Option to stay as current Rookie/Pro level instead of moving up to a completely empty race.

In several of my leagues we've got members who are racing alone or with maybe 1 other person in the pro area. They are now about to be promoted to elite, based simply on the fact that they were both the only two drivers, thus are in the top 6. 

Can we please have an option to allow them to still be classesd as elite, but stay in the pro section as otherwise we're just constantly going to get people leave because there is zero point racing if you've not got anyone to race aganst. I've got 7 leagues, we've so far lost about 10 people because of this. I myself am stuck at Elite with nobody to race against and frankly have not bothered visiting daily to set my strategy as it doesnt matter.

It seems there was a huge oversight here as nobody is going to want to play when there is nothing to do. 

+1

Not a problem for me yet, but our private league is going to be ruined when promotion moves half the people up a level.

We're just going to restart the league if needed but that's a pain that nobody wants.

Your request makes no sense. Elite managers racing in Pro tier? And after all they're Elite just because they choose to compete in empty leagues in the first place.

Perhaps that's your problem, why do you opened 7 in the first place? Now you complaining about lack of people joining? Especially when 6 of them are at the same exact time...
There's no better solution that wait a few seasons until all the tiers all filled up, until then you can always swap leagues at the end of the season to find a more competitive one. It's not perfect but your proposal would be a mess.

I think the reason for creating 7 leagues initially was because at the time everyone was a rookie. Thus a league was limited to 32 cars, which is either 16 or 32 players.  Nobody wants to wait for others to finish a season before they start racing so they choose or create another league.

So initially with x players you have x/16 leagues. Next season you have too many leagues for x players and t will get worse each season unless the number of leagues is reduced or there are sufficient new players.

I understand that but you can't keep Elite managers at Pro tier "still classified as Elite" whatever that means. That would delay the filling of the Elite tiers even more. We'll have to be patient.
Even if you're allowed to simply abdicate of your promotion and Elite status would be bad because in the next season there would be one elite manager less.
The Elite managers will have to gather in fewer leagues (or wait alone :P) until then because , as you pointed out, we all started as rookies and will take some time until the amount of pro's and elite's can be similar to rookies.

+1 to that!

Carlos, it should simply be an option for Users to stay in Pro, as long as in the own league are too few elites.
It simply is boring to race against just 5 other teams just because I 'advanced'... and that's just Pro, not even Elite where I'll be driving against even less people next season... hooray!

It was the wrong way to go here in the first place. You usually start with one league that is filled. As soon as there are more competitors than reasonable numbers of places in that base league, you create a second league that is below the base one. From that moment on, all new teams will have to start in the 2nd league of course. And if this is full, too, then you'll create a third league, which will be the starting point from then on. 

This guarantees, that the top league is always filled. Here you have a filled 3rd league and empty major leagues, as it will take at least 3 full seasons to get elite filled, while pro still stays empty. (1st five get promoted, to elite, six follow from rookie, makes 7 there, same game next season, makes 8 then. This takes aaaages to fill all places and will probably never happen anywhere. I can be patient if things stay constant, but at the moment a promotion is more of a degradation.

The Soccer method described above makes way more sense, leagues could quickly fill, as all 48 places could be filled within one season (elite first, when it's full, they start in pro etc.).
If I race in elite, pro or whatever adds nothing to gameplay anyway. I don't get better suppliers, drivers, staff, facilities or more money, nothing. A win in elite is worth as much as or better as less as a win in rookie... rewards for good performance aren't existant anyway so I really don't care where I drive, as long as the grid is full.

This is, in my opinion, a huge design flaw, as it is a big downer (or however to call this) after the first season already. Driving against 30 > driving against 10. Ouch!

In the current state, after not even two months, there isn't much content for 'advanced' players, as pretty much everything can be reached within 25 races (only level 8 stuff is left for me). Taking most of the competitors from them as 'reward' doesn't help here, to keep them playing and probably most important, paying.

I payed for one month and see no reason to continue with that. I have no idea what the future will bring, I have reached almost everything the game offers me, when being the only subscriber in your league you have to be stupid to lose a race, as it is a piece of cake with handling the strategy, so there's not much motivation left.

I guess I extravagated a bit here, but it should emphasize my point.

+100

Promoting people to an empty tier is flat out rediculous. Your reward for doing well is having your gaming experience ruined? Yeah, that's a great plan for keeping people around long term.

Dominik, I understand and agree with you, I would rather have the "Soccer method" you described too. However this game is designed to give players the chance to interact live during races and that is a big problem for a worldwide league. Even national wide leagues would be problematic because not everyone can be online at the same time.

I don't have a subscription yet, but I think that live orders and strategy are the real core of the game (and gives a huge advantage) and that's why we have these leagues where we can customize everything in order to gather managers that will be online during races.

What I was saying is: given that this league scheme is here to stay and that everybody will start as rookies if you keep people from reaching elite you'll be delaying the process.

Now I got an idea, what if everything stays the same with this kind of leagues (so you can join in with friends and do your own league if you want to) but there's also leagues like hatrick.org for instance but instead of national leagues we would have "time zone leagues" and everybody would choose whatever they like the most. Those leagues would be created by the developers and would fit as many people as demanded (creating lower tiers when needed) so you can became "GMT world champion" :P
But then again how many races per week? just one is a joke to me, everyday would be too many to others...
 

i get what your saying, rather than, rookie, pro and elite, a tier'ed league, whereby, say one league, races at 18:00, and all races happen at that time....you coudl then end up with say 6/7/8 different tiers, with teh top being full...

infact, the only incomplete leagues woudl be down at teh bottom? 

i kind of like that....

yeah, you get the idea, would that be awesome? but this kind of things usually grow downwards so you can reach top tier quicker.

The top tier would have 16 teams, then the 2nd tier would have 3 divisions (84 teams), the 3rd tier 9 divisions (144 teams) and so on.
The last 3 of each division would be relegated to give place to the champions of the next tier (who would be promoted).

I think that a league like this at 19h GMT and 13h GMT would have many people joining. And other leagues could be created at others hours if needed.
The seasons should be running at the same time, that way we could have our very own race of champions where the best teams of each top tier would race each other (on a Sunday maybe)


The leagues as we have now could remain and everybody could join whatever league they want.

I think something like this NEEDS to be implemented.

I guess you got me a little wrong here, Carlos. 
The idea with one single big league system would be great, I've seen that in other Managers. Like you said, the lower the tier, the more divisions there are. But that's not what I meant, as I am aware, that leagues with individual live-times and days are the biggest strength this manager has opposed to others.

What I intended to say was, that a league you create starts with the elite tier and as soon as this is full, new players will get into pro tier, so simply the current system inverse, that no one gets into the situation to race pretty much alone after one or two seasons (what actually happened, as I've seen).

Yet, I like the idea of maybe a parallel 'official' league, that races once or twice a week at a set time. With parallel I mean, you would be able to race in a free league whenever you like AND optional in this official league.
Your team name would stay the same but for competitiveness you'd have an independent pool of drivers and staff, so no one could take advantage of racing more often in a free league than others and profit from faster rising stats of your drivers.

A no promotion/reglegation system would be great for a group of friends or people who know eachother outside of iGP.

The reason why Pro/Elite Tier's aren't full yet is because this game hasn't been around for a while and not many leagues have completed 2 seasons. After 5 or 6 seasons, it will be good. There will be a chance of relegation from the higher tier's and a more competition.

I think the idea of small friendly league hosts having the option to disable the promotion/relegation function might be useful.

So long as it was really obvious this was how that league works.  I would hate to get into a league and then find out I wasn't going anywhere.
Mind you I only relegate anyway!

An clearly visible option would be nice for some leagues.
Another idea would be, to do a dynamic promotion/relegation for the case that elite/pro are not crowded enough.
E.g.:
New league, 16 Rookies. > 10 Teams will advance, as no one is in Pro/Elite. Next Season > 8 Teams will advance from Pro to Elite and 8 Teams advance to Pro, no relegation. From then on the usual way, so 5 promotions to Elite and relegations from P12 down.
This would fill all tiers much quicker and Rookie is always crowded after a day anyway.

Another idea...
As there are many leagues to the same time, I think Leagues with small subdivisions wouldn't be that bad, either. 
3 Rookie tiers, 2 Pro and one Elite tier. This would make sure, that higher tiers are quickly filled and additionally it makes Elite more rewarding as you have more competition.

Just thoughts, but maybe anything from this would make the game more challenging/entertaining/*random.positive.adjective*...

I like the Pyramid League format. So if 6 people from each of the 3 rookie leagues (2 cars), got promoted. Then there would be 9 people in each Pro Tier. Then the top 5 from the two Pro Tier's could go into the Elite Tier.

This means there would be 10 teams in the Elite Tier. 9 Teams in Pro Tier and probably about 16 in the Rookie Tier. Unlike now which only has 6 in Pro, 10 in Rookie and 0 in Elite.

Excellent.