Hello Everyone,

We appreciate the feedback and interest that we have received so far. This idea is still in the preliminary stage and were mostly gauging interest and trying to get any feedback to the initial set of ideas. To address some of the concerns that have been expressed:

5 seasons too short and making IFA and Draft Pointless

- To help with this we could augment draft picks/FAs to be produced with higher than normal ratings to reduce the time it would take for the players to be ML ready.
- We could also implement DITR players more frequently through the course of a season
- The 5 season threshold is to give franchises time to make some changes but not so long that it is the typical "dynasty" game and then becomes too similar to the already existing product.

Balancing of teams initially:

- We have a couple of ideas here. 1) We could augment teams that would all come out exactly the same and would be using average ratings for players at all positions across HBD. 2) Run a starting set of rosters similar to how they are now where teams could be balanced, pitcher heavy, bat heavy etc. 3) THIS ONE IS FOR FUTURE CONSIDERATION AND WOULDN'T BE FOR THIS INITIAL ROUND but develop sliders so that each user could set "priorities" for how they want their roster to be generated based on pitching, defense, power, contact, etc.

Relegation and rebalancing of rosters:

- The point of relegation would be to drive competition to keep owners trying their best to stay in the league or be "kicked out"
- With the roster reset we are still working on this and it seems to be a popular idea that if you stay in the league you keep your current roster. To add to this we could "reset" the relegated teams' rosters only to help the new owner have a competitive team.

Criteria for getting in and winning:

- We can look at the criteria required to enter the league and make it more difficult. We set the bar where we did as we weren't sure what the interest from the community would look like
- As far as who would get in, we haven't looked into this idea too much at this time
- Determine winners would be primarily on overall win % but would have modifiers in the ranking system for post season success

Cost being high:

- The idea behind this is to have a more "exclusive" world. The rewards are substantially more than for a normal HBD season, since there are the typical rewards on top of the payouts.
- The thought behind the higher price point would also be to keep users engaged as they've invested more into this team than their normal HBD teams
- This world is also going to require a lot of manual work as there isn't any automation for some of the aspects that we're proposing here and it is going to require site staff to monitor this situation regularly to ensure that rules are being followed.

Again, we are still in the early stages of this idea and greatly appreciate all that we have heard back on this so far. I know that I didn't address every concern that is out there but I tried to address some of the more common/recurring themes.

thoughts -

1. evenly distribute rosters - if randomly created, everyone's team needs to be even. One method is every team's overall ranking is the same. I know overall is a very imperfect stat but it's one way of doing it. The preferable option (but i'm guessing too difficult to program) would be a fantasy draft of all players of the world at the creation of each new world.

2. draft/internationals - eliminate college/HS/INTL from everyone's budget and give everyone the same ability to see everyone. that way everyone is on the same playing field for both winning now and in the future

3. relegation - trying to factor in how playoff wins work is too difficult. let's keep it simple - at the end of every season the bottom X owners in wins for the regular season are non-renewed. This can be a set # of teams or it could be the lowest team in each division. Eliminates everyone's biggest pet peeve - the tanker.

3(a) taking over a relegated team but only having one year to get above the regulation line - tough challenge but it's part of what will make the league interesting.

4 - buy-in / payouts - this is irrelevant to me but seems important to others. this is probably the easiest fix.

5 - no 5-year reset. league keeps rolling.

#1: The best pitcher does not always win the Cy Young. Randomly created teams works for me, you should be able to use what you are given and make it work with your additions. #2: I would lower the amount of money allotted to each team, make them choose wisely. #3: The Veto trade threshold should be lowered (less veto's needed to veto a trade). #4. I REALLY like your idea of creating higher rated players for the AD, our fantasy draft.

Posted by buddy996 on 9/17/2021 10:28:00 AM (view original):
And six years is a long time. How about cutting it down to 3 sets of 5 seasons, they would only be around 4 years

You continue to have reading comprehension issues.

It is ONE set of 5 seasons.

No mention of 5 sets of 5 anywhere.
Yet you are stuck on this 6 year thing.

I'd honestly want everyone to start with the exact same team (obviously different player names) but each team would have the same players with the same ratings all across the board. This will really separate the cream from the chaff (or whatever that saying is) I've seen players with ratings in the high 80's overall that I wouldn't put on my team if they were thrown at me.

Either that or like jholt mentioned (without the sliders) if you get the nod to be in the league you get to pick 'heavy hitting' 'heavy pitching' 'fielding and base stealing' and have one of 3 pre-set types of teams to build off of.

I'm starting to realize this is too rich for my blood and I'm not good enough to break even or be able to afford it. So while I love it and will be watching from afar, I'm probably a pass.

As constructed, is the "League of Legends" more of a game of skill or more of a game of chance? If all rosters are equal, and all participants use the same settings, it's a game of chance. Henceforth, it's illegal wagering. Might want to rethink this one WIS.

- Determine winners would be primarily on overall win % but would have modifiers in the ranking system for post season success

I'd be real careful with this. This has the potential to incentivize unethical play in current "casual" leagues as owners try to increase their career win% to qualify for this league. In my HBD experience, higher career win% often (not always) indicates owners who are willing to make lopsided trades with newer, inexperienced, owners to the detriment of league health. More than a few leagues have folded after a high career win% owner comes in, pulls off a lopsided trade or three, and creates an unbeatable goliath to the point where too many owners quit because what's the point, and the league can't recover.

If this legends league becomes popular, that win at any cost mentality is going to filter down to the current casual leagues as owners try to qualify for this league. This type of incentive has the potential to harm current HBD leagues in the long term, making worlds even harder to fill than they already can be.

Is the new revenue you create from this going to make up for leagues that fold as ringers seek out and exploit the softer/easy going leagues?

TL;DR - if you thought trades were a problem now, you ain't seen nothing yet.

How are ballparks assigned? To be fair, everybody could be giving a generic park (ratings 0, 0, 0, 0, 0). However, I'd prefer being able to pick something different than the generic. Like was stated before, if every owner's players and ballpark starts out with the same ratings it is no longer a game of skill but only a game of chance.

If there still is a draft, how do you assign who gets the #1 pick vs the #32 pick? The #1 pick in season 1 would have a huge advantage over the #32 pick. This is because the #1 pick in season 1 will likely be a huge contributor at the ML level in seasons 4-5.

I think WS could print money if they let people a league start via a 25 round slow-timed snake fantasy draft and then "evenly" divy up the remainder of the of the league. I think there would be alot of appetite for 1, 3 or 5 year formats that way.

I'm intrigued. The competition would be fun. Not concerned about the payout. WIS is in this to make money, as they should be.

please send invite

Somehow they finally comment and make it worse.

Maybe you should re-read the original post: It says: "After each set of 5 seasons, the league is "reset" where the teams are evenly balanced and everyone get a clean slate to try to win." Not only ONE set of five. It did not have to say 5 sets of five, he was taking suggestions or other options or opinions. He did not specify how many sets of 5 seasons.

5 seasons too short and making IFA and Draft Pointless

- To help with this we could augment draft picks/FAs to be produced with higher than normal ratings to reduce the time it would take for the players to be ML ready.
- We could also implement DITR players more frequently through the course of a season
- The 5 season threshold is to give franchises time to make some changes but not so long that it is the typical "dynasty" game and then becomes too similar to the already existing product.

I would estimate that around 90% of the DITR I have gotten over the years never made it to the majors. Giving us more of them does not solve the issue of IFA and draft being pointless in seasons 3-5.

EDIT: It also usually takes 2-3 seasons of development after a player gets a DITR boost before they are ready to contribute at the ML level. This need for development time makes DITRs in seasons 3-5 worthless as well.

Posted by dedelman on 9/16/2021 8:09:00 PM (view original):

Posted by bripat42 on 9/16/2021 7:41:00 PM (view original):
I like the idea in general, but the 5-season reset means it's not really Hardball Dynasty. No one -- or almost no one -- will invest in the draft or IFAs or any kind of long-term development, certainly not after the first or second season of the 5-season cycle. Others in the thread have addressed this flaw.

As well, if HBD is genuinely serious about this, HBD staff needs to serve as an independent commissioner -- and that should include handling trade protests. Plenty of owners already try to abuse the "trade veto" mechanism as a means to block trades they don't like. With more at stake, such actions only would increase, thus one of the reasons an independent commissioner would be beneficial.

As well, how would AWOL owners be handled? It's naive to think they won't be a factor just because the price and the stakes are higher. Especially as Season 5 is winding down, if an owner knows he'll be relegated out, he may just go on autopilot and bail out, and that impacts the rest of the league.

These are just off the top of my head. I think there likely are a lot of issues that either haven't been thought through or the plan for handling them hasn't been shared with us.

This post exactly summarizes my concerns. Additionally, it's not just late in season 5 that people will go AWOL; there will be owners 100 games behind after season 3 that will bail, leaving ghost ships around for 2 seasons.

Not necessarily true. You still get regular HBD rewards (ie: you can still get credits for playoff appearances and WS wins in Seasons 4 and 5, even if you're out of it).