Posted by shoe3 on 11/16/2016 1:44:00 PM (view original):
Posted by sh0wtime99 on 11/16/2016 1:27:00 PM (view original):
Posted by MikeT23 on 11/16/2016 1:11:00 PM (view original):
Posted by CoachSpud on 11/16/2016 12:43:00 PM (view original):
RE changes in HBD: "It required adjustments and all the noise has settled down." It'll be delightful when that finally happens here. Imagine these forums without every other thread turning into the same old bitchfest. Wow.
Part of the whining problem works like this: long-time user X gets an idea. Of course, in his head it is a terrific idea and will benefit his team. He posts his idea. A couple of other guys see that it would help their team or make the game easier or whatever floats their boat, and climb on the bandwagon. Now this idea is thought to be the best thing since sliced bread. WIS scrutinizes it from the point of view of what's good for the game overall, and sees that from that point of view it is a bad idea. They don't implement it. They also don't give feedback on bad ideas. If they did, they would be doing nothing but trying to convince people who don't want to hear it that an idea is bad, and that would become a never-ending process. Nothing else would get done. User X and his small bandwagon still think the idea is great and now have TWO whines: WIS never implemented their idea AND they are ignored.
Since the idea becomes permanently lodged in a few heads and thought to be a great idea, I don't think the whining will entirely go away. That's understandable. Two things I do hope will go away are (1) users with a chip on their shoulder trying to trash HD on their way out the door, and (2) out-and-out hate posts, ad hominem attacks that have no place here.
MikeT, welcome to these threads. You bring a perspective that we really need here. Thanks.
At the risk of becoming a pariah, the whole "great idea" thing is spot on.
I noticed, in HBD, that some owners posted "great ideas". On the surface, they weren't bad. However, if you dug deeper, you realized it benefited few, sometimes at the expense of others, sometimes not. When it helps a few and has little effect on others, is it worth programming? IMO, probably not. But no one wants to hear that their well-thought out and reasonable idea isn't so great. And the "Thanks for your input" response is off-putting. But everyone drops a stinker. That said, some of my "great ideas" get recycled from time to time. One is scouting regions in HBD. Someone will bring it up and I'll post my 2007 ticket and the "We're working on some ideas" response. I still think it's a great idea but it might be a ***** to program. Looking back, some of my other great ideas were crap.
That said, I have no idea what was proposed for HD and I'm certainly not qualified to judge even if I did. However, stopping the "planting of a flag" as pkoop put it, is a good idea. If a weighted roll of the dice means you lose a recruit you were leading on, so be it. It evens the playing field. You'll win some of those too. What I'm seeing, and I could be completely wrong, is an overreaction to the first season or two when a user didn't win one.
If it was battles they wanted, then there were easier ways to get them than what happened. What I actually think this new system does is it better monetizes the game. Do you know the last time any of the top coaches actually paid to play? This system of randomness removes that because you won't find elite programs that don't get gutted anymore. So now everyone pays. Am I in love with it? No, not really, but only because I feel like battles could have been accomplished without a huge overhaul to the system. But that requires believing that battles is what they were actually after and not the monetization. What people were asking for were more options in game planning and coaching, but those largely went ignored at the expense of the recruiting overhaul.
Working backwards...
1) lots of people wanted a recruiting overhaul, especially at D1.
2) the old scouting was horrid. To find potential, you sent your scout who would send back the same notes over and over. You could scout a guard 10 times, and not know his ball-handling potential. This desperately needed an overhaul, it was maybe the most common complaint outside of sniping (commonly misunderstood as "poaching"... but a separate rant).
3) there is literally no way to increase battles in a multi-player commodity game without a) unintended consequences, and b) p!ssing certain people off.
4) so what if they want to "monetize"? Is that supposed to be a negative? Are you aware of any business that sells a good or service that is not primarily interested in "monetizing" its idea? At least they're targeting an under-served market (i.e., game-players interested in sport management simulations). If they really wanted to "monetize", they'd dumb it down to the point of absurd simplicity, release it as an app, charge .50$ per season to play, and feature posterizing dunk cutaways alongside ad panels. They're trying to make the best and most competitive game for the market they're trying to hit. Of course they want to make some money along the way.
1-2) I would agree about the scouting, although FSS kind of solved most of that. Not whether it was "high high" or just "high", etc, but you did have a sense. Not sure it was everyone wanting a change, though.
4) And there's nothing inherently wrong with monetization of a product -- but I do think it needs to be acknowledged when it happens.
3) True. But one that causes the mass exodus of everyone (isn't that where this thread started???) is one that I think should have been rethought. Removing distance would have been a better compromise, but that's obviously just my opinion.