Warrior General Games

It's pretty obvious at this point we have a lack of teams carrying on to higher levels which in turn leaves lots of players without homes which in turn leaves lots of players not playing and not buying flex and lots of nots that aren't good for the game long term. So the goal should be to encourage long term team ownership while still maintaining.

First, should be something like reducing the renewal fee to 100 flex while keeping the same original purchase. This reduces that high-awareness team cost to a level people don't mind spending without giving it much thought.

Second, let agents buy as many teams as they want. It's already pretty easy to game the one team thing via friends or networks. And I'm not fond of discouraging customers from giving you money when they want to anyway. If someone wants to spend $100 buying an entire league's worth of teams, why not.

Third, offer flex-back at the end of the season based on total scrimmage flex spending. If an owner spend 500 flex, they get 50 flex back at the end of the season. If they spend 1000 flex, give them 150 back. If they spend 2000 flex, give them 250 back. If they spend 5000 flex, give them 1000 back. This works on the same psychology as "sales" at stores where they offer bigger discounts if you spend more money than you would have otherwise. Consumer psychology tends to be very silly for the most part so may as well take advantage.

Fourth, incenitevize human players being on a team versus CPU, especially if those players boost. Give teams a flex pool for scrimmages that starts empty. When you sign a human player to your team, you get 10 flex for the pool, and yes, if you cut a human player, you need to lose 10 flex to prevent people gaming the pool. If a player on your team boosts, 10% of the boost cost gets added to the flex pool. This flex pool can only be used on scrimmage and challenges.

Fifth, let owners buy any tier of team that they have 'earned' by owning a team that has made it to that tier. The biggest problems with too many players, not enough owners happens at higher tiers as currently there is no easy method of replacing teams that go away, and when a team disappears, that's up to 43 players who are now homeless. Getting a mechanism in place for getting teams that can sign them, as well as my fourth point that encourages them to do so, should help a lot with keeping players on human controlled teams.

Any other ideas y'all have?

Can't you already do all of this with money?

I appreciate the problem your trying to solve but I think you've got some incorrect assumptions.

Flex Point renewal costs for team ownership are not the reason most owners don't renew, most of them quit because:
1. It's more work than they anticipated
2. They don't understand how to do the basics like building a defense, offense, and setting depth charts
3. Recruiting difficulties
4. They have a lack of early success, get frustrated and quit

The vast majority of owners don't want CPU players, the majority of owners want well built players and amateur players make mistakes. The owners who will sign them are for the most part amateur and unconnected owners.
1. Its a buyers market on several positions, generally you can get the QB or HB or WR you really want. Teams are , in general, more open on offensive line builds (which is already flex point incentivized)
2. Players and owners learn through trial and error but if they are so frustrated they quit thats not good either.

There are some things GLB could do to make it easier for new owners and players to have at least some initial success:
1. Add a "how to" button on the team landing page particularly for rookie teams, covering depth charts , offensive and defensive tactics etc.. Yes, much of this information is available in the forums, but if you look at adult educational models, some people can read the forums ingest the information and adapt. Some people prefer to learn by visual aid. Some by humanistic (chat) discussions and others by self-direction (trial and error). Right now only the trial and error and literary types are well served.

2. Try to keep farm teams out of lower level league's with amateur owners.
Well connected and networked owners will tend to crush the amateurs, thats never going to go away completely but for the new player, going 3-11 is probably a quitting number. 5-9, 6-8 those are more doable and they will probably attempt to learn from their mistakes and improve. I offered my suggestion for this but assuming they never get around to my college league for farm teams:
- If they ever go to allowing owners to have more than 1 team, they should place the second teams in a division with each other when founded.

3. I'm all for the "earned" method of advancement.
However we should have some "one-offs" right now in journeymen leagues we have one cpu team her league. Nothing wrong with after the first day of the off-season opening those 8 teams up to new owners who want to join late and build a roster. It would bring the player market back into equilibrium.

William,

I agree with a lot of what you said. In most cases, those issues you bring up come down to the near complete lack of "how to play" instructions. I think the game needs a lot more documentation to help new players get started and have some hope for success, and I vehemently disagree with all the "veterans" who say the game is better because nobody knows the rules.

But I also think that 500 flex per season makes a person stop and really think, "Is it worth that much to continue trying to learn to play" versus 100 flex where you open up the possibility of them thinking, "100 flex. Whatever. That's nothing."

As for trying to keep vets from squashing new owners. Maybe do something like only allow brand new players to play in the rookie league and have experience owners/players who create new teams and new players simply start at sophomore. The downside is I'm not sure how many new owners there would be each season without WGG actually starting to market the game.

Still it's something more to think about.

With regard to just one of the points mentioned (owners quit due to frustrations with losing) - why not expand the default playbooks and tactical setting options in order to give teams a more fighting chance.

In my league (sophomore) there are several teams (probably using a default defense playbook) that are using goal line defenses against goal line offenses....if that isn't the quickest way to discourage a new owner...I don't know what is.

So for starters - let's get those defaults cleaned up - then allow users to submit an offense / defense / whatever that might get added (or they could recruit users to make them).

"Hey Xav - give me a quick / basic zone defense will ya?" (I expect the answer would be "no problem")

"Hey tx - give me a quick basic heavy run focused offense" (ok).

Next thing you know - you might have 10 or 15 or 50 default offenses / defenses that a new owner could choose from. Some wouldn't be good (for his specific game) - some might - at least he would have a solid skeleton that isn't totally and completely broken.

(sorry - this probably isn't really the right place to post this)

Yeah, no default tactics are ever going to be consistently good.

The metagame changes every season, and teams flock to the most effective plays every season. People that don't are always going to be behind...and I'm not going to go update the default settings to coincide with the metagame (and the counter to the metagame) every season.

And having 50 options would just be overwhelming.

I agree somehow on the Teams cost...

And the lack of teams is pretty obvious atm. Journesys not finding teams because so many quit. Seasoned looks even worse as only 6 Leagues survived o.O What will they look like next season? I guess only 4...Sophemore...only 8 teams atm, in 2 seasons it will look horrible there. And look at the Rookies...only 8 new leagues? I mean C'mon! This is getting worse every season and shouldnt it be the opoosite? o.O When our current Rookies hit Journeyman, they will most likely only have 3 Leagues and I already think that the current 8 leagues in Journeyman feel like inbred...

I dunno what it is, but sth doesnt look good here. So many Superstars looked for teams this season and no one wanted them...

Originally posted by Corndog
Yeah, no default tactics are ever going to be consistently good.

The metagame changes every season, and teams flock to the most effective plays every season. People that don't are always going to be behind...and I'm not going to go update the default settings to coincide with the metagame (and the counter to the metagame) every season.

And having 50 options would just be overwhelming.

That's great, but to ask a blunt question,

What are we doing to make the game more "new user friendly?" As several people have pointed out we are on a slope path towards a highly inbred system with very few but highly dedicated players? If thats the objective, ok but at least share it. I was thinking you wanted a wide pool of players from casual to experienced gamers and those who had never even played GLB1. I mean which is the goal?

Originally posted by Xavori
Second, let agents buy as many teams as they want. It's already pretty easy to game the one team thing via friends or networks. And I'm not fond of discouraging customers from giving you money when they want to anyway. If someone wants to spend $100 buying an entire league's worth of teams, why not.


No... This can never happen. It won't happen anyway.

2. The flex back idea is a decent idea, but it is 100% gameable. Right off the top of my head I figured how I can turn 20k flex into 100k in a few seasons.

5. Is just bad. Never flood the market, even if it's for a specific tier.

The only suggestion of this nature that I would have expected to have been posted, but wasn't, was an incentive for people to coach teams. Of course this can be gamed, but glb has always been short of coordinators, and when the game gets to the top with a low # of coordinators, same good ppl coaching all the good teams, it becomes hard for ppl who are outside the spectrum to get coord positions at top level.

If Administration could somehow make an incentive for ppl to coach teams, even if they coach said teams to 5-25 it is a success. More coaches means more coaches that are bad, and more coaches that are good. The good coaches rise to the top with the rest, the bad coaches stay at the bottom to continue learning.

Originally posted by Corndog
Yeah, no default tactics are ever going to be consistently good.

The metagame changes every season, and teams flock to the most effective plays every season. People that don't are always going to be behind...and I'm not going to go update the default settings to coincide with the metagame (and the counter to the metagame) every season.

And having 50 options would just be overwhelming.

I wouldn't think it would be that hard (but I certainly don't know anything).

You pick someone (I'll choose Xav just to give him the attention he so desperately craves) -- He's in charge of writing some well rounded, decent, O playbooks / D playbooks / O tactics / D tactics....

You work your programming magic...and any playbook in Xav's arsenal is now available when a rookie team chooses their plays (just like if he were a GM).

But beside that - DUDE. I'm not talking about hours of work -- for starters I'm saying "TAKE GOAL LINE DEFENSES OUT OF THE DEFAULTS AGAINST GOAL LINE O's" = that alone is sucking the life out of new coaches I'm sure.

Quick side example: (this might be private...but I'm sure Corndog can see it) -- 2 sophomore teams running as many QB roll outs and HB sweeps as possible...and trying to stop it -- http://glb2.warriorgeneral.com/game/game/61437 - 56-42 final score. I'd bet that one play sucks more fun out of rookie ball than any other single thing.

Having top players in the game put together default game plans pretty much defeats the purpose of us being coordinators in the game.

Originally posted by TxSteve
But beside that - DUDE. I'm not talking about hours of work -- for starters I'm saying "TAKE GOAL LINE DEFENSES OUT OF THE DEFAULTS AGAINST GOAL LINE O's" = that alone is sucking the life out of new coaches I'm sure.

1). If something so simple is destroying new coaches, then they aren't going to last long or do well anyway.

2). Then the new metagame would become something else. Then the presets would need modified to account for the new "ITS SO SIMPLE JUST DO X".

As for your side example...what is wrong and what should be fixed there? Not disagreeing with you, but what is actually broken there? Who isn't doing what they should be and what should they be doing instead?

I'm talking basic Os and Ds -- to cover a very basic range.

Don't you think you could tweak the current defaults in a way that makes the game more fun for new players...without giving up any of your 'secrets'?

As I've said several times - don't you think getting GL Defenses OUT of the playbook against GL offenses would at least improve a new users experience....without giving anything up?

Also, as for part of the actual thread, "LET EVERYONE HAVE AS MANY TEAMS AS THEY WANT ITS MORE MONEY"...recruiting becomes even more of a nightmare for every team owner. Sure, it makes your networked teams easier, but 90% of the teams in the game having 6 human players and not finding any more isn't going to create a great gaming experience for them, or your networked teams playing against them.

Case study: GLB1.

Originally posted by Corndog
1). If something so simple is destroying new coaches, then they aren't going to last long or do well anyway.

2). Then the new metagame would become something else. Then the presets would need modified to account for the new "ITS SO SIMPLE JUST DO X".

As for your side example...what is wrong and what should be fixed there? Not disagreeing with you, but what is actually broken there? Who isn't doing what they should be and what should they be doing instead?

What is broken about gl rollout is that no matter what you do the offense has the numbers as they come out with 4 lead blockers.