Warrior General Games

I was bored on the train home the other night and did some maths on this.. so here is my take on it...

Worst case scenario:
300 fp to create a player
600 fp for custom equipment + 300 fp @ level 8 = 900 fp
300 Flex x 3 boosts x 10 seasons = 9000
Total FP spent = 10200
On retirement, 300 + (70% of 9900 = 6930) = 7230
Loss of fp = 2970

Assuming you buy fp @ 100 for $1 (NO discount) that is $29.70... or £15 in real money

40 day per season (+2 days off season) = 42 days x 10 seasons = 420 days
So for $29.70 you get entertainment of a premium player with all boosts and custom equipment for 1 year, 1 month and 25 days (approx)...
7 cents (3.5p) a day

So I'm not gonna need to sell my house to keep playing this then like some people seem to intimate.. maybe just drink 1 less pint of beer every 2 months!

Originally posted by nutrumpet
Ignorance has nothing to do with it, and since when were people punished for leveling and investing into an MMORPG? I don't want to play something for free, I want to play something fun. A plateau is fine, deleting my player isn't. Taking my investment away is not ok with me if I've been a customer for years and been investing in this game and this community, I should be rewarded not punished.

If Ive played for that long and there needs to be an ending progression, that's fine, but I should not be losing 30% of my investment just because I've been here longer and been more dedicated than other people. That's exactly the opposite of what should be encouraged.

Seriously, stop insulting people on the forums. It's childish. I'm not unappreciative...I like this game a lot and I care about it which is obviously why I'm so interested and concerned by this news.

I agree with a lot of this, but take buying a car for instance. You put time and money into it over the years, but you still have to sell it at a lower price than you purchased it for. This is similar. IMO.

What about forced retirement after 10 years IN THE PROS? That way, most people will get a longer life out of their character by a few seasons, which means less money "lost" per day...as some people seem to view it.

If there's a HOF, only statistics earned in the pros will count towards it. Eh?

i usually don't post much, but i had to respond to this topic. I'm not here to bash anybody or tell people they are stupid.

I agree with the people complaining about not getting 100% back if there is forced retirement.

But if a players attributes go down after a certain season(10-15), and you are still getting original FP and 70% of paid FP, I don't see what the problem is.

I would love to have alot of money to boost my players, but i don't. So instead of complaining about having to spend money, I did something about it. I have emailed all my friends the referral link, and I also sold(on ebay) the PS2 games and DVDs i dont play anymore. After selling 12 items i have $80+ to spend on this game.

Originally posted by karma99
I was bored on the train home the other night and did some maths on this.. so here is my take on it...

Worst case scenario:
300 fp to create a player
600 fp for custom equipment + 300 fp @ level 8 = 900 fp
300 Flex x 3 boosts x 10 seasons = 9000
Total FP spent = 10200
On retirement, 300 + (70% of 9900 = 6930) = 7230
Loss of fp = 2970

Assuming you buy fp @ 100 for $1 (NO discount) that is $29.70... or £15 in real money

40 day per season (+2 days off season) = 42 days x 10 seasons = 420 days
So for $29.70 you get entertainment of a premium player with all boosts and custom equipment for 1 year, 1 month and 25 days (approx)...
7 cents (3.5p) a day

So I'm not gonna need to sell my house to keep playing this then like some people seem to intimate.. maybe just drink 1 less pint of beer every 2 months!

Thank you for posting this.. I was going to do it myself.

Also.. to the people that said something on the order of "There are no paying customers who will like this and will stop paying".. FALSE.

I paid for 1000 FP. Those will last me 2 seasons of boosting. If that's all I do for the next season, the remaining points will help me purchase custom gear. I will CONTINUE to pay for 1000 FP every 2 seasons to help boosting my player to the max.

Even if I'm forced into retirement, I'm still happy, because I'll have 70% more FP to spend on my up and coming players. 70% more than what I would have possibly paid for.

All in all, whatever the developers decide, I'm happy with. As long as players at some point HAVE to retire, whether it's through a maximum amount of seasons a player can play for, or degrading skills/abilities enough to 'force' the player to retire.

Johnny Unitas doesn't still play, not even as a benchwarmer. Why should my player 23 seasons from now?

To anyone complaining about the concept of forced retirement:

Retirement is PART OF FOOTBALL. You can't expect to have a player that plays 50 seasons. It's unrealistic and dumb, and there are many, many reasons for why it's dumb already posted in this thread. Personally I find the lower levels interesting. It's exciting to get your first sack or have your first big game or develop a championship team. Granted, everyone has their own definition of what they find fun, but hey with enough FP investment and friends on good teams, you can skip past a lot of the low level team developing stuff.

The admins are offering you choices and tell you in advance the eventual loss of a certain percentage of your FP. As for the issue of whether or not players should be forced to retire, arguing in favor of players that play forever it's just dumb

This will probably get skipped like the last 5 pages I just skipped. 70% return of points put into your character is a good deal, ESPECIALLY for those of us that plan to have our players fulfill 11+years considering how generous Bort and DD are with FP when it comes to holidays and special events (Thank you very much, love this site even though I just joined) not to mention the other things they do for us like continuely improving the game to make the experiance better for us the players.

Having a child

I !DO! like the idea of your retired 11+ year player being able to have kids come into the league with minor benefits. It can be accomplished easily like this, when retiring one of these well experianced players you get an immediate option of creating an offspring player. Based on the position of the retiring player you'll get 3-4 similar positions that they can transition into. These similar positions have a 1.5 stats to the normal counterparts of that position. What I mean by this is remember when you first made your player, he was level 1, and had the same exact stats as every other similar level one position player. Those stats increase by 50%, since it's only about 7-4 point increase based on the original stat, its not that big of a deal. Another benefit already mentioned is keeping your retired players equipment, but lets say you can only choose half of it (because of size issues, and not the custom equipment because the parent cherishes it). Finally some extra starting money, your parent should be loaded by then.

Some other minor benefits could be +5 confidence upon creation of child (Hey my parent was a big shot, so am I), plus 2 vision and/or stamina.

Mainly the point is to give small incentive to the retiring player without giving them a major leg up over new players.

Since it will be awhile before anyone enters their 10th season, they'll have alot of time to sit on this issue.

Originally posted by Bort
I don't know where DD got the 70% for forced retirement from - we had discussed something higher than that before, since it's forced on you, but that has nothing to do with my next point.

Forget the FP-related stuff for a moment, and look at it from the perspective of a new user.

If you were to sign up in 10 seasons, and there were a bunch of guys at level 50 or whatever, and you knew that they would never ever retire, and you could never ever catch them because they will just keep getting better and better, don't you think that would suck too? Would you want to play the game at that point? You'd probably just give up, thinking "I can never achieve greatness because everyone will always be better."

However, if the players get old, they retire, and they go to the hall of fame, with their name forever immortalized, then you would know that you would have the chance to reach that glory too. There's suddenly an end goal in the game of football immortality, instead of a never ending chase after something you can't catch. That sounds like a lot more fun to me.

---

As for those of you who think we are just in this to "rip you off" or get rich or whatever, you are way off base, and it really hurts me to hear that.

We created this game, in our spare time, while working full time day jobs, because we thought it would be fun. We love football. We love community web games. We're just two regular guys, not some faceless greedy corporation, and we're glad to offer this game to the world, for free.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Our goal when we started the site: at least break even so we can keep the thing running. If we can make it a full time gig, great. If not, we'll do the best we can to keep it going and keep improving it.

I have poured my heart and soul into this game non-stop for the last 7 months, without gaining a single cent until 12 days ago. I've put in 16-20 hour days many many times (today is one of them) during the development of this site because I enjoy working on the game, and I want this to be a fun thing for the masses, not because I want to rip you off.

If you don't think my time and effort is worth paying for, then don't pay for it. It's your choice, and I respect that. Just please don't call me greedy, because I am far from it.

Why not have a depletions of skills / abilities over time (sorry if someon has already suggested this.

The fact you get 70% of the flexpoints you bought back is outstanding. The people complaining about this are completely missing the point IMO. They keep talking about an "investment", but that is wrong: it´s not an investment, it´s pure consumption. Nobody´s coming here and putting money into the game with the intention of earning a profit (that would be an investment). They are putting money into the game for their own enjoyment, ie: consuming. When you consume, you spend the money with no expectation of getting it back if the product/service is not broken/useless.

Just like when you go to the movies, you don´t buy a ticket and expect to earn money (AFTER you´ve watched the film, no less). And if the theatre decided to give you 70% of the money back just because you stayed till the end, you would be ecstatic.

Originally posted by Kevin Smith
Just like when you go to the movies, you don´t buy a ticket and expect to earn money (AFTER you´ve watched the film, no less). And if the theatre decided to give you 70% of the money back just because you stayed till the end, you would be ecstatic.


I should have totally tried that at my old theater one day, Give them back 50% of their ticket price after the movie. I would have so many return customers it wouldn't be funny!

Originally posted by FarEastBeast

Why not have a depletions of skills / abilities over time (sorry if someon has already suggested this.

That is the plan. There is not a "forced" retirement. You just lose your skills at a certain point. Its up to YOU to decide when to "call it quits" and start with new guys!

Why not reward the best careers with the highest returns on investment?

Maybe if you retire as a multiple season record holder or league champion you get as much as 120% FP back, but an average joe career returns maybe 50% FP.

I dont see what the whining is all about just but the package with 30% discount and you never lose anything cost wise. What I wonder about is why not just make a elite league that only like level 50 plus players can get into. Call it the pro league and the only way you can get into it is to retire from the non proleagues. Offer some crazy reward for playing in this pro league but put a 3 season cap length to the career there. If players don't want to go pro then cap them at level 50 and let them play as long as they want. maybe that crazy reward for going pro could be that any money he has left can be passed down to a new player aka winslow to winslow jr. so to sum it up.

level 1 to 50 is say arena ball
No Time limit until reach level 50 (That way a career backup can go to the pros on equal grounds or a recycled pro can train like a nut with his inherited money for overall better stats. That gives longevity to the purpose of going pro.

Level 50 to 100 is Pro
Can only be a Pro for 2-4 seasons
At Retirement game money and items earned will be inherited by new replacement player.

Just keep newer and cooler items to earn with game money and it could get very addictive to progress pros and it gives older players something a little permanant to be proud about and newer players something to strive for.

Forget about the relative arguments that center around how people "feel" about what's "fair" because ultimately if the game doesn't pay for itself, it will die. Period. Unassailable fact.

$ can come in from continued investment from current players and/or influx from recruiting new players.

If there is no retirement, new players will see that they have no hope of getting any playing time and will simply abandon the game. Veteran players will slowly drift away by attrition. With a reduced client base and no alternative new source of revenue, the game will die a slow death by stagnation.

FORCED retirement is another issue, one that I think the Admins are smart enough to see is very controversial. But few would argue that some kind of retirement system is reasonable, if not for the fiscal reasons outlined above, then for the sake of modeling reality.

Declining skills after a certain point would allow new players to have a hope of achieving stardom and encourage them to invest money in their player IN EXCHANGE FOR A STRONGER PLAYER CHARACTER AND PRESUMABLY GREATER ENJOYMENT/SUCCESS IN THE GAME--NOT for a a strict FP-for-FP "return on investment." It would also make "Forced" retirement moot since the player would likely eventually not be useful to a team and not be able to secure a contract.

Amongst the myriad suggestions that I have seen on this thread, how about this?

(1) DECLINING SKILLS BEGINNING AFTER A SET NUMBER OF SEASONS BASED ON PLAYER'S POSITIONS--i.e., RBs might start to decline after Year 6, but OLs might not start dropping until Year 10. This could also provide incentive for a player to create some of the less glamorous position players--they'll be able to play longer with the same player than they would a RB or WR. (QB would probably have to have a premium on it since they can potentially have long careers AND are "glamour boys.")

(2) DECLINING SKILLS WOULD BE AN ABSOLUTE NUMBER DECREASE IN ATTRIBUTES, NOT A PERCENTAGE so that a player that was stellar in his prime will not lose as much each year and will probably have a longer career. The marginal player will soon drop out of the leagues since the (for example) 10 point drop in speed is more damaging to his prospects to play than it is for the star who was the fastest guy in the league.

(3) NO FORCED RETIREMENTS but players would not become eligible for the HOF until formally "retired."

This would result in established players spending FPs to improve their player in order to not only be more effective for their team, but indirectly prolonging their career. It would allow the prospect that a new player might eventually have the opportunity to rise to the top of his profession, surpassing those who simply were lucky enough to discover this game a few months earlier, if he invests (for the return of increased and speedier player success NOT for a full return of FPs later) money in FPs as his player develops. It maintains a person's ability to play at minimal cost and still be effective as long as he realizes that his time in the spotlight may be brief (just like in real life).

Frankly, I would think that it would be entirely reasonable to not refund ANY FPs when a player retires, but the Admins are much nicer than I am. I would just give a discount on future FPs purchased based on number of players that a person has retired. This would keep the $ to maintain the site coming in. I know to many this is going to seem "greedy", but I worry about the Admins ability to keep this game going as it continues to grow. It will likely take more and more time away from their "real jobs" and they need to have a source of revenue to keep things going in the future rather than just an influx at the beginning of the game that they have to nurse for years and years.

Just my 2 cents because even though I'm a newbie, I'm enjoying this game.

Oh, BTW, if it means anything, I have spent significant money on this game and look at it as the price of playing. ANY return of FPs for a retired player to me are a gift UNLESS the player was felled by a career ending injury--now THAT would be frustrating!