Breaking news - New Top 11 version 5.6

[jcohen42]

I appreciate the long, well thought-out response. I do have a few comments (and not trying to criticize, just giving my point of view).

A majority here in the Forum didn't see the refund of Tokens as a positive nor the general idea of "Not paying anything unless I win the player". But at the support channel alone there have been tens of thousands of requests for tokens to not be deducted from the Manager's account unless he/she actually wins the auctioned player.
When it comes to Facebook and Twitter - the situation was the same.

Maybe I'm cynical, but I think this is because users in those channels are greedier. Here, people generally see the big picture and are more inclined to appreciate the tactical aspects of the game. On Facebook and Twitter, though, you're more likely to get random users that just want everything for free, and to make the game easier and simpler, rather than to emphasize the tactical nuances of the game. I've played for so long because of those nuances; as more of them go, I am more likely to leave as well.

The concern that there will be immense bidding wars is easy to creep in to one's mind but there's also the other thing - There is such a high turn-over rate to the players in the Auction now that if you don't feel like spending half of your tokens on a one single player, well... just bail out. Don't continue and wait for the list to reset with the next 15 players. In the end you will most likely lose more than several auctions but you'll also have won a few. Now you don't have to wait for several hours for your auction list to populate with the next batch of players only to lose a few, spend your tokens for nothing, and wait a few more hours for yet another chance of hopefully getting something back for your tokens.

I get the thinking behind this, but I think this is going to be difficult in practice. Everyone is going to be bidding on the same players, and it's going to be very difficult at the beginning of the year to find cheap players, especially if you don't have time to just sit and wait for several 4-minute periods. "Bailing out" is a nice idea, but when people can jack up the price with impunity, it is going to take lots of active watching just to get one player for a reasonable price. This is exacerbated by the shorter 10-second reset period, as it's harder to watch multiple players at the same time now.

Bearing in mind also that we are now seeing high prices for players at the END OF THE SEASON. I fully expect the problem to be much worse when players are trying to retool their squads. Perhaps this could be fixed by having players bid against players of similar levels (revolutionary, I know).

My advise: set your goal beforehand. What player you wanna get, their skills, their roles, SAs, how much you'd be willing to spend in the worst case scenario. Then give the game a few minutes of your time and do some auction runs. You didn't win any player? Well you also didn't lose anything. Why not try at a different hour of the day? It's still viable to try and snipe players at the more irregular hours of the day actually. And I'm reading that some of you were actually able to acquire some good players still!

This all sounds nice, but again, it's difficult to get players now; it'll be worse at the start of the season. The fact that players aren't losing anything by bidding just makes the overall prices go up, which causes players to be more expensive than they ordinarily would. That gives players like me, who have to buy players on the cheap to survive, a much more difficult task.

Look, I get the effort that was put into this, and perhaps we do need to give it more of a chance. I am personally waiting until next season to actually try it out because I don't need to buy anyone yet. However, I think the concerns are very real and very strong here, and if we at least get some indication that the team will consider adding back the old auction system in some form if this system proves to have unsolvable deficiencies, we will be more open to it. I have offered a suggestion of having both a Quick Auction system and an Auction system working alongside each other, perhaps this is a doable compromise.

PS: I notice that you did not address the issues teams have encountered with selling players, or trying to see players' stats. Is that also something you're monitoring and considering adjusting?

[LeManiaque]

New features that a player wants do not need to be "given a whirl." Nordeus had done a poor job letting us know why 5.6 should excite us. Unless@Jeeves is traveling the world's coffee shops to hype it, this is some work that should have been done by marketing and social staff.

How different might this situation be if Nordeus had video spots weeks before? Do what Jeeves did, but for thousands of players before the update, not a handful the day after. You didn't tell us to be excited, and in the void, we found a lot of frustrations. Nordeus made the worst of this opportunity. It's too much work to listen and implement updates to have the release be so poorly executed.