Here is a rough draft proposal for a new world with a cash prize. I am throwing this out there for your thoughts and ideas as well as your critique of this proposal since it will be sent to WIS.
Thanks, maharacer

Greetings,

I am writing to enquirer about an idea that I have been mulling over for some time now in Hardball Dynasty, and now, due to the depletion of players in Gehrig World (among others), it seems a favorable time to present my idea. I would like to run an HBD Invitational world that will have a $500.00 cash prize (which may increase to $1000.00 at a later time) for the World Series winner. It will be winner take all. The money will come from a private account that I have created for this purpose. WIS will not have to contribute any money or incur any costs other than normal operating costs that already in place in an active world.

The world will be called the HBD Invitational. I will choose the owners and send them invitations to join based on several criteria:

1. The owner must have a minimum of 5 championships – This is the only hard requirement, no exceptions

2. In order to maintain the peace and prosperity of the league, the owners that I invite will be those that I have enjoyed playing against, who have been fair and ethical, and who have not engaged in too much controversy (some controversy is always welcome). Examples of behavior that will prevent an owner from being invited are past indiscretions like constant tanking, collusion, predatory trade activities.

In other words, I will invite owners that I know. Since I don’t know everyone, and there are many more qualified owners that deserve to be invited, I will seek the opinion of a two long time owners with experience that far surpasses mine. One will be assigned as the American League representative, the other the National League Representative, and each will be given five invitations to hand out. Both of these reps can also help me since I have never been a commissioner before and may have questions.

Game Structure (upon approval of WIS staff)

An exact time will be given for the league to begin (ie. button is pushed)

Budgeting: will take place. You will be limited by player salaries so owners must mind their budgets. Transfers will operate as normal. See rules below!

Coaching: will take place as usual

Inaugural Draft: Two (2) weeks following coaching.

All players in the current world will be dumped into two (2) separate pools based on their current level. One pool will be major league players and one pool will be minor league prospects and placement will be determined by their status at the end of the last season.

There will be two straight drafts, one for the majors and one for the prospects. The draft order will be randomly determined by the commissioner. The major league draft order will be the inverse of the prospect draft order so that the owner who drafts first in the major league draft, will pick last in the prospect draft. There will be no altering the order once determined. Once the majors are drafted, the prospects will be drafted the following day at the same time.

The draft pool will be available two (2) weeks before the draft in order to give owners time to determine strategy and will be similar to an amateur draft that everyone knows. The only difference is that the salary of the major league players will be visible beforehand.

Private Rules: not set in stone yet

1. Prospect budget limit. TBD. The idea is to prevent players from dumping salary in order to spend $40 M for International players. Probably in the range of $26M- $30M

2. Beginning season four (4) the team with the worst record in each league will be removed. In other words, everyone in the inaugural class has three (3) seasons to get their team in order. My thinking here is that this will prevent tanking and allow an influx of new owners from the waiting list. Therefore there is no MWR at any level. The new owners who comes off the waiting list (tbd) only have one (1) season (the current season) to get out of the cellar or risk losing the team. There is no three (3) game grace period.

3. The World Champion will need to provide a current address in order to receive payment which will arrive by certified mail. I have done this in my fantasy football league for years and have never had a problem.

4. When naming your team, pick a name that doesn’t make you look like an ***. No stupid **** or you will be asked to change it. Besides, if there is a future blog, you will need to have an icon for your team, and any icon for a team named Farts or Dickwhippers would be tough to produce. Besides, since this league is privately funded, looking professional may bring in higher prize money. Imagine, albeit foolishly, someday making a living playing simulated baseball

Well that is the basic structure. I am not sure if it is feasible or if the current code will even allow such a league. The critical part, to me, is the draft. Ideally, I would prefer a live draft as in fantasy sports, but the amount of players would make it a huge endeavour. As it stands now, I am not sure how new worlds are assigned players, but I believe that they are already complete teams and it is first come, first serve. I could be wrong in this view however. Anyway, let me your thoughts everybody and if it can’t be done, it is not a problem. Comment here or drop me a site mail. After I get some input I will send this off to WIS. Thank you for your time.

It has been a long time since WIS created a brand new world in HBD. If I remember correctly, they fully populate both the ML teams and all minor league teams with players. When you signed up for a franchise in a new world, you were randomly assigned one of the franchise with it being just luck of the draw what players you ended up with. Some franchise were more ready to win now, some were better stocked with prospects. While I like your draft idea, it would require extra work by WIS staff to implement the draft and populate all the teams from the draft results. Given the fact that WIS is run by a bare minimum staff that has not had time to do any meaningful updates to HBD over the last decade, it is very unlikely they would have the time or be willing to put in the extra effort your draft idea would require to create the world.

That being said..... You could start your world with the normal HBD creating process they already have in place. Since some franchise will be better stocked at the ML level at the start and it will be random who gets the better teams, start low and ramp up your prize money. For example, $100 season 1, $200 season 2, etc up to $500 for winning season 5. I suggest having a smaller prize for the team that loses the WS, maybe 20% of whatever the prize is for the winner. Also, if you have owners use the current structure for buying seasons to pay for playing, I think WIS would be far more willing to create your world.

Starting with season 4, having the owner of the franchise with the worst combined ML record over the previous 3 seasons replaced is good. You may want to increase this to the 2 worst since I suspect you will have a very large waiting list. I think it would be fair for the owners removed to go back on the bottom of the waiting list so they eventually have a chance to rejoin the world as owners from the top are used to fill openings.

Good luck maharacer! Appreciate folks willing to mix things up.

Regarding prospect budget caps - ULB has one at $25M. I really enjoy it because it adds a twist that other worlds don't offer. But it does favor contending teams in IFA since they can punt the draft and spend their entire budget on IFA's. Theoretically, the bad teams could also punt the draft and blow their entire prospect budget on a single IFA but in my experience that rarely happens. Too much draft FOMO for lots of folks, especially before seeing the draft pool. In a more competitive league like this I would assume more owners with losing records would be willing to bid for the stud IFA's but who knows. In ULB at least. the playoff teams usually end up with the top IFA's

Might want to consider putting a cap on just for the IFA's so that the bad teams can bid on IFA's too. Or maybe not, maybe you want to punish the bad teams, hahaha

Posted by brianplath on 4/26/2024 11:55:00 PM (view original):
Good luck maharacer! Appreciate folks willing to mix things up.

Regarding prospect budget caps - ULB has one at $25M. I really enjoy it because it adds a twist that other worlds don't offer. But it does favor contending teams in IFA since they can punt the draft and spend their entire budget on IFA's. Theoretically, the bad teams could also punt the draft and blow their entire prospect budget on a single IFA but in my experience that rarely happens. Too much draft FOMO for lots of folks, especially before seeing the draft pool. In a more competitive league like this I would assume more owners with losing records would be willing to bid for the stud IFA's but who knows. In ULB at least. the playoff teams usually end up with the top IFA's

Might want to consider putting a cap on just for the IFA's so that the bad teams can bid on IFA's too. Or maybe not, maybe you want to punish the bad teams, hahaha

Given what Brian said.... go high on the prospect cap, $30M

That is probably a better idea. Thanks. Also Sportshub game network, the parent company, has something called League Safe, where I can deposit a couple thousand and they can handle the payouts for the champions. Sportshub also has a draft engine that they use for fantasy leagues that I am going to research and see if having a live draft for the inaugural season is possible.

When we tried something similar a few years ago, we decided to do all we could to avoid needing admin's help.

We held a live draft prior to the season starting (pressing the button).
We then spent the first day and a half (once budgets set) to trade all the players to their respective teams.