[greenrebellion]

A buddy of mine and I have been working on starting an online league for a little while now, but we are really hoping to do it right and create an extremely immersive world right from the get go. It will be a fictional league and the idea is to make it challenging and require committed fairly active GM’s. Of course everyone probably starts with visions of grandeur, but we are really taking our time to make sure this is setup properly from the get go before advertising it, hence this post as I’m looking for some feedback on best practice approaches and to gain insight into other's experiences.

Thus far, we’ve written a back-story for the league, which I believe is important for fictional universes, and we’ve written a very detailed overview/constitution/bylaws for the league. The league will include custom financials which will encourage battling for every win even if you are well out of a playoff spot. The website is in progress and will provide ways to post articles etc. Again, everything we’ve done and every rule we’ve created is intended to enhance realism/immersion without becoming too cumbersome.


With that in mind, I wanted to bounce a couple of ideas/thoughts/questions off this forum:

1) Actual ratings will be off (as well as stars) but we can’t decide on whether we should go with no potential ratings aka stats only, 1-5 potential ratings or 1-10 potential ratings. Pure stats only leagues don’t have a great track record of success in OOTP, but it seems like there should be some sort of demand for them. Anyone that has been in a pure stats only online league (no ratings at all) please let me know what caused the downfall of these leagues. 1-5 potential is still very vague but provides a quick visual “scouting report” so to speak…but one would still have to rely heavily on stats to make decisions. 1-10 provides enough information that even if you weren’t heavily stats focused, you could probably still build a pretty good team.

2) Rule V draft – I like the Rule V draft, but it has pitfalls. The AI is horrible at running it so it creates problems for teams in transition and its also very easy for a team to get decimated from a missed export or two when a GM didn’t get a chance to update their 40 man rosters. This in turn negatively impacts realism/immersion. What is this forum’s view on online leagues and Rule V drafts and what are some systems/rules that are put in place in order to maximize the success of the Rule V draft?

3) Scouting on/off…Coaching on/off….what are players thoughts and views on these options and some of the advantages and disadvantages of each. The only online leagues I’ve been in have had these options turned off so I have no experience on the other side.

4) Sim speed. This is a tough one, personally I prefer faster rather than slower, but like to try to find a balance so that it isn’t so fast that its impossible to get really immersed in the league. Our current plan calls for a speed that completes 5-6 seasons per calendar year, thoughts?

5) What is the best way to run an inaugural draft so that it doesn’t take a month to complete but still allows players the ability to customize their team from the start?


Obviously a lot of these questions are very subjective in nature. I'm just looking to gather other people's online league experience, combine it with my own, and hopefully come up with a "best practice" approach.