I am bumping this discussion from a couple of years back - well before I started playing here - because it reflects a lot of what I have concluded in the past few weeks. OLs may serve as an intro, but honestly I am not even sure that is true - they disorient, and to some degree distort the interest in good simulated baseball teams for the newcomer and also lead newbies to a series of frustrating losing seasons.
Frustrating not because they are losing, but because they are a series - that is a distinct set of losing experiences that may, or may not, lead to a learning experience and improvement. With a progressive league, a losing season is something to get past and build on, but inevitable sooner or later for just about everyone. If all leagues were progressive, except maybe some themes that would not work as such, it would still mean a steep learning curve, but a series of losing seasons would now be links on a chain, not just one frustrating and demoralizing defeat after another.
I have had one owner message board conversation after another in OLs trying to keep morale up for players who have had it after starting another season 4-25 or 7-20, or had that 15-20 game losing streak experience. I now tell them about progressive leagues.
I also think that while themes are fun, some of the fun is the idea itself and drafting for it. I find that themes while often good, are not quite as much fun as I thought. So this is where I am after months of trying more or less every model of OL team I could conjure up and then joining a slew of themes.
I am convinced that while the occasional trip back to OL or Theme League may be interesting to test something, or see what strategies are working or not, the real game is in progressives.
There is more innovation, a wider pool of relevant players. More available strategies. More realistic baseball. More sense of community. More continuity with your teams and therefore greater emotional satisfaction. More levels of strategic thinking. Less concern with normalization, though in multi-year leagues it is not quite irrelevant. Players can be evaluated a little closer to their real life performance therefore. There is more room for ordinary players - something that we in the average joes, wider rotation and platoon and other leagues have had to jump through hoops to come with ways to accomplish. There is more room for superstars, since often salary caps are non-existent or irrelevant.
You can trade someone other than 200K players with fake names. Yes, I have agreed to trade Sandy Koufax in a progressive league I am in in 1964, because I want long-term players for a last-place team that Sandy would be wasted on. The team getting him may win the pennant as a result, but has also traded two players that will play for my team for years to come, giving me an opportunity to rebuild a very weak team.
Like many of the people who posted on this thread, which I stumbled over looking for something else, I created a lot of theme or OL teams partly to allay boredom with the repetitiveness of the OL competition. Instead, with just a few progressive teams I am pretty sure I am going to pay much closer attention to the results of every single game, keep statistics more religiously and have already begun writing up accounts of my team activities and performances or strategic choices, something a lot of progressive league players do.
So let's encourage new players that we do encounter in OL play (at least for the few weeks I plan to still be in them as my current teams play out their seasons) to come play in the progressive leagues. This will fill them more quickly, which will be good for all of us, and will create a different socialization process for newbies. Imagine whole cohorts of new WIS players who don't even know who Addie Joss is except if they join a progressive he pitches in and then exclaim "Wow, he is good, how long until he retires ? Who would you want for him in a trade ? " or to whom Milacki '88 means "That guy who started a few games down the stretch in a league I was in back in '88" ! Or for whom HoJo is a really good hitter at third base to have in 1989. Unless you draft Gwynn or Boggs in 82 instead.