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Hey guys, a little slow around these here parts at the moment, so I figured this would be the best time to get this discussion going.
The Free Agent round is solid as it stands. If we don't change a thing, it still works. It's not as good as it could be though, so that's the goal of this thread, to figure out how to make it better and then if it's worth doing so.
Currently every owner gets $100,000 as a FA budget. We do blind bidding, highest bid gets the Free Agent. Minimum bid is $5,000. JCMElway, Bowlenball, and possibly others created these fundamental aspects of the game. They are phenomenal and it's a great starting point.
Logically, the fallacy lies in that after the initial blind bidding, not everyone will have used up all of their funds. The reality is that anyone wanting to win the game will want to use these funds to obtain as many lotto tickets as possible.
The question is should owners be punished for bidding on a player and losing? That's essentially what we are doing now. I don't believe that's the best way. The strategy of bidding intelligently and accurately holds up regardless.
Which brings us to the next question, how do we fix it?
Last year, we had a FA2 round where leftover funds were allowed to be bid on the remaining crop of Free Agents. This was fun and rewarding, but only a handful (10 maybe) people participated. We can't really count that part of the game if nobody is doing it. So, maybe a FA2 round is just too much.
Which means, we need to make the original FA round the end-all, be-all.
This is my suggestion:
Allow owners to bid over budget (like 200k or even more) but require them to number their prospects/bids in preference. Once they have been rewarded 100k worth of players, they are done. This would allow some flexibility if they keep getting outbid on their preferred prospects and ensure they get some Free Agents. The owners not wanting to really participate in FA still have the option to just front load all their money on a handful of guys and be done with it. The owners that love the FA round can basically roll the concept of a FA2 round in the FA1 round and insure they get their budget's worth of players. This would keep the FA round singular and avoid the situation where too few owners are showing up for a subsequent FA round. If an owner doesn't exhaust his budget, it's his own fault for not putting enough players and bids down. To me, that's better than the game parameters potentially causing someone to not get Free Agents at all even if they participate heavily.
Now, the downside is that this is more work for Bowlenball or whoever is collecting the Free Agency bids. It's still just spreadsheets, but now it's not as simple as highest bid wins, done. I don't think it's overly complicated though. Now, it's pretty much highest bid gets cross-checked with remaining funds, done. It's another step, but the amount of time will be greatly increased because theoretically there will be many more prospects being bid on. (I think that's a great thing in and of itself). If the amount of work is too daunting though, you could simply increase the minimum bid to $10,000. This would decrease the amount of prospects, possibly by half, that would need to be sorted. I'd rather see it stay at 5k, but I can understand if it needs to be raised to 10k.
Regardless of the decision on the minimum bid, I see this as the best way to improve the Free Agent round going forward. The only con I can see is the increased amount of work grading, but that's easily handled either by just doing the extra work, getting a volunteer to do the extra work, or increasing the minimum bid.
Thoughts?
The Free Agent round is solid as it stands. If we don't change a thing, it still works. It's not as good as it could be though, so that's the goal of this thread, to figure out how to make it better and then if it's worth doing so.
Currently every owner gets $100,000 as a FA budget. We do blind bidding, highest bid gets the Free Agent. Minimum bid is $5,000. JCMElway, Bowlenball, and possibly others created these fundamental aspects of the game. They are phenomenal and it's a great starting point.
Logically, the fallacy lies in that after the initial blind bidding, not everyone will have used up all of their funds. The reality is that anyone wanting to win the game will want to use these funds to obtain as many lotto tickets as possible.
The question is should owners be punished for bidding on a player and losing? That's essentially what we are doing now. I don't believe that's the best way. The strategy of bidding intelligently and accurately holds up regardless.
Which brings us to the next question, how do we fix it?
Last year, we had a FA2 round where leftover funds were allowed to be bid on the remaining crop of Free Agents. This was fun and rewarding, but only a handful (10 maybe) people participated. We can't really count that part of the game if nobody is doing it. So, maybe a FA2 round is just too much.
Which means, we need to make the original FA round the end-all, be-all.
This is my suggestion:
Allow owners to bid over budget (like 200k or even more) but require them to number their prospects/bids in preference. Once they have been rewarded 100k worth of players, they are done. This would allow some flexibility if they keep getting outbid on their preferred prospects and ensure they get some Free Agents. The owners not wanting to really participate in FA still have the option to just front load all their money on a handful of guys and be done with it. The owners that love the FA round can basically roll the concept of a FA2 round in the FA1 round and insure they get their budget's worth of players. This would keep the FA round singular and avoid the situation where too few owners are showing up for a subsequent FA round. If an owner doesn't exhaust his budget, it's his own fault for not putting enough players and bids down. To me, that's better than the game parameters potentially causing someone to not get Free Agents at all even if they participate heavily.
Now, the downside is that this is more work for Bowlenball or whoever is collecting the Free Agency bids. It's still just spreadsheets, but now it's not as simple as highest bid wins, done. I don't think it's overly complicated though. Now, it's pretty much highest bid gets cross-checked with remaining funds, done. It's another step, but the amount of time will be greatly increased because theoretically there will be many more prospects being bid on. (I think that's a great thing in and of itself). If the amount of work is too daunting though, you could simply increase the minimum bid to $10,000. This would decrease the amount of prospects, possibly by half, that would need to be sorted. I'd rather see it stay at 5k, but I can understand if it needs to be raised to 10k.
Regardless of the decision on the minimum bid, I see this as the best way to improve the Free Agent round going forward. The only con I can see is the increased amount of work grading, but that's easily handled either by just doing the extra work, getting a volunteer to do the extra work, or increasing the minimum bid.
Thoughts?
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