managers dropping out of tour...

[LANCEBOUSLEY]

the two years i have participated in the tour, i have noticed that many managers just disappear. they see that they are out of the running and just stop playing the tour events.

i feel that this a problem as it changes who the compeitition is and perhaps could make it tougher to pick up a few points down the stretch as only the "better" managers stay in.

for next year i propose the following changes.

1. to particpate on the tour one must buy a "tour pack". a 7 game package only usable for tour events. it could be priced at say 125.00

2. have a firm deadline for signups.

3. assign managers to leagues in each event via a random number system so that the every league is established whole and you don't know who is in it until the whole league roster is published.

4. have a bullpen of managers standing by to manage teams for those managers who choose to go missing. heck, i filled in once this year and paid for it. i'd be happy to play a few "free" leagues on the tour. have any resulting credits won go to the "fill in" managers account. don't count the results in the missing managers stats.

just a few thoughts early on a sunday morning only one cup in so be gentle with feed back... :D

[maligned]

More thoughts:

1. Group the leagues more closely together so a) the tour championship is starting in October (when it should be starting :D ), b) people stay engaged later because things aren't drug out, and c) the greater overlap in events keeps people registering for Events 5-7 because Event 3 hasn't even finished and nobody's out of contention.

Example: Event 1, April Week 1; Event 2, April Week 4; Event 3, May Week 3; Event 4, June Week 2; Event 5, July Week 1; Event 6, July Week 3; Event 7, August Week 1

2. If there are going to be Live Drafts, lump the live drafts near the beginning of the Tour (Events 1, 2, and 4, for example), so time lost with events that fall behind schedule can be made up easily with autodrafts in the final 3 events. Also, doing autodrafts for the later events would allow these events to be held closer together such as in my example schedule in Item 1.

3. Have a team of Tour coordinators, instead of just one person. Tee does an amazing job, but having 3 or 4 people to handle issues, generate random draft orders, keep league stats, etc. would be fantastic.

[Roscodog]

This is the first tour I've competed in and I understand the frustration of guys over some of the events as I almost dropped out after the 2nd event myself. I'm glad I didn't as it looks like I should be in the top 12 for the championship league. I only played in 5 events as that is all I need. The one live draft I competed in was fun but is overly time consuming. I think you would get more participation and less frustration if there was no live drafts and if the leagues all started a little quicker.

[FRANKZAHN]

I agree with dropping the "live" drafts. They are anything but "live". They drag out too long and there is always someone who can't or won't keep it moving.

[maligned]

rosco,
Don't forget that you can drop your worst score if you play at least 6 events. All the leaders' scores are going to go up significantly after events 6 and 7 scores come in because they'll be dropping a low score.

[Roscodog]

Good point maligned. Unfortunately for me, it will be next to impossible for me to compete in a live draft (event 7) over the next two weeks. I'm just going to have to hope a score of 100+ will be good enough to make it in. Looks like my event 6 team will give me a 100 points atleast, so I don't have to worry about my score going down.

[maligned]

Last year's #12 score was 98.8, so you may be fine.

[cummings2]

Good points everyone, I think Mal's schedule would work just fine.

Live drafts are nice but it's a pain in the neck when people don't use proxies and the first round without clock drags on for 3-4 days (in the good cases), for all intents and purposes I think we should all check in prior to starting the draft and there should be a 1 or 2 hr. clock on LDs from the very beginning to help encourage use of proxies.

As far as dropping out of the tour I'm not one to speak as I've dropped not only from the tour but from SOM altogether but I think it would help if people just took a chill pill every now and then, we play this game to have fun and enjoy some competitive spirit while at it but unfortunately we have all too often a good doses of cyber-drama going on that certainly didn't help me sticking around. After helping out as a filler anytime I can (even with badly drafted live draft fiascos) trying to help my leagues move along, I still got the snipy comments; in the last tour league I was in I tried to point out we were loading in a league with the wrong settings... so I was told off by one of the managers for trying to help. The guy is a cool guy so I have no probs with him but that was certainly the straw that broke my back. I really have no time for this, I kept coming back for the fun and the community and when the community is in some sort of cyber-roid-rage then it clearly marks my Q to take a hike.

So, my points after all this rant:

Start the tour earlier, overlap events a-la Maligned schedule, check-in pre live drafts with 1-2 hr. clocks from round 1. And above all: Relax, you ARE alowed to enjoy it :wink:

C2