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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

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.

So if you don't have a deep team and have to send in your starters into the cup you should be punished more than a deeper team.

and

if you are unlucky to be matched up against a relatively strong opponents int he first few weeks.

So again should be punished over a team that has to play against a bot, because you were unlucky and the others were lucky to play against bot's.

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

What about if your in Spain or the USA, should you be punished because you don't have bot's in div 4?

Your not the only one playing this game, you have to think about how any changes are going to affect others playing the game. The best thing about BB is that everyone can come up with there own strategy on how they want to play. The BB's are adding stuff like Inside/ outside Isolation and Inside / outside box and 1 to create more and different strategy's.
If they keep taking away the ability to come up with different strategy's we will all be playing the same way and that would not be fun.

It the same as why the BB's wont stop day trading. It's a different strategy and anyone can do it if they want.

So if you don't have a deep team and have to send in your starters into the cup you should be punished more than a deeper team.

Thats your choice to not have a deep team. I don't see how thats relevant. Same thing applies today regardless as teams that don't have deep team get in GS trouble when they attempt to play their starters for cup games.

So again should be punished over a team that has to play against a bot, because you were unlucky and the others were lucky to play against bot's.

The cup can come down to luck at times. It all balances out. Some times you get get a tough opponent early. Other times, you will see D4 teams for 4-5 weeks in a row. It is luck of the draw. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Its never about punishing anyone. Again, nothing has changed from how it works right now. Tanking one game is not a trend. Besides as proposed, there are other factors like total team salary compared to league average, etc.

What about if your in Spain or the USA, should you be punished because you don't have bot's in div 4?

Your not the only one playing this game, you have to think about how any changes are going to affect others playing the game.

That was a bit uncalled for. What I am getting at is that nothing would have changed regardless. I don't get how there is any punishing at all when there are just more teams in the cup.Spain/USA have bots in D5. Their cup just lasts longer because they have more teams. How is that relevant? Thats just saying as an Aussie team, you get drawn against a D3 team(less bots in D3). You might or might not have to tank. It all depends.

As you say, there are many ways to play this game and the best thing is that you can do whatever you like with your team to succeed. The whole point of this thread is about preventing season long tankers. A don't see how tanking the odd game here or there is relevant to this thread as this is NOT what it is about.

This is about tanking from the day you reached your league just for the extra income. Not tanking a game here or there so you can maybe extend a cup run.

The whole point of the thread is to stop people from tanking.

My point is that there is no way on telling how much, how long, and why a team is tanking. If someone sell's there players at the start of a season to save good money for the first few week's and buy's better players mid season to help win the finals, that's not tanking it's just a different strategy.

So there is no way to work out how to punish tankers when there are so many reasons why people tank 1 game, 5 games or a season.

And that's the last thing I'm saying.