Suggested

Restoring League Integrity & Fair Play

Hi everyone.
This is a revised and up-to-date thread about how we can ensure, in my view, the long-term sustainability and balance of the leagues.
You can find the original thread here: https://igpmanager.com/forum-thread/64164

The majority of leagues are facing a serious issue with players remaining in them without setting up their cars, which weakens the competition.
Correct me if I am wrong, but right now, there isn't an auto-kick feature in every non-boosted league.
With a bronze boost, the host is able to select after how many days inactive players are going to be kicked from the championship.
As a result, the majority of leagues are filled with inactive players who sometimes haven't even opened the game in over a year (!)
This subsequently prevents active players from joining the leagues of their choice and in general makes the races more boring for the current members of the leagues, since they are racing against the same people all the time.
It's a pattern: leagues full of inactive players offering zero value to the game.

I think the solution is pretty simple:

You can implement a rule where if a player remains inactive for more than 14 days at any point during the season in any type of non-boosted league, they are automatically removed from the league.
For boosted leagues it could be left to the host's preference to select the desired period of time.
I would argue here that the "never" option should be removed.
A cap at two months would be okay, but again this isn't as important.
Let's be honest, it wouldn't be hard for an inactive player returning from a hiatus to rejoin to their old league, so I cannot see a valid counter-argument against taking this approach.
You could argue that some active hosts might find something like this a bit restrictive, but it is important to understand that not all hosts have the same energy to monitor their leagues and kick inactive players all the time.
I say all the time because there is a common trend: plenty of low-level inactive accounts (I would argue some of them are bot acccounts used for auction farming) join leagues and just park their accounts there.

A suggestion about this:

In order for a player to join a league they should spend some time beforehand signing competitive drivers and staff.
I think it would be a cool idea if the game set certain criteria before players could join leagues uncontrolably.
Something like this: if you have signed 3+ stars drivers and staff, then you are good to go.

Another critical issue is that there are still many inactive leagues in the game, even after the most recent update regarding the closure risk.
This needs a bit of revision.
It should be stricter, since it is evident that many inactive-farming leagues are operating right now.
Especially in low-populated leagues, it should be more punishing because the current system favours this type of league by making them appear way more active than they really are.

In addition to this, for similar reasons, the creation of a league should cost significantly more tokens than today.
I have seen many created low-populated leagues by players only to be left inactive after a few seasons.

Moreover, I firmly believe that auto-generated IGP leagues are doing more harm than good to the league system.
They lack a host and, more importantly, they are too 'impersonal' to form strong communities.
If I were you, I would give a set amount of time to the players of these types of leagues to take over host duties and then I would close them down.
As I mentioned before, we need fewer, but more active leagues.

Also, I believe that non-boosted leagues should not have the option to be private.
I remember an old post from you, Jack, saying that the silver boost feels kinda empty; you could add this feature to it, I think.
The fact is that many players hide behind these leagues to farm and consequently violate the game rules.
And yes, I’m not buying the argument that hosts do this to protect their leagues from trolls or low-level accounts.
Actually, since the statistics of every team are interactive, we can easily see if these locked leagues are used for farming or not.
So, I don't necessarily understand their existence without a boost.

Moreover, on a more controversial note, I believe that players who fail to set up their cars should receive a DNS (Did Not Start).
In almost every race, backmarkers dictate the final results because of the DRS they provide to trailing cars.
A fairer approach, if technically possible, would be for backmarkers not to grant DRS to the faster cars overtaking them.
I would like to see a poll regarding this in the future; I believe the majority of players would agree with me on this.

Turning to a separate issue, the hall of fame is such a mess, simple as that.
Some leagues reached a very high rank quickly- I will not analyse how here- and every team that joins them immedaitely finds itself at the top of the leaderboard.
In my opinion, unless the hall of fame gets a complete revamp, I don't see any reason to have a ranking where many excellent players are overshadowed by leagues with abnormaly high scores.

Finally, please consider implementing a minimum level requirement (e.g., Level 2) for players to post in the forum.
We have seen many strange posts from bots containing suspicious links.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed, especially considering there are many younger players in the community.

What do we gain from all of this?
1) Eliminating ghost and very low-population leagues will stop the waste of server resources on running inactive competitions.
2) Healthier competition, as active players will be concentrated in more populated leagues.
3) The integrity of the Hall of Fame and most importantly the game's in general will be restored to some extent.
4) Increased chances of forming stronger, active communities.
This, in turn, increases the likelihood of leagues being boosted, leading to more income for the game.

Jack, I hope you will have a look at this when you have time.
I believe it addresses some important issues by offering specific solutions to some extent.
At the end of the day, this is just my opinion as a player. I'm not trying to force anything; I'm simply sharing my views in order to help the game move forward.
Thanks everyone for your time.

I agree with the 14 day inactivity rule because I have raced against teams that clearly stopped playing months ago, yet they still affected DRS and the race order. I would keep leagues open to new players, though, rather than requiring 3 star drivers and staff before they can join.

The irony that a bot account replied to my thread proves my point completely.
Too bad this time it didn't contain a weird link like most times these accounts do.
I highly doubt that this is an experienced player who created an account just yesterday to post this kind of reply here.
As I wrote in my initial post, these types of accounts are joining our leagues in a massive influx, making the host's job pretty tiring having to kick them all the time.
And even if they kick them, in the next few days there are new accounts taking their place.
This is ridiculous.
I am quite sure that none of these accounts belong to new players, but even if this is the case one in a million, this isn't a good sign when the majority of them don't set up their cars even for a single race.
Jack, could you please give us an update on this when you have a chance?
It is a trend that has been happening for more than 3 months.
I don't want details, just the confirmation that you are aware of this problem and this thread in general.
You wrote under the blog post to me and other players that we should be precise when stating any problems and offering suggestions, and you were right.
That's why I updated this thread.
I would really appreciate any kind of reply.
Thank you.

Agreed, although I'd push it a bit more stricter and drop it to 7 days as the minimum for auto-removal.



I agree on raising the token cost of creating a league, but I'd also like to see a reduced cost for changing liveries and maybe introducing new livery palettes.



Indeed, "iGP Leagues" have made it much more difficult to recruit active players. I'd advocate for their removal from the game, alongside private farming leagues... Hosting the ARL, I've barely found active players; almost 95% of joiners were low-level accounts I had to remove for inactivity, showing no interest in even setting up their cars.



About non-boosted leagues, I agree on not letting these leagues have access restriction privileges, and implementing the DNS policy is a great idea. Backmarkers and their potential DRS gifts can heavily influence race outcomes after the 1st round of pit-stops (or even before on Extreme tyres, as the non-race ready cars start on Inters or even slicks). -- I'd also review the race strats, especially for NRF racing, as it is pretty much always the same strats (M-H-H or M-H-M or similar 2-Stop Strats on 50% RD).

Thank you for the reply, I really appreciate it.
I think my initial message was straight to the point, so I am glad you understand. 
Good luck with the updates, I wish you all the best!

That maked sense 👍🏼