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It's not purely tanking that's the issue, but more the ability to tank for the majority of the season, before buying up a bunch of players to win a relegation series.

Exactly, here is one example french D1 :
(http://www.buzzerbeater.com/team/35796/schedule.aspx?seas...)

Winterfoll Wolves won the relegation series without any opposition whereas he did 5V/17D against 11V/11D for his rival Azur BC.
Why ? Because he tanked most of the season before recruiting these players before the deadline:
(5655072)
(10843522)
(9372068)
(17113306)
(6878529)

Azur BC tried to do his best during all the season but when he saw this, he knew he would have zero chances so he decided to let down to make a few economies.
Now, what is doing Winterfell Wolves in your opinion ? Tanking as he sold all this players after winning play downs. Great ...

Winterfell could do so why ? Because the last in his conference, Tenakha, decided to tank from the start of the season so he knew from the beginning that he could be 7th and still get a chance with this strategy. And you know why ? he is in the exact some situation this season with the last one tanking too
This creates another problem : it tends to create differences between conferences that last during seasons and longer than before. This is the problem of my own division where 1st conf is ususally weaker so they don't hesitate to keep low salaries compared to the 2nd where it sometimes looks like an armament war from the start that leads promoted to act by the same way.
Effect : in some divisions, playrEs prefer to tank one season in order the come back in another division. it happened during almost 10 seasons in french D3.14.



Of course, there are also every season the example of the B3.

from Kukoc :

The chemistry idea has been thrown around plenty of times. The reason why it sucks is the fact that it favors older established/rostered teams. It would get even harder to close the cap.

Not a problem if you give 100% of chemistry rate for the creation of a team and that you give a limite to this chemistry so that effects don't add up infinitely. What's more, during offseason, there might have a reset or a 66% impact on chemistry compared to the rest of the season. This might also help the fansurvey line about "scared to loose our best players" more accurate.
What's more, taking in account the time played by these players might be interesting too. A back-up or a trainee recruited during the season should not have the same impact than a big salary recruited for the final laps.

Since a few seasons it has become easy for promoted team to do better than average teams already there because of the promotion bonus and because market was so low that you can have a big team without problem.
Once again, The example of french D1 illustrates that : the winner was a promoted team last season.


Last edited by Dunker Joe at 5/29/2012 5:04:57 AM

So if 6 teams in the lower section tank (8th seeds are bots or tanking to relegate) the season. Both 6-7th will buy those players for the money they have saved during the season. Doesn't that mean 4 out of 6 still relegate and 2 of those with nothing in their pocket?

In that situation I don't really have any sympathy for any of those teams, as they have all chosen to tank. In reality, it doesn't really happen like that though.

More often, you'll have one team on one side that tanks all season (let's assume there's a bot in 8th spot) and buys up a bunch of $200k players to beat the guy in 6th place that has been playing to compete all season. The guy in 6th (who has been playing 'properly') has little chance of beating the guy that tanked and bought in a bunch of hired guns for the relegation series.

Whether the team in 7th is financially better off (I'll get to that bit further down) is irrelevant, as the team that is in 6th has been relegated as a direct result of his opponent tanking all season and buying players in for the relegation series. The team in 6th doesn't even have the chance at competing in the relegation series - short of buying a bunch of hired guns himself, there's nothing he can do about it. In this situation, tanking has become the 'optimal' strategy to survive. Surely this has a negative impact on the game experience?

As for the financial aspect, it's debatable whether the team is financially better off or not. I don't want to get into a long debate about the specifics, as that's not really what the issue is about, other than to say they are probably better off financially. Using a quick example...

Assuming a team can save between $200k - $250k a week by only paying the salary floor, they will save something like $2.5m - $3m a season compared to a team that is competing with an average roster (this is II in Australia, just as an example). The high salary guys they buy in are generally not that expensive to purchase (due to the wages), but let's assume they will sell them off for around about the same amount they purchased them for, give or take $300k total. Let's say we buy in 2 guys with $150k salaries and 1 monster $200k guy to win the relegations series, two weeks of wages for these guys is $1m, plus a $300k loss on the sale (estimate), it ends up costing them $1.3m to buy in the hired guns for the relegation series. Take this away from the ~$3m in saved waged for the season is still a profit of ~$1.7m.

Given this financial incentive, as well as the ability to not relegate, and it suddenly becomes clearer why this is becoming the optimal strategy to succeed.

I have relegated once. I tried to stay in DivI when I first promoted. I kept building my team. I never want to relegate again. It messes up your economy and I had to get a 22-0 record to get back up. How can anyone say relegating is good in a big country? Bizarre.

I fully agree with you. I don't think relegating is of great benefit to a team. The issue isn't teams that tank and relegate though - I don't have a problem with that, as they are still being punished by relegating. My issue is with teams that tank and then buy players at the end of the season to avoid relegation. This is what the BB's need to look at, as soon as possible.

What is the minimum wage in your league?

The chemistry idea has been thrown around plenty of times. The reason why it sucks is the fact that it favors older established/rostered teams. It would get even harder to close the cap.

This can be mitigated somewhat by giving everyone warning that such a feature will be implemented (and when it will begin) i.e. announce it two seasons before it actually takes effect.

If there's a maximum amount of time that it takes to reach the top level of 'loyalty' (e.g. three seasons), it doesn't significantly favour more established teams, as teams with the same roster for seven seasons will get the same loyalty bonus as teams that have been together for three seasons (or whatever the maximum is).

In any case, I would like to see the tanking issue addressed first. Features like this are no doubt much further down the line - the tanking issue is much more important.

What is the minimum wage in your league?

In my league it is 135k whereas a team with 330k of wage succeeded into being second in conf1 (low competition) and average wage of the division was about 420k (before the end of the season where a few teams recruited big players, half of teams already saved sold several players and the few ones still playing for not being relegated kept the same high wage).
In my opinion, minimum wage should be about 250k.

In French D1, I just asked to Megadez. He or I will let you know

Last edited by Dunker Joe at 5/29/2012 5:24:03 AM

In french first division: $ 262 658

There is an easy way to stop tanking: no fans buy tickets of teams losing intentionally. No fans in a tanking team's arena -> no money through tanking.

Here is example of some hardcore tanking
http://www.buzzerbeater.com/league/1104/overview.aspx?sea...

This is what you can notice in this example:

-teams are not only tanking because of the money, but because they want to have the best draft pick so it's double profit.
-when teams notice that they won't get eliminated they can also tank and play next season in same division.
-there is also tanking for 5th place.

Conclusion: it's crazy

Possible solutions:
-Increase salary floor.
-Don't let teams with technical loses draft players or they should draft the last.
-Decrease the profitability of 5th place.
-Introduce fines for teams that for example in the first divisions earned over 5M in one season and lost over 90 percent of the their games.

Last edited by Ghost Master at 5/29/2012 7:28:44 AM

There is an easy way to stop tanking: no fans buy tickets of teams losing intentionally. No fans in a tanking team's arena -> no money through tanking.

I like this idea but perhaps less severe.

In reality, who is going to watch a team that loses by 40 game after game after game? You may get some fans for the OTHER team who will want to come watch, but not many will want to watch your team. Quite often, constantly losing teams from many sports risk losing their place in the league, let alone teams that don't have a roster to compete whatsoever.

Reduced fan arena income = less desirable to tank.

In fact, under this system, a team could "do badly" and still make an ok profit, as long as they aren't losing by 40 game after game after game. It would have to be managed well, just like a winning team has to be managed well.

This can be mitigated somewhat by giving everyone warning that such a feature will be implemented (and when it will begin) i.e. announce it two seasons before it actually takes effect.

If there's a maximum amount of time that it takes to reach the top level of 'loyalty' (e.g. three seasons), it doesn't significantly favour more established teams, as teams with the same roster for seven seasons will get the same loyalty bonus as teams that have been together for three seasons (or whatever the maximum is).

This is exactly what I was thinking. It might even work if it's half a season that it takes for a team to "gel", also adding in a random factor for each player.

Newer teams would be barely affected because they start in the lowest league and are competing against similar, newer teams. After a season or four, depending on the strength of the league, they move up and, if they've managed well, their players will have the "gel" factor already sorted.

Before we get too far into suggestions that involve fines or penalties, we should really make sure we understand exactly what the problem is and why it's happening, or why it has become a strategy.

As I see it, the problem is tanking i.e. losing games on purpose. To come up with a suitable solution, we must also understand why teams are tanking.

Possible reasons...

1. Because it's possible to make more money, compared to paying for a roster that allows you to be competitive.

2. Because the team has no hope of being competitive in that division anyway.

3. Because the team wants the first draft pick.

4. Because there's a bot in the 8th spot (or another tanker), allowing them to get away with tanking to save money for a relegation series.

I'm sure there's a few others, but these are the ones that are on the top of my head at the moment.

I think it's also important to highlight that there's two different forms of tanking...

1. Tanking to save money and get relegated at the end of the season.

2. Tanking with the aim of finishing 7th and saving up enough money to buy in mercenaries for a relegation series.

I don't really have much of a problem with #1, as the team demotes at the end of the season, which certainly isn't a reward. I have a big problem with #2 though, as the team (a) gets the benefit of saving a bunch of money; (b) gets to remain in the same division; (c) gets rewarded with a fairly high draft pick; and (d) often causes a team that has been trying to be competitive to demote, because they can't buy in players at the end of the season.

Possible solutions suggested so far...

1. Moving the transfer deadline. This would completely remove all forms of #2 tanking (i.e. tanking to finish 7th), as they would no longer be able to buy in players to help them win a relegation series.

2. Significantly increase the salary floor. This removes some of the financial incentive to tank.

3. Significantly decrease attendances for tanking teams. Again, this reduces the financial incentive to tank, however would require changes to the fan survey code, which is probably more difficult than the first two suggestions.

4. Various fines or penalties for teams that lose by 30+ points, etc. I think we need to be careful here, as it's possible for non-tanking teams to lose a game by 30+ every now and then.

Another option that hasn't been suggested before (to counter type #2 tanking) is to introduce a minimum contract period for players purchased from the transfer list. e.g. a player will have an initial contract of 8 weeks, forcing you to pay a minimum of 8 weeks wages for all players purchased. This doesn't stop teams from buying up a few days before the playoffs, however (although they may have to think twice about it, if they can't sustain the wages for 8 weeks).

Personally, I think suggestion number 1 works the best, as it is the easiest one to implement and it will put an end to type #2 tanking immediately. This could also be looked at together with increasing the salary floor, although don't think a salary floor increase will solve the problem by itself.