Warrior General Games

As I recall, USAPL was really the only really good pro league in seasons 9-10; a lot of the other leagues weren't much different from now with a very small number of elite teams at the top, a middle tier that can enjoy playing each other, and a bottom feeder tier that everyone clobbers and gets turned over every season. How much different was the dominance of Benitos, Krazy, EFGH, etc to what you have now? Even CPL seemed to have 1-2 less top teams each season.

You might be right, but my dots almost never play in non-US leagues, so my view is skewed.

SLAP season 10 was a really good season. While both the Benitos and Monkeys had outstanding seasons, both teams had scares in the playoffs. The rest of the league was fairly competitive except for a couple gut jobs in each conference.

Season 11 was excellent as well with several teams in both conferences slugging it out for the top spots.

It has gone down hill since because it took about two seasons to clean out any team that was worth a lick in AAA and most of the teams that have come up since then have not been that good. (Couple of exceptions for sure, but just saying in general). When you have a Pro league that has a conference that goes from good competitive games to having times on the schedule where 6 of the 8 conference games were decided by a score of 100+, that is no good.

I was on another team in Canada Pro in season 13. We had just promoted up from AAA. We had one loss (by 2 points) and beat the second place team in the conference twice by a combined margin of 59 points. 7 wins during the regular season saw us score 50+ points in a game on a team that was not exactly built as a offensive power house. Season 14, we were in WL and had 1 win.

Originally posted by islander1
You might be right, but my dots almost never play in non-US leagues, so my view is skewed.

Fascist.

The WL isn't killing GLB.

What is killing it is teams were/are too easy to own and people just buy them and sell them like cheap hookers. There was a huge demand for teams early on, so they kept creating more and more teams and leagues to appease the public. Anybody could buy a team, they didn't need to earn it or anything. This spread out the game way too thin. The majority of people didn't have what it takes to run a team and ended up selling it back. Now, there are more teams than interested owners and you have leagues full of CPU teams.

Also, we're 15 seasons deep into this game, and the admins have not even attempted to address the problem with gutted teams in Pro Leagues. Wtf?

I thought I remember SLAP and WEPL being good leagues to play in around S11.

One difference between USAPL and other Pro leagues was that the last half dozen or so guys on the rosters in USA were a lot better than those same guys in other leagues, especially outside the top 6 or so teams in a given league. It just seemed like below that you'd see pretty even games, but they'd be decided by something like a backup/underleveled C or G just getting repeatedly abused on the plays that he was in.

Yea, i think it's more to do with decline than it is WL. 2 variables and no constant so hard to blame it all on WL

Originally posted by islander1
Let's not forget how much healthier population wise this game was, back when WL was instituted.
Actually that underlying weakness already existed even then. Anyone who had a team back in S5 or earlier and then was part of a new team in S8 to S10 could see a huge, huge difference in league balance and competitiveness. Tons more "legitimate" teams were being created back in the earlier days of this game, whereas there were far fewer teams organized around S8 that you would ever consider future Pro material.

The problem isn't the World League or the plateau or anything else besides the fact that GLB has hit its saturation point. It hasn't been bringing in new users for some time, and a smaller percentage of the established users have been involved with creating new waves of teams. The archetype roll-out will help things somewhat since a lot of people were motivated to create new dots, but that shortage exists precisely because people haven't been creating nearly as many new players as they were back when the current USAPL dots were first "born."


And speaking as someone in the World League, in my opinion it is by far the best thing to ever happen to GLB. This season it's amazing how much balance we have there (#3 seed in Alpha beat the #14 seed 41 to 37), and you really don't want juggernauts like Valhalla or CB coming back to their home regions and beating the crap out of people like they're clubbing baby seals.

Originally posted by jdbolick

Actually that underlying weakness already existed even then. Anyone who had a team back in S5 or earlier and then was part of a new team in S8 to S10 could see a huge, huge difference in league balance and competitiveness. Tons more "legitimate" teams were being created back in the earlier days of this game, whereas there were far fewer teams organized around S8 that you would ever consider future Pro material.

The problem isn't the World League or the plateau or anything else besides the fact that GLB has hit its saturation point. It hasn't been bringing in new users for some time, and a smaller percentage of the established users have been involved with creating new waves of teams. The archetype roll-out will help things somewhat since a lot of people were motivated to create new dots, but that shortage exists precisely because people haven't been creating nearly as many new players as they were back when the current USAPL dots were first "born."


And speaking as someone in the World League, in my opinion it is by far the best thing to ever happen to GLB. This season it's amazing how much balance we have there (#3 seed in Alpha beat the #14 seed 41 to 37), and you really don't want juggernauts like Valhalla or CB coming back to their home regions and beating the crap out of people like they're clubbing baby seals.

I agree. Also, the WL was supposed to be implemented in like season 3, but you know how slow Bort & co. are....

Originally posted by jdbolick

Actually that underlying weakness already existed even then. Anyone who had a team back in S5 or earlier and then was part of a new team in S8 to S10 could see a huge, huge difference in league balance and competitiveness. Tons more "legitimate" teams were being created back in the earlier days of this game, whereas there were far fewer teams organized around S8 that you would ever consider future Pro material.

The problem isn't the World League or the plateau or anything else besides the fact that GLB has hit its saturation point. It hasn't been bringing in new users for some time, and a smaller percentage of the established users have been involved with creating new waves of teams. The archetype roll-out will help things somewhat since a lot of people were motivated to create new dots, but that shortage exists precisely because people haven't been creating nearly as many new players as they were back when the current USAPL dots were first "born."


And speaking as someone in the World League, in my opinion it is by far the best thing to ever happen to GLB. This season it's amazing how much balance we have there (#3 seed in Alpha beat the #14 seed 41 to 37), and you really don't want juggernauts like Valhalla or CB coming back to their home regions and beating the crap out of people like they're clubbing baby seals.

Do you honestly think that neither the plateau or the WL have negatively impacted this game in no way whatsoever?

Originally posted by lukin83
Do you honestly think that neither the plateau or the WL have negatively impacted this game in no way whatsoever?
The World League has been great for the game, not only because it keeps the truly elite teams from getting bored by beating up on a lot of regional teams that can't come close to competing with them, but it also gives more of those regional teams a chance to compete at the Pro level. Meanwhile I also think that plateau and decline are essential to keep people interested in the game. If the same dots stay at an elite level for a long period of time, then everyone else gets bored while sitting behind them. I am kind of bummed that my own World League dots are nearing the end of their careers, but it's time for someone else to get the experience of playing at that level.

Originally posted by jdbolick

The World League has been great for the game, not only because it keeps the truly elite teams from getting bored by beating up on a lot of regional teams that can't come close to competing with them, but it also gives more of those regional teams a chance to compete at the Pro level. Meanwhile I also think that plateau and decline are essential to keep people interested in the game. If the same dots stay at an elite level for a long period of time, then everyone else gets bored while sitting behind them. I am kind of bummed that my own World League dots are nearing the end of their careers, but it's time for someone else to get the experience of playing at that level.

There would still be a changing of the guards with an extended plateau. I don't buy into your thought process on that at all. I personally think that the lack of a true plateau is the issue with GLB and not the WL. The majority seem to believe one or the other though, so your opinion that neither is an issue is a little odd (although expected since I know you have been vocal about this in the past).

I definitely think WL is still good for the game....Originally posted by jdbolick

The World League has been great for the game, not only because it keeps the truly elite teams from getting bored by beating up on a lot of regional teams that can't come close to competing with them, but it also gives more of those regional teams a chance to compete at the Pro level. Meanwhile I also think that plateau and decline are essential to keep people interested in the game. If the same dots stay at an elite level for a long period of time, then everyone else gets bored while sitting behind them. I am kind of bummed that my own World League dots are nearing the end of their careers, but it's time for someone else to get the experience of playing at that level.

I mostly agree. Although this guy is saying this because he doesn't have many bored dots.

The problem isn't WL, it's the rest of the league structure. We need North America, Europe, Asia/Australia, and SLAP/Africa for Pro Leagues...then filter them down to AA level appropriately.

Originally posted by lukin83
There would still be a changing of the guards with an extended plateau.
Not really. While it's possible for younger dots to surpass older ones, they have to be clearly better, not just a little better. You're a Season 1 player, so you probably don't know what it was like to be stuck behind all those dots for so many seasons just waiting for them to finally decline and get worse, only to constantly be knocked down by stuff like adding VAs and other bullshit. It was terribly frustrating at times, especially because we were stuck behind them for numerous seasons, whereas now those different generations are generally only competing for a couple of seasons before the older one gets out of the way. Add a longer plateau and it goes back to being stuck behind them for numerous seasons (even if the younger dots are theoretically better, limits on promotion mean that there is more competition to move up, so it's harder to do than to stay at the higher level).

Personally I do not favor extending the player lifespan at all, as it's already a ridiculous length of time for an internet game. I would prefer not to have any kind of extended plateau, but the only one I could see being acceptable is the aforementioned model where a player still declines in his 11th season, he just hits his plateau earlier by keeping accelerated leveling for longer than just to level 25 or whatever, then having the intermediate period be a plateau.

I would believe this argument a lot more if it was coming from the WL teams instead of the Pro teams.

That is like Pee Wee Silver saying that Pee Wee Gold is ruining Pee Wee, but honestly the fact that the best teams are all thrown together gives the silver teams a chance to win and gives the Gold teams real competitive games.

Teams that don't do what it takes to be competitive (recruiting, gameplanning) will stay in the AA and AAA with the 'rest'. Teams that do what it takes will be Pro or WL depending on their talent.