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

[Syd Thrift]

There's a team in the Stone League I'm in that is dead last because their pitching his horrific. A deeper dive reveals that they've got all diamond cards in their lineup with lots and lots more diamond and gold cards on the bench and reserve. However, their pitching staff is all Bronze and below. The best pitchers on their team are Jim Abbott (69) and Geoff Zahn (69 and probably an underperformer due to that low STF). Tanking, you say? But wait! All those guys on their reserve roster are also position players as well. A quick glance suggests that they really are starting the best they have to offer.

So, if they've got diamond-level pitchers who are inactive, that's clearly tanking and they need to get disciplined for that, I think we can all agree. Of course, we can't see their inactives, although I'm sure the admins can. But what if they don't? What if they really and truly are just selling off all of their pitching rated 70 or higher in order to stay in the lower leagues and earn cheap PP? That strikes me as unethical (although tell me why I'm wrong if you disagree) but is it illegal by OOTP rules? Should there be a rule? How do you enforce that?

[bailey]

They can't make you buy good pitching. Problem with the strategy is that you score so many runs it doesn't matter how bad the pitching is. You move up, just the same. If the diamond bats disappear near the end of the season to avoid promotion--that would be tanking.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by bailey

They can't make you buy good pitching. Problem with the strategy is that you score so many runs it doesn't matter how bad the pitching is. You move up, just the same. If the diamond bats disappear near the end of the season to avoid promotion--that would be tanking.

We'll see but even with them having the top offense in the league, so far those guys are dead last in the conference. That pitching staff is *bad*, like my team scored 54 runs over 2 games on them levels of bad.

[Matt Arnold]

If you' have to ask on the boards if you think something is legit, please report them and then we can investigate further.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by Matt Arnold

If you' have to ask on the boards if you think something is legit, please report them and then we can investigate further.

Absolutely (and I did!) but this has an interesting wrinkle to it, which is: is it unethical to load up on one side of the field to the extent that you have no realistic chance of getting promoted from low-level leagues or even avoiding relegation (I think yes), and if so, is there anything that can be done about it (I think... I don't know)?

In this case, how do you differentiate blatant tanking (which would certainly be the case if this user hasn't actually sold off their pitchers and has them inactive, which again, I reported just in case) from really, really awful strategy? In this case, I think that even if this person is selling the higher level pitchers they acquired (assuming they haven't just purchased everything from the auction house, which maybe I shouldn't assume), it's potentially super unethical but I don't know that there should be a rule like "if you have at least 5 gold players, you must have at least 1 gold pitcher" or whatever.

It's also annoying that people will find ways to skirt the rules. IMO it's one thing if you're looking for exploits that allow you to win; it's another one entirely if you're finding ways to tank that are in the spirit but not the rules of the tanking bylines.

[dkgo]

Originally Posted by bailey

They can't make you buy good pitching. Problem with the strategy is that you score so many runs it doesn't matter how bad the pitching is. You move up, just the same. If the diamond bats disappear near the end of the season to avoid promotion--that would be tanking.

You can definitely give up enough runs to make sure you don't promote.

It's a flaw in the system. I went on all year last game that it doesn't make sense to design the game such that people would prefer not to win, but the incentives are misaligned.

[Syd Thrift]

Originally Posted by dkgo

You can definitely give up enough runs to make sure you don't promote.

It's a flaw in the system. I went on all year last game that it doesn't make sense to design the game such that people would prefer not to win, but the incentives are misaligned.

Yeah... as much as I’d hate this since I’m currently in the lower levels, I feel like the PPs you get should be heightened the higher the level you’re at; that is, an All Star selection in Diamond should earn you more points than an All Star selection in Rookie. That would probably help. Also, I don’t know, at some point if the pitching is bad enough, like your team ERA is over 6, maybe you’re unable to earn PPs anymore (which, yes, would encourage teams to play with ERAs right at 6, but that’s hard to accomplish without going over, just having an ERA in that range would still cause these teams loaded with diamond players to get promoted, and if teams did stuff like hold out players until late in the season or drop in bad players at the end, that’s still punishable by the rules of the game... maybe if you added a rule that if you sell a diamond or perfect player you can’t buy that card back again for one month / 4 seasons, that would cover that last loophole).

Maybe at the lowest levels it can be something as simple as, if you win 100+ games in, say, Bronze level or lower and then are relegated at the next one, your team is automatically suspended for 2 weeks. That seems harsh, as it’s extremely possible to win 100+ in F2P just by building your roster somewhat shrewdly, but 2 weeks isn’t the end of the world either...

All in all I’d hate to be in the rookie league this guy gets relegated to...

[Thundercrack]

Not tanking and not unethical. What if he went diamond pitching and mediocre position players? I doubt anyone would have a problem with that. As you said, if he had diamond hitters on reserve, maybe different story. But he’s chosen an offense heavy approach, I don’t see any issue with that.

[dkgo]

Generating PP is 90% of the game for the vast, vast majority of the player base. That's how all of these games work. If you aren't maximizing achievements or playing the market then you will keep falling behind people that do. You aren't breaking any rules trying to earn points and that is the entire purpose of the game. The game doesn't reward winning with points so people aren't going to try.

People who don't know any better and play the "right" way with incremental player improvements are the ones who get stuck in the purgatory level where they aren't good enough to win, aren't bad enough to relegate, and aren't earning points either to improve.

Unless you spend thousands at the beginning on PP and simply don't care, then the most important part of the game is how to get them.

[obseen]

If the diamond hitters on the team are comprised of the usual SE cards then it would be close to impossible not to have pitchers over 69 locked unless the SE cards were purchased. You can look to see how many collections he completed in the Manager screen

[Kris Jardine]

"Cheat, deliberately lose, trade wins or Perfect Points, "feed" wins or Perfect Points from one account to another via the auction house or any other method, or otherwise fail to make a good-faith effort to play the game in a fashion intended to win via fair gameplay according to the intended operation of the game."

That is the TOS definition of things against the rules. As Matt said above, if you feed the Terms of Service are being violated, please report and the team will look into it.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by Kris Jardine

"Cheat, deliberately lose, trade wins or Perfect Points, "feed" wins or Perfect Points from one account to another via the auction house or any other method, or otherwise fail to make a good-faith effort to play the game in a fashion intended to win via fair gameplay according to the intended operation of the game."

That is the TOS definition of things against the rules. As Matt said above, if you feed the Terms of Service are being violated, please report and the team will look into it.

It would be nice to know how YOU intend for US to play the game. I'm playing in good faith to win in the long run, but may sacrifice wins now, just like real life.

[Kris Jardine]

Originally Posted by bailey

It would be nice to know how YOU intend for US to play the game. I'm playing in good faith to win in the long run, but may sacrifice wins now, just like real life.

Its not so much what the intention is supposed to be, its what its NOT supposed to be.

There is a difference between building your team slowly and working towards the endgame and in deliberately gaming the system to farm PP and stay at lower levels.

Not all situations are created equal which is why we advise people to report teams, the moderation team discusses it as a group and decides what to do.

[bailey]

My problem is that you can ban someone without warning for egregious tactics and not explain in advance what those egregious tactics are because you never thought of what egregious players like myself can discover.

[One Great Matrix]

Perhaps the TOS should just warn "If other teams dislike you enough, and we agree there is good reason to dislike you enough to boot you from the league, you might be booted from the league." Or something like that, ha.

[Syd Thrift]

I don’t know, man, there’s no “natural animosity” here; teams are just a bunch of 1s and 0s. In order for people to “dislike” you, you’ve got to do some pretty shady crap, whether it’s blatantly illegal by the rules or just horribly against the spirit of them. This particular issue I think you could resolve more equitably the way I noted, which is to stop giving out any award PPs if your team fails to meet certain relatively easy to meet thresholds. But that does require extra coding, plus less leeway to bend the rules for someone who is just not doing well or doesn’t get basic aspects of the game, perhaps...

That guy by the way us still up to his current shenanigans. His team ERA is up around 9 and his main roster has a whole bunch of diamond quality players on it...

[Dobrt]

Just think about it. If you lead the league in any category at seasons end, you get quite a few PP. How much easier is it to collect if you have diamond hitters in a lower league. If you play like that for a few seasons, and with tournament wins, you can buy more diamond players faster than by progressing up the pyramid. IMO the PP amounts for achievements should be far lower in lower leagues to make players want to progress.

[Kris Jardine]

Originally Posted by bailey

My problem is that you can ban someone without warning for egregious tactics and not explain in advance what those egregious tactics are because you never thought of what egregious players like myself can discover.

The only time we would ban a team without issuing a warning would be a major offense of the TOS causing major instability or harm to the game, users or game's economy.

For things like tanking (as an example), a warning is always issued first

[Torgonius]

So me using my 200 OVR homemade Buddy Biancalana card...

[Ron2112]

Originally Posted by dkgo

Generating PP is 90% of the game for the vast, vast majority of the player base. That's how all of these games work. If you aren't maximizing achievements or playing the market then you will keep falling behind people that do. You aren't breaking any rules trying to earn points and that is the entire purpose of the game. The game doesn't reward winning with points so people aren't going to try.

People who don't know any better and play the "right" way with incremental player improvements are the ones who get stuck in the purgatory level where they aren't good enough to win, aren't bad enough to relegate, and aren't earning points either to improve.

Unless you spend thousands at the beginning on PP and simply don't care, then the most important part of the game is how to get them.

This leads to the question I'll ask next (because I'm new): can you get more points by tanking and farming "easy" achievements than you can get from rewards by winning your league?

If the answer is "yes", then perhaps there should be a few more incentives for doing well.....?