I think one problem with custom leagues is the immersion factor. The whole idea behind a custom league is customization. MFN has very little compared to some other games. MFN is more of a hardcore sim without the eye candy. No face-gen, no uniform customization, no field customization etc.... I think it's some of the stuff that those drawn to the fantasy football world look for.

I do a lot of iRacing and those of you that do first person shooters or mmo's can also attest to this, Immersion is all the rave. Everybody is looking for it. Everybody wants it. Everybody needs it. I think that's why the user created leagues are doing so well is that we can provide a little bit of immersion.

If this is true. then the custom leagues would not be dying

Well, on one hand they aren't. All of the active veteran players that were willing to spend money to customize their teams have moved to private custom leagues. And most have reduce their teams in the process. Because why play in a bunch of leagues when you can play in fewer, active leagues?

I think the solution to this is to do two things:

1) All new leagues are ones that players create. This is a revenue stream after all.

2) Cut down all of the CUST and MFN leagues to a reasonable number 10-20 or so. And put them all on the beta engine. That way JDB can pull lots of beta engine data while players can still play the stable engine in leagues that other plays have paid to create.

This to me makes the most business sense.

Now that's an interesting idea. :)

Add this to the list:

3) Spots in player created leagues should cost 6 credits, which would require players that want to play in those leagues to buy at least 1 credit. This would mean that every player would be _invested_ in their team. But before you can do that, the talent pool for leagues needs to be normalized. No more 15 SP skill players. No more 15 ST DL, OL, or LBs. No more 15 INT QBs. Etc. Once the key attributes for each position are normalized and secondary attributes actually matter, then it'll be a lot easier for all players to compete.

The only issue I have with this is that some ppl play games strictly for the free aspect. Granted most Custom Leagues have members willing to spend, but not all of them are willing.

#1 above dictates that there would still be free custom leagues available. They would just be on the Beta engine.

Lot of good points and thoughts on the game have been posted in this thread. As far as taking over a team and making it competitive, it does take knowledge and experience to be able to do so in the short term, and is very difficult for someone who is new in the game. I have done it several times, a few in mid-season, and have advised other owners that have turned around their teams right away. Many of the player personnel moves that I have made and suggested to others are close to what seth has posted. Speed is a very important attribute, as it is in the real NFL. Ive also had players with sub 80 speed that have played very well. Ive had players that I would not have drafted that have played at the "All Pro" level. I picked them up from the FA pile because they were better than what was on the team that I had just taken over.
Overall, this game is not going to appeal to the "majority". We who really enjoy this type of game are and have been a very distinct minority. Who do you tell when you win a big game? What kind of look or expression do you get when you are jumping around the room, fist-pumping, yelling, whatever you do when you get a game changing or winning play in a big game? LOL, those of us who love to play this game and put the time in know the answer to those questions, and that is that it is only us. We are the only ones who care about it, and there arent a lot of us. How do we get more of us in this game is the question, and that comes down to online marketing along with continuing to improve the game.

If it means anything, I think that only the struggling leagues would get reset. If a league is strong there would be no reason to reset it. It's a way to freshen the leagues that need help. I think it's a good idea.

And the thing I would add to this now that I've thought about it more is make renewal in these leagues cost 6 credits every time, but make customization completely free. That way players are going to have to spend to get the credits to renew. I believe this works out to about 6 bucks a year if you have to renew every two months, which is what I think the renewal rate is, which is not a bad subscription rate.

So if you have 10 leagues that are completely full that means you have a subscription rate of 320 * $6 = $1,920. That's not enough to retire on -- sorry JDB -- but it would go a long way to pay for the server space and bandwidth. (The immediate counter argument is that everyone would just go out and spend $40 to get credits at 0.20 per, and I say let them. This argument is basically the gym membership argument where you want a bunch of people to spend money on time that they are probably not going to take full advantage of.)

And you would still have the free leagues to attract new players. They would just be on the Beta engine since you are getting free labor out of those folks anyway.