[vote requested] Proposed Rule Change: Encouraging Mid-Career Player Development

[pacers]

Proposed Rule Change: Encouraging Mid-Career Player Development

As I covered in more depth in this article, so much of our game revolves around the RP economy - how it's generated, how it's managed, and how it's spent. Spending RP needs to lead to clear benefits for each GM, but just as importantly, also make the game more fun for other GMs. In particular:

• One player’s currency spend should lead to positive observational externality for other players.
• We therefore want to encourage players to spend currency.
• For our league, the primary use of RP is player development, and the positive externalities are that 1/ well-developed players are cool to see, and 2/ a larger pool of good players makes trading and free agency more interesting.

Our current player development system encourages camping players with 0-3 years of experience but makes it much more expensive and difficult to develop players thereafter. As a result, the vast majority of players who were underdeveloped during their rookie contracts are not camped, often for reasons unrelated to the specific player (e.g. the GM being busy, having too many players to camp, etc). This is too bad for the rest of the league, as we miss out on players who might otherwise be much more interesting had they been camped. How many players get off their rookie contracts and have a solid sim, only for us to wonder what could have been - for instance, Serge Ibaka or Marco Belinelli?

Due to the above, I’m proposing a “middle tier” of Reward Camps that costs 150 RP per point for players with 4-7 years of experience. Here’s what it would look like:

Current System:

• Players with 0-3 years experience: 100 RP per rating increase
• Players with 4-10 years experience: 200 RP per rating increase. Once a player reaches 30-years-old, or 10+ years of experience, whichever comes first, he may not be eligible for upgrades

Proposed New System:

• Players with 0-3 years experience: 100 RP per rating increase, +8 in total increases per offseason
• Players with 4-7 years experience: 150 RP per rating increase, +8 in total increases per offseason
• Players with 8-10 years experience: 200 RP per rating increase, +6 in increases per offseason. Once a player reaches 30-years-old, or 10+ years of experience, whichever comes first, he may not be eligible for upgrades

There would be no changes to any other aspects of player development - e.g. the +24 increase boost per player, the 6400 RP spend limit per offseason, supercamp eligibility etc.

I believe this change is targeted enough to encourage more player development without causing more ratings inflation or disrupting the broader player development framework, as it fully camping an uncamped player after their rookie contract is still much more expensive (3600 RP instead of 4800 RP), but not prohibitively such.

As always, the point of the game is to have fun, and I believe this change would lead to more fun for all of us by:

• Enabling more avenues to find useful players
• Encouraging GMs to develop diamonds in the rough
• Creating more interesting players in the league

Thanks all -

[raptors]

I think I’m in favor of this and see it as a positive for the league, my initial concern is similar to the point Jesse made regarding the net RP cap where I worry that this type of change favors those of us who are way more active and have RP to spend in the first place (while I wish every GM would be active and manufacture RP, realistically that’s probably not happening)

Curious other people’s feelings here, inclined to vote yes as long as we think this is fair

My one tweak might be capping 4-7 camps at +6 rather than +8 (keeps the incentives tilted toward camping earlier and cheaper). But I do love the idea in a vacuum of extending the shelf life of players and giving teams more pathways to developing talent/adding value to reclamation project type guys in deals

As I think about it my other concern is that this change could favor competitive teams much more than rebuilding ones (might be more likely to use this tool when you’re already good versus seeing the value in it when you aren’t necessarily trying to win?)

[GX.]

I’m more than a big fan of this, some might say I’m a whole air conditioner.

what do you need on these votes for a rule to be passed?