Warrior General Games

I'm suggesting this as a way to keep mediocre owners from bailing on the game entirely.

Getting attached to players and teams and watching them grow is a tried and true method of customer retention for any online game. Unfortunately in this game, it's easy for an owner to find his/herself in a league they don't think they can compete in. When this happens, the owner really only has two choices: give up the characters they've gotten to know, or quit the game entirely.

Since I suspect the devs don't want to give people reasons to quit, I suggest giving them a way out. Keep your team and the people you've gotten attached to, but hope you get into a new league that is more your level.

Oh, and bonus points if the game shuffles owners into new leagues of teams relatively close in ladder ranking.

You can't fix this, not really. If you're a "mediocre owner" and you are going to quit the game because you can't win your league, there's nothing GLB can do to prevent that. With 15 Sophomore leagues, only 15 teams get to win it all this season. And maybe 4-6 teams in each league have a legit shot at winning the title in a given league, in a given season? That's under half the teams. Hopefully owners and players find a reason to play other than "win it all or ragequit"

Originally posted by Xavori
Oh, and bonus points if the game shuffles owners into new leagues of teams relatively close in ladder ranking.

Highly exploitable and encourages tanking / full roster shuffles. That's not theory, that's proven from GLB1 league attempts. Next thing you know you have admins spending time setting up arbitrary rules about what's okay and not okay when redoing a team.

You think people get upset at being outclassed in a league now? Wait until you see what happens when you get shuffled into a league that's supposed to be "equals", but one of the teams has a full roster turnover pulling the best dots from 5 other teams and then puts full effort into the tactics and just crushes the league by 60+ a game. Think it won't happen? Happened repeatedly in GLB1. Next thing you know no one respects any trophy but WL, and now you only get 1 meaningful trophy a season instead of 15.

Originally posted by Xavori

Oh, and bonus points if the game shuffles owners into new leagues of teams relatively close in ladder ranking.

Adding to NiborRis' point- lets say a team knows they're gonna be stuck at third in their league forever. They decide to shuffle, as do some other teams - suddenly, we've got a league full of "good but not great" teams, only one of whom can win a title in this league. Meanwhile, off in the leagues they left, some teams go CPU, and suddenly you've got a good handful of "simple" leagues being won by mediocre teams.

Originally posted by Xavori
I'm suggesting this as a way to keep mediocre owners from bailing on the game entirely.

i laughed so hard I had to upvote

Originally posted by pottsman
Adding to NiborRis' point- lets say a team knows they're gonna be stuck at third in their league forever. They decide to shuffle, as do some other teams - suddenly, we've got a league full of "good but not great" teams, only one of whom can win a title in this league. Meanwhile, off in the leagues they left, some teams go CPU, and suddenly you've got a good handful of "simple" leagues being won by mediocre teams.

Hmm. Interesting point.

I can definitely see where a team could end up 'exploiting' such a system for a single season. But in doing so, they'd basically be guaranteeing the rest of the league would be resetting after that season.

My whole point is a lot less about winning the trophies, and much more about keeping owners around as long as possible. I understand some people are never going to win trophies, but because I'm not a pinko-commie, flower-wearing, yuppie treehugger who believes in "participation" awards, I'm totally okay with people not winning.

My concern is that an owner who feels trapped in a league they don't think they'll ever win will just quit right away. If instead we had some system (and I'm definitely interested in hearing ideas from people who've played longer than I have) that kept them around a few extra season, that's a few extra season's worth of flex they bought which pays for moar betterer game.

So we let people bail from their league at the end of every season if they think that's their best chance, and we put them in a league of their 'equals'. Sure, we'll have to accept that there are a handful of owners who will figure out how to game the system, but it's better to allow a few of those to happen than it is to drive away more owners by limiting the options of everyone.

In the immortal words of the green-blooded, pointed-eared bastard, "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Originally posted by Xavori
Sure, we'll have to accept that there are a handful of owners who will figure out how to game the system, but it's better to allow a few of those to happen than it is to drive away more owners by limiting the options of everyone.

False premise.

Originally posted by Badhands
False premise.

Yo, beyotch, don't be all tryin' to get all logical fallacies up in muh face cuz I will totally lay the smack down.

False premise: statement, claim, fact or assertion that is not true and which thus renders any argument using it automatically invalid, unsound, or non-cogent.

So if you're going to claim that my statement is a false premise, you have to be sure that my statement is in some way untrue.

Of course, the statement you quoted has two claims, so let's look at each separately.

1) We'll have to accept that there a handful of owners who figure out how to game the system.
2) It's better to allow a few of those to happen than it is to drive away more owners by limiting the options of everyone.

Now on #1, I'm pretty solid. The previous posters pointed out that it happened in GLB1, and my own experience with online gaming would let me bring forth any number of examples of people exploiting games for their own benefit. Sure, I could have explicitly laid out my warrants, backing, qualifiers, and what not but I made (the prolly dangerous) assumption that most readers could fill in the details on their own.

#2 is a pure opinion statement. It CANNOT be factually invalid as I'm not claiming it as fact. You can disagree with my opinion, but you cannot simply say my opinion is false.

Since neither of my statements are untrue, my claims cannot be labeled a "false premise."

So, in summary, beyotch. Don't freakin' argue logic when you gots none, yo.

Originally posted by NiborRis
Highly exploitable and encourages tanking / full roster shuffles. That's not theory, that's proven from GLB1 league attempts. Next thing you know you have admins spending time setting up arbitrary rules about what's okay and not okay when redoing a team.

You think people get upset at being outclassed in a league now? Wait until you see what happens when you get shuffled into a league that's supposed to be "equals", but one of the teams has a full roster turnover pulling the best dots from 5 other teams and then puts full effort into the tactics and just crushes the league by 60+ a game. Think it won't happen? Happened repeatedly in GLB1. Next thing you know no one respects any trophy but WL, and now you only get 1 meaningful trophy a season instead of 15.

yup

Originally posted by Xavori

My concern is that an owner who feels trapped in a league they don't think they'll ever win will just quit right away. If instead we had some system (and I'm definitely interested in hearing ideas from people who've played longer than I have) that kept them around a few extra season, that's a few extra season's worth of flex they bought which pays for moar betterer game.


That system is called the Ladder.

Originally posted by bhall43
That system is called the Ladder.

so we can win titles for ladder and league games?

Originally posted by joe
so we can win titles for ladder and league games?

Gonna assume that if you are so unhappy about your chances of winning your league that you feel the need to quit, you probably are gonna have to find a pretty bad league to win.

Originally posted by bhall43
Gonna assume that if you are so unhappy about your chances of winning your league that you feel the need to quit, you probably are gonna have to find a pretty bad league to win.

Thing is, from a business standpoint, that's not bad since they'd still be paying for their team and possibly scrimmages.

The goal of my post is aimed at player perceptions. You want people to believe that they'll eventually have a chance to win a trophy, even if its in a lower overall ranked league.

KEEP HOPE ALIVE!

Originally posted by bhall43
Gonna assume that if you are so unhappy about your chances of winning your league that you feel the need to quit, you probably are gonna have to find a pretty bad league to win.

No not at all. Top of our Division. I just hate all the up in the air stuff. Nothing really concert and the ones who tested the game have vanished.

Originally posted by Xavori
So we let people bail from their league at the end of every season if they think that's their best chance, and we put them in a league of their 'equals'. Sure, we'll have to accept that there are a handful of owners who will figure out how to game the system, but it's better to allow a few of those to happen than it is to drive away more owners by limiting the options of everyone.

Except it's impossible to make a league of "equals". It's just impossible. Several methods have been tried in GLB Classic and they all failed.

And if you just move teams randomly...well, seriously, what league is a middle-of-the-road team moving to that they'll have a shot of winning? You'd rather be stuck behind the Maine Snails instead of the Portland Ronin? Okay. How about Sunday Funday? Maybe you'll get shuffled into Wolf league.

And speaking of Wolf league - what keeps a top 20 team from a league like Wolf from requesting a "reshuffle" as well and taking over some other league?

If you're not a top 25-30 team, or competitive with that tier, wherever the breakoff is in team quality, you're probably not winning any of the sophomore leagues right now. So you can't make a creampuff league. Randomizing doesn't get you anything better than what we have. Therefore the benefits of developing long-term rivalries by keeping people in the same leagues far outweighs the negatives of feeling "trapped" behind a better team, in my opinion.

And the ladder is GLB2's answer to this anyway - since we can't keep teams that are similar in competitiveness in a league, let's match them up each week. And reshuffle and re-rank each time - there's no gaming the system that way; maybe you get a couple bad games as a team significantly changes in quality and the ELO rating takes a few games to catch up, but overall you'll get a season of competitive games to enjoy and try to win even if your league isn't within your grasp. This gives you something to strive for each season - improve your ladder rank from start to finish. Win X% of your ladder games. Set your own goals - that's what keeps people interested. Develop good rivalries - it doesn't have to be for the division title.