"House rules" for online leagues

[ricko]

Originally Posted by Ktulu

If the league is good enough people will participate, incentives just give those who have more time an advantage over those who do not.

I'm with you. I don't like the idea of rewarding people who have more free time than others. As long as you are keeping up your commitments, you shouldn't be (indirectly) penalized for not giving more of your time.

I'm in only one online league (the WBH; it rocks). My time for it runs hot and cold. I enjoy it more when I'm participating, and I'm sure I would be more competitive if I had more time. That's enough of an advantage, in my eyes. Just my $0.02.

We do, however, penalize teams for disrupting the flow. Missing an export, causing extra work for the Commish by not managing your roster properly, stuff like that. The rewards we do have are mostly cosmetic. For example, if you go through a whole season without being penalized, you get to give one of your players a nickname.

[Raidergoo]

Instead of a participation point scheme, eMLB awards cash to teams for writing news articles, preparing awards ballots, and the like. The cash is added to the organization's cash, so that they can spend it on player salaries.

There are a couple things that you can spend cash on during the off-season, like boosting fan interest upwards 1-5 points, increasing market size, or adding seats to your stadium, or bidding for Japanese players from an AI run NPB.

[DWK]

Originally Posted by Corsairs

Alright, specific question for online players: What kind of a schedule do you set during the playoffs? I know a lot of leagues sim 7 days at a time. Do you keep that pace during the playoffs or slow things down to allow for more fine-tuning of lineups/rotations? We're about to hit our first post-season and I'd be curious to learn how other leagues handle things.

The BTL sims 2 games per day for the playoffs so you can fine tune more. This way managers can tweak something if need be.

[Corsairs]

Originally Posted by DWK

The BTL sims 2 games per day for the playoffs so you can fine tune more. This way managers can tweak something if need be.

We've settled on a similar pace for our first playoffs. The first round (best-of-5) is played with one sim of 2 games and another of 3 games. Round 2 (best-of-7) has three sims: 2 games / 3 games / 2 games. For the championship round we'll be simming just one game each time to allow for very fine tuning. All championship games are broadcast live.

[mikev]

So, one house rule that I've just implemented is due to a strange glitch in the game.

If a player's option year is declined, he is apparently released into the FA pool immediately instead of whenever FAs are supposed to declare. In some cases, there are several sims after the end of the world series and before FAs file.

To keep an even playing field, I restricted all FA offers with the exception of Scout Finds from the time the Championship ends to the time Free Agents file.

[Corsairs]

Thanks for that tip mikev!

You just mentioned scout finds, and that's something I wanted to ask about. There's been discussion on these forums in the past about how "hidden talents" can unbalance a league over time if left unchecked because of how good they tend to be. I would like for hidden talents to be impactful to an extent, but ultimately I want the draft to be the primary source of talent acquisition for the league.

Do any of you place limitations on hidden talents? I was considering placing a limit on the number of these that can be signed per year. The idea floating around in my head is a limit of 2 talents signed to major league contracts per team, with no limit on the number of talents signed to minor league contracts.

[mikev]

We don't place any limit on scout finds. Most of them seem to be 20/20 scrubs, with the occasional gem thrown in the mix. It's been fairly rare to have a scout find go straight to the bigs.