I agree that this game is set up similar to the way the activity really works. It takes time to create powerhouse groups in real life and it takes time to do that in this game as well. However, I think there is way more incentive to work hard in real life to get groups to be awesome. You get to see the progress of the group, see the progress of the members, other people will notice...so if your group goes from 21st one season to 13th the next, people will notice that and say "wow, that group is on the way up." But in this game, who is really paying attention to who finishes 13th versus finishing 21st the season before? There would be more attention paid to that if the staff writers came out with articles all the time, but they don't. More thoughts still forthcoming...

Fantasy football is compelling because in each season there is a chance your team could win regardless of what happened during the last season. This is, of course, different than what happens in the real life marching arts, and so FMA shouldn't totally adopt a fantasy football mentality. Success in prior seasons should aid you in future ones. But this does make FMA less compelling and it needs something else to make it more interesting.

It seems like most of the staff writers are not actively involved because to really be involved in and have success in FMA, you have to play every day multiple times a day. Not everyone always wants to give up that much time in their lives (sometimes they can't) so instead of playing for a season, they either don't participate at all in that season or spend the season campaigning. When people are campaigning they aren't going to spend time writing articles for groups. But this makes it even less interesting for players now.

So what is there that attracts people to FMA now? I've spent 8 seasons getting my groups to where they are now (and my guard has 2 finals gold medals including a new scoring record) but it seems like people pay less attention than they did when I joined in season 13.

I think the 6 hour submission thing was done to alleviate the need to submit all the time making it easier for people to play. However, this is a catch-22 because it does make it harder for new groups to break into the top. I still think the need to play as often as you do to have to be successful is too much, but any solution to fix that makes it even harder again to break into the top.

I think something that was REALLY compelling in the original FMB was the finals chatroom and not really knowing who was going to win. Finals week isn't as compelling anymore because you can gauge people's submission activity based on their competitive gains and so it's pretty obvious who is going to win most of the time (unless someone uses the FMA store right at the end).

Maybe we could do something with finals week to put more time between the final hosted shows and the championship shows. Instead of doing the 600 cap for finals week, we could give people a set amount of energy to spend for the entire week that they could choose to spend all at once, so this way everyone would be put on the same footing for submission, but maybe we could add back some focus things and add back chances of over-rehearsing certain sections. Now, for BOA prelims/semis, someone correct me if I'm wrong but don't they not release scores until after finals? Maybe we could do the same thing to provide some real drama about who wins. Add back some kind of chat room announcement. I don't know I'm just tossing some suggestions out there.

We have on-season DCP-I for reality-based Fantasy Drum Corps. It is very time consuming in its own right, and you have to like spreadsheets and calculating score projections to be successful. :)

IMO there isn't as much "strategy" in this version of FMA, so the competitive nature of it diminishes and you have less overall participation in the forums.

There used to be a whole lot of strategy in the original FMB with the focus submissions. I would write down my submissions every day and keep track of the effect they had on my score. Now my staff level are all high teens except drumline which keeps me pretty competitive as long as I don't miss any rehearsal. I just jack up my challenge level to the highest it can go and don't miss any submission. It pays off in the long run especially in guard (maybe I should try a different strategy in drumline, but too late for this season...we'll see) but other than challenge levels I don't think there is much strategy in this game. It seems to be almost entirely based on your staff level, your influence, and how much you rehearse.

You know I just joined this again today. I kinda missed playing it back in the day. I believe I started in Season 1, but it may have been season 2.

Anyone remember Ivory Brigade? We weren't always in the top, but I know for a couple seasons my group was in the finals and almost won it once.

Hi Ivory!

I remember you from way back when. Are there any others that still really play from the first site? I saw a post from Cub Spirit on this topic earlier.

what happened to the site? why did it get taken down?

I believe it was financial issues.