All,

We have been kicking some ideas around lately on how to curb tanking.

As you know, rebuilding is a viable strategy in HBD. But there is a big difference between winning 60 games per season while rebuilding and winning 30 games while tanking.  The latter involves players playing out of position, fatigues pitchers, etc., all which negatively impact 31 other owners in inflated stats, schedule tactics, etc.

Our goal is to make tanking a much less desirable option by punishing those that do it automatically as part of the game mechanic rather than through customer support.

Here's what we have in mind:
Any franchise that wins fewer than 50 games during the regular season is considered a franchise that tanked.  If the owner maintains control of the franchise, the franchise will not be able to exceed $20M in prospect payroll budget the following season. Each owner may win fewer than 50 games once in a world before this penalty would kick in. This would be retroactive starting with the next season to begin.

For example, an owner won 48 games back in season 2 of a world now in season 12. When the world moves to season 13 and the same owner's franchise again won fewer than 50 games, he'd see the new penalty in season 13.

In addition, we would add automated messages at the rollover to spell out in world chat which franchises failed to win 50 games the previous season. This way, other owners can be on the lookout for "new" owners replacing departing owners that failed to win 50 as we're sure some owners will try to cheat the system by creating alias accounts.

What are your thoughts? Would this negatively impact any private worlds?

Thanks

I'm sure you guys would run accross kinks that would need to be worked out, but it sounds good to me. I'm all for it.

It would depend on the private world rules.   I can't imagine a rule being in place that allows teams to lose 112 over and over again but there might be.

Well intentioned, but not necessary-- private worlds can control or not control tanking as they see fit, and in public worlds this is an invitation to alias no matter how you alert the other owners.

I think its a great start.  Its an improvement that would make just about everyone's game experence better IMO

Posted by dedelman on 11/2/2011 6:33:00 PM (view original):
Well intentioned, but not necessary-- private worlds can control or not control tanking as they see fit, and in public worlds this is an invitation to alias no matter how you alert the other owners.

Aliases do have to start over with their budgets.   So they can't build the 66m prospect and 20m IFA scouting called a "tanker's dream".     If nothing else, the powers that be are recognizing that tanking is horrible for HBD.     Maybe they'll do away with the $4 4th place credit.

This should be great for public worlds...private worlds "shouldn't" need it, but I'm sure it will help some there as well

I think 50 wins is a great baseline, and one that we currently have in J5B. That being said if it had the full support of WIFS it would make it much more easier to enforce. 

I like it and see no problems.  Make it so.

I like where you're going but using your example, if a team only won 50 games in season 2 then they may legitimately be rebuilding in season 13 as they may have built up, made their run and be out of steam again. What about a penalty for twice in 8 years (or more often)?

50 wins? Where is that blind monkey?

Real general managers get fired after a number of seasons of bad performance.  That's why minimum win requirements make sense here as well.  50 is too low.  Start at 55.  I prefer the four season minimum win rule: 55/125/195/280 (ala Coop, MG, etc.).

At the end of each season, each GM should get a note in their inbox from their owner evaluating their performance.  Not incredibly detailed - just have some canned commentary related to how close they were to their win requirement (or congratulating for making the playoffs, etc.).

Posted by moosep on 11/2/2011 7:58:00 PM (view original):
50 wins? Where is that blind monkey?

Looking for his other nut while slammin' his little monkey hands on the keyboard.