It seems the max Talent in world class for members is 80, Across all captions.

Is this a change or a bug?

@MercySMH, I had this issue as well. Across several corps in every division except for All Age. All Age, as it turned out, had tons of 100/100/100 (or close to) stat members to "hire". As I was bringing on members, I didn't have an issue at all with the All Age. However, World Class seemed to have nearly no one above 85 or so for me. As I hired a few initially that maximum continued dropping to the low 80s until I couldn't refresh to get anyone above 82 or so. Someone else I talk to about this game IRL said the same thing happened for their World Class corps.

My initial thinking was that there is a limit to how many top tier members are hireable, so maybe it was just a missed timing - but it doesn't seem like with the number of active players we have now, that should take down the pool that much. Just 2 hours into the new season and we've hired out all the top tier members? Hmmm. I almost wonder if members from last season are "marked off" and not available for this season for some reason in the web code. Maybe many (or all) of the previously used members are allocated to last season and numbers just fell as a result of those that were hired falling off, even if not aged out?

Tbh, I wish we would have had 3-4 months with seasons of 2-4 weeks each of Beta testing where these kinds of questions could be worked out before diving in head first. The season transition questions are a big one, I notice. I will say, lots of lessons learned so far, but I'm not sure these lessons are meant to be here for us to experiment and find out with anyway.

based on what you’ve said, I believe it is some kind of bug where members that we’re used in the last season were all pulled from our corps and put into the drafting pool. I am the one in All Age who had fully maxed members. Season three definitely should not progress until these bugs are fixed

Yeah I am not willing to spend money on my members until this is addressed. This seems like it might shoot me in my foot

Yeah I started with way less than I did last season too... so even with dropping a whole corps neither of my current ones can field even half a roster... Kind of debating just restarting a new account, if it takes 2 months per season and after placing 2nd you have to basically field nothing... I don't see a point in playing.

It's too time consuming for no real reward. Second Place was a number... with no prize.

@MercySMH. I've seen nothing against the rules about having multiple accounts. Is it the fairest way of playing? Not for me to decide. But the game did not give a lot of hints about how this would all work at the start. I'd hate to see fellow players like you - especially those who try to work their way to the top and be engaged - drop out because of budgetary constraints and members. I mean for me: I've got a whole spreadsheet dedicated to this game. I know the time and energy investment. It's not nothing. But maybe we ought to consider this the Dark Souls of DCI sims, in a way. First builds can be more or less an experiment.

If I were in your position (and I am in probably most ways): I'd consider starting an account using another email and work towards pushing funds on the few fundraisers that really work as early as possible. And I'm sure there are plenty of others who were in the top 20 last season who've had to see cuts to whole corps, members, or quality staff because members just weren't there, or funds became scarce. It does indeed suck starting the following season at like 40-70% of what you started with for S2. The loan payback each season amount is pretty debilitating - Who pays back 20% of a loan every 3 months even in real life? 5% interest is fair. Maybe different kinds of loans should be available? Short-term and long-term with different interest rates? Many small businesses take out loans from banks and pay those off after multiple years - 2, 5, 10, 25, etc. At the same time, loans felt necessary to hire 8 staff at $600k+ and members around 200k+. And that's toward the lower end, right? It could easily be more than a million to bring a corps online, especially if you're wanting to score well. But I guess that's the game. How do you make enough money so that you can dump it consistently like that? At this point, I can only imagine it's a many season project to get returns on fundraising and hope to be at a point that each season can spend less than you're earning back, while still having $2mil+ in the bank. So less of a drum corp simulator and more of an investment simulator...at least at first, lol.

The Husketeers almost certainly will have to "re-build" over the next few seasons. The fundraisers I bet on also put me in a worse place. You're right, starting a completely new corps at this point would seem to give one a head start compared to "legacy corps", provided you weren't super lucky with the Bingo or something like I know some folks were. The bankruptcy system is there, too. I'd hate to use it, but it is a way to hit the reset button without completely starting a new account or starting over. I'm not sure I'm there yet. But for now, I'll likely even see a pretty harsh drop in scores and placement while funds go toward fundraising. It's not hard to imagine I'll be scoring in the 40s-60s by next season. If I tried to even remotely maintain the quality of staff or level of members, I'd be folding by next season or S5. So: drop the spending on staff and members. Field a "Minimum Viable Corps", and stash funds away to hopefully fight another day. I posed the questions I have about fundraising in another thread, so I won't beat that point too much here.

Final points: I do think winning or medalling should provide more rewards. As it is, it didn't lead to retained staff or members, discounts, multiplier bonuses, didn't really make a dent in the way of monetary gains (no higher donations or angel investors coming into play here), and didn't give a kind of "Corps Winning Hype" to give a boost to those who medalled or anything. That's possibly something I'll put on the Feedback tab now that I think about it. Maybe let top 3, 5 or 10 for each division have access to a unique dataset of performers and staff that are maybe more expensive but more consistently good with their stats. I know the Blue Devils don't have to worry as much about getting solid performers as other corps. Their reputation precedes them. Things that like that could be implemented, maybe. I don't know the full solution. But FMA has their Influence system and that makes some sense as each season you can theoretically get more points into member talent. We're missing a mechanic like there here, even if it's quite different - just some way to earn legacy or reputation for putting the time in and sticking with it and seeing members or staff bolstered in some small way because of that.

Thanks for reading. It's all meant in lightness and fun - to help make this the premier drum corps sim. I hope that comes across, even with all the commentary.

P.S. Not to put undue stress or attention on them either, but @Director seems to be absent recently. I imagine given some time, they may return and work out some of these pain points. Or we will have learned our lessons as players and found strategies or workarounds that work for us. But for now, it is a valid question: whether this game is indeed going to stick around for the long haul - or whether this was a quick hobby project for them to push out and then leave. Time will tell.

I agree with everything you have said, i am very tired so I don't have a lot of text in me right now, however, I find it quite odd that a 2nd place world class corps is limited to members at 79 talent... I highly doubt that all the high numbers were taken within a day.

Something seems to have gone very wrong IMO. I had successful turnouts in my investments and it seemed to do nothing. I put 500,000 into the march a thon i think this season. I do think the smartest way to play the game is to put everything into marchathon for 2-3 seasons (about half a year) and then have fun with that as you SHOULD be able to keep it coming from there

I may experiment with multiple accounts to find something that works for long term enjoyment. The Order is now placing 6th in World and 7th in All Age. (67 67 67 67) and to be honest I am feeling quite discouraged atm... I don't see any way to improve if I can't get any members with at least 80 talent.. I have incredible staff and it feels like I wasted so much of the money now.

Sorry everyone, I will look into this tomorrow, I've been completely swamped

Totally understood and glad to have you back! I think you'll find we might have overreacted a little or made up some theories that aren't helpful for us to dwell on, lol. But hey, silver lining - we've got some great community members here from what I can see and they really care about the game! :)

No worries mate, I am almost certain all of our frustrations come from a place of love, We all really want this thing to succeed. I'm glad you're back <3

So this is actually working correctly coding wise..

there are randomly generated members with various skills and attributes.. when you are looking at the staff/member page you will only see the members and staff that are available. If there are no members available with skills above 80 or 90 then there won't be any of those members available in that division.. which means they have all aged out and moved to the next division or retired.

Upcoming Fixes to be applied lated today:
- updated the daily cronjob script to re-generate staff and members if the total number falls under 200
- prevent users from refreshing the page to show new sets of members to choose from (will prevent someone from refreshing until they get all 100's
- manually generated members with 90+ talent levels