Yeah, cust leagues re getting sparser.
IMO, its due to the growth of private leagues. Customizing is cool, but I think a lot of people have joined too many leagues; as they contract then the spaces become available. A partly competitive league is dull.
Possible solutions?
1. Dynamically contract and expand CUST leagues as requiredCUST-XX has 10 spots. Those spots haven't been filled in over half a season. Develop a system where that league gets merged into another Cust league with enough spots. Maybe flag the league up for closure - prevent new owners registering for that league.
There would be a fair amount of housekeeping to take place - preserving history somehow, problems of importing places from CUST-OLD to CUST-NEW.
What this could do if implemented well is scale the number of leagues as required.
2. Simplify the game mode for CUST leaguesThe game already plays differently based around league type. MFN-1 is obviously cutting edge, for those experimental souls. CUST allows customisation. So why not go the whole hog and really categorise them better?
Make the Cust leagues "simpler" - but which I mean cut a lot of the intracacies involved, use a simpler interface, game engine ( or more accurately, the parameters an owner can affect that feed into the game engine ). This could potentially retain more casual players.