To play Devil's advocate here, is the ability to see other teams bugets a counter to the real world where a prospective IFA or free agent will say "Tacoma has offerred me $100 mil over 5 years, better top that" or "You've offered me more, but no way do I want to pitch in the Bronx, I'm heading to Tampa even though they've offered me less"

Personally, I don't mind the system.  Its not hard, but its not exactly easy to figure out how much each team has for IFAs, let alone who can land them.  In the end, cheaters are going to cheat, if you have the biggest budget for an IFA, then if you really want them, you're going to sign them for whatever it costs.  You can just as easily bump up the cost of landing an IFA that you have no intention of signing.  See a half way decent prospect, but you're holding out for something better, offer him $8 mil and see if someone jumps it.  perhaps you up your offer again until you stop seeing resistance, then pull your offer back, or resubmit a much lower bid and wait for the next guy.  The IFA market is so different here than it is in real life, guys go for $20 mil+ bonuses on a regular basis in HBD.  In real life you can sign the top 2 IFAs for under $12 mil most years (excluding the posting rights for some of the established Japenese stars or Aroldis Chapman last year), teams just aren't going to dish out that much cash for a very raw 16 year old from the Dominican.  The projections of players in WIS is so much more exact, if you see a stud, you know he's going to be a stud, and you're not going to leave $20 mil on the table hoping someone else comes along even though you have the most cash to spend.

How is it cheating to use what's presented to you by the makers of the game?

Its not, but the scenerio where one coach says you can't beat me, so don't bid and save me money vs #3, and I'll get you back next season.

If I'm in the IFA market, I'll make a list of everyone that has a decent size of money for IFAs to help gauge my battles a little.  If I'm in the offseason FA market, especially for a big money FA, I'll compare the bugets for other teams on the Trade propossal list and attempt to figure out who I'm battling and if I have a shot at winning or if I need to move on.  No problem using the tools that Admin gives us, but you know there are some that stretch the limits of fair play.  Frankly I'm not sure what you can do, other than police heavily, which I'm sure you do as a good Commish and look for irregularities that may spell something iffy.

So why did you say "In the end, cheaters are going to cheat"?   You seem to imply that taking the time to figure out who has how much IFA money is cheating. 

because some were saying that changes needed to be made because it helps people cheat.  My point in that statement, is that no matter what you do, cheaters are going to cheat, as long as people have the ability to communicate outside of the WIS realm regarding their teams, people can work around things if they want.  So don't make a change simply because it would make it tougher for someone to cheat.

Again, its not cheat, at least in my view, if you're using information readily given to you by WIS regarding this game to your own advantage.  If others don't take advantage of it, then that is their problem.

OK, it's not cheating.  Fair enough.

But it's very unrealistic.    While the Sux may know the Yankees current payroll, they have no idea how much they're willing to spend.   I can look at any team you have, and we're not in any worlds together, and tell you your max payroll.    Doesn't that strike you as odd?   Would you tell me how much you have in your savings account?

"its not cheat, at least in my view, if you're using information readily given to you by WIS regarding this game to your own advantage"

Agreed.  But the point of this thread was: is it realistic that WIS should be giving us this information?  Wouldn't restricting the sharing of this information add more strategy to the game?

sorry tec, I was addressing the point that someone brought up that they could use all that information to cheat.

anyhoo, back to the main point.  Its not realistic, but then again its not realistic that a player doesn't come back and say "New York is offering twice that amount, you better raise your offer"  and tells yout he specific team that your fighting against.  Its not realistic in that some guys take less than other teams are offerring on the FA market so they can play where they're more comfortable in real life, but in HBD its all about the money.  Its not realistic that a team in New York has the same budget as a team in KC, etc....

Removing all budget numbers for other teams would add more strategy to the game, but how much?  Its still all about how much can you spend, and how high are you willing to go.  I honestly think it would lead to more cheating, where in 3 or 4 guys, who know that they're key players in the FA market, or the IFA market could band together to corner that market, either thru trade chats where WIS could easily investigate such cheating, or offline where WIS has no ability to track that sort of cheating.  At the end of the day, if I have $20 mil availalbe for an IFA, and there comes 1 guy who is a certifiable TOR arm, then I'm going to offer that $20 mil, and let the cards fall where they may.

taz, the scenario you outlined above can happen today.  In fact, it can happen much easier because you can just look at budgets to see who the potential IFA players are.  If budgets were hidden, then owners would run the risk of outing themselves as possible colluders if they started sending trade chats asking if the other owner was going to go after Cruz or Matsuyahoo.  If, as you say, the "cheaters are going to cheat", that doesn't mean that you have to make it easy for them to do so.

As to your question of how much more strategy hidden budgets will add, the answer is very simple.  Mike already outlined it earlier in this thread.  If I have $15m unspent prospect budget, and the next guy only has $8m, then I know I can can win a bidding war with a $8,000,001 bid, and still have $7m available to spend on other guys.  If budgets were hidden, I wouldn't know that.  I might underbid and lose, or I might just put in a pre-emptive bid of $15m for the next big guy and be out of the game for the rest of the season.  Making those decisions are part of the strategy to be gained.

While I agree w/ your last statement, IFAs don't sign right out of the gate.  If you have 15 mil to spend, why offer that up right away?  Why not offer 6, and see where things go?

Basically, I agree with you in that it definently makes things more difficult, but the basic premise doesn't change.  I have $x to spend in free agency, IFAs, coaching, etc....  A guy pops on the FA or IFA market, I deem what I think he's worth, what I'm willing to pay and where I have to draw the line.  Under your scenerio, I might be $7,999,999 and get the message that I'm behind.  Unless your last minute shopping, the guy isn't going to sign that cycle anyways, so you have time to offer the $2 more to land the guy.  If you don't know that the next guy has $8mil left, perhaps your next bid is for $10 mil.  You get the "your in the lead message" and then sit around and wait until he signs.

I don't think you'd even have to be cheating to know who the players in the IFA market generally are.  The teams w/ low team payrolls and typically in the IFA market the heaviest, unless you're in a world where there are budget restrictions beyond the standard.  I don't know if asking if another coach is going after a particular player or not is cheating, but I think most can make a reasonable guess at who's a player in the IFA market, and who's not.

To me, there are a lot more things that can be done to make the IFA market more realistic, starting out w/ eliminated the original demands.  Its pretty stupid that you can spend $4 mil on IFA scouting and get lucky enough to see a guy pop w/ an $11 mil demand and know he's going to be a legit ML player, while the guy who's poured $20 mil into his IFA scouting may never see the guy.  I think its kind of stupid that both draftees and IFAs are not available until after budgets are set.  Washington knew last year that Bryce Harper would be at the top of the board and he wasn't going to come cheap.  Many of the top end IFAs are already whispered about before the IFA signing day and many already linked to specific teams for specific dollar amounts.  Changing these aspects would create much more strategy to me than knowing what another team's budget is.

I guess I should add that hiding budgets would also add value to ADV.   Right now, if I'm looking to trade for a 2nd year player, I check his draft spot.  Then I check the other owner's budget for when he drafted him.   If an owner spent 20m in HS and drafted the 18 y/o 14th, there's a good chance the player is legit.   If I don't know how much he spent on HS scouting and I'm looking at my 0 ADV projections, I have no idea if that player was a first round value or a colossal mistake. 

Conversely, if I trade for a 2nd year player and get a lot of interest from someone with 20m in ADV, I know they're seeing something in him.   If I don't know how much they budgeted for ADV, I have no idea if they know his true value.

That's a good point Mike.

I completely agree with the idea of eliminating initial demands, for all the reasons given both here and in other threads.

Not sure if I agree with knowing who the draftees and IFA's are before budget day.  That opens up another big can of worms.  It allows owners to see, right up front, who the big ticket IFA's are.  They can decide to punt the current season payroll-wise and just stockpile cash towards the IFA's.  One of the things works well with the current system of guys being introduced gradually throughout the season is that if an owner decides that he's going to be a big player in the IFA market and holds back his cash, he's taking a risk that the big IFA never shows up.  Taking such risks (or not taking them) should also be part of the strategy, not only during budget time, but throughout the course of the season as well.

Back to the first point; you're right, but only up to a point.  If you can tell how much the next guy has to spend, then you know where to set your limits on bidding.  If I'm up to $7.5m and know that the next guy only has $8m to spend, I know my next bid of $8.001m is guaranteed to be a winner.  But if I don't know what the other guy has, I might decide that I don't want to go over $7.5m because I have no idea how much it's going to take to win, so I might concede and walk away from the IFA.  I could lose a stud because of $501k sitting in my wallet that I never spent.

It's also been suggested that IFA bidding should be a "one and done".  One bid, and that's it.  Not sure I agree with that, it may be a bit extreme  But maybe if there were a set number of bids you can make on a particular guy, maybe 2 or 3, then you'll see the dynamics of bidding change.  You won't see the incremental bids every 4 hours until you take the lead.  You have to put more thought into what your first bid should be, what your second bid should be, and most importantly what you third (and final) bid should be.  More thinking = more strategy.

But you wouldn't know that $501k was keeping you from signing the guy until he signs.  For all you know, somebody might have had the funds and desire to go up to $16m.  That's the beauty of not knowing other people's budgets.