by supertyphoon » Mon Sep 12, 2011 6:07 pm
There's a competing historical baseball simulation - What If Sports - that allows multiple teams to have the same the player, and it's possible for managers to copy successful teams man-for-man. I've even seem copycat teams in the same league. I haven't had any teams there in quite a while, but piggybacking was rampant when I did, and it didn't make the game nearly as fun or challenging if one pioneering manager managed to put together 100+ win team, only to see it copied over and over ad nauseum after it was posted on the list of all-time best records.
If someone is new or wants to try a style of play you've been successful at, I see no problem if they want to copy your team and they ask you for help and suggestions while doing so. Eventually they'll modify that blueprint to suit their particular tastes and managerial style, and they won't need mentoring.
On the other hand, a blatant rip-off of another's team (a la WifS) is the lazy man's way out. It's not wrong, just lazy. And if he's in the same league as the manager copied from - without their permission - I feel like he should at least acknowledge the fact, not try to cover it up, and move on.
There's so many players available at all salary levels that anyone can make up for losing most of their players to another copycat team. In fact, I think I'd get greater satisfaction out of building a winning team from scratch through waivers and preseason moves than I would if I landed all the players on my draft list. The icing on the cake would be to win more games than the copycat team. That would be a more suitable form of karmic justice than complaining about it.