The Best & Worst of the Suggestions
Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:32 pm
This article is a little later than I wanted to put out, but it’s better late than never. The league has cooled down some, but we were on a nice hot stretch of many different suggestion discussions, a surprise poll, and another Bobcat GM threat of quitting due to the tax system and point reward structure. It was almost too much to keep up, even for general managers who sign in daily and keep up with the latest threads. I feel that lost in the blitzkrieg of suggestions there were some ideas and discussions that we lost in the flood, which made me think about doing a writeup to highlight some of the better ideas, in my opinion. There were some “not so serious” suggestions and jokes, so I decided “it’s time to fire up the article.”
Let’s jump right into it:
Worst Ideas
Quitting the Bobcats to fix the tax problem
This may have been the pinnacle of the craziness that was last week, and it was a surprise to half the league. Everyone knows there is an open league Skype chat for any and all to join, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, especially for those that are in it. Long story short, the tax penalties have been heavily discussed, and something about the Boston Celtics trade block had Darth (now Ross Perot) feel the best thing to help the league was to quit his team. While hilarious and concerning at the same time, it was a terrible suggestion.
Moral/Ethics Test
Another treasure from our Bobcats owner. After the very first depth chart thread our commissioner saw a team’s depth chart and noted that deliberate tanking depth charts may need to be revisited. This immediately split the league into two sides with not a lot of middle ground. Either you don’t care that the game becomes less fun, or you realize unrestricted tanking potentially could hurt the competition in the league. Darth, unsurprisingly, is in the latter group, but this one suggestion rivaled the “Quit the Bobcats” suggestion, which is saying something. In the “Should Playoffs Matter More” suggestion thread, an “ethics/ morals test to gauge a prospective GM before we invite them into our sacred fraternity” was proposed. Although mostly a joke, knowing Chad this had some seriousness to this. It went somewhat unnoticed, but not by me.
Paid Regression
I… I am not sure where to start with this. If it wasn’t for a threat to quit or an unethical morality test, this would have easily taken the cake for the worst suggestion. Ever since De La Rosa there have been jokes about “I’d pay to train him down in potentials to train his currents” but with Doug, this was not about De La Rosa. I want to point out before continuing that Doug DID IN FACT support the idea of training purple potential players with very low current ratings capped at green currents to help develop these raw college players. Now that we got that out of the way, there was a surprise poll posted by our commissioner that asked if we were open to rehashing the purple training. Whether the wording was worthy of the Pulitzer Prize for titles is up for debate, but the vote came in as a resounding “No.” Well, it was worth a sho—what’s this new suggestion thread from Doug? I support the idea of training purple potential guys if they have a yellow current or lower, but a paid regression is by far one of the funniest suggestions I’ve seen. The lone reason listed in the original post made it even better. The fight to allow purple trainings is still going on, but it’s an uphill battle that’s not gaining ground.
Unhappy Players
Wig has great ideas and we’ll visit some of those later in this article, but this suggestion actually frightened me for personal (selfish) reasons. As part of the “how do we curb tanking” discussions, Wig tossed out the idea of deactivating unhappy players now that we can see them in the nodes. In principle, this is actually a great idea, if it worked the way it probably should. Basically, if you sit a more talented player over a worse player, the talented player becomes unhappy and can’t be played. Unfortunately, this does nothing to curb tanking and only randomly hurts competing teams. If I’m tanking, why would I care if I can’t play the more talented player if that’s what I’m already doing? The game is random with unhappy players as well. When Enes Kanter was benched, he didn’t get unhappy. You know who’s unhappy? Monte Palmer on the Pels averaging 28mpg (started 23 games) and Brett Lopez averaging 18mpg (my primary 6-man playing both backup C and PF). If the game worked how we feel players would react in real life this would be a potentially good idea, but with how random the game is the suggestion only hurts competing teams.
The Better Suggestions
New CBA
Sometimes very lengthy suggestions (and media entries) can be overlooked. Sometimes I log in just to quickly look at what’s new and will scan through a thread. Sometimes GMs just search for their teams in threads and won’t read contributions if it doesn’t involve them. One reason or another, long writeups sometimes don’t make as much of an impact as they should. This idea completely changes RFA and UFA as we know it, and we haven’t had an offseason change so radical since we implemented RFA, and for some of you change is very scary, but it doesn’t have to be! Some of the ideas I really like in thread is free agency taking up 5 sims, contract extensions come back with no negotiating, and RFA becomes more strategized. The idea isn’t perfect (none are) and it hasn’t been fully dissected due to the outrage of other suggestions. I’m not sure I love the idea of 6 year contracts, and the idea of taking a pick for RFA-declines may completely change how we view non-blue players. The suggestion may take a couple of reads to form an opinion as it is a lot, but the offseason would be revigorated.
Should Playoffs Matter More?
Shameless, shameless plug, but hey if you don’t like it you should have wrote the article first! During the tanking discussions on how to penalize teams, an idea was thrown out by the commissioner that maybe the postseason needs to matter more. It’s simple and makes sense. For seasons we’ve had teams who were too good to lose but not good enough to really make noise in the playoffs complain that they are stuck. You can shamelessly sit your starters, yeah, but not many are willing to do that. The system we have in place gives you a point for every 5 wins and 3 points for making the playoffs. If you’re a team that realistically won’t go further than that, it nets you a whole 11 points at a minimum (40 wins as we’ve seen in the West is 8 points, plus 3 for making the playoffs). So 11 points and the 15th pick vs 6 points for winning 30 games and a higher chance of a lotto pick. Those 5 points can be had for selling a late 1st, there’s no way that’s worth it. I’ll never understand why the league is so willing to reward bad teams because “a game should be fun” but not reward good teams because “the rich get richer.” I blame Wig absolutely mindfricking the East for over 3 decades.
Removal of Point Cap in Trade
This proposal just makes sense. You know where this arbitrary number of 10 point max per trade came from? A guy who spent damn near $500 on a laptop in a league, what, 5 years ago on a different version of this game we play? There’s no actual reason it’s set at 10. This was also at a time where points were almost meaningless. Trainings (which we’ve revised and improved) weren’t that worth it. Media articles (which we’ve revised and improved) weren’t rewarded as equally as team accomplishments (which we’ve revised and improved). Even luxury tax (which we’ve revised and improved) were revised and improved. My point is that we’ve revised and improved many areas of this game involving points, but we’ve never looked at the cap of points in a trade. Points are more important than ever, and removing or increasing the cap could increase its value as we find ways to train, trade, and pay tax. I again will blame Wig mindfricking the East for over 3 decades, as this was proposed before by Ryan (thesyndicate) and the main reason against? Superteams remaining super (i.e. Wig). Thanks, Wig.
Awards Nomination Points Revamp
I’m all for removing self-nominations for GMOY, including Coach of the Year, and allowing 6MOY and MIP self-nominations as I’m not looking that hard at your team, but the GMOY becomes more valuable if the league recognizes you did well and someone nominates you, rather than the same few GMs who are taking away votes from more deserving nominations (except the years they deserve it). That gets me over 1500 words.
Let’s jump right into it:
Worst Ideas
Quitting the Bobcats to fix the tax problem
This may have been the pinnacle of the craziness that was last week, and it was a surprise to half the league. Everyone knows there is an open league Skype chat for any and all to join, and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, especially for those that are in it. Long story short, the tax penalties have been heavily discussed, and something about the Boston Celtics trade block had Darth (now Ross Perot) feel the best thing to help the league was to quit his team. While hilarious and concerning at the same time, it was a terrible suggestion.
Moral/Ethics Test
Another treasure from our Bobcats owner. After the very first depth chart thread our commissioner saw a team’s depth chart and noted that deliberate tanking depth charts may need to be revisited. This immediately split the league into two sides with not a lot of middle ground. Either you don’t care that the game becomes less fun, or you realize unrestricted tanking potentially could hurt the competition in the league. Darth, unsurprisingly, is in the latter group, but this one suggestion rivaled the “Quit the Bobcats” suggestion, which is saying something. In the “Should Playoffs Matter More” suggestion thread, an “ethics/ morals test to gauge a prospective GM before we invite them into our sacred fraternity” was proposed. Although mostly a joke, knowing Chad this had some seriousness to this. It went somewhat unnoticed, but not by me.
Paid Regression
I… I am not sure where to start with this. If it wasn’t for a threat to quit or an unethical morality test, this would have easily taken the cake for the worst suggestion. Ever since De La Rosa there have been jokes about “I’d pay to train him down in potentials to train his currents” but with Doug, this was not about De La Rosa. I want to point out before continuing that Doug DID IN FACT support the idea of training purple potential players with very low current ratings capped at green currents to help develop these raw college players. Now that we got that out of the way, there was a surprise poll posted by our commissioner that asked if we were open to rehashing the purple training. Whether the wording was worthy of the Pulitzer Prize for titles is up for debate, but the vote came in as a resounding “No.” Well, it was worth a sho—what’s this new suggestion thread from Doug? I support the idea of training purple potential guys if they have a yellow current or lower, but a paid regression is by far one of the funniest suggestions I’ve seen. The lone reason listed in the original post made it even better. The fight to allow purple trainings is still going on, but it’s an uphill battle that’s not gaining ground.
Unhappy Players
Wig has great ideas and we’ll visit some of those later in this article, but this suggestion actually frightened me for personal (selfish) reasons. As part of the “how do we curb tanking” discussions, Wig tossed out the idea of deactivating unhappy players now that we can see them in the nodes. In principle, this is actually a great idea, if it worked the way it probably should. Basically, if you sit a more talented player over a worse player, the talented player becomes unhappy and can’t be played. Unfortunately, this does nothing to curb tanking and only randomly hurts competing teams. If I’m tanking, why would I care if I can’t play the more talented player if that’s what I’m already doing? The game is random with unhappy players as well. When Enes Kanter was benched, he didn’t get unhappy. You know who’s unhappy? Monte Palmer on the Pels averaging 28mpg (started 23 games) and Brett Lopez averaging 18mpg (my primary 6-man playing both backup C and PF). If the game worked how we feel players would react in real life this would be a potentially good idea, but with how random the game is the suggestion only hurts competing teams.
The Better Suggestions
New CBA
Sometimes very lengthy suggestions (and media entries) can be overlooked. Sometimes I log in just to quickly look at what’s new and will scan through a thread. Sometimes GMs just search for their teams in threads and won’t read contributions if it doesn’t involve them. One reason or another, long writeups sometimes don’t make as much of an impact as they should. This idea completely changes RFA and UFA as we know it, and we haven’t had an offseason change so radical since we implemented RFA, and for some of you change is very scary, but it doesn’t have to be! Some of the ideas I really like in thread is free agency taking up 5 sims, contract extensions come back with no negotiating, and RFA becomes more strategized. The idea isn’t perfect (none are) and it hasn’t been fully dissected due to the outrage of other suggestions. I’m not sure I love the idea of 6 year contracts, and the idea of taking a pick for RFA-declines may completely change how we view non-blue players. The suggestion may take a couple of reads to form an opinion as it is a lot, but the offseason would be revigorated.
Should Playoffs Matter More?
Shameless, shameless plug, but hey if you don’t like it you should have wrote the article first! During the tanking discussions on how to penalize teams, an idea was thrown out by the commissioner that maybe the postseason needs to matter more. It’s simple and makes sense. For seasons we’ve had teams who were too good to lose but not good enough to really make noise in the playoffs complain that they are stuck. You can shamelessly sit your starters, yeah, but not many are willing to do that. The system we have in place gives you a point for every 5 wins and 3 points for making the playoffs. If you’re a team that realistically won’t go further than that, it nets you a whole 11 points at a minimum (40 wins as we’ve seen in the West is 8 points, plus 3 for making the playoffs). So 11 points and the 15th pick vs 6 points for winning 30 games and a higher chance of a lotto pick. Those 5 points can be had for selling a late 1st, there’s no way that’s worth it. I’ll never understand why the league is so willing to reward bad teams because “a game should be fun” but not reward good teams because “the rich get richer.” I blame Wig absolutely mindfricking the East for over 3 decades.
Removal of Point Cap in Trade
This proposal just makes sense. You know where this arbitrary number of 10 point max per trade came from? A guy who spent damn near $500 on a laptop in a league, what, 5 years ago on a different version of this game we play? There’s no actual reason it’s set at 10. This was also at a time where points were almost meaningless. Trainings (which we’ve revised and improved) weren’t that worth it. Media articles (which we’ve revised and improved) weren’t rewarded as equally as team accomplishments (which we’ve revised and improved). Even luxury tax (which we’ve revised and improved) were revised and improved. My point is that we’ve revised and improved many areas of this game involving points, but we’ve never looked at the cap of points in a trade. Points are more important than ever, and removing or increasing the cap could increase its value as we find ways to train, trade, and pay tax. I again will blame Wig mindfricking the East for over 3 decades, as this was proposed before by Ryan (thesyndicate) and the main reason against? Superteams remaining super (i.e. Wig). Thanks, Wig.
Awards Nomination Points Revamp
I’m all for removing self-nominations for GMOY, including Coach of the Year, and allowing 6MOY and MIP self-nominations as I’m not looking that hard at your team, but the GMOY becomes more valuable if the league recognizes you did well and someone nominates you, rather than the same few GMs who are taking away votes from more deserving nominations (except the years they deserve it). That gets me over 1500 words.
