I think there's a difference between sabotaging games by playing people out of position or using 0(0) pitchers and just putting your resources into scouting and development for a few seasons when you wouldn't have been in the playoffs anyway. if you're going to lose 85 games, you might as well lose 100.

Which is just another way to say "one man's tanking is another man's rebuilding." Why do we keep having this conversation?

It's not all that complicated. I've been thru this many times. Everyone has a "tanking threshold". At some point, everyone is going to say "Whoa. That's tanking. Stop it." You just have to find worlds that are populated with owners who have a similar mindset. Up until today, I thought tec and I were on the same page. Evidently, we are not.

I now know, in Mantle, that I can play guys grossly out of of position, with no bat to justify it, during a down period and I'm good as long as I make the MWR. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable doing that but, if I do, I know tec will not say a word.

Posted by bad_luck on 5/5/2016 6:57:00 PM (view original):

Posted by sjpoker on 5/5/2016 1:04:00 PM (view original):
I have an (un-named) fellow owner in one of my leagues that has racked up a pretty insane team. Here is his budget/records/fees over the last few seasons.

League rules are $110 over 2 and $170 over 3. That's pretty reasonable and consistent with the leagues I am in now, and the others I have been in previously. His team in my other leagues would - possibly - get bounced in one (all 100 loss teams get reviewed each season) and would (kind of) get restricted in another ($30 million cap on prospects), but I'd hazard to guess that he's good in 90% or more of leagues out there.

So the guy didn't break any of the rules. But its a pretty obvious tank job. How would any of you prevent this?

Why does this need to be prevented?

Simple. If I am trying to remain competitive while doing my due diligence in the draft and development while another guy creates an unbeatable team that blocks me from ever winning a title - I have a problem with that.

In Riley World, we have no MWR, no rules. (I know, bad advertising.) Bunch of longtime owners who know each other, everyone looks the other way when someone goes through "one of these." Until a few seasons ago, when one new guy just went soooooo far over the line playing a complete crap major league team. Apparently there was some griping to the commish in private, which eventually spilled into world chat, but hey, no one could really do anything about it by that point. It was just funny to see that, like Mike says, there was a point where everyone said "okay, now you're tanking." And of course the new guy is saying "WTF you hypocrites?"

Posted by sjpoker on 5/5/2016 8:39:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bad_luck on 5/5/2016 6:57:00 PM (view original):

Posted by sjpoker on 5/5/2016 1:04:00 PM (view original):
I have an (un-named) fellow owner in one of my leagues that has racked up a pretty insane team. Here is his budget/records/fees over the last few seasons.

League rules are $110 over 2 and $170 over 3. That's pretty reasonable and consistent with the leagues I am in now, and the others I have been in previously. His team in my other leagues would - possibly - get bounced in one (all 100 loss teams get reviewed each season) and would (kind of) get restricted in another ($30 million cap on prospects), but I'd hazard to guess that he's good in 90% or more of leagues out there.

So the guy didn't break any of the rules. But its a pretty obvious tank job. How would any of you prevent this?

Why does this need to be prevented?

Simple. If I am trying to remain competitive while doing my due diligence in the draft and development while another guy creates an unbeatable team that blocks me from ever winning a title - I have a problem with that.

Shouldn't you also be trying to build an unbeatable team?

No. Because unbeatable teams kill worlds. We play for enjoyment and challenge. There is no $1 million prize to be won. Taking a crap all over competitiveness ruins the game for 30 other people. In real life, sure, try to recreate the 1920s and 1950s Yankees. The other MLB owners can't just walk away even if they think they have no hope of winning. We can. Try to build the best team in a world? Absolutely, that's the point. The best team in a world might have an 80% chance of making playoffs and 60% chance of winning. If you were to define unbeatable as having, say, a 90% chance of winning, why would anyone else spend $20 a season to keep playing?

That said, if you want a world in which all is fair, including blatant tanking, just join such a world. But don't come into a world in which 15-20 people invested 20 seasons, tank your way to unbeatable, and expect them to be fine with it.

Posted by joshkvt on 5/6/2016 3:08:00 AM (view original):
No. Because unbeatable teams kill worlds. We play for enjoyment and challenge. There is no $1 million prize to be won. Taking a crap all over competitiveness ruins the game for 30 other people. In real life, sure, try to recreate the 1920s and 1950s Yankees. The other MLB owners can't just walk away even if they think they have no hope of winning. We can. Try to build the best team in a world? Absolutely, that's the point. The best team in a world might have an 80% chance of making playoffs and 60% chance of winning. If you were to define unbeatable as having, say, a 90% chance of winning, why would anyone else spend $20 a season to keep playing?

That said, if you want a world in which all is fair, including blatant tanking, just join such a world. But don't come into a world in which 15-20 people invested 20 seasons, tank your way to unbeatable, and expect them to be fine with it.

Perhaps Bad_Luck should check out Kaline. I had a team there I loved. Great group of owners. One problem. Check out the Baltimore franchise. They dominate the league. Not a tanker mind you, he gets new players in there and then noob-rapes the hell out of them. But I couldn't go on with it. Why drop $25 a season when he's in almost every WS? And sadly the old commish let it happen over and over til some good owners left.

So yeah, I agree with what josh is saying. Thats why a league like Clemente is so damn good. Everyone has a chance.

When I started playing this game I knew it was, as they like to say, "deep", and there were a lot of nuances of gameplay to figure out.

If you start trying to figure out ratings, and interactions, and roster building, it's very easy for a noob to realize very early on that tanking is easy and will work based on how talent acquisition in the game is set up.

I'm not even sure the guys who do it are trying to win championships, it might just be that they prefer having players guaranteed to be at the top of the stats leaderboards over winning titles with hitters batting .276.

It's linear, unimaginative, and I would figure unrewarding. To me, anyway. It's a cheap easy way out.

Posted by damag on 5/5/2016 8:46:00 PM (view original):
In Riley World, we have no MWR, no rules. (I know, bad advertising.) Bunch of longtime owners who know each other, everyone looks the other way when someone goes through "one of these." Until a few seasons ago, when one new guy just went soooooo far over the line playing a complete crap major league team. Apparently there was some griping to the commish in private, which eventually spilled into world chat, but hey, no one could really do anything about it by that point. It was just funny to see that, like Mike says, there was a point where everyone said "okay, now you're tanking." And of course the new guy is saying "WTF you hypocrites?"

It's the same with cash in trades. Some say "It's my team, I should be able to sell prospects if I want." Which is fine if the world doesn't care. But there's always a limit. I could go back and confirm the numbers but in S1 of Steinbrenner, an owner was getting cash in every deal. More than salary he was moving. After the 2nd one, I said "Kind sirs, are we going to allow owners to sell players in this brave new world? Some consider that non-sporting" or something like that. Maybe I put in F-bomb in there. I got a lot of "I don't see a problem." When he cleared 20m and signed the best FA in the world, people began to reconsider. I think he ended up with 30m+ acquired in trade. A rule was put in place and the owner was outed as an alias after 3-4 seasons.

But the point is that everyone has a line. Sometimes it takes someone crossing it before they realize but everyone has a line.

Owner was ericwoody. He rec'd 28.7m in cash. tswayne11 contributed 7.2m in his only season in the league. rsf507 contributed 7.8m to the cause in his only season in the world. Wonder which one was his alias?

This one time in one of my worlds, an (tanking) owner had the #1 pick, but two weeks before the draft he blew a ton of cash on a big IFA. Draft day the clear #1 was a stud SP, "undecided". Turned out the player asked for too much signing bonus, so the owner tried to run through a trade to clear money to sign the player. I railed against it in world chat, because not only was the guy gaming the system, at that point he was asking the rest of the ownership to help him do it. Card laid is card played. Own your mistake, was my point. The trade was vetoed.

The most ridiculous part was the one owner who tried to make the point in world chat, "help the guy do it otherwise he gets the #1 again next season plus the #2 as a Type D, and we all get bumped down the order one notch."

I don't know, I clearly don't see things the same way you guys do. In my opinion, you pay your fees for the season, it's your team. You want to try to sell players, go for it. You want to stockpile IFAs and high draft picks to try to build a super team 4 seasons from now, be my guest.

What's the point of the game if you can't employ your own personal strategy?

If other owners don't like it, they are free to not trade with you. Other than taking advantage of inexperienced owners with rape trades, I think anything goes.

And obviously there are other owners who want to play that way too. As we've said before, the key is to get into a world with other like minded owners if you want to enjoy the game the way you like to play it.

Also, bad_luck, you draw the line at trade rape. That's another point we've made, that everyone seems to have their own line somewhere. Me, I happen to think that trade rape is the worst. Much worse than tanking. An owner who tanks to a super team is not guaranteed a championship. An owner who trade rapes is guaranteed to get players he shouldn't have access to, and by doing so he subverts the natural order because his team never has a down cycle - which can be achieved without boning noobs, by the way.

The fact that advertising that no one should trade with Owner X ever is probably against WiS rules and can get me kicked is the only thing that's stopped me from doing it.

Screwing a new owner out of his present and/or future creates a void. New owner can up and quit. Fine. But his replacement has little to work with. It's the same concept as building a super team. If there is a lack of parity, it makes the world harder to fill. IOW, competing against guaranteed LCS teams year after year isn't any more enticing to a prospective owner than taking over a team with little to no resources.

If more people understood this, there would be less "Why can't my world fill?" threads.

I'm all for owners building the best team possible. But there has to be parameters in doing so or your world will just have problems getting/keeping 32 competent owners.