BuzzerBeater Forums

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.

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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.

In the event the amount of support for any particular ideas leads to changes in the game, I completely agree that the draft should provide a higher % of useable trainees.

I really like yodabig's suggestion. In fact, this might completely solve the problem (at least how I see it). We don't need to flood the game with MVPs/HOFs/ATGs. But we do need more all-stars and perennial all-stars in the draft, and less 1 ball potential players.

I could also really support thylacine's suggestion #3 (increasing the skill level, on average, of 19 year olds)

Hi,
I was wondering about another different way to decrease the amount of useless draft picks :
Are drafted only players who are at least scouted once.
Only managers who spend their scouting points get draft picks.

It wont change the challenge of finding a high potential out of the other draft applicants. Bots won't get draftees (and no more 18 yo 4k HoF in a bot's roster). Low potential players or low skilled ones won't be drafted that often neither.

Do you think this could be implemented ? It shouldn't need much changes in GE i guess ...
Cheers