Online game costs too much

In my opinion the online game costs way too much. $19.99 per season? That is more than an mmorpg and with this online only version of SOM you don't even get to manage game by game and play by play. I also think there is too much turnover in regards to rosters. While real baseball has free agency and waiver wires I think realism sometimes is poor for baseball sim games. In the demo league I am playing I am finding there is too much turnover in players on the rosters and I actually haven't even done as much as I could in terms of making my roster better day to day but still the changes I have been able to make have been way too much. In regards to the prizes awarded for paying $19.99 to play this sim I just don't think getting a free season or two is rewarding enough. Just my 2 cents on why I won't play SOM Online full seasons.

So I would wish right now for ...

1. more managerial control game to game
2. much lower cost (especially if rewards for winning a division and so on are not better)
3. more reward for winning a division and so on

I agree with you on the cost of the online games. I was assuming it was still the same price as I paid for the first two seasons at $14.95. I am guessing once your complete those two seasons then the price goes up to $19.95 per game. I would continue to buy full seasons at the $14.95 price for 2 seasons, but hesitate at the $19.95 price or $79 for 5 seasons. Times are tough with the economy, so please strat-o-matic lower the price a bit so we can continue to play 365 days a year.

Has anyone purchased the computer baseball discs from strat-o-matic to play the same kind of seasons on there own computers? Is there a version of the 60's,70's ;80; etc to purchase? Is it difficult to download. Not a good tech guy here.

I'd like to see SOM lower their prices as much as anyone. However, I doubt they're getting rich running this game when you figure the cost of salaries and infrastructure to run the game. Furthermore, when I compare the cost per hour to some of my other activities, I can justify what I pay:

movie, 2 hours, $10, $5/hour
duplicate bridge, 3 hours, $9, $3/hour
Rockies game, 3 hours, $20+, 6.67+/hour
SOM online, 20-40 hours, $20, 0.50-1.00/hour

You can further reduce SOM's cost by buying a 5-pack, and also by buying up credits when they have their occasional sale.

I hope SOM will lower it's price a bit once they gets all the data moved over and they can shift staff to things other than the online game. A lower price will help attract fresh meat, errr, make that new blood to the game. However, the price isn't that bad either if you look at the big picture.

I agree about the online game costing too much. You can buy the cards the cd rom card images etc for 100 and play it as much as you want. U can download most seasons for around the same price as one season of the online game. The best way is to lower the price to aroun 10.00 so ppl can participate in multi-season legues without shelling out more than the price of buying the whole set of cards and cdrom netplay version of the game. It would attract more players as playing the online version has less features and control.

Scott.

I agree about the online game costing too much. You can buy the cards the cd rom card images etc for 100 and play it as much as you want. U can download most seasons for around the same price as one season of the online game. The best way is to lower the price to aroun 10.00 so ppl can participate in multi-season legues without shelling out more than the price of buying the whole set of cards and cdrom netplay version of the game. It would attract more players as playing the online version has less features and control.

Scott.

I agree with Coyote. Economically, five weeks of online gameplay at 19.95--or $16.00 if you buy the five-pack--is still a good value. And, as he pointed out, I don't see them getting filthy rich at that price with the number of players actually interested in On-line Strat. Also, Online-strat is a different animal from the board game or the CD-Rom game; it provides a different service and different source of entertainment that those two strat modes can't. It allows you to draft a team against 11 (or 23 or 6) other managers (from different US states), organize that team through provided salaries and salary caps, and then compete against those other managers every night as you continually manage your team through strategy and general manage it through transactions. So, while On-line Strat does have less game-play control than the other Strat modes, it more than makes up for that by providing these particular gaming aspects, as well as the service of facilitating daily game play that would be impossible otherwise to most of us working Strat players.

So, yeah, I'd like On-line Strat to be cheaper; I'd like everything to be cheaper. But it's still a great value at it's current price for the services it provides.

after drafting a team, you spend 10min checking the scores adjusting your pitching and line ups for each series, do an occasional trade etc. It takes very little of your time. For 20.00 its not cheap. 54 days of 10min of your time, if you were to play the game consistently over a full year that's what 140.00? For 10min of your time? But as you know, people usually play 3 or 4 teams at a time cuz 10min just isn't enough time to keep you busy when u have some free time. so that's like four to five hundred dollars in a calendar year. Much too expensive for what you get in return.

Scott.

Also, once you put a site up, fix the bugs, the site costs very little to maintain, and has very little work hours from staff dedicated to it. Improvements and added things are where the hours go.

Scott.

after drafting a team, you spend 10min checking the scores adjusting your pitching and line ups for each series, do an occasional trade etc. It takes very little of your time. For 20.00 its not cheap. 54 days of 10min of your time, if you were to play the game consistently over a full year that's what 140.00? For 10min of your time? But as you know, people usually play 3 or 4 teams at a time cuz 10min just isn't enough time to keep you busy when u have some free time. so that's like four to five hundred dollars in a calendar year. Much too expensive for what you get in return.

Scott.

Scott, we haven't been discussing whether or not Strat is cheap (although it may be); we've been discussing whether its price is fair, and it is. A season takes from 54-64 days of game play, depending on playoff participation. That means a day of strat costs from 31-37 cents a day to play. For that not-so-exorbitant sum you do get to do all the activities you mentioned above (for ten minutes or more or less). But, more importantly, you get all the services and facilitated game-play Strat provides that I mentioned in my post above yours, services you neglected to address in your post above. So yes, I would say all this is worth 31-37 cents a day.

My questions to you would be:

1. What do you think are better deals out there for 31-37 cents a day?

and

2. If you consider On-Line Strat too expensive at 31-37 cents a day, how much per day would be a fair price for Strat to charge?

also consider that $5 out of each $20 goes back to the gamers in credits. So the way I look at it is I pay $15 for a team, and another $5 thrown into the prize pool

This has been discussed many times before over the yearz. You can rationalize the economic benefits all you want. Others have tried to make a point that the costs of producing the game justifies the cost.

The bottom line is the game is too expensive. It takes forever for leagues to fill. Multiple 12 team leagues should easily fill on the same night if the game were price correctly. Unfortunately, SOM is shortsighted in this area. They should lower their pricepoint. It would likely result in a lot more businesz.