Eliminate Prospect Budget - Page 7 - Hardball Dynasty

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Is the cap on Prospect transfers supposed to prohibit tanking? It won't, but it does make a once valid choice in how to run a franchise away from owners. It seems that limiting the options users have as to how to run their franchise is counter-productive to enhancing the game.

I've seen 2 tankers in my short time in HBD. One in a private world where he was quickly and effectively booted, and one in a public world where no amount of pleading with Admin got him removed. He's still there with his "I didn't tank" stance, but the other users in the world know the truth of it.

Anyway, if HBD seriously wants to greatly reduce tanking, they're going to have to implement a big brother system that tracks the moves of the users. Does his team suck? Check. Did he even try to sign legit FA that would have helped his club win? Nope. Is he even managing the pitching staff and keeping it fresh? Nope. Do they have a small payroll and transfer large amounts of money to prospect and attempt to sign the best of the best inat FA? Yep. That's just a small list -- I'm sure you more experienced owners could come up with another 20 or so "checkpoints" that tankers seem to have in common.

Is it Big Brother? Sure, but it's an alternative way to manage/spot tankers than the "few bad apples spoil the bunch" decisions that seem to be made now. Continuing to go down this road is going to result in a bland game with few strategies that are effective enough to use to win.

There's also things HBD could do -- such as not having FA that are utility bench players in skill demand $6mil/yr contracts (slight exaggeration)-- that would allow players to actually make moves to help their team without having to commit to bad contracts. When I'm close to Spring Training and I can't offer an Invite contract to a guy because he wants $3mil/yr for 3 years -- there's something wrong there.

Just some of my thoughts... sorry for the lengthy post.

1/11/2010 3:47 PM

kahrtmen

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All you need is two small changes to budget transfer rules:

1) Don't allow transfers into prospect
2) Allow 100k increments (or some other smaller amount)

1/11/2010 4:01 PM

gjello10

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What do you think about allowing Prospect Budget to be set to $30 mil on budget day? This would force even more money into Player Payroll on the lowest payroll teams, by not starting the season with, essentilly, $10 mil scheduled to disappear into a transfer penalty right off the bat. I think most teams hovering in the 50-65 win range, especially new owners and owners taking over teams that have been in the toilet for many seasons, would genuinely like to field a better team if they could. But sometimes the best way forward with a really crapped out team is to take a step back. And this would help.

Again, nothing is going to help those who are trying to lose (Mike said something about a boot and an ***, I believe). But the way I see it, the transfer penalty should be an actual penalty for mis-budgeting, and having to make a transfer in-season. It shouldn't be a cost-of-doing-business for bidding on top IFAs. Having it this way distorts the IFA market.

At the end of the day, it's better for IFAs to be distributed, as they are in real life, based mostly on how much money an organization devotes to its scouting, and not based on who can cut their BL budget under $40k.

So, I say cap total prospect budget at $30, let people budget $6-30 mil on day one, and leave everything else, including budget transfers, the same. (edit: the $100k increment idea could also be added)

This will lead to far less money being dumped out of the World as intentional Prospect Transfer penalties, which will help maintain the overall talent in the World at ML and MiL levels. Also, more teams which are currently not in the IFA market heavily will increase expenditures. This will help minimize the advantage of cutting payroll to $25 mil and having a crappy team.

Again, when it comes to what to do about people who want the #1 pick 5 seasons in a row, see Mike's solution. But I think this would fix everything else.

1/11/2010 4:08 PM

timf

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stiffs that is the point i am trying to make trades so they dont make use of all the tools available to them. good owners will make trades to get better, sign FA's to fill gaps, draft good prospects at lower spots and sign the good IFA's that dont require $30M bonuses and. Tankers as you so helpfully reitterated do nothing but go for prospects and IFA's. That is their strategy and it works to a point. Better managers will still beat them.

1/11/2010 4:10 PM

blackmink18

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Quote: Originally Posted By patrickm885 on 1/11/2010Sure,

Over time we have noticed that a common strategy is to have an unrealistically small player payroll, take the surplus and transfer it all into the prospect budget. This provides for an unfair advantage over teams that are actually willing to compete.

In nearly every case we are seeing that these franchises tank for several seasons to accumulate minimal player payroll and then build their farm system through the IFA process. In turn, the franchises that are trying to compete season after season are out of the IFA process entirely.

We decided that one way to curb the tanking is to limit the amount of money that can be dumped into the prospect payroll budget. That amount is going to be $30M and max contracts will be handled the same exact way that was outlined in the last update thread.

We also talked about getting rid of the budget transfer page altogether, is that something that you would rather see?

You're going to complain that people will keep spending 25$ for 4 to 5 seasons and "tank" ?

1/11/2010 4:10 PM

steelerstime

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Wouldn't it be hilarious if WIS incorporated win % into the valuation of bids. So lets say a team that has averaged a .600 win % over the last few years-his $15 mill offer is actually worth $20 mill. And the team with a .325 win %-his $20 mill offer is actually worth $15 mill.

It would certainly affect the tankers, and reward those that are trying to win.

1/11/2010 4:14 PM

kahrtmen

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Quote: Originally posted by gjello10 on 1/11/2010What do you think about allowing Prospect Budget to be set to $30 mil on budget day? This would force even more money into Player Payroll on the lowest payroll teams, by not starting the season with, essentilly, $10 mil scheduled to disappear into a transfer penalty right off the bat.

This is a good point. That penalty is for misbudgeting, but if you know you are going to transfer before the season then you really aren't misbudgeting. You are doing the only thing you can to get prospect budget above 20m. Why penalize this kind of activity unless you don't want people moving money into prospect?

I think the better way to handle this is to leave the prospect cap at 20, not 30. That will force teams to spend even more on payroll. 20 and 30 are arbitrary numbers anyway. The lower the amount available to spend on prospect, the more money that is available for payroll.

1/11/2010 4:30 PM

timf

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I think there could be something to this proposal by steelerstime but I think that the IFA's makeup or patience should somehow be incorporateed into any formula. Obviously a guy with low patience and/or makeup would be more inclined to take the cash and not worry about how good the team is and thus the tanking teams would be in essence getting guys that would bolt after their arbitration years are over and the more competitive teams would be the ones able to sign the guys that care about winning and who would also stick around longer. I'm sure admin could do some research and come up with a workable formula and do some tests to get this one right. I think this is a better solution than capping how much each team can spend on prospects.

1/11/2010 4:35 PM

domiisgod

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Quote: Originally Posted By kahrtmen on 1/11/2010
Quote: Originally posted by gjello10 on 1/11/2010
What do you think about allowing Prospect Budget to be set to $30 mil on budget day? This would force even more money into Player Payroll on the lowest payroll teams, by not starting the season with, essentilly, $10 mil scheduled to disappear into a transfer penalty right off the bat.

This is a good point. That penalty is for misbudgeting, but if you know you are going to transfer before the season then you really aren't misbudgeting. You are doing the only thing you can to get prospect budget above 20m. Why penalize this kind of activity unless you don't want people moving money into prospect?

I think the better way to handle this is to leave the prospect cap at 20, not 30. That will force teams to spend even more on payroll. 20 and 30 are arbitrary numbers anyway. The lower the amount available to spend on prospect, the more money that is available for payroll.

If you leave everyone with a lot of extra payroll, the IFA problem will drift away as the price of free agents rises. So $5,000,000 x 3 guys will now be 8 million per, the 8 million now over 10, and we will see more guys that should be 10-12 mill per guys going for max contracts since everyone will have more payroll room.

Fixing one problem seems to create another.

I think the WIS monitoring the win % idea was good and should be followed more hardcore.

1/11/2010 4:37 PM

shobob

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Here's an idea floated on our world chat in Cobb by Yanks21: "Personally I think they should remove the transfer feature and up the CAP on prospect payroll to the $30M. But I think there are other ways to improve the IFA. They should set it up like the real IFA. Have all the IFA's come out around the All-star break, have a real life 7 day bidding period and then have an IFA sign date (like July 2nd in real life). Rather then get feed back on whether or not your bid is good enough you don't hear anything, you make your bid and that's it. It opens it up for owners to try and figure out do they go all in on 1 IFA, do they bid on 2? Etc. And IFA budget is still relevant as the amount you spent limits who you see and how good the ratings are. I think that would be more fun, IMO."

What do you all think of that? I like it.

1/11/2010 4:38 PM

kahrtmen

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I like that idea, but why 30m and not 20m?

1/11/2010 4:44 PM

shobob

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I dunno. Either one would work for me

1/11/2010 4:46 PM

spudpicker

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If tanking is a strategy nobody likes, why not remove players who end a season with under 50 wins and never let them take the team back?

It's pathetic to see an owner with consecutive seasons with less than 40 wins... so why keep rewarding that player? Why not just curb that behavior through the win-loss column?

1/11/2010 4:56 PM

timf

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I think the way it is done now is fine. The problem is not the process, the problem is the teams tanking to free up more money and outbid everyone on the best IFA's. Why not fix the problem instead of changing the process altogether? Maybe limiting prospect budget of known tanking teams the season following the tanked season. To make things simple and quantifiably, why not eliminate budget transfers for any team that finishes with less than 65 wins? The 65 is completely arbitrary and could be different but I think you get the idea.

1/11/2010 5:00 PM

kahrtmen

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The problem is, there is a fine line between optimizing your long term strategy and tanking. People like mirky are doing their franchise a service in the long run by running 20m payrolls every year because they are allowed to do it under the rules. If you change the rules then it forces people to change their strategy.

1/11/2010 5:04 PM

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