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I think cup should remain random. It gives those lower league teams a chance for the title (even if it is a small one).

I think that cup should be changed, but on a different way.

There is a lot of teams in the low leagues. In fact a majority of the teams. So there can be created cup, played just between teams from 6. league separately, 5th league separately, 4th league,.. so do a division way of the cup. Higher league can play more matches against (home and away) as they are closer to the final, so there will be same volume of matches, so you can compensate lower volume of teams in higher league... this would continue like that into secon leagu where would be probably whole season like two matches to go against next team and first leagues can play international cup against teams from the countries with similar volume of users.

That way would be possible to have a chance to win a cup to everyone, not just to 1st league teams. That seems to me pretty boring. And what is normally cup about if not about trying to win that?

hmmmmm that idea is allready implemented its called normal league games

That is not correct. You cannot play against a team from different league of the same division. To win a division you have to beat only few teams succesfully and you have whole season run to do it. Cup is about relegation battle.

At this condition is cup in fact pointless, because doesnt offer any chance to win even for a 2nd division teams (if any won the cup, Im sure that 3rd division team didnt). The problem is that you have here only frame of teams in the first two leagues. Majority is much lower and from that point of view it is not interresting, because you will always know, that you will relegate sooner or later no matter what you do.

Im not sure about basketball, but in football there are cups divided among different levels, so 1st league team will not usually go play agaisnt bunch of villagers to the arena where buy tickets mostly families of the players.

I dont know how about you, but I dont see any motivation in a long run in the cup, because you have to have extra players for it which doesnt have to cross over 50k wage, because it doesnt make big difference anyway if you are losing money because of it.

my mistake i misread your post.
still i think the cup is fine how it is.

I understand your post It's hard to play in a tournament that you just know you can't win, so you want to change the tournament where the playing field is more level. The way I see it, though, is that the Cup is that part of BB that gives your team an opportunity to play outside of the regular league competition. For the top teams, it means that unless they randomly get assigned another top team in an early round, these games are easy wins and quick paychecks for their team, and also an opportunity to get in some training for younger players while getting their team Enthusiasm up. For the lower division teams, it usually means getting thumped in the first few rounds, depending on how lucky they are in getting matchups against similarly lower division teams.

Personally, I think if the tournament only featured games against teams in the same division, it would be boring. What's the point of a tournament that's just an elimination version of what I'm already doing in my league games? I see the Cup as an opportunity to distinguish my team and try to get ahead of the teams in my league. When my team is still playing, it's a challenge balancing the need to win league games and desire to grab those Cup win payments an increasing my Fan Survey. If I get knocked out, I look to see if I can get in edge in league games by not having to save my best players for a Cup game, and I also get an extra game where I can play my players out of position for training purposes without worrying about the outcome of the game. When I was still a lower division team, playing against better teams gave me an opportunity to really see what my team could do, and very often a higher division team would expect my team to roll over and not even try, so I scored a few Cup upsets that way.

I think every manager needs to set a goal, whether it's focus on league games or Cup games. It's really hard to do both, and that's just part of the game. I always set a goal for a minimum number of Cup wins and that usually satisfies me to try to reach that so I can make sure I don't kill my Fan Survey with an early exit (I failed badly this season!), and after that I'd rather lose so that I can make sure I reach season training goals, too. But that's my strategy and accomplishes what I like. Everyone needs to make their own assessment of how to approach the Cup, whether they want to win Cup games or could care less.

What if the cup games were just between the same league, so all of div 3 in one cup etc. And the winner got something more rewarding so that it would make things more interesting. For example, the winner of the cup could receive automatic promotion to the higher division and 1 million dollar prize money. This would mean that teams could try and promote via the cup or via their league, or via both if they are good enough. Would add some more tactics to the game as well.

What if the cup games were just between the same league, so all of div 3 in one cup etc. And the winner got something more rewarding so that it would make things more interesting. For example, the winner of the cup could receive automatic promotion to the higher division and 1 million dollar prize money. This would mean that teams could try and promote via the cup or via their league, or via both if they are good enough. Would add some more tactics to the game as well.

The way to promote is already by beating teams in your division. I don't think adding another route to promotion adds much to the game. Then, when you factor the different sizes of each division, we'd have very different Cup experiences by division. What would D.I teams do the the Cup when there's only one division? D.V Cup games would be the "Tournament of the Bots". I appreciate your thoughts on how to improve the Cup experience. As I posted above about my feelings on home court advantage being random, etc., I agree that the Cup isn't perfect as it is, and given the number of posts that so many other people have written on the topic, there's obviously a vast range of opinions on the subject. But I think that any changes that could be made to the Cup need to be be clear improvements to the current system. I think you are thinking about things the right way and posts like yours help get everyone thinking about how to make this game better, I just may have a different opinion on the Cup.

I dont believe that playing against teams from higher leagues is so interesting, because the difference between these teams are usually strongly remarkable.

If there really is a need to leave the cup as the way it is (hattrick way), the behaviour of the teams during the cup should be different. There has to be any possibility to boost motivation or something (by beating slightly better team in country rank), so in the end of the lucky road you can beat 1st league team with 10k players like they were 50k players. That would be interesting.

Here is my idea. In the first 2 rounds only the lowest division teams play, then the remaining teams are matched up against teams from the division above, and so on...

So for a 4 division country it would look like this:

Round 1: The 1024 D4 teams face off (512 teams progress)
Round 2: The 512 D4 teams face off (256 teams progress))
Round 3: The 256 D4 teams face off against the 256 D3 teams (256 teams progress)
Round 4: The winners face off (128 teams progress)
Round 5: The winners face off (64 teams progress)
Round 6: The remaining 64 D4 and D3 teams face off against the 64 D2 teams (64 teams progress)
Round 7: The winners face off (32 teams progress)
Round 8: The winners face off (16 teams progress)
Round 9: The remaining 16 D4, D3, and D2 teams face off against the 16 D1 teams (16 teams progress)
Round 10: The winners face off (8 teams progress)
Round 11: Quarterfinal (4 teams progress)
Round 12: Semifinal (2 teams progress)
Round 13: Final (1 winner)

This way the lower division teams would have an enthusiasm advantage against higher divisions. The D1 teams are automatically in the round of 32. I can't be bothered doing the math, but if a D4 team TIEd every league and cup game in this system and made it to round 9 then they would have a huge enthusiasm boost over a D1 team.

But it wouldn't work for countries with more than 4 divisions...

Last edited by Jeeves at 8/3/2010 8:58:53 AM

Wow, very creative. I don't see it working out here, but I admire the thought that went into this. A five-ball idea!