Suggested

League Filters for new players

As a frequent Forum user, I have often read about managers, and particularly leagues hosts note that there is a significantly less players entering into their leagues, particularly into the Rookie tier.

I too have this same issue, with the Rookie tier previously filling up, every time in literally 1-2 hours (after removing an inactive manager), compared to now, where it is a lot harder to fill up to capacity.

And after a sizeable check through many of the leagues in iGP Manager (around 1000 active leagues), it appears a significant majority of the brand new players coming into this game, enter 'inactive' and/or close to empty capacity leagues. (I would estimate around 65% of all brand new players)

I understand this last change in the league filters was undertaken due to some managers indicating that their league were not receiving any new Rookies at all. This could be partially attributed to those leagues hosts failing to understand how the previous league filters worked, and/or being too ruthless and removing Rookie managers far too soon and too frequently (I even experienced this a while ago, racing under a different name, and being kicked from a league after 1 race, and a race where I turned up to race live!)

Of course this is an example of a very poor Host, giving no indication or reason, however this, and other past examples could have influenced the last decision to change the league filters.

The change has though left many well established leagues in iGP Manager struggling to get enough Rookie managers joining their leagues, or in some cases, with no Rookies entering at all. This leads to a increasingly precarious situation for many of these leagues, with Rookie managers dwindling in numbers, leading to some leagues losing their entire Rookie tier, which then effects the Pro tier.

It is increasingly common now to see a league with an empty Rookie tier, half full Pro tier, and active Elite tier.

My proposal, taking into account all said above, would be for the league filters to return to how they once were previously, with active, near full capacity tiers receiving more priority than empty tiers and near empty leagues.

In my opinion, it would be a better player experience as well for these brand new players if they entered active, near full leagues, where the league boards chats are more active, than enter the many near empty leagues, where there is commonly, not a single message in the last 30 days on the league board.

I would also propose a 'No Kick Rule' for the brand, new iGP managers entering a league, set at 10 days, to allow time for the new manager to be accustomed to the game, and prevent early league removals, which can obviously have a detrimental impact on new player motivation.

Enough rambling from me! Just my thoughts and opinions after seeing a few leagues close to myself close, or become a shadow of their former selves as a result of many seasons of not receiving any new Rookie managers.

Bump :P

(rookie and elite recommendations above) These images don't support your argument that iGP is prioritising leagues with less cars.
I see the league select page the same way it's always been, always promoting the leagues with more cars over the right leagues. It's the same leagues with 30-26 cars constantly being shown and the new players are either lucky and these leagues are right for them or the most likely thing is that these leagues aren't right for them but they are still forced to join (when creating an account you are forced to select one of the leagues iGP picks FOR YOU, you can't select any filters at all. New players are then likely to believe these are the only leagues available in the entire game and so if they don't see one which fits they stop playing, they become inactive, etc. For the smarter ones that explore and then try the filters, there's still a chance that you won't get the league you want recommended to you because the game wants you to fill leagues not to join the one that's right for you, with no other option because you don't know of the forum yet, you once again join a league you don't want to join, can't race, get bored, give up, leave when there were lot's of other perfectly good emptier leagues available for you to join. These players joining and immediately leaving the full leagues keep them at the top and continuously, pointlessly promoted to the wrong players.

The only reason why players would be joining empty leagues is because of iGP's tendency to have really good and really bad phases when it comes to the recruitment of new players. Sometimes it is so high that we can fill up the rookie tiers of the more full player hosted leagues forcing emptier leagues to then be filled. I believe at the moment we are at a slow phase. Either way I don't think hosts should be forced to rely on what is basically luck for the survival of leagues.

This is precisely my point Leo Yeo, regarding brand new managers (not existing Rookie Managers or Elite Managers, as you ellude to) I mentioned this clearly in the 3rd paragraph:


When I have time, I will add screenshots to highlight this point (short on time at the moment...there is a whole new world outside iGP!)

I 100% agree that a lot of players are joining fairly inactive leagues, but the joining of "close to empty/empty" leagues is quite rare unless, as I said, iGP is in one of those phases.

To combat the first problem directly without inviting the 2nd (by having inactives kicked) too is to find a way to promote more active leagues. Putting the most populated leagues at the top isn't working. Maybe it could be good if the game could keep a count of the number of players in a tier of a league that have logged in in the last n days and rank leagues from that instead, hosts would be rewarded for keeping their leagues active. The data is there to do it, the question is will the devs do it.