Division Resizing

[flockmastoR]

Now with the cleaned up divisions, proper relegation and the ability to resize, I also think that there doesn't need to be auto-relegation. However, I would go for slightly higher number of promotions and relegations, as those two go practically hand in hand: automatic relegation of inactive practically increases teams being promoted, so if we take away the relegation due to inactivity, we should raise the regular promotions / relegations a little, e.g. 4-5-6-7-8.

But this auto-relegation for inactive teams is "just" by one division?! Or directly to "The Rest" as the Donkey post indicates?

Directly to "The Rest" currently. The cleanup would have taken quite long otherwise.

Maybe we can talk about this topic again. As far as I remember, the main reason to introdcue it was to get rid of the inactive teams that didn't relegate to division 6. Those teams where inactive for many many months, the lack of active teams that replace them and push them on relegation spots was the reason why they stayed there so long. With the resized divisions and more importantly more active teams, this problem is no longer a problem and I think this auto-relegation should be suspended.

Currently, a team from Division 1 that is inactive for 6 months will be in division 6 after that period (after the old regime) but now lands into division 6 after just one month. As the donkey already rode, this well earned spot in division 1 shouldn't be thrown away by only one month of inacticity. The impact imo is too high (mainly transfer market and reset possibility). So while it helps teams that have ruined their finances or got high fines that ruined the teams finances by allowing them earlier resets, it punishes teams that want to make a complett restart of the team by cutting them the access to the good youth transfer market.

I can tell from my own experience of the total cut, that without bug using (still waiting for the FPC, thought Hansa opens one), my team would be relegated into division 6 in June and that after being in Division 1 for nearly 3 years just by the totall team rebuild idea. Luckily, I could ride the TTT with 5 riders already over 20 in May.

I know that some teams did regularly take some months off (after the season) to come back with a new team in the next season (Quick, CircleCycle for sure teams that I don't know that good). I think we should continue to allow different ways how to play the game (instead of just ride a race every day and grow to 20 riders) and not punish managers for taking 3 months pause.

[Chemnitz Pro Cycling Team]

I support this point made by the Friedhof, but got other reasons. I'm not a fan of giving teams, which rode very long much too expensive a too easy way to recover. Zizou is an example (it was not unfair, I just don't like that he just recovered after riding far too long much too expensive, which was unfair to other teams).

[Hansa]

I support this point made by the Friedhof, but got other reasons. I'm not a fan of giving teams, which rode very long much too expensive a too easy way to recover. Zizou is an example (it was not unfair, I just don't like that he just recovered after riding far too long much too expensive, which was unfair to other teams).

+1

Dont give these teams an easy path to resetting.

[Alkworld]

This topic could be discussed again, now with a few more teams. What's possible?
- change size of current divisions 1-5 (auction market will adapt automatically)
- add a new division 6 (either with auction or direct-buy market), move rest down to 7

[Robyklebt]

New Division 6 with auction makes little sense for me. It's not like divisions are huge right now.

New Division 6 with reset, D6-7 market might be an option. If we keep the current D6 pretty empty, at times promotion to the auction market might come too fast for some teams. See Elmo who felt he came up too fast. I don't know how the general feeling among newcomers is though, but it might make sense to add this extra division to add an extra month for the fastest ones. Will be more for others though.

Make the divisions bigger again to me seems the most logic way forward, but thinking about the extra division above worth a few weeks of reflection, is it good bad. Increase divisions by how much? 18-20 etc now, I don't know how many extra we have now that ride regularly (making the divisions sortable would help, add that to the Donkey complaints board) so hard to say. After the rant below I realized that it used to be 30-40-50-60-70, at least in 2012, so maybe go to 20-25-30-35-40, that's an addition of 2-5-8-11-14, so 40 teams added.. too many? Then just make them 20-23-26-29-32 and then see how it works with these 20 extra spots. If we aim for something like the 30-40-50-60-70 it used to be. But well depends what you want too, the old system with every division being bigger than the one above, but by how much?

Auction market will adapt automatically: What was the frequency of new riders under the old division size? 1 every x minutes? Or to make it easy for people like me, how many per day? And now? Ok, if I remember correctly it used to be 278 youth riders at any time. Correct?`Wrong? Now... unfortunately no number given, copy paste ask chat GPT said 250. Would be helpful to have the number there as under flash! Which still says nothing about the frequency I guess? Ah, no it does since the time they stay on should be the same? 3 days I think... bit out of my league with all the math. Anyway, seems now 250 riders for 116 teams. It used to be 278 riders for...? Forgot the size of the divisions, 1 was 30? Or 25? Ha, once was 29th of D1, so it was 30. D2 I guess 35 then? So 200 teams in D1-5? Hm, was even more at times, 30-40-50-60-70 it seems, see Zauberlehrlinge's placements. 278 riders. So... too many riders on the D1-5 auction market, stupid chat GPT told me that 131 riders would be the correct amount to keep the ratio to what it used to be. ( We just got used to the easy pretty non-competitive market when there was almost nobody riding anymore, so we got a market made for 250 teams for the 50 of us... or how many it was.
Adjust that ratio a bit somehow, too many riders now for the size of our divisions. Then automatic adaption is perfect, but our starting point seems wrong. 250 riders for 118 teams when it used to be 278 for 250 teams. And Buhmann did adjust, test, try a bit before he and the community thought that now it seemed balanced. Right now it really isn't, we're just all used to mostly get what we want.

Ah, and I'm still not convinced by the shortcut to reset that others have been talking about here too. (and even less by the 20 millions you get for resetting)

[Radunion]

I would only touch div size if you can show promotion and relegation correctly. Otherwise, the div you are in the next month feels just random. For me, adding another div would be preferable, but if you want to change size, do it one team per div at a time.

About the active teams in the rookies division. I was never a fan of it and still am not. Maybe increase the points required to go up or put in a minimum number of races as well. Monuments in field two gave lots of points to rookies, so it was much easier for them to get promoted.

[Robyklebt]

Only 2 comments?
And don't completely understand Radunion's post actually.

I would only touch div size if you can show promotion and relegation correctly.

It's basically correct no? Only issue is the "highway to D6" for inactive teams in higher divisions, 0 points and 0 races that go to D6. But well, that can't be shown "correctly" anyway until the last race of the month... since if such a team rides that race it doesn't go down to D6 anymore. Get rid of the highway the only way to solve that issue (showing extra promotion spots in D6 until all teams in D1-4 have points or races isn't "correct" either after all, again the guy riding on the last day, so until then number 9 in D6 is on a promotion spot, that then disappears)But don't understand why this should be an issue only if you touch the division size?

Second part of Radunions post is even more mysterious to me, against active teams in D6? How does that work?

Anyway, Donkey more or less stays with the rant he wrote before, most logic way forward would be to increase the size of the divisions. By how much, look at the numbers of active teams. Too big, we have D5 half empty again, avoid that. Adding divisions.. we used to have 250? (numbers in my first post were wrong I think, it's 110 now, not 118). We all hope to get back to those numbers i presume, we would need new divisions to come to 234... I think makes more sense to increase the size first. Doesn't have to be the old 30-40-50-60-70 of course, but well that's long term, but for me would make sense to simply increase the size.
Or that extra D6 but with the non-auction market, but after thinking it over... prefer the size increase.

[Gipfelstuermer]

RKL is right, not many comments here. Probably because divisions don't mean much in-game? I mean, what do they really impact?

- WC team selection. Once a year. No impact on own team.
- Field split. More often now, but not that important and div size doesn't change much about it.
- Transfer market. If you spend all time in div1-5, at some point you basically forget how div6 market works. So not many comments about that.

Maybe I forgot something else?
I guess comments would likely come if div6 became ultra competitive and teams feel they are stuck in div6? So that speaks in favor of adjusting div size with number of active teams.

Currently we are around 150 logins per day. Used to be around 100 per day. 50% size increase of divisions perhaps a bit extreme. Some competition in Div 6 also wanted. How about increasing divisions by 20/25% in a first step? Then see how many players we have after TdF?

20/25% would be something like

Currently: 18-20-22-24-26 (110)
Then: 22-25-28-32-36 (143)

Just thinking out loud and proposing something. No strong view.

[schappy]

Short comment for me, i am against more divisions, you need now 5 month to come to the first Division, if someone really matter this, it will be more then half a year, if we have more division. IMO we can increase the Divisions a little bit, not too much, we have to take a look how much they ride on the long term.

[flockmastoR]

Short comment for me, i am against more divisions, you need now 5 month to come to the first Division, if someone really matter this, it will be more then half a year, if we have more division. IMO we can increase the Divisions a little bit, not too much, we have to take a look how much they ride on the long term.

I cannot remember playing any other online game where you can reach the top of the game in that short time. So adding an additional month to reach division 1 imo is not an issue. As Gip already said, there is not much you win being in Division 1. Ok it takes potentially one more month to win the Division 1 title, but for that you also need the time for the team development most likely.

Having another division might be an option if it really is an issue of newcomers reaching div 1-5 too fast (which I don't know if it is). Increasing the divisions a little bit is also an option.

BUT: Get rid of the highway to D6

[Pokemon Club]

Short comment for me, i am against more divisions, you need now 5 month to come to the first Division, if someone really matter this, it will be more then half a year, if we have more division. IMO we can increase the Divisions a little bit, not too much, we have to take a look how much they ride on the long term.

I cannot remember playing any other online game where you can reach the top of the game in that short time. So adding an additional month to reach division 1 imo is not an issue. As Gip already said, there is not much you win being in Division 1. Ok it takes potentially one more month to win the Division 1 title, but for that you also need the time for the team development most likely.

Having another division might be an option if it really is an issue of newcomers reaching div 1-5 too fast (which I don't know if it is). Increasing the divisions a little bit is also an option.

BUT: Get rid of the highway to D6

If it is the same to be in Div 1 or in Div 5 why we need a division resizing ? Maybe it is better to change things as market (Div 1-5 can become div 1-3 and div 6 div 4-6) or things that really give an importance to divisions before changing divisions

[Gipfelstuermer]

things that really give an importance to divisions before changing divisions

d'accord - but any good ideas?

[team fl]

things that really give an importance to divisions before changing divisions

d'accord - but any good ideas?

I highly dislike the idea that higher divisions get more advantages and hence more importance. So far, the Divisions have more or less four meanings:

a) fun, comparison, fight for div1 win, etc. (honour and glory so to speak)
b) distinction between new and more experienced teams (or simply Div 1-5 and Div. 6 teams), f.e. regarding access to riders on the transfer market, reset, etc.
c) deciding who will ride in group 1, group 2, etc. which has an ingame impact already: all groups but group 1 get less money (?), less points (?) and no HOF entry for GT or monument wins. The more teams that will play C4F, the more relevant this will be.
d) order of chosing national teams.

If you give the Divisions more meaning with clear ingame advantages, the game will lose some of its "permeability" which makes this game very intersting for all kinds of player types (old, new, riding often, riding less often, riding stage races, focus on one day races, etc.). Those who ride very often and are in higher divisions consequently profit from that fact alone because they (usually) generate more money and points anyway. So I don't see the need to give higher divison teams more advantages.

The resizing of the divisions will mainly have an impact on point b) I guess. So the question is, how you seperate new teams that should have kind of a "safe space" from more experienced teams. That's the question I would look into, not about having new stuff for the divisions.

[Falcor CC]

Maybe just a sidenote:

-In the past week, 88 teams that joined since the Tiktok post have made at least 1 login
-Of those 88, only 43 logged in in the past 36 hours. Of course not everyone logs in every day, but I guess around 60 active remaining players from the tiktok wave would be a decent estimate, meaning they could fill over 2 divisions.

That being said, I would add 1 new division at the very maximum, maybe even none, to make the lower divisions a little more "competitive" (just points/activity wise) too.