League Activity Down, Concerns Grow

[Brooklyn]

League Activity Down, Concerns Grow




Harlem, NY – Management, players, and fans of Ultimate ABCA have expressed their concern about the decline in league activity recently. In this article, Harlem GM will rank other GMs in terms of their level of activity, and provide some possible reasons as to why league activity is down.




GM Level of Activity



This is a very scientific measurement, based on the judgment of the Harlem GM. It takes into consideration the level of activity from the past month or two. We’ll group all GMs into the following 3 categories:



Highly engaged: These GMs go above and beyond the basic requirements to be part of an online sim league. They regularly participate in Slack discussions and are always open to talking trade.


- Auckland Breakers

- Bamberg Brose Baskets

- Barcelona Regal FC

- Beijing Aoshen

- Belgrade KK Partizan

- Boston Celtics

- Cairo Zamalek

- Harlem Globetrotters

- REAL Madrid

- Mexico City Titans

- Mikawa Aisin Seahorses

- CSKA Moscow

- New York Knicks

- Perth Wildcats

- Piraeus Olympiacos BC

- San Francisco Warriors

- Taipei Fubon Braves

- Vancouver Grizzlies



Solid engagement: These GMs, while not overly engaged, are active enough to be solid contributors to an online sim league. They actively look to make trades and do more than just simple DC check-ins.


- Chicago Bulls

- Guangdong Southern Tigers

- Milan Olimpia

- Portland Trailblazers

- Rio de Janeiro Flamengo

- Seattle Supersonics



The lights are on but nobody’s home: These GMs are doing the bare minimum. Their engagement in the league consists of DC check-ins and monitoring sim results, but beyond that not much else is happening.


- Istanbul Anadolu Efes

- Minnesota Timberwolves

- New Orleans Jazz

- San Antonio Spurs

- Tel Aviv Maccabi

- Toronto Raptors

- Washington Generals

- Zagreb KK Cibona



Note: The two newest GMs (Brazil and Buenos Aires) as well the two vacant teams (LA and Newcastle) have not been included in these ratings


Based on these rankings:

- 50% of the league is highly engaged (18 teams)

- 17% of the league show solid levels of engagement (6 teams)

- 22% of the league are essentially absent (8 teams)

- 6% of the league are too new to be evaluated (2 teams)

- 6% of the league is vacant (2 teams)




Possible Reasons for Declining League Activity



Here are the Harlem GM’s possible reasons for declining league activity, in order from most likely to contribute to declining league activity to least likely to contribute to declining league activity



- Back-to-back poor draft classes: Having two consecutive weak draft classes limits the excitement in the league. Without adding new, exciting, above-average young players to the mix, the league’s player portfolio has gotten stale.


- Cairontonio’s decreased activity: Could one GM’s decreased activity have that much of an affect on the entire league? We think so. When Cairontonio is on a tear, he is probably accounting for at least a quarter of all trades, and possibly up to half of all trades. This level of activity, while detrimental to his organization and the reason he owns more IT awards than anyone, spurs (no pun intended) activity across all GMs. It’s not only about the trades he’s directly involved with, but the ripple-effect his trades have on other trades occurring that don’t even involved him
.

- Minnesota’s absence, and the weakening of the clique: While New York has done a phenomenal job stepping into the simmer role, the stark contrast between the style of the two leaders is impossible to miss. Minnesota and his clique (Bamberg, Cairo, Mexico City, and the groupie Perth) have been likened to a North Korean governance style in the past. Nepotism ran rampant in league decisions, and if you spoke out against the clique you were more likely to get a lashing than an active listen. New York, on the other hand, runs the league with more of a Canadian style of governance. All members are treated fairly and actively listened to, yet firm decisions for the benefit of the league are made when necessary. The result has been a weakening of the clique and a shifting of the power to the rest of the league. So what does this have to do with league activity? While Canada is an excellent place to live, it’s about as calm and peaceful as it gets. North Korea on the other hand is a consistently unstable environment, a perpetual oscillation between stirring with and oppressing its citizens. So while I’ve complained about the North Korean style here in the past, maybe it’s better for the activity of the league? Maybe we do need to instil fear in GMs in order to get them moving?


- Bad trades: There was a clear hit to league morale after the LA-Vancouver trade that saw a very inactive GM trade almost all of his valuable assets to Vancouver in return for next to nothing. When trades like this happen, people lose interest in the competitive element of the game. When people feel that it doesn’t matter how well they manage their team, other teams are going to jump ahead of them by making unbalanced trades, the competitive edge is damaged and interest is lost. There should be an onus on veteran GMs to not take advantage of new or inactive GMs, and to ensure trades are somewhat balanced. The trade can still be won by the veteran GM, but a mature person would put the league before themselves. Heck, New York partially dismantled his 2-time championship team on this basis. In the case of Vancouver, however, the shortsighted inability to control one GM's greed hurt the league as a whole.


- New York’s dynasty: I put this one last in terms of impact to league activity because it hasn’t at all impacted my activity, if anything it has increased it because I’m interested to see what the GM does with his organization, but I do acknowledge that for some GMs who are trying to win championships right now it can be discouraging to have such a dominant team in the league.

[Portland]

I wrote a massive reply to this fine article but just killed it like I've done my last dozen attempts at articles because it wouldn't have sparked any discussion. So, short version... basically I think we're still a strong league. Participation is certainly down but maybe that's just in contract to what it was at it's mad peak. This feels like the new normal to me. I'm in an OOTP that's been going over twenty years and probably only 25% of the gm's are highly involved. Yet it keeps on going, and I think we will too. gm's who don't say much but still keep sending in dc's are still enjoying themselves; I have no problem with that. The loss of competitive balance and the tanking draft-whores are more of a concern to me.

[San Francisco]

This is a common issue in most sim leagues. The GM's do the bare minimum. It is not really that surprising. Is there a solution? Not really most GM's just like to coast.

[Deleted]

[Deleted]

I don't think there's a real problem.. every sim league (and fantasy league) goes through ebbs and flow of activity for a variety of reasons. It's summer. Slack/Skype has driven some board activity away in Legends/Ultimate. The core GM group is older than we were back in the OG, Retro, Global days etc and life priorities change - doesn't mean we don't like being in the league but of course it impacts whether or not we have time to write articles or attend live sims etc.

I do think we have too many teams - but just to be clear, reducing teams doesn't increase activity on it's own. Surely more teams might chase a playoff spot though if there were better odds of achieving it - something the 36 team setup hurts. With so many teams given up a playoff spot (myself included) you have a pile of teams who don't feel they have much to do other than wait out another season.

I also disagree that a title team juggernaut impacts participation - I doubt anyone decides to not post or not write articles because team X is likely to win the championship.


Maybe we need to reassess what a successful or engaged league looks like?

To me 24/36 solid to great participating GMs is an acceptable number - even if the highly engaged number is closer to 15-20.. I'd prefer the current mix and environment of the league than at other times when the "activity" was primarily childish argumentative bickering. Current ABCA is a pleasant hobby that occupies a small amount of my free time weekly - that's all I want out of a sim league, maybe others need to adjust their expectations?

[Belgrade]

I'll try to get the draft generator released tonight.

As for Los Angeles, the guy at one point had Lillard and Russell + his own pick(s) when missing the playoffs. To see the shit I see on that roster now...fuck you!

[Vancouver]

Appreciate the plug but lopsided trades happen all the time and do not have any impact on league activity.

You make a point about NY being a dynasty but failed to mention he got John Stoxkton for a single 1st. Does that team become a Dynasty without that lopsided traded? Nope.

This was a fun read and overall, activity is there - it's the dog days of summer and a lot of people are traveling. For one, myself, CSka and spurs are all on vacations. Yea I check in cause I'm on the beach and we have free wifi but I don't have the game so it's tough to really make trades or evaluate what we're doing as a whole.

[deregocr]

The slack app is great for activity, it is much easier to check on a regular basis without having to navigate pages

[Belgrade]

Aug 7, 2016 22:52:01 GMT Vancouver said:

Appreciate the plug but lopsided trades happen all the time and do not have any impact on league activity.

You make a point about NY being a dynasty but failed to mention he got John Stoxkton for a single 1st. Does that team become a Dynasty without that lopsided traded? Nope.

This was a fun read and overall, activity is there - it's the dog days of summer and a lot of people are traveling. For one, myself, CSka and spurs are all on vacations. Yea I check in cause I'm on the beach and we have free wifi but I don't have the game so it's tough to really make trades or evaluate what we're doing as a whole.

To be fair: Stockton had absolutely 0 responses for 3 days in my trade block after the failed Big 4 experiment.  I then used that 1st to ensure the consecutive 1sts rule wasn't broken when trading Sam Jones for what ended up being the #1 overall pick.

[New York]

Aug 7, 2016 22:52:01 GMT Vancouver said:

Appreciate the plug but lopsided trades happen all the time and do not have any impact on league activity.

You make a point about NY being a dynasty but failed to mention he got John Stoxkton for a single 1st. Does that team become a Dynasty without that lopsided traded? Nope.

This was a fun read and overall, activity is there - it's the dog days of summer and a lot of people are traveling. For one, myself, CSka and spurs are all on vacations. Yea I check in cause I'm on the beach and we have free wifi but I don't have the game so it's tough to really make trades or evaluate what we're doing as a whole.

maybe not a dynasty but lets not pretend I wasn't a lock for the #1 seed before that trade (which was made with one sim left in season 5) and that he wasn't my 4th best player both years he's been here. Plus Stockton was 30+ years old and as mentioned Belgrade didn't get much interest in him before out deal so it's a bit silly to compare it to a deal where LA downgraded his best piece (yes even before the TC drop KP was > Barry), gave up a lottery pick for no reason, and took on arguably the worst contract in the league. 


As for the topic at hand, I know I was the person to bring up the recent lack of activity so I should probably chime in. My reasoning for mentioning the lack of activity wasn't just because of the recent decline of involvement because I get the point everyone is trying to make about it being summer. It was something I started bringing up going back to this league starting, and really started to focus on last season when I saw a total of 8 rookie bios done. It may be a selfish thing to bring up (it definitely is) but it is a bit frustrating to spend hours on creating a draft (plus hours actually running the draft) when others can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to help out there. Or  to point to something that's a lot more minor, doing the live sims and having 2-3 GMs be involved with that. 

I would like to see us lower the amount of teams and while I do agree with Boston that this won't directly effect the activity of the league, it's something I think would benefit the league in the long term for the reasons he mentioned. 

I guess i'll end by saying, I'm not asking/hoping for people to be as active as me because I know plenty of people on here say I'm a bit too active lol. But I would hope to see people show a bit more effort. To reference @seer 's post again, this isn't in reference to guys like him or any of the older members because even if their activity has died down from 3-4 years ago or whatever it was, they still have a presence around here so I wouldn't count them in the conversation of "inactive GMs". 

So again my reasoning may be a bit selfish but while I don't have any unrealistic expectations for what this league is (in the end it's just something for all of us to do in our free time) I just want to see this league do as well as it can. 

[New York]

Also good article Harlem. There's point I and others may not agree with but I think it's definitely something that doesn't hurt to discuss.

[Minnesota]

I like that this got some conversation going but what i really like is thst I was considered part of the kliq which is just hilarious

[Vancouver]

Aug 8, 2016 1:41:28 GMT New York said:

Aug 7, 2016 22:52:01 GMT Vancouver said:

Appreciate the plug but lopsided trades happen all the time and do not have any impact on league activity.

You make a point about NY being a dynasty but failed to mention he got John Stoxkton for a single 1st. Does that team become a Dynasty without that lopsided traded? Nope.

This was a fun read and overall, activity is there - it's the dog days of summer and a lot of people are traveling. For one, myself, CSka and spurs are all on vacations. Yea I check in cause I'm on the beach and we have free wifi but I don't have the game so it's tough to really make trades or evaluate what we're doing as a whole.

maybe not a dynasty but lets not pretend I wasn't a lock for the #1 seed before that trade (which was made with one sim left in season 5) and that he wasn't my 4th best player both years he's been here. Plus Stockton was 30+ years old and as mentioned Belgrade didn't get much interest in him before out deal so it's a bit silly to compare it to a deal where LA downgraded his best piece (yes even before the TC drop KP was > Barry), gave up a lottery pick for no reason, and took on arguably the worst contract in the league. 


As for the topic at hand, I know I was the person to bring up the recent lack of activity so I should probably chime in. My reasoning for mentioning the lack of activity wasn't just because of the recent decline of involvement because I get the point everyone is trying to make about it being summer. It was something I started bringing up going back to this league starting, and really started to focus on last season when I saw a total of 8 rookie bios done. It may be a selfish thing to bring up (it definitely is) but it is a bit frustrating to spend hours on creating a draft (plus hours actually running the draft) when others can't be bothered to take 10 minutes to help out there. Or  to point to something that's a lot more minor, doing the live sims and having 2-3 GMs be involved with that. 

I would like to see us lower the amount of teams and while I do agree with Boston that this won't directly effect the activity of the league, it's something I think would benefit the league in the long term for the reasons he mentioned. 

I guess i'll end by saying, I'm not asking/hoping for people to be as active as me because I know plenty of people on here say I'm a bit too active lol. But I would hope to see people show a bit more effort. To reference @seer 's post again, this isn't in reference to guys like him or any of the older members because even if their activity has died down from 3-4 years ago or whatever it was, they still have a presence around here so I wouldn't count them in the conversation of "inactive GMs". 

So again my reasoning may be a bit selfish but while I don't have any unrealistic expectations for what this league is (in the end it's just something for all of us to do in our free time) I just want to see this league do as well as it can. 

Sorry, I wasn't comparing the two trades at all. You were clearly on the way to #1 seed and getting the best pg in the league only cemented your team as practically unbeatable when all it cost was the last pick. Regardless of his age, interest, etc, I was simply pointing out that lopsided trades happen all the time and are not a reason a league is less active. It was troll comment to begin with by Harlem and shows just how little he's been around the league because these types of trades are more prevalent then he seems to think.

Anyway, to make this an actually constructive conversation, maybe there are ways in which activity can be improved. Whether it's lowering PP costs, raising BIO rewards, more frequent double PP weeks, weekly round tables, etc. I think we should explore that as a league

[Toronto]

I can't speak for everyone in my grouping(still, the majority), but "the lights are on but nobody's home" is the complete opposite of my situation.



I don't have a ton of time in my life right now to talk in slack about wrestling or make trades that will change the incline of my treadmill...but if people reach out to me with something that isn't nonsense I do find time for it.



The fact is there is a greater section of the league playing for draft picks than championships, and I usually have more fun (and success) trying to make some noise in the playoffs as a hopeless lower seed than losing perpetually until i "take over the division." (still waiting, harlem.)



Honestly for the past few seasons, at least half of the "inactive" teams on your list would have been trying to dump talent in their own best interest, if they were actively trying to trade. In addition to the large amount of the active teams trying to be worse.....I don't think that would make this league more fun at all.



To NY's point, I do sympathize. I'm one of probably a bunch of people that hasn't written any/many articles since legends. I don't write bios because I'm young, not a basketball scout, and extremely against sourcing the internet. I am, however, present for the majority of live sims and I appreciate them a ton, whether I talk or not. My bad, I will actually try to contribute some.



Annnnd I agree with VC that there are probably avenues that can be explored to help fix the lack of activity.



Just saying, as one of the guys who supposedly isn't around and detracts from this league...I love this shit. Thanks to Minny, NY, and the rest of the committee that keeps everything afloat.

[Deleted]

Aug 8, 2016 1:41:28 GMT New York said:

Aug 7, 2016 22:52:01 GMT Vancouver said:

Appreciate the plug but lopsided trades happen all the time and do not have any impact on league activity.

You make a point about NY being a dynasty but failed to mention he got John Stoxkton for a single 1st. Does that team become a Dynasty without that lopsided traded? Nope.

This was a fun read and overall, activity is there - it's the dog days of summer and a lot of people are traveling. For one, myself, CSka and spurs are all on vacations. Yea I check in cause I'm on the beach and we have free wifi but I don't have the game so it's tough to really make trades or evaluate what we're doing as a whole.

I would like to see us lower the amount of teams and while I do agree with Boston that this won't directly effect the activity of the league, it's something I think would benefit the league in the long term for the reasons he mentioned. 

Has the committee talked about contraction at all?
We're probably near an ideal time for it - couple vacancies and a couple easy firings 

[Aalborg]

we have in the past.. been a non starter for a few committee members

[Deleted]

Aug 8, 2016 13:15:56 GMT Aalborg said:

we have in the past.. been a non starter for a few committee members

That's surprising.. I know of probably one dead set against it for whatever reason but I wonder why the committee as a whole wouldn't support it?

1) Multiple vacancies
2) GMs near termination / deserving of termination
3) Would better balance playoff vs non playoff ratio and give a few more teams a reason to fight for post season instead of giving up so easily
4) A higher ratio of playoff teams means a higher ratio of invested and active teams through the playoffs instead of having 20 teams waiting it out
5) Could easily flex the draft strategy down to two classes per year if need be to balance talent

Those are my main reason for supporting it... I understand that doesn't mean anything I'd just be curious to hear some of the reasons against it?.. and I'd be curious if any of the reasons were more substantial than division breakdown preferences or unspecified unwillingness.

[Portland]

Aug 8, 2016 13:42:57 GMT @seer said:

Aug 8, 2016 13:15:56 GMT Aalborg said:

we have in the past.. been a non starter for a few committee members

That's surprising.. I know of probably one dead set against it for whatever reason but I wonder why the committee as a whole wouldn't support it?

1) Multiple vacancies
2) GMs near termination / deserving of termination 
3) Would better balance playoff vs non playoff ratio and give a few more teams a reason to fight for post season instead of giving up so easily This.
4) A higher ratio of playoff teams means a higher ratio of invested and active teams through the playoffs instead of having 20 teams waiting it out  This too.
5) Could easily flex the draft strategy down to two classes per year if need be to balance talent.  Sacrilege!  But hell yes this.

Those are my main reason for supporting it... I understand that doesn't mean anything I'd just be curious to hear some of the reasons against it?.. and I'd be curious if any of the reasons were more substantial than division breakdown preferences or unspecified unwillingness.

[Brazil]

I will be honest with people...other than the check in, my interest has a lot to do with the outlook for the year. This team is in Year 1 of a reset and I'm playing what I have.

[New Orleans]

I've been quiet in this partially due to being away and mainly due to how inactive I've been lately. Apathy has set in pretty hard.

That being said, some GMs in here talking about how active they are is a bit BS. Appreciate you coming in here when you get called out but some of you are damn near impossible to reach via PM or on Slack.

The issue is and has been the number of teams. When you've got 25% of the teams just completely worthless in a sense of activity it means that a portion of the league's talent or players we have desires to acquire for sentimental reason are not attainable until there is no point in attain them even for the fun of who they were.

The bad draft classes, the poor planning to the point where there are only a couple of the top 25 PGs ever in the league have led to an even odder situation where it's impossible for more than a couple of teams to put together an actual team and this is coming from the king of playing guys well outta position and making it work.

Trades and Dynasty's are never an issue. When MN won it in 03 with that talent... it seemed like he was poised to do what NY did the last two but contracts are catching up to NY now. He got lucky with Nance being ready as soon as he was and a few contracts falling under max to give him depth. Then having the young talent or assets to acquire vets.

Long story short... Unless we are down to 30-32 teams... this trend will continue. I doubt it heightens back to what Legends was or even what this was at the beginning. There will always be random Slack chats but true league-centric activity is impossible when a quarter of it is in the dumps to the degree it is here. There are people who in 6+ seasons of being here from the beginning have not amassed over 250 posts OR been active on Slack and new or old, they are the problem and need to be clipped to make this league the best possible.

[New York]

Aug 8, 2016 13:42:57 GMT @seer said:

Aug 8, 2016 13:15:56 GMT Aalborg said:

we have in the past.. been a non starter for a few committee members

That's surprising.. I know of probably one dead set against it for whatever reason but I wonder why the committee as a whole wouldn't support it?

1) Multiple vacancies
2) GMs near termination / deserving of termination
3) Would better balance playoff vs non playoff ratio and give a few more teams a reason to fight for post season instead of giving up so easily
4) A higher ratio of playoff teams means a higher ratio of invested and active teams through the playoffs instead of having 20 teams waiting it out
5) Could easily flex the draft strategy down to two classes per year if need be to balance talent

Those are my main reason for supporting it... I understand that doesn't mean anything I'd just be curious to hear some of the reasons against it?.. and I'd be curious if any of the reasons were more substantial than division breakdown preferences or unspecified unwillingness.

As mentioned by Roark, we've definitely looked into in the past but since Minnesota (not mentioning him to call him out or anything but I think being clear about which committee member isn't interested makes things a bit clearer) was against dropping the league size, it's not something that has been discussed at length since probably season 2 or 3 of the league. 

I wasn't aware that there were multiple members of the committee that saw contraction as a non-starter outside of Mexico (again not calling anyone out but I think it's fair to be a bit transparent in the discussion) mentioning he was a fan of the current division structure. I think this thread shows that the league would support a drop in the amount of teams so I'll put up a poll today about the topic, and if most are for contraction I'll bring it up once again to the committee and see where that goes. 

[Piraeus]

I'll keep my thoughts brief, but I am against contraction because I don't believe it is a solution to activity.

I am for revising / increasing PP incentives, including the new GM referral bonus, which is currently a measly 50 PP plus another 150PP if the person stays 2-3 months. These positions don't get filled often enough for that to be so low.

[New York]

Aug 8, 2016 17:12:11 GMT Piraeus said:

I'll keep my thoughts brief, but I am against contraction because I don't believe it is a solution to activity.

I am for revising / increasing PP incentives, including the new GM referral bonus, which is currently a measly 50 PP plus another 150PP if the person stays 2-3 months. These positions don't get filled often enough for that to be so low.

So few questions from this post:

1) Why don't you think contraction would be a positive?

I don't think anyone is saying that we contract by 6 teams and then the following day we see a boost in activity but as Boston said we've already got multiple vacancies (and honestly always do) which are obviously inactive teams which leads to players that are inaccessible to the rest of the league and also just clog things up overall. Then that's not to mention the team's that aren't vacant but basically serve the same role. So basically why is having 36 teams a positive rather than 30 is what I'm asking?

2) Are you saying that people would be more active if it was easier to earn PP? 

ultimateabca.proboards.com/thread/1858/double-pp-articles-tuesday-extended
ultimateabca.proboards.com/thread/1858/double-pp-articles-tuesday-extended

I direct you to the last two double PP offers during one of the easiest times to come up with articles (early off-season near the draft) and guess how many articles were written? One. People aren't earning PP because they choose not to, not because it's hard to earn. 

I think again this is a case of the focus being put on the wrong thing. More articles would be nice obviously but it's not what I look at when I think about activity or the lack thereof, I look more at general involvement with stuff as simple as posting around the forums besides the 12 "same" post a GM is required to do. Just my take on things though. 


 

[New Orleans]

I said it in Slack but I really feel the biggest issue with 36 teams and thus more inactive teams is the lack of talent that can move in trades. So if we've got talent spread to all teams and 25% of them are essentially impossible then you add in young players, vets on winning teams and you've only got about 35-40% max of the worthwhile player pool that could be dealt. Lends to same players being recycled and just a lack of movement in a league. This is before we add in the active teams who just don't deal much.

To me, that's the biggest issue with this league currently and the most easily remedied issue by removing some of the teams. Put players back into play that otherwise never would have been.

[Piraeus]

Aug 8, 2016 18:38:30 GMT New York said:

Aug 8, 2016 17:12:11 GMT Piraeus said:

I'll keep my thoughts brief, but I am against contraction because I don't believe it is a solution to activity.

I am for revising / increasing PP incentives, including the new GM referral bonus, which is currently a measly 50 PP plus another 150PP if the person stays 2-3 months. These positions don't get filled often enough for that to be so low.

So few questions from this post:

1) Why don't you think contraction would be a positive?

I don't think anyone is saying that we contract by 6 teams and then the following day we see a boost in activity but as Boston said we've already got multiple vacancies (and honestly always do) which are obviously inactive teams which leads to players that are inaccessible to the rest of the league and also just clog things up overall. Then that's not to mention the team's that aren't vacant but basically serve the same role. So basically why is having 36 teams a positive rather than 30 is what I'm asking?

2) Are you saying that people would be more active if it was easier to earn PP? 

ultimateabca.proboards.com/thread/1858/double-pp-articles-tuesday-extended
ultimateabca.proboards.com/thread/1858/double-pp-articles-tuesday-extended

I direct you to the last two double PP offers during one of the easiest times to come up with articles (early off-season near the draft) and guess how many articles were written? One. People aren't earning PP because they choose not to, not because it's hard to earn. 

I think again this is a case of the focus being put on the wrong thing. More articles would be nice obviously but it's not what I look at when I think about activity or the lack thereof, I look more at general involvement with stuff as simple as posting around the forums besides the 12 "same" post a GM is required to do. Just my take on things though. 


 

1) There are 18-24 active GMs, according to this article . Removing 6 positions will not increase the number of active players. Sim Leagues move in cycles. The summer ALWAYS has less activity. I don't want to kill 4-6 spots and then have people on the waiting list where we can't fill the teams.

What is the real negative of having 36 teams? I don't see it. There are very few people who I can't reach via PM or slack if I want to talk trade. I don't think removing them makes the league any better. I am fine with Istanbul and Tel Aviv levels of activity.

2) Those were not successful but consider that they were for a finite time period and often during weekends when people are outside and attending events, again, during the summer time. I am not talking about a promotional period. I think across the board PP have far little impact to be worth it for most people. We have yet to see PP drastically change much at all. I think we should try out a longer term PP raise if you want to properly judge it.