The great promotion debacle...

So, i think it's a serious problem that only 4 teams get promoted.
It means that there are too few teams racing. A season of 4 cars racing in elite has meant a number of active players that regularly turn up have now left.
And now after becoming league admin i find there are no options for the league admins to move teams around or change the number of teams promoted.
Having kicked out a few players that were no longer active, my 'Pro' tier no longer has the correct number to activate promotions, this means the 'elite' tier is looking at the rest of this season, aswell as 2 other seasons before anyone gets promoted to the elite tier??
This is a real problem with this game, those active players in the elite tier are now looking at 6 months (league is 2 races a week) before we get more than 4 active racers. That's assuming that those in elite league actually stay there for those 6 months..
There was also a situation recently where someone joioned the league, they were at a higher level that any of the drivers in elite but they were racing with the rookies?

I need options to keep this game fun, and keep this league alive before those in the top tiers get bored and leave due to lack of competition. I don't just need options, i need options fairly quickly.

Ideally the league admin would have the option to move drivers and teams around the leagues, aswell has decide the mumber of teams that get promoted and relegated.
You could have promotion out of the rookies set at a high level until the league is established and then you can change it. You should also be able to have promotion to Pro active while promotion to elite is locked until the pro tier has high numbers (not just 16, it's not enough and doesn't take into account players leaving). You can then activate promotion to elite and have high numbers getting promoted while not effecting the competition in the pro tier.
When this game was designed it never really took into account of the number of people leaving and becoming inactive after getting into upper tiers. And admins need options to keep competition alive.

I agree with some of that, but some of it would be solved by being in a more popular league

Hmm...
When you have a situation where people in the higher tiers are leaving as the racing isn't fun, as there's no competition. The problem of promotion is casuing people to leave. The situation goes in a circle. You can't fill the higher tiers as promotion numbers are so few, and those that are there are racing without numbers and competition so get bored and leave.
We'd have more than enough if those that enjoyed the game were still here. Buit the situation of promotion has directly caused people to leave.
It needs addressing and league admins need options.

We have a similar situation in our league (iGP Worldvision). we have an healthy elite tier but noone in rookie or pro. The ones who do join up usually leave after a short while as there is no one to race and not enough teams for promotion. To this end the elite tier has started to suffer as the bottom teams were going to be relegated to pro where there is no chance of ever getting back to elite. Alas I don't have any ideas as to what could be done to stop this problem.

There's a simple solution to that, maybe a little bit too late for both of you to implement.
Don't boot inactive teams in the PRO tier, even if they are not running they will help you get the minimum required teams to have promotion to Elite.
In fact don't boot any inactive teams in any tiers unless you have a way to guarantee promotion. By always keeping in mind that sometimes the inactives help the active you can have a league which is not dying.
I know it doesn't answer what you were asking for, more controls for the admin, but at least it can allow new team to join and get promoted to Elite.

You could create some teams to do the job

The only way to solve this issue really is to have an everyday league. people go inactive due to boredom. So I would suggest you play more. You can only really have a 1 or 2 etc a week league if you have your mates in and it's a laugh. Otherwise you'll always have this issue.

Unless teams can go straight into Pro or elite and be competetive, that's still not solving the problem.
The league is well stocked with Rookies too and has always done well getting more.
I'm not entirly sure your understanding the issue, we have people that have made it too elite that due to inactive players are now staring at a lengthy stretch with just 4 teams in elite, this will be boring, it's already encouraged some people to leave the game (not the league, the game. They're inactive).

I need to be able to give promotion to 6 teams in pro, 8 - 10 in rookie at the end of this season. Those teams would be of good enough to compete as they've been here a good amount of time. And all 3 leagues would be well filled and promotion could go back to normal.
Either that or i need to be able to move teams around individually, so that at the end of the season i can manually create a good league system. At the moment people who like this game are not enjoying it due to the problem the promotion system has created. We need a way to encourage them to stay and keep playing. (i'll include me in this) 
You may think it's only 4 people in elite, but some have already left. And i bet others have found the same problem. How many people are inactive before the first year is up? When you join in the Rookie leagues it's fun as they are always full and racing is close. Promoting only 4 teams is always going to completly change someones enjoyment of the gaming dynamic.

As for playing more, if people wanted to play more often they would join/start another league. The twice a week is appealing to many including me. I'm not sure that would solve the problem either, i'd still be looking at a 6 week period where i'd have trouble keeping those in elite interested before promotions kicked in. Racing every day for 6 weeks with 4 teams isn't going to encourage them to stay.

Partly agree on that. The thing is that from the outside it looks like an active league but once new teams start racing they discover they're racing themselves and perhaps just a few others. And so they leave because of that.

Once you're down to low numbers of active teams, it's very hard to get it up again. And then you get to the point that in many peoples opinion, there are just too many leagues around which cause none of those leagues to ever fill up. Managers get bored after a while when racing only a few teams and then two things can happen. Either they move on to a more active league or they quit iGP.

At the moment, the 'league admin' can actually do very little.
You have race lengths, time and days of the race aswell as being able to kick players.
That's not an awful lot.
The league admin needs to be able to have more controls. I need to be able to move individuals to different leagues, open and close specific leagues (i.e. have promotion to pro while elite is closed and not used) and i need to be able to decide what leagues have promotion available, what leagues have relegation available and just how many go up and down from each league. It would be great to close relegation from pro and elite tiers for a while too, enabling you to get larger numbers racing and allowing more to join the league from rookie. Having relegation from pro and elite when there's just 16 cars when it could be past 30 seems counter productive.
If i was able to close my elite tier for next season, i'd have 20 or more in Rookie, aswell as 18 in pro. That would give me 2 great leagues.
As it is i'm looking at good rookie league, an ok Pro and a really poor elite league.

I agree with Andrew Cole.  League admins need more admin power.
When I joined my current league I was Pro in my old league, so I got put in Pro division in my new (current) league.  I was the only team in Pro, and the admin tried to move me to Rookie with everyone else but didn't have that option.  Then the admin wanted to enable promotion/relegation, but didn't do it before race 17, so we had to go through a whole nother season with two teams that should have been in pro dominaing the rookies.  Sure, the admin learned how to correctly set up promotions, but had he had more admin capabilities we wouldn't have had to endure a 'lost' season.
I don't think telling us to be in a more popular league solves anything.  People create leagues to race at times convenient for them, and a certain number of times per week that they will enjoy.  Then they promote their league and try to get others who share their 'vision' to join.  This takes time to build up.  Creating a few more options for the admins to help them manage their league would be very helpful for the admins and give them the best shot at buildng a successful league.

G

If everybody in the Pro tier would have done a team reset, they would have ended up in the Rookie tier Gary. But that raises a question for me, why would you even want to be in the Rookie tier once you have been promoted? I for one also would get quite mad if a league admin would decide to put me in a lower tier as I put in quite some effort in getting higher. Unless those things would be in consent with the manager of that team, it would create very unwanted situations.

There also is a reason why there are tiers and that is the experienced teams would dominate the teams that just have started. Most likely the ones who get dominated for seasons quit and then you're back to where you started.

As for everybody wanting a convenient time to race, I realy can imagine that. But there's also quite some leagues out there offering exactly the same at the same time and with low numbers.

Just a thought to be thrown on to the pile - Add dumby teams.

The very basics of it will work as such -

16 teams are needed in 2 car per manager. If 7 are real managers, then make the league up of 9 dumby teams who are at a design of around 40% Locked.. Basic drivers and so on..

Each dumby team gets replaced with promotions, relegations and also new managers to the league..


It might be a simple idea or very hard to impliment, but it's another idea.

Firstly, with only 4 teams getting promoted, you can be sure there are plently of teams running to the same or simimar level accross the tiers.
In my league there are rookies at the same level as me in elite.
And generally there's little point in relegating anyone using this, unless an admin wished to close the upper elite tier and have 2 tiers so the racing had good numbers, the main use of the admins having control is that when new tiers opened up and promotions happened, that more teams would go with them.
I don't think we need dumby teams either. If team admins had control over promotions it should prove unnessesary.
We have numbers with the relevant experience for 3 medium sized leagues, or 2 reletivly large. But as it is those that have made it to elite are stuck. We've gone to the trouble of getting there but are now faced with racing on for months with no competition.

I think Pro tier on iGP Manager should be just done completely away with, and just have Rookie & Elite.
Don't need 3 tiers.

That is a good point.

What also should be stopped are things like 10 or less people in a whole league just wasting time, space and effort..

I seriously detest the system that allows people who are new that can come on, make a league and sit there on their own for a month or two and then quit because they don't understand about the system or how leagues work properly.. ALL of the stupid 10 manager leagues or less, should be closed down and them people should either find another league or leave.. It creates more POINTLESS work for admins.

I like you Rob, but right here I have to say that that is about the most ridiculous idea I've ever heard.

I have another account in a league that started as a private league for people who joined iGP from Reddit's Formula 1 board (which is how I got here). After some time a lot of people left the game, and so we made the league public, and it is still public to this day. Those of us in Elite there, save for one manager who joined us at the beginning of the season, have been there for multiple seasons and enjoy racing each other.

I've thought about leaving, not because of low numbers, but because the time I spend competing on the game can get in the way of responsibilities other things. However, I keep coming back because I like the guys I race with/against. We enjoy each other's company and there are many friendly rivalries. The idea that we should be forced to find new leagues when all of us want to stay is completely asinine.

As it is, there are only four other public leagues that race at our time of day. Of those four, only two are 50% distance (our distance). Of those two, one races everyday (which I don't like doing much), and the other runs three times a week as ours does, but not on the same days at all. So basically, we're all here originally by choice, but if our league is forcibly closed, there is nowhere for us to go.

I can totally understand your point, but have a look at the leagues that have 5 or less players who are Free 2 Play.. ALL of these league are created within the data base.. If iGP has a crash or any other issue, it's extra leagues that the devs need to sort..

Also, take a look at some of the times that they run. Some of them are running at the exact same time as another league.. 2 half full leagues, same time, same distace.. They should be forced together for the good of iGP..

Less leagues = Bigger and full league = less work for the devs.

I personally think that the thread is a solution to a bigger problem though.

People are quitting everyday over the small bugs that are still around after over 2 years..

iGP should control some of the league times that kick off... Just for an example.

Block ALL times kicking off at the quietest period for that day / week and have a whole systems down time so that the devs can take the system off line and work on issues..

We don't need OTT updates that look great but have more bugs with it.. Nope.. What is needed is down time and 6 months of zero main updates and all of the small ones like Pits, Tyres and the 101 othr small issues that make people quit or the ones on the verge of leaving... 101 small bug fixes are a lot better than 1 updates that may or may not work.

I feel IGP need to run  some of their own leagues maybe 6 every day league with 4 hours of gap between each so player from every country will have some league to choose from, and some league with weekend races and 3 races per week. and maybe give little bit of extra xp in iGP leagues so teams are attract to play in IGP leagues rather than some player created league where only 3-4 teams racing, And yes Maybe its the Time to remove Pro tier because Players lose their interest in the game in Pro tier Because here very rare to see a league with healthy pro tier

I don't think you need to remove pro tier, there are leagues with 3 good tiers.
But the admin needs to be able to control the situation, if an admin could run 2 tiers, and then if there was a need open up elite later on that would probably work.
If the admin was in charge of all aspects of promotion and tiers then someone is making individual decisions based on the circumstances of that league.
We don't seem to have a problem with Rookies joining our league, so choosing to promote 6 or even 8 cars from it for one season wouldn't cause much issue. But that won't be the same for every league.
But 4 is never enough to be promoted to a new tier.