Strat-O-Matic Baseball 365

Without price changes, the game becomes stagnant and boring, as you draft the same players over and over. Most (but not all) owners desire new challenges. There is a competitive sim that changes prices every six months. Whenever the changes are made, there is a lot of activity on the board about the new bargains, new prices, new leagues, etc.

There are several ways to change prices. None of them are perfect, but they all infuse new challenges and new bargains into the game, which has to be good. The pricing does not have to be perfect. It just has to create new bargains.

Let's vote.

1. Should the prices be changed every six months, once a year, never, or other (offer suggestions)?

2. Should the prices be changed by Strat employees, a veteran, a committee of veterans, or other (offer suggestions)?

3. Should John G address this issue in his weekly blog?

4. If there was a veteran committee, would you be interested in serving on it?

5. Who would you suggest as members of the pricing committee?

6. Any other suggestions?

Bruce I applaud your effort but I fear its a waste of time. If SOM itself refuses to respond or even read our suggestions what is the point?

Who is this John G you talk about. I think he is. ........
Fill in the blank

I think price adjustments would be an excellent idea. I've thought this since the days of ATG 1.

My preference would be price changes no greater than 8% annually or, at most, semi annually, based on player demand in 80M and 100M leagues. Total price changes would be zero sum. ($.50M players would not be changed downward.)

It would be nice if Strat would handle such a project and getting their input would be the first order of business. Second order of business would be to determine if the ATG community would support price changes.

Maxie

I'm pretty new here, but aren't the salaries carefully designed to be indicative of the card's abilities?

STEVE F wrote:I'm pretty new here, but aren't the salaries carefully designed to be indicative of the card's abilities?

this



Most of the talk I've heard about changing prices is to base it on usage. This would seem to take values out of the game, not add them.
I'm a lot more in favor of adding some new cards, 10 or 20 a month or a quarter. I'm not really in favor of price changes just for the sake of changing things up. The last price change effort was an attempt to get the prices closer to the value of the card. Changing them arbitrarily seems to negate that.

I'm most definitely FOR changing prices occasionally. Once a year maybe? I also agree we should change them based on usage. I also agree that any change should be zero sum.

This would seem to take values out of the game, not add them.

Yes, those particular cards that are values and are used a lot would go up in price. But, for every one that goes up, another one comes down in price. This just means that a DIFFERENT set of cards would be perceived as "values" after each price adjustment. Then it would be even more fun to try and find the "new values" every so often.

WN

WeatherNut wrote:I'm most definitely FOR changing prices occasionally. Once a year maybe? I also agree we should change them based on usage. I also agree that any change should be zero sum.

This would seem to take values out of the game, not add them.

Yes, those particular cards that are values and are used a lot would go up in price. But, for every one that goes up, another one comes down in price. This just means that a DIFFERENT set of cards would be perceived as "values" after each price adjustment. Then it would be even more fun to try and find the "new values" every so often.

WN

Assuming that the cards are already priced to reflect the ability of the card (and who would know the value of the card better than SOM) I suggest that there are no "values". Rather, gamers see the values they want to see there

Well they did give us 6 Team Leagues and a Featured Shuffle Set! That should makes us happy?

To SOM. ADD more cards. Say enough to represents ALL the Decades. With this you can also ADD Options to create Decade Only Leagues, NL or AL Only by Decade or how about beside the NEW 6 Team League you have options/drop downs for either a 6, 8 , 12, 16 or 24 Team League.

But what do I know as a paying customer......NOTHING!!! Customer Service is NON-existent at SOM.

From Wikipedia in case SOM is unsure what Customer Service is:
Customer service is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. According to Turban et al. (2002),[1] "Customer service is a series of activities designed to enhance the level of customer satisfaction – that is, the feeling that a product or service has met the customer expectation."

The importance of customer service may vary by product or service, industry and customer. The perception of success of such interactions will be dependent on employees "who can adjust themselves to the personality of the guest,"[2] according to Micah Solomon. Customer service can also refer to the culture of the organization - the priority the organization assigns to customer service relative to other components, such as product innovation or low price. In this sense, an organization that values good customer service may spend more money in training employees than average organization, or proactively interview customers for feedback.

From the point of view of an overall sales process engineering effort, customer service plays an important role in an organization's ability to generate income and revenue.[3] From that perspective, customer service should be included as part of an overall approach to systematic improvement. A customer service experience can change the entire perception a customer has of the organization.

I would like to see an ATG VIII set that included:

A - 20-25 guys, including all the regulars, from the team with the best result (deepest playoff advance) or record (most wins) for each franchise in each of the following time periods:

1 - 1876-1900 -include Chicago, New York, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, both Philadelphia teams, Brooklyn, both St. Louis teams, Detroit, Cleveland, Washington, and Cincinnati

2 - 1901-1920 - the dead ball era

3 - 1921-1946 - pre-integration

4 - 1947-1975 - probably the era most of us would consider to be the "purest" years of the game - no steroids, decent balance between pitching and hitting, only incidental use of the DH. perhaps the break should be pre- and post-DH.

5 - 1976-present - I would like to see this split into 1976-2000 and 2001-present, but I respect SOM's desire to not include too many active players in the ATG set, especially since they don't like to disseminate card data too freely.

B - the top guys by WAR (I would prefer fWAR to bWAR), 2 at each position in the field (or DH), top 8 starters, and top 8 guys with <100 IP and relief ratings, for each of the above franchises, for the above time periods. I would add in extra guys to supplement guys who starred on the top team for the franchise in that era.

I estimate that this would generate a card set of about 5000 players, with a lot of new guys. I think that, in doing this, error ratings for fielders for the first two eras should be adjusted to account for the steady decline in error rates. Also I think that playing time (PA's and IP) for players should be adjusted to account for the longer seasons nowadays.

I would also like to see the Negro Leagues divided into two eras, so that some of them could be included in theme leagues by era. This is more possible now that the game company is putting out individual NeL seasons which I find very interesting.

This would provide a lot of balanced to the card set, and make for some very interesting franchise theme leagues. It would also increase the number of cards available for the two dead ball eras, and for the 50's and 60's. SOM might also be able to expand on this to introduce mystery card leagues for the two dead ball eras and for the pre-integration era.