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#2 just to clarify, since I'm getting no love for this point:

You could train all players until they turn 21 without hitting the salary cap.
So even an announcer could have prolific skills, which would be easily adequate in Div4,5.

Not get rid of them but they should change the ratio. In every draft it seems 2/3 of players are automatically useless because of their low potential. It is too much. I don't want every draft to be full of $5k HoF players but you should be able to draft an 18 year $3k old allstar every season even if you have the last pick. There should be around a third of the draft useful and trainable players rather than the current 10% at most.

Wild guess but here is the current ratios:

60% Degrees of uselessness: announcer, bench warmer, role player, 6th man or starter
24% star or allstar (12 per draft)
12% perennial allstar or superstar (6 per draft)
4% MVP, hall of famer or all-time great (2 per draft)

Whereas I think it should be more like:
26% Degrees of uselessness: announcer, bench warmer, role player, 6th man or starter (12 per draft they are all just getting fired anyway but I agree there should be some useless players although how useful is a $1k 19 year old MVP?)
24% star (12 per draft not great but can be a 3rd trainee)
24% allstar (12 per draft everyone should be able to get one at the minimum)
18% perennial allstar (9 per draft by the time you allow for skills and age still not that many trainable but much more common to be honest I don't even want to train this potential but at least you can do something)
6% superstar (3 per draft about right now)
2% MVP, hall of famer or all-time great (1 per draft make these guys really rare and special)


Last edited by yodabig at 3/23/2013 6:43:33 PM

Not get rid of them but they should change the ratio. In every draft it seems 2/3 of players are automatically useless because of their low potential. It is too much. I don't want every draft to be full of $5k HoF players but you should be able to draft an 18 year $3k old allstar every season even if you have the last pick. There should be around a third of the draft useful and trainable players rather than the current 10% at most.

Or at least make a lot more players have higher starting skills even with low potential - a decently balanced 10k player, maybe, but with very low potential, so it's someone who could be useful as a starter in low leagues, depth in middle leagues and a decent end of bench option for the top league guys.

Not get rid of them but they should change the ratio. In every draft it seems 2/3 of players are automatically useless because of their low potential. It is too much. I don't want every draft to be full of $5k HoF players but you should be able to draft an 18 year $3k old allstar every season even if you have the last pick. There should be around a third of the draft useful and trainable players rather than the current 10% at most.

Or at least make a lot more players have higher starting skills even with low potential - a decently balanced 10k player, maybe, but with very low potential, so it's someone who could be useful as a starter in low leagues, depth in middle leagues and a decent end of bench option for the top league guys.

Wouldn't mind drafting some capped bench warmers occasionally

I suggest that the first step should be to get rid of the third round of the draft. That would cut the database polluting bunch of uselessness to a certain degree.

Second step: Get rid of potentials less than star - this wont change much, as there are still other factors that determine a players usefulness, like tendency to commit fouls, (poor) build etc.

Third step: turn your swag on.

Last edited by Knecht at 3/24/2013 9:33:14 AM

I am new to this game but I think that instead of changing the draft system, the game could allow each team to spend up to 10 of their left over scouting points to upgrade skills for any of their 3 draft picks.

A few rules and notes:
-I was thinking that each skill upgrade would cost 2 scouting points giving a manager the option of upgrading 5 skills per draft.
-Any given skill can only be upgraded twice per player. (Ex. if you wanted to upgrade IS for all three of your draft picks, you can upgrade IS 2 levels for 2 of your draft picks and 1 level for the other)
-Only current year draftees can get this.
-Can only be used in the first two weeks of the season.
-Only the manager who drafted that player can use this option.
-Potential can not be upgraded.
-You can use it all on one player. This way the draft won't be a big bust for those who finish last.

I don't really have a use for my scouting points as I invest 10k a week most of the season and wait till All star break to use Scouting Combine to get the age and height of all the draftees. I then change my investment if there are enough 18 year old players with the height range I'm looking for - 5''11 - 6''6 for guards or 6''10+ for big men. I then interview each 18 that falls into the group that I'm looking for; guards or Big men. This leaves me with points left over most of the time.

If this would be to big of a change I will settle for yodabig's idea as it would make the draft more interesting and seems like less work to implement.

The only reason I got addicted to this game is because I got a NT potential draftee in my first season of playing.

You can't say people in lower devisions don't know how to train- it's definetly not rocket science and is very easy to learn. We've all been in lower devisions (or at least most of us) and the reason a lot of people have continued playing this game is because we got a good draftee early on and we wanted to see him grow and improve so some day he'll be a great whole player.

I'm not even talking about balance and giving tools to young teams in order so they could get better and promote to higher devisions, if you'll hurt the draftees of young teams in lower devisions you are severely hurting their playing experience and dramaticly reducing their chances of continuing playing this game.

I honestly think one thing that would help is to get rid of all the potentials lower than allstar.

Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you make ten a little louder, make that the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pauses] These go to eleven.

3. Increase the max skill level for 19yos draftees by 1.
or even have 20yos draftees as well with max skill level of proficient (9)

Regarding the first two suggestions, I think they've both been discussed in various ways in other threads and now above in this one, and I have to say that I'm not really in favor of them, though I appreciate the sentiment.

The first one in a sense makes a some sense when compared to the real world (better pre-professional players will be drawn to play in higher leagues, such as the NBA, and the lesser players will be left over for the rest of the world’s leagues, the “better” (usually more profitable) leagues will attract the better young kids, though they don’t always have drafts and it’s more about who can attract and sign those players. So if we really want to make this about real life, then only the top league(s) in the world should have a draft and all other players would go straight to the TL. Therefore, given that I think the “real life” model would probably result in a lot of BB manager riots, the current situation is preferable. And once we’re resigned to maintaining a draft for all leagues (already deviating from real life), I can hear the argument why the higher leagues might “need” better draftees (it’s been discussed in other threads about how hard it can be to train in higher leagues compared to lower leagues since rookies/trainees tend to get steamrolled in higher league action and can only play “serious” minutes in some Cup games and scrimmages, while managers can get away with playing trainees in league games in the lower divisions), but then again in higher leagues managers can actually afford to spend on better players in the TL and not have to develop trainees to the same extent, so the current system works sort of like the lower divisions are the “minor leagues” while the “major leagues” are primarily for players that are already good enough for the big time. In conclusion on this issue, I against changing the way things are with the quality of draft picks by league.

I’m not going to get into #2 since I think there were reasons why potential was created as an attribute for players to begin with, and that’s that, it’s not logical to me to think that we can throw out potential for the sake of making training the youngest players easier.

(continued...)

(continuing...)

Suggestion #3, however, I like. This has been suggested in the past and I’ve always sort of like the idea that older players might possibly be better than younger players. Sort of like how that extra year at college, or working for the Peace Corps, or whatever experience in life does to help other skills, could make the older draft picks more desirable. But I will now temper my enthusiasm… In today’s world of kids entering a draft, it’s typically the younger ones that are seen as having the most long-term potential and possibly the best skills (otherwise they wouldn’t enter the draft so young and feel like they can skip getting more experience in college or other lower leagues first). In fact, I’d say that the best NBA rookies most seasons tend to be the youngest players, so I don’t know why we would think that older players should have better skills. If anything, I’d think that if we’re going to alter the skills of draftees by age based on real life, then perhaps we should see the 18-year-olds with generally better skills than the 19-year-olds, but with a slight bump in Experience for 19-year-olds. But looking back at this from the perspective of BB, the difference between an 18 and 19-year-old when it comes to training is that the younger players get an entire extra year of training before training speed declines, which means a much better chance at reaching their potential than the older draftees, so the value of the younger players is greater and maybe if the older players could come with a “year of pre-training”, then that would make the older players at least as valuable as the younger players. Ultimately, I think the question really comes down to whether or not there are enough quality value players in the draft already, not whether or not we should recalibrate the value of the older players, so in the end I guess I’m thinking that there should either be “real life adjustment” as I suggest above (better 18-year-olds, experience for 19-year-olds), or just leave things the way they are since it’s actually not so bad. (And I remember back when the draft was not so good and we’d have intense “change the draft” suggestion posts at least few times every season.)

Agreed...And I also agree with the premise that the draft as it is now, is a waste of data space. I would be in favor of anything to make the draft more relevant.