Warrior General Games

Incoming long post.

I think this is something that as a community, we should be discussing amongst ourselves. There's more qualified agents out there that probably understand the situation better than I do, but I'm on bedrest due to a surgery for a bit, so you're stuck with me.

I really enjoy this game. We all do. It has it flaws, sure, but there's a certain charm to it, and a lot of work has been put in to making the sim great. I would really like GLB to be around for a while. And that's the purpose of this post. Most agents that I've talked to feel like this game has been on the downward slope for a while. A lot of quality agents and contributors leave, but their rate of replacement is not too great. Most all successful teams nowadays are from agents that have been around since the beginning; very few newer agents are having any long term success.

I don't feel there is any need to point fingers or place blame for why this is. I'd like to discuss ideas that can help the game become more successful. I think the responsibility lies on both the developers, but also us as a community.

I've never personally been in contact with Corndog and Bort. They've done a great job dealing with building a functional sim, and making the proper tweaks to keep making it better. They definitely deserve appreciation for all their hard work. With that said, I think it's safe to say that the biggest source of frustration with the community is the lack of communication between developers and us. They've been hard at work on the new RPG, which is great, but there's a noticable lack of presence from any of the admins on the boards nowadays. I can't personally recall seeing either Bort or Corndog post anything since the changelog at the beginning of the season (though I could be wrong.) The growing sentiment seems to be frustration from the absence of communication. This is causing people to leave, but there's nothing really in place to bring more people in to the game. Not really a lot of advertising, mostly word of mouth, and the amount of active teams this season as opposed to previous seems to reflect that.

I don't think it's all on Bortdog to fix though. There's plenty we as the community can do to keep the game going strong too. One thing that sticks out to me is how hard it is for newer people in this game to succeed. There's a couple useful guides in the FAQ that are great, but it seems like viable build info is hoarded and kept secret more than it is actively spread. We used to have a pretty active positional builds forum. We used to have a few top teams like Air Raid and Logzilla open their builds for all to see. There's a real lack of discussion on the boards compared to earlier seasons. Lots of people coordinating 12 different teams as opposed to newer guys showing interest in learning the ropes. Basically, I think we need to find ways to make the game accessible to newer customers to help offset the ones leaving.

Hopefully this post didn't go on too long. I just want to do my part to help this game thrive. I think getting some discussion going between userbase and developers would be helpful. As of now, Little Lebowskis whole roster is open for anyone to look at, if it helps with build ideas. I'm personally open to chat it up with anybody that wants to bounce coordinating/gameplan/build ideas off each other. Hell, I'll start a new build forum if people would find interest in it.

What about everyone else? Anyone have ideas on how to make this game grow?

Part of the problem with build guides in this version is that there is a lot of debate on what exactly every skill does for each position. They did this by design and it makes creating players more fun when you are trying to crack the code instead of building a player exactly to a build guide that hundreds of other people will copy as well. This is the cost of the devs being vague in the description of skills instead of giving us all the formulas.

There are two key competitive advantages that you can achieve in this game and those are player building and playcalling. While some very successful teams have left their builds open I can also understand others that leave their builds closed if they feel they have struck gold and don't want everyone copying them. With that said, new agents tend to make terrible players. We could probably have some general build guidelines for each position in order to at least help them make better players from that start.

One really fun part of the game for me has been coordinating. It's what really sucked me in to the game and made me stick around this long. The problem is how big of a learning curve it is, especially on the defensive side of the ball. It's tough going for new owners/coordinators in this game and they tend to get crushed by those who have been around a while. The only way I can see this getting better is by changing the whole defensive playcalling system.

I agree with both of you bit time

I'd say most of the fun of the game to me now is running teams. I am still figuring builds on some of the positions but the entire experience of player building just isn't as fun any longer, but putting together a group of players built within my system is if that makes sense.

I agree. I've built dots since the beginning of GLB2, but I only recently decided to get into the playcalling/ownership, and am having a blast. People are going to be drawn to different parts of the game, coordinating might not be for everyone, etc. The problem is it's going to be hard to enjoy doing anything at this rate. You take our tier (seasoned), and at least 3 good teams (Phoenix, Bottoms, your Lab Rats) are folding this season, with the possibility of more following (possibly Dream Team, for instance). There just isn't enough people for a rewarding experience all the way to vet tier right now.

Up votes are great and all, but I'd really rather see some opinions. Surely you guys have things you'd like to say concerning the direction of the game.

There hasn't been new plays in a number of seasons.

GoGetta i would like to get on board with you more often.

this is not an attack on bort or corndog, just hoping for response.

that being said i agree for almost all of it. While yes we can't blame everything on the the Dev. but at this point that is the biggest problem period. I have had people that truly taught me the game and they quit because the Devs didnt either take any of our suggestions at all and didn't communicate with us at all.

What makes successful games and businesses. Because that is the question here. This is a game to us but a business to them.

1. Every great business and game has communication between the top and the bottom. Top is the Devs. Bottom is the agents us. Hell we have posted before an entire list of what we thought could help the game before and none of it was done or even responded to.

2. Development and ever changing. There hasnt been any new plays in forever. We have all showed how there are only 10 or less viable runs and 10 or less pass plays to use, both. On defense we have showed that the playcalling system has major flaws. Not allowing us to be more specific on when we want certain plays called. We have even came up with the plan and idea on how to fix this ourselves that everyone agreed was easy to use. Still no response or hey guys we cant do that because of this.

3. Businesses make one company run fluid before they start a new one. The issue here is that they keep trying to pop out these other RPG games and what not. While this game that i know is making them a shit ton in flex is slowly dying off. And let me tell you we dont want it to die. I get it can be hard to do some advertising. But i know it does not cost that much to keep the servers running. You guys can afford to run a few adds here and there on places where people will see them. You have to make sure this company in GLB2 is flourishing first before you build a new company and worry about it.

4. You guys have MODS. In place, let them do something then. These poor guys can MOD forum and that is it. They cant help the community out at all. Hell Stobie built a program based off using you guys, and he just finished building a 2nd program for us to use as well. You guys arent communication with the MODS or the user base. You guys aren't a religion or god for us. we dont just have faith you are there. We want to hear from you, we want to know what you maybe have planned for us.


simply put COMMUNICATE! I dont' remember the last time we had a bort or corndog siting besides changelog in a long time.

once again bort and corndog we arent trying to attack you at all. We just want the game to continue on. We want to keep playing, and enjoying this wonderful game.

That my friend is both a GLB Classic and GLB2 problem...always has been and always will be until proven otherwise unfortunately

Thank you for the input guys.

At the end of the day, it is a business. And they've earned the right to run that business however they see fit. I think we're just looking for some sort of acknowledgement as to what direction they're taking... if the new RPG and Mighty Brawlers and what not are the priority, or if this game is still going to get its love too. There's plenty of agents in this game that go above and beyond to make this game great and more accessible, by writing guides, answering questions, or creating entire freakin' websites. Not every game has a community with the desire to actively help.

So my request: can we get something from the mods? Anything as to the state of the game?

Also, I mentioned in the OP a thought about starting a new dot building forum. Would anyone be interested in that? Think it would be beneficial to both vets and newbies, but it would be a bit of work.

A dot building forum you say...I'm for it and anything positive for the game I like...as far as the state of GLB 2...again unfortunately GLB Classic went down this very same road, just not this fast

As far as builds are concerned I know that I try to jump in on build conversations when they are posted and my thoughts regarding the build aspect in question have not already been stated. Additionally, I occasionally open some of my builds to all but it is randomly and usually for a period of time with no notification to anybody. If somebody is struggling with builds they simply need to have the motivation to do the research whether it is digging through forum threads, scouting the HOF players for open builds or by sending a PM. I personally keep my information to myself and those involved in my teams. The exception to this is when people take the time to PM me questions. I have helped countless people that I have never had contact with in any way because they took the time to PM me. I have had in depth build conversations and game planning discussions with people that I know nothing about. Many of us help others but I am not going to waste time and energy trying to help somebody that is not willing to put forth some level of effort in figuring things out.

I am not going to get in to the Bort/CDog bashing. They have their positive moments even if they may be brief. There are things that they do that make it appear that theye intend to have this game around for a while and other things that they do or don't do that make me feel the opposite. At this point I would not expect any drastic change to their approach in all honesty.

As for agents departing the sim. This is going to happen with any game. Yes, many have left due to issues with the direction or lack thereof for the game. Others have left due to simply being burnt out. Burn out is real and is in my opinion the largest problem the game has when it comes to people leaving.

Let's break down what causes burn out:
1) Coaching/Gameplanning - This is by far the biggest thing that can cause burn out. Quality coaches are often asked by many to help with their teams. There are only a hand full of quality DCs and these guys get hit the hardest. Not only are they asked to work their craft on more teams due to being one of the few, they are also strapped with the more time consuming job on each team that they are working with. Scouting opposing offenses and running the SAME hand full of plays just about every game while modifying their tactics. They are spotting tendencies and adjusting for those constantly. Too much of that will burn anybody out. OCs do not require as much Gameplanning but it never hurts to Gameplan on occasion (I know I have not been Gameplanning hardly at all the past 3-4 seasons). The burnout with OCs comes primarily from running the SAME hand full of plays much like DCs. Additionally, there is little incentive to Gameplan for OCs as the best plays to run in various situations shift much less against opponents. A quality offensive play run against the right defense can still bust through and do as you would like if your player builds are right. There are many more OCs in the game due to the fact that an OCs job takes far less time than a DCs. My hat is off to all you DCs out there!!!

2) Player building - After spending many seasons with the game, an agent will feel like he/she has a firm grip on player builds and realize that majority of the best builds are essentially cookie cutters. There are a few exceptions to this where you can make a player still perform well with a different build but the experimentation phase will pass for most people. Player building could be so much more dynamic if there were more ways to make any DOT elite but in different ways.

3) The learning curve - This essentially applies to our young agents. When you start to play and build DOTs here for the first time there is a serious learning curve on player builds. I would venture to say that most people that are dipping their toes in the water are not in the forums. Their first DOTs will most likely perform poorly later in their careers (if they make it through the disappointing rookie season). Eventually, some of these agents will decide that they need to know more and seek information in the forums. There is a lot to digest at first if you are not actively talking to somebody and vague/general questions will be torched by some people which is off putting. If the agent is aiming to coach offensively or defensively there is an even larger curve. Watching your offense or defense get annihilated can be extremely discouraging.

Potential solutions:
1) Coaching/Gameplanning - Make defensive gameplanning a bit more streamlined as we have requested. Make or fix offensive plays (passing and running) that properly counter specific defensive plays. The same should be done for defense. Play calling for the defensive and offensive sides of the ball need to be more diverse and rock, paper, scissors like IMO. Running the same plays in the same situations game in and game out while still getting elite results seems a bit ridiculous to me. Bottom line here is that we need to make life a little easier on our DCs and properly build up rock, paper, scissors match ups for OCs and DCs to play cat and mouse with. As things are right now the good teams spam the same exact plays and often in the same situations. More needs to be done in regards to spam IMO.

2) Player building - Similar to play calling solutions, I believe that making more build concepts viable would be nice. Right now quality builds are pretty focused on the same things for each position. Make it so other combinations of high skills can be every bit as good and still hang with the META. Essentially, instead of having one META type build I believe that there should be 2-4 META types. Similar to gameplanning this could create another level of rock, paper, scissors match ups all over the field at every positional battle whether it is blocking, pass defense/catching, tackling/running or whatever.

3) The learning curve - Perhaps some of the issues with the learning curve he creating terrible initial DOTs would be alleviated by making more player builds viable. There is always going to be a learning curve though. This will always be the case. Figure out a way to engage new faces a bit more so that they stick around long enough to reach the point in development where they seek the forums and seek information. Coaching/Gameplanning will always have the larger learning curve though most likely.

The bottom line is that GLB2 can became a mundane task as we all go through the exact same motions day in and day out. The excitement eventually wears off when a person realizes how shallow the sim really is. Often this realization comes well before realizing that this sim may never be what it could be. Many people held out hope and stuck around for a long time simply because of what the game could be. Once that hope is lost all bets are off. I believe that more diversity in Gameplanning/player building could help with that but who knows.

Honestly I think the biggest impediment to opening this game up to more diversity of strategy are the way the distance tags limit defensive playcalling.

Due to the distance tags being attached to specific plays, and you having to match tactics across 5 different formations means you may have a "long" play you like against 4WR, that you can never use because there are no good "long" plays to use against 2TE. So You have to decide which 2-3 tags to focus your playcalling on. You may only use short; medium; and inside run if you're a man defense. While if you're a zone defense you may only use medium; and long. It's also a bit easier to run a zone D as you can run the same zone plays against any number of WR's and it's mostly idenical. While a man D has to vary which plays get ran against certain numbers of WR's. The Tactics matrix actually hamstrings a man defense because we can't fill in our own distance tags.

For offensive plays, each pass has a distance tag, but you get a dropdown and can put any play into any section regardless of if the distance tags match. So for instance I FL Hitch is designated a short play. However the WR1 and WR2 routes have the potential to be deep passes, and if you want you can place the pass into your medium section and use the tactics matrix to make that play come up in situations where you want a medium pass.

However on defense 3-4 Cover 3 Tiger is considered a "Long" play and it's arguably a blitz for short situations, but it will only come up in situations you designate as long. So often times you'll have a tactics matrix that makes no logical sense and is only set up to satisfy the ludicrous design of pre-tagging defensive plays based on Corndogs, opinion rather than their actual use.

That has set a very hard meta for defense. Right now the best defense is a zone defense focused on running 3-5 plays across ALL formations. Each player is built to only play the 1-2 assignments they will have extremely well, and nothing else. Anything less than that on defense will ultimately struggle and have to be very active at gameplanning just to keep up. We don't need new plays on defense. We have dozens of new plays on defense that no human AI has access to because of how the Tactics matrix restricts us from using them. I'm more annoyed about that, and the utter radio silence about that than anything else.

Yes, there are several bugs and errors that the devs seem to have no interest in fixing. Yes, they make changes to things nobody cares about, or that even cause more problems when changed than they were before. Yes, they mostly ignore us, or treat us with smarm when we have reasonable concerns and suggestions. Yes, they seem to care more about their new RPG than they do about supporting this game. Yes, ever since they fired Catch22, they seem to have moved away from customer service and towards their own ends. Yes, typing up this paragraph has reminded me why I refuse to buy any more flex for this game. Now I'm mad again. Seriously I have nothing but bad feelings in my heart where Cdog, DD, and to a lesser extent Bort are concerned. Like Kanye after Katrina hit I feel like nobody cares about us. And the contracting leagues and declining team ownership are indicative of that IMO. Ultimately everyone gets exactly the results they deserve. And when this place becomes a ghost-town, all I'll think about that, is that it's exactly what the devs deserve. They deserve a dead game with no customers. They certainly act like thats exactly what they want. Honestly they struck gold with GLB1. I have no idea how or why it became popular but we all got swept up in it, and they've been riding the coat-tails of that initial rush ever since. I don't think it's likely for them to hit it big like that and attract such a large player-base as fast as they did again. It would've been prescient to try and maintain that player base, but every chance they've had they've constantly taken us for granted. I've already said this is going to be my only team. No reset, no nothing. And I'm only going to build one more GLB2 dot because it's a position I've always been curious to build but never quite had a chance to. After they all hit vet, I'm gone. And that's only because I feel a certain responsibility to the players on my team, and the people who assumed I made a real commitment.

With each game GLB becomes more and more like a job I don't get paid at with a boss who constantly makes the same mistakes and asks me to clean them up rather than just not making them in the first place. The only difference is I'm here by choice.

Think about how lucky they got, in terms of attracting users.

At one point GLB1 had over 100,000 active users. For a game that never advertised, and was mostly referral based. They never really worked for customers as far as I know, and they never really tried to keep them either aside from Catch22's work. This radio silence has been part of their MO for a long time. GLB1 was great for the first 20 seasons too. Bort showed up once a season to answer any questions you had, Catch22 became the face of HR and kind of the go-between for customers to Bort during the season. The sim was volatile and changed from season to season. Things were exciting enough to ignore some of the bugs like D-line teleporting, and Blockers taking on 3 and 4 defenders. But there was, always a pervading radio silence that just expanded and expanded. WG decided to fire the one guy who cared about customers and a further downward spiral continued. I think they've always taken customers for granted, because they've never really been without them. They don't know what it's like to scrape and claw for customers, or how much each customer is actually worth in sales, or how much money they could really see in income from taking a few hours a week to talk to us. I don't know how much ya'lls time is worth, but I get a decent bit, and if someone asked me to answer a few questions on a forum for a few hours a week to see an increase in flex revenue of maybe $400-500 a month, I'd do it. That still shakes out to $30-$40 an hour of time put in. And possibly could be even more. The price of attracting new customers is terribly high IMO. I don't think WG has ever realized what thats like. I've started a business before, and the toughest, most thankless work was in attracting customers, keeping customers, and getting customers to share and advertise your brand to their friends. But that was also where all the money was. Right now I would never invite anyone to play this, I would never refer anyone to play this, not even my worst enemy. And I wonder how many of you guys would refer a friend?

There's no advertising, little if any word of mouth, a game-play style that wears players out, a learning curve too steep to maintain casual players, devs who never communicate with players, high entry cost, and difficult/broken gameplanning mechanisms for players who actually know the game. This is destined to fail, and honestly in a year I'll be VERY surprised if they can even fill more than 1-2 rookie leagues. For any business to have long term success they need to be good at two things. Getting customers, and keeping customers. GLB has always failed at both except for a brief period when 100k mad souls all flooded in.

All of my builds are open, and I'm available to chat if anyone has any questions or wants to talk about tactics and such.

The more that is hidden by us, the agents, the worse this game will get. We do not want a closed shop.

doobas™