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After all the discussions about the draft, how it has to be tweaked to make this or that work, I actually came to the conclusion that BB needs "fresh blood" in that department, but not the way it works right now.

I´d throw out a proposal of re-working the "talent" (=potential) concept of rookies and players overall.

Step 1 : Potential should be a hidden skill.

There´s two different approaches to that, but basically, I´d say that no drafted player whatsoever should cap below Allstar Level. His overall potential should remain "unseen", though you should be enabled to use scouting points on either people on the transfer market you´re interested in or in players on your own team / roster to get an evaluation what to expect from him. So basically you can use 2 scouting points to get the extra information that he´s a "three ball potential player" at any point during his career (or the draft). You might want to add that injuries can affect this overall potential to some degree over time (you cannot jump out of the stadium anymore once you had three torn ACLs). I´d love to have that kind of a "real player scouting" on any hidden skill issue btw, but that´s just a side note.

Step 2: Give every player it´s individual training speed.

Some guys are quick learners, others ain´t. Some develop quick and cap early, others slow and almost forever. I think adding some randomness (hidden skill also) would add to the diversity of the game. I´m not talking about factor 2 or 3 or alike, it´s more like between 0.9 and 1.2. I know to some degree it´s already there (size), but actually I´d like to see this "training speed bonus" as the real treat over the "potential". Would make trainees and draftees alot more competitive within a short time, while you still get a "Schrödinger Cat" once you evaluate the draft.

(Step 3: Give every player a "special strength" or "special weakness"

Pure optional thing - I´d like to see a player having something which he shines doing it. If you draft a SG, he should have a "bonus" skill (like Range, JS or Handling) in which he develops 10% better than others. If you get a PG, let is be Passing, OD or Driving. If you draft a SF, it can be OD, ID or JS, if it´s a PF, it should be JS, IS or Reb, if it´s a Center, it can be IS, Reb or Shotblocking. Or alike. Or maybe even completely random. And - of course - hidden.
Gives the player "more character", and you might have a reason to draft a player who is listed as a SG but lacks Range, because you can see he "behaves and thinks" like a SG, and will develop into one.
Otoh, you might aswell invent a "big lapse" skill, which takes longer to train, because the player simply has no clue how to approach that thing)

(Step 4: Retiring players get "visible"

Once a player retires or is sacked for whatever reason, ALL of his skills (including the hidden ones) can be seen until the start of the next season.
You can "learn" about your players then and get an idea how things work and don´t work by recalling the history of the player and comparing it with the hidden values. Based on those numbers you can start making up your theories about how things work and get together.)

Overall: give the players some character people have to work with (or around), give the managers some tools to find out something about their players (draftees and all others), create reasons, why "everybody" is worth a shot of some kind.

Should make any draft more interesting, and the number of instantly sacked guys would go down alot (aswell as overpaying just because of never-trained-out potential).

1. is the thing i could imagine from your suggestion, but this one would give older teams an advantage who know exactly how much potential their current trainees have. Also i expect, that supporter will betray "greedy" customers with wrong statement in the comment or in the transfer ads. So i won't like it.
Also finding the right trainees could get a torture, when you had to check out a lot of trainees by cash, and would make their prices fluktuate a lot, since it is more difficult to see talents.

2. this would make the game a lot more random, did i have the luck to get a trainee with a luck number etc. Also the training speed have so many influenced factors even today, that it is nearly impossible to predict training and even our training speed study is not more then an educated guess with pretty rough results.

3. ok athis is also imaginable, but why not let the manager create their players and especially it goes against the target to have more multiskilled player instead of monoskilled monsters.

You would like to play this game you are suggesting? I surely would not. Hidden potential, individual training, special strenghts and weaknesses. Most of those things hidden. Ok we old players would adapt, if we would want to, but what about the new players.
Even at the moment the game seems pretty complicated for a new user, but with some mentoring and giving some pointers of how things work they might stay with the game. With your new suggestions, nothing is known. Investing in scouting to scout your own players when you start playing, really?:)
Everyone would just wait for teams to go bot and get those players you know everything about.
Currently everyone can make their own superstars, training speed is based on height. If you have enough potential you can keep going for long. We don't need extra random events to end careers, lower potential or give some pointless speed to one skill. You can manage gameshape and try to avoid injuries with higher level doctor.
Your new system is a lot worse than we have currently.

The draft system in the current way is definately broken, if 95% of the players even cannot become regular league players in most of the leagues because they are limited by "potential". This part has to be fixed, and raising the lower threshhold of talent to a minimum of All-Star would be key of any change imho.

I think you really have to change that system into something where training and effort you put into a player(intelligent managerwork) outweigh the pure luck of pulling something great (which is to a high degree random), without making the system so easy that everybody can do anything.

In my proposed system, you can still build useful players out of most talents, but you have to invest both time and skill to find out who can be special and how you can make him a true star.

So yes, I would like to play a system like that, because you would be limited by your own skills more than depending on pure luck.

I didn´t get a rookie worth anything over the last ... 7? seasons or such, but was always able to get a useful "steal" trainee via transfer list for rather cheap money. Though having that luck by myself, it was still plenty time eyeing the transfer list and overpaying here and there a bit on pure potential - both things not many people can provide. Everybody can do "their homework" by putting together a decent training routine and maybe analyzing and scouting the improvments the own players keep making.

And of course you can lie about a players "hidden" abilities in your transfer ad - that´s what advertising is all about. But if you´re interested in a player, you might aswell invest a scouting point or two and interview him before buiying him to gat your own information about that guy (something that actually happens in real life also).

Last edited by LA-seelenjaeger at 12/7/2011 1:43:05 PM

The draft system in the current way is definately broken, if 95% of the players even cannot become regular league players in most of the leagues because they are limited by "potential"

You are just shooting bizarre numbers here. I say, with training, any player from draft, can be a starter in DIV5. Hell some of the draftees are starters in DIV4 from the start. Asking to change the the base potential to Allstar is like, asking the base skill level to be respectable. There must be guys who can't be a starter in DIV1-2, nomatter how hard you push them. The simplest thing you need to understand is, nomatter what you set the lowest point to, there will still be better trainees and worse trainees. Allstar can't be a starter in DIV1 anyway, you need atleast superstar potential for that, should we now set the lowest point to superstar?

I think you really have to change that system into something where training and effort you put into a player(intelligent managerwork) outweigh the pure luck of pulling something great (which is to a high degree random)

There are 48 draftees in a draft. That's 144 scouting points to do the "intelligent managework", thats 36 weeks of putting in 40k (sure you can save some using one of the 1+ pointers, but not much). In addition to that, you might want to scout your own players, to know their specialitys and crap. So the luck factor still remains in your system.
What happens to the transfer list? Total loto. You buy a pig in the bag. Great usage of transfer ad, get's you the cash. Buy this guy, he has MVP potential! There is no way you can check if that's true, unless you scout him. What if I have a list of 17 young players I think are worth looking at, sometimes even more. Where do you get the scouting points. It's pretty absurd. Sure you can't go that wrong, with everyone being an allstar potential. What a nice way to actually make potential almost useless.
NB! Perhaps you suck at drafting. I have used my points well and have profited 1,73mil$ (invested 1,65mil and made sales for 3,38mil)over 11 seasons. Only 3 seasons I have lost money in draft and I can't really count that last draft in, because I kept one of the guys for training. So you might start honing you skills toward "intelligent managework" instead of suggesting something worse?

Last edited by Kukoc at 12/7/2011 6:12:06 PM

I suck at drafting? Funny boy you are. There´s 4 people worth money in the average draft, and honestly, it´s great that most players can be 4th and 5th division starters, but any team who has the aim to play in 4th of 5th division is either stuck in a huge country or lost.

In the average draft I´ve seen over recent years, there´s like 10 out of 48 players who can by potential contribute in the league level I´m currently in AFTER at least 3-4 years of training, BUT out of those about 50-66% drop out because of bad or bad distributed starting skills and / or age. So that´s at best 5 out of 48 players (~10%) who CAN at some point be useful for the league level I´m playing at.

This is a point where I somehow agree with Pini - this is not balanced.

Pinis solution of making higher league drafts better would create a HUGE imbalance between the leagues and can hardly be a solution. So I´m trying to propose a different approach: erase the potential, or at least RAISE the average potential to a point where most players at least HAVE A SHOT of making the league.

Still, most of the players will end up beeing fired because of their initial skillset, but it would be nice to have like 20% of the players drafted around for some time. Won´t happen with the current system, and for sure not in higher league (happy celebrating your 4th and 5th league comparison, but that´s not a valid point for the discussion, because anybody´s aim should be to compete in a higher league AND because I do by no means ask for a higher skill level of the original draftees, so the impact rookies will have stays the same at the beginning of their career).

20% of the players staying in a league or contributing at some point of their career would mean it´s like 10 guys, which is roughly 2/3rds of the first round. Even bad classes in the NBA somehow manage that number.

It´s not about those 20% players beeing top-stars, which they should not be, but at least useful role players.

The overall league talent level will balance itself by the income of the players.

I don´t see your point about the transfer list at all. You still buy a player by his skills. If you are interested in a player because of his skillset and size and age, throw a scouting point or two at him to gather information. Maybe the scouting point systems needs to be adjusted so you can gain more than those points you mentioned, but honestly, I´d rather scout a player I´m interested in buying than using it on a rookie draft where I pull 7th or 8th, because at this point there will be nothing left but end of the bench guys at my league level. Drafting becomes more and more of a useless lottery the higher you play, just because the chance of getting anything useful if you´re trying to stay in the league is close to none, and the tanking and dropping teams or even the premature newbies get the good guys anyways, collecting money in their higher division stint, getting a high profile rookie, and then, two seasons later, coming back richer and stronger than you have ever been.

(Some data: in the last draft in my div II, there were 12 players all-star or above (I think 4-5 of them beeing exactly all star) - in division II in germany you should be an all-star to have a shot at beeing a rotation guy at some point (we might have a role player with a potential less here and there, but I guess most teams would accept my assumption here), with three of them beeing true money players who sold or can be sold for 500k+. Three "real stars" at this league level is perfectly fine (two of them were on teams relegated), but out of the remaining 9 players I don´t see more than 2 or maybe 3 becoming rotation guys at this league level, most are just end of the bench roster filles on their teams because of age, size or skill distribution they willl never have a shot at developing in anything useful). That´s a big lousy, won´t you agree?


Last edited by LA-seelenjaeger at 12/7/2011 7:05:37 PM

Maybe I should have been more precise in my steps ...

Step I : Raise the average potential to Star / All Star (roughly)
Step II: Hide it
Step III: Invent a new hidden skill "learnability"
Step IV: Make scouting points available to scout real players aswell as rookies.
Step V: (new) Rework the scouting points system.
Step VI: New "Speciality" for some skills
Step VII: New "Special dumbness" for some skills (both related to initial drafting position)

I´m for the whole package, while Crazy for example is against III, VI and VII if I understood him right.

The problem is simply the ratios are wrong at the moment.

This is wild speculation based on my observations only in India (where I have studied every draft for the last few seasons) and Australia but the current breakdown is something like this.

announcer 2/48
bench warmer 6/48
role player 6/48
6th man 6/48
starter 6/48
star 6/48
allstar 6/48
perennial allstar 5/48
superstar 3/48
MVP 2/48
hall of famer 1/100
all-time great 1/1000

Consdiering that all players with potential of announcer to starter are really just varying degrees of useless that all get fired within a week of the draft there is half the draft gone already. Then consider the one or two MVPs you get in the draft can be a $2,000 salary 18 year old and a $4,000 19 year old 7'0" PG with atrocious ID and IS then you can start to see how few useful players we really get per draft. The figure of 10% has been often raised and I think that is a good ballpark figure.

I would suggest a MUCH better distribution of potential would be something like

announcer 2/48
bench warmer 2/48
role player 2/48
6th man 2/48
starter 2/48
star 10/48
allstar 10/48
perennial allstar 10/48
superstar 6/48
MVP 2/48
hall of famer 1/100
all-time great 1/1000

So no change to the top three potentials at all but a lot more players that can be trained and at least become useful players in decent leagues.

Still, most of the players will end up beeing fired because of their initial skillset, but it would be nice to have like 20% of the players drafted around for some time. Won´t happen with the current system, and for sure not in higher league (happy celebrating your 4th and 5th league comparison, but that´s not a valid point for the discussion, because anybody´s aim should be to compete in a higher league AND because I do by no means ask for a higher skill level of the original draftees, so the impact rookies will have stays the same at the beginning of their career).

but a lot of player get stopped anyway before reaching allstar potential, and when you get your upper league player when you are still in lower league you often also loose your money. And i saw a lot of stars whoo could be still backup for my team.

Also i beleive the main reason for just using the top 5 per cent of draftee is, that we simple doesn't need more. We had to face, that we nearly don't loose player, when a team goes bot most trained player stayed a lived and the new team produce some talent too, before they reach the point where they could use the old talents.

And most upper division teams train, and also sacrifice a lot for training like the low leagues dudes ok they ain't 18 year old anymore but it is still training.

Edit: I miss all the threads, with there a no players worth to train out there, from people who are looking for trainees. Only think i see is that people want draft where they could train or sell 2-3 of them ... But the market already is filled, with players who fit in your criterias that you get one of them easily if you like.

Last edited by CrazyEye at 12/8/2011 1:59:23 AM

The problem is not that you can't buy a player to train who is good enough for your team. I could do that for less than one weeks scouting cost easily. Even restricting myself to just Australia (600 managers) I have little difficulty in finding great trainees. The issue is that it is almost impossible to draft one yourself. Bumping a ton of players potential from roleplayer or 6th man to allstar or pallstar probably wont make trainees even cheaper, they are already almost free at that potential level unless they have very high starting skills and are aged 18, but it will make it possible for people to train their own draft picks.

I have spent $20,000 a week every single week since I started early in season 10 and yet I still have all three of my trainees bought from other teams.

but this wouldn't be different through raising the quality in the draft, this would be more making the player more the same. So that you keep him or fire him, cause the other most likely don't want to buy cause they have the same.

With higher quality, the player you keep to train get better, but most of your self drafted dudes will be still to weak considering the circumstances.

And getting an ideal trainee through draft is complicated, cause he had to fit in your programm to so even when you find a solid one you often sell him cause he don't fit into your training plan since you maybe had to fight other weaknesses then with your trainees. Maybe there more details about the draft could help.