BuzzerBeater Forums

My thoughts on the draft:

1) I suggest that the 18/19 year old would be either 3/4/5 draft balls. But I don't think increasing the amount would be needed. Personally I believe there are enough 4-5 potential players in a draft for those who decide to draft.

2) For the 20/21 year old category these would be either 1-5 skill and 1/2 draft ball potential. I agree with having them come out capped if a 5.

3) Draft order should be randomized for the 2 worst teams and 2 relagating teams for a total of 4 teams. Right now all that is required to get the best pick is to toss out the worst possible lineup. So what you have is teams that will lineup 3 players for a game instead of 5 to ensure they lose the game. So it becomes a battle of how bad you can lose which I think is pretty stupid. Also this will combat tanking to a degree. And help those teams who unfortunately aren't tanking but lose a relagation series.

4) Players should have limit of 8 instead of 7 on starting skills. This will make them easier to train in the long-term. As is, it takes too long to train a good player. This will reduce that time without affecting the current game too much.

Anyhow good ideas!

OH and one other thing. I did a study of 14 drafts. My first seven drafts and the last 7 drafts in my current league. Here is my findings per draft:
11 Pot = 0.0
10 Pot = 0.6
9 Pot = 1.1
8 Pot = 1.8
7 Pot = 3.5
That is 7 high potential players per draft on average.

Last edited by lawrenman at 6/1/2014 9:30:32 PM

According to the numerous threads about the draft on this forum it seems like everybody hates it.
I have nothing to add here but just want to say I like the system and how it simulates a real draft.
I must be the only one who thinks this works.

However, I would change it for a youth team system.

You're not the only one.
I have several members on my team that were drafted players. People are just too picky. Donald Luwa for instance was a Star potential 3k salary guy when I drafted him, and Marks, when I drafted him, he was an 1100 SALARY superstar potential player.

People are just too lazy to put in the work.

It shouldn't take 6 seasons or a year and a half time to get any value to your team. I would invest in the draft if you could actually pull a useful player, like the NBA draft is weighted to help the weak teams. This draft offers little help to a struggling franchise. It should. Starting salary and skills should be far higher and in accordance with their overall potential. You should be able to pull an MVP with a 21k starting salary, or a Per Allstar with a 13k starting salary. It's the only way to fix the draft and make it worth it to invest. It's not fun spending 18 months working on a guy to make him usable as it currently works, I'll never invest a penny into it again.

Everything else about the way it works is fine. I like the points system and how you have to uncover players.

Last edited by Hoosier at 6/1/2014 8:26:26 PM

It's the spending years of real life time to develop players. My two trainees I have had for over a year and they are now serviceable backups. What if I chased a build that didn't work? No problem, build two more, see ya in 700 days!

I understand what you are saying, and I agree that we need to think about it's effects on the economy.

@law: the numbers would be negotiable, I suppose the effect on the economy wouldn't be as big if there wasn't a large increase in high potential players. But, maybe it would be a good thing by lowering the prices of the very high potential 18 year olds (quite a few of which never meet their potential). I guess I'm not really complaining about the average number of high potential players in the draft, more the variance. Also, my idea of high potential is different from yours. I consider MVP+ to be high potential, while allstar+ is just "trainable." I know some people train stars and starters, but IMO they cap before they can be truly great (although I'll train them as a 3rd trainee), but that is a discussion for a different thread.

But, how fun would it be to pull a PG with Sensational OD and PA? Or a C with Prolific IS/ID/REB? The key would be that they would have very little, if any, cap space left. Both of those players would be around star potential. A player like that wouldn't be much for an NBBA team, but would really help a D IV team.

Going back to the economy, it's a little weird in general. A lot of high end players can go for peanuts, mainly because only the top teams can afford their salaries. For the most part, the players with a lot of demand are those whose salaries are between $15k and $50k or $75k. I think this would help add a bit more supply in that area. It's debatable if that would be a positive or negative effect. Personally, I think it would be positive.

The other weird thing is the timing. I love the concept of the draft, but, to me, the major thing is that there is a flood of players at the beginning of the season and then hit or miss for the rest of the season.

The older, better but not as trainable thing is one I've been in favor of for quite some time. I simply have no reason at all to spend scouting points because I'm not getting anyone reasonably trainable and I can't get anyone to play even backup roles in anything approaching a competitive game. I think the number of high potential 18 year olds is what is usually lamented, but I think there should be more solid players rather than more winning lottery tickets.

If there'd be a way to fix it so it depends what level (top league, II, etc.) I might agree to it, but as it's being suggested now, I couldn't go for this. I'm in D.V, and the idea of someone in my league, or even in D.IV, should I promote, drafting a player with 20k salary in my league would completely discourage me from even trying. Part of the fun in the game, especially in these lower leagues, is in the training of your players so that you won't end up trying your hardest only to go 0-22 in league play. Drafting three guys of 10k+ salary on my way to D.IV would be the sort of thing that makes me wonder why I would bother investing hours of my time into training for the future, and why I would bother investing hours of my time scanning the transfer lists for just the right guy to fill a needed position in my squad, when I can just figure out my lineups this season, wait for the draft, pick up a couple 10k+ salary players and buy the empty positions I need to fill so I can just train game shape all season.

Maybe it would be okay drafting more highly skilled players in the upper divisions (D.I/D.II), but especially at the lower levels, I think this sort of idea would compromise everything that we've come to know about the game, especially when half the D.V teams would be filled with 10k-salaried players within a couple of seasons and make it that much harder on newer teams who're showing up with maybe one decent player out of eighteen, destined to lose to even the bot-teams by that point.

On top of that, it would be another thing closing the gap between the top tier teams and D.IV, V, and VI teams, which would make planning for a National Team strategy change and would possibly lead to a lot deeper bot runs, and if fixing teams' starting rosters by improving players' starting skills to stop that problem would require a change in the setup of the economy to avoid driving new teams into crippling debt from the very start.

However, if this were to be kept for the higher divisions, then one of two things would happen:
1. The market would be even more overrun with higher-salary players, and it would cause more market instability.
2. The distance between top tier teams and lower divisions would widen, and teams that promote would likely struggle more.

So in conclusion, I'm against this idea.

Last edited by Speede at 6/5/2014 3:42:54 PM

I suggested this before but maybe you can really consider increasing the maximum skill level to at least Strong.

What about intorducing some new option (similar to "scouting combine" and group demonstration")?
For example, paying 10 scouting points, a new option that allow you to see one skill (that you can choose) for each 48 players?
This will not affect the market or change the draft system, and makes the choice a little more rational and less random.

It wouldn't be a good idea to make the prospects better or worse depending on level of division.

That said, I don't see any down side to the lower levels by having the ability to draft a higher skilled player. You too would be able to pull a really good player too if you invested in the draft so I don't see how it would be unfair or cause for discouragement. You could still train at the lower levels and if done correctly it would offer you a chance to be competitive sooner as you climb the divisions. You can never train enough guys to fill your roster, you will always need the TL to find complimentary players that you don't have to train. So that aspect is unaffected other than it not being the only way to build a team at the higher levels.

IMO

If you compare the BB draft to the NBA draft, the biggest difference is that in BB, the players have no incentive to show you what their skills are. If we tweaked things, it would be easier to see skills and harder to see potential. That way people who invest in scouting can get good potential and those who don't still know what the field looks like from a skill POV.

What I would love to see is this:
- Do away with the "ball system."
- Generate player ages (18yo-21yo) and potential randomly. Then generate skills randomly with 18yos up to 7, 19yos up to 8, 20yos up to 9, 21yos up to 10.
- Change the draft screen so that each player has 3 pieces of info: a potential rating [EDIT to delete extraneous info] with a margin of error from 100% to 0% (18yos start with 100%, 19yos 90%, 20yos 80%, and 21yos 70%), an average of their stat line from games you've seen them play, and a number of games seen.
- Add a salaried scout to the staff. Better staff decreases the range of error more per viewing (say minimal=8% and world-renowned=22%).
- Over the course of the season have prospect games.
--------- Divide 50 prospects randomly into 5 teams of 10. (50 to make it even and to let some players not get chosen - also a draft reality.)
--------- Have each team play 4 games over the course of the season. Each game is played at a neutral site with Base/M2M tactics, 7 GS, 5 Enth and a blank lineup. (If you run 1 game per week that's 10 games overall, so skip ASW, Playoffs and Week 1.)
--------- Make each game cost $5k to send your scout to, which reveals the box scores and adds precision to the evaluation of players' potential.
- At the end of the season, the top scorer, rebounder, passer, and defender of each team are named and their game averages are released. Additionally, they have 40% removed from the margin of error in their potential estimate.

So at the end of the season, your draft board would look something like this:

Prospect 14: HT 6'1", AGE 19, POT Allstar (32% error), Games Watched 4
SG MIN 37, FG 8.1 - 21.3, 3FG 1.5 - 3.1, FT 0.2- 0.9, OR 1.3, RB 4.2, AST 2.3, TO 0.2, STL 1.6, BLK 0.3, PF 2.0, PTS 17.9

So you'd know something about player skills relative to the rest of the class and have a clue that your player could be starter-superstar potential.

You could even let the neutral sites be decided by the 10 lowest pre-season CR and give the hosting team a free scouting and a bonus accuracy boost.

Something like this would add real strategy to the draft and create an engaging new dimension to gameplay.

Last edited by rhyminsimon at 6/19/2014 7:12:22 PM