BuzzerBeater Forums

There will always be people who are trying to cheat, that is not an excuse to stop developing the game and to stop adding new features.

At the current situation a lot of people can't really enjoy a big part of the game (even huge in my opinion) which is the draft system simply because they are managing a successful team. They don't scout, they can't enjoy the tension and excitement of waiting to see the players they got from the draft and most importantly- they don't get a chance to train and develop a player of their own straight from the draft (which besides being a lot of fun and personaly the main reason why I got so attached to this game, can also be a big advantage with the bonus merchandise sales).

Another point to take in account in favor of my proposal is that nowadays a lot of teams which want to get a good pick in the draft choose to lose games intentionally in order to finnish in a lower position and as a result get a better pick, this feature can lead to a lot of managers choosing to manage a competitive team rather then tanking.

I completly agree- the small teams should get help from the system in order to reduce the gaps, and I believe this feature will go alongside that agenda perfectly.

First of all, there is no one forcing you to sell your pick, feel free to save it for yourself if thats what you want. If you don't feel like investing in scouting and gambling on the draft you can sell your pick for money and use it to strengthen your team.
No matter what they choose, the lower positioned teams still get an advantage in form of the first right over the best draft picks whether they want to sell it or use it by themselves.

Secondly, if you are a strong team positioned up high in the league this feature won't let you to "have the cookie and eat it at the same time"- you want a good pick? open your wallet, spend some of your cash and pay the lower positioned teams in order to buy their's.

In conclusion- I believe my proposal don't hurt the small teams but gives them more options, and can even help in reducing the gaps.

Last edited by Yotamnor at 10/4/2012 6:45:03 AM

Edit. Okay, I noticed the suggestion is limited to same league only.

(Would the draft picks be for sale within the league only?) How would the draft picks be priced?

A simple auction is not okay, since it makes controlling cheating pretty much impossible. The whole cheating aspect also depends greatly on whether the sales would be limited to a single league.

Last edited by GM-WallyOop at 10/4/2012 10:09:14 AM

I sincerely can't see whats the big problem with auction sales, if it's working good for players it can also work good for picks in my opinion. But anyways, adding a buyout option might eliminate a case in which picks are being sold for "too much"- the highest price for a pick will be lets say 1M, the moment someone offers 1M (or any other price chosen by the devs) the pick will be sold to him immediately.

A friend of mine also offered a system in which every pick will have it's own (chosen by the devs) price and the selling team will only get to choose wheather or not to sell the pick and not the price, and the first team which is willing to buy it and has enough money win the pick, I personally think this option is way worse than an auction and will open up much more cheating possibilities.

Last edited by Yotamnor at 10/4/2012 10:47:22 AM

I sincerely can't see whats the big problem with auction sales

It opens a possibility to transfer money between teams.

if it's working good for players it can also work good for picks in my opinion.

It can, if it follows the same rules and receives as much attention from the users. As I wrote (in not so many words), the chances of controlling the fairness of the system depend greatly on selecting between an open market and a closed one. If the market were closed (own league only), the only eyes on the sales would basically be the league mates. All other control would need to be automatic.

What you need in order to put more eyes on the transactions is an open market. Even then, it is pretty difficult to judge what a fair price for the first pick or the Nth pick would be. I guess the market could in some sense decide it by itself, although what we are seeing with staff bidding (see level 5+ coaches) is not very promising. So, it would perhaps make sense to introduce a level of blinding into the system. You would then not know whose pick you are bidding on, only that it is e.g. the first pick overall. That removes any motivation to bid higher than necessary. Obviously, any system where you could draft outside your own league would be problematic with the current scouting system. Should be doable one way or another.

But anyways, adding a buyout option might eliminate a case in which picks are being sold for "too much"- the highest price for a pick will be lets say 1M, the moment someone offers 1M (or any other price chosen by the devs) the pick will be sold to him immediately.

A maximum does not keep anyone from cheating if the money is good. If it isn't, why would anyone sell for the maximum or for even less? I'm not saying this is completely impossible, just that I don't see how it would really work in a reasonable way.

A friend of mine also offered a system in which every pick will have it's own (chosen by the devs) price and the selling team will only get to choose wheather or not to sell the pick and not the price, and the first team which is willing to buy it and has enough money win the pick, I personally think this option is way worse than an auction and will open up much more cheating possibilities.

Something like this might actually work better in terms of preventing cheating. You could perhaps structure it such that the 16th pick overall has the chance to buy (or trade picks for a price) the first pick (if available) first. If they are not interested, then the 15th pick and so on. And next, you consider the second pick and so on. The problem is that building such a structure gets complicated. And perhaps more importantly it's just not so trivial to actually set good prices.


While sales or trades of draft picks is realistic, I'm not sure what purpose it would serve in this game. The positive thing is that it would allow a little more chances of rebuilding for teams that do well every season. Now they have little to gain in the draft in any active league, which makes the draft rather uninteresting. And perhaps it offers a steadier income for those teams that get good bids but are not interested in the draft (although why wouldn't they be?). So, there would at least be a bit more strategic freedom (usually a good thing). But the sales issue is not without problems, as seen above.

As you already saw by yourself, the auction option is the most simple and do able system to make, and although there are less "witnesses" to watch over the market there are also less potential cheaters and a lot less probability of having 2 teams with some sort of connection that will lead them into cheating for one another.

Also, the best witnesses for cheating in the players market are the league members of the cheater- as they get a notice for every transfer going on inside the league, if the league members will get a notice for "pick sales" aswell I believe the picks market will be "cleaner" then the players market.

there are also less potential cheaters and a lot less probability of having 2 teams with some sort of connection that will lead them into cheating for one another.

This is generally not true, although in a randomly chosen league there would probably be no problem. Then again, there are probably no cheaters anyway in a randomly chosen league. The problem remains that pricing could not be free.

Missed part of the discussion, still I want to come back to one of your earlier points:

"... always be cheating ... no reason not to develop the game ..."

I wholeheartedly agree BUT - the benefit of a development has to outweigh the gain for possible cheating.

You can buy any player AFTER the draft if a team is willing to part with him. There´s a HUGE market with an enormous variety of players in all price ranges. Therefore the gain for the "buying" team is probably close to non-existent if we consider the huge gambling factor in acquiring ANY player based on a scouting report. The chance to fail is huge (different from the TL, where the chance to fail is inside the buying manager´s head only).

The great benefit would be on the sellers side, who can make money without risking anything, they don´t have to spend any scouting points, they simply can generate money out of virtually nothing.

In addition, the option for cheating is obvious. It´s there and hard to deny. It´s a money transfer tool, which is VERY hard to overview or to check for the GM staff. You either make fixed prices, if there´s no buyer, there´s no sale, first one to bid wins. Or you make acutions, which is a bad idea as mentioned before.

So although your suggestion is one of the best concerning selling draft picks, it opens more bad ways of using it than it does good from my point of view.

Another part to take in account- pick sales can only occur at the end of the season, which makes it a very uncomfortable way to transfer money between teams because there is only one chance every season to to do that- This, and everything else I mentioned in the previous post I believe can show that cheating with picks sales is a lot harder than cheating with players.

As mentioned before - cheating with players happens in public, with plenty possible watchers taking care and intervening via Cheating Ticket.

There´s an activity low at the end of each season concerning users who are currently not involved in the playoffs, so the amount of "real" monitoring of what goes on with draft picks comes down to maybe a handful coaches at best per league. That´s VERY few people to realize shady moves.