Your Expanding Strategy Ideas

[kimkrichbaum2]

I am starting a new thread from a message I posted on "Skill and Chance"(see end of page 4). The basis of my inquiry is this. It seems that some experienced managers have noticed that because player pricing equity has gotten better, and many of the best strategies are all known by the experienced managers (or the newbies that read this forum). That everything is so equal, that while skill still plays a part in results, that chance may play even a larger part. This is not ideal for managers who love strategy.

So my question is this, assuming these conjectures are true. What kind of changes could SN and SOM make to spice up strategies in the leagues? My sense is a combination of draft changes and actual game play changes would be the hottest.

Here are the best ideas I've come up with, I'd love to hear yours.

DRAFT: Price all players at 60% of their current value. During the draft each owner chooses 25 players, but does not rank order them. Instead they put down a price they would be willing to pay for that player, at his base salary or above. And if more than one manager chooses a player, the one with the highest bid gets them. If you don't get a player, you don't get a replacement player, you just have a temporary hole. Then we have a waiver period as we do currently. From this point on (until the season starts), each player costs 1 2/3 of their base salary(the same as salaries are now). Priorities in the wiaver draft are exactly as they are now. If you don't get a player in the waiver draft. you get the next available player, just as we do in the regular draft now. Players continue to make moves until the season starts. After the season starts all players picked up cost double their base salaries(about 120% of current levels.) whenever you release a player, you get what you paid for him - which will be a relase penalty for anyone picked up before the season started.

PLAY: rate each hitter on whether they are better at hitting fast balls or off speed. A dead fast ball hitter, will get most of their hits in the 1 column of their card. A better off speed hitter would more hits on the 3 column, the 2 column could either represent balance, or hitting fast breaking stuff like sliders. The pitchers wuld have a rating based on how much they throw fast balls, sliders, and off speed stuff. The computer would set it up and that 1, 2, and 3 on the big die would not have equal probability. An extreme fast ball pitcher would role four 1's, one 2, and one 3 out of each 6 roles that go on the hitters card (4,5, and 6 would stay even). A knuckleballer say, would be the opposite with lots of 3's. This would go well with allowing managers to choose their lineup for each game, not just each series, or having more categories of lineup than just lefty righty. (versus lefty junkballer or balanced righty or lefty flamethrower, etc.)

Both of these changes would add whole new strategies to the game, especially the PLAY change. and it would take a couple years for the best strategies to shake out. Then my recommendation would be change some aspect of draft or game play every 3 years, so there are always new horizons to explore!

Your ideas?

[LARRYLANG]

The biggest thing I would like to see changed is have the ability to autodraft or Live-Draft when you sign up...I know some of the theme leagues do live-draft on another site but I would like to see it as an option when I buy a team..When you buy your team--join a league that is best suited for when you are available to live draft. Or if you would rather do it like it is done now--just fill out an auto draft list. This one thing would spark an incredible interest in this game.

I too would like to see lineup settings for each individual game instead of for each series...Thus solving the delima of when you have a guy injured for 1 or 2 more games---do I put him back in the lineup and be exposed to Hals sometimes incredible lineups and player substitutions for the games he is still injured...If it were game by game that decision would be a moot point.

I don't know alot about computers so this may be to difficult of a program to add, but it would sure make it more enjoyable for me.[/b]

[vince0501]

litangel your first suggestion has some interesting possibilities. Your second, however, is beyond TSN's scope. You have to remember that they are working with another companies product. Changing the column readouts would mean we were no longer playing strat. Strat has for years been making what I still feel is the best baseball simulation on the market, so the game does not need changing. Tweaking perhaps, especially making Hal better. Bernie is apparently trying to do that, while working within Strats' structure.

[LANCEBOUSLEY]

i don't know about game by game but it would be nice to have the basic lineups vs regular and reverse pitchers.

and be alble to list the substitution order i.e.

in rf i want...

drew first then if drews not avail i want

orland palmero then and only then would i want
yadira molina or some other schlub who is 5 (+5) e25!!!

given that the difference between the optimal lineup and the most suboptimal yields around 26 runs per year and that 10 runs = around 1 win per year. so optimal to sub is about 2.5 wins per year.

I am skeptical that all our machinations add a whole lot to the win column.

[bricoons]

Strato is great because of the luck factor. Thats why I play here. I like all of the what ifs based solely on the strato cards and the strategy they have built into them. If you want something more realistic with gameplay, I know there are other games out there that do take fastball hitters v knuckleballers into consideration because i have played them. Strato has had a formula that has worked for years as far as game play.

There are some things that could be done to help make the game play more like the actual card game, maybe.

Pelzer's idea for individual game lineups would be a good place to start.
Finding ways to make thestrategies listed as more situatoional (such as bunting) rather than just choosing to do them more often or less often would be good too.

I would also like to see a live draft option when signing up for a game. I keep trying to look through message boards for a live draft league that would fit into my schedule, but haven't found one yet or ones without themes im not interested in.

The main problem with playing a strato game online is that replaying with the same mix of cards all the time will start to make things predictable even with game play changes. The only way to really make seasons more challenging is to use cards from different years, like the back to the 80's game.

How about this for an idea...Have a new game with a random card draft pool from any era with more open pricing on the draft side. You'd have to research the player cards everytime you play. The drafts could be filled either with studs or bums and you could see good years or bad years from name players. This is just off the top of my head so it is probably idiotic.

-Brian

[longgandhi]

Maybe TSN Strat has become like the Ultimate Fighting Championships.

When they first started, UFC was more about which style of fighting was the most effective. After a while, style wasn't the deciding factor because every competitor was accomplished in several striking and grappling styles. The deciding factor has become the physical and mental abilities of each individual competitor.

The previous few years in TSN Strat, the deciding factor for many championships came down to who could divine the best card exploits. But now, with most participants familar with what makes a good card, or at least which cards go well with which parks, along with TSNs improved pricing, maybe the winners are being decided by who has done the best job of assembling their team for their park/division. Oops, wrong thread. :oops:

[MARCPELLETIER]

litangel,

it's good to see someone having Som at heart trying to better the products. I have to agree with many above:

1- your drafting suggestion is a bit similar to the auctions leagues, which is already offered as a service by penngray at www.penngray.com/auction (TSN is discussing with penngray, I believe, to get the site under their wings).

2-definitively not an option. Your idea is not bad, but it wouldn't be strat anymore (in fact, I wonder if this service is not already available).

Also, bear in mind that this new process where it is difficult even to the best managers to win 90 games is not necessarily something TSN dislikes. Of course, TSN doesn't want to have "the old guard" drop out. That said, many new "rookies" in the past were simply blown away in the older seasons, so I am pretty sure that the percentages who were buying another team was lower than it is now. Furthermore, the free credits were always given to the "old guard" in the past, whereas now, there are more evenly distributed.

(which makes me think: perhaps another reason why the old guard doesn't play as often is simply because they don't have the same level of free credits!!).

Therefore, while I would strongly disagree that skill has disappeared from strat, I have to recognize that the game has narrowed the gap between best managers and rookie managers, and it is my opinion that TSN probably likes it this way.

[MARCPELLETIER]

My own suggestion (I've said it in the other thread, but it is better suited here) is to support what bk offered in the past:

1-establish a fair pricing system
2- let the supply and demand make small corrections on it (perhaps up to 30%), such that, every monday, TSN comes up with a slightly different pricing system that would reflect the draft activity (and waivers activity???) of the preceding week (or perhaps of the cumulative season).

This system would have two advantages:

1- The old guard would retreive some of this aspect of "searching" for the bargains---because effectively, some players will hypothetically be as low as 30% of their real value.

2- The rookie managers, especially if they don't follow the activities on the board, won't probably purchase the "hot" value as intensively as those owners who follow closely the boards in order to learn who's hot and who's not. By consequence, the rookie managers might very well end up with many "who's not hot" players, some of which will certainly be good values given that their prices would go down for not being hot. In the end, rookie managers might to some extent beneficiate from this system and turn out with respectable seasons nonetheless.

[emart]

Interesting point about TSN probably preferring more parity, Lucky. If new players have a pretty good chance of being competitive without become Strat masters, then the game is more satisfying for them, they win some, play more, and perhaps bring others into the game.

Makes me wonder if they (TSN) haven't adjusted the programming in some way to achieve relative parity between teams..... :? If I recall correctly, there were other kinds of 'normalizing' features that were used in past seasons, and certain features that were selectively enabled/disabled.

[pedakrla]

[quote:742ce2edb4="emart"]Makes me wonder if they (TSN) haven't adjusted the programming in some way to achieve relative parity between teams..... :? If I recall correctly, there were other kinds of 'normalizing' features that were used in past seasons, and certain features that were selectively enabled/disabled.[/quote:742ce2edb4]

TSN might be tempted to do something like this for a nanosecond, for the reasons you mentioned, but then I would expect cooler heads to prevail. The implications of being caught (virtually total loss of business, loss of credibility, stain on the TSN reputation, loss of the SOM franchise) are just too big, in my opinion, for TSN to do anything that would compromise the integrity of the competition.