*AC Modification Proposal to aid Player Retention

[br0_0ker]

This is a fantasy roleplay game at heart, players want to be great football players for their team.

I think because of this point, it makes sense to NOT change it. Decreasing the barrier to a stud player in the ISFL devalues the stats/achievements that come with being a max-earner. Consider that performance in the sim is not linear, nor does a higher TPE level necessarily guarantee a better player performance. The only way to consistently guarantee your player is top 5-10 in the league for consecutive seasons at any position is to max earn, and it should be that way. As it is currently, a sub 600 TPE player can be effective across multiple positions, and can even be a top 10 positional player on the season. But they shouldn't be able to retain that status with minimal effort, much like you wouldn't be able to spec a lvl 20 character in a fresh D&D campaign (unless you have some funky set-up going on), it takes time to reach that level and the satisfaction you gain from that improvement is partly due to the grind to get there.

[domffl]

Can we also implement TPE-based User Bets?

[Gadget]

As someone with a PT pass, I 100% support this idea. As far as I’m concerned it’s a sunk cost anyways.

[IsaStarcrossed]

Someone else touched on it earlier, but the biggest problem I see here isn't the TPE inflation or even making it easier for people to earn. These are things I've preached for literal years that would help make the league more appealing to the average user. The biggest hurdle I see here is the loss of affiliates with dropping the written PTs. I'd say roughly half of the users currently in this league are in multiple sim leagues and many only stay here because they can use it as an affiliate. I think if you lose that, we see some serious dropoff in activity from those who have another sim league as their primary.

[soevil]

This is a fantasy roleplay game at heart, players want to be great football players for their team.

I think because of this point, it makes sense to NOT change it. Decreasing the barrier to a stud player in the ISFL devalues the stats/achievements that come with being a max-earner. Consider that performance in the sim is not linear, nor does a higher TPE level necessarily guarantee a better player performance. The only way to consistently guarantee your player is top 5-10 in the league for consecutive seasons at any position is to max earn, and it should be that way. As it is currently, a sub 600 TPE player can be effective across multiple positions, and can even be a top 10 positional player on the season. But they shouldn't be able to retain that status with minimal effort, much like you wouldn't be able to spec a lvl 20 character in a fresh D&D campaign (unless you have some funky set-up going on), it takes time to reach that level and the satisfaction you gain from that improvement is partly due to the grind to get there.

Though I feel like it is the unpopular opinion, I agree. While I understand the point as it relates to player retention and engagement for casual/moderate earners, I don't think it should come at the cost of closing the gap between those players and max earners. I'm sure I will get flamed for this, but not everything has to be optimized for equality. This is a game: there are winners and losers, good players and "bad" players - and that is okay. Casual and moderate earning players do have a place in this league, pointed out in Voxaroth's recent media "The Casual Player Is Our Friend". I think we should explore opportunities for better retention and user engagement, but I don't think this is it.

[infinitempg]

This is a very interesting idea and somehow has never come up as far as I know in my time here. The thought process was always to reward the grinder with big rewards, but the actual gameplay theory you've presented makes a ton of sense to me. Personally I think we need to keep the TPE pseudo-cap (just so everything stays consistent) but playing with the actual values of training/PTs (if we were to keep them at all in your proposal, which is another argument entirely) is something that can be looked into! The discussion about what value a true max-earner has and all that can be balanced by changing these numbers - but making casual players earn well enough to stay engaged could be a good change.

The biggest hurdle I see here is the loss of affiliates with dropping the written PTs. I'd say roughly half of the users currently in this league are in multiple sim leagues and many only stay here because they can use it as an affiliate. I think if you lose that, we see some serious dropoff in activity from those who have another sim league as their primary.

I'm not sure this is true? Obviously I have no experience with this (one league users unite!) but if they're writing their PTs elsewhere but now don't have to write one or link to it here wouldn't that be easier to be active here?

I also haven't done a point task since like 2019 though so what do i know lmao

[Swanty]

Firstly, thank you so much to @ElMerchanto for kicking this discussion off! As Infi said, I don't remember any time in my almost 3 years here where someone has questioned why our TPE rewards are the way that they are but it's certainly one we should be having.

Echoing a lot of the thoughts outlined above, I'd personally be against modifying the weekly PT rewards. Not just for the equivalence we have with other leagues that allows users to save time, but for the PT Pass. Writing PTs isn't for everyone and I think the opportunity to skip them by having a league job is a really enticing asset for a lot of people (myself included in that). If we were to drop the TPE available for those or remove the task entirely, having a job becomes less appealing. And not having enough people willing to do crucial jobs is probably the biggest danger to the league's survival, so I'd be reticent to mess with anything that could risk the balance we have now.

Looking at AC/WT though, 88% of users who complete an AC also complete weekly training in that same week, and 95% of the time they buy the $1M option. So it's probably fair to say that tweaking the distribution of TPE between the two won't affect too many existing users. But as you mentioned, if having AC be the major task for TPE tempts someone on the fence about continuing to just put their name in the thread and maybe stick around, then it might be worth a change.

I wonder if something like the below might give the best of both worlds, that is making it easy and tempting to 'check in' for users who don't have much money, while also not significantly affecting the existing userbase:
AC - 4 TPE
$500k training - 2 TPE
$1M training - 3 TPE

Alternatively it could be 5 for ACs and 1/2 for training, with the 500k option becoming 250k or something. I like that because it introduces a couple of dilemmas. The 1 TPE option is so much cheaper, it might be more tempting than the current 500k option which only 5% of users opt for. And the other is that it actually makes equipment better value than training, so there'd be a dilemma as to whether to save up for equipment for better value, or take the training to avoid missing out on TPE.

Regarding the concern that low earners specifically perhaps need a bit of a boost in order to have decent performance, I'm not sure TPE inflation is the answer, as I think we have a good effort/reward balance right now and this would have effects throughout the entire scale. Instead, it would be great if it were easier to get to a TPE level that allows your player to be 'viable' in the big leagues but not necessarily past it. I think we could potentially achieve that through the Training Camp task, which already offers different levels of TPE based on the player's season. Offering a much larger boost in a player's 2nd, 3rd and 4th season could help newer players get to that level while also getting them excited about the upcoming season having made a huge step forward. And to make up for bringing that TPE forward, we could make the TC task only for players in their first four seasons (or significantly reduce the rewards for later seasons).

[CROney3]

Firstly, thank you so much to @ElMerchanto for kicking this discussion off! As Infi said, I don't remember any time in my almost 3 years here where someone has questioned why our TPE rewards are the way that they are but it's certainly one we should be having.

Echoing a lot of the thoughts outlined above, I'd personally be against modifying the weekly PT rewards. Not just for the equivalence we have with other leagues that allows users to save time, but for the PT Pass. Writing PTs isn't for everyone and I think the opportunity to skip them by having a league job is a really enticing asset for a lot of people (myself included in that). If we were to drop the TPE available for those or remove the task entirely, having a job becomes less appealing. And not having enough people willing to do crucial jobs is probably the biggest danger to the league's survival, so I'd be reticent to mess with anything that could risk the balance we have now.

Looking at AC/WT though, 88% of users who complete an AC also complete weekly training in that same week, and 95% of the time they buy the $1M option. So it's probably fair to say that tweaking the distribution of TPE between the two won't affect too many existing users. But as you mentioned, if having AC be the major task for TPE tempts someone on the fence about continuing to just put their name in the thread and maybe stick around, then it might be worth a change.

I wonder if something like the below might give the best of both worlds, that is making it easy and tempting to 'check in' for users who don't have much money, while also not significantly affecting the existing userbase:
AC - 4 TPE
$500k training - 2 TPE
$1M training - 3 TPE

Alternatively it could be 5 for ACs and 1/2 for training, with the 500k option becoming 250k or something. I like that because it introduces a couple of dilemmas. The 1 TPE option is so much cheaper, it might be more tempting than the current 500k option which only 5% of users opt for. And the other is that it actually makes equipment better value than training, so there'd be a dilemma as to whether to save up for equipment for better value, or take the training to avoid missing out on TPE.

Regarding the concern that low earners specifically perhaps need a bit of a boost in order to have decent performance, I'm not sure TPE inflation is the answer, as I think we have a good effort/reward balance right now and this would have effects throughout the entire scale. Instead, it would be great if it were easier to get to a TPE level that allows your player to be 'viable' in the big leagues but not necessarily past it. I think we could potentially achieve that through the Training Camp task, which already offers different levels of TPE based on the player's season. Offering a much larger boost in a player's 2nd, 3rd and 4th season could help newer players get to that level while also getting them excited about the upcoming season having made a huge step forward. And to make up for bringing that TPE forward, we could make the TC task only for players in their first four seasons (or significantly reduce the rewards for later seasons).

I agree with this synopsis and the general premise of the original idea. As a new user, I don't have all the ins and outs of total TPE, max earning, etc... but OP brings up a good point about the casual users. I don't think there needs to be any drastic changes, but the AC TPE being higher by default makes sense to me. I don't think it will reduce the gap significantly enough between max earners and casual earners since quite a bit of TPE is earned through money earned, which casual users likely won't have enough to buy full weekly training and full equipment each season.

So something like this makes sense to me:
AC - 5 TPE
$250k training - 2 TPE
$1M training - 4 TPE

This would allow casual players to stretch their low budgets and still earn TPE but also allows max earners to keep up the pace. I dunno, just spitballing here. Great discussion to have!

[qWest]

Firstly, thank you so much to @ElMerchanto for kicking this discussion off! As Infi said, I don't remember any time in my almost 3 years here where someone has questioned why our TPE rewards are the way that they are but it's certainly one we should be having.

Echoing a lot of the thoughts outlined above, I'd personally be against modifying the weekly PT rewards. Not just for the equivalence we have with other leagues that allows users to save time, but for the PT Pass. Writing PTs isn't for everyone and I think the opportunity to skip them by having a league job is a really enticing asset for a lot of people (myself included in that). If we were to drop the TPE available for those or remove the task entirely, having a job becomes less appealing. And not having enough people willing to do crucial jobs is probably the biggest danger to the league's survival, so I'd be reticent to mess with anything that could risk the balance we have now.

Looking at AC/WT though, 88% of users who complete an AC also complete weekly training in that same week, and 95% of the time they buy the $1M option. So it's probably fair to say that tweaking the distribution of TPE between the two won't affect too many existing users. But as you mentioned, if having AC be the major task for TPE tempts someone on the fence about continuing to just put their name in the thread and maybe stick around, then it might be worth a change.

I wonder if something like the below might give the best of both worlds, that is making it easy and tempting to 'check in' for users who don't have much money, while also not significantly affecting the existing userbase:
AC - 4 TPE
$500k training - 2 TPE
$1M training - 3 TPE

Alternatively it could be 5 for ACs and 1/2 for training, with the 500k option becoming 250k or something. I like that because it introduces a couple of dilemmas. The 1 TPE option is so much cheaper, it might be more tempting than the current 500k option which only 5% of users opt for. And the other is that it actually makes equipment better value than training, so there'd be a dilemma as to whether to save up for equipment for better value, or take the training to avoid missing out on TPE.

Regarding the concern that low earners specifically perhaps need a bit of a boost in order to have decent performance, I'm not sure TPE inflation is the answer, as I think we have a good effort/reward balance right now and this would have effects throughout the entire scale. Instead, it would be great if it were easier to get to a TPE level that allows your player to be 'viable' in the big leagues but not necessarily past it. I think we could potentially achieve that through the Training Camp task, which already offers different levels of TPE based on the player's season. Offering a much larger boost in a player's 2nd, 3rd and 4th season could help newer players get to that level while also getting them excited about the upcoming season having made a huge step forward. And to make up for bringing that TPE forward, we could make the TC task only for players in their first four seasons (or significantly reduce the rewards for later seasons).

In a similar vein to avoiding eliminating the PT in the interest of preserving the incentives for jobs, I'd be reticent to reduce the benefits from purchased TPE in the interest of preserving the incentive for creating media/gfx/pod content.

Overall I'd disagree with the primary notion put forth by the author that "casual & moderate users are the lifeblood of every game" being applicable to our league. It's important for their to be a place for those users to be involved and have a good time in the league, but from a perspective of keeping the balance and stability of the league ecology just growing and focusing on bringing in on those users could create a big problem if it doesn't come with abundant rewards and incentives for users to continue to give maximum contributions back to the league or new users to get involved at that level. I don't want to come off too aggressive to our less active users, but the lifeblood of our league are the people that volunteer a lot of time to provide quality contributions in their league jobs or in creating league content.

Basically, the league may struggle to grow too much without our low to moderate activity users, but it definitely will fail without our more dedicated members.

[MikeWhiskey]

Firstly, thank you so much to @ElMerchanto for kicking this discussion off! As Infi said, I don't remember any time in my almost 3 years here where someone has questioned why our TPE rewards are the way that they are but it's certainly one we should be having.

Echoing a lot of the thoughts outlined above, I'd personally be against modifying the weekly PT rewards. Not just for the equivalence we have with other leagues that allows users to save time, but for the PT Pass. Writing PTs isn't for everyone and I think the opportunity to skip them by having a league job is a really enticing asset for a lot of people (myself included in that). If we were to drop the TPE available for those or remove the task entirely, having a job becomes less appealing. And not having enough people willing to do crucial jobs is probably the biggest danger to the league's survival, so I'd be reticent to mess with anything that could risk the balance we have now.

Looking at AC/WT though, 88% of users who complete an AC also complete weekly training in that same week, and 95% of the time they buy the $1M option. So it's probably fair to say that tweaking the distribution of TPE between the two won't affect too many existing users. But as you mentioned, if having AC be the major task for TPE tempts someone on the fence about continuing to just put their name in the thread and maybe stick around, then it might be worth a change.

I wonder if something like the below might give the best of both worlds, that is making it easy and tempting to 'check in' for users who don't have much money, while also not significantly affecting the existing userbase:
AC - 4 TPE
$500k training - 2 TPE
$1M training - 3 TPE

Alternatively it could be 5 for ACs and 1/2 for training, with the 500k option becoming 250k or something. I like that because it introduces a couple of dilemmas. The 1 TPE option is so much cheaper, it might be more tempting than the current 500k option which only 5% of users opt for. And the other is that it actually makes equipment better value than training, so there'd be a dilemma as to whether to save up for equipment for better value, or take the training to avoid missing out on TPE.

Regarding the concern that low earners specifically perhaps need a bit of a boost in order to have decent performance, I'm not sure TPE inflation is the answer, as I think we have a good effort/reward balance right now and this would have effects throughout the entire scale. Instead, it would be great if it were easier to get to a TPE level that allows your player to be 'viable' in the big leagues but not necessarily past it. I think we could potentially achieve that through the Training Camp task, which already offers different levels of TPE based on the player's season. Offering a much larger boost in a player's 2nd, 3rd and 4th season could help newer players get to that level while also getting them excited about the upcoming season having made a huge step forward. And to make up for bringing that TPE forward, we could make the TC task only for players in their first four seasons (or significantly reduce the rewards for later seasons).

In a similar vein to avoiding eliminating the PT in the interest of preserving the incentives for jobs, I'd be reticent to reduce the benefits from purchased TPE in the interest of preserving the incentive for creating media/gfx/pod content.

Overall I'd disagree with the primary notion put forth by the author that "casual & moderate users are the lifeblood of every game" being applicable to our league. It's important for their to be a place for those users to be involved and have a good time in the league, but from a perspective of keeping the balance and stability of the league ecology just growing and focusing on bringing in on those users could create a big problem if it doesn't come with abundant rewards and incentives for users to continue to give maximum contributions back to the league or new users to get involved at that level. I don't want to come off too aggressive to our less active users, but the lifeblood of our league are the people that volunteer a lot of time to provide quality contributions in their league jobs or in creating league content.

Basically, the league may struggle to grow too much without our low to moderate activity users, but it definitely will fail without our more dedicated members.

I don't know if i qualify as a super dedicated user. But i do a bit. I can safely say that without plenty of people, I'd quit. It wouldn't be fun. So I'd say the casual users sticking around is key for me personally to do anything. I may be the minority in that I need the casual users to justify my time spent. But I do think if higher base rewards (which every level of user would get) helps retention, we should do it in a hurry.