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Because they love watching their favorite team flog other teams!! It does not work both ways. The winning team's fans are always happy to do the flogging!

So you would go and pay $100 to watch a no contest. You are watching sport for the wrong reason's then. people pay money to see a competitive game, not a Div 1 team flog a bunch of school kid's.

For the purposes of game play, it is the best compromise where you don't punish the non-tanking teams. This is already in effect to a degree. When 1 plays 8 in a home game, you expect less income.

But yeah...I'm sure some hard core fans would show up to watch their teams flog others just for the sake of it...and its not school kids..they are ABBLers for a start...

When an ABBL team sell's there team and sends in scrubs so they don't have to pay much salaries because they are tanking for the $$$$, they are not ABBLer's, they are Div 4 school kid's

But yeah...I'm sure some hard core fans would show up to watch their teams flog others just for the sake of it...and its not school kids..they are ABBLers for a start...

So like you said

some hard core fans would show up

So the usual crowd wont turn up and you attendance will take a big hit.

Last edited by whitemaggot at 3/31/2011 9:15:02 PM

the question is if this game have too be that realisitic, because at least in the most professionaell leagues, you have to get a license and for that often a player etat is part of getting it. So this scrub team wouldn't promote in the first way at least in germany.

other example out of germany,, in our second div is an pretty ambitious program, with div Etat who get some old Nationalplayer etc. They have visitors like a solid one div. team, and could have sell more if they already have an one div arena even if the y play just second division competion(they lost one game the season, and i don't think that they would lost a second one in the last games)

but our solution as game designers to this problem is that such teams are very likely to get relegated.

These teams affect the outcome of the regular season in their current league regardless of what happens to them in the short term (relegation) or in the longer term (they bounce back stronger or stay down and end up losing the financial advantage they gained). It's not fun for their current league mates, and it doesn't seem fair to teams they will face the next season.

I haven't seen any proof that tanking is a winning strategy. A team which is bound to relegate (100% chance) is probably better off tanking, but any team that has a chance of staying up needs to factor that possibility in somehow. However as long as it is possible to make a large weekly profit, some users will try it. In doing so, they affect the competitiveness of their league.

My league (my conference in fact) currently has two tanking teams, which is pretty boring for the rest of us. I appreciate the fact that these guys had reasonably competitive lineups for the first 7 games or so, which means teams in both conferences had practically the same number of easy games. It would have been pretty sad for the league if they had tanked from game 1.

the important point is how to detect if a team is tanking or not..

Exactly, and I think salaries must be one tool in detecting that. What should be considered is some sort of past average total salary of the team vs. current total salary of the team. I haven't spent a second thinking about a robust solution to the problem, but as long as it is about total salaries (spending) vs. total income (basically crowd + merchandise), the salaries are really the key here. Combine whatever metric that is derived from the salaries with some sort of sanity check based on in-game performance and no one should be punished undeservingly.

it looks like a good solution to me..
now we need the devil's advocate to find a leak here..

Still reading through the thread here, but I think basing the tank-detection on salaries is not a good idea.
As another poster pointed out, some players are twice as good as others even when they have the same salary.
Why not just detect tanking based on average margin of victory? If you lose every game by 60 points, fans aren't going to keep coming. Make it exponential so that an average margin of victory of -15 points is almost the same as -10, but -50 points is noticeably worse (for attendance) than -45.

But then it's not a perfect solution, because what happens if you sell your 4 best players all of a sudden? Fans need to know right away that you are forfeiting.


And reading this thread I was thinking, isn't it a little bit ironic that there is a draft like the NBA, while at the same time, there is promotion and demotion like in European countries for example?

If getting the 1st overall pick means you go to play in the D-League next season, would the Cavaliers still be tanking? And would the Thunder be where they are today?
I think there is something fundamentally wrong with mixing the two aspects, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

Still reading through the thread here, but I think basing the tank-detection on salaries is not a good idea.
As another poster pointed out, some players are twice as good as others even when they have the same salary.
Why not just detect tanking based on average margin of victory? If you lose every game by 60 points, fans aren't going to keep coming. Make it exponential so that an average margin of victory of -15 points is almost the same as -10, but -50 points is noticeably worse (for attendance) than -45.

But then it's not a perfect solution, because what happens if you sell your 4 best players all of a sudden? Fans need to know right away that you are forfeiting.

Also we all know you cant play you starters as starters every game for game shape reasons, so what would happen to a team that is trying to win the cup and doesn't want to send in his starters in a league game and get a 60 point loss because he sends in his scrubs. Do we start punishing players that are not even tanking?

Thats why as suggested it looks at a trend and over time. So 1 tanked league game out of the blue for a cup run is not going to hurt you. Whereas 3-4 tanked games in a row is a trend and is a definately a tank

if you are trying to win the cup you will send in scrubs until the week you get knocked out of the cup, so if you are knocked out in the 7th week that is not 1,3,5 or 7 weeks of tanking. It's just not tanking.

Thats not necessarily true. If you have a deep team you can facilitate a deep run without having to run your starters and only if you are unlucky to be matched up against a relatively strong opponents int he first few weeks.

Barring any bad luck, the first 3-4 weeks of a cup run is mainly against D4-D3 teams (from australia) which a D2 team's bench can safely dispose of without having to run starters