Talk Fantasy Football

..hiho Folks

This goes to organisers of large online leagues. Small Background: We are running the biggest german online bb league for the cyanide client for about 5-6 Years now (about 15000 Games played). We initially had a player base of about 220 coaches who play a league system with the champion being the 1st of league 1. you can advance from lower leagues to higher leagues by achieving good-enough ranking in the season-table (just similar to soccer/football). There is a 1-week per match schedule.

From the beginning we had about 20-30% of our players quitting league play for different reasons (mainly sadness because they didnt perform well, sometimes personal causes)
how do you handle this. in the first seasons we filled the gaps with players that signed late but when you got everyone a spot we had to give def-wins etc. this frustrates

a) the players that wanted to play
b) the orga (us) that had to do a lot of work

how do other leagues handle this. Do you let quitters join again ? do you have a special treatment or "system" that works well against quitting except telling people to think fair and of other players?

Honestly i never had this situation in a tt-tournament before until the last tourney, when an opponent left in the middle of a game while losing against my halfling team yelling "i didnt come to a tournament to lose against halflings" and left the tournament (obviously an online-gamer^^)

nevertheless how do you handle this. any suggestions to keep the players at bay (online) and keeping them playing instead of quitting the league?

The short answer is: It can't be avoided totally, but you can certainly build a relationship with people and try to only accept coaches into your league who you trust to complete their games.

I think ukbbl have a test division where you have to complete a season before going into the competitive leagues. Then ban dropouts!

Get all coaches who sign up to play a season understand that they are expected to play an entire season and ban any that drop out (without good reason). Big leagues are good, but slightly smaller leagues with reliable coaches are even better.

You ban the dropouts forever ? We didn't do that yet.

I agree with smaller is better.

Not sure how long they are banned for, it's pretty strict I think.

And how do they get past banning an account (vs. banning a certain player)?

Don't know, sorry. Try contacting gavrad76 on the Cyanide forum, he's one of the commissioners and would probably have some better answers!

Smaller is better. 220 is absurdly large. At that size it is essentially open play anyway.

I think anywhere from 10 to 32 is good sized league. I prefer 10-16, only going above that if you want separate time zone divisions.
This creates rivalries amongst the coaches, makes the league more yours and theirs.

You will still have quitters, but less of them, and easier to replace if there is some demand for the league.

The OCC is also a large Cyanide league and like all such leagues face the same problems. I am not a manager of the OCC, but I do play in it. As far as I know when you sign up for a season you are signing up for 9 games (divisions of 10 teams with a single round robin format). That is a 9 game commitment. Coaches that just disappear during the season are not asked back. I would assume that extenuating circumstances would be reviewed.

As for dealing with those losses mid-season, the OCC allows current coaches to play replacement teams. So my current division is 2C. But if a coach dropped out in 5B there will be a thread stating the race and TV of the team that needs to be replaced. We can normally find some coach currently in the OCC that has a similar team that is willing to play the remaining schedule for the missing team. If I had a similar team and the ability to play a few more matches that season I could step in. Obviously we can't always find a perfect fit, but sometimes a different elf team, different hybrid team, or different bash team around the same TV is the best we can do. It's still better than just handing out admin wins for the rest of the season. Proper OCC teams must start as rookie teams in the OCC and not play any games in other leagues. The rules for replacement teams are softer, but a replacement team will always be retired after the season and won't be allowed to continue the next season. In that way the OCC coaches have their entire list of teams as possibilities when needed for replacements.

I certainly don't know if the OCC handles it perfectly, but they are in the 31st season so its at least a proven sustainable model.

I think the biggest thing is having a team of dedicated admins that will work to replace the missing teams. It's really too much admin work for just one or two people. If you can get volunteers of admin helpers of one admin per every 10 or so coaches it will go a long way to keeping things running smoothly.