Suggested

Proposed adjustment to level cap

After joining a discussion in this thread, I think it will be a good idea to change the way level caps work slightly. This is only in relation to hiring drivers & staff. The thread I have linked is the latest example of people being confused by the current method.

Currently, we store all drivers with decimal ratings, e.g. an overall level might be 12.61. The level cap on transfers respects drivers "up to" your level, but not beyond it. As your level is not decimal, this means if you are level 12 you will only see drivers up to level 11.99. In the interface these decimal digits are not shown, so people are often confused when they can't sign a driver who appears as the same level as them on the GUI, because they can't see that the driver is actually some decimals higher in level.

My proposal is to raise this cap by a whole digit, so if you are level 8 you will see drivers and staff up to level 8.99 instead. This means it will include all level 8 drivers. If this is popular I can implement it as early as tomorrow, but it will have an impact across the game whereby everyone may notice a star taken off of their drivers, but you will be able to train them up to the new level cap or sign a replacement.

I also think an added perk of this is it will bring everyone a level closer to the top managers, the level 20 guys who won't be able to sign anyone of a higher level, but it will bring everyone a level closer to them. As we're focusing on balancing measures lately, I think that could be a nice side effect of it.

We currently show them rounded down, but one of the motivations for "adding a level" to what everyone can see is that it will level out Elite leagues quite a bit where the levels take a long time to gain and some guys have reached level 20. The recent addition of dynamic XP has done a lot to balance lower levels more quickly, but progress is very slow at the top levels and this would act as a balance in that environment, bringing everyone a level closer to the top.

It will make level 20 managers less "untouchable" and level 19 managers will be able to hire drivers at effectively the same level. What level 20 would unlock then is level 20 facilities, so it still has a benefit over level 19 but not as significant.

It is mostly people in these Elite tiers which are concerned about balancing, because there are very few errors made in these races and the levels take so long to gain that it might be a long time before they can reach the level 20 guys. This would push them about 1-2 months closer in some cases, saving a lot of time balancing that tier.

I'm not sure about that Joey. I like to try to keep the numbers clean on the front-end as much as possible, even if we have more granular details in the database.

I'm in two minds about removing driver skill atrophy, even on reserve drivers (it currently only applies to them). What do you think? I see it as an area for confusion.