Finding Your Level

[Marleigh]

One of the changes in the system to a single Perfect league and more relegations was aimed at teams 'finding their level

This is the recent record of one of my teams



Clearly they are not good enough for Diamond yet they are good enough to bounce back to Diamond every time they drop back. In total they have had 12 seasons in Diamond with 2 of those seasons being above .500.

I don't know how to 'fix' this but it's clearly not fun to have 2 winning seasons out of 8. And the passive generation of PP is mainly through breaking losing streaks, maybe the greater relegation numbers from diamond will even it out more. last seasons gold league was actually a lot of fun and very competitive, but getting that every other season (or more if i avoid relegation) isn't fun and it definitely isn't isolated as one of my other teams is currently starting out on this bouncing between divisions



I know i could spend a fortune to fix it, I know i could spend time running tournaments and working the market, but i prefer to have lots of teams and this version of the game doesn't seem very conducive to that. Very disillusioned with the game this year

[dkgo]

You are right that this mode isn't meant to have "lots of teams" and all of them do well. By definition you are putting less time into each of them. You aren't playing tournaments, you aren't working the market, so how and why should they design the game so that a team without any effort put into it does just as well as the teams with owners who are doing that? Don't they deserve to be better than you?

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by dkgo

You are right that this mode isn't meant to have "lots of teams" and all of them do well. By definition you are putting less time into each of them. You aren't playing tournaments, you aren't working the market, so how and why should they design the game so that a team without any effort put into it does just as well as the teams with owners who are doing that? Don't they deserve to be better than you?

What he is saying is this... he is happy to be a gold level team with all of the diamond level teams being better than him. His frustration comes from the fact that he can't stay at gold level. He keeps getting promoted to diamond level where he is not competitive, which defeats the purpose of promotion/relegation, i.e. "finding your level". The system of promotion/relegation clearly does not work for the stated purpose. We have tried it for three versions now, and the systemic problem persists.

P.S. Marleigh, you would get back to gold level a lot faster if you would stop beating the crap out of my Colonels.

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by Orcin

What he is saying is this... he is happy to be a gold level team with all of the diamond level teams being better than him. His frustration comes from the fact that he can't stay at gold level. He keeps getting promoted to diamond level where he is not competitive, which defeats the purpose of promotion/relegation, i.e. "finding your level". The system of promotion/relegation clearly does not work for the stated purpose. We have tried it for three versions now, and the systemic problem persists.

P.S. Marleigh, you would get back to gold level a lot faster if you would stop beating the crap out of my Colonels.

Exactly this, i would be happy being in a competitive gold league rather than getting promoted to suffer in diamond

We are only 5-5 vs the colonels, and in our last two games there have been 40 hits, 39 runs and 6 errors, giving the paying public what they want

[HRBaker]

I still think this would help...


1. After the very first season, fill ALL levels with teams to form the pyramid for season two.


2. After that first week, best 6 teams (Division winners) go up and 6 worst teams go down.


I think it takes too long to fill the pyramid, and the first 8-10 weeks forces too many whales against F2P teams... AND we push wild card winners up into worlds they can't hold onto.


Your never going to fix ALL the issues because the chasm is too wide between good and bad, but you somehow have to keep the lower half of the customer base engaged for as long as possible and separating the good from the bad as early as possible would be a good thing.

[jd200600]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

Exactly this, i would be happy being in a competitive gold league rather than getting promoted to suffer in diamond

We are only 5-5 vs the colonels, and in our last two games there have been 40 hits, 39 runs and 6 errors, giving the paying public what they want

I 100% agree with this. I hate to say it like this, but I have “wasted” 8 weeks this season being in too high of league. I knew once I hit those levels, my record and PP earnings were going to be worthless. This is the biggest thing that led me to checking out like I have done so many times this year.

[Torgonius]

So, you want to be able to win, possibly dominate, a league, but not get promoted up a level where you won't fare as well?

[jd200600]

Originally Posted by Torgonius

So, you want to be able to win, possibly dominate, a league, but not get promoted up a level where you won't fare as well?

Crazy how having a chance to win makes a game more enjoyable. The level I am at now, Silver, I have had the same amount of losing seasons and winning season. No titles. However, my games are now enjoyable because I am not in Gold losing 100+ games each year. Never had more than 68 wins in Gold. Why would I want to be at that level?

[dkgo]

Originally Posted by Orcin

What he is saying is this... he is happy to be a gold level team with all of the diamond level teams being better than him. His frustration comes from the fact that he can't stay at gold level. He keeps getting promoted to diamond level where he is not competitive, which defeats the purpose of promotion/relegation, i.e. "finding your level". The system of promotion/relegation clearly does not work for the stated purpose. We have tried it for three versions now, and the systemic problem persists.

P.S. Marleigh, you would get back to gold level a lot faster if you would stop beating the crap out of my Colonels.

OK, but you can't go 92-70 every year at gold without teams at the other end going 70-92. Where do those teams come from if they want to stay at silver and win 90 games themselves?

But I do agree that promotion/relegation has proven to be a very bad system. Teams need to just be assigned to an appropriate tier each season. Give better rewards at higher tiers as an incentive for people who want to move up, or you can just play your gold roster against even teams forever if you want.

[QuantaCondor]

Originally Posted by Marleigh

One of the changes in the system to a single Perfect league and more relegations was aimed at teams 'finding their level

This is the recent record of one of my teams



Clearly they are not good enough for Diamond yet they are good enough to bounce back to Diamond every time they drop back. In total they have had 12 seasons in Diamond with 2 of those seasons being above .500.

You must be winning divisional series in gold, despite only going 90 wins, like clockwork. I'd say that's unusual. Diamond relegation has also increased so that there's a strong chance to go down to gold rather than hanging around near the bottom of diamond for a while. I'd say the system is set up pretty well for a team like this, you've just highrolled a couple times in a row.

Also this:

Originally Posted by Marleigh

And the passive generation of PP is mainly through breaking losing streaks, maybe the greater relegation numbers from diamond will even it out more.

Yeah that's obviously not true. You can only pop one losing streak PP achievement each week, and it'd be unusual for even a poor team to reliably hit L20 or whatever the upper bound is on that without some effort.

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by dkgo

OK, but you can't go 92-70 every year at gold without teams at the other end going 70-92. Where do those teams come from if they want to stay at silver and win 90 games themselves?

But I do agree that promotion/relegation has proven to be a very bad system. Teams need to just be assigned to an appropriate tier each season. Give better rewards at higher tiers as an incentive for people who want to move up, or you can just play your gold roster against even teams forever if you want.

I never said anything about going 92-70 every year either, but as you can see 92-70 was only good for 3rd in my division, so the division was extremely competitive, I won the WC, got lucky in the 1st round and got destroyed in the 2nd round by a much better team, there were lots of teams contending for the playoffs right down until the last few games.

[Marleigh]

Originally Posted by QuantaCondor

You must be winning divisional series in gold, despite only going 90 wins, like clockwork. I'd say that's unusual. Diamond relegation has also increased so that there's a strong chance to go down to gold rather than hanging around near the bottom of diamond for a while. I'd say the system is set up pretty well for a team like this, you've just highrolled a couple times in a row.

we were 1st in runs against and 3rd in runs scored in the regular season, with a -7 pythag on the 92 win team, so we played closer to our true potential in the playoffs, being able to adjust the lineups for the first round helped massively too, I was playing vs lefty cheese so brought in more righties to hit and lefties to pitch.

On the 90 win team we won our division, lost the first round 3-0 but had the equal best record of the losers (2 had 88 1 had 90), got promoted due to our 10 runs better run differential, so we were the 5th best team promoted. (which is why i was asking in the discord about what the tiebreakers were)

[Coriolanus]

I believe one solution to the stagnation problems is allowing off-ramps from the "BASIC" one-size-fits-all league. Honestly feels batty that there is this wide variety of tournament formats but there's only one league (to rule them all?)

It feels like after you get to, say Bronze, you should be able to off-ramp into a variety of different leagues. Why TF is there not a league JUST for people that want to play with Live players. At this point I would WELCOME that challenge compared to my 95%-the-same-year-to-year team at Gold/Diamond. If I pull some a couple decent historicals, maybe I go back into the big pool. Similarly it seems equally obvious there should be THEME leagues, for teams of players from certain teams or certain eras. How hard is this to do? Is it just a failure of vision? Because it seems obvious to me this is a way to keep PT enjoyable for a wider swath of people. Why is it not a real consideration? the whales all want to swim in Diamond/Perfect water anyway. Why do we have to spend our time in their world? Aren't other worlds as valid? And if the question is just "CANNON FODDER" then flush inactive teams out of the THEME and LIVE leagues at intervals, and push them into the great goulash. Honestly, it makes too much sense to me, I don't get why Devs haven't relented on their ONE LEAGUE ONLY ethos. Can't we ALL be happy, or is it modeled on our economic system?

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by Coriolanus

I believe one solution to the stagnation problems is allowing off-ramps from the "BASIC" one-size-fits-all league. Honestly feels batty that there is this wide variety of tournament formats but there's only one league (to rule them all?)

It feels like after you get to, say Bronze, you should be able to off-ramp into a variety of different leagues. Why TF is there not a league JUST for people that want to play with Live players. At this point I would WELCOME that challenge compared to my 95%-the-same-year-to-year team at Gold/Diamond. If I pull some a couple decent historicals, maybe I go back into the big pool. Similarly it seems equally obvious there should be THEME leagues, for teams of players from certain teams or certain eras. How hard is this to do? Is it just a failure of vision? Because it seems obvious to me this is a way to keep PT enjoyable for a wider swath of people. Why is it not a real consideration? the whales all want to swim in Diamond/Perfect water anyway. Why do we have to spend our time in their world? Aren't other worlds as valid? And if the question is just "CANNON FODDER" then flush inactive teams out of the THEME and LIVE leagues at intervals, and push them into the great goulash. Honestly, it makes too much sense to me, I don't get why Devs haven't relented on their ONE LEAGUE ONLY ethos. Can't we ALL be happy, or is it modeled on our economic system?

Not sure it's a lack of vision as much as it is a lack of manpower to regulate all that. How do you regulate "theme teams" ? Or do you expect one league for 70s players only, one league for 80's players only, one league for batters with 85+ contact only, etc ? And how do you guarantee those leagues get filled ?

[Coriolanus]

Originally Posted by eldur00

Not sure it's a lack of vision as much as it is a lack of manpower to regulate all that. How do you regulate "theme teams" ?

How do they regulate who gets into tourneys? I imagine it's software.

Originally Posted by eldur00

Or do you expect one league for 70s players only, one league for 80's players only, one league for batters with 85+ contact only, etc ? And how do you guarantee those leagues get filled ?

Are you suggesting the logistics of this are too difficult to figure out when there are thousands of people playing the game now? Have you ever noticed that some leagues are only partially filled? I've played in 20 and 24 team leagues before.


is this what the problem is? A failure to workout logistics?


To be clear, I'm OBVIOUSLY not suggesting a fix for this year. There is no fix at this point for this year.

[Tinkerman]

The main PT league probably needs as many teams as it can get. But if every team also had the option to join one custom league, that would give a lot of players the means to create the type of league that they want to play in. I think custom leagues could take PT to a different level.

Originally Posted by eldur00

Not sure it's a lack of vision as much as it is a lack of manpower to regulate all that. How do you regulate "theme teams" ? Or do you expect one league for 70s players only, one league for 80's players only, one league for batters with 85+ contact only, etc ? And how do you guarantee those leagues get filled ?

Just start off really simple. Imagine just providing the OL group with the means to create a league that only contains OL teams. How happy would they be? I'm guessing quite happy. They seem to have no problem regulating their rules amongst themselves.

[dkgo]

Yes, but that makes it much easier for anyone to play the game the way they want without spending any money. Nice for us but not really the goal of a business. Realistically it would need to be behind a small paywall I would imagine.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by dkgo

Teams need to just be assigned to an appropriate tier each season. Give better rewards at higher tiers as an incentive for people who want to move up, or you can just play your gold roster against even teams forever if you want.

This is precisely the solution that I would like to see.

[smales72]

I can hang around in Gold like a lot of people. Made a foray into Diamond and clearly is hopeless. Sans spending much money that's it.

[Lemandria]

Originally Posted by smales72

I can hang around in Gold like a lot of people. Made a foray into Diamond and clearly is hopeless. Sans spending much money that's it.

It gets worse. If you "hang around" at any level playing .500-ish ball for a few seasons, eventually the league's "average team" continues to improve and you start inching back down towards the Rel line.