I would like to offer a commissioner's perspective. For commissioners of user-created leagues, keeping a league full has become nearly impossible.
* The only way to prevent an AI-crippled franchise is to take it over yourself. You can almost manage this until you have five or six empty teams. At that point, most commissioners give up and feed those empty teams to the AI wolves.
* Vetting potential new coaches is ideal, but almost impractical because you might not get another applicant.
* There is a glut of user-created leagues, way out of proportion with the number of MFN coaches, and thus more competition among the commissioners for the few available coaches.
* Most of the experienced, dependable coaches are already running more teams than they wish to be.
* No matter how good of an experience and what degree of immersion you offer the coaches in your league, some won't want to stay and build a team because there are plenty of playoff-caliber teams sitting empty out there. It's easier to just cherry-pick one of them.
My league, the USFL/WFL has been full for 11 seasons. I have been fortunate to have a core group of 13 coaches who have stuck with the league since Day One. But, barring a marketing initiative that brings in more coaches, I am afraid operating with uncoached, AI-ruined teams is going to be the norm across all user-created leagues.
I wish I could offer a solution for marketing MFN. It is such a niche product that zeroing in on a target audience would require some study. Maybe I will just start another thread about marketing.
Last edited at 7/12/2019 9:13 am