Warrior General Games

Originally posted by markm6770
OK.... let's try a different tactic. You've posted your solution and have one person on board (you). I've posted my take on things and have 7 on board with me. What does that tell you?

Tell me again who's solution is going to cost the game more players?

Dong sold their team and quit caring. That's a parity issue, as they should have been filtered out of WL. Using Dong Energy as an example of what is wrong with the game is supporting my argument, not yours.

Please find another World League team that is not playing games with "realistic" final scores.



Nonsense, because next season some other team can get into the WL and stop caring, leaving the same lopsided boring result.

And the same thing would be happening in every league in the game, no matter how much you tried to stack the teams by talent before hand.

You would have to rebalance the leagues EVERY game to avoid that from happening.

Far better to balance the players so that no matter what the worst team in the game would still be able to at least run with the best teams enough to keep the scores reasonable and the games watchable - even if they did not have much chance of winning enough to get into the playoffs.

As for the "im the only one who wants this" point, Bort tinkered with it with speed last season actually. So BORT sees the need.

Meanwhile there is a thread every single season about league retraction, but it hasn't happened.

Because BORT sees the danger in going down that path as well.

Games that get smaller get gone. You are asking for GLB to go out of business. Its not a route Bort should take unless he has given up on expanding GLBs player base.

So you'd be OK with it if you lost this game - http://goallineblitz.com/game/game.pl?game_id=2068467 by a score of 28-24 for the sake of a realistic final score? Just want to make sure I am understanding you.

Don't bring up the fact that Jambi Juice has CPU players and zero cares.... (see also : Dong Energy)

Originally posted by yello1
Nonsense, because next season some other team can get into the WL and stop caring, leaving the same lopsided boring result.

And the same thing would be happening in every league in the game, no matter how much you tried to stack the teams by talent before hand.

You would have to rebalance the leagues EVERY game to avoid that from happening.


True... as long as Bort allows teams to sell mid season, there is always the potential that a team will quit. But it is far better to only have ONE "bye week" as opposed to TWELVE "bye weeks." Parity. P-A-R-I-T-Y. You can say it.

Originally posted by yello1

Far better to balance the players so that no matter what the worst team in the game would still be able to at least run with the best teams enough to keep the scores reasonable and the games watchable - even if they did not have much chance of winning enough to get into the playoffs.


Clearly inferior teams should have near ZERO chance of winning. The only slim hope they should have is superior game planning. It should never come down to a coin flip. We all get the same amount of skill points. Build and recruit better players.

Originally posted by yello1

As for the "im the only one who wants this" point, Bort tinkered with it with speed last season actually. So BORT sees the need.


Are you truly referencing LAST SEASON? You realize last season was one of the biggest failures in GLB history? You want to know why folks are leaving... just look at last season's debacle.

Originally posted by yello1

Meanwhile there is a thread every single season about league retraction, but it hasn't happened. Because BORT sees the danger in going down that path as well. Games that get smaller get gone. You are asking for GLB to go out of business. Its not a route Bort should take unless he has given up on expanding GLBs player base.

News flash for you.... the game IS getting smaller. I am holding out hope they will advertise, but I'm not sure if there is much of an untapped market out there for this sort of game. Hope I am wrong though.

If we don't see an influx of players, Bort's hand is going to be forced or we will have CPU-heavy teams in the pros. It's just a matter of time.

I wonder if he should scrap leagues all together and just go to a ladder system?

Originally posted by markm6770
So you'd be OK with it if you lost this game - http://goallineblitz.com/game/game.pl?game_id=2068467 by a score of 28-24 for the sake of a realistic final score? Just want to make sure I am understanding you.

Don't bring up the fact that Jambi Juice has CPU players and zero cares.... (see also : Dong Energy)



Its real simple.

A game is fun if you think you have a chance to win it going in (and conversely a chance to lose it), so you prepare for it.

And while watching it the game is close and competitive enough that you watch the entire game because you are still in it, or your opponent is still in it.

Whereas if the game is so lopsided you don't feel any reason to game plan, and just click on the Show Score to see how bad (or good) it was, then WHERE IS THE FUN IN THAT??

Get it?

So yes the game would be more interesting with dots that were always at least somewhat competitive because the build system keeps the highs and lows inside realistic ranges of performance.

As to CPUs, no - obviously we do not want CPU teams.

But the way to avoid that is to FIRST make the game competitive and interesting.

Then people will play more, build more dots, and tell their friends about the game.

Then you won't have empty teams.

Yes you could do league contraction first. But the game would still suck and you would just need to contract again, and again, and again - until the number of paying customers is too small for Bort to leave the servers running.

What about a team of level 64s against your team of 79s? Would you be OK losing to that team?

Just curious....

Originally posted by yello1
WL Is the ultimate example of "contraction". Its filtered for the 32 best teams in the league every season. You have to win a championship from the top 2nd to 9th best leagues containing the 33rd-288th best teams in the game to get in and then you have to be in the top half of those top 32 to stay.

Technically that is not true. Often teams that did not make the playoffs in the WL and are thus demoting are better than some of the incoming teams that are promoting from Pro.


Originally posted by yello1
And yet, the Dong team stands there as an example of non-competitive play in the World League.

It is living proof that your misconception that having fewer leagues will make the game better.

It just won't, not consistently and not well enough to matter - not as to the imbalanced games.

Again I ask, show me another WL team in the last 10 seasons that wasnt competitive. We are talking about one team. Every other team in the WL (basically since the plateau was extended) has had some kind of fighting chance to at least make the playoffs. It is astonishing how often a handful of games decided by a touchdown or two is difference between the 8th seed and the 13th seed. Even if you had your governor in place that team would not care and would not try. It is a joke team.

So again, I will tell you to stop talking about things that you obviously know nothing about.

Originally posted by yello1
You can not ask for "contraction" to do any better than that.

I couldnt agree more and it has worked PERFECTLY!! There really is no denying this.


Originally posted by yello1
Yes warm body wise some lower leagues should be pared because there aren't enough players left.

But the elite and national pros do not need this.

There is only ONE Elite Regional Pro league... only ONE. Yet there are 8 Nat Pro leagues. How do you not see the problem there? There used to be 3 or 4 Elite RP leagues and even that is not enough to replenish the 32 teams + guts that drop down from Nat Pro. The lower leagues are trimmed as much as they can be. Show me where you could trim the lower leagues anymore than it is now?


Originally posted by yello1
What they need is better game balance - and that means in part a tighter build system to promote competitive play.

That is the reality.

When is it going to sink into your dense skull that the disparity between elite teams and average teams is coordinating? Putting a governor/handicap on dot performance by changing the build system would do very little to make those games more competitive.

Originally posted by yello1
Its real simple.

A game is fun if you think you have a chance to win it going in (and conversely a chance to lose it), so you prepare for it.



Let me fix your post. A game is fun if you think that the way you play it matters, if you think that the decisions you make contribute to the end results in all aspects of the game. As soon as people feel that this is not the case, that they can't really make great players no matter how good they are or how much they know, or conversely that players who know very little or barely try can make average to above average players that compete with theirs, they will lose interest and leave.

This is pretty much what happened last season. Most dots played on pretty even par with others their same age and level, regardless of how much better the one was built than the other. No one could really do anything to speak of offensively, lots of people left, and it was widely considered one of the worst sims GLB has ever had. This season, by contrast, I think most would agree to be one of the best sims GLB has had, mainly because we distanced ourselves quite a bit from what made last season's sim so horrible.

Good dots can smoke bad dots, and people like that because it makes their build and tactical choices meaningful. This is critical to the success of any game. Even if your players are poorly built, you know that there is a way to build good players because you see other people who have done it and that gives you hope that you too can do it. Last season it did not really seem possible to build dominant players no matter how hard you tried. Even if your tactics are poorly constructed, you know that there is a way to build a good AI and DC setup because you see other people who have done it and that gives you hope that you too can do it. Last season it did not really seem possible to put together a dominant offense, defense or STs unit no matter how hard you tried. When this happen, gamers realize that their choices are irrelevant, which basically means that the game is very poorly designed, and they lose interest and leave.

What you are saying is correct on one level. Of course the game is more fun if you are in a competitive league where what you do matters. And yes, GLB has a much more punishing end turn around than most other games when you realize that your players and tactics are not good enough because you just have to rebuild from the ground up. Certainly most other games are not as punishing of incompetence as that, but as has been pointed out in this thread, many of the games that are that punishing are really popular, because the greater failure is punished, the more success is meaningful.

What you are saying also indicates that you seem to think that tactics should matter but player building should not matter so much. The whole point of this game, and I really cannot stress this enough, is that player builds should matter more than tactics. That's it. That's what the game was designed to be, that's what the games are like that this one was based on, and that is what this game will continue to be.

A very small percentage of people coordinate compared to people who build players. The game is designed first and foremost for the people who build players, and as I said above complexity in tactics has been added over the seasons to give players more things to do and more ways to be built, not the other way around. This game just isn't a tactics game first and a player building game second. It's not some sort of football manager game with the bonus that you get to build players. It's a player building game, it's all about the dots, and the tactics are just the sine non qua to having dots, because those dots need to be able to do something meaningful. The game would still work with the most basic tactics because at its core it is all about the players, not the tactics.

If you want this game to be anything other than that, then really you just want this game to be something it never was, isn't and never will be. It's really as simple as that.

Originally posted by yello1
Nonsense, because next season some other team can get into the WL and stop caring, leaving the same lopsided boring result.

And the same thing would be happening in every league in the game, no matter how much you tried to stack the teams by talent before hand.

You would have to rebalance the leagues EVERY game to avoid that from happening.

That could happen even with your handicap (floor/ceiling) system. This point is irrelevant to the discussion. Dong Energy is irrelevant to the discussion. That is a flaw in the demotion/promotion system... it is NOT a league structure issue.

Originally posted by yello1
Far better to balance the players so that no matter what the worst team in the game would still be able to at least run with the best teams enough to keep the scores reasonable and the games watchable - even if they did not have much chance of winning enough to get into the playoffs.

This is happening in the WL right now. I know you cant see past DONG but the game is balanced and the WL has proven this for many seasons now. Nat Pro and Reg Pro structure is not.

Originally posted by yello1
Meanwhile there is a thread every single season about league retraction, but it hasn't happened.

Because BORT sees the danger in going down that path as well.

There was a thread about extending the plateau for 10 seasons before Bort did something about it... that same thread asked Bort to accelerate the building process too and it took like 15 seasons before Bort did. Both of those were necessary additions and Bort waited way too long to implement them. Guess what.. that exact same thread that asked for plateau extension and build acceleration ALSO asked for the leagues to be contracted and here we are almost 20 seasons later. I am sorry but Bort is just as big of a moron as you are. That is the reason this game is failing.

Originally posted by yello1
Games that get smaller get gone. You are asking for GLB to go out of business. Its not a route Bort should take unless he has given up on expanding GLBs player base.



The game is getting smaller regardless. They have not advertised the game and at this point (especially with them working on another project) I would appear that they never will. There is one of two options... restructure Nat and Reg Pro or handicap the AI/coordinating/game planning.

As you can see handicapping the build process is not an option. Again, it would have very little influence. I am partially torn on handicapping the coordinating aspect of the game. There are certainly things that need to be done to make it more user friendly and less time consuming to learn but would be very hesitant to dumb the strategy part down too much.

The more you limit our ability to differentiate builds and game plans the more this game becomes about chance/luck. Take the control out of our hands and the games become meaningless... just watching a bunch of random coin flips.

That said, restructuring Nat/Reg Pro is a must regardless. Again, it is not a permanent move. If Bort ever does decide to expand the userbase it would be very easy to expand Nat Pro to accommodate. Even if they started advertising this offseason it would still take 5-6 seasons before those new influx of dots/coordinators reached end-game. It is very worth it to contract the leagues for at least that long.

Perhaps Candy Land is a better game choice. Everyone has a chance to win, even a 4 year old child. Any age or size can win.

http://www.nickjr.com/games/dora-candy-land.jhtml

Originally posted by tpaterniti
Originally posted by yello1

Its real simple.

A game is fun if you think you have a chance to win it going in (and conversely a chance to lose it), so you prepare for it.



Let me fix your post. A game is fun if you think that the way you play it matters, if you think that the decisions you make contribute to the end results in all aspects of the game. As soon as people feel that this is not the case, that they can't really make great players no matter how good they are or how much they know, or conversely that players who know very little or barely try can make average to above average players that compete with theirs, they will lose interest and leave.

This is pretty much what happened last season. Most dots played on pretty even par with others their same age and level, regardless of how much better the one was built than the other. No one could really do anything to speak of offensively, lots of people left, and it was widely considered one of the worst sims GLB has ever had. This season, by contrast, I think most would agree to be one of the best sims GLB has had, mainly because we distanced ourselves quite a bit from what made last season's sim so horrible.

Good dots can smoke bad dots, and people like that because it makes their build and tactical choices meaningful. This is critical to the success of any game. Even if your players are poorly built, you know that there is a way to build good players because you see other people who have done it and that gives you hope that you too can do it. Last season it did not really seem possible to build dominant players no matter how hard you tried. Even if your tactics are poorly constructed, you know that there is a way to build a good AI and DC setup because you see other people who have done it and that gives you hope that you too can do it. Last season it did not really seem possible to put together a dominant offense, defense or STs unit no matter how hard you tried. When this happen, gamers realize that their choices are irrelevant, which basically means that the game is very poorly designed, and they lose interest and leave.

What you are saying is correct on one level. Of course the game is more fun if you are in a competitive league where what you do matters. And yes, GLB has a much more punishing end turn around than most other games when you realize that your players and tactics are not good enough because you just have to rebuild from the ground up. Certainly most other games are not as punishing of incompetence as that, but as has been pointed out in this thread, many of the games that are that punishing are really popular, because the greater failure is punished, the more success is meaningful.

What you are saying also indicates that you seem to think that tactics should matter but player building should not matter so much. The whole point of this game, and I really cannot stress this enough, is that player builds should matter more than tactics. That's it. That's what the game was designed to be, that's what the games are like that this one was based on, and that is what this game will continue to be.

A very small percentage of people coordinate compared to people who build players. The game is designed first and foremost for the people who build players, and as I said above complexity in tactics has been added over the seasons to give players more things to do and more ways to be built, not the other way around. This game just isn't a tactics game first and a player building game second. It's not some sort of football manager game with the bonus that you get to build players. It's a player building game, it's all about the dots, and the tactics are just the sine non qua to having dots, because those dots need to be able to do something meaningful. The game would still work with the most basic tactics because at its core it is all about the players, not the tactics.

If you want this game to be anything other than that, then really you just want this game to be something it never was, isn't and never will be. It's really as simple as that.



Cant say it any better... if yello still doesnt get it after that post he is better off just leaving the game.

Originally posted by Plankton
Perhaps Candy Land is a better game choice. Everyone has a chance to win, even a 4 year old child. Any age or size can win.

Looks like not much has changed in OPL since you left, right?

Originally posted by beenlurken
Looks like not much has changed in OPL since you left, right?

I don't know why you guys still argue with Yello. After this much time, it is obvious that you guys will never agree with one another, and you know where I stand on this. Not going to get into it.

I know where you stand:


Conspiracy Plankton says: What if BL and Yello are the same person and we've all been trolled?

Originally posted by Plankton
Originally posted by beenlurken

Looks like not much has changed in OPL since you left, right?

I don't know why you guys still argue with Yello. After this much time, it is obvious that you guys will never agree with one another, and you know where I stand on this. Not going to get into it.

We actually just started arguing again... yello had taken a break from full douchebag mode but he seems to found his groove again.