Failure to recognize that something went wrong and reluctance to figure out what it was will doom BR.   Writing it off as "bad luck" isn't going to help any more than doing nothing to fill. 

Worlds don't just suddenly have 10 owners decide to "cut back on teams" season after season. 

Right, I can't buy the "just bad luck" explanation because it has happened so many times in recent years.  If it was a one-season thing, ok, bad luck.  For it to happen 3 straight years, something else is going on.  Not close enough to the situation to know what that is though, either.

Call me crazy, but I just finished my first season, and it seems like bad policy to have no clue how many teams you will have filled the day before rollover. Don't you think that it's probably a better idea to talk it out at the beginning of playoffs, get a feel for what next season will look like... And go from there. Worlds don't magically fill.


As for tufft, dude, I'm sorry you guys are going through this. But here is an idea: go to your classified page and offer the incentive you were talking about and send it as a gift certificate. See if other BR owners would be willing to chip in. Get long term commitments from upstanding owners, and you can get this resolved much quicker then if you get one and done owners coming through.

Mike & SourSurfer - I thought exactly what you think.  Even playing in the world with very good balance and no ******** owners.  There must have been some reason for the high turnover.

That's why I spent some time looking for a reason.  And I haven't been able to find one.  I did develop theories.

We're not the only world that let in a lot of new owners the past year.  So I don't think that, on it's own, is it.

There is a snowball effect / tipping point.  As owners leave and rollover is delayed, others leave.  If we had just 2 openings, we probably would have gotten 2 new owners.  Once you get past 5... 6... 7... owners who weren't even thinking of leaving will decide to move to a world with fewer openings.

I think most people don't like anti-tanking rules.  Tanking is the easiest way to build a winner and winning is fun.  Most people think it will be harder to rebuild a team if they can't lose 110 games for a few seasons.  Few seem to think it through enough to realize that nobody else will either.  A high percentage of people who post in the forum seem to like anti-tanking rules, but we're a minority of the people who pay the game.

BR had a rule that you couldn't rename or move the team.  A few people told me that's why the dropped or decided not to join.  They'd rather have a team with a name they think is fun instead of playing in a balance world.  I get it.  Not how I role, but I get it.  (We backed off that rule.)

There was a sizable exodus of founding owners over a 2 season span a few years back.  Something must have triggered that.  Nobody is going to tell me they left because another owner left, but I believe that's the truth.  Whatever the "I'm in a elite world" vibe is, it hit BR going the other way.  And suddenly BR was not.

I think the original post was something like, "Anybody have any big ideas?".

The answer seems to be 'no'.

Thanks again for your input.  I appreciate it.

In the world that I commish, I start doing two things right around the time the regular season ends and the playoffs are about to start: 

(1) I start polling the current owners to see who's coming back, who's leaving, and who's not sure.  Probably to the point of being a pest to some people who don't respond, but it's my responsibility as commish to know what I'm going to be dealing with at rollover; and

(2) I start a recruiting thread in the Classifieds Forum to start creating a waitlist of owners who may be interested in joining our world.  Even if I don't know how many teams or which ones may be available, I'm aggressively recruiting.  I'm also bumping the thread at least a couple times a day so that I'm always on the first page, and up near the top.

Since we went private 5 seasons ago, we've been pretty lucky in that we've only had 0, 1, 3, 2 and 2 openings over the past five seasons.  But for each of those seasons we've had owners already lined up for our open spots, and we were able to fill and approve within 24 hours of rolling.

If you want to fill your world, the commish needs to be active and aggressive during the recruitment process.

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/1/2011 8:54:00 AM (view original):
Someone asked me a few weeks ago about reviving a dying world.   My sitemail back(cleaned up a bit as some comments were "world-based"):

Anyway, the keys to a successful world, IMO, are the owners. While it's tough to be real picky when you have a dozen openings, you have to screen owners.  One and done owners are world killers as they keep a team in constant flux. The prospects don't develop well because of low training, lack of attention or poor coaching. The drafts might be bad due to low scouting or owner disinterest. And the owner may sign bad deals or make bad trades in an attempt to win now because he knows he won't be around for later seasons. Keep those guys out.

Just run of the mill bad owners are a problem too. First, don't let them join. Second, if they're already there, establish some minimum win rules so that you can send them packing at some point. I use 55/125/195/280 in Coop/MG but those are pretty tough, relatively speaking. Try to establish something a little easier but that spans at least 3 consecutive seasons. Some worlds use 2/120 but that's a yo-yo loophole of 50/70/50/70 for the tankers.

Lastly, establish a trade policy of some sort. I abhor salary dumps so there has to be some quality involved from both sides. And you may want to put in something about cash. No more cash than salary is pretty standard. Prevents buying/selling of players.

Again, the key is getting and keeping GOOD owners. It may be tough for you in the beginning because, if you have a lot of openings, the urge is to fill and play. And the other owners will badger you to do just that. But filling with one and dones just perpetuates the problem. Screen owners. Also, start looking before you need owners. Create a recruiting thread before the playoffs start. Find out who's returning/leaving and list the openings. Far too many commishes wait until the season ends to start looking.

This.

Posted by MikeT23 on 12/1/2011 9:39:00 AM (view original):
Did a quick check.   Of the owners you lost after S11, 9 of them played only 1-2 seasons in BR.   So your S9-S10 recruiting was crap.   My guess is you started down the wrong trail a year ago and, as usual, the trail gets worse and worse.   

If you want to avoid being the perpetual "ONLY 12 OPENINGS" world, you need to stop it right now.   Set a standard for new owners and stick to it. 

And this.

Those are "big ideas" coming from a commish who runs two successful worlds with minimum win rules.  MWR that I expect are tougher than BR's.

Tufft, one comment on your 9:35pm post: my experience is that the most successful worlds are the ones in which you have 32 owners all in at least a general agreement in how they want the game to be played.  So if you have a world that has a well-known set of rules, everybody knows what they are getting into and implicitly or explicitly agreeing that that's how they want to play the game. 

So I'll disagree with your comment about "most people don't like anti-tanking rules".  The most successful worlds are the ones that have strong and enforced anti-tanking rules, and in general, the owners in those worlds are fine with abiding by them.  If they're not, then they shouldn't have joined the world to begin with.

@tecwrg.... Absolutely. Diamondbacks is a laidback, fun world, but it just implemented a MWR that goes will the laid back vibe. If BR is a laid back world, institute more lax rules, but still patrol for tankers. If BR is a super competitive world, find supercompetitive owners. Or find the happy medium. There are always good owners that swing to different sides of that spectrum.

You're right, nobody has a silver bullet to quickly fix a huge problem that has been festering the past 3 offseasons.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and all that.

Though I agree they could do more to market the game (if they wanted), I don't think we're headed for some doomsday scenario, either.

Posted by tecwrg2 on 12/1/2011 9:40:00 PM (view original):
In the world that I commish, I start doing two things right around the time the regular season ends and the playoffs are about to start: 

(1) I start polling the current owners to see who's coming back, who's leaving, and who's not sure.  Probably to the point of being a pest to some people who don't respond, but it's my responsibility as commish to know what I'm going to be dealing with at rollover; and

(2) I start a recruiting thread in the Classifieds Forum to start creating a waitlist of owners who may be interested in joining our world.  Even if I don't know how many teams or which ones may be available, I'm aggressively recruiting.  I'm also bumping the thread at least a couple times a day so that I'm always on the first page, and up near the top.

Since we went private 5 seasons ago, we've been pretty lucky in that we've only had 0, 1, 3, 2 and 2 openings over the past five seasons.  But for each of those seasons we've had owners already lined up for our open spots, and we were able to fill and approve within 24 hours of rolling.

If you want to fill your world, the commish needs to be active and aggressive during the recruitment process.

This is absolutely key.  There was a time I'd have the world I used to commish rolled and filled in a matter of hours using this system.

I stopped having the time to be quite so vigilent, and the world suffered.

I gave up the duties to someone with more time, and going back to this process we rolled quickly with an excellent couple of additions.

Effort and attention over the course of the WHOLE season (especially at the end) by your commish will make or break your world.

The inability to fill is not exclusive to BR, nor is it exclusive to worlds with a lot of openings. In Addicted Users we rolled into season 21 with 4 openings. We added 2, then one left. Got tired of waiting, I guess. IMO AU is a solid world with MWR to prevent tanking. 14 owners have been there more than 10 seasons. Everyone currently in the league has at least a few years of HBD experience. We rarely have any more than 4 openings, not ideal but not a lot. We have NEVER had as much trouble filling as we have had this year. So, while haveing double digit opening is going to obviously cause a league difficulties, I think the problem may be more one of saturation. I know personally, I have 2 teams and that's all I'm willing to handle. Some have many more and some have only one. Each to his own. But what I'm saying is there doesn't seem to be a lot of established, experienced owners who are looking for another team. What they have now is what they are going with. There's not a lot of movement. That could be why a league with only 3 current openings is having as hard a time filling as one with 10.

Mantle had two openings for the most recent rollover, earlier this week.  We had two guys lined up, with a third to spare in case somebody dropped out last minute.

Aggressive and pro-active recruiting mitigates the need to wait to fill after rollover.

We have attempted to do many of the things that were recommended in this post but still are having no luck.  People see 15 openings and don't even bother.  What can we do at this point?  Would a group of you veteran owners be interested in trying to save the world short term because I feel the only way BR gets saved is by some of the long term Hardball Dynasty players.