We just rolled into our 5th season and I noticed a lot of new teams joined up. The key issue I noticed is that they will all start with a 5000 standing room stadium. Why not put these new teams into a second division where they can compete and work their way up? Shouldn't we be at about that point where a second division can start?

We don't want to create more divisions to have them filled mostly with AI teams. More divisions will come if we get more users playing. That is proving to be a slow process, but we should get there eventually. The game should be a lot more fun when we get multiple divisions running, but we don't want to spread the divisions too thin.

It shouldn't be a problem that clubs start with smaller stadiums. Remember that if they jump into a league that is in its 5th season, they will be getting more league money than if they started in a new division, so they can purchase one or two free agents and improve their stadium, plus they will get more money across the season from playing on the road at bigger stadiums. Will they be able to win the division? No, but the goal should always be to improve your club, and that's something they can definitely do.

norbert, is there any talk of combining worlds? What's the point of having every world having a USA division, when you could consolidate that down into 10 worlds with USA with each having multiple divisions? Same goes for England, Italy, Ireland...

Quote: Originally Posted By norbert on 7/14/2009

It shouldn't be a problem that clubs start with smaller stadiums. Remember that if they jump into a league that is in its 5th season, they will be getting more league money than if they started in a new division, so they can purchase one or two free agents

One of our new owners (season 5) just started off by buying three big FAs... no shortage of cash to start with.

So if you are a new owner who is aware of the need for seating income, and not intent on immediate FA help, you could blow that cash all on stadium improvement... and you would not be starting with only 5000 capacity.

I have another ID I have started a team that got placed in the start of season season 4. I was able to pull in 4 good FA's and add about 2000 seats to start the season. Somehow, I finished 9th in the table that season and added about 5000 seats throughout the season. Now, the season just rolled into season 5 and I had almost $900,000 to play with for free agency. I signed 8 guys who were in their 50's or 60's and I can tell you I have a much better team starting season 5 now than this team I have in season 5 that just won the league in season 4. Oh, and I have $250,000 over for stadium upgrades.

I feel I have a real good shot at competing for the league title in my second season with my alternate ID team. So, at least through 5 seasons, taking over a team in midstream is not that difficult. Later down the road might be difficult but its not too hard to do it in 2 seasons.

Trust me, until there are more people that take this seriously, building a top of the table team is easy and can be done in 2 seasons, no problem.

I am in the World 65 England league and we just ended our fourth season. In our 4th season we had 7 users and the rest AI, now it looks like our 5th season only has 3 users and the rest AI so we are losing people.

Norbert, it would be better to fill as many leagues as possible with users to create the second divisions. Is there any way to move the 3 users we have into another division?

To use jbcracing's issue to illustrate my point: because we have so many worlds, the "user pool" becomes diluted. You end up with 10 to 12 worlds that have England as a country, but not every England country fills with users. If you consolidated those 10-12 worlds into, say, 5 or 6 worlds, then you would have full users in England across all worlds and have the possibility of creating second divisions.

As it is right now, I think the game is quite fun. I don't mean to be hyper-critical, but it seems that we may have too many worlds. I think any users that are in countries that have only 5 or 6 human-controlled teams and 15 or so AIs would agree that consolidation would be a good idea.

I have to admit, that would really bug me. I don't have a solution, but I do know that one of the reasons I've been enjoying this is so much that I'm lucky to be in a very competitive league with 20 user-controlled teams, and we have picked up new owners every season.

Quote: Originally Posted By norbert on 7/14/2009We don't want to create more divisions to have them filled mostly with AI teams. More divisions will come if we get more users playing. That is proving to be a slow process, but we should get there eventually. The game should be a lot more fun when we get multiple divisions running, but we don't want to spread the divisions too thin
It shouldn't be a problem that clubs start with smaller stadiums. Remember that if they jump into a league that is in its 5th season, they will be getting more league money than if they started in a new division, so they can purchase one or two free agents and improve their stadium, plus they will get more money across the season from playing on the road at bigger stadiums. Will they be able to win the division? No, but the goal should always be to improve your club, and that's something they can definitely do

I agree with Norbert. Everybody who wants to argue with what Norbert said here seems to want immediate gratification, while Norbert looks at it long term, as he must and we should.

He could consolidate your worlds now. Then, when a bunch of Europeans started playing the game (eventually this will happen) you will be ragging for your worlds to be unconsolidated so you could have some Europeans in your world. Patience, grasshoppers.

snake_p,

You're probably right, plus how would WIS even implement consolidation? Would they say that some future season (lets just say its Season 7) will be the consolidation season, and then Season 6 is basically the "qualifying campaign" in which all users in the about-to-be consolidated worlds are separated into Season 7 divisions based on Season 6 performance? A tough thing to do, no matter how you slice it.

Consolidation is not in the plans, but I would not say it would never happen. We want to wait to see if we can get the number of users we need for the current worlds from Fox Soccer, which has been a very slow process because they have a lot on their plates, but it will pick up eventually. They are behind the game 100% and have a stake in it now.

We have the number of people playing now with no advertising and very little presence on just our site (basically a menu link and forums), so it's not too far fetched to think we could get 10 times that number with Fox Soccer throwing some real estate up for it. I'd like to see at least 5 countries per world and 2 or more divisions per country.

The first few updates will most likely be improving the basics of the game, like play by play, tactics, and players, but the game really reaches full potential when we can start looking at youth academies, international competitions, and national teams.

Thanks for the update norbert. It sounds like you guys have a lot of irons in the fire - and it sounds like good things are to come (whether they may be in the distant future or otherwise). Keep up the great work, love the game and website.

norbert, I'm hoping that the features added will come close to what you see in a Football Manager type game.

thank you norbert for the update. It's nice to know that FC dynasty has such capable staff working on it.

you guys just need to start creating lots of alternate ID's to fill the spaces. :D