Opinions on TR team threads

Vote-based Type Race Team threads have been active for a full year as of this month. We'd like to know what you think of it now that you've had some chance to experience it. Does having these options for selecting leaders help at all? Is there anything about the procedure that you like or dislike? Please keep in mind that this question specifically addresses the general wellbeing of TR teams, so stay on topic. You can express your thoughts on other topics by using the suggestions forum or other feedback threads. After the holiday season, we'll review them.

Apologies for my English ahead of time, there are some words I simply don't know in English and this ended up becoming wordy because of it. In my opinion, the way leaders are chosen now is definitely better than the previous "first come first serve" situation. By allowing the players to choose what person they wanted to lead, it encourages interaction and encourages the leaders to put more of an effort into their teams that month. So far, I've mostly seen the upside of it, where people will pick someone they know has put an effort into their team in the previous month, but I have also seen some issues arise where teams will simply go without a leader some months, and someone is forced to take over at the beginning of the race after a post has been created by the system. I understand this is more an issue on the players' side rather than the voting, but I feel some encouragement may be needed for some people to lead that month, since it is also a bit of a scary experience at first! TL;DR: It's a pretty good mechanic! I've had a mostly positive experience with it, yet I feel it may have also scared away a few people from leading due to fear of not being picked that month.

I wonder if "being a team leader" should come with some kind of reward? A small one, of course, since a large one would be unfair. Or maybe, once the type race is over, players can rate their team leader's performance, and have a reward based on that? These ideas would incentivise people to be a team leader, but I'm worried it may bring resentment if the reward is too generous. Maybe I'm worrying too much?

i definitely think this is a good idea- it'd be good encouragement for people to try for team leader + actually put effort forth!

As someone who will hopefully be unbiased in this, in the sense that I cannot manage a group like that to save my life, I really support the idea of a little recompense for the host. They’ve got a pretty imposing responsibility, and getting a little treat might be that little encouragement they need. But make the reward too big, and we’d maybe have many more people who wouldn’t be as interested in hosting sign up just for the free snacks. I think the reward would serve less as an “I want that and I was thinking about being a host” and more of hosts feeling recognized and acknowledged for their effort.

So far, I haven't really seen all that many teams each month that needed a vote in the first place, since it seems like a LOT of the teams just have one person that does it so they get it by default. But I like the concept in general, even if I've yet to have it apply to any of my teams XD As for the reward, what about something like an exclusive forum title so that people will know, 'Hey, this person is a good type race leader, I should keep an eye on them, see if I get them on my team!', plus I think a lot of the TR team leaders tend to be active on the forums anyway, so it'd be a bit of a flex for them. And that way, you don't have to worry so much about people doing it just for the 'free stuff', since it wouldn't have any direct transactional value, and would be more about the clout/prestige of being a good TR team leader.

I haven't really been affected by the vote, I think I've only been on one team where multiple threads were created. I hosted at least 4 team threads this year, just because I like doing it. I don't feel any need for a reward and I feel like offering a reward would actually mean more people creating threads just to try to get the reward.

i like the reward idea, for time and effort and such. i think people see it as a lot of work for little reason. i was on breakneck this last race and nobody stepped forward, it made the team feel a little chaotic and barren even when we had people try to organise things. they did well on short notice, but it felt sort of like the start of A Bug's Life where they're all panicking about the leaf lol. i play guild wars 2 and theres a near constant debate/discussion about how little people "tag up" (mark themselves as leaders/organisers) for competitive, dungeons, world bosses, etc. that require leaders. the general consensus is it's a lot of thankless work, and that some kind of bonus for people who do significant amounts of organising/leading would incentivise people to "tag up", or at least work on learning how to best lead different types of content so that they could tag up. it's sort of similar here i think. if you say a team leader gets a pick of an extra z-crystal/fragment, or mega stone, or something high-value, people might start working on figuring out how to lead because their time and effort would be rewarded. when everyone gets the same thing, there's not much of a point in stepping up outside of... i don't know... masochism? vanity? lol. i'm not sure how doable a lot of what i might suggest will be, but: i like the idea of the voting on the leader's performance too. it makes it less likely that people will step up then dip out and come to reap the rewards that they didn't earn. i think it might be good to have a record of how highly rated team leaders are, and maybe that information could be used to pick leaders in future. higher rated leaders will be more likely to get picked but make sure there's some kind of cooldown on leading so that it's not just the same few people every time. like, 3 months and then you can lead again or something? also, maybe a vote for stand-out users who aren't the leader, for those that contribute a lot to the team in a meaningful way, to encourage people to contribute more, which makes leading a little less of a pain, which makes more people likely to try leading, etc. just get that kind of treadmill going. the only problem there is: do you want to reward stand-out users too? maybe a z-crystal/fragments for the leader, less fragments for stand-out users, and now people want to try aiming a little higher in terms of meaningful contribution. i emphasise meaningful because i worry it could be a popularity contest for some. ummm (shrug) i dunno! like i said idk how doable a lot of stuff is, but i think the issue is high effort for no real reward. what's the point of going the extra mile when you're all ending up at the same place anyway?

I like Corona's idea of forum title to help show who is the team leader.