Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

I thought I might create a new team and saw there was an Autoleague with 11 teams in it. I threw together a draft list in < 5 minutes, but alas, the league had already filled. My remaining options for an 80M league -two 24 team leagues that are both less than halfway full.

I used to organize a leagues at different caps and with different players sets, but a few months ago, I stopped. The issue -- people had stopped signing up. I don't think it was that nobody wanted to play those leagues - there just weren't enough guys playing ATG to generate the momentum needed to fill a 24-team theme league. Now, it seems, we've gotten to a point where you can't even find a generic league to join.

When I checked a few minutes ago, there were 28 ATG leagues in the Directory, however, 3 of those are Live Drafts that aren't going anywhere, another 5 are "Shuffle" leagues with one team (they won't ever fill), two 999M leagues that won't fill, and finally, 11 Rookie leagues .

So that means there are 7 relatively standard leagues, none of which is close to halfway full. If you want to sign up for just a regular ATG league this weekend, you are SOL.

SOM's inattention and management failure have been documented elsewhere. I'll just note that SOM spends the little effort the do put into ATG delivering worthless upgrades like auto-filling your remaining cap in the "At most" price box, while failing to do incredibly obvious and easy fixes like...
>> Put filters on the League Directory list, so that you can find the kind of league you're looking for without seeing 11 "Rookie" leagues
>> Adding new players that were voted on like 6 months ago

At least they supported Mighty Moose to keep Barnstormers going for another year.

If SOM had ever taken the time to figure out how to control player over-usage* and some other issues in the gaming system, I think they could have made SOM sports games into flourishing online products, but they never had the imagination or resources to make that happen. It was fun while it lasted.

* Over-usage degrades the Baseball product, but it completely killed Football which has many awesome attributes as an online game.

Riggo,
You forgot to mention this...

http://www.strat-o-matic.com/product/ba ... ies-cards/


Another thing they've done, instead of what WE want and need.

visick

LOL!

The lifeblood of early ATG was the 80m AutoLeague followed by a Frenzy. These Rookie Leagues are nothing but clutter, and the Law of Unintended Consequences in regards to so many cap options, draft options, too many choices, etc means that most Public Leagues sit for weeks without coming close to filling.

the sad thing is they don't even acknowledge the problem,,,I guess because they do not see the problem...

Options are wonderful to have but there are so many options in Salary Cap, AL only, NL only, pre-war, post war, live draft, auto draft, Rookie leagues, Shuffle leagues, Theme leagues, etc, etc that it is hard for any one of those options to gain momentum to get 12 (or 24) others want to do that exact option at any one time. The litany of options get a few managers in and then die and therefore are killing the game. If there were fewer options all leagues would fill faster.

A good start would be eliminating the rookie leagues or only have one rookie at a time per set. All companies have bad ideas that they pull back from. Remember "New Coke".

80 Mill
DH or NO
Waivers or Frenzy

It was how the game began and under which it flourished. PLus it was the cap at which the card pricing was pegged to.

Yeah, yeah, call me Mr. 80 Million League, but if it ain't broke don't try to fix it.

You wanna have 60 mill and 100 mill caps too, fine. But cut out the nonsense and fix the flaws that people have been bitching about for years now.

And in answer to your question Riggo ... It's not over, but it's on life support. Which is sad for those of us who have played since the original ATG umpteen years ago.

egvrich wrote:80 Mill
DH or NO
Waivers or Frenzy

It was how the game began and under which it flourished.

Actually, in the beginning there was no waivers.
Every league was a frenzy and the draft would occur sometime after midnight.