Originally posted by greengoose
Building dots is boring for 2 reasons.
1) A player's building career is basically 400 or so real days long, and 75% of that time is spent WAITING for resources to actually build your player with. It's the equivalent of spending 13 months to build a brick house that only requires a fraction of that time simply because you are waiting patiently for bricks......
2) Over 60% of that time (and a lot more if you have CPU games, don't make the playoffs (1/2 of the GLB player base) and don't play on a good team that actually plays meaningful friendlies/Tournaments) you have nothing to look at - your player isn't even playing a meaningful game to gauge his progress with.
To put it in a time perspective it's like watching Michael Johnson and a 3-toed sloth in a 400 meter race. An hour after the gun went off Michael Johnson is already showered, changed and heading home and the sloth has still got another 45 minutes before he hits the finish line. Even if you replace Michael Johnson with yourself it would still be 59 minutes instead of an hour.
a) It's like that in any RPG. The difference between this and something like WOW or Diablo is that the game is played in a real-time interactive sim. Play any non-computer RPG, and you'll have to wait a lot longer to develop your character. Play a computer RPG, and the vast bulk of your game time is spent gathering all the XP and resources you need to advance your character. Hence, it's the nature of RPGs. It's a marathon, not a dash. Otherwise, you'd be constantly retiring characters to create a new one. Then everyone would complain about having to make new characters all the time....and cry boredom with the game.
b) You've been here, more or less, since the beginning, right? How many dots have you built in that time? How many teams have you run? Point is, it's all old hat to you. You can't be expected to look at the game with fresh eyes. You've pretty much already done all that the game has to offer. That's why the game has gotten stale for you. most likely. Back when it was all new - when building dots or running teams was new to YOU - how bored were you back then....back when you were trying to figure everything out? I'm willing to bet some serious dough that you weren't bored at all back then. And that's what new users experience when they first join GLB. I've only been here for a year. I'm not bored at all - for precisely that reason.
c) GLB isn't meant to be a game where you need to spend hours sitting at the computer obsessing over it. If it's become that way, it's because of the people who play GLB. Min/max-ing, running offenses/defenses, recruiting the best dots from what appears to be a smallish pool of talent....that's what makes GLB time-consuming. It's also a turn-off for new users because people like things to be simple. Yet agents are always asking for "new this" and "new that". Meanwhile, Admin keeps asking "what's best for the game?". To a degree, there is some placation involved so GLB can retain the core customer base. Meanwhile, they need to expand that base while also ensuring longevity of the game. That may mean simplifying the game somewhat, which in turn may mean displeasing some of it's long-time customers.
All of that said, here is where I might agree with you:
1) 416 days is a rather long time to wait when you want to compete against the top talent.
2) Such a long wait is bound to be a turn-off for many new customers who just want to play the game recreationally.
3) New users will be much more likely to spend much more money if they can see quicker results.
These three things pose a major quandary for GLB because,
a) it may mean an overhaul of the game, or
b) it may necessitate a major add-on to the game which, in effect, would result in two different versions of the game.
Both are very time-consuming, and all those man-hours cost money. For all I know, Bort could be working on a completely new version of the game already behind the scenes. If he isn't, then maybe he should, but it would be a matter of time and money whether that is even feasible at this point.
Personally, I see Chysil's Training Camp idea as a jump point for helping to make players more relevant from day 1, as the OP desires. It sets the stage for creating an "introductory version". It might even allow Pee Wee leagues, D Leagues, and Casual Leagues to be combined into a "GLB Lite", a quicker, more simplified, more user-friendly version of GLB that might better appeal to new users who simply wish to play recreationally. Those who want more could then upgrade to "Advanced GLB" (sort of like what we have now) with it's greater AI control, dot-building, and higher costs. Maybe that's where Bort wants to head. Again, I don't know. But sooner or later, GLB is likely going to have to become a tiered game with different versions and different cost structures which appeal to different customers, just to expand it's customer base. The highest tier would likely have the highest user retention rate while the lowest tier would have the greatest user turnover with most customers falling somewhere into a middle tier once they get hooked. Three separate tiers, isolated from one another, where like-minded users can compete and interact without being put off by those who are more serious about the game.
In other words, trying to please everyone by placing all eggs in one basket is not likely to work. Therefore, diversify.
