Hey, is this tanking, shrewd managing, or just plain unethical?

[ronhatch]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

Yeah, like I said early on, the chances are just too high for a non-cheater to have to face one of these jackasses in play. Even when you see someone who is "legit" good at the lower rungs of the league there's always that question. Maybe they'll have fixed this by 22 but I kind of doubt it since it appears to be an issue with the admins deciding there's no issue and then glad-handling the people who complain.

It's weird, too, because this will also dissuade whales. Why spend money to get ahead when you can just cheat?

Y'know... I was thinking about this more, and to me the real issue is that the design intent of the game simply doesn't line up with the actual reward structure of the rules as written. The rules need to be changed so that long-term success lines up with the short-term act of playing to win the current season and even in some cases the current game.

I've noticed that the current structure also encourages tanking when your friend (or in my case, brother) happens to have a team at the same level that isn't on track to promote or relegate at the same time as yours.

[dkgo]

I said that two years ago!

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by ronhatch

Y'know... I was thinking about this more, and to me the real issue is that the design intent of the game simply doesn't line up with the actual reward structure of the rules as written. The rules need to be changed so that long-term success lines up with the short-term act of playing to win the current season and even in some cases the current game.

I've noticed that the current structure also encourages tanking when your friend (or in my case, brother) happens to have a team at the same level that isn't on track to promote or relegate at the same time as yours.

Yes. It's been debated to death for 2.5 years now. The official answer is usually "we don't want the rich getting richer".


I think time has proven the rich will find ways, regardless. The current structure doesn't necessarily encourage tanking, but it also doesn't really encourage getting to the top either...the incentive, other than bragging rights, is just not there.

[Orcin]

I have trouble understanding why a tournament that runs every day awards 12,500 points to the winner, but a league that takes a week to complete only awards 3,000 points to the winner.

[dkgo]

Originally Posted by eldur00

Yes. It's been debated to death for 2.5 years now. The official answer is usually "we don't want the rich getting richer".


I think time has proven the rich will find ways, regardless. The current structure doesn't necessarily encourage tanking, but it also doesn't really encourage getting to the top either...the incentive, other than bragging rights, is just not there.

That answer is also completely inconsistent with the rest of the game. The "rich" get richer by having the best cards to play high-reward tournaments with. Open tournaments with premium card rewards are won by teams who don't need it. They already get more PP during the season through achievements. Which is fine, you want to give people an incentive to buy points because that is what keeps the game going.

I am 100% convinced the best thing to do is to assign every team to a tier based on the strength of their active roster at the weekly reset. As crude as total overall rating is perfectly fine, the mechanism is already there for cap tournaments. Then use the roster checks you have now to prevent teams from adding in a full team of high rated players once the league is established. Higher tiers get a PP multiplier on achievements. All done within the game itself instead of community police yelling at each other.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by dkgo

That answer is also completely inconsistent with the rest of the game. The "rich" get richer by having the best cards to play high-reward tournaments with. Open tournaments with premium card rewards are won by teams who don't need it. They already get more PP during the season through achievements. Which is fine, you want to give people an incentive to buy points because that is what keeps the game going.

I am 100% convinced the best thing to do is to assign every team to a tier based on the strength of their active roster at the weekly reset. As crude as total overall rating is perfectly fine, the mechanism is already there for cap tournaments. Then use the roster checks you have now to prevent teams from adding in a full team of high rated players once the league is established. Higher tiers get a PP multiplier on achievements. All done within the game itself instead of community police yelling at each other.

I agree partly with this. I've been 100% for the abolition of Pro/Rel since the beginning, but I don't think the seeding should be restricted only to active roster, there has to be other elements put in to ensure WINNING is actually an incentive to play. I think the seeding "number" should be more complex than that, especially for people who want to buy a few higher cards and not make them have to wait a week to play them.
And I agree about users being the police. I can't think of a single instance of a game that tried to use that where it all went peachy and the company never had to resort to other means after a while. There might be examples, but I don't know of any on top of my head. And the reason is because it's a lot easier to get a small group of people (devs) agree on what is considered poor behavior than the masses (players).



We still get a weekly thread proving we don't all agree on what tanking is...how are we supposed to police our neighbors ?

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by Orcin

I have trouble understanding why a tournament that runs every day awards 12,500 points to the winner, but a league that takes a week to complete only awards 3,000 points to the winner.

That is a very good point.

[BertBDJ]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Very strange - this team (in Rookie) has Greg Maddux and then no other pitchers, it uses all batters in its rotation and pen. And has several stud hitters in its lineup. Only Iron cards show on the roster. Noticed it because last night I was waiting for the season to end, and there was a tie-breaker scheduled to determine one WC spot. I thought it was a little off that Mike Ford was the starting pitcher...

Possibly actually just AFK?? I've got him in my league now (2034) he's running the same lineup as you experienced with him in May. He hasn't made it out of rookie league. This just seems like a player who gave up, and now this terrible lineup is floating through the system. I beat him by 20 runs three games in a row. Unfortunately, he's not in my division, and this disparity will impact all the teams fighting for playoffs. That division will likely get both wildcards, and a tonne of points to get better with. I also understand that HR's are balanced across the league, so that division will probably have the HR leader as well, = more points.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by BertBDJ

Possibly actually just AFK?? I've got him in my league now (2034) he's running the same lineup as you experienced with him in May. He hasn't made it out of rookie league. The only change I can see is that he now has a Maddux in the SP lineup trying to rack points. This just seems like a player who gave up, and now this terrible lineup is floating through the system. I beat him by 20 runs three games in a row. Unfortunately, he's not in my division, and this disparity will impact all the teams fighting for playoffs. That division will likely get both wildcards, and a tonne of points to get better with. I also understand that HR's are balanced across the league, so that division will probably have the HR leader as well, = more points.

I think he's leaving it as-is *because* it will never get out of Rookie. Maybe at some point when he's hoarded a ton of PP he'll change it.

Maddux was there in May as well, check the rotation from the screenshot. In Rookie that card (especially with that defense and those hitters) will be a pitching Triple Crown threat every year and rack up tons of pitching award PP.

Imagine how many PP Bagwell, Ichiro, Bellinger and Yaz pull in every year in Rookie. The rest of that lineup is there for D to support Maddux.

The only way you could keep a team with players like that stuck in Rookie forever is by using hitters for the rest of the pitching staff. It's totally on purpose IMO, and I am surprised that team hasn't been banned by now.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

and I am surprised that team hasn't been banned by now.

You're probably alone on that front.
There are tons of teams that are abandoned early on. It's very possible they had those plans initially, then just gave up.

[Orcin]

This is a perfect example of a team that should have been set to AI control after it was reported and investigated. If the owner comes back to "fix" it, and it gets reported again, then it should be banned.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by eldur00

That is a very good point.

One "Pounding" achievement gives 3000 PP, and if you've got a tanker in your league with a really shady pitching staff you'll probably get a few of those when you play them.

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by eldur00

You're probably alone on that front.
There are tons of teams that are abandoned early on. It's very possible they had those plans initially, then just gave up.

Well let's say "surprised" in that it's clear they should be banned. I think manpower isn't being devoted to doing that though. If it was this would be an extremely cut and dry case.

Maybe he abandoned it, maybe he just has a number of PP in mind and he checks every week or so to see how much he's made. There's no work needed with a team set up like that. It will rake in PP and keep losing enough to stay in Rookie, it doesn't need to be tinkered with at all.

He could also be using the PP as he goes and have cards stockpiled on the inactive roster. Once he feels he's fattened up enough then he'll un-sandbag.

[dkgo]

Originally Posted by eldur00

I agree partly with this. I've been 100% for the abolition of Pro/Rel since the beginning, but I don't think the seeding should be restricted only to active roster, there has to be other elements put in to ensure WINNING is actually an incentive to play. I think the seeding "number" should be more complex than that, especially for people who want to buy a few higher cards and not make them have to wait a week to play them.
And I agree about users being the police. I can't think of a single instance of a game that tried to use that where it all went peachy and the company never had to resort to other means after a while. There might be examples, but I don't know of any on top of my head. And the reason is because it's a lot easier to get a small group of people (devs) agree on what is considered poor behavior than the masses (players).



We still get a weekly thread proving we don't all agree on what tanking is...how are we supposed to police our neighbors ?

There are definitely better ways to seed all the teams, but overall active roster rating is a simple first pass that everyone could understand. Plus it rewards strategically built teams. Once the season has started every team has 100% incentive to win since that earns you the most points while having no negative impact on your future points like the current system.

It is imperative for all the mechanics of the game to be self-contained. Most people aren't browsing the forums for the latest regulations and no one actually downloads the terms and conditions to make sure they are playing correctly. It's a common strategy for F2P players in nearly all similar resource building games to grow slowly, a lot of players familiar with this genre aren't going to think they are doing anything wrong by sandbagging PP. The game economy is screaming at them to do it.

[Kris Jardine]

Just for the record, that team has been reported a grand total of 0 times. Not a single time. Other than in this post.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by dkgo

There are definitely better ways to seed all the teams, but overall active roster rating is a simple first pass that everyone could understand. Plus it rewards strategically built teams. Once the season has started every team has 100% incentive to win since that earns you the most points while having no negative impact on your future points like the current system.

It is imperative for all the mechanics of the game to be self-contained. Most people aren't browsing the forums for the latest regulations and no one actually downloads the terms and conditions to make sure they are playing correctly. It's a common strategy for F2P players in nearly all similar resource building games to grow slowly, a lot of players familiar with this genre aren't going to think they are doing anything wrong by sandbagging PP. The game economy is screaming at them to do it.

I disagree that ignorance is a defense. However, the game is not built optimally to drive success, and as such, there are definitely cases of people tanking out of using logic. Logic should dictate that he who wins, wins bigger than he who loses. Sadly, and I think it's been pointed out beautifully by Orcin, when you have a daily tournament that offers about 4X the amount of points a regular weekly league provides to its champion, who needs to even take care of their main team anymore ? Even if I accumulate all the 20 points for a Shared Shutout during the week that I can't earn in a tournament, I still don't come close.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

Just for the record, that team has been reported a grand total of 0 times. Not a single time. Other than in this post.

By the way, the team that I reported earlier today is still tanking... now 6-32 with iron players on the active roster in gold.

[Spieler]

Originally Posted by Orcin

I have trouble understanding why a tournament that runs every day awards 12,500 points to the winner, but a league that takes a week to complete only awards 3,000 points to the winner.

Now this I agree 100% with you on. The league prizes should be MUCH higher.

[Spieler]

Or tournaments nerfed a bit on PP and über-cards. Hand out packs of all kinds and as many as you can. But 10k+ rewards and cards that can sell for millions can be a bit much. Was PEAK Bartolo Colon a tournament reward? His bid was up to 2.5m PP, don't know what it ended up going for.

[Orcin]

I would prefer to see the league rewards increased, especially for the first time achieving at each level. That might encourage people to climb the ladder.