It will change as people learn how to do it all.  In advanced worlds that have lots of human active owners, I am finding transfers are getting to be more common.  I started a team in season 9 in a 20 human world with several dominant teams.  We are just finishing my 3rd season in the world and I will win the title.  So, it's possible if you know what you're doing.

I think the much bigger question is figuring out how to set up teams so that a new owner can take over the existing team.  There is too much turnover at this point and that is 98% of the problem with the game.  If you're not dead, you will finish top 10 in your league within 1 or 2 seasons.  The better owners get bored because the new teams come in and pay 2 million for an above average player and 800K for an 18 yr old that will be pretty good in 5 seasons and then they lose the first year or two and quit and the cycle starts over.  The wait between seasons is killing some owners.  There needs to be something to do to fill the time in the interim because I think people sign up for teams and then after a couple of days, they forget about their desire to coach a soccer team and then the world finally rolls and they are no where to be found.  I have another team I started that I decided just to bring in 18 and 19 year olds and I have no player in my roster above 44 OVR.  That team in in 10th place.  wtf?  That's embarrasing.  There are 10 owners who literally are dead in that league.

Oh, and in world 90 that this expansion is going on, we are at week 5 and all of the new leagues have a total of 1 signing.  So, there were probably 60 or 80 new owners in those worlds and only 1 has signed someone.  It's basically a dead, useless world.

If we can put something in place where teams can step in to existing teams and promote naturally, then 2nd divisions will be fine.

Norbert, is it possible that instead of selecting what country you want to be in that there is a button that says first available?  I truly think if you staggered the worlds so a new one was open about once a day and you either picked a country you really wanted or you had "first available" as a world team, you would solve a huge part of the problem.  As I've said before, I think most owners would be fine if they had to play in Uzbekhistan if it meant they got to play.

joemexico, I think allowing clubs a better way of joining leagues is something we will look at, whether it be not deciding your club's nationality or choosing worlds, we'll have to look at all the possibilities and how difficult it is to implement and what issues might arise from doing so.  Again, that won't be something we can actually implement until we schedule some dev time. 
As far as club's taking over dead teams, the way it works currently is that an abandoned team is switched to an AI team as the season rolls over and that AI team becomes an "open slot" for a club to join.  The problem right now is that dead teams get added to leagues from the start and it's difficult to prevent that.  There is already some code to remove a club from the waiting list if the user has not logged in to their team for some time, but it probably needs to be a little tighter.  The problem is that there are legitimate users that don't care to sign in to their team until they get put in to a league, so we don't want to prevent them from playing, but we have seen an abnormally high number of users create clubs, join the waiting lists, and then disappear.
It's possible we could put in some code to switch a team to AI sooner than the end of the season.  That could open up the possibility of "taking over" a club, but originally we felt people should earn their way to a better club and start at the same level as everyone else, even if it meant joining a league where all the other club's are higher level and building over several seasons until they could compete.  Allowing someone to take over an existing club would be allowing them to get a better club without having to build it up.

Seeing as we are throwing out ideas here:
I think multiple divisions would solve some of that. When you first start, I don't think you really care if you play against AI. Maybe while your learning what a good contract or good players look like, playing with only a few humans might even be better. Three divisions per world would be nice. I would also like to see a seating minimum for teams to achieve before promotion. 

How much code is it to take 3-5 worlds and pause the clock for a week?  When it goes to end of season, hold the league for a week so that a new world opens almost every day.  The problem is the 3+ week wait between the last new world and the rollover to the next world.

In the mega world mentioned, there are currently 60 new human teams in the 3 new worlds and only 1 has signed anyone.  So, there is likely 1 active user out of 60 and that is probably because they sat for several weeks.

You can talk about the other code but I was thinking you could take a break on a few worlds so there is almost always someone rolling over.

World 91 week 7, from 3 new joined nations only 2 teams with signings, from joined before 2 seasons Mexican world  only 1 team with signings, from 12 joined teams at the Portugal league - 0 signed players.  That makes 3 active clubs from 90 joined - do you think that more other owners will stay for the next season? Than why we need 8 nations world? It is not even competitive also don't know what filters are applied for the FA scouting, but don't think that any team from the new nations can sign any decent players- not now, not after 5 seasons.

It sounds like Norbert is saying the new world teams are in their own bubble for several seasons before it goes to an open pool.  I do think the numbers you mention scream lots of people were interested in sim soccer during the world cup and forgot about their interest the 2 or 3 weeks later when they finally got to sign up.

Right now, I have 4 teams that are in end of season or first 10 weeks of next season at the same time.  There are way too many worlds turning over at the same time leaving a HUGE gap before the next season starts which explains so many of the dead teams. No new team should have to wait more than 7 days - that's just my opinion.

Well, the latest developments on new owners.  In world 90, 3 new leagues were added (Brazil, England, and Spain).  So, 60 new owners.  There was 1 transfer in the 3 leagues and in week 12, there is still zero teams that upgraded their stadium.

That is just dead meat.............there wasn't any reason to add the extra nations.

Really wish unassigned owners could change nations, and get warnings about openings to fill them... kinda like HD and GD does... you fill a specific opening, not just sit around waiting for league to generate... that way owners who stopped caring would stay unassigned...

World 70 rolled over, and despite over 40 people on the waiting list, Brazil did not get a second division. Somehow, though, the US did. They only lost two teams, whereas we (Brazil) lost five, perhaps that has something to do with it.

Brazil was kind of an anomaly. It was far less popular than I expected it to be, and from the original 3000+ teams that were around when worlds were finally created, there were only enough in Brazil to fill three worlds. We in World 70 had a number of AI teams in early seasons (and it would've been worse for World 69), but then the popularity picked up and for the last four or five seasons, it's appeared to me that all the Brazils had managed to stay full or close to it. Yes, Brazil had lucked out and managed to have a perfect number of worlds to sustain the number of teams created.

Sadly, with all the World Cup signups, almost all of which will be dead teams, there are now six worlds with Brazil in them, likely with two more on the way, and the two existing Brazils that have rolled over so far haven't gotten second dvisions, despite over 100 new signups to Brazil since the previous season rollover. So I'd have to imagine that pretty all the Brazil leagues are screwed for the future.

I agree with you, the  most important thing for new users is to be joined ASAP, and after that someone have to explain them the basics in the game. Otherwise 90% form new joined team are AFK at the time when they appear in our leagues. I am not sure how hard is to start creating 2nd divisions instead of new joined worlds, but I think that is the only way to improve the game and players quality.

Nobert said something about reducing the AFK period, maybe for new joined teams will be great to be done, SIM can manage the teams better and at least will build their stadium.

Posted by uncleal on 7/28/2010 10:50:00 PM (view original):
Really wish unassigned owners could change nations, and get warnings about openings to fill them... kinda like HD and GD does... you fill a specific opening, not just sit around waiting for league to generate... that way owners who stopped caring would stay unassigned...

I'm still interested to hear what you guys all think about the feasibility of this idea. If you guys like it I'll drop it in Suggestions. Because, essentially, this removes auto-add, which reduces dead teams. Plus, it gives owners an idea of what country to pick -- they can *see* that the next world to roll over has (for example, I'm not actually checking this figure) 8 Brazil slots open, 5 USA slots, and 3 Mexico slots. Or whatever it would be. And they could help pick their country accordingly. I think this would also reduce the total # of worlds and allow for an expedited entry to second (and further) divisions.

The idea is great, not sure how hard will be to make it happen.

Bad idea. IF they start to fill old teams, then we will never get second divisions.  But then again we may never get second division anyways, so does it really matter.

Second divisions don't do you any good if you got 20 AI teams...