An Open Letter to the Community

I began playing Franchise Ball in July of 2020. To say that the game has changed in five years is quite an understatement.

Since I started playing Franchise Ball in Season 88, five of the teams that made the World Playoffs my first season, including the winners, the Chicago Ohawks, have all purged. Various leagues, such as Beta Premier, have come and gone. Forty different teams have won the World Championship. Many features have been added to this game, but the one constant throughout it all was the community.

The community in Franchise Ball, for the most part, has always been the most welcome part of the game. It is one of the few aspects within the game that I feel equal to everyone else. Very rarely do teams pop up for toxicity reasons, much like the seasons of the 90s and early 100s, and for the most part, we all respect and find each other as a family of sorts in this game. Sort of like a family, it is very rare that we all agree on certain aspects of how the game should function.

The one change, however, that has brought us all together in a regard is the teardown of free teams and the already slim benefits that many teams, like myself, have had the pleasure of using during our time in Franchise Ball. This is not just a feeling that is felt between free teams either. Many teams, whether they have been here for a few months or since the beginning of the game, have expressed their anger and dissatisfaction with the creation of Executive Plus. These include removing tokens from teams of ALL tiers and autobidding.

For the record, I like some of the moves that came with Executive Plus. LHP / RHP Lineup Management and Variable Rotations are both very good moves in terms of a baseball simulator, and I think it can be fairly helpful in the future for executive members. However, that is where the majority of the favorable moves end.

To start with the most controversial of the moves, removing the tokens have a HUGE effect on everyone. Free teams were moved down to three, basic and premium went down to ten and twenty respectively, and to make matters worse, this happened when there were FOUR GAMES LEFT IN THE SEASON. Many teams, like my own, lost out on Division titles because we could not use the six tokens we had previously gameplanned around for the majority of the season. This was not the first time it had happened either, as apparently, tokens were moved to three during the debut of Executive before Josh reversed course.

There was zero transparency in this decision, which has, as I have seen, been backed by a number of users that I can only count on one hand. Ironic considering Josh talked about consulting the community on these changes (never happened by the way). Only after Josh realized this move was not a controversial change that would have gone away in a week did he ‘walk back’ his decision. And by walk back, I mean make it so every single free team would have to subscribe to get their six tokens back. Not only is it counterintuitive and not possible for many teams like myself, who have other obligations with their money before spending it on online games, but it makes this entire controversy for not. Josh turned a genuine feeling of anger and dismay into a game for himself to earn more money. It is a real kick in the balls for many of us who have been here for years and have helped create a community in this game that has encouraged other users and mainstays to join.

Along with the removal of tokens came autobidding, where teams with Executive Plus could bid on a player, and then have their bid automatically raised if someone were to outbid them. To put this in a simple way of understanding, you can thank autobidding for the game outages during Bid Day. The game was legitimately unusable for everyone. Many people could only come away with one or two bids. And this did not affect only bidding, no… you could not view free agents, you could not switch pages for upwards to half a minute. The entirety of autobidding was poorly planned, poorly executed, and you should expect to not be able to bid the rest of the time on Franchise Ball if this feature is kept. Not only that, but it keeps every other tier at a disadvantage. For many teams in the tiers below Executive, entire teams can be wiped out by a handful of people with autobidding because we do not have the funds to escape it. It can, and it will, cause the downfall of Franchise Ball as we know it.

The worst part about these changes come at the cost of the removals of features of every tiers. Features that executive users had prior to these changes, they now have to pay $200 or wait an entire year to get these features back. It is not fair to those who pay for this game, it is not fair for those who do not pay for this… no one is winning from these changes except for those where money is not an issue monetarily.

Do not let this article fool you. I love Franchise Ball. This game is one of my favorite simulator games I have ever played, in part due to its simplicity, community and other features that allow me to enjoy owning a baseball team. This community, as stated previously, has been one of my favorite communities to be in, whether it's making logos for teams or joking on the Discord server… I have had fun interacting with many of the users in this game. However, I, and many other teams, can only take so much of this bullshit.

It is our job as a community to tell Josh that the way he has implemented these changes, and the ways he tries to ‘absolve’ himself of any wrong doing is completely unacceptable. There should have been no casualties in terms of creating a new tier of membership, but instead, we all lose. The community has a right to let their voice be heard, so let us get our voices out there. It’s time for us to speak up.

Josh, do the right thing. Give us back our tokens. Stop trying to scrooge us out of every dollar when many of us cannot afford to give you payment for this game. I am frankly tired of being treated as expendable by you. Your lack of accountability, and your manipulation of us is getting to be too much. Do the right thing and remove these features that the community has frowned upon since their implementation last month.

To the community, keep on rocking. Be the change you want to see. Do not stop the fight in trying to do what’s right.

If this article gets removed, it is fair game for us to realize Josh does not care about the community, and only what is right for him.

Atlanta Firebirds