My Ideas for a Multiplayer Dynasty Format

[VlaDiv]

I was thinking, it would be tough to involve 30 people in online games they actually have time to play, while making it possible to play every game and see many years of a season. How will EA do it? Here's one way I thought of that might be reasonable:

Season length: 29 games
Playoff Format: 3-3-3-3
Fantasy Draft: Yes (they could also allow using real teams, but that could present a lower level of even, fair teams since the contenders would get picked right away and you'd have hopeless teams left at the bottom)

Here's how the games work. You don't have to be there to play. It just gets simmed if no one is there. If you are there and your opponent is there, you play each other. If you are there and no opponent is, you can either play cpu, sim it, or you can do simulation intervention once (no re-simming) and hop in after any quarter. This cuts down on cpu boredom and it cuts down the need for people to play every game when they can't.


Day 1: Fantasy Draft. (may be ladder or standard format) Games 1-3
2: games 4-6
3: games 7-9
4: games 10-12
5: games 13-15
6: (Available all-star activities and trade deadline) games 16-17 (2 games)
7: games 18-20
8: games 21-23
9: games 24-26
10: games 27-29
11: playoff round 1
12: playoff round 2
13: playoff round 3
14: championship games

repeat cycle, day 1 is all offseason activites: draft, retirement, free agents, and then 3 games while everybody is on.

Trades that aren't answered by players by the trade deadline are decided by the CPU. This allows you to keep playing after a few players have permanently left your dynasty. You have to take into account that several people will lose interest and only the real committed ones will stay.

With 14 days in a season, 25 years would take 50 weeks. This is a perfect amount of time for a whole year of solid basketball that you can play as much as want or leave mostly alone and casually follow. Can you see this as a format for actual online play? I think 3 games a night, approx 1.5-2 hours is about the time that people have to play. Maybe they start around 10 pm, or you can agree as a league.

Also, add some kind of leaderboard/hall of fame for good dynasty performance and championships won so it's not all to be forgotten.

6-29-06 "VlaDiv"