Non-Beta Better?

[dturley]

Hi,

While I am not totally opposed to paying for an on-line game, I don't think baseball mogul, in its present form, is up to snuff.

For instance, the bullpen is so small, if a starter has a rough outing, your bullpen can be tapped out for two days. This leads to two problems, you have no relief (except your Spot Starter potentially) for your next game. You can bring up players from the minors, but the attraction of this game is not having to monkey around with it for a couple of days. It should play itself, at least for short periods of time.

There is no DL. Nothing further needs to be said.

Cheating is epedemic.

There is no draft.

There is no manager.

Teams cannot run a deficit without having their funding for medical/farm/scouting totally erased. This is just plain dumb.

Try to make your money from advertsing. The draw on bandwidth cannot be extreme, as there are no graphics.

Cheers

[mikeh5]

I disagree with your opinion on bullpens (and I'm not very passionate about your other takes). The BBMO pitching staff comprises 11 players - just like most major league teams carry for the bulk of the season. And now with the option to have a 4 or 5 man rotation you pretty much have all the choices that managers use for their pitching staffs. This is about as realistic as it can be.

[dturley]

Shine them apples!

[mikeh5]

Oh no, dturley is on to me! The truth is out now!

Yes, it's true, I've been kissing up to the Sports Mogul gods in hopes of receiving a long winning streak and All-Star players at 1 pt salaries in appreciation of my words in defense of the pitching rotation/bullpen options of this game.

[dturley]

..and try to play the game. The point being that unless you can check back on your team every hour on the hour, you are going to have no pen if your pitching staff has just come off a rough outing. You will no doubt confess that the computer does not do a very good job of managing. So, the bullpen is the same as a major league team. So what. In order to leave your game alone for a day or two, you need a bigger bullpen.

[Godard]

I try to have my closer have an endurance of C or better; same for long relief and spot starter.

The closer gets used the most, and with good endurance, he bounces back the next day.

I do agree that the penalty for F endurance is too high, so I work around it.

[iansmith]

Let me take a couple of these...

Cheating is epedemic.

The cheating issues were caused by the free system. Having to pay for a league will get rid of 99% of the cheaters. Not many will be willing to spend $5 a month so they can cheat, get caught and loose their $5.

Try to make your money from advertsing. The draw on bandwidth cannot be extreme, as there are no graphics.

There is a big field with rolling hills and trees and a MILLION GRAVESTONES of dead internet startups who tried to make money off advertising. The banner advertising industry took a nosedive this year and is still dropping like a lead weight. We do have banner ads but other than getting us free pizza on friday nights :-), it doesn't do much to support a company.

--
Ian

[willat]

Don't most banner ad revenues consist of getting the displayer a free ad on some other site instead of cash (unless you are one of the ultra high traffic portals)?

I don't think that would help enought to run this game.

[mikeh5]

If you're really concerned about checking your bullpen often enough, join a slower league. I work all day and can't check my teams during the day, so the fastsim leagues don't really work for me. The slow and normal speed sims should solve your problems of bullpen abuse.

And yes, the manager system in the game isn't the best of all-time, but it is pretty good. You'll probably find in a few threads that there's a lot of debate here on how refined the manager engine needs to be. Some players are looking for just the GM role while others want to control the manager's decisions in every situation.

[bigfly22]

Cheating is epedemic.

The cheating issues were caused by the free system. Having to pay for a league will get rid of 99% of the cheaters. Not many will be willing to spend $5 a month so they can cheat, get caught and loose their $5.

Let me put my bit in on this. When beta was done, you lost a lot more than just the cheaters. I would be willing to bet the money I can't afford to pay to play the game online, that you lost a lot more good, clean players than you lost cheaters when it is all said and done. The reality of the situation is that if they were getting away with cheating before when it was free, they will continue to do so even if it does cost them money. If you really think that charging people $5 a month is going to stop cheating...

Jason Templeton

bigfly22@collegeclub.com

[James Grove]

Jason -

You are probably right. I suspect we lost more users who played fairly than we lost cheaters.

Unfortunately, we knew we were going to lose players, but there was nothing we could do about that.

We cannot afford to run Baseball Mogul for free forever. Advertising doesn't pay the bills these days (even if we use the enormous X-10 popups that infuriate everyone ;) ).

The fact that the fee helps keep cheaters out is just added value that makes the game more fun for the serious players. It is not the most important reason for charging the fee.

And don't forget - it's not just the fee that stops cheaters, it's the fact that they have to identify themselves in order to play now. Cheating is much easier when it can be done anonymously.

We believe we have priced the game reasonably. A full year subscription at a bronze level costs about as much as 1 or 2 retail CD-ROM games. (And I for one have more than my share of retail CD-ROMs that I bought, played for a only a week, then put aside.)

So I'm sorry if the end of the Beta test disappoints you. We will miss many of the players who logged in every day. But now we will be able to start investing the fees into game improvements and into developing new games in the Mogul family.

I hope you'll keep your eyes peeled, and try out some of the new games in the future.

Thanks for helping with the Beta Test.

-James Grove

[bigfly22]

James -

I definately understand the business decision that you have been faced with, and I respect the decision to stop the free game. Fortunately there are a few free leagues out there that are run by people who keep up the challenge and integrity of the game. That is what keeps me hooked. I hate to say it, but I too have plenty of games that definately did not get worn out by me playing them. The good thing is that my wife keeps me in check when it comes to spending $ on games. Unfortunately she isn't as big a fan of BBM as I am. The turnaround to that is that she and I did go see our first Major League game this summer. Anyhow, I do appreciate all the work you and the BBM team have put & will continue to put into the game. It gets better every time. Believe me when I say that I will continue to play the CD version and buy any new ones that come out.

Thanks!!

Jason Templeton

bigfly22@collegeclub.com

[willat]

It is simple economics that the higher the price goes, the less customers that you will have. You will always have more customers at a price of $0.00 than you will at a price of $4.95 and up.

My hope is that close to 100% of the cheaters are not willing to pay to join this game and cheat, and that the customer base will be almost all serious players.

I would also assume that since cheaters can be identified, they won't be very willing to join up and lose their (or Mommy's) money.

[steven0560]

Like all good ideas, it takes time. There will be bugs, cheaters :mad:, and a large fall-off of active players, but good things come to those who wait:). As long as the product is good and continues to improve, eventually the leagues will pick up.

The worst part of the cheaters syndrome is that, they left a legacy of certain teams loaded to the max with superstars. I've seen teams using Jason Kendel as a shortstop and many other ridiculous position changes to accommodate the over abundance of stars on their team.

But I think it will work out the kinks in time. :p

[BBM]

This game is not as horrible as you guys say if you ARE WILLING to join a PRIVATE LEAGUE, that means league that are will PASSWORD PROTECTED, not beta league and NON PASSWORD PROTECTED LEAGUE.
I have a league avaliable for you guys that are still whining about not enough active managers or cheating or what so ever. That league is MAL, it has 2 more two teams avaliable, 30 managers are going to be all active and i am the commisioner of the league, so i will be able to remove someone who is inactive or they r cheating.
Sounds good? Email me at abcboy70@hotmail.com for details and/or join, you wont be disappointed.

[takaplan]

BBM is right. You gotta join a private league.