Suggested

DP when joining mid season makes no sense

edit: the post below was made before this thread was moved to the suggestions topic

What did you try to do?
Tried to join a league and have a fair chance of being able to stay in the tier. Expected to at least have the design points I would be given at the beginning of the season, where no one has benefited from research or putting in design points mind you.

What happened instead?
Instead I am given only 16 design points (2 for each race that was already completed in the season) in all areas and 24 extra dp to spend. I have a 5* CD and would expect 38dp in all areas at the beginning of the season, you would think that the game should be adding to this total rather than subtracting from it???

Did the problem happen while using wi-fi, mobile data, or both?
Wi-fi

Did the bug happen in the app, on PC, or both?
PC

What operating system is your PC?
Windows 10

Which browser did you experience the problem in?
Firefox

Can the bug be reproduced?
Yes, I joined, left and joined again and it reoccurred

Additional comments:
I could have sworn this wasn't a thing when joining mid-season before the major update to DP, which is why I have posted this as a bug.

Switching leagues mid season is definitely a bit of a nightmare, it was always bad but its way worse with new design system as before everyone was maxxed out design (main areas) at race 7-8 so you caught up much quicker but now teams are developing all season, its almost impossible to survive in 1 of the top 10+ leagues, its definitely needs tweaking to receive a better level of car when switching.

But joining in the middle of the season is going to have far less effect on a championship than joining at the beginning of it. With that logic those joining at the start should have their dp reset to 2 on everything, sounds stupid doesn't it?

The system should be harsh enough to deter those joining from being able to compete for championships, but not so bad that it automatically demotes you (I really shouldn't need to be saying this)! I'm not saying no penalty, I'm saying it should be balanced better because at the moment the only way to stay up is through glitching the game's promotion or getting very lucky. The current system is just asking for pros to have a terrible experience when someone who certainly had the skill to stay up, didn't.

I’ve started locking our league during the break. New teams joining the league during the break are much faster than they should be, pole nearly every race, win the league, then in their 2nd season are at the same level as the rest of the league and finish where they should. By then we’ve lost a few more regulars because of the frustration of this bug!
I’ve had the same thing happen with another account... pole pretty much every race and winning on tracks like Monaco by a country mile!
It’s a no-win situation just now.

Again, there is a massive difference between stopping someone from fighting for the championship and stopping someone from being able to stay in the tier. We aren't arguing about the same thing here. 

If it's not a bug than this thread can easily be moved to the suggestions sub-forum by a higher up, I don't have the power to do that and I wouldn't want to start a new thread since much discussion has already happened here.

As a league host I'd prefer to have my fastest managers in my top tier; from a racing perspective, having a larger number of quicker and competitive managers is better too; from a rep perspective it could also lead to an improvement for the league, it keeps the tier full throughout the season which fsr this game seems to actively try to prevent; for managers of a lower tier not being forced to go up against mind numblingly fast managers is better. These are all guaranteed benefits, your main point assumes that every single one of the pre existing managers in a league are these god level, loyal managers, these un-missable players, when in reality that is such a rare case that it's barely relevant. Even the championship battle example is also fairly irrelevant, I would be angry if anybody cost me points in a championship battle, doesn't matter who it is: points lost is points lost.

And just because this has been a feature for a long time, does not make it something that shouldn't be modified to make it work better in the new system, because as I've said this doesn't work in the new system.

As Leo said, the new system takes away the competitiviness of new entrants mid-season forcing them to wait until the season break to enter (with a bit of lucky) and gain full design points as if they stayed the entire season. I'm aggainst league hoppers, but starting on Elite in the 8th race with a car as slow as Rookie's isn't fair either. He is a lvl 20 team, so research is less powerfull to close the gap to Acc (almost maxxed out), for example.

I think if he, or any other manager switching leagues once per season, should started with 3*(# of races in the past season) as if he entered in the season break without any research gain would be fairier and having their research power cut to 60% of what should be, because all stats at 16 isn't good at all to keep managers who gave up on their old league and can only find spots on leagues which already started their season just to be relegated in some cases and gaining 40% (his case) of a 170 DP gap would be 68 DP in a single race isn't a good either! This would be a massive gain compared to other teams already on the league.

Maybe a analize on what were the impacts of the "new" mid-season league change rule with the iGP community, as Jack did about qualifying results, to see if the results were as expected.

"So the solution to all of the above issues is simple. If you want to join a new league, wait until the break between seasons. It really is that easy and has been for the last two years"

Very simply said but not simply done. The odds that there will be a space at the end of the season are lower than the odds of a space at the end of the season+a space mid-season. The current system actively forces people to join at the end of the season and thus actively deters leagues from filling. As the league select page does this as well I really don't think we need both of these issues compounding the other.

And anyway once a spot opens up mid-season how could you possibly guarantee that another one one will open up in the season break? You can't and not everybody has seasons upon seasons to wait for the perfectly timed spot! It's unfair to force them to engage in what is basically an RNG game to play the game in the tier they should be in in a league they want to be in, especially when it has a space sitting right there!

"why would we want the devs to waste time fundamentally changing a two year old rule for moving league mid-season when the solution is already in the control of the players."

Because the current system doesn't facilitate keeping leagues full, which should be a goal for this game. It is the ultimate goal of the devs to have as many players playing their game as possible, can't do that if you're sitting there every 15 or so days for a magical spot that'll have no guarantee of coming. That doesn't seem like a waste of time to me, that seems like basic logic. Also the change I propose is even simpler than the current one:

** When a player joins a tier (at any point of the season) give them the exact number of design points they would have gotten if they had joined at the start of the season. **

So if the league they are joining had a 17 race season last season, no matter when you join you will get 17 races worth of design points, from there research should get you close enough to being able compete at the end. So if you join in round 2, you will be around 30dp off your competitors instead of ~35dp down in every single area not including the DP pre-existing managers would have manufactured. This gives you more to work with than now, but also doesn't put you exactly equal with managers that have completed more of the season.

TBF, upon further thinking the current system makes sense in rookie, (and is similar to how it was in elite before the update in pro) but it's so clumsy and unbalanced in elite now that it needs changing.

"Why should an existing team suffer relegation because a God like manager chooses to gate crash the league mid-season?"

if you are slow enough to be demoted by anyone after they join mid season (even with my system), the lower tier is probably a more competitive tier for you.

"If you want to limit your league to high level managers set a password and invite only those managers you want."
Well now this is going too far, there is a difference between only inviting high levelled managers to your league and having the desire to want a lot of/mostly high levelled managers in a league. As a league host not wanting the latter is not the healthiest mindset for your league or for the game. And if you are a league host and you aren't a fan of a new system that would result in more people joining leagues throughout a season, then you really do have a backwards mindset. I really dislike the, "well that's just the way it is" mindset, it's so bland and defeatist, let's be forward thinking and not be afraid to make the little tweaks could make the iGP experience a lot better.

"My concern is that every time the devs introduce a seemingly simple update there follows months of unexpected side effects which are often worse than the problem they are attempting to fix. For example, recently they changed the design ranges to prevent managers from maxing car design half way through the season and removed driver errors in qualifying in an attempt to get rid of the perceived randomness. These apparently simple changes have resulted in all manner of issues ranging from even more random qualifying, pit stop nightmares, wrong design for promoted and relegated teams and I'm also hearing rumours of the reintroduction of second season design bug. 

I would prefer the devs to sort out some of these problems before turning their attention to something which we can work around by timing our moves."

You know what, fair enough, it seems understandable and fair to me that the devs should be (and probably are) working on sorting out the larger problems in this game, but I do hope at the least that this has been put on some of sort of shortlist to consider for the future.

And as for my hopes of staying in the tier that I'm in, we'll see! Hopefully it is good news by the end of next week!