All three teams in same league AGAIN - RIDICULOUS
 

Not sure if this should go here but whatever.

I am extremely disappointed that all three of my teams are in the same league AGAIN. This is ridiculous to say the least. All three of my teams were in separate leagues last year and all three were set to "stay put" but apparently that "stay put" button doesn't mean "jack s----"

I realize there are a lot of teams currently playing and you guys probably have no control of were teams land but something has to be done about this - I do not want to compete against my own teams constantly every week. It makes it unplayable for me to say the least.

Can't there be a mod were known owner teams automatically do not get put in same leagues and what is up with the stay put button? Do these selections not work? Are they just window dressing?

Stay put means, that your teams stays with all the other teams of the league that also wants to stay put.
If only a few teams of the league select stay put, you are likely to get mixed up with other leagues where a few people selected stay put or selected random.

That should be described a bit better in the settings. To me "stay put" implies that you are going to be in the exact same league # along with all the other teams who "stay put" and then the randomized teams fill in the gaps.

So basically there are no other selections you can make to try and keep your teams separated. Would random be better? I use to have have random set for two of them and one of them was stay put - but they all three still manage to wind up in the same leagues sporadically.

Seriously this is a problem - I dont want to compete against my own teams all the time. If that were the case I would not have worked so hard and spent so much money to build all the teams separately.

I think it is sad they don't take care of one of their best customers for such a simple request. (I don't care if the programming is not simple). You can't trade cards among your own teams, but you can play against your own teams? The temptation to turn one of them into an all-iron team must be strong, especially if two are in the same division.

I have to agree that I also misunderstood the wording.

I was also under the assumption that "use friends" was the only option to refer to other players while stay put was used to only focus on my team and stay in the same league #.

It sounds like we need a 4th option that helps teams stay in the same league # so users can ensure they can stay separated from their other teams or possible an ignore list with a low number of teams (maybe max3).

I am also surprised by this discussion. I thought "stay put" meant that I would stay in whatever league I am in now, i.e. P408, as said above.

I think the discussion is somewhat confusing because the league names (.406, etc) are kind of meaningless. If you select "stay put" along with 20 league-mates, OOTP will try to put the 21 of you in a league with 9 other teams (maybe even 9 teams from a league who also said "stay put" together), and even if your new league name is .472, you did "stay put" as desired.

EDIT: I am realizing I am describing the friends feature and therefore add me to the list of people who don't understand the difference between "friends" and "stay put".

In the early days of PT 1.0, teams in the same league were generally kept together from week to week to create and preserve rivalries. Then, based on player feedback, that was changed to randomizing every season. Now, we have the option to choose which method we prefer. "Stay put" is the old system of staying with your fellow opponents (who chose the same option), and "random" is the new default.

I think the confusion is due to the friend list being used to create entire leagues in a way the devs didn't anticipate. I believe friends were initially assumed to be a short list of real-life friends or family to play against when possible, not a whole league of like-minded strangers who wanted to keep their league together. The former case is best with friends lists so that the friends/family aren't also stuck with all the other teams that happen to be in their league that week. The latter case needs friend lists to assemble the league in the first place, but the league can persist either by changing the friend list every week or by using "stay put".

Friends and stay put essentially work the same way, with the difference that a friend list is self-selected, and stay put essentially acts as a friends list with everyone else in the league who also used "stay put".

So how do three of your teams all in SEPARATE leagues with stay put chosen still wind up together? It is maddening. The suggestion above of a 4th option with an ignore list is a great idea. I find it hard to believe that I am the only one having this issue.

I have multiple teams in gold right now but they are in different leagues. Perhaps this was achieved by each team having a different group of friends. So each set of friends is placed into a league but the leagues they are in does not intersect. Perhaps you could try something like that… Have each team friend a different subset of people, that might be enough to pull them apart. I know there is a whales and a mini whales (dolphins?) league in perfect. Perhaps you could attach your teams to those leagues?

It sounds crazy, but try having your 3rd team friend 1 and 2, while #2 friends #1 and #1 friends neither. I've heard both teams need to friend each other to wind up in the same league.

Well...Congratulations on all the success your teams have had anyway...You have 3 teams and they are all excelling in the top level of competition, where there are only 26 different leagues or so, I would leave stay put unchecked on all of them if you really want them to not end up together.

But you had the World Series to yourself last year.

And this season one of your teams is in my league, but the other two aren't, so either you're lying or referring to ....like, PT 19. Or last week.

Don't have much to add except I didn't know the Saints made such a good baseball team & congratulations.

That won't actually be any better than just leaving all 3 on random.

As Chris explained the algorithm to me before, essentially what happens is that everyone at a level are set into "groups". So anyone who are mutual friends become a group, anyone from a league who all have "stay put" set become a group, and everyone else become solo groups.

And then from those groups, essentially everyone gets filled into the leagues. So maybe there's one group of 25 people, they'll all get put together in P401. The next biggest group is maybe 15 people, so they get placed into P402. The next group of, say, 10 would get placed next (I don't know if they also go into P402, or if they would go into P403). And so on.

So if none of your teams have any friends lists, then all the teams will simply get placed to fill up the leagues. So right now, the best way to have your teams in separate leagues are to make sure each are in separate friend groups, the larger the better. If one team is in a friend group of 16 and another is in a group of 15, then it's essentially impossible for them to be in the same league together.

There's no way to specify a negative, though. That would complicate the algorithms, if you also had an "enemies" list. Because what if we're filling the league and we get to your team at the end and the only available spot is in a league with your enemies? Trying to avoid that massively complicates the algorithm.

Otherwise, the best way to make sure your teams are not in the same league is to do like me - have one good team that actually is at perfect level, and have a second team that's all the way down in Silver. Problem solved!

You don't need an enemies list. After all the friends groups are assigned and before the solo groups are assigned, there should be a group that has the "put the users associated with this license in a different league" box checked. Then they get assigned to different leagues, as long as they don't have any friends, that should work and not complicate the algorithm unduly.

If an ignore list were added, many F2P players would add every team they perceive as a whale. Something needs to be done to prevent the issue Saints is having, but we've already seen how unintended consequences led to leagues of friends.

Also, without an in game communication method, the utility of a friend's list that requires reciprocity is marginalized.