Quote:
Originally Posted by tarmer
I have been following the new league announcements for a while now, I have watched several new leagues start, Several call for new GM's and I assume several wilt away...
I have not made the jump to OOTP X yet (well because it was something I could not get budgeted in yet) but I have also seen the issues that have been creeping in with the updates for 10 which has caused it seems some issues in the online community
My question really has to do with what everyone is doing ? I know that once the new version comes out everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and be the first league to have a new version site up. Others follow and older versions get lost in the shuffle
I have put together a league (and what I think is an awesome site for it) using OOTP 8 (why you ask - well firstly because it was the last one I could upgrade to and since 10 is out there is no reason to buy 9 and secondly - Since 8 was released as free, I was hoping to also catch some "new" players now that they could well "afford" to try it)
HOME (<------ Site)
But I have had NO takers, no requests for teams, no anything - I have had a lot of hits but no one wanting to take a team.......
So to get finally to the question... does it make a difference if I move this league to X ? Would I suddenly get more managers than I could handle OR is it just that managers are not out there anymore ??? I can remember it the days of 6, 6.5, 2007 & 2008 - You could advertise crap and get a boatload of takers - Now you try and get nada...
Any Thoughts |
I think
OOTP developers have gone out of their way to try to make things easier for commissioners to run their leagues. (Which is a good thing) In doing so, it has made it easy enough that now many more people want to run leagues because of it. Honestly back several years ago, running an
OOTP league was pretty painful at times with some of the manual steps required, so this has been a good improvement.
This however is what leads to having many more online leagues then there ever was before (which also might not necessarily be a bad thing). The issue however with so many leagues is that there can only be so many leagues of the same type or you won't find people interested in your league.
The leagues that have success at getting members to join usually are either leagues that have been solid for years and had a strong following of people watching from outside of the league and have built great communities, or the other type of successful leagues are usually those with some kind of hook to get a special group of interested parties. Whether it is a historical league, or a fast-sim league, or a no-ratings league, or whatever.
I personally won't ever tell prospective future commissioners that they shouldn't open new leagues. But I would caution them to trying to realistically know what to expect from participation. If they are to open the 80th different 2009 Real rosters online league, what are they going to provide that will get coaches to join that the other 79 did not offer?
Edit: So I guess to directly answer your question... it doesn't matter as much if you upgrade or not as it would be what your product or selling point will be. I have no problem getting new members currently (knock on wood). I have a waiting list of 10+ for an ootpx league, and still have an ootp9 league running strong with no openings either. But that is because we serve a specialty niche as well as have a strong community of people. So if you have a 'selling point' you might find success from upgrading. But I'm going to guess another generic online league in ootpx won't fare as well.