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I didn't get shuffle after I took it easy the whole season in utopia and still feeling the downfalls of taking it easy when you don;t have a good team. However I am in playoffs this season with the hall of fame potential I have drafted didn't start untill about mid season I think not sure. I would advise people against taking it easy the first season with a new team. I may do it again sometime soon if I am not preped for promotion in utopia. I don't like the idea of reshuffling leagues.

How are we ever going to develop rivalries in league play if the worse team doesn't get to stay in the conference? My opinion here not base on anything we should really look to add more divisions to utopia like first team gameplay and have a botfied league such as division 5 division 6 leagues in the USA. Reshuffling just takes away getting good draft picks in the league and consistently trying to improve your team based on draft picks is invalid here and should look to add more towards the transfer list.

I was just refering to my past expereinces and how taking it easy is not as effective when you don't have a good team.

I like the idea for Utopia, because that are veteran managers mostly.

But for a starter it is far more fun to win, than to lose.
Specially in the beginning when you haven't figured out a lot, competing with veterans is harsh. When I started I played mostly against bots, I had no problem with that. I had time to figure things out and was still winning. After promotion the second season, I found out how difficult the game really is, but that was just interesting.

Get people hooked up in the game, by winning and than, after a season bring them in a mostly human league. That is my advice.

It doesn't have to be implemented fully, you know. Once they start fiddling with it they can make sensible decisions. Say a country has 200 users. 16 D1, 64 D2, 120 D3.

You can go about it in various ways:
a- Fill 7 leagues with 16 teams, leave the 8th half empty and delete 9th and above
b- Fill 8 leagues with 8 managers and fill 8 leagues with 7

Between these 2 extremes you can have various solutions in between. I agree it's pointless to have 16 human managers at the lowest level in the example above. I'd think 14 would already work better since there is no demotion at that level. In fact I'd say fill 12 leagues with 10 human managers so that the bots will fight for the relegation. This will also prevent that a new manager is forcibly put in a league with only bots (because you have additional slots in the human populated leagues). Option b is definitely better and likely less difficult to implement.

However the current situation is that some leagues have 15 human managers and others have 1 or 2 and it's plain dumb. People might promote right away and then quit because at the next level they get hammered every game.



Last edited by Lemonshine at 10/26/2015 12:28:58 PM

I like it. I'd try to keep the rivals together when shuffling, but that's a very minor concern.

Personally I'd swap 2 teams from a conference to the other (this would be new) and 2-4 teams from a league to another (this already happens). Only swap equally ranked teams: a #2 with a #2, a #5 with a #5, to keep the level broadly in line (but clearly a weaker conferences or leagues will become more competitive).

I think this is a great feature to level the playing field across same level leagues (and conferences). There may be leagues where all the teams are carrying a much lower salary than the overall average. If you swap into such leagues 4 teams with average or above average salary, at least there is a chance some older teams will be forced to increase their payroll to compete instead of cashing thanks to a league specific situation.

I also think it's more interesting when you have to scout managers you haven't played against before.


Last edited by Lemonshine at 10/26/2015 12:51:50 PM

yeah, swapping 5th place teams in between conferences sounds like a cool concept...not sure the teams who will get swapped will like it (say you get moved from a weak conference to a strong conference)

well if in 90% of the other leagues that 5th placed team would have ended 7th, then I think it's fair he has to face average competition. Same for the 5th who is in a very strong league and would have nailed a 2nd or 3rd spot elsewhere.

Bottom line for each unhappy user you will have a happier one, but this way at least it's fair: you prevent entire leagues to be much weaker than others. This is evident even at D2 level. For example all the previous winners of my D2 are in D1 at the moment (that's 5 teams) and have the #1 and #2 seed in the blue conference and #1, #2, #6 on the red conference. On top of that a guy who relegated from that D2 also had back to back promotions and he's now in D1. So 6/16 teams in the top league have been in my ex D2 in the last 5 seasons.
Do you think this system is fair when people had to wait to promote because there were too many good teams concentrated in that league? I don't think so. 2-4 teams from that league would have been able to promote in any other D2 in England, in fact no D1 team coming down there ever made it back to D1 within 2 seasons. Then there is the even worse problem of leagues with 15 human managers and others with 2. How is that fair by any standard?

And while this is a matter of (bad) luck to some extent, I think smoothing such imbalances it's a completely valid and fair idea, no matter what some user thinks.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 10/27/2015 9:11:15 PM

It's the same in D3 in England. Last time I did the draft scouting for D3 (before NT Scout became available) I noticed that lower numbered leagues have many more human managers than higher numbered ones. 15 and 2 were not random numbers I picked. The guys in the most human populated D3s have also stuck around and the most populated D3, in fact, used to interact a lot through the league forum.

That's another suggestion right there. If you do start swapping teams across leagues everywhere in the world, please implement a divisional forum. The problem with forums is that the new posts are hardly visible. I think some cosmetic improvement would help, but it would be even nicer if you could see if a former league opponent (who has been swapped out) posts something in the division forum. In D4 and below perhaps there could be groups of leagues where the swapping is implemented (so perhaps 1-16 17-32 33-48 49-64). (Local) forums activity has never been a priority, I know, but it's one of the easiest ways for people to engage with other managers.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 10/27/2015 9:25:31 PM