Posted by jholthus on 9/16/2021 4:13:00 PM (view original):

Hello Everyone,

With the MLB playoffs quickly approaching the WIS staff has been busy trying to think of a fun, new idea for HBD. We thought, wouldn't it be great to provide users with great rewards? Wouldn’t it be great to see who can truly be a dynasty building GM? Wouldn’t it be great if someone could call themselves the best of the best?

We’ve come up with an idea to see who can be successful at Hardball’s version of the Premier League. This would be an “exclusive” league dedicated to experienced, successful owners to go head to head for a chance to not only crown themselves league champion, and be engraved in the HBD/WIS history books but also earn some pretty awesome rewards by doing so.

Eligible owners would need to meet the following criteria to be eligible to enter the league.

1. 20+ HBD seasons completed

2. 1+ World Series ring

3. 1+ Active HBD franchise

The league rules would be pretty simple. Evenly matched teams would be created. This would be like a normal HBD season where trades, draft, budgeting and of course winning all still play a role, the catch… you only have 5 seasons to achieve as much success as you possibly can. At the end of the 5 seasons, the bottom 6 owners (by win %/overall success) are relegated out of the league. The rest of the owners have the option to pay the league fee again to be a part of the next set of 5 seasons. After each set of 5 seasons the league is “reset” where the teams are evenly balanced again and everyone gets a clean slate to try to win.

What is the league fee you ask? Well the investment you would make to be a part of this league would be an upfront total of $250 for the 5 season cycle. This ensures that for a minimum of 5 seasons there won’t be waiting for the world to refill, there won’t be new owners coming in and messing up franchises in the middle of the season and everyone is in it to win it.

I haven’t even gotten to the best part of this exclusive relegation league yet. Not only would you get normal HBD rewards/payouts for success, but we have decided to sweeten the pot even more. Additional payouts at the end of the 5 season cycle would be given out as follows:

1st place - $1000

2nd place - $600

3rd place - $300

4th and 5th place - $100 in WIS site credit

We would like to get the ball rolling on this ASAP and wanted to get user feedback to see if this is an idea that the community would be on board with.

I would play

I would be very interested

Posted by jholthus on 9/16/2021 4:13:00 PM (view original):

Hello Everyone,

With the MLB playoffs quickly approaching the WIS staff has been busy trying to think of a fun, new idea for HBD. We thought, wouldn't it be great to provide users with great rewards? Wouldn’t it be great to see who can truly be a dynasty building GM? Wouldn’t it be great if someone could call themselves the best of the best?

We’ve come up with an idea to see who can be successful at Hardball’s version of the Premier League. This would be an “exclusive” league dedicated to experienced, successful owners to go head to head for a chance to not only crown themselves league champion, and be engraved in the HBD/WIS history books but also earn some pretty awesome rewards by doing so.

Eligible owners would need to meet the following criteria to be eligible to enter the league.

1. 20+ HBD seasons completed

2. 1+ World Series ring

3. 1+ Active HBD franchise

The league rules would be pretty simple. Evenly matched teams would be created. This would be like a normal HBD season where trades, draft, budgeting and of course winning all still play a role, the catch… you only have 5 seasons to achieve as much success as you possibly can. At the end of the 5 seasons, the bottom 6 owners (by win %/overall success) are relegated out of the league. The rest of the owners have the option to pay the league fee again to be a part of the next set of 5 seasons. After each set of 5 seasons the league is “reset” where the teams are evenly balanced again and everyone gets a clean slate to try to win.

What is the league fee you ask? Well the investment you would make to be a part of this league would be an upfront total of $250 for the 5 season cycle. This ensures that for a minimum of 5 seasons there won’t be waiting for the world to refill, there won’t be new owners coming in and messing up franchises in the middle of the season and everyone is in it to win it.

I haven’t even gotten to the best part of this exclusive relegation league yet. Not only would you get normal HBD rewards/payouts for success, but we have decided to sweeten the pot even more. Additional payouts at the end of the 5 season cycle would be given out as follows:

1st place - $1000

2nd place - $600

3rd place - $300

4th and 5th place - $100 in WIS site credit

We would like to get the ball rolling on this ASAP and wanted to get user feedback to see if this is an idea that the community would be on board with.

Yes

The big objection concerning player development.

The way we handled this in the Draft Tournament was we implemented a rule that everyone must sign all amateur draft picks who were willing to sign for slot money.

This kept fresh talent coming in every season.
YES, a lot of good players never got signed, but in the big picture so what?

WRT IFAs, they were exceedingly cheap.
Several really good ones would get signed for only a few million. In 3 seasons, only 9 IFAs were signed for over 10M.

Despite the claims in previous posts there were many who contributed at the BL lvl much sooner than 3 seasons. That's a mindset created by the current HBD setup.

I'd say be careful with this idea. You have far too much interest to limit this to one world, and you don't want to bastardize the existing product by encouraging experienced owners to migrate to these "premier" leagues. It's hard enough already to fill worlds.

By the way, it's not my thing, but if I were to do it as it's described I'd bottom out every budget item and fatten salary for FAs. Seems like a lot of issues with the format.

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.

AWOL owners was the one obstacle we could never overcome.

The large buy in makes it less likely folks would bail, but I agree you're going to see some of the bottom feeders lose interest no matter what.

At least we did every single time we ran it.

Posted by texashick on 9/17/2021 4:36:00 PM (view original):
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.

This was exactly what we did. The draft took over 6 weeks typically. The appetite isn't as great as you would think. It's very time consuming, and for one version we even had some jerk bail after 8 rounds. That was a hard replacement to find and stalled the draft for over a week.

Posted by tlowster on 9/16/2021 5:39:00 PM (view original):
Why not just have a premier league with Premier payouts and premier requirements to join? No resets, no special payouts. Just one premier league where the buy ins are exactly 10 times more than normal and the payouts are exactly ten times more than normal. Then, if it's successful, create another one. Make the requirements higher too though -- .525 overall record; 1 as ring; 30+ HBD seasons; etc.

Can purchase 1 season of Premier League for $250 or if I want to buy a ten season premier pack, it can be $2000 for buying in bulk.

Just thoughts on an open forum here, but what if, instead of trying to find a premier league that pleases everyone, we could have two separate premier leagues -- 1. something similar to the one originally mentioned where teams are in it to see who is most successful at running their franchise like the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets and Phillies; 2. Have a regular HBD premier league where it is just regular HBD, but there is a larger entry fee, larger payouts and a minimum threshold to get in. This way, owners that have had success running their franchise more like the Rays, Twins, A's and Brewers can still have a piece of the pie.

I think you can get plenty of interest in both types of leagues.

Posted by tlowster on 9/18/2021 10:13:00 AM (view original):

Posted by tlowster on 9/16/2021 5:39:00 PM (view original):
Why not just have a premier league with Premier payouts and premier requirements to join? No resets, no special payouts. Just one premier league where the buy ins are exactly 10 times more than normal and the payouts are exactly ten times more than normal. Then, if it's successful, create another one. Make the requirements higher too though -- .525 overall record; 1 as ring; 30+ HBD seasons; etc.

Can purchase 1 season of Premier League for $250 or if I want to buy a ten season premier pack, it can be $2000 for buying in bulk.

Just thoughts on an open forum here, but what if, instead of trying to find a premier league that pleases everyone, we could have two separate premier leagues -- 1. something similar to the one originally mentioned where teams are in it to see who is most successful at running their franchise like the Yankees, Red Sox, Mets and Phillies; 2. Have a regular HBD premier league where it is just regular HBD, but there is a larger entry fee, larger payouts and a minimum threshold to get in. This way, owners that have had success running their franchise more like the Rays, Twins, A's and Brewers can still have a piece of the pie.

I think you can get plenty of interest in both types of leagues.

I think tlowster's idea of 2 types of premier leagues is good.

Sounds good. I would be in.

I haven’t even gotten to the best part of this exclusive relegation league yet. Not only would you get normal HBD rewards/payouts for success, but we have decided to sweeten the pot even more......

I think several people who posted about the low reward payout vs the high buy in missed the highlighted statement above. I know I did when I first read the original post. Getting normal HBD rewards/payouts should help keep owners with no shot at the extra prize money interested in playing seasons 4-5.

How about fixing the current game first? That would please 100% of your customers.

yes

IN