I agree that it may make the game too chancy, and if its too chancy it will drive many away, which is why I'd be fine with dumping the DiTR system all together.  Doesn't matter if its a "free" player or not, doesn't matter if you did nothing to earn it, what you have is a game that is presenting an idea after every all star game that a handful of random (?) players is said to be a Diamond in the Rough, a guy that has been overlooked and now has great potential, however a vast majority of the time, those guys are nothing more than AA roster fodder at best.  Personally, it makes the game look weak, poorly planned.  how many new owners have asked about what the DiTR means, and the reply on the coaches corner always end 'don't worry too much about it though, they're generally crap'?  It makes it look 2nd rate, and I don't think it lives up to WIS expectations, hence the tweaking.

I don't complain about the DiTR's I get, I complain about the system in place that produces few actual diamonds, even fewer at positions outside of C and RP.  For the "look" of the game, I'd prefer they just dumped it over where it stands prior to this announcement.  With this improvement, we'll see.

It's cool that additional variance mirrors real life, but the fact of the matter is that it doesn't actually improve the quality of HBD.

IRL a team pays a skinny, athletic 17 yr old dominican kid $25K and 1 out of 100 times he bulks up and becomes a slugger at the ML level.  Landing these types include a lot of luck, but normally scouts will see something that makes him worth a stab.  Here we just see that a guy has 20/40/25/25/30 ratings or w/e and if he magically gains 50 points in each category it's not like you were smart to pick him up, just lucky.  If you're talking about acquiring really raw guys with potential for incredibly abnormal development patterns, then there would need to be an entirely separate dimension for that to make sense.  Like you'd need to add a rating that quantifies the odds of becoming a DiTR and have the accuracy of it depend entirely on your scouting budget, so at least you invested something to find those types.  Managing your farm system would have a fun little aside of lottery ticket management.

Personally I wouldn't care that much for such a feature, but I guess it could work for some ppl.  Right now the main problem with DiTR is that it's a 99% useless feature, since it normally makes high A players good enough to play AA.  I think it would make it more interesting if we had a higher % of players becoming fringe ML players, but I wouldn't want uncapped upside for players who fall in the DiTR pool.

Seems to me that the positions of C and RP typically make up around 25-30% of a major league roster.  So it's not like these good DITR's don't have a place to play if they become ML quality.

Posted by mlhutch on 10/27/2011 1:27:00 PM (view original):
Can you please allow us to see world rules when deciding whether to join a world?  That seems like a pretty critical piece of information needed to make an informed choice on a new world.

I always attach the rules to the invites I send. I guess if you join a world that goes public and reverts back to private--it could be an issue.

Just because no one in your world screams "WHHHEEEEEE!!!!  LOOK AT MY DITR!!!!!" doesn't mean owners haven't gotten them.   In my example, I was simply giving him playing time in the minors because he had a yellow note next to his name.   I go to erase the note, because he's on the BL roster for good now, and I notice he's a DITR.   If 1-2, in your entire world, each season become legit BL players, it works.    You seem to want every team to get 1-2.  If that happens, the draft becomes irrelevant.   You're getting as many BL players from DITR as you are in the draft.

the draft already is irrelevant for non-tankers imo

If you can't find a BL player late in the first round or mid second, you probably have 0/0 in scouting.

ya but the quality of ML players at that stage is so low that it's just not worth the $ spent on draft scouting.

you just get much better bang for your buck out of investing the money in the FA market imo

Well, that's a different story than "the draft already is irrelevant for non-tankers", isn't it?

Shouldn't DITR quality and number be tied to one of the scouting budgets?  Advanced scouting seems like the best fit to me, but I'm flexible.  In fact, I set the school record for the "v-reach" as an 8th grader.

Posted by MikeT23 on 10/27/2011 3:48:00 PM (view original):

Don't you think, if everyone took you approach, that the game would change for you?

can i talk my **** without you interrupting me every 2 minutes?

Posted by topoftheworl on 10/27/2011 3:51:00 PM (view original):
Shouldn't DITR quality and number be tied to one of the scouting budgets?  Advanced scouting seems like the best fit to me, but I'm flexible.  In fact, I set the school record for the "v-reach" as an 8th grader.

well that would be one way to make advanced scouting almost not completely worthless.

With all this talk, I have to post two players here.  I have only played 9 seasons and only in one world.  First of all, I've had my share of perfectly worthless DITRs.  But I've also had Willie Javier (http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=3097943), a gold glove RF who is also good for about 35 HR and 100 RBI.  Not bad at all.  Even after the DITR, though, I almost didn't give him a shot in the BL because he had such uneven ratings and had a bad spring training.  After that, I almost traded him because I just wasn't sure if he could ever make it.  Well, it turns out he's a pretty darn solid player.  Not a perfect one, but good.  And he was a $100k IFA.

And I don't always do this well, but recently in the late first round of the draft, I got Donald Chong (http://www.whatifsports.com/HBD/Pages/Popups/PlayerProfile.aspx?pid=4133167).  Apparently others overlooked him because he was old, or because he would never make it as a starter.  But he's going to be an above average SuA who can pitch 6 innings in a pinch if I need him to.

I think doing well with both IFAs and late draft picks is just a question of being able to recognize the value of a player with an abnormal set of attributes, and knowing how to use those attributes rather than counting on finding a player who has all 70s or 80s across the board.