ATG " the Eight" will be released.....

This reminds me of one of my favorite stupid management practices. There is probably a Dilbert cartoon out there spotlighting it.

Management hands out unrealistic deadline. They assume everyone will kill themselves to meet the artificial deadline. This is called leadership. The project usually fails for obvious reasons. Management blames underlings instead of taking responsibility for having no idea how long the project would really take. There is always some middle guy like Garcia who was forced to announce the unrealistic deadline which everyone actually working on it knew could not be met.

This is one of the "prime directives" of the Safeway management book. The other is "never address anything until it becomes an emergency"

This may help.. Just recently read the book by Glenn Guzzo about the Strat O Matic Story.

In childhod Hal R was spurned somewhat by his father etc. this plus other factors causing him to turn inward, and become a solitary person.

With his game as his baby the story unfolds. After reading it the company never does anything until the last minute. He had family sort cards to make up the team sets before mailing. Never trusting any outsider for any research and/or process improvements. There is no indication of business sense thru the whole book. Customers are hardly mentioned except for sales figures. One year all the pitchers cards had their hits and walks in the '4' column, a printing error, released as is no money spent to re do the cards until late in the year. Total mistrust to outsiders and complete loyalty to only those he knows.

More than 50% failure on 'new' products being released, Some of them are so beyond stupid they had zero chance of success (scavenger hunt anyone?) Lots of company's trying to buy Strat O but always Hal knows the quality would be compromised. ( I def agree with him there)

The book lets us see why the company does absolutely nothing for their customer base. The company has never looked ahead always dealing with the now. Only the current year etc. Customers are last in this companys equation, and the book tells you why.

Sorry to be negative etc., but they have been only able to handle the tasks at hand for 50 plus years, never being able to look a head and actually plan something.

It's an OK read not great but at least we find out how they are thinking...

Read it when it was published. Basically just an Ode to HAL. But you make some very good points.

That (your summation of the book and conclusions about customer relations) seems correct.

It would seem, considering his age, and what I consider to be a recent out of character attempt at customer relations, to reinforce the idea that the company is being sold.

Bernie has not worked here for some time now.

How do we know this? and are we sure this is the case?

It certainly doesn't seem that way to me, just based on the fact that some of the blogs contain information about what happened during the TSN days.

You can always Facebook him.

https://www.facebook.com/berniehou?fref=ts

That (your summation of the book and conclusions about customer relations) seems correct.

It would seem, considering his age, and what I consider to be a recent out of character attempt at customer relations, to reinforce the idea that the company is being sold.

Remind me again what the recent attempt at customer relations was...

1. The injury rating thingy
2. ATG8
3. The quick response to the revolt over Cuban and Japanese cards
4. The FB "whore your cover photo for 25% discount" promo.
5. The 10% discount promo.
6. Their very quick response to my request for my old team records (under a forgotten name and password and email)
7.Wasn't there another feature they added too, in the last 4 months?

1. The injury rating thingy
2. ATG8
3. The quick response to the revolt over Cuban and Japanese cards
4. The FB "whore your cover photo for 25% discount" promo.
5. The 10% discount promo.
6. Their very quick response to my request for my old team records (under a forgotten name and password and email)
7.Wasn't there another feature they added too, in the last 4 months?

1. IDK what this is
2. Not sure this qualifies. When Chevy releases the 2016 Tahoe in a few months is that an example of customer relations? Some may say that ATG8 is overdue, not a great example of Strat catering to their customers.
3. Agree. They listened. (Even if I was the lone guy who thought those cards would be fun)
4/5. Again, I'm not sure running the occasional promo qualifies as some great customer relations. Is there a company (besides Apple) that doesn't? Shouldn't this be business as usual?
6. That great and I'm very happy to hear that (seriously)
7. I don't count the long overdue addition of live drafts as an example of customer relations. I count it as an example of the bare minimum and something that shouldn't have had to be begged for.

1. The injury thingy is where they list the number of days lost due to injury; a fun feature, I think.
3. I was also in favor of our beleaguered island friends having cards
7. Live drafts
8. The per game info went up to all season instead of just the last ten games on the players card.

All I'm saying is that there has been a noticeable shift in energy level towards ATG. The examples above would be my 'proof'.

My premise is that they are doing this for a reason.

All of this assumes (based on continuous comments on the boards) that nothing has been done to this game for quite a while. If this is not so, and this community is the whiniest group since the Hebrews escaping Egypt, then I am mistaken.

Keep in mind I have only been playing this since January, after a 5 year lay off. So, everything is new to me. The batter/pitcher settings; complicated line up cards; 8 gazillion cards I've never seen (the Negroes played ball before Jackie Robinson?- who knew?)(somebody kept stats before 1901- what a surprise!)( Baseball started up again after the '95 strike- shocking!), with complicated data that's never been present(all baseball players didn't hit into double plays at a rate of 20% across the board?); the fancy pong like replay is amazing; I can change my team name. I have options as to how to reveal my nights scores?

So this WHOLE game feels new to me. Plus, my teams have been crazy lucky lately, which definitely raises the optimism factor.

As far as the Super Reliever debate goes...Druid brings up an excellent point. The strategy of using Starters to eat up all of your innings is just as ridiculous as Super Relievers. I have no problem with any strategy that is employed. I've us Super Relievers before and I've used No Relievers before. I'll use whatever I think might work and whatever I think might be interesting to try. I've had some success and many many miserable failures.

But as to what's realistic...sure the Super Reliever is unrealistic. But is it any more unrealistic than this?

http://onlinegames.strat-o-matic.com/team/374172

That's 23 innings for the season out of my pen and one "starter" who may as well have spent the season on a beach in Aruba. I don't hear people complain about this very much. Personally, I think it's pretty damn impressive!

May I ask what settings you use to obtain these kind of results? I'd love to try a stud starter approach!