Suggested

Proposal: Remove relegation to achieve balance

I play iGP with friends. If I would do a bad season and be thrown out of the league, I would quit iGP, because I am not interested in playing with other people. I don't care about the "massively" parts with global rankings etc. I would prefer if league admins would be given more choices on how to run their leagues, both for caps, relegations, track choices etc.

Could you not just apply the soft cap only to teams relegated from their respective league? Or would that create an unfair playing field?

As i have post above percentage if possible could avoid that.
i will say again :
if i have driver level 16 for example :
image post

performance will be capped at 12 but with percentage (12 / 16 ) = 0.75 = 75 % -->
talent (unchanged) = 20 Com = 3.75 Sta= 14.25
FC = 14.25 XP (unchanged) = 10
SL = 14.25 Focus = 14.25
DEF = 14.25 Morare = 15
ATT = 14.25 Knowledge = 4.5

I don't know if this leads to 12 overall rating or a bit higher. the driver will be capped at 12 will train but slow 3% per tick and will avoid something that i i don't like that is star rating speed and the driver will behave according to his stats;)
edit: training can be normal if driver not capped in our normal level and as his stats will work with percentage but can be also as i said above capped as punishment that an elite tier driver runs at pro;)

As Sam said, go for individual skills to, more or less, retain the overall attribute balance of a driver.

I wouldn't worry too much about new players. It's not unlike the soft training cap and I suppose new players manage to figure that one out. Additionally I doubt that that many new players below level 8 are confronted with this soft cap. Those drivers usually don't appear on the market for low level manager and I suppose you'd need someone to send you the drivers link or something like that to get them. So most players to encounter this situation should have settled into the game well enough to be ready for something new.

To display the cap I suggest displaying the driver level in red, like the stars if the driver exceeds the manager level, followed by a red triangle !-symbol that displays a descriptive tooltip just like the round grey i info symbol. The attributes could be displayed as the capped values followed by the full values in brackets, perhaps in light grey but that might lead to readability issues if displayed in the grey boxes.

And if the real problem was coming from the level cap itself ? In the old IGP level 10 was enough to build all facilities at max and there was no cap regarding driver training. The only cap was directly linked to our team level and only limited us to the level we were able to hire drivers & staff, the cap in pro (lvl12) was more a virtual cap because it still allowed to hire lvl12 drivers who thanks to a bug were in fact the best drivers in the game (mental stats / gearing bug), only rookies were not able to build all facilities and buy the best drivers (lvl8 cap).

That worked pretty well and teams promoted in the next tier when they were ready. Elite was really interesting and it was nice to see new managers coming from pro, starting at the bottom and slowly improving seasons after seasons. Everyone had access to the same possibilities (design, boosts) and even if the design facility doesn't make a real difference now this is not the same with the boosts.

With the last changes (staff stars taken into account rather than skills) the only differences between teams are now the following from low to high :
- design (points per race)
- drivers
- boosts
- top2 champ bonus

Like I said design doesn't make a huge difference and lower level teams have slightly better spying system to balance it, then drivers are important but high level teams have similar ones so they won't really change your results. Finally the main differences are coming from the boosts and I experienced all situations (better or worst boosts than others) with my teams (lvl 12 to 17). Just an easy example to understand :

If you are level 14 and are competting against level 20 managers, the last team has 42% more kers than you, it is more powerful and it has a better drs. In units :
- KERS level 14 = 140
- KERS level 20 = 200

In consequences this is really tough to fight against those teams if you have similar design and strategies. This is where I really miss the old IGP because everyone had the same chances and it rewarded players who managed their KERS better, now I don't enjoy to get destroyed by the KERS difference or to destroy other teams with my higher level team.

Last point is directly linked to your position in the past season, if you finished in top2 teams (elite, not sure about rookie/pro), you get a bonus for the current season and roughly you start with the following amount of design points (based on CD 4.5 stars) :
- 370/380 dp with bonus
- 310/320 dp without bonus

That was confirmed in multiple leagues and although it is not expected to work like that this is how it actually works so this is not a real bonus but rather a bug.

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That's why I think the real solution for the future and the remaining balances is to remove most of the current caps and to allow natural selection between teams like it was in the past. That will resolve the situation of relegated teams and help everyone to compete based on their real valor and not like currently mainly based on their team level.

no way...totally unfair....thats the job of the league admin....not fair to those who cant compete with high lvl teams in leagues...i have fallen back to pro a couple of times and its not due to no participation....it was due to weak parts(old igp version) and low trained drivers(again old version)...ya sometimes people did do this to go back to lower tiers so they could dominate...but now with no saved setups like in the past and different aspects of the game its harder to do with the new version...so my vote is no, dont do this, leave it in the hands of the league members and admins....been on here since 2013 and enjoy playing this, shouldnt be penalized for poor results because of under developed drivers/cars.

It sounds like the soft cap is a goer and would solve a lot of issues. I saw the concerns about development and the hoarding of cash and tokens when a team gets relegated etc. Couldn't that be soft capped too?
i.e. You can still continue to develop your facilities but they are soft capped for the division. This means that when you do get promoted you haven't lost out on a seasons development and so struggle again in Elite.