People wonder why there are super teams and owners leave leagues because of it. Owners can turn around a team a helluva lot faster if they can budget however they want. What we have now isn’t like MLB at all. Realistic is having whatever budget you want each year. Rebuilds would take less time.

Posted by adlorenz on 1/14/2021 2:06:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bripat42 on 1/14/2021 11:15:00 AM (view original):

Posted by adlorenz on 1/13/2021 5:36:00 PM (view original):
Thanks! I just combed the page and I have 51 features varying in sizes from tiny to pretty large. I don't know the timeline a lot of thing but I promise we will try to make changes to help the playability of the game.

-Adam

Adam,

I greatly appreciate the improved communication, and today's patch is great both in terms of game improvement and the patch-update announcement so we know what is happening.

However, I am concerned about "51 features varying in sizes from tiny to pretty large." First, I obviously don't know the exact numbers, but I think it's safe to assume the users posting in this thread (and on the forums in general) represent a significantly small percentage of overall users. Second, many suggestions in this thread are, for lack of a better term, controversial.

This is a great game as is. I hope today's update, as welcome as it is, is not a step toward turning HBD into something entirely different from what it already is through multiple major changes.

Again, thank you for your effort and the improved communication.

bripat42, I can assure you I have no plans to make massive changes to HBD and how it is played. The 51 features are sourced directly from this thread and they are a launch point for ideas, not promises of things we will change or fix, but there are a lot of good ones.

The budget change today I understand is impactful, but its your team's money and to keep transfers from happening because you have $1,999,999 and not $2 million is tough to look at and justify, you still will pay the penalty for transferring budget, but you won't have "dead" money.

One thing I will say is that we have to make the game much more consumable for newer players. So what I will say, and I know this is going to ruffle some senior players feathers there needs to be a couple adjustments on what the attribute titles are. One that stands out to me which is horribly misleading is "contact". In just about every other game contact means something completely different. So I am not going to change how contact functions in game engine, but make it so a casual players can jump in and know what the terms actually mean. Rather than have to have a senior player explain to them what it really means like I had to have done.

I hope that reassures you a little bit, thanks again!

Adam

Not sure what you mean by "In just about every other game contact means something completely different." Are you talking about baseball or other sports?
?
Pretty much every video game or sim game for baseball calls the ability to hit the ball "contact." What do you call Tony Gwynn? A contact hitter. Gwynn's ability to make contact is very high. Albert Pujols, in his prime, would have a high contact and high power ratings.

Definitely not "horribly misleading" for anyone who knows baseball, which is the audience for this game.

I've said this before, but I think it makes sense to ease up on the $4MM incremental limit on the way down because you can fire certain specialist scouts within the staff. However, on the way up, i mostly agree that it is fine the way it is -- the scouting department isn't one guy you hire, it's an entire staff. A staff, as a whole, develops over time. In fact, I think it would be neat to add another category like a specialist category that can make a 20 million dollar budget's staff even more accurate and give it the ability to see more players. Same idea here -- specialist budget can only go up 4MM a season to a certain maximum.

Having to wait three seasons to have your desired scouting is not ideal when you first takeover a team, but it is more realistic and once you have experience, you can appreciate the work it took to get there.

Posted by tlowster on 1/18/2021 12:36:00 AM (view original):
I've said this before, but I think it makes sense to ease up on the $4MM incremental limit on the way down because you can fire certain specialist scouts within the staff. However, on the way up, i mostly agree that it is fine the way it is -- the scouting department isn't one guy you hire, it's an entire staff. A staff, as a whole, develops over time. In fact, I think it would be neat to add another category like a specialist category that can make a 20 million dollar budget's staff even more accurate and give it the ability to see more players. Same idea here -- specialist budget can only go up 4MM a season to a certain maximum.

Having to wait three seasons to have your desired scouting is not ideal when you first takeover a team, but it is more realistic and once you have experience, you can appreciate the work it took to get there.

I understand your point, but owners who take over a franchise are usually taking over a franchise with a high draft pick. So why saddle that owner with unreliable scouting when they have the chance to draft the players at the top of the draft? It is basically another penalty against a new owner. With $10M scouting, you already don't see every player, so the chance that the best player available isn't on your draft board. Even if that player is on the new owner's draft board, the ratings aren't reliable.

The issue I would have with extreme swings in budgets is that you’d have teams that essentially tank (within world rules) with high scouting and low payroll to accumulate young talent, then once enough of those guys are ready for the majors, take scouting down to zero, and sign the top free agents for huge contracts.

2 seasons later you drop the team, you have a $145MM player payroll of aging veterans.

Some people may love this, but I’m not a fan. Not sure this type of team (or available strategy to compete with) is good for new owners either.

Posted by mhulshult on 1/18/2021 8:52:00 AM (view original):
The issue I would have with extreme swings in budgets is that you’d have teams that essentially tank (within world rules) with high scouting and low payroll to accumulate young talent, then once enough of those guys are ready for the majors, take scouting down to zero, and sign the top free agents for huge contracts.

2 seasons later you drop the team, you have a $145MM player payroll of aging veterans.

Some people may love this, but I’m not a fan. Not sure this type of team (or available strategy to compete with) is good for new owners either.

+1

Anything that can be done to prevent owners from doing shady activities, I am all for. I get the point of owners wanting more freedom with budgets, but this could lead to more open franchises due to shady owners pulling crap like referenced above.

I hate taking over teams with stupid #'s in budgets like 10/10 in hs and coll scouting, 12 med or 8 in adv scouting and you have to slowly go up or down to reach where you want it. We all know that unless its 20 its very fuzzy so unless you can get it there in one season its dumb. Im ok with maxing payroll for a season or 2.

The budget restrictions (or lack of them) would be great options for worlds to customize. Have a wacky ignore-budget-limits world of people want one, other worlds can leave it alone.
Personally I wouldn’t like the lack of restrictions for reasons well stated above.

Posted by hypnotoad on 1/18/2021 10:20:00 AM (view original):
The budget restrictions (or lack of them) would be great options for worlds to customize. Have a wacky ignore-budget-limits world of people want one, other worlds can leave it alone.
Personally I wouldn’t like the lack of restrictions for reasons well stated above.

That's not bad actually. Maybe this is the direction we want to go? Have these options available in worlds so that the comish and owners can make these decisions on a lot of hot button topics we have discussed. Obviously all of the changes made wouldn't be able to be optional, I could see that being a headache for programmers, but hopefully the budgeting one would be.

Maybe a budget change of 5 million a season rather then 4? That way its 4 seasons to go from 0 to 20 and vice versa rather then 5.

It's been a while, but don't the Sim BB leagues work that way -- very customizable? I think big changes would play hell with existing leagues however.

I don't think that's a good idea. I could see where in weak worlds the commish could customize the settings to please himself.

Then those worlds fail. As they should. Seems pretty simple.

Waiver Wire order will be displayed on the Waiver Wire page

Good on you guys for doing stuff. I get you want to make smaller changes to the code as you figure it all out. I'm a super fan of that strategy.

Now that we've seen the ordered list of team on the Waiver Wire page, I think I speak for 90% of us saying we don't care. It's a waste of space. I want to know my rank. Don't care about ever other team. If I do, I can look at the standings. I have done this exactly zero times over my many HBD seasons.

I get not every small change is going to be a win. I expect you'll roll about 1 / 5 back out, as there will be unintended consequences.

This ordered list of teams isn't harmful, but now that you understand this part of the code, isn't it best to remove that list from the display?

" This ordered list of teams isn't harmful, but now that you understand this part of the code, isn't it best to remove that list from the display? "
- or put it at the bottom, below the player list, so it's less obtrusive.

Buffing Advanced scouting, how about giving it a bit of a boost. In real life advanced scouts can refer to scouts that prep for the opposition. There certainly is a great advantage to knowing where to stay away from a hitter, pull tendencies to better position the OF, etc... so how about giving the equivalent to an additional 5 PC, 2 Range, 1 Eye, and 3 splits to players (numbers are just out of a hat) at max

Just a thought...