Suggested

Remove Driver Atrophy

You are level 8 and already an expert — fair enough.

I understand your point of view; however, we clearly have different perspectives on this.

Thing is training every day should be putting you at the top not way down the order

I registered my very first account in 2013, and although I didn’t play much back then, it was incredible to see how much the game has evolved until 2020-21. 5 years ago, we had a perfect 20-level system, which served the needs of both beginner and experienced players. Then they introduced level 30 and the decline started. A few months/years later, it became obvious that some kind of change was needed, as fewer and fewer new players were sticking around. Everyone can decide for themselves what they think about this, but in my opinion, it would have been better to take one step back rather than a step "forward" at that time. Beginners can now immediately build a team capable of winning, these days you can practically win with zero effort invested. No joke, I’ve seen a level 8 player win offline in an league full of experienced and active players.

Why am I writing all this? Because this is exactly why atrophy was introduced, as you wrote: "wanting everything easy and simple". The difference is that this desire came from beginners. In my view, what you wrote applies to the entire current game: "that may feel convenient in the short term, but it damages depth and long-term longevity". Atrophy is a consequence of this whole new star system. It’s not normal that in a 15-race season a driver cannot be trained back to 100%, and the issue here is not convenience. I would gladly train my driver every day if, for example, a random skill area dropped slightly after each race. In its current form, however, both the academy and any attempt to ever get your driver back to 100% become pointless. The winner is the one who can sign a 100% driver before every season.

Although truly competitive championships like PL or DWC no longer exist, I can imagine players in these leagues spending hundreds of tokens at the start of every season just to remain competitive with their driver. To me, this is nonsense and clearly pushes iGP in a pay-to-win direction.

The star system is not a good long-term solution for either beginners or veterans. For beginners, it takes away the sense of progression and replaces it with a game where the goal is simply to maintain your team’s competitiveness with unlocking features. Veterans, on the other hand, lose their motivation when they see that the same competitiveness they built over years can now be achieved with nearly zero effort. On top of that, with the new push system, a major skill-based element of the game has almost completely disappeared. The new 10% research also favors those who either couldn’t or didn’t want to think logically, or learn how to develop a car for an entire season. A lot of exciting development directions ended up in the trash with this change.

Many elements of the new update fit your statement perfectly. It’s just unfortunate that you highlight these points specifically in the debate about atrophy, which is merely a consequence of a fundamentally flawed system that rewards players who invest zero effort. Compared to the increasingly common “sign a new driver every season” mindset, even developing junior drivers required more effort…

Very well articulated.
Clear, coherent, and hard to refute.
This goes beyond opinion and into solid systems analysis.
Congratulations on a strong contribution.

Exactly. That’s the right approach. 🤖👊

I have voted 'NO' as I personally feel it adds a new dynamic to all the drivers competing in a championship, as in they are not all equal.

That said, I do feel currently (for a 15 race season at least) the rate of atrophy is a bit too high. Perhaps at 2/3 of the current rate for a 15 race season or scale the atrophy based on the season length.

“The purpose of atrophy is really to discourage inactivity and account farming, while keeping managers engaged.”.

Based on your words, the best solution might be -1% atrophy after every race (as it was in the early days of the update) and COMPLETELY REMOVE the -5% atrophy on all stats at the start of each season.
This way, the manager is forced to be active every day to train his driver and get him back to 100%, otherwise if he's absent for 15 days, he loses 15% in his statistics. If he then wants to recover that 15%, he doesn't race = he doesn't farm tokens. Discourage inactivity and account farming, while keeping managers engaged.
This could be the solution to the problem.

This does need addressing as right now, multi-account managers will have found a way around this. And that way they get the advantage once again.

I would like atrophy to be diminished, maybe one random skill point per race so it’s manageable to get back up before and during the season. This way inactive accounts still get punished.

I would combine this with the introduction of 3% atrophy on buying a new driver. This to prevent multi account working around atrophy.

And also, right now, I’m about to lose one driver because of 3 rounds of atrophy. that driver is a lost cause at the rate of training as it is today. Maybe if you could introduce a one-time anti-atrophy package for a few tokens, I might be tempted 😉

Maybe in the very short term abolish atrophy for now until a better system is introduced?

I’m with you Jean…. The comment of HCR not MAKE sense at all! 

The game should accommodate the full spectrum of players. 
Other games I've played if you want FTP you need to grind a lot, login many times a day, watch a ton of ads. Etc...
You want to skip all that? Pay up.
A ton of players don't even login every day or just once per day before the race

i agree the 5 % atrophy is too much start with 1% and increase once we see how it goes. poll should include option to keep atrophy at an different %.

This might be the best solution, although 1% every race is still not recoverable in one race if you race daily. Maybe training should get a slight boost to ensure you can recover that 1% before the next race.
Also giving 1% atrophy on a single stat each race will likely maintain drivers at their current level. It won’t be possible to make them better

That’s actually one of the reasons why I play this game. I’ve a dayjob (and kids) this is one of a few games where not having loads of time doesn’t put me at a disadvantage