Subject: II.4

Let me tell you why running Hockey NT team was fun
1. I played countries (teams) I never played before. Had to study each of them, their preferences, styles, players, everything
2. despite being underdogs, there were always a feeling we could compete and win matches. Always the feeling we could make playoffs and if do so, actually win it.
3. Every year there is a meaningful championship. Each Playoffs mean something. One cant play on VL or whatever. Maybe the last match one can save some energy.
4. New players comes every season. So we have to study and work with different players
5. when season ends a new starts and everything is new ... new teams you play, new managers, new players, new everything!!!


For normal league, only one advance. maybe a second team advances. 4 relegates. usually they are dead teams or teams with managers that dont care much. the other 4 that play for relegation, if active chances are they stay.

Until this new change, teams would often play on VL or Low till playoffs. Boring! boring! boring!

season ends and guess what? we play the same teams, same managers, same players ... and the process goes for years (in real life) until you are luck to promote OR force your want to relegation so you can see new faces.

and even when a new team promotes, chances are... they were ones you played against before when you where in a lower league. How fun can that be???

In handball, at least on D1, we see new teams every season and its been competitive so far so i am enjoying. wish it were like that always. I know soon some teams (probably mine) will become just too rich and it will end the competitiveness of it.and them, it will be boring too

Yeah, I get the simcity and just build concept. It can be tedious. As for the competition and all, I think I.1 is far above and beyond but then again I'd hate to be a I.1 team that's been dedicated to this game since season 1-5, then have some clueless idea get lucky and beat me out. I think the favoritism of countries with more coaches hurt us competitively and honestly can be discouraging. I mean for our SA, I feel robbed and have a feeling that because USA doesn't has as many coaches, we're not getting a quality pull of new players, not getting as much money for general/media. It should go purely off your level and nothing to do with the "there are 50 more coaches in my country compared to yours".

Ah, yeah it seems hard to climb up to I.1 as long as there are an established majority of active coaches up there. Maybe they should start closing the gap on money earned? Maybe make the relegation a little bigger (bottom 8 are relegated instead of bottom 4)? I get what you mean about playing the same teams over and over, it would/does get a little boring after time. Fortunately for us in this division I think we all enjoy it because all our games are close and never really know the outcome until it happens.

I know one thing I'd like to see (and this might help with making teams more volatile) is players retiring. I mean once they become 0/6, mandatory retirement or something.

*Disclaimer - This is a jab at Orlando or other teams who rely heavy on older players. I tried it in the beginning and is what got me in II.4 and kept me here for the first couple of seasons.

i doubt a clueless would make his way from d4 to d1. even with ways to make it easier to new teams it would still require them to read forums, articles and outside websites to get a better knowledge on what takes to win.

what would happen is that the "veteran" d1 didnt pay attention on that "unknown" team and if loses will say "holy crap, i need to pay attention o that dude before our next match. need to study him better". that would make much more interesting.

your feeling is right, and that is why in the past i tried to work and motivate new managers to stick in the game. It is hard to motivate when the real truth is: they dont have a chance unless many teams fold.

the less managers we have the worse is for USA.

i think the first step is to make facilities cheaper and take less time to build for those that start playing after season 1. make it pro rated to the average. get the average total spend by teams on facilities, divide by the total needed to build all facilities and make that percentage cheaper for each level do the same for time to build.

that would work almost the same as starting on season 1. as it would take much less time to catch up and manager would have the chance to finish all facilities at about the same time as teams that started on season 1.

this is just one idea. im sure there are many other ways to help close the gap.

I'm classified as a clueless coach. I've never read forums, articles, or anything related to this game other than the guide (and even that is sparely). I mean I used to play Gridiron and it was the same problem. You'd have old coaches who had a reserve (warchest) that dominated on recruiting and never gave new coaches much of a chance for players that were competitive to win. I mean I've got the feeling that no matter what I do, the only way I'm ever getting to I.1 is if the top 20 teams up there quit and probably the top 2-3 teams from each II conference dropped. It gets to the point that I wouldn't mind staying just to help build USA players for the national team (which would mean I need to build my facilities more) but with our SA picks now and the draft, even that is become a distant dream to fulfill. I'm sure I'll be like every other coach and once my stadium is built up, facilities are maxed, and still stuck in II, probably retire.

I am (was) planning to stay in hockey just to develop players but if they implement that draft every other week i dont think i will want to spend every other weekend just to pull crap players. In that case, there would be nothing for me to do here other than revoke it.

Speaking on handball, everybody is clueless so we are all in the same boat so for all of those who started on season 1 it should be fun as long as one accepts one is clueless and probably will be until players have higher OR and it becomes easier to understand the match engine.

I mean to be honest here, you know Handball just like any new sport will eventually spread out and become like soccer and hockey. We drop coaches everyday and I.1 seems to be slowly breaking away with talent and money compared to II. I might be wrong but what once was me competing with some I teams, I'm now being easily outmatched and that with the I team using simple tactics and not doing multiple formations. I'd say in a couple more seasons, it will probably be the Top 8 will become fixtures of I.

in a couple of seasons the differences will be evident. for now, probably only 3 teams or so are earning a lot more than others in D1 (im among one of those). If those few continue to succeed in D1 (for the next 2 seasons) then they will become such power that nobody will be able to catch up.

but there are still teams in D2 that can come to D1 and be contenders. Season 2 and 3 playoffs were won by incoming D2 league managers.

Season 4 could be another one won by a D2.

when can we ever say that a D2 team will join d1 and not only be contenders but win in Hockey D1? never. Unless all D1 folds at the same time.

and i mean to be honest too when i saw all handball managers are clueless. some have some clue, but even then , when they think they know something its proven they know nothing. Im including among those.

I didn't think the draft was that bad other than refreshing every 5 seconds. Maybe it's because I have a Pro Pack but I put them in order and let it run. The only downside would to me would be if I had a last second change of heart on a player because of a different need or already drafted a position and didn't need it anymore.

Besides, the draft is just as useless as SA when it comes to new talent. Regardless of you being here or not, you're not going to get anybody that you'd deem worth your time/money to develop.

True, maybe my view of D1 on the outside (for handball) is that they're building faster, quicker, getting better talent, etc. Of course, that could also be because they know how to build a team while I don't.

i had some "issues" on first rounds. first round was the worst.
I had the order i wanted in excel. so i had to keep marking players that were selected so they disappear in the excel, then use CTRL-F to search by player name. it wasnt slow, but took me 30 seconds of my draft time. if i made a mistake, id be screwed.

and during draft i missed to mark one, so i searched for him and didn't find so had to search for another.

Well, they added the options to do all that by spending credits. Seems like it would probably be cheaper just to buy a Pro Pack, LOL.

well, all D1 teams are managed by experienced managers. Several took advantage on season 1 to sell players, make some money (even though not much) to speed up building facilities.
also smart enough to know their season 1 players were not future of the team so they sold for money.

then comes season 2, they have some slightly advantage that quick becomes into a "high" advantage.