Agree on the flexibility on setting budgets

If WIS was really concerned with this they could quite easily look and see what owners have quit HBD but are still on the site as well as what owners have cut down on the number of teams they have and ask them what was it that caused them to move on.

I'm not holding my breath on ever being contacted by them

The first league I joined has been sitting at 10 open spots for 6+ months.
I joined another league because I was tired of waiting.
I joined another (3rd) league as a 'swap' for my first league and the number of open spots increased by 1.
Frustrating, obviously.

From reading here, it seems we are on our own and shouldn't depend on developers/sports hub for new recruitment.

Forums are from web 1.0 (outdated).

There is nothing viral about sending sitemail from an outdated forum to new users.
Can we try to use more modern ways of communication and recruitment? (Reddit, Twitter, etc)

It doesn't take much to start a subreddit. Just need a few moderators.

WhatifSports twitter had not been active in more than a year.
What if another one was created.
Something like @HBDRecruiting - or similar, wouldn't that help engage new users?

I have only 5 seasons of experience.
My teams are terrible, I'm still learning the game and it is still fun.
The most disappointing aspect of this service is waiting for a league to start.
(and terrible Web 1.0 UI/UX)

Fyi there is an /hardballdynasty subreddit; hardly used.

Are there any qualified/motivated users that would be able to head up social media and online presence initiatives from this forum?

Posted by yumen442 on 10/29/2018 7:35:00 AM (view original):
Are there any qualified/motivated users that would be able to head up social media and online presence initiatives from this forum?

This is a good question.
There seems to be a handful of veteran posters.

u/JDintheD is the subreddit moderator.
Anyone know this person?

I've been in touch with someone from Sports Hub in the past about helping out the HBD portion any way I can, because right now it's a one-man team. Three separate occasions now I've reached out to get an answer and all three times I have not heard back.

Posted by brianp87 on 10/24/2018 4:15:00 PM (view original):
Why not have the sim run teams if they do not roll in a certain amount of time. To me it makes the most sense.

Scoresheet baseball has a sim manager take over any open teams and it does not cause any problems though a live owner is obviously preferred. I know its a completely different game but this would get new seasons starting faster and that should increase the total number of players as it would be a more enjoyable experience. Scoresheet also offers a discount for anyone taking over an "orphaned" team. I would put a maximum on the number of sim teams though - say 4? - so that this doesn't just become any easy out to avoid recruitment efforts,

The biggest challenge to having “ghost” or simmed teams would be how they would interact with the rest of the world (trades/waivers/Rule V). It could result in either overly efficient teams or defunct underperforming teams depending on programming.

My experience with sim teams comes from FCD, the soccer dynasty. (It's here; still exists.)

The sim teams don't compete at all for players, and can't transfer players. Once all the bidding for free agents is over, they sign the leftovers. When there's competition for players, it's interesting. Owners leave. Your team gets stronger with less competition. More owners leave. Your team gets rocked up at cheap salaries. It's playing Madden on Easy Mode. You have one game per season that means anything, against the other real owner in the league. Eventually if this happens far too much, and there aren't enough owners to populate the league, that means there are actual very good unneeded players. Then the sim teams get to where they can legit beat you.

On the other hand, I've seen in these forums where College Football owners complain about being beaten out for recruits by strong-AI sim teams.

So which do you want?

And by the way, don't forget why so many worlds exist that are only half filled and not playing for six months at a time. Why are the existing owners in those leagues not moving to other worlds, picking up different teams, and letting those life support worlds die? Because they want to win with the team they built up, more than they want to actually play now. I could look at it like they want to play Madden on Easy Mode, but maybe that's too simplistic.

Automatically roll worlds after 60 days (and only after 60 days) after roll over with simmy running the open teams. The "good" worlds will still fill with all humans, while allowing the others to play - the 60 day wait would still incentivize commissioners to recruit, but would alleviate the glut of worlds sitting idle.
Alternatively, a policy could be put in place that worlds sitting for 60 days are closed or merged until supply of worlds matches demand. This could alienate some owners who lose their teams/world history, but may incentivize other owners in the world to pitch in and help recruit or at least be active in promoting their world or risk losing their teams.

A system where there is a massive number of leagues sitting idle with a huge number of openings for long periods of time is clearly broken, and not how the game was intended to function (at least I hope not). A system where a single paying customer (commissioner) is solely relied on (in many cases) to attract other customers to the product is a poor strategy. Yes, there is a handful of commissioners that go above and beyond and successfully complete quick rollovers. But there aren't 141 of those (or however many worlds there are) and even commissioners who put in a fair amount of effort run into brick walls when there are a massive amount of openings overall and few owners willing to take on new teams, unless there is some recruiting secret I am missing, in which case please sitemail me with what that is.

All in all, I don't expect much to change, as there aren't adequate support resources dedicated by SportsHub to address such issues.

There almost needs to be a person to actively look at which worlds could be merged and coordinate mergers.

Posted by drummer_66 on 11/2/2018 12:25:00 AM (view original):
There almost needs to be a person to actively look at which worlds could be merged and coordinate mergers.

I did look into this briefly a few days ago, and would be happy to help with this effort but I don't know if I can be solely in charge.

Posted by bruinsfan911 on 11/2/2018 6:56:00 PM (view original):

Posted by drummer_66 on 11/2/2018 12:25:00 AM (view original):
There almost needs to be a person to actively look at which worlds could be merged and coordinate mergers.

I did look into this briefly a few days ago, and would be happy to help with this effort but I don't know if I can be solely in charge.

I can help too. Although I’m new to the game, I’d still be willing to help.