In honor of nevdully's

Nev reports being happy with all the free time he has gained from not playing Strat online and having his stress levels reduced. I believe he misses some of the community, but overall, not the game. I would be surprised if he ever were to return. Nev struggled at times to understand probability and was dismayed by certain outcomes he believed were unrealistic, that dismay accumulated over time and really torqued him. I know that he was also distressed with what he perceived as a lack of responsiveness by Strat to community concerns and input.

Not to insert myself into the discussion between Salty and Whoopycat, both of whom I like and respect, but I too have not found SOM management particularly responsive. Things have taken a turn for the worse in this regard since TSN terminated its association with SOM. Bernie, for all his flaws, did try and accommodate the community at times. Now there is little to no dialogue between SOM and the community at large, all though several managers appear to have insinuated themselves into collaborating with SOM on pricing, for example. What is truly emblematic though of SOM's approach to customer relations is Garcia's episodic blogs that are locked, eliminating any dialogue with the community right out of the proverbial gate.

Personally I miss competing against Nev but respect his decision to stop playing.

You certainly can't argue with The Last Druid on that ! Exclamation point for strong effect !

Nev was the best of the best and yeah I teased him at times in what I thought was good naturedness. "Didn't you quit" was always in fun and I think even him and I made up in the end.

I wouldn't be replying at all if it weren't for Druid's points about SOM. Barnstormers has brought in an untold massive $$ revenue stream for SOM during the entire run of SOM since it took it over from TSN. And I believe that it was DUE to it's popularity and income that Players and Mystery card tournaments sprang up. What do we get ?

Frustration when we went for the first time to a 24-team semifinal event - SOM balking at 12 little credits for those other 12 semi-finalists "unless" we grow to 150 plus regular tour players. Then when they said - "Give us the word" when you are ready to have us promote your tour and we will put in the blogs and league banner and social media (yet to see that). Gave them the "word" when we put out our signup sheet and it took another 6 days before such promotion comes out in the form of the banner and the blog.

And now our feet are to the fire to meet their demands.

And for all of you that think I have the ear of SOM ? I send to the same 365 e-mail address you do, and no one ever cares to leave their name and who I am dealing with in my communications.

I have been on the brink of quitting many times too. Until a player told me that he felt the ATG would quickly die off if it weren't for the annual tournament. Well I don't know about that but it kept me to going ONE MORE YEAR. I don't think I will even PLAY this year but it's for those that do get enjoyment out of it.

We do need to honor Nevdully and all those other people who have been posting about being around since ATG1. Many people have done the right thing and left. Those who have stayed - now we're the dumb ones. - MM

No good deed goes unpunished.

I loved nev. I still love nev.

FULLY agree with all of what both of YOU
being what MOOSE and DRUID are saying here--- and as was pointed out, its not that I don't respect you Whoopy--
its just that what you are saying I don't see as the case at all.

Bernie, for all the difficulty of being a one man show and occasionally going super slowly, did at least respond to all emails, did have some dialogue with the community, did at least sometimes address complaints, did have NEW ATG VERSIONS come out that weren't just card adds, DID at least ASK the community what it wanted even though there was rarely consensus etc.

Anyway back to NEV--
am just glad hes happier, thats what counts.

Nev was as great a person as he was a competitor.

- The Sheik

The problem is proving your 21-3 team is so much better than everyone else's that it really should win 130 games.

With all due respect to Nev, I completely disagreed with him on his various complaints. If you look at all of the things Bernie/TSN/John/SOM have added over the years since ATG1, there have been a staggering number of improvements. You don't need me to list them to know what they are, but to say SOM has been unresponsive is a bit unfounded.

Normalization in ATG1 was obvious and easily proven. There was no reason based on dice probabilities that Ruth or Mays should not hit 70-80+ home runs playing in Fenway 67 against weak pitching. And yet they didn't.

To extrapolate that to "my team was 21-3 and now I'm only 6 games above .500" is completely different. Pythagorus say in order to win 80% of your games, you basically need to average double the runs of your opponent per game. Read that again: average double the runs! Do you know how freaking hard that is to do in a league where everyone operates under the same salary cap? That means if you win a game 6-4, you need to win the next game 10-0 to keep that pace in order to cover the expected occasional losses. Looking at the ATG record books, the team at the top of the list with 116 wins had a whopping run diff of about +330, and they were outscoring opponents by roughly a 6-4 margin, and Pythagorus says they won about 3 more games than they should've.

Bottom line, there was no way to prove "team win" normalization. Just because you are out-managing your opponents and winning a lot of close games (which Nev was very good at), does not mean current success equals future success.

Nev's other big complaint was the so-called "black box" features of the game such as pitcher fatigue and the various game settings such as home field advantage. He wanted 100% transparency of game results. All I can say there is I disagree with his viewpoint. SOM online is a baseball simulation, not a simulation of two people sitting across from each other rolling dice. With that said, this game has a tremendous amount of transparency. If you've played the computer version, you know that we get to see probably 98% of the game results with complete transparency. The black box features account for the rest, and it was this other 2% that Nev couldn't get past. In my experience playing the computer version, these features account for AT MOST one game outcome per team per season.

I realize Nev isn't here to defend himself, but he's welcome to return anytime and shout me down.

Amen on all counts. The complaints of "I'm not winning when I think I should be" always struck me as pointless. My response would be, "If you don't like it, don't play the game," which Nev did. I've played thousands of Strat games via the computer edition. Record is better there because I can actually make in-game decisions. Can't do that in this format, and it is fruitless to think the computer can simulate that process. Teams normalize because results even out over time. 100+ win teams SHOULD be outliers (like 100+ loss teams).

Now, if he had an issue with the way business is being handled, that's another issue. But complaining about the sim...kid's stuff.

I hesitate to add this, but I think it needs to be said: if you're feeling stressed about a li'l ol' dice game, I think that says more about you than the game...it's JUST a game. No need to pour your ego into it. Being good at online strat is like being good at playing the tambourine. It's nice, but, ah...no one cares except you. (Of course I use "you" here to refer to "anybody").

P.S. last 100-win team ran away with the division, huge run differential; first round playoff loser....these things happen. I used my credits and tried again, because whining helps nothing.