see: you can't be as much in charge of your team's destiny as you would expect and want. Too many unknowns, too much random. They'll quit.

Posted by shoe3 on 10/10/2016 9:13:00 AM (view original):

Posted by poncho0091 on 10/10/2016 12:17:00 AM (view original):
I think Cavs post is by far one of the most important posts in this entire thread. Cavs is the current target audience. The vets who don't like the update have been told to suck it up and move on if we don't like it, because there is a presumption that the old game could not retain new players. Cavs is the target audience of this update. He is a new player who had a few seasons under HD2 and now has time under HD3 and immediately he is turned off. What this says is that maybe HD3 will not appeal as much to new players. Yes there are some who will like the update, but it just further enforces the point that HD2.0 was not the issue for retention. As may have been saying for years, you can't expect to build a game and not advertise for multiple years. If you don't advertise, you cannot replace those who eventually leave.

The target audience is fans of sports simulation and fantasy sports who are not already playing the game. They have filled worlds before on promotions/giveaways, and after 2 seasons they went straight back to where they were. Advertising that game would have been good money after bad.

If you show this game to 100 random game players, 90 of them won't be interested from the start. Text-based sports simulations is a very niche market. Of the 10 who might give it a chance, you want to retain as many as possible. And some of those 10 still aren't going to like it, just because of their own preferences. As I've said before, players have different preferences on how much ambiguity they can handle, how deterministic they want the game to be. But one constant from the business end is that you don't want a large group of players who have "figured it out" clogging up all the top spots. It's not that you don't want their money (for those who are paying something), but you need to adapt the game to keep ahead of them, or it's taken over by whales.

Nobody has vision or real interest in WIS business plan, except WIS and their employees, so this "mass exodus" speculation is a time and energy waster. It's a fact that every major tech update is met with a certain amount of attrition from people who just don't like the change for whatever reason. You have a right to not like it and voice your displeasure. But this kind of doom and gloom thread about how disastrous it's going to be if this or that subset of customers decide to go away is pretty myopic.

Here is the best new post in the thread.

Thanks Spud...like anyone gives a sh&^ about what you think...

Spud makes a sound point that games like this need to evolve to avoid clogging.

The better way would have been to enhance firings and hirings and make every several months an incremental improvement in the game - adjustments to keep it fresh and evolving improving.

3.0 is in my opinion an ill constructed effort to improve - and I'm acting on that opinion

You mean Shoe makes a sound point?

The issue with comparing this with any "tech update" is this is a dynasty game, it's an apples and oranges comparison. A customer who stays long-term literally has huge incentive to stay because their success and continued payment is building on itself. For that dynasty customer to leave (and potentially leave multiple worlds) can't be comparable to just any customer of any business.

They don't want you Dave. Not because they don't like you or they are dumb, it's because the game simply didn't appeal to enough people. They are banking on the new game being more attractive to the 1000's of people who tried it and didn't like as opposed to the 100's who did.