Warrior General Games

Career Boosts need to be free at this point.

Currently we get a Rookie and Soph seasons that are competitive.

Seasoned, Journeyman and Pro are a wasteland of shitty Ladder games. A lot of League games suck too.

Then we get 2 Vet seasons.

So 4 out of 7 Seasons are good, 3 suck balls. I'm intentionally being crass to make the point.

With free Career Boosts, we'd at least get 6 good seasons out of 9. That's a much better ratio.

Let me be clear: I will be making significantly less players going forward with the current dynamic. The FLEX loss you'll have is much greater than the FLEX loss from getting Career Boosts.

The last three seasons of my LZ2 team hasn't been anywhere as near as interesting as my first run through. I can't justify the current costs for 42% of my players existence boring/sucking.

Be smart for yourself and your customers.

I agree that something should be done... The teams that are left and polishing up the Pro tier have had the worst run that I have ever seen. We thinned out quickly team wise and have been playing CPU league games along with terrible ladder games whether playing up or down. The playoff teams have been a foregone conclusion the past 3 seasons and even quality competition has turned in to a very serious problem with the team numbers thinning out so much.

How about start in soph with our rookie points already and then tack on an extra vet season? Just have us use the 2 boosts from rookie in vet so you boost 4 times at the end. They don't lose money on flex boosts and we get an extra vet season..

Sounds like that just makes career boosts even better of a bargain. You increase your fun seasons by 50 percent for far less than half the cost of a player.

Originally posted by Corndog
Sounds like that just makes career boosts even better of a bargain. You increase your fun seasons by 50 percent for far less than half the cost of a player.

Or we just paid extra just to get to Vet. Depends how you look at it. We essentially have been paying up just to get to Vet ball with hopes that there will be more competition there. Pro tier teams rolling in to vet paid far more flex per quality opponent than any other team I am sure. Paid good money to play CPU teams most league games and down tiers in ladder. With other tiers also thinning out this is a big problem for the community both now and moving forward. Additionally, if a mega tier is created with majority of active owners where will it leave other existing and future tiers?

Originally posted by Detroit Leos
Or we just paid extra just to get to Vet. Depends how you look at it. We essentially have been paying up just to get to Vet ball with hopes that there will be more competition there. Pro tier teams rolling in to vet paid far more flex per quality opponent than any other team I am sure. Paid good money to play CPU teams most league games and down tiers in ladder. With other tiers also thinning out this is a big problem for the community both now and moving forward. Additionally, if a mega tier is created with majority of active owners where will it leave other existing and future tiers?

And extending veteran for everyone only exacerbates the thinning of lower leagues.

The fix is more active agents, and while letting everyone play in vet for free as long as they want would make some people quite happy, it would make the lower leagues even more vacant, making the experience even less interesting for new players, meaning fewer new active agents, which goes the opposite way of fixing the problem.

I am not saying that free career boosts is the answer. A serious problem is tenure and it has to do with new owners frustrated by their teams not doing well due to player builds, rookie RNG and lack of ability to do much and/or PB/Tactic issues. For experienced owners/agents these thin tiers have taken a lot of wind out of the sails. Many have already left. Whether the Rookie tier is removed or whatever ideas you and Bort may have are the answer who knows. It is a very serious problem though. The question is what can be done to assist with keeping both new agents and old agents around longer? The game is not what it once was due to decreasing teams, agents and stimulating forum discussions as a result. Can things be done to keep retention of new and old agents around long term? If nothing is done my fear is that the sim will never be able to recover and I know that those that are here are here for good reason but how long will everybody stay and what will the sim be like in another 3-5 seasons for those that remain?

There are roughly 160-170 human owned teams from Vet this season down to Rookie and that does not take in to account the number of those teams that have CPU rosters, partially human filled rosters or inactive owners. Majority of those teams are sitting in Rookie to Seasoned and will continue to remain in lower tiers due to others going inactive, folding their teams or resetting. The issue is not with the low tiers where all teams have promise and every bodies "vision" when creating the team is under the belief that the team will grow to be successful. The issue is lies with tenure for established agents/owners and JMan+ tiers need to find a way to be bolstered. For new agents/owners the issue is with the early parts despite a much more active presence at all times in comparison.

Originally posted by Corndog
Sounds like that just makes career boosts even better of a bargain. You increase your fun seasons by 50 percent for far less than half the cost of a player.

If you own quite a few players on a team that's expensive just to add the career boosts. Some people have 5+ on a given team and you've seen some owners control a whole team. Who in their right mind wants to add almost 5 dollar cost per player for the 4 career boosts?? Especially when most traditional Games (MMO's) are 14.99/month. This could get very expensive if you wanted it to. So no in my opinion it's best to run to Vet, get your 2 seasons out of it from doing all the skill boosts and call it good for a reset after that.

I agree with Xars point's and yes also agree with Leo's, maybe it don't need to be free but something needs to be done. instead of 150 cost per player per boost why not 50 for each career boost?? That's a hell of a lot more reasonable and people may be more apt to doing it then.

It does not even have to involve career boosts. It could be something along the lines of what AtticusFinch posted where after owning a team for X amount of seasons or spending X amount of flex gets you some flex back or free scrims, additional S* player or free player slots or whatever.

Originally posted by SithLord
So no in my opinion it's best to run to Vet, get your 2 seasons out of it from doing all the skill boosts and call it good for a reset after that.

Doesn't really make much sense to me. You retire these players and start all over again so you are spending more money restarting than paying for an extra season of veteran play.

Honestly i don't mind the career boost cost. I just wish that seasoned through professional was a better experience as a coach. Saying we need more users is obvious CDog, but what is also obvious is that users are losing interest beyond sophomore because you spend half your time playing teams beyond your means or for top journeyman/pro teams well below your means. Just look at Winchester Rebels this season in Seasoned. They drew early on teams that were beyond their level of play and their owner dwindled in interest mid season. They ended up winning our league championship and are coming back next season, where they will likely once again draw a ton of teams beyond their level of play and their owner will once again be in a similar spot. That isn't the type of thing we want to see as a continuing trend. It's one thing to be stacked against a wall of great teams in your own tier, but as a seasoned team to be stacked up against Journeyman's top or even Pro's top team just sucks.

Career boosts aren't really a big problem, IMO. Ability points however are a pain, lol.

As for teams dropping out, that's largely because there's one too many tiers. If Soph was dropped and Rookie started where that is, you would have better Rookie ball play, and better team retention to Vet.

Originally posted by BoDiddley
Career boosts aren't really a big problem, IMO. Ability points however are a pain, lol.

As for teams dropping out, that's largely because there's one too many tiers. If Soph was dropped and Rookie started where that is, you would have better Rookie ball play, and better team retention to Vet.

drop one of the 3 most competitive seasons of play? Not sure that is the answer either. Would still be 3 wasted seasons from seasoned to pro.

Originally posted by bhall43
drop one of the 3 most competitive seasons of play? Not sure that is the answer either. Would still be 3 wasted seasons from seasoned to pro.

What I mean is combine Rook/Soph like others have suggested and just call it Rookie still. The quality of play from seasoned to pro would increase, as would the number of teams in each league.