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We are now removing inactive players from Pro and Elite

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medal 5302 CEO & CTO
6 years 142 days ago (edited 6 years 142 days ago)
A large part of the strain on the service lately has been the number of race simulations being conducted at peak times. That isn't just the number of races, but the number of drivers, cars and teams being simulated within those races. If you want to understand the problem, read the quote below where I elaborate, alternatively, you can skip to the solutions we are providing after the quote.

Just imagine, if there are 16 teams in a league, each producing 78 laps worth of data at the Monaco iGP, then 1248 laps worth of data is generated from the race alone, before factoring in practice, qualifying, strategies, driver and staff contracts, finances, sponsors and other data. Then imagine that we have thousands upon thousands of races running, let's just say 10,000 for example, then that equates to 12.5 million laps in a single afternoon's worth of data!

Over a year ago, to combat the fact that a lot of data comes from inactive mobile players, who maybe installed the app and didn't use it much, we started removing inactive players from leagues, defined as anyone who hadn't logged in within 28 days. This was very effective at reducing load, but brought complaints from league hosts who said their Pro and Elite tiers actually needed the inactive players to stay populated. So, as a compromise we opted to only remove inactive players from Rookie.

Several months later, this has led to an accumulation of inactive players in Pro and Elite and many of the recent problems. Simulating millions of laps of data for hundreds of thousands of players every single evening, with many inactive players among that, is not sustainable. Mobile apps have a very high "churn" rate generally (it's pretty much industry standard now that only 10% of people keep any mobile app installed).


Clearly then, we cannot afford for inactive players to have resources allocated and impact on the experience of active players. It would be illogical to maintain the status quo. As a compromise I've made the necessary decision to prioritise our active players, and we must ensure that they get the best service possible. From this point onwards players will be removed from leagues for inactivity as follows:


  • Rookie - After 30 days of inactivity, a player will be removed from the league

  • Pro - After 60 days of inactivity, a player is removed

  • Elite - After 90 days of inactivity, a player is removed



This ruling has come in to effect immediately, and we can guarantee it will improve the quality of the service for all active players by reducing the strain on our servers significantly. Within as little as a day, there should be significant and noticeable improvements. Spacing the timing among tiers as we have done will keep the higher tiers populated for slightly longer, allowing them to remain more active, while still ensuring improved quality of service for all active players.

In addition to this we are working on infrastructure improvements that mean we'll be able to handle the kind of load we've seen even with all the extra players, to allow for growth in future. I will elaborate on this in an upcoming blog.

Thanks for your continued support.
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
As a league host when does this take effect? You say it takes effect straight away but nothing has changed as yet in our league.
I only have 10 managers in pro and three of them meet your 60 days inactive status. If they are kicked then my top two pro drivers will not promote this season as it takes us under the 8 required to have promotion on. 
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medal 5302 CEO & CTO
6 years 142 days ago (edited 6 years 142 days ago)
Inactive players are being removed as we speak, so if they wish to remain in the league they will need to login now. Of course, they can also re-join the league even if they are removed.

When a team is removed from a league due to inactivity they are not penalised in any way. If they have been inactive for this amount of time, then they haven't been using design points etc. either. But if they do re-join, they should have their standings points total restored and it will allow you to promote. If that isn't an option then you may need to invite more people to join, or I'm sure if you write to Yunus on support and explain this scenario, he will be happy to promote you manually after reviewing the case.

I can only apologise for any inconvenience the new rules may cause, such as you described. There really isn't much choice, as it's the most obvious and immediate solution in order to improve the overall quality of service within hours.
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
I keep onto of the inactive player problems in my league by removing anyone who is inactive around the 7 day mark.
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medal 5000 Super Mod
6 years 142 days ago
@Jack. This will most likely result in active Elite players seeking to move to a more active and competitive league. So will you and the other devs be doing anything to address the excessive design penalties that are imposed on people moving league for genuine reasons? If you are please will you also do something to remove second season design bug? TY
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
A first I thought this was looking like a bad idea because as a league host I've had multiple occasions where people have told me that they were going on holiday or needed something serious to deal with. In fact I have a person in my league right now who is taking time off so this was a little jarring to read. But considering the fact that 60 days (2 months of inactivity) in pro will be kick-worthy and 90 days (3 months) in elite will be kick-worthy it seems that there should be nothing to complain about from our end. To login just once, to use the website just once, in 2 months, is not a big ask at all and thankfully this should encourage people to stick around for longer. Should the allotted delay until the kick be reduced however, could we also make it so that days until someone gets kicked depends on the activity of the host as well? Or maybe something such as a "guest manager" or "spare manager" that replaces the inactive manager but can be replaced by the inactive manager when they return to being online...

Anyway I'll still be sure to inform everyone in my league about this, as should every other league host.
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medal 5302 CEO & CTO
6 years 142 days ago

Kevin
@Jack. This will most likely result in active Elite players seeking to move to a more active and competitive league. So will you and the other devs be doing anything to address the excessive design penalties that are imposed on people moving league for genuine reasons? If you are please will you also do something to remove second season design bug? TY

I'll be happy to look in to any other issues that arise when moving leagues while we make these changes. Now is the perfect time for that.

Could you list all the issues you are aware of or feel could be improved? I'll try to address each one.


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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
Finally a right decision. Although the 90 days inactivity for elite is too much. (I think it would be better for a kickoff in 30 days of inactivity in all tiers). Anyway this is still a very good decision. Well done.
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
thanks guys 
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
Jack, I support this decision. I agree with Giannis 2 posts above though; 60 days and 90 days are too long. I suggest reducing them to 30 days across the board, or maybe 21 days for Rookie, 28 for Pro, and 35 for Elite.

In the Rookie tier, there are many new players that sign up and play for several days and never touch the game again.

You can also consider using the number of races inactive instead of using the number of days inactive.
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medal 5302 CEO & CTO
6 years 142 days ago (edited 6 years 142 days ago)
It was previously 28 days across the board, and that was when people complained that it was killing the pro and elite tiers, by ruining promotions and so on. That's because people don't join those tiers as quickly, since everyone joins the game as a rookie. In response, we had made it rookie only. See the quote in my original post for the full story.

The times we've set are plenty to get the service running well in my opinion which is the most important thing.
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medal 6194
6 years 142 days ago
Jack perhaps we could go with 30 days for rookies, 45 for pro and 60 for elite.
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
Ok suddenly all players was removed. So I was forced to join other league because mine was now without players and the races was cancelled because of not enough entrants. The problem is (beside of reset my car design) that I was penalised for 25 millions!!! It was not my fault. What can I do? Tnx.
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medal 6194
6 years 142 days ago
So you were the only active player in the whole league winning you 16 championships and also winning you 268 races out of 273 you entered. Ha ha. I'm sure Yunus will be able sort you out with the money penalty.
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medal 5000 Super Mod
6 years 142 days ago
Hi Jack.
I think we all appreciate there needs to be a deterrent to prevent people hopping between leagues with highly developed cars, bossing a league for half a season then bailing out and joining another league and doing the same.

But the problem with the current penalties is:

  1. They are overly excessive and

  2. They penalise managers who are genuinely moving league for more convenient race times or more challenging competition.

  3. In terms of rep points (for those who are interested in this) a move between leagues can take three or more seasons to recover from.


The other big issue which causes a lot of angst and is intentionally exploited by some managers is the second season design bug. I think most people know how it works so I won’t go into detail here. In a nutshell, when you move league, if you know what you’re doing, in an Elite tier at the beginning of the second season you will have 50 core DP across all attributes except for your CD weakness. For the first few races of the season your cars are unstoppable and providing you manage the races you should expect to achieve 1-2 finishes and be so far clear you are guaranteed to win the championship.

I’m happy for other managers to come up with better solutions but in my opinion moving leagues should be as follows:

When a manager joins a league:

  1. Any unallocated DP they have banked from their previous league is reset to zero.

  2. Any latent “next season” design is cleared (removes second season design bug and the arguments it causes)

  3. DP are assigned to the cars based on the star rating, strength and weakness of their current active CD as though the CD had been designing the car for an entire 17 race season (basically a start of season design based on their CD)


This would mean that a team joining a league at the beginning of the season would be competitive straight away instead of spending half a season being lapped. However, the further into the season they join the more uncompetitive their cars will be because they will have an Australia design whereas the remainder of the league will have “X” races design advantage.
This would prevent anyone from league hopping with highly developed cars but not penalise managers who genuinely move to a new league at the beginning of a season.
And of course, the further into the season they join their new league the more uncompetitive their next seasons car will be because there are fewer races to generate design.
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medal 5302 CEO & CTO
6 years 142 days ago (edited 6 years 142 days ago)
Iztok, Yunus can help you out with that for sure.

In fact, there was a 10% fine on leaving a league, however I have just reduced it to 1% after reading your case. This is a throwback to something that has been around since the old iGP, and that is to discourage league-hopping by applying some penalties, because it could be used as an exploit. The intention behind was to stop a player from changing leagues daily.

EDIT: Kevin posted as I wrote this. I'll reply to his post below.
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago (edited 6 years 141 days ago)
About design that Kevin said when moving or join a League from inactivity I agree to the part that all have to reset.

I suggest as they join getting design of a 5 star CD but from a lower tier.
I mean if a team joins a League at Elite tier at 1st race should get design of 17 races of a 5 star CD but points as if was at PRO.
With strength and weakness of current CD and if the team will join at mid season get also points only from design facility not from Research for the missing races. but will get points for next season from CD for all races that missed (as Kevin said also).

About the Pro issue with Leagues now i think needs 16 cars for promotions to elite. Maybe we can add an option for Rookie that if are less than 16 cars in Pro Promotion can be 6 or 8 cars and not only 4.

For penalty I suggest to remove it when leaving a League and add one as a team Joins and the value of it according to the reputation of the League.
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medal 5302 CEO & CTO
6 years 142 days ago
In response to Kevin's suggestions above I have accelerated the implementation of the following changes so they are now effective immediately:


  • Any latent "next season" design when changing leagues is scaled to 20% - this will prevent exploitation while not completely eradicating all progress for legitimate league changing.

  • Teams will get 30% more design points when changing leagues than previously. It was previously the case that you would get the number produced by your Design HQ, multiplied by the number of races the league you were joining has done, then scaled to 70%. Now it will be scaled to 100%. E.g. if you have a level 20 Design HQ, and join in race 12, you will get 240 Design Points to allocate.



Regarding the other suggestions:


  • The first suggestion about allocated DP was already enforced, so I'm not sure what was meant by that.

  • The final suggestion about the CD effectively "designing" a new car when changing leagues is a good one, but too much work to implement right now. We'll consider it.


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medal 5000 Super Mod
6 years 142 days ago
So if you join a league at the beginning of a season how many DP will you have? For me the big issue is not about managers dropping into leagues part way through a season it is the uncompetitiveness of teams who join a league during the inter-season break. They currently start with virtually no design whereas their competitors start with approx. 340 (if they have 5 star CD which most elite teams do).
This is the scenario I was trying to address. Many legitimate league moves are done during the season break and unless the incoming team get an initial design based on their CD they have to run around at the back for half a season until research allows them to catch up.
Perhaps I wasn't clear in my post. The bit about clearing unused dp, I know it already happens I was just trying to list the rules I thought should be in place for "joining" a new league. This is when the car design should be adjusted, not when the team leaves a league.
As I said, it's only my opinion, you guys are doing a great job trying to make the game better for us. Thanks.
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medal 5000
6 years 142 days ago
Agree that this is a good think I normally remove. Inactive rookies after 7 days only problem is now pro is down to 7 and leaves no promotion to a 4 team elite 
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