Ian_B33 :
There is no promotion incentives... the money isn't better, all it does it throw you into a scenario where your player base which you may be trying to grow is dumped well beyond it's means...
If I recruit someone today, I can have a maximum of 110 attribute points on any one of their skills.... Someone I picked up recently has 1 skill I'd like to grow, it's currently at something like 83....., if I focus purely on that skill then I have to get 27 points for that alone, by the time I've got that we could be looking at promotion to another level which brings the maximum up to 115 etc...
So rather than the game being strategy based, where you grow your team, allow them to fight for a decent promotion and then continue to grow as you go, you end up with 50's-60's dotting about in leagues that they literally have 0 chance in, unless they use match bonus which is unsustainable...
As for a 12th place fighting for 9th place promotion....why? He's better off realising that he's performed badly in the league and that promotion would mean an even harder time in the next league.
Not to mention the obvious, but gold balls anyone? You get them in tournaments, tournaments are played against people of the same league rank (afaik), therefore being a 9th place promotion ruins your tournament chances....
The game is skewed, awful strategies have to be applied in order to allow players to remain in a lower league to play in a growth developing way...
Have to say I couldn't disagree with you more. The whole point of the game is to take your team as high as you can - you grow to allow that to happen, not the other way round. Being in a tougher league is a huge incentive to improve your strategy. And how you see being able to improve a player's stats by 5 points more as being anything other than a huge advantage is beyond me. Strikes me it's not the game that's skewed, but your approach to it - you obviously grow faster in higher leagues, not by ossifying in lower ones.