These are some really good points. And I agree with you on nearly all of them. Very well said.
Still, I cannot understand how giving a manager roster flexibility is making the gamer easier if the "hard" aspects of the game are stuff like the generating income, transfer market, tactics, training, and weekly load, etc.
I agree those are great challenges and they do make the game very rewarding, but "roster flexibility" should be a no brainer option. It's not a path to making the game "easier", it's making the game more accessible.
So I will just ask you all point blank: can you think of any other sports *simulation game where you are forced to build your team a certain way for the first few months. And again, "just fire them" isn't a valid argument to this. Firing a good player because you want to train Centers and don't want to lose 10k a week (a lot for new owners) isn't FUN or ENJOYABLE.
I am glad the user pop is still over 12k, but c'mon yall, playing in a division that's 60-80% bots is going to be a huge turnoff for a lot of players. And there's really only two ways to solve that issue.
1. Cull some leagues
2. Increase the user pop
Personally, I am a fan of #2 because that means more income for BB and maybe an app sometime before I die.
And I am not saying this is a direct path to making new managers competitive right away. So much more goes into it.
This would, however, give new owners a sense of agency, and that only INCREASES their chance of staying active.