BuzzerBeater Forums

Actually there is such thing as a right answer and reddaddy's is the correct one.
It's absurd to give up a full ball of potential (potentially the difference between Perennial all-star and all-time great) for a fraction or two of a grade level (potentially probably 2 or three total skill levels, some of which might not be all that relevant to the player's position). It's just absolutely terrible advice to try to suggest that your strategy is the best way for a team to proceed.

potential is the most important in my opinion, you may not have a great player right away but if u stick with training them they can become some of the best players on your team.

and if you are planning on selling they also sell for the highest

pick an 18 year old with high potential, and don't pay attention to A+ A or A-

Yup, I still think you're wrong in part because you're overvaluing the transfer estimates (or likely fabricating it to fit your argument). I have a pretty hard time imagining a sub-$5k star potential player selling for 1.5m (or even $600k). I also find it fairly hard to imagine such a player earning more on the TL than a Hall of Fame prospect with an alright but not great starting salary. But since you sold neither player there's no way for us to figure it out one way or another.

I also find it fairly amazing that you kept notes on the TPE value of your draftees when they were first selected 14 weeks ago. At the very least I think you're drawing extremely broad conclusions from a single draft's worth of experience without selling either of those draft picks.

I feel obligated to point out the merchandising side of it, that if you intend on training the players you drafted, and only those players, then their value on the transfer list doesn't mean very much at all. It would help if we knew how much of a merchandising bonus you got for playing with the players you drafted, as without those numbers it is next to impossible to tell who is correct, but if that is the route that you are choosing to go, you should value potential at what you think its actual value is, not at what the market values it at.

Redaddy, I agree with your assessment for the most part as you can always sell high and buy a prospect you like for less, thus making plenty of money. It is not very smart to give up this money making opportunity AND the fact of the matter is that you don't usually draft the "perfect" trainee for what you are trying to do. If you could draft the "perfect" trainee with perfect skills then great, but it happens few and far between. I understand the other side a bit I guess, because we all know that if you are in D3 and below you may not be wise to train an All-Time Great to their potential as it will probably eat much more salary than can be absorbed by the money generated at those levels of play. However, being able to sell this player and make some money is still the wise thing to do.

As for merchandise I have come to believe that keeping your team in tact has the greatest effect on the merchandising profit...barring the promotion of a player to the NT. I have had up to 8 US born players on my team and am well below the merchandising average because I had a decent player turnover this season due to selling some guys I was training and purchasing new ones on the market.