Hey, is this tanking, shrewd managing, or just plain unethical?

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

As I've said previously in this thread, people seem to overstate the frequency that tanking teams occur. You are talking about the 1% of teams not the 40% of teams.

Doesnt mean we dont take it seriously, but just want to make sure everyone realizes were talking about the vast minority of teams employing against-TOS strategies

Sure. However, even if it’s 1% of teams, if you’re in one of the lower tiers for 3 seasons that means you have a better than 50% chance that you’ll have had at least one tanking team in your league.

[MaroonAlberich]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

Yeah it's not ideal, but I don't think you should feel like your team is not legit either. I would bet most if not all teams have gotten a bunch of PP the same way.

Not yet here.

Is it wrong to kinda want one of them in my division? It seems that I only see a store-bought team every other week or every third week, but never these tankers that hand out PP left and right. Law of averages says I'll get one soon, right?

[DonMattingly]

Originally Posted by MaroonAlberich

Not yet here.

Is it wrong to kinda want one of them in my division? It seems that I only see a store-bought team every other week or every third week, but never these tankers that hand out PP left and right. Law of averages says I'll get one soon, right?

This is my 4th season with 3 teams and I have seen 2 of them. I haven't been vigilant at all though, there could have been more,

So figure there is at least a 1/6 chance, maybe more like 1/4 chance in getting one in any given season.

From what I saw with both of them, the situation could be helped by forcing teams to have at least 11 pitchers on their staff. The one I saw today only had 9, and the other had only one, with batters making up the rest of the staff. That one the more I think about it was kind of being genius in the way they were cheating, as the one pitcher was a 99 Maddux. He was raking in awards in both pitching and hitting and still losing enough to stay in Rookie.

[MaroonAlberich]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

From what I saw with both of them, the situation could be helped by forcing teams to have at least 11 pitchers on their staff. The one I saw today only had 9, and the other had only one, with batters making up the rest of the staff. That one the more I think about it was kind of being genius in the way they were cheating, as the one pitcher was a 99 Maddux. He was raking in awards in both pitching and hitting and still losing enough to stay in Rookie.

Been thinking about what could curtail this a bit. What if PP earned through a game (as opposed to batter of the month, All-Star Selections, and that sort) were removed from the "giving" team to some degree? Wouldn't have to be a zero-sum game, but perhaps if a team earns 220 points in a game, their opponent loses 110 (50% penalty) or 165 (75% penalty) PP? Obviously, there would have to be some sort of backstop, like you couldn't fall below 1K or some such.

Not sure if this could be coded or not, but it would really be something if relative strengths of all cards on the two teams could be taken into account, so that a tanker would lose points for purposely losing, whereas a team losing to a whale stomping everybody would not be so severely penalized.

[Hertston]

I haven't cared since I tried to substitute a couple of lower ranked Cardinals pitchers into my Cardinals theme team to replace place-holders from other clubs, and got some idiotic message about not playing a competitive team.

I have no problem with anybody playing any team they have the cards for. Last year you could build a Perfect League team by slow progress and without spending - this year, no chance. Of course people will 'tank' to get points as it's the only way to win if winning is your thing (I prefer to just build the team I want, and see how well I can get them to do.) The problem is the game, not the players. Rewards need to be scaled and increase with each level - particularly those for playoff entry and success. Reward winning through promotion. Do that and problem solved.

[DonMattingly]

I already reported the team, but here is a little more context.

A team that just won 144 games in their 3rd tour of the Rookie leagues is now sitting on a .329 winning percentage with an 11.43 ERA in Stone (ST195):

[MaroonAlberich]

Originally Posted by DonMattingly

I already reported the team, but here is a little more context.

A team that just won 144 games in their 3rd tour of the Rookie leagues is now sitting on a .329 winning percentage with an 11.43 ERA in Stone (ST195):

What really makes me happy is that they have only won 1 of 3 at Rookie so far.

Hate to ask (because I don't want to sound like a prick to the devs), but with so much evidence out for a team like this which has been discussed at least a week (if not longer), how are they still around?

[pstrickert]

Good question.

[ronhatch]

Hey, so new user here (finally decided simulated baseball was better than no baseball at all after hearing my brother talk about the game for years). It's my understanding that playing out of position doesn't accrue any benefits in tournaments, only in the main leagues... so since I feel like I need to learn to be competitive in the iron-only tournaments before moving up, isn't it going to look exactly like tanking when my mostly gold team starts playing iron cards to add flexibility for the tournaments?

Seems like some very skewed incentives going on here.

[Syd Thrift]

Training in league games does not carry over into tournaments.

[Kris Jardine]

Originally Posted by MaroonAlberich

What really makes me happy is that they have only won 1 of 3 at Rookie so far.

Hate to ask (because I don't want to sound like a prick to the devs), but with so much evidence out for a team like this which has been discussed at least a week (if not longer), how are they still around?

We don't discuss actions taken against a particular team publicly, but when a team is reported for tanking, typically we send a warning and give the user a chance to rectify whatever issue has put them on the wrong side of TOS.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

We don't discuss actions taken against a particular team publicly, but when a team is reported for tanking, typically we send a warning and give the user a chance to rectify whatever issue has put them on the wrong side of TOS.

With all due respect, if a player is blatantly cheesing the game by, for example, going out of their way to put a 1B at SS (which the game will not let you do automatically and can only be done by getting around the rules), I don't think that requires a warning first. I'm not saying you should have, like, a zero tolerance policy, but in a lot of these examples these aren't people who are like "oh, sorry, I didn't realize I wasn't supposed to play Jeff Bagwell at first base and finish with a team ERA in double digits", they're just straight up cheaters and all that a warning is going to do is either give them another couple weeks of tanking before they're finally banned or tell them that now is the time to turn their ill-gotten gains into victories.

This is one reason why I *do* think you should just have some built-in anti-tanking methods that you don't need to moderate, such as:

1. Quash the bug that makes it possible to play fielders radically out of position. You already have logic in there to prevent this, it's just possible to get around the logic (as explained early in this thread).

2. Set minimum pitch counts, or eliminate pitch counts altogether and replace them with "times through the lineup" (for people who want to experiment with openers and followers, which by the way I never, ever saw in the game; the only time I ever saw pitchers with low pitch counts was from tanking).

3. If a team has an ERA, say, 50% higher than the league average after 30 days of the season have elapsed, they don't earn any PPs until their team ERA drops below 50%.

4. As part of your normal process to warn and/or ban tanking players, force the AI to auto-set the player's lineups and rotations. If that makes a newly banned team suddenly go 45-5 over their last 50 games and win an Iron League championship, so be it. Nobody will be able to spend points or otherwise continue on with that team and those teams will get flushed out soon enough.

In order of importance, I think 4 would help the most *if* you guys are actually on top of things regarding banning tanking teams.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

We don't discuss actions taken against a particular team publicly, but when a team is reported for tanking, typically we send a warning and give the user a chance to rectify whatever issue has put them on the wrong side of TOS.

Obviously, no action has been taken so there is nothing to discuss.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Syd Thrift

4. As part of your normal process to warn and/or ban tanking players, force the AI to auto-set the player's lineups and rotations. If that makes a newly banned team suddenly go 45-5 over their last 50 games and win an Iron League championship, so be it. Nobody will be able to spend points or otherwise continue on with that team and those teams will get flushed out soon enough.

The warning should include one full week plus the remainder of the current week with AI control. It's like a temp ban given at a forum. You don't let the offender continue to post during the punishment.

[Orcin]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

As I've said previously in this thread, people seem to overstate the frequency that tanking teams occur. You are talking about the 1% of teams not the 40% of teams.

Doesnt mean we dont take it seriously, but just want to make sure everyone realizes were talking about the vast minority of teams employing against-TOS strategies

How many thefts is too many? If it is your stuff being stolen, none are acceptable. Even if there is only one, that one should still be addressed.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

We don't discuss actions taken against a particular team publicly, but when a team is reported for tanking, typically we send a warning and give the user a chance to rectify whatever issue has put them on the wrong side of TOS.

I know you guys are learning as you go and improving moderation, but at one point you may want to get someone whose job will be to do this and stop relying almost exclusively on other players reports. After a few years of what seems like inaction, the player base will stop caring and feel like it's pointless.


In PT 19 I reported the same guy 4 weeks in a row for playing catchers at every position except catcher. That was before we had the random seeding option and seeding every week would put you with a lot of the same teams. When I saw them on week 5 with the same lineup, I stopped caring, because I got the feeling you guys didn't care either.


I haven't reported anyone since.

[dkgo]

It may only be 1% of teams, but that is still hundreds of teams in the universe and an even larger percentage of active teams. And that one team impacts 29 other teams in their league each season.

[pstrickert]

Originally Posted by MaroonAlberich

Not yet here.

Is it wrong to kinda want one of them in my division? It seems that I only see a store-bought team every other week or every third week, but never these tankers that hand out PP left and right. Law of averages says I'll get one soon, right?

You make a good point. What incentive is there to report a team? From what we can tell (and whether it's true or not), nothing seems to be done. What incentive is there NOT to report a team? The chance to gain more PPs quickly when we play the tanking team (in some cases, 19x in a single season).

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by dkgo

It may only be 1% of teams, but that is still hundreds of teams in the universe and an even larger percentage of active teams. And that one team impacts 29 other teams in their league each season.

Well, at least the other 14 teams in their conference. Which, please correct me if my math is wrong but I've come up with these percentage chances if you have a 1% chance that any single team is tanking (note that I'm using, initally, the chance that it's a team in your own division)
:
1 season of play: 13.1% chance that at least one of the other teams in your conference (14, total, not including you) is tanking.
2 seasons: a 24.5% chance that at least one team in either season was tanking
3 seasons: 34.4% for at least one tanker in any of the 3 seasons
4 seasons: 43.0%
5 seasons: 50.5%
6 seasons: 57.0%

So, if you're stuck in one of the lower rungs, where you see this behavior the most, for 5 years, you'll have roughly a 1 in 2 chance of having had someone in your league acting in bad faith and influencing the amount of PPs distributed, even if the number is as small as 1% for those teams, which, if this 1% is based on all teams, you're very unlikely to see this behavior in silver and higher leagues (where you may see teams that had previously tanked but just to get to that level they probably aren't tanking any longer), so it's likely to be even higher than that.

Hopefully the PT guys can see where "it's only 1%" doesn't mean that this isn't a really big problem?

[Kris Jardine]

I see it was a mistake to try and engage and provide information in this thread.

Moderation policies and procedures are ever evolving and we discuss them constantly as the ways people try to circumvent the TOS evolves as well. It was better in 20 than 19, and is better in 21 than 20.

PT isnt even 2 years old, so we're all learning as we go.

As always, if you have ideas you'd like to share, my PM's are open