The Night Watchman

Let’s skip the boring intro and get to some things, why do people join FTP?

Normally because they want a cricketing managing experience where they can put themselves in a real life situation and make themselves the most successful team in the game.

But now let’s put this to real life, how many people go down to your local cricket club every single week to watch the seniors play?

How many of you watch your state play every single game?

I bet not many, but then let’s switch this too internationally when Australia is playing live in OD’s most people who are into cricket watch them, and Ashes? Well you’re just un-Australian if you don’t watch it!

But then it gets to FTP, then what?

The only people that really watch WC’s are the Nat managers, the players managers on the odd time and sometimes loyal supporters.

So what’s that, 30 people at most watching per game out of a possible 2167 people?

Let’s go 16 nations, divide it by 2 makes eight if my maths is still holding up and times that by 30…. wow 240 people.

240 people at most watching the biggest event on the calendar national wise, that’s really sad.

And also think that there is no real compensation for watching it, after all watching the best players in the world has the same feel as the worst teams in division seven after all the WC doesn’t have the sort of prestige.

Real sporting events like the Grand Final of AFL leave some of the toughest man crying after excruciating defeat.

Am I saying that Ash should make everyone run away crying? No. He could do that with his instant win button, as Knights he cried about it…. Woops… sorry buddy.

But let’s see, every season we see either the U19 WC or the Senior WC take place, neither one really holds more prestige over the other.

Why? Because if you win it your reaction is, “OH MY GOD! WE WON! WOW…. wow… we did well… tough to overcome those fatigue problems… Yeah…. now what?” and to be honest winning the most difficult thing in FTP should have something better then that.

Now some may be going, “Slow down P-dawg…” well except for being who are old like certain mods who will be like, “Slow down sonny Jim!” tougher than the PC? Really?

Hells yeah! To get elected is tough enough but practically from the word go you need to do two seasons of prep for this event.

Where nothing really happens depending on the result.

So some more negative people will be wondering, “Do you have any solutions or are you just a glass half empty sort of guy?” My solution is simple:

Make sure that when this site redesign happens do this:

World Cup page, have a picture of the World Cup.  Underneath two tabs one for Seniors one for U19s, underneath there you have the list of winning nations from season onwards, you click on teams name that won it has the tour list with stats from games, to runs, to wickets too; everything and then fantasy points and the like.

Clicking on a player’s name leads to his bio, he gets a World Cup trophy picture small size next to his name and underneath he has a section where the Nat Managament team and the manager can write a bit about it.

Call it a players Hall of Fame, that player can never be deleted…. and where it says International matches have a World Cup section which they can click on, see the World cup’s they’ve participated in, click on either the world cup or who they represented and it leads back. Simple really.

Too hard to code? I certainly hope not after all we’re trying to make the big spectacles worth watching, because I’ll be shocked if we had thirty people per ONE game let alone all of them.

So is that it you’re probably wondering, a bit of touching up here and there but nothing in the meantime before the site redesign?

Nope I’ve got a few more ideas.

One, a chat window on the right, move the team lists down a bit more and have this window underneath the pitch/weather it has how many people are viewing this match, they can talk in there view who else is there and can pick a flag out of the two countries too appear next to their name too show who they’re showing allegiance too. [Editor's addition: how about a neutral flag?]

One problem that many will think will come from this is that mods will need to see this, this will be ONLY for the World Cup for starters to see how it goes. Basically with 8 matches a go you could easily go through and see if anyone’s been abusing it.

If so they don’t get too be apart of it for the rest of the WC, they muck up again they miss out on that world cup and the next one, muck up again? Well they’re stupid and never get to be apart of chat again.

So now you’re thinking, “Jesus this long of a post and what, two ideas?”

Oh they’re still coming…

The teams that ‘host’ games by having it on their ground can pick the pitch to play on thus allowing them gaining slightly greater control, on top of that I feel it’s fair if they get half the compensation of the crowd receipts if it was a normal game.

It may make them tune in the start to see how much they’re looking at and maybe stick around.

Each WC game could have chat people nominated Man of Match awards too allow the communities to get involved more and have a bit more of a say.

Now will this kill the forums of WC? I doubt it, after all the chat will only be open thirty minutes before and thirty minutes after each game and a lot of the talk goes on after games on the forums anyway.

Any other ideas I’m all for, this WC system needs to be more prestige….. needs to have more interest.

Thoughts?

Let me know

PGraham