Big Baller League

Rule Change Proposal: Moving to a Net RP Trade Cap

Hi team - finally getting around to putting together the proposal to move us from a Gross RP trade cap to a Net RP trade cap.

The RP economy is arguably the single most important thing driving trading activity, which is arguably the single most important thing in driving league engagement. Currently, as everyone knows, every team can trade up to 1500 RP in a single season, and once you reach your RP trade cap, you lose a key trading lever for the rest of the season with no way to recover that lever.

This rule can be tweaked to add a lot more depth and activity to the game.

Design Goals:

• Enable more trading! Trading is fun and drives league engagement, and RP is the grease that drives more trades.
• Add more depth to how each team can manage their RP bank.
• Keep the system straightforward and easy to understand.
• Do NOT change the system to be overly advantageous to those with a lot of RP (who are more active in generating content, etc).

Proposed New Design:

• Same as now, each team starts with RP trade cap of 1500 in a season, resetting after TC.
• Each team CAN add to their trade cap by acquiring RP in trades.
• Each team CANNOT go negative in RP trade cap at any time.
• Each team CANNOT trade away more than 1500 RP in a single trade.

This system is designed around rewarding trading activity and strategy, not generating a ton of content - even if you have a million RP going into a season, you still have to acquire RP in trades in order to trade away more than 1500 RP in that season. And because the only way to increase your RP trade cap is to acquire RP from other teams, the league-wide RP trade cap per season stays the same.

Example Scenario:
You trade away 1500 RP in a single trade. You then acquire 500 RP in a subsequent trade in the same season.

• Current rule (Gross RP cap): You are still unable to trade away more RP that season.
• Proposed new rule (Net RP cap): You are able to trade away 500 more RP that season.

That’s it. This post is deliberately short because the change is simple. I strongly believe this change would be a massive positive for the league and would love to see us implement it!

Very well thought out proposal, thanks tonger!

That said, I’m a NO on this one.

Many of the benefits you outline about a net cap are real. I’d selfishly enjoy many of the benefits it would provide active traders and RP-generators (like me!) but am opposed to it more broadly:

-This would only increase the advantage that “big markets” (e.g, active traders and RP generators) enjoy. I think these GMs deserve an advantage - they put more into the league - but this will result in the more engaged GMs having another lever at their disposal that more inactive GMs wouldn’t have reason to use . Negative impact on parity ensues.

-This dynamic is not hypothetical and it’s something that played out in our old league when we didn’t have a trade cap. There was a weird dynamic where less active GMs were legitimately hostile to those who used every lever at their disposal and it was honestly kind of awkward. The current (gross) rule is intentionally clean and simple.

-Way more potential for circumvention. You might only have a 1500 RP limit in a single trade, but teams could (and would) attempt to slyly trade installments of RPs to the same team (or via another team) if they were so motivated, over multiple trades. And it would be challenging to prove.

Less important, but I’d also add that the league seems to be getting more complicated in the BB era with more things to track, and having more dynamic RP rules again requires more engagement to not fall behind. It can be a little more daunting for some portions of the GM pool and imo there is some magic in the simplicity of a league where there are fewer loopholes / tricks of the trade.

Skillz wrote: Yesterday, 9:29 pm Very well thought out proposal, thanks tonger!

That said, I’m a NO on this one.

Many of the benefits you outline about a net cap are real. I’d selfishly enjoy many of the benefits it would provide active traders and RP-generators (like me!) but am opposed to it more broadly:

-This would only increase the advantage that “big markets” (e.g, active traders and RP generators) enjoy. I think these GMs deserve an advantage - they put more into the league - but this will result in the more engaged GMs having another lever at their disposal that more inactive GMs wouldn’t have reason to use . Negative impact on parity ensues.

-This dynamic is not hypothetical and it’s something that played out in our old league when we didn’t have a trade cap. There was a weird dynamic where less active GMs were legitimately hostile to those who used every lever at their disposal and it was honestly kind of awkward. The current (gross) rule is intentionally clean and simple.

-Way more potential for circumvention. You might only have a 1500 RP limit in a single trade, but teams could (and would) attempt to slyly trade installments of RPs to the same team (or via another team) if they were so motivated, over multiple trades. And it would be challenging to prove.

Super appreciate the thoughts. In response:

- I don't think this change benefits GMs who generate more RPs than other GMs, as you're still net capped at 1500 RP and the only way to trade more than 1500 RP in a season is to go acquire it from someone else (not generate more content).

- This change gives an avenue for GMs who are more active - agreed there. Is that a bad thing given the current state of the league? Said otherwise, are we at a point where active GMs have so many advantages vs less active GMs that this change would take it over the top?

- Currently, if a GM wants more RP than you can trade them to complete a trade, you'd have to give them more assets, which other GM would then have to go sell - this change enables the other GM to say "go sell your assets so you can trade me more RP." This new dynamic would favor the less active GMs at the expense of the more active ones, which counterbalances some of the above concerns.

Voted no - I don't really agree that a net trade cap would increase strategy, I actually think there's more strategy involved when tradeable RP is a scarce asset vs. when it becomes more plentiful, specifically only for those who trade the most. I don't really think the current rule as written is broken in any way and think it's one of the biggest improvements over our old league in terms of putting all teams on an equal playing field every year regardless of trading activity or content generation. Also think the circumvention thing is a pretty big deal as Jesse laid out - the rule is already kind of being circumvented right now with 3 way trades, and think this provides a lot more avenues for that.

Also think it's pretty biased to call the current trade cap "gross", let everyone make up their own mind without inflammatory adjectives

Very few GMs actually exhaust their trade cap each year.

The few that do - typically me jwoo tonger joe etc - are also the content generators, because they don’t mind spending from a surplus.

So even if this rule in it of itself doesn’t exclusively benefit “big markets,” it does in practice. The GMs most likely to benefit from the new rule are those same ppl.

If this rule does get passed we are going to need to hire one mod to explicitly monitor the sonicks annual RP transactions

<3 u nick

Skillz wrote: Yesterday, 9:48 pm Very few GMs actually exhaust their trade cap each year.

The few that do - typically me jwoo tonger joe etc - are also the content generators, because they don’t mind spending from a surplus.

So even if this rule in it of itself doesn’t exclusively benefit “big markets,” it does in practice. The GMs most likely to benefit from the new rule are those same ppl.

I hear your other points, but I'm still not following this one. This change doesn't enable anyone to spend their RP any faster, nor does it enable anyone to acquire RP any faster, so shouldn't the incentives are the same? If the reasoning is that people who generate a lot of content are also those who are super active in trades, then ok, but this rule change should navigate that distinction.

Want to make sure I understand this point, as I specifically designed this change in a way that isn’t meant to favor people who generate more content.

pacers wrote: Yesterday, 11:26 pm

Skillz wrote: Yesterday, 9:48 pm Very few GMs actually exhaust their trade cap each year.

The few that do - typically me jwoo tonger joe etc - are also the content generators, because they don’t mind spending from a surplus.

So even if this rule in it of itself doesn’t exclusively benefit “big markets,” it does in practice. The GMs most likely to benefit from the new rule are those same ppl.

I hear your other points, but I'm still not following this one. This change doesn't enable anyone to spend their RP any faster, nor does it enable anyone to acquire RP any faster, so shouldn't the incentives are the same? If the reasoning is that people who generate a lot of content are also those who are super active in trades, then ok, but this rule change should navigate that distinction.

Want to make sure I understand this point, as I specifically designed this change in a way that isn’t meant to favor people who generate more content.

To paraphrase Jesse, I think he's saying that:

1. the change most significantly benefits people who exhaust their RP trade cap
2. The people who exhaust their RP trade cap most often are usually those with the most RP (which is empirically true)
3. The people who have the most RP are the ones who generate the most content

Therefore the people who generate the most content and thus spend the most RP benefit from having the ability to potentially spend more RP, even if they have to trade more in order to reap that benefit - as the non-content generating GMs are less likely to trade 1500+ RP in a single season anyway and are mostly unchanged by this rule