Official Tanking Penalties Topic

Personally, I have no problem with a team running a 38m payroll and having 50m in prospect money.   I don't know how much "value" you get when paying 35m(which equates to 50m with transfer penalty) for an IFA that was 20m in scouting.   Most likely it's 3 seasons before he hits the bigs and you can keep him for 10 seasons.    You've spent 70m(7m a season) plus his yearly salary for one player. 

But a lot of owners don't like it.
3/26/2013 9:36 AM
I don't like it, but I see it as a competitive advantage for the reason listed.

Not that I've used the advantage well.
3/26/2013 9:52 AM
There you go.
3/26/2013 6:43 PM
I left my point unfinished.   You used over 1/3 of your budget for one player that you won't use in the bigs for at least another 6 real-life months.  If you stick around for 3 real-life years in that world, you've spending an additional 7m per season until you lose control of said player.   You only take the hit in one season but you're also assuming you'll be around for 13 more seasons in that world.   I'm not a "bounce around" kind of owner and I've played 13 or more seasons in exactly two worlds.   The ones I commish.
3/27/2013 8:42 AM
I'm relatively new to the game, so I'm hoping this post is taken as a "food for thought" contribution for you more knowledgeable folks to discuss rather than any sort of expert opinion.

As far as I can tell, having a bad team results in two things: first, high draft picks which pretty much directly leads to great players; and second, low player salary, which can lead to better IFAs. The only drawback (I can see) to tanking is an owner has to endure some "bad" seasons. But, if your goal is to cut salary and get a high draft pick, a tanking owner has just as much to root for during their season as a winning owner -- the race for the top seed in the playoffs is nearly identical to the race for the top draft pick. The inherent downside to tanking seems ambiguous to me.

So my question is: what kind of effect would modifying the salary cap have? In an overly-simplistic view, real-life success generally leads to an increase in fan interest and therefore an increase in money. Lack of success leads to a manager being fired (seems like minimum wins can approximate this) and also for an uninterested fan base. If competing for a WS is not enough of a reward to keep owners competitive every season, is there some sort of incentive that can be tied to success, such as a higher cap or a better chance for Free Agents to sign, that could be instituted? Basically, it seems there isn't a clear counter-balance to the advantages tanking gives -- if some sort of benefit was given for a team with prolonged success (or even just a lack of losing), maybe that would give more of an incentive to stay competitive?

Anyway, just my 2 cents, and apologies if this has been covered before -- in which case, think of it as a chance to educate a newer player, and I would appreciate it!

4/3/2013 3:49 PM
Creating an uneven playing field, i.e. giving some owners 185m budget and underperforming owners 175m(or whatever # you choose) will lead create a bigger problem for an owner who "just doesn't get it."   All bad teams aren't tankers.     So this guy gets frustrated and gives up.  Now you have to sell a bad team to a new owner. 

And, if the penalties weren't substanial, there would be no reason to have them.   I think most owners can work around a bad 5m contract.   Giving them 180m to work with isn't a big deal. 
4/3/2013 4:29 PM
The two public worlds I am in are Berra and Ford.  Each of them had 4 100+ win teams this past season.  I just took a look at the histories of these teams to see how many of these guys are possible tankers who built super teams.  Of the 8 teams I found only one even semi-tank.  He has seven seasons in the league and the first 3 were pretty bad.  Even still he has never made it out of second round of the playoffs and I would hardly call his a dynastic super team.  

My first life in this game I had some really bad teams.  I wasn't really tanking as much as I took on teams that I shouldn't have and stuck around for a year or two and failed at rebuilding so miserably that I left the game all together for about a year. 

My point is that losing to the tune of $20 bucks a season isn't very fun and is a deterrent in and of itself.  Then you have the chances of down draft classes, bad IFA years, other owners competing with you for IFA's, injuries, AND the potential lack of judgement costing you players at every turn.  I would guess that for every successful tanker there are at least 3 or 4 who failed miserably at it.  Of course people who really know the game can go into a terrible world and tank.  I am just not sure why people really care that much about it?  There are lots of leagues (even public ones) that don't really have a tanking problem OR if they do they implement a MWR to help solve it. 

I mean how big of problem is this really?  Does WIS really even view it as a problem?  I personally think they don't.

4/5/2013 12:03 PM
People care because no one plays in a vacuum.    Your 10 losses are 10 wins for someone else.   Say an owner plays to win for the first 91 games.   He's 45-46 and a couple of games out of the playoffs.   He decides to tank.   He finishes 4-67.   He played to win for 91 games and forced teams to beat him.   He played to lose the last 71 games and handed wins to teams.

Do you think that could have any effect on who makes/misses the playoffs?
4/5/2013 12:24 PM
I am not arguing that tanking is a good thing.  I am saying I don't play in the best worlds in HBD (two are public) and I just don't have a ton of experience with tanking actually happening.

Abandoned teams happen a lot.  Inept owners happen a lot.  Had a problem with an Alias owning two teams in the same league and trading the good players to his second team.  However, owners who know how to play the game intentionally losing 110 games and building a super team just hasn't happened much in any of my 7 leagues. 

My question is does this happen in lots of worlds that I am missing?

4/5/2013 4:01 PM
None of mine because we started doing MWR in them.   But, if people are talking about it, it happens enough.
4/5/2013 4:09 PM

Good discussion guys. Thanks to all for chiming in.

Tanking definitely happens enough to be an issue gotigers17. I wouldn't wager a guess as to what % of dreadful teams are that way on purpose, but it's enough for it tio be an issue for sure. Especially when you see owners who have multiple WS titles running teams that lose 110+ games for three, four, five seasons in a row.

There is simply a dfference between doing the best you can with what you have (lack of talent, old geezerly husks, not much payroll, etc.) and *trying* to lose. Often the smoking gun is a 30 y/o player at AAA who is much better than the High A caliber, non-prospect, player a guy is using in the Majors. Tjat's not an honest effort. As I've pointed out before, and pajammies recently mentioned above, there are real life repercussions to tanking that do not exist here. Can you imagine the long term damage to its fanbase a team in real major sports would suffer if it wasn't perceived to just be rebuilding, but actually trying to lose as much as possible? Not to mention whatever penalties it's league might place on it.

I compare and contrast the other Dynsaty games. In my experiences and from what I can tell still, there's really no alias issues and no tanking issues there. It is in large part because there are no rewards for losing on purpose because there's no draft, and aliases can't trade even if they wanted to. I realize that's beause those games replicate college sports and HBD replicates pro baseball, but the point is still interesting to ponder.

 

 

 

4/9/2013 10:20 AM
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Official Tanking Penalties Topic

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