Proposed Ladder Structure for IGP

I have been playing IGP Manager (IGPM) for a year and the one issue I have with the game is that anyone can form a league. This has the result that there are a great many leagues with too few players in each league.  Additionally, new players can join leagues in which they are overmatched , with the result that people quit in frustration. 

To remedy this, I propose that competition structure be changed as follows:


1.  All players would compete in IGPM "sanctioned" leagues based on their manager rating and their level.  Each league would have 32 cars and as that number is reached, a new league would form. 

2.  At the end of each season, people would move up or down a league depending on their season ending driver rating. 

3.  All seasons would end on the same day.  All seasons would begin on the same day.  If a person joins IGPM in the middle of a season, they would enter an existing beginner league if a league has slots available.  Otherwise, they would be put into a new "overflow" league for the remainder of the season. 

4. Private leagues would continue to be allowed but the results would not count towards overall standings and would not be included in the Manager's stats. 

5. Two car teams would continue to be allowed and they would race either in leagues with only two cars or in leagues which would allow one or two cars (thoughts on this).  Again, this would be managed by IGPM and not the individuals. 

6.  Conversion to this structure would result in shortened seasons for many current leagues for the changeover season. 

The advantage that I see from this type of structure is that competition would be greatly enhanced.  Right now, people drop out from lack of competition or because they are in over their heads.  This type of structure would assure that everyone would compete with individuals at their level.  In my view, this would also help IGPM gain and retain members/subscribers.

You would need to make sure that the sanctioned leagues supported differing frequencies of races and time zones to accomodate the differing requirements of players, this is the main reason why you have such a large number of leagues. I'm not a sure a sanctioned structure could support that kind of requirement.

how do you propose a solution for race times and schedule, and percent of laps to race?

This, this and this ^^^

The idea in ways has sense to it but it isn't practical.

 The main reason people race in the leagues they do is they find one that suits the number of cars, frequency, time and length of races they like. People start leagues with parameters they like, and if it suits a number of other active racers, that league becomes successful. If noone else joins, so be it. I don't see a problem with that. 

What you're proposing sounds very much like the way iRacing works and it works well over there as you can race the style you want to race at a regular frequency when it suits you. IGP is not that sort if game.

I think perhaps a true rookie league system wouldn't hurt. Where in you're first season you race against other first seasoners and 'have your hand held' through-out the season, or maybe just a 3 race intro-season to start you off before you select a league.

The tiering system however could do with a bit of tweaking IMO, but that's a different topic.

Good points.  And the proposal could use a bit of tweaking.  
Regarding the frequency of races and time zones, a program could be set up wheereby a person elects to race in a 3, 4, or 6 day a week sereies with updates to rankings occuring quarterly.  I ageee that this would need to be tweaked a bit.
Time zones are another story; haven't thought about that  too much because it does not seem to be an issue now.  My league has members from the US, Brazil, Greece, Italy and Scotland and time zone doesn't seem to have an adverse affect.  It shouldn't have an adverse affect on my proposal either.  The main issue is attracting and retaining members in any given league.  I see leagues that have 30 members of which 10 or 12 are active and the rest have no activity for months.  That is what I am trying to address with these suggestions.  I would like to see full fields on the starting grid.  Maybe the idea that this should be for beginners has merit and perhaps this should be done initially.  But I think that for IGP to have a future, this type of laddre environment would have to be extended through all of the classes.
 Regarding the thought that there are a lot of single player leagues out there, that is the whole problem.   Joe Blow starts his own league and nobody joins.  After a bit of time, he drops out from boredom.  Or, Joe continues to the end of the season and wins a driver and team champoinship or two in his single car league.  This distorts the manager stats and makes them suspect.  Sooner or later, Joe will drop out from frustration or boredom and IGP loses another potential paying subscriber.   I suspect that this, or similar scenarios, happen quite frequently such that a vast number of "members" are in fact quite inactive and should be dropped from the membership rolls.  
The whole idea behind this suggestion is that the developers need to put in some organized competitive system in order to attract and retain members.  I don't know how many subscribers there are or how many active members, but without some sort of controlled competitive environment, I am afraid that IGP cannot survive.  In my view, tiering is a viable way to manage competition.  Mandatory sanctioned league membership with only results from the sanctioned leagues counting in ratings, is another.  
And yes, what I am proposing is similar to Iracing.  And it does work for them.  And something similar could work here.  

Ofcourse time zones matter. I'm from New Zealand and we are currently 13 hours ahead of the UK. All night time for the UK is day time for us, and most of the scheduled race time would probably be the earlier hours in the evening for the UK which are just not practical for most people down this end of the world (EG early morning when we're either getting ready for work or are already at work)

But re: controlled competitive environment - It's already being worked on. Hopefully something is released in the next few weeks.

Eton, in fact you are just 11 minutes from UK. You just have to take the Total Recall's gravity train.