My Studios

hey, guys--

I'm starting a new thread here to make it easier for us to compile and track feedback on the new games. Let us know if you have questions, comments, feedback here.

thanks!!

a note--

we'll make this more clear tomorrow, but when you sign up for a new league, it's a little unclear whether you're in a box office list of leagues or an ultimate list of leagues.

if you go to your profile page (cleverly called "My Profile"), you can more clearly see which are Box Office and which are Ultimate leagues.

I created a new league to test the salary cap format out, but then decided to just join in the big league being formed by the posters to the message boards.

I tried to get rid of that first test league, but all I could do was remove my studio from it. The studio still exists, but is not in any league, and is just sitting in my profile.

Is there any way to just delete it?

BTW, I know about the fairness issues with the draft model of play and can see why you have switched to a salary cap method. But my family and I still really like the draft method and were hoping to continue using it throughout the year. We were all really disappointed to see that you have not left it as an alternative. It was one of the main reasons we switched from HSX to FM. Now that it's gone we are less excited about playing the remaining seasons of this year. We are really hoping you will reinstate it as an option for private leagues soon. Please!
It wouldn't even require having a drafting room and all the stuff you had for it in the last game. We just want the ability to draft 6 or 8 movies at our discretion (plus add/drop later), without the limitations of a budget and film costs.

Thanks for considering our concerns!

Alright, so here's my gripe. I'm intrigued by the new salary cap and how it will force me to change my gameplay technique. With that said, there needs to be better commisioner controls on private leagues. Currently I can't edit invites other than the opening message, I can't set a time or a date when the choosing of the movies for each studio becomes possible which is not good because in a league of 10 studios, the first three or four will gobble up all of the blockbusters. Maybe I'm griping prematurely, but I did enjoy the draft and I do agree with the other guy about leaving the old game as an alternative option. I realize versatility is harder to manage with servers and everything, but it will only make your site look that much more AMAZING. Anyway, just some food for thought. Als, I would like to be able to see who all I sent invites too and be able to leave league messages and email all the CEOs again. That was invaluable to my last league. thanks

kingstaf wrote:

Alright, so here's my gripe. I'm intrigued by the new salary cap and how it will force me to change my gameplay technique. With that said, there needs to be better commisioner controls on private leagues. Currently I can't edit invites other than the opening message, I can't set a time or a date when the choosing of the movies for each studio becomes possible which is not good because in a league of 10 studios, the first three or four will gobble up all of the blockbusters. Maybe I'm griping prematurely, but I did enjoy the draft and I do agree with the other guy about leaving the old game as an alternative option. I realize versatility is harder to manage with servers and everything, but it will only make your site look that much more AMAZING. Anyway, just some food for thought. Als, I would like to be able to see who all I sent invites too and be able to leave league messages and email all the CEOs again. That was invaluable to my last league. thanks

Blockbusters can be owned by more than one studio. There's at least 2 or 3 people in one of my leagues that each own Spiderman 3 or Pirates 3.

yep you are absolutely right. I see now how the fairness works and that it isn't a bad system for that, so I am much happier now. However, my only real concern is the focus has shifted from being who chooses the best movies to perform to who chooses the best combination of films given a certain salary cap. I enjoyed the ability to only be able to choose one film that no one else could have. It creates that "awww, crap" type reaction in my fellow league players when one of us has one the other wants. It's a good thing because it rewards research and contstantly changing depending on tracking and it rewards faith in movies as well for people who choose and really do believe theyt can predict the future. The new system is cool in that anyone can choose whatever they want, but then its like trying to see who is best at creating an award winning combination of films. Maybe an investment system would be a better idea than slates for this sort of thing because then however much money put into the films shows how much people could get out and keep the eight film limit while allowing everyone to contribute to whatever film they want equally. Although that would probably be a different game called Fantasy Financiers. I don't know, I think there is something to be said of being able to "own" your movies and you alone. I realize that brings up fairness issues but there have to be ways around it.

We'll try to respond to all of your comments, but won't be all at once...to start:

Prospero de Pasamonte--

I hear you. Give it a try or one thing you could try is an offline draft and then have people enter their picks on the honor system. with a 6 or 8 person league, that should work since I doubt any one roster would be over $100.

Thanks moviebabe! I'd already thrown that idea at my commish before I joined a public summer league to try the new hotness out.
I think you are right, that no one's slate will end up exceeding the cap. We'll be drafting snake style. But there are a lot of high priced movies out there.
Here's to crossing fingers!

I understand the need for a box office league playing the summer season, to use a salary cap. But for some of us who are playing a year long competition and have worked diligently to create an even more competitive game, not being able to use the original game engine is most unfortunate.

I'm the Commish in the league Prospero is in, and although it seems my opinion from here on out won't matter, I'm in the camp that thinks this decision stinks. I just wish you had given us at least the option to do either, for at least the summer, so you could have gauged how the leagues in Ultimate would have fared.

As for us, we'll try to make it work using the old method, and play our league out through 2007. But with how our league works I don't necessarily see the person who gets Spidey, will necessarily win it in the end. We've incorporated the o/u as another category, so 35 is now the max points (we have 7 members). Also the leader (Prospero) in another week will be drafting 7th. We will reverse the current standings. So although Prospero did have 300 and has a 100 to 200 mill lead box office wise against some of us, he'll find that lead devoured by Memorial day. But he wont be out of the race since everything is cumulative throughout the year, and we'll have the fall season to cap it off.

So I understand that a salary cap makes sense for anyone joining who just wants to play the summer. But for those of us who liked the idea of having our own studio slates, which no one else can own, to change mid stream and be wary of legalities in playing the waiver game, this new game ties our hands in the midst of a pretty competitive season.

Just another league commissioners .02 on the new game. Brenda tell Mason, I'm switching my drive time dial to Money & Petros because of this!!!

J Cheever Loophole- Commissioner of the Hoop-De-Doo Movie Mania League

hey, J Cheever Loophole--thanks for the post.

Just want to clarify that if you are already in a league for which you drafted movies, that league will continue to run as is through whatever your end date is.

You are right that any *new* leagues/studios signing up now for the summer will be under the salary cap system.

I don't dare break the news to Mase that you may defect entirely, drive time radio and all, because of this!!

Give the new game a try and know that we're keeping a list of future enhancements (and re-enhancements) from comments and feedback.

We're still a fairly small group of folks here so it's hard to do everything at once, but our thought is that we'd like to be able to provide the more sophisticated commissioners options for a few of these essential game play elements down the road a little.

I agree with some parts of this new system. I've been playing this fine game since the beginning of the holiday season and have truly enjoyed the competitive banter with my buddies as a result of the draft. While I am excited about this new salary cap system, I would say that it has one fatal flaw... 2 or more studios can own the same movie?! Not only does that strip the game of its enjoyable trash talk (I'm sure I don't have to tell some of you how much flak I caught for passing on '300' in the draft), but it also robs the game of its realistic feel. The NBA and NFL have salary caps too, but you don't see any players working for 2 different teams, and it should be the same for our studios. In the future please consider adopting a system that combines both elements. Perhaps there could still be a draft, but subject to a salary cap. Studios would still draft, but could be forced to pass on certain high priced movies in the later rounds if they had spent too much money. Just a suggestion, but i hope you make return to a system in which studios own unique slates. Thanks, and keep up the good work!

I really dig the new layout of the site. I only have three pieces of feedback (one which was mentioned in a different thread). The first would be to hide your slate until the movies come out or league play begins. The second would be to bring back the forums within the leagues so you can communicate with your fellow moguls. Especially in private leagues, for all I see is the studio names and am not able to tell who of the friends I invited actually joined. The third and least important would be giving a prize to person who has the best slate on all of fantasy moguls, much like facebook did for the NCAA basketball tourney.

Respect,

Jewmaican

couple of responses here:

Jewmacian: Got it. We've got the note about hiding slates until the season starts...won't be able to make that change right away, but we've put it on the list. We will also be adding a league message board function later this week, so that's on its way. Prizing..yep, we'll get there...we're pretty small and running on a shoestring right now, but we think that would be super cool as well!!

Eldr1tch: True, though there is actually a salary cap version of most sports games as well....but the combo idea (draft plus cap) is an interesting thought. We have a few other ideas on how to tier movies, especially in the box office only game, that may start to accomplish the same sort of thing. thanks for taking the time to post!

Well I agree with Eldritch. I must make a disclaimer at this point that we have spoken about this concept being that he is my good friend, roommate and a participant in my league, of which he will probably win.

Anywho he is right. The best part of the game is that you must make choices. There will always be better performers than others. I grant that in the blockbuster season there is usually 1 or 2 ginormous hits and those dominate in BO only leagues. However, I believe most people are now playing in the ultimates. I feel like BO is just to get your feet wet and more experienced players play in the ultimate, where many other factors come into play. But I digress.

Drafts and other models force a player to make decision on how badly they want a film over someone else. I agree that a pure draft model may not be fair. So, I have an idea for a proposed model. In fantasy football leagues I participated in years and years ago we used to have a bidding draft, meaning everyone would sit around the table representing our "teams." We would all have budgets to make our decisions. There was also a minimum you must spend to purchase a player that they must keep available during the process. The draft would go like this:

Each person would take turns presenting a player for auction and everyone would bid on him and highest bid owns that player. This would repeat itself until everyone’s team was full.

This accomplishes everything that has been brought up as problems. One, it has the market of "studios" set the value of each film, instead of fixed relatively arbitrary number. Two, only one studio has ownership rights to each film. Three, it gives everyone a chance to draft each film. Plus, it is closer to how business works. Highest bidder gets ownership.

With all of that being said, I would still rather a pure drafting method. It is more fun and way less complicated and time consuming. Plus, as Eld said, it is way more fun to junk about someone passing on a film than it is to just outperform them.

Sorry for the length, but I really do not like this system.

Rob

Here is a quote from the message board of my Feb-Apr league, "Springflix":

"EpicProportion wrote:
Well this sucks, this may be my last league I play in. Did you see the new way they are playing fantasy movies, looks like they removed drafting all together. They replaced it with a budget to pick movies and anyone can pick the same movies. This blows, it takes all the fun out of it to pick what you think will be the best movies and whatever you get is your movies for the season, instead anyone can have the same movies. Too bad we can't make a private league with the old rules still aplied... "

In this particular league, Epic will end up posting what will probably be the most lop-sided victory in the short history of Box Office Moguls. His current slate, which includes 300, Wild Hogs and Meet the Robinsons, is over $450M in total box office, more than double the total of the player currently in second. Whew.

I gotta say, I can't totally disagree with his opinion. Granted, I have yet to get my feet wet in Ultimate Moguls (that will change as of this summer), but I have some additional gripes.

I can understand that you would want to level the playing field by changing the game to a "salary cap". It also seems to make the game more similar to fantasy sports leagues. But the similarities end there. In fantasy baseball, for example, you have the option, most of the time, in dropping athletes and picking others up, in case they get injured, send to the minors or just hit a cold streak. Obviously, that wouldn't work here, otherwise people would drop their blockbusters after 1-2 weeks and simply draft the next one. I wish I had a suggestion to counter this, but I don't.

Plus, by increasing the league size from no more than 8 to 20, 50, whatever, you kind of dilute the sense of competition, IMHO. In other words, if you start off slowly in a league with 7 other people, you won't be as likely to give up as you will in a league with 49 other people. And I hate to be the one to bring this up, but someone's gotta say it: we're not playing for anything. No money, no prizes, no nothing, beyond "bragging rights". Which is enough for some people, including diehards like me, but it might not be enough for others.

It has been state that the reason for this change is because, had this website been around last year, anyone who would have drafted Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest would have won, no matter what anyone else did or had, and you wanted to eliminate that possibility. Had the old format continued, anyone with any of the three May blockbusters would have had a distinct (though not necessarily unfair) advantage.

But the summer won't last forever. The original format, in my opinion, worked very very well in the fall, winter and spring leagues. And it can again. It is my hope that, barring overwhelming positive feedback about the "salary cap" format, you'll at least bring back the option of creating leagues involving a first-come first-served draft.

Also, I do not like the fact that we cannot create our own parameters for a league, beyond type and size. No variation in salary cap, start date or end date. In my opinion, this has to change.

Thank you for your continued openness to feedback.

My Studios

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