This has aged well.

"we should expect to see fuller worlds with greater competition than ever before."

Posted by Benis on 2/14/2019 10:50:00 AM (view original):
This has aged well.

"we should expect to see fuller worlds with greater competition than ever before."

In fairness to tz, I doubt he was expecting Fox to sell WIS so quickly after the 3.0 rollout.

Interesting read here. I don't have an opinion on 2.0 or 3.0. I'm not really sure if I even played 2.0 or 1.0. I played from around '07-'10. And took a 7 or 8 year break and came back in April '17.

But in general... i do think D3 is ridiculous. It's seems like luck based on.... "5 D3 coaches have 5 players each lined up. Wait wait wait. D3 Coach A has 1 of his players taken. D3 Coach B has all 5 of his players taken". Not interesting.

On the other side of the fence, i've never personally seen a D3 coach beat a D1 coach for a player they both want and put effort in for. In almost 2 years, i've NEVER lost to a D3 school just at D2 (there is the small possibility that first time happens to me in Wooden this season. We'll see how that plays out).

Overall, i'm not for a game where the rich stay richer top to bottom. BUT..... I do believe that if a D1 team even sniffs a recruit that a D2 or D3 coach is on, the D1 should win 100% of the time. It may have been shoe (maybe? I forget who posted it) saying that even UK loses players to other schools sometimes. And the talent isn't all cramped together at the top...... oh yes it most certainly is! There's ZERO players that are bigtime standout ballers that would choose D3 Thomas More over a D1 school, just because the D2/D3 school shows more interest. That doesn't happen.

The best coaches shouldn't have a monopoly here. But the best schools should. I feel like the division cap would be the best idea to solve this.

THIS COMES FROM A COACH THAT IS STRICTLY D2. I shouldn't be signing the #23 PG in the country on my teams. He'd be going to Clemson or Washington or TCU or Penn St. And even the "idea" behind these kind of signings is why new users at D3 can't keep up.

i've said this multiple times here.... this game needs to be "taught" and not "learned" to succeed. If you're a new coach at D3, why in the world would you come in having the mindset of... "ok, i'm going to target a top 50 PG and a top 100 PF with my two openings"...? I sure didn't. And I sucked from '07-'10 because of it. Once I was taught how wacky the recruiting is, in April '17, i'm an E8 team every season and just won 3 titles in 2 months.

There's my 2 cents to add to the rant. Carry on

Different game in 2007-2010. You generally couldn’t recruit players ranked by position then (rare exceptions would be players transferring from D2 programs, or *very local* players who wanted to be close to home, recruited by a very high A+ D3). They would ignore your effort, even if no other team contacted them.

Nobody is talking about UK caliber teams losing quality players to D3. It doesn’t happen, as you correctly point out. Sometimes D1 teams are unable to pry a guy away from a heavily invested D3, because they don’t have enough resources to make up for the effort gap, even with the massive advantages they have. That’s a gameplay decision issue. The D1 is choosing not to cultivate any backups, and trusting that they’ll just be able to get a guy late. You can’t have it both ways.

And no, the talent is not all cramped together at the top IRL, nothing like it used to be here. It’s rare to see an IRL NCAA team with 5+ future NBA players on the roster. Even if it was common to have lots of real life teams roll out rosters composed entirely of future NBA players every season, as 2.0 was, that doesn’t mean it would be good gameplay for a competitive multi-player game.

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 8:39:00 PM (view original):
Different game in 2007-2010. You generally couldn’t recruit players ranked by position then (rare exceptions would be players transferring from D2 programs, or *very local* players who wanted to be close to home, recruited by a very high A+ D3). They would ignore your effort, even if no other team contacted them.

Nobody is talking about UK caliber teams losing quality players to D3. It doesn’t happen, as you correctly point out. Sometimes D1 teams are unable to pry a guy away from a heavily invested D3, because they don’t have enough resources to make up for the effort gap, even with the massive advantages they have. That’s a gameplay decision issue. The D1 is choosing not to cultivate any backups, and trusting that they’ll just be able to get a guy late. You can’t have it both ways.

And no, the talent is not all cramped together at the top IRL, nothing like it used to be here. It’s rare to see an IRL NCAA team with 5+ future NBA players on the roster. Even if it was common to have lots of real life teams roll out rosters composed entirely of future NBA players every season, as 2.0 was, that doesn’t mean it would be good gameplay for a competitive multi-player game.

My point about the D1s tho..... I think if Kansas can unlock a scholarship and offer it to a player, and it only takes 42 AP, that should beat a D3 team that's all in with 20 HV, 1 CV, and promises. I just think D1 should hold that kinda power. It's D1. A kid won't change there mind if they get a letter in the mail from Kansas, just because Knox D3 really really wants him to come there. And sends him tshirts every day. And takes his mother out to breakfast every Sunday. It's KANSAS!

And I don't really mean 5 NBA level players. What I mean is, the top 8 or so players on every D1 roster that's in the Big 6 (5?) conferences, are better than every single player in all of D2 and D3. As individuals. I just feel D1 should look like that. And D2/D3 should look like me and you out there in tiny shorts, hustling up and down the court for every loose ball. And fighting for every shot. In other words.... a bunch of scrubs!!! Because you and I belong in D2/D3. We are old and terrible. But top talented kids belong in D1

my take on it

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/14/2019 9:15:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 8:39:00 PM (view original):
Different game in 2007-2010. You generally couldn’t recruit players ranked by position then (rare exceptions would be players transferring from D2 programs, or *very local* players who wanted to be close to home, recruited by a very high A+ D3). They would ignore your effort, even if no other team contacted them.

Nobody is talking about UK caliber teams losing quality players to D3. It doesn’t happen, as you correctly point out. Sometimes D1 teams are unable to pry a guy away from a heavily invested D3, because they don’t have enough resources to make up for the effort gap, even with the massive advantages they have. That’s a gameplay decision issue. The D1 is choosing not to cultivate any backups, and trusting that they’ll just be able to get a guy late. You can’t have it both ways.

And no, the talent is not all cramped together at the top IRL, nothing like it used to be here. It’s rare to see an IRL NCAA team with 5+ future NBA players on the roster. Even if it was common to have lots of real life teams roll out rosters composed entirely of future NBA players every season, as 2.0 was, that doesn’t mean it would be good gameplay for a competitive multi-player game.

My point about the D1s tho..... I think if Kansas can unlock a scholarship and offer it to a player, and it only takes 42 AP, that should beat a D3 team that's all in with 20 HV, 1 CV, and promises. I just think D1 should hold that kinda power. It's D1. A kid won't change there mind if they get a letter in the mail from Kansas, just because Knox D3 really really wants him to come there. And sends him tshirts every day. And takes his mother out to breakfast every Sunday. It's KANSAS!

And I don't really mean 5 NBA level players. What I mean is, the top 8 or so players on every D1 roster that's in the Big 6 (5?) conferences, are better than every single player in all of D2 and D3. As individuals. I just feel D1 should look like that. And D2/D3 should look like me and you out there in tiny shorts, hustling up and down the court for every loose ball. And fighting for every shot. In other words.... a bunch of scrubs!!! Because you and I belong in D2/D3. We are old and terrible. But top talented kids belong in D1

my take on it

I can’t speak for you, but I don’t belong on a D5 team. I can play church league pick-up, off the bench. There is not some mystical line between D1 and D2. The best D2 teams in the country can beat a lot of D1 teams on any given night. The best D2 players in the country could start for a lot of D1 teams. When teams move up from D2, they don’t start out below everyone else. Divisions are pretty arbitrary, apart from institutional politics, and attribute ranges are fluid. That’s why caps are both unrealistic, and a bad idea for gameplay. The same player can be a D3 superstar, a D2 4-year starter, a mid-major contributor as an upperclassman, and a Big 6 reserve player. It’s all about prioritization. You start saying KU should wipe out another team’s effort credit automatically, just because it’s KU, and you reduce prioritization to an afterthought. Now there’s no risk to KU’s strategy of spending all its resources on 3 players when it has 6 open scholarships. It can just take what it wants - and remember, that’s a problem you identify yourself for D3 teams, how D1 teams are already able to wipe out big chunks of effort, just with a visit or 3.

Gameplay choices should always be risk v reward. Coaches should have to make tough choices when the outcome is unknown, especially when we’re talking about simulation of choices coaches don’t actually make, like when recruits chose what program they will join. No level of team should be exempt from having to make those choices.

I can kinda see that as far as game play. I'll give you that. I just disagree with the game play setup. I also disagree with talent level. Big 6 programs are powerful for a reason. You take the Ill-Chicago teams, and UMBC teams and put them in the Big 12 and they win 2 conference games each year. You take those same 2 teams and put them in D2 and they compete for the title every season. Personally I think the gaps are larger than you do.

And I'm a D5 player now at 38. I sit in the crowd now and watch guys like you from the stands. Only I don't have to go home in agony for the next week and wear ice packs on my knees for 3 days. I know my limits! (And I would never wear short shorts!)

Posted by topdogggbm on 2/14/2019 9:56:00 PM (view original):
I can kinda see that as far as game play. I'll give you that. I just disagree with the game play setup. I also disagree with talent level. Big 6 programs are powerful for a reason. You take the Ill-Chicago teams, and UMBC teams and put them in the Big 12 and they win 2 conference games each year. You take those same 2 teams and put them in D2 and they compete for the title every season. Personally I think the gaps are larger than you do.

And I'm a D5 player now at 38. I sit in the crowd now and watch guys like you from the stands. Only I don't have to go home in agony for the next week and wear ice packs on my knees for 3 days. I know my limits! (And I would never wear short shorts!)

I think a lot of folks think of these RL programs as static; like the snapshot view of what they are right now is *what they are*. That just isn’t true. You put an upperclassman Steph Curry on UMBC or Ill-Chicago, and it’s an Elite 8 team. And there are plenty of low level D1 teams any given year that would absolutely not compete for a D2 championship that year. But given some personnel changes, they can swing far the other way. It’s really fluid. Part of the problem is that this game uses numbering conventions for attributes that train us to think about players and teams in a really unrealistic way.

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 10:42:00 AM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 2/14/2019 10:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 12:39:00 AM (view original):
You know what makes me laugh? People who spend time and energy on a game they think is garbage. Also, people who think the game is “dying off” because D3 (which certainly never needed to exist in the first place) has declined, even though thousands of teams are human controlled.

You lost, poncho. Go away if you don’t like the game. Seriously. It’s ok. You’ll find something else.

Obviously you missed Benis' posts showing how the entire HD population has died off after the release of 3.0.

The way things are now you have to SUCK to NOT make a post season tournament. Read a case study on "New Coke" and maybe you will understand the difference between a successful company and WIS. (I am sure the millennials have no idea what I'm talking abut here). "New Coke" = 3.0

Another reminder of the hands-down stupidest topic on the forums. “Died off” is ridiculous and false. Thousands of teams are controlled by humans. It’s nowhere near dead. We don’t have to worry about it disappearing next week. It’s not like there’s this large staff of people who require salaries, or stockholders expecting dividends. It’s server costs, and whatever FTE HD takes of Seble’s salary. If they want or need to increase population, address the time and cost to play the level most people want to play. Easy. Done.

And as above, if you *need* a massive amount of people doing the same thing you’re doing in order to enjoy it, you can play FarmVille. Just don’t forget to log in every 5 minutes to harvest your carrots.

in summary:
-ignore the fact that 40% of the game's population has left since 3.0 began
-by level "most" people want to play, you mean the level that you want to play.
-massive amounts of people playing the game designed to produce revenue is apparently a bad business decision now.

Something you seem to not understand is if the lower levels are trash, you can not sustain the game long term, because new people don't stick around. As the older players leave, you need to replenish and we are currently not doing that as populations continuously keep decreasing.

Posted by rugburn on 2/14/2019 11:15:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 10:42:00 AM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 2/14/2019 10:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 12:39:00 AM (view original):
You know what makes me laugh? People who spend time and energy on a game they think is garbage. Also, people who think the game is “dying off” because D3 (which certainly never needed to exist in the first place) has declined, even though thousands of teams are human controlled.

You lost, poncho. Go away if you don’t like the game. Seriously. It’s ok. You’ll find something else.

Obviously you missed Benis' posts showing how the entire HD population has died off after the release of 3.0.

The way things are now you have to SUCK to NOT make a post season tournament. Read a case study on "New Coke" and maybe you will understand the difference between a successful company and WIS. (I am sure the millennials have no idea what I'm talking abut here). "New Coke" = 3.0

Another reminder of the hands-down stupidest topic on the forums. “Died off” is ridiculous and false. Thousands of teams are controlled by humans. It’s nowhere near dead. We don’t have to worry about it disappearing next week. It’s not like there’s this large staff of people who require salaries, or stockholders expecting dividends. It’s server costs, and whatever FTE HD takes of Seble’s salary. If they want or need to increase population, address the time and cost to play the level most people want to play. Easy. Done.

And as above, if you *need* a massive amount of people doing the same thing you’re doing in order to enjoy it, you can play FarmVille. Just don’t forget to log in every 5 minutes to harvest your carrots.

in summary:
-ignore the fact that 40% of the game's population has left since 3.0 began
-by level "most" people want to play, you mean the level that you want to play.
-massive amounts of people playing the game designed to produce revenue is apparently a bad business decision now.

Something you seem to not understand is if the lower levels are trash, you can not sustain the game long term, because new people don't stick around. As the older players leave, you need to replenish and we are currently not doing that as populations continuously keep decreasing.

-40%? Show your work. 40% of what? Coaches? Teams? Revenue?
-by level most people want to play, I mean the level that literally everyone who thinks about playing a college basketball simulation wants to play. Nobody goes searching for a game where they can coach Martin Luther to D3 glory.
-I don’t care what kind of business decision it is, because I’m a consumer. I care about what kind of game it is. 2.0 was a much dumber game. For people that leave or don’t stick because it’s too complicated, I don’t want to play a competitive multiplayer game with those people anyway.

The lower levels aren’t trash. They are basically the same game - wait and see what falls to you - as before. The difference is that D1 doesn’t suck anymore, and there isn’t a logjam anymore. So players who were playing lower levels because D1 1) sucked, and 2) lacked openings at jobs from where players could be competitive are now playing D1. Sure, there were long time D3 players who had just decided to pretend their “superconferences” were the ACC or Big 12. Not really much of a selling point to new players, though.

Anyone who talks trash about the population of D3 without addressing the time and cost of getting to D1 is being intentionally obtuse. Reverting to the stupidity of 2.0 is not going to bring anyone back, and will drive even more away. If they want to increase population, make D3 its own free to play, no credit sandbox, and let paying customers start at D2 with the option to move to low D1 after a season.

Posted by shoe3 on 2/15/2019 12:53:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rugburn on 2/14/2019 11:15:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 10:42:00 AM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 2/14/2019 10:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 12:39:00 AM (view original):
You know what makes me laugh? People who spend time and energy on a game they think is garbage. Also, people who think the game is “dying off” because D3 (which certainly never needed to exist in the first place) has declined, even though thousands of teams are human controlled.

You lost, poncho. Go away if you don’t like the game. Seriously. It’s ok. You’ll find something else.

Obviously you missed Benis' posts showing how the entire HD population has died off after the release of 3.0.

The way things are now you have to SUCK to NOT make a post season tournament. Read a case study on "New Coke" and maybe you will understand the difference between a successful company and WIS. (I am sure the millennials have no idea what I'm talking abut here). "New Coke" = 3.0

Another reminder of the hands-down stupidest topic on the forums. “Died off” is ridiculous and false. Thousands of teams are controlled by humans. It’s nowhere near dead. We don’t have to worry about it disappearing next week. It’s not like there’s this large staff of people who require salaries, or stockholders expecting dividends. It’s server costs, and whatever FTE HD takes of Seble’s salary. If they want or need to increase population, address the time and cost to play the level most people want to play. Easy. Done.

And as above, if you *need* a massive amount of people doing the same thing you’re doing in order to enjoy it, you can play FarmVille. Just don’t forget to log in every 5 minutes to harvest your carrots.

in summary:
-ignore the fact that 40% of the game's population has left since 3.0 began
-by level "most" people want to play, you mean the level that you want to play.
-massive amounts of people playing the game designed to produce revenue is apparently a bad business decision now.

Something you seem to not understand is if the lower levels are trash, you can not sustain the game long term, because new people don't stick around. As the older players leave, you need to replenish and we are currently not doing that as populations continuously keep decreasing.

-40%? Show your work. 40% of what? Coaches? Teams? Revenue?
-by level most people want to play, I mean the level that literally everyone who thinks about playing a college basketball simulation wants to play. Nobody goes searching for a game where they can coach Martin Luther to D3 glory.
-I don’t care what kind of business decision it is, because I’m a consumer. I care about what kind of game it is. 2.0 was a much dumber game. For people that leave or don’t stick because it’s too complicated, I don’t want to play a competitive multiplayer game with those people anyway.

The lower levels aren’t trash. They are basically the same game - wait and see what falls to you - as before. The difference is that D1 doesn’t suck anymore, and there isn’t a logjam anymore. So players who were playing lower levels because D1 1) sucked, and 2) lacked openings at jobs from where players could be competitive are now playing D1. Sure, there were long time D3 players who had just decided to pretend their “superconferences” were the ACC or Big 12. Not really much of a selling point to new players, though.

Anyone who talks trash about the population of D3 without addressing the time and cost of getting to D1 is being intentionally obtuse. Reverting to the stupidity of 2.0 is not going to bring anyone back, and will drive even more away. If they want to increase population, make D3 its own free to play, no credit sandbox, and let paying customers start at D2 with the option to move to low D1 after a season.

I have no interest in playing D1. The team name and color is just decorative. I wanna play a game that seems the most fun to me. By competing for the best talent and trying to win.

i did not come here to play D2 when I arrived. That was NOT the idea. When I played almost 15 years ago, I tried D1. (I admittedly sucked at this game at every level back then). And quit. Coming back, I thought D1 would be where I want to be. But......

(THE most important part of this) After being back and figuring out how this game works, seeing what goes on, I had zero interest in D1. And THAT is where this game is flawed. After hearing you guys discuss EEs and seeing how it works, I decided.... screw that.

You work so hard to get the best talent you can, all the way up the ladder, only to run into the EE issue. Where's the incentive in that??? If you're a competitive person, where's the logic, or the fun in..... "shucks guys, I had my shot this season. I'll let you guys have a crack at it while I rebuild again"..... that doesn't even make any sense. When we play D2/D3, we don't train ourselves to recruit hard one season, and then the next season... "I'll just take lesser talent this season. It's others turn to win". But if you want to avoid EEs at D1, we have to do that in a sense.

Sure, being aware, and adjusting your strategy can get it done. But who the hell "wants" to do that?! We're just forced to. I wanna recruit all 5* when I get to D1. Just like all D1 coaches really do in real life. (Not ALL 5*. But you get the point). Is Coach K gonna pass on Zion and RJ because "I might lose them in a year"? Absolutely not.

Overall point is.... because the game has a dumb setup regarding EEs, and because D3 recruiting is funky, the game design has forced me to decide D2 is the best game play for. And that's where I'll stay. I didn't think Slippery Rock is my ultimate goal when I first started. But i do now. Thanks to the game design. I'd love to play high D1..... so fix it. I'll join you all when that happens.

“Overall point is.... because the game has a dumb setup regarding EEs, and because D3 recruiting is funky, the game design has forced me to decide D2 is the best game play for. And that's where I'll stay. I didn't think Slippery Rock is my ultimate goal when I first started. But i do now. Thanks to the game design. I'd love to play high D1..... so fix it. I'll join you all when that happens.”

Before, people didn’t want to play D1, because there was a system where the top 20 teams divided up all the good players, and there were 2 ways to break 8nto that group - wait for one of them to leave or forget to renew, or wake up at 3AM every morning of recruiting to perform the complicated dance of seeing if anyone else had stupidly challenged one of those top 20 teams for a recruit, so you could pile on to wreck that guys season. Of course, there was a 2B which was illegal (but not uncommon) which was to coordinate these attacks with others.

The only way to break this winner’s ball setup is to widen the window on recruiting. That involved 1) probability based decisions by recruits (so 50.1 gets a recruit roughly 52% of the time, rather than 100% of the time); and 2) making elite talent more volatile and harder to replace. These are, as you can imagine, not popular ideas among people who had entrenched themselves in those top 20 programs. But all this other talk about ideas that would have “solved” the problem - caps, recruit gen, just little tweaks like rollover cash removal, etc. - this is all revisionist history nonsense. This was all discussed in beta. Those ideas all end up being either dumb or insufficient, or both, once looked into and considered from a broad perspective.

So bottom line is, if you don’t want to deal with the headaches of elite talent being volatile, fine. Don’t recruit talent. Either find a way to be competitive without it (which can be done), or play lower levels. But don’t pretend you would *really* like to play a simulation of real life college basketball, because you clearly don’t.

Posted by Benis on 2/15/2019 8:26:00 AM (view original):

Posted by rugburn on 2/14/2019 11:15:00 PM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 10:42:00 AM (view original):

Posted by mullycj on 2/14/2019 10:08:00 AM (view original):

Posted by shoe3 on 2/14/2019 12:39:00 AM (view original):
You know what makes me laugh? People who spend time and energy on a game they think is garbage. Also, people who think the game is “dying off” because D3 (which certainly never needed to exist in the first place) has declined, even though thousands of teams are human controlled.

You lost, poncho. Go away if you don’t like the game. Seriously. It’s ok. You’ll find something else.

Obviously you missed Benis' posts showing how the entire HD population has died off after the release of 3.0.

The way things are now you have to SUCK to NOT make a post season tournament. Read a case study on "New Coke" and maybe you will understand the difference between a successful company and WIS. (I am sure the millennials have no idea what I'm talking abut here). "New Coke" = 3.0

Another reminder of the hands-down stupidest topic on the forums. “Died off” is ridiculous and false. Thousands of teams are controlled by humans. It’s nowhere near dead. We don’t have to worry about it disappearing next week. It’s not like there’s this large staff of people who require salaries, or stockholders expecting dividends. It’s server costs, and whatever FTE HD takes of Seble’s salary. If they want or need to increase population, address the time and cost to play the level most people want to play. Easy. Done.

And as above, if you *need* a massive amount of people doing the same thing you’re doing in order to enjoy it, you can play FarmVille. Just don’t forget to log in every 5 minutes to harvest your carrots.

in summary:
-ignore the fact that 40% of the game's population has left since 3.0 began
-by level "most" people want to play, you mean the level that you want to play.
-massive amounts of people playing the game designed to produce revenue is apparently a bad business decision now.

Something you seem to not understand is if the lower levels are trash, you can not sustain the game long term, because new people don't stick around. As the older players leave, you need to replenish and we are currently not doing that as populations continuously keep decreasing.

This is 100% correct. It's so simple that if anyone reading these forums can't comprehend it then I feel sorry that you have to walk around this world being such a fuckin idiot.

Thanks for your assessment, Duke.

Anyone reading these forums thinking Benis is doing anything other than mouthpiecing for a group of sour grape sucking gamerz whales, who are still crying about losing their favorite toy 3 years ago can feel sorry about whatever they want. I’ll just keep chuckling at the Duke of Obfuscation still playing this game he hates, and trying to do his forum pied piper act to mount the counter revolution. Keep blowing that pipe, Benis.