Season 6 Ideas

I figured it was time to open up this forum and allow everybody a chance to speak their mind before we start really getting into the Season 6 start-up phases. We've got a decent-sized community, so I'm sure there are some solid ideas out there.

I'll open things up with a couple of ideas of my own....

1. Shorter season/less games each week. Asking players/owners/anybody to devote 4 nights a week to playing FIFA is a bit much. I've been around these leagues for a while, and when over half your week's nights are spent playing FIFA or organizing your team, it kinda sucks the fun out it. The fact that the season goes on as long as it does also cuts into the fun....as half the teams are mathematically out of things pretty early and you start to see forfeits. It's a bit of a grind, so maybe a shorter season or less games could help with this. It would also make waiting to move on to a better team, or for TC guys, a chance to actually be part of the draft, go by a lot quicker.
2. Less time between games/stricter adherence to game times. This is maybe the single-most frustrating thing about being in 11s leagues.....going through the trouble to have your team ready, then having to wait 20+ minutes to start......then play the game, then wait another 45+ to start again. To me, game time is forfeit time. Teams should be ready at gametime, 5 minutes max lenience. Start the second games at no later than the 40 mark.....so 8 & 840, etc. Anything to speed up the process and make leagues less of a grindy waiting game.
3. Lower the amount of players needed to start a game. I know the whole point of LGFA is to be a "simulation" league.....but I just think this could possibly help with (a) the amount of forfeits and (b) make it much easier to start games on time. Tbh, my team is down to play even if all you've got is an Any and a GK.....and we basically did that once or twice this past season. I'm for saying as long as a team has 2, they're good to go.....but I understand if the powers that be prefer a higher number. Ultimately, playing with 2 leaves you at a disadvantage anyway, but if that's what it takes to cut down on late starts and forfeits, I'm all for it.
4. Better owner screening. This has already been exhaustively spoken about, but needs to happen anyway.
5. Do more with the TC guys. Either do away with TC altogether, or organize them/include them better. Personal idea? Create a couple of "TC Teams" that participate as full-teams within the league and just add all the new guys on those teams. Doing that would help define the leaders/owner candidates out of the group as well, as those guys would take the lead and organize the troops for games.

I've got several other ideas, but figured we could start here and see where things go. Most of my other ideas would involve a change in philosophy/structure for LGFA, and I'm not sure how down everybody else is with that. Things like....

1. Doing away with team minimums and maximums. Let people have any amount of players on their team....so long as they have at least an Any and GK at gametime. This would help the league expand much more quickly and would provide more variety of play. I know some people prefer to play 2s, some prefer 5-6 and not a full 11.....just gives options and doesn't force owners/players into having to do more.

Anyways. Let's get this dialog started and hopefully come up with some ideas that help the league grow/evolve.

 

In my opinion:

1- The number of game is perfect, I don't feel like whe should change that.

2- I agree with you, we should put the game time at 9:00 and 9:30. Waiting like 40 min to play the last game is too much/boring.

3- I feel like 7 players is already not that much. Considering the number of active players, every single team is suppose to easily have 7 players at least per game. We need to choose owners who are there for the good reason, not only because they are not good enough to get a bid and play. I say that because I see alot of guys around here who want to be owner to have a chance to play. 1 thing you learn quickly in this league: Owner bad at fifa = Bad team and forfeit. Nobody want to play for a owner who put himself ST or CAM and don't even know how to play 11s. Btw, bad owner at fifa will bid on random people and have a really bad team. With good owner, we should not have any problem to have minimum 7 players per game. I'm not gonna play against 2s if my team have 11. If I want to play with 2 ou 4 players, I'm gonna play pro club not league game.

4- I agree

5- We tried so much time to do TC games and things like that but nothing was working.. I was owner during 3 seasons and the thing I realise was that almost all the players in the TC don't even know they are sign-up and will no msg you or anything. You need to contact all of them and they are not gonna answer almost all the time. Owner need to give strike/bann players who don't answer so everyone who will be in the league will be active.

The most important will be to pick good owner. We need experienced owner or unexperienced owner with good GM/AGM. Owner really need to look at the ACL and AVL stats too, not only LG. West Brom got a stacked team for almost nothing with top ACL/AVL players. Its so simple to look at ACL/AVL stats and it can really help a team to have good players and don't let stacked team.

Btw, sorry for my english.

 

Number of Games: Totally agree with less games per week. The 4 days is exactly why I wasn't willing to reschedule last minute for you @dstokes31 ... because it was already a struggle getting people on Sun-Wed + the hour long difference that some games would have was an issue when I was losing guys after 9pm to other stuff.

Start Time: Definitely agree re: start time. I'm not sure what the compromise is between other leagues (both inside and outside of LG), but back to back games need to happen.

Number of Players: I think if you resolve ownership issues, we won't run into a need to *only* have 2 players. I feel like 7 is a good number... it makes more people on the team responsible (for everything they should be, like playing games and earning wins or losses).

Owners: I have no idea how to correctly implement this besides not allowing Thibeault to own a team (and the other fuckers who couldn't get their guys on), but agree it needs to happen. I took over from a quitting owner and new exactly how much work it was going to require and then did that work... but it wasn't easy. I think having fewer teams would help here... the estimated 14 seems impossible to achieve with the current active userbase for players and owners.

• Players shouldn't be vetted I guess, but they definitely need to have more responsibility. I only had a few players that would consistently put in their availability (and some players that flat out said "no, I show up when I show up" who were promptly removed).

Training Camp: I probably ended up removing half of my TC players I inherited from Havens due to inactivity and the 6 or so I had left after that were definitely valuable. In order for that to even happen though, I had to message them a lot and actively encourage them to participate (with a few exceptions). Removing duds is essential, and I think with fewer teams we can have a more active TC community. I don't think I ever ran into a situation where I had more than 11 people available any given night (okay, twice I think), and I was thankful to my TC folks who could step up when called upon.

Disclaimer: I don't think this should read as a argumentative, and apologize if it does. I think we've all agreed on the problem: inactive users (namely owners, but I think players share the responsibility), we just need to identify the solutions.

 

Nights/Week: I mentioned when I offered to take over Spurs I wouldn't be interested in playing every game, and didn't have to... but 4 nights a week is super hard on the players (and the owners by extension) because it doesn't work like hockey. You need a core group on every night (I mean, tactics aside, with a roster of 16 you mathematically need overlapping players regularly), so even in the best situation of perfectly overlapping schedules you run into fatigue issues for players. I'm only speaking with anecdotes; I shouldn't have any final say in what happens... I just feel fewer games would make it easier on players to fulfill the responsibilities they currently struggle to keep, as well as heighten/strengthen the importance of each match.

Owners: I know I'm not going to have the time for it, because it truly takes a good amount of effort. I think just because people are aware of the problem, doesn't mean they are also the solution. It doesn't take a lot of research to figure out West Brom fucked up. Hell, people speculated before the season even began that they would be an issue because we already know what level of contribution (or lack thereof) they'd provide. Again, I'm not the decider, but I place more value in active teams than number of teams.

 

4 nights is way too much for this league, and I said it last season so it's not something I'm reading into, etc.

I don't play hockey, and likely most in LGFA don't either. So why are we compromising our time/enjoyment for a small few to work with LGHL or LGCHL schedule?

Please don't bring back owners who folded their teams in S5.

 

I totally agree that better utilizing the GMs and AGMs makes for less of a grind, and I'm definitely someone who is guilty of over-managing at times.....but I think Leborn hit it right on when he was talking about 16 players for 11 spots, 4 nights a week. There's a ton of overlap there, and that's an awful huge commitment on anybody's part....player, owner, league staff, etc. Especially when there's the aforementioned delays in game starts, or, a team starts to dip down the tables in a very long, grind-y season.

Don't get me wrong....I enjoy playing in the league for the most part. Just expressing some concerns of my own, as well as concerns I've heard several others voice.

 

When it comes down to it the majority of players don't run into fatigue or frustration issues when they are having fun and being included as part of the team. This usually happens to directly translate into a winning, losing, struggling or average record. There has been plenty of times when teams out of contention still have full 11's show up and exceed.....and WIN Mack Eh is a prime example of that last season bringing Bournemouth to the FA Cup finals.

As PA i'm hoping to get to the roots of the issues this and upcoming seasons. As a league we struggled on many levels in past. However if we collectively choose to do our parts...and retain those who do in their roles...we can identify the cause of those issues and correct them.

There's a huge expectation of owners and management...especially this season. Remember that BOGs are around to help when it comes to those issues, not just for action center decisions. I will be urging Brisan and Golski to push BOGs to fulfill their duties. However their role is reactionary. It is up to management to approach and communicate with them with questions, complaints against players/rulings, or the need for advice/help.

I will be assisting this season in making sure we identify TC being active or inactive, and taking action accordingly. I will also endeavour to determine why they are choosing to participate or not (hopefully before they ignore lgfa altogether). In keeping active TC and bringing in new active FIFA players steadily that should present the substance to each team for availability and scheduling issues.

Players should be in touch with their management, teammates and PA (when needed). Management should be in contact with their team, staff and other management. BOGs should be in touch with the management of each team and Commissioners. Commissioners and PA should be in touch with players, staff and management. Keep the communication open through Xbox messages, live party, forum post and the shout box.

Have a little faith that we have learned and are growing as a community. LG is renowned for making a strong community of dedicated players and advanced tools like no other. This means making new friends (and even challenging opponents that sometimes develop into personal adversaries). We will stick with what works, identify & toss what doesn't, and tweak what needs improvement.

 

You took my comment about hockey totally wrong.

I'm using hockey as subject because we had players/teams who would leave after first LFGA game to go play a LG hockey league game, and then come back to play their 2nd LGFA game. So everyone had to wait until 10pm (likely later in fact) for a few hockey guys. That doesn't make any sense and I don't even understand why the 2 leagues are playing at the same time on the same night.

If this league wants to be better, how about we revert our mindset to smaller/better. Every season the idea is to have as many teams and game nights as possible. Obviously that hasn't made the league better so far. How about starting smaller, guaging interest from late signups, potential quality new owners, etc.....and then grow based on that interest and results of the season at hand? This isn't something that has just happened now, it's been going on each season and nothing has been done to correct that bad trend season to season.

 

I agree with @PsychSmokeBBQ . We should aim smaller, get a solid group of owners/management, and then continue to build every season. Trying to have as many owners as possible only lead to instabilities in many teams the last few seasons. If we concentrate on quality, instead of quantity, we can continue to build off it bit by bit.

 

The issue with that is hockey has 3 leagues and they all have different times. CHL 8:30 9:30 AHL 9:30 10:30 and NHL 9 and 10/10 and 11. So there is going to be conflicting times regardless and guys bouncing back and forth.

 

The idea here is to hold ALL members to their LGFA responsibilities.

Players, staff and management not meeting their obligations & on time will have much more serious consequences. If they simply can't make it within the allotted extended time then each team needs to be held accountable for starting their games on time or agreeing to reschedule. If player(s) from hockey or any other league (LG based or not) are causing this kind of issue then they will be served with minimal warnings and strikes accordingly as per the constitution so long as they are reported properly with the evidence required. A ban from LGFA impacts their LGHL/LGAHL/LGCHL careers also. We intend on issuing those bans and keeping the rosters and TC slim to ACTIVE and PUNCTUAL players only as much as we can.

Everyone wants LGFA focused members in the LGFA. Minimizing poor attendance and poor focus on duties is one staff's top priorities this season.

 

Good question. I feel like we try to emulate the NHL league pretty often, since it's a good model of success. They have few forfeits (from my understanding), and I think this might have something to do with it....

Players needed: 6
Roster size: 17 (283% of required players)

In comparison, our league:

Players needed: 11
Roster size: 16 (145% of required players)

So to be close to what the NHL's successful roster ratio is, we'd have to roll with 31 players per team. Just to put things into perspective.

This goes back to Leborn saying there's a ton of overlap in our league...or less games "off" for players and managers. Even well-managed teams will need to re-use the same players most games in a week. I don't really view TC as the "solution" to this, since they're not typically the most dependable crew.

So...I think we've got options. Larger roster sizes could help. So could reducing the number of required players.

I mostly just wanted to bring that info to the table. I think far too often we try to be like the NHL league, while not really addressing the fact that we have far different demands and structure. I certainly think the LGHL's success is something to work towards....and in some cases, borrow from and put our own twist on it....but ultimately we've got to build our own thing here. Not an LGHL clone, or an ACL/VIFA clone, but our own separate identity.

I don't really think that's been done yet....I think we're focused on adhering to "set in stone" logic and rules that shouldn't really be "set in stone". As a result, we haven't really grown as a community, and we continue (every season) to have massive attrition and forfeiture issues. Proactive steps have got to be taken to avoid this continuing, and sometimes it feels more like we just roll out new seasons, shake up staff slightly, and hope that everything will be better this time around.

Anyways. Like most around here, I'd just like to see this league succeed. I think it's in the right hands, and hope it's headed in the right direction.

 

bump

 

I like Creepy Klepto's idea of Free Agent Friday's involving bidding for the new players.

Since LG won't allow proper bidding for just new signups weekly, we could do a silent bidding. This means teams have until Friday's bidding to put a single bid into staff through 'conversation' for a player. All bids are final and cannot be retracted or modified. Highest bidder wins. If no bids on the player, then auto-assign to teams who have not won a bid that day.

This gives more weight to $$ during the season.

 

Good Ownership...

I got thrusted into ownership and then my owner bailed... it was a nightmare.. some how i manage to convice people to still play even tho we were winning. I think we only did Forfit towards the end...

Also stats... Man those are a pain in the ass to do.. It seems like i was trying to adjust my roster cause the people who signed up didnt play and i had to add people etc.

 

FYI - http://leaguegaming.com/forums/index.php?forums/lgfa-players-association.492/

 

I 100 percent agree 3 nights per week is too much. We should eliminate Wednesday. The reason being is most good people play Acl on Wednesdays and as a owner you are basically forced to play Tuesday and Wednesday due to the fact half your team won't be there.

Also there is no waivers in European soccer this needs to be removed or I'm advising every team to use their whole salary because with waivers money essentially becomes irrelevant after the draft of you can patch your team with waived players