ALOT of free teams.

There are only 30 available D3 teams in Wooden.

I believe FREEHD has been open since 3.0 rolled out.

And it appears a significant chunk of them are just floating. I had to send out 10 invites to get an exhibition game. Half the teams in my league didn't do any exhibitions and no indication that there's actually a live body behind the screen name.

Posted by rednu on 11/30/2016 10:17:00 PM (view original):
And it appears a significant chunk of them are just floating. I had to send out 10 invites to get an exhibition game. Half the teams in my league didn't do any exhibitions and no indication that there's actually a live body behind the screen name.

I think this ends up hurting everyone in the long run. Often times I like to schedule teams with large rising SO/JR classes (as many people do) in order to artificially inflate my RPI. When a human picks up these teams, I'm hopeful that they'll make what would've been a solid team already into even more competitive one. The issue is that they fail to update the depth chart or distro among other things and it can lead to some ugly results. Often times you'll find teams playing short two or three guys (and in extreme cases, four or five) because the coach lost interest, has no clue how to play, or maybe just doesn't have the time to invest to learn the in's and out's of the game. The free season basically gives them a chance to check it out, but there's no incentive to stay either. I understand WIS is bound to retain a few of the coaches, but for the most part we should be looking to recruit people who have an interest in basketball simulations, rather than just asking the entire WIS community to try 3.0 and hope for the best.

Maybe I'm just overreacting, but as rednu said, there's really no indication of any activity and I honestly feel as if the SimAI could do better.

Eleven of us from one particular HBD world came in and all took teams in a nearly empty D3 conference (1 human, 11 SIMAI teams) in Smith this season using the free team code. It's helped that we're all relative n00bs, and it's also fun that we all know each other from HBD. Trash talk and grudge matches right off the bat. I think/hope a number of us are coming back for a second season.

Posted by tecwrg on 11/30/2016 11:04:00 PM (view original):
Eleven of us from one particular HBD world came in and all took teams in a nearly empty D3 conference (1 human, 11 SIMAI teams) in Smith this season using the free team code. It's helped that we're all relative n00bs, and it's also fun that we all know each other from HBD. Trash talk and grudge matches right off the bat. I think/hope a number of us are coming back for a second season.

Now THAT sounds like a fun situation to be in! In my opinion one of the greatest hidden positives of this game is the social connections that can be made. I absolutely gave up on my D1 ambitions in Naismith when I lucked out and got into the GLV, which had a lot of good coaches and friendly banter. Rupp D3 was similar for a number of years in that it had a great active world board and I loved writing up daily sports reports for the previous night's games and such before it got to be just too much of a time commit for me.

I haven't met a soul from this game in real life, but I have no doubt there are a number of coaches that I would gladly hoist a beer with in the bar and would hit it off like we were old college friends or something.

It was actually 12 SIMAI teams when I found it. An outsider snuck in before we could get 12 in there. We hate him.


That's a joke. He might be a wonderful fellow.

Posted by tecwrg on 11/30/2016 11:04:00 PM (view original):
Eleven of us from one particular HBD world came in and all took teams in a nearly empty D3 conference (1 human, 11 SIMAI teams) in Smith this season using the free team code. It's helped that we're all relative n00bs, and it's also fun that we all know each other from HBD. Trash talk and grudge matches right off the bat. I think/hope a number of us are coming back for a second season.

That is why I've stayed in my DII conference. We didn't come into the conference together, but many of us have been there together for a long time now.