Game

New Design Balancing system when changing leagues

We want to make it easy for players to move freely between leagues and to escape inactive leagues. In our recent thread about removing inactive managers some good suggestions were given. We've implemented a variation of these which I believe makes switching leagues easy in a balanced and fair way.

This is not a light read! Here are the details:

• When you change leagues, your designs are now completely re-generated according to the state of the new league, using your current (active) Chief Designer.


• If the new league is in the first race of its first season, designs will be totally reset, as if you were just starting a new account. Because this will be the same for everyone in the league, nobody is disadvantaged.


• If the new league is in a season greater than 1, then your designs will be scaled to the progress of the season. For example, if the season is in race 10, then you get "10 races of design progress", and if it's in race 16 then you get 16 races of design progress. This is applied to both the current and next season design, matching all progress to the league.


• The exception to the above point is if you join a league in a season greater than 1 while it is between seasons. Then you get a full 17 races of design progress, as if you had been present in the league for the full previous season, while your next season designs are completely reset and must be built from scratch (the same as everyone else in the league).


• Design Points are also given when changing leagues, scaled to the season progress. 1 per race in Rookie, 2 per race in Pro and 3 per race in Elite. E.g. if you join the Elite tier in race 14 of the season, you'll also get 42 Design Points to spend on your car, in addition to the base design created by your active Chief Designer.

The end result is no exploits can be made on designs by league hopping. All teams, whether joining or already in a league, get a fair outcome and should be relatively competitive. The effort put in to building a team is still respected, as the HQ and CD influence the values generated. Those who have managed these well will get better designs than those who have not.

Lastly, a note for the experienced players:

This is a clear demonstration that yes, we listen to your proposals.  A big change that will greatly facilitate the change of leagues.  Empowering the most active and attractive and leaving the inactive abandoned.

Hi Gary, that's exactly how it will be in the new league. :)

It's a little less optimal than if you'd been cleverly optimising the design all season but it's good enough to be about where you should be.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. We also discovered this issue yesterday during tests and so this morning I've implemented a new solution to scaling designs in promotion and relegation. There was already an older solution in place, but it wasn't as effective as this new method.


From now on, during promotion or relegation, your next season design will be scaled using this formula (which I've simplified here for clarity):

nextSeasonDesign * (newTierDesignMax / oldTierDesignMax)
E.g. Using the current design caps of 50 in Rookie, 80 in Pro and 100 in Elite, then promoting from Rookie to Pro your designs will be multipled by 1.6, giving them a 60% boost. Relegating from Elite to Pro your designs would be multipled by 0.8, reducing them by 20%.

This will mean if you had achieved the maximum design progress in Rookie, it will be converted to the same promoting to Pro. If you had achieved the maximum progress in Elite then it will be reduced to the equivalent of that in Pro during relegation.

Some may feel this gives people promoting too competitive of a design, but if you think about the new system, they could leave and re-join the league to get a comparable design, so it makes the most sense to scale it directly to the new tier level. Throughout the season the HQ and driver levels will still make a difference, but at least the starting designs will be balanced from now on.

Hi Stefano, it looks like they have utilised the old "exploit" to get designs maxed out with 50 on all attributes. They competed in an Elite league for 13 days, changed leagues (joining Elite in your league) and then got relegated yesterday evening (before the new scaling was implemented). This, under the old system, means they were able to develop the designs to the maximum possible values for Elite.

This is a perfect example of exactly what the new system has been set up to prevent, and what Kevin was bringing our attention to. This will not be possible going forward, any guys you see doing this now will be the last guys in the game doing this.