Challenge Ideas

Post by **timmy_t** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:03 pm

I agree bruins72 about the Marleau rule.

I think, since we all completely overhaul our teams anyway, we could put a limit on the number of trades per season. Otherwise, we're better off with a fantasy draft...

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:33 pm

That's an interesting idea, timmy. I'm all for limiting trades to some extent. I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to trading out most of my team to get who I want. In reality, no GM is going to be able to completely revamp his team to that extent. It just wouldn't happen.

I do think that the challenges are suffering from too much of everybody having almost the same team. A couple people figure out a good player to get and then it seems like every team has that same player. Either that or everybody goes after a player that gets waived or traded cheaply at the start of the season in every game. Look at John Madden in the last two versions of the game. I know every time I start a new game I pillage the Washington Capitals and unload all of my over-inflated contracts on them. Every game. Who doesn't go after Niittymaki whenever they take over a team with weak goaltending?

Konstantinov16 · Post by **Konstantinov16** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:47 pm

Well I haven't participated in the Challenge yet, but I myself would like to see a trade maximum. My brother in our fantasy league is kicking everyone's buttox because he's made like 40 trades. Anyway, just my two cents.

Post by **CatchUp** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 4:57 pm

I think this problem could be solved by creating a 'black list' of players that can not be traded for. This way, everyone gets to play with different players (as opposed to the Marleau's and Nitty's) but your hands aren't tied by a trade maximum. Personally, I think trading is the best aspect of this game and I would have to vote against a trade limit.

Taloncarde · Post by **Taloncarde** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 5:21 pm

I would defineatly be for a blacklist, after all it's not much of a challenge if everyone trades for the same players. That being said, any player on the blacklist that is on the challenge team selected wouldn't count. I realize not everyone does this, or maybe make it an exception list not so much a blacklist, IE, you can trade for X # of players on this list, say, one or two.

Post by **batdad** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 5:37 pm

If you put a blacklist..then there are less players to choose from to make moves for. Chances are then greater that people will trade for the same people. PLUS I HAVE NEVER EVEN ONCE HAD MARLEAU ON MY TEAM!

A generous---say 5 trades before season, and then a 5-7 trades limit for during the season (up to trade deadline week), with a possible go ahead and do what you want at the trade deadline, would be the way to go to me.

And life is back to normal eh CatchUp...Must go get my new avatar.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 5:48 pm

I'm not in favor of a black list, but I would like to see a limit on trades. Like Batdad said, maybe 5 trades before the season begins and maybe a limit of 3 trades per month. I think this would make the challenges more challenging since some players' value goes up as the season progresses. This would put an emphasis on the art of trading for us players. I know Van Ryn is pretty easy to get before the season starts, but usually after the first game, he's harder to trade for.

Also, I know some of you guys like to keep quiet about who you've traded for. I think I'd maybe also like the idea of this being a rule. Maybe this would help create a little more variety among our teams. Of course, as soon as we enter our stats for the first 20 games, some of our traded players will have been revealed. I guess some adjustments could be made when it comes to entering our stats, but maybe that would be a little bit too much of an overhaul on the system we have now.

Post by **Danny** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 6:26 pm

Newbie here so bear with me, my opinion might not be as important as some veteran member's opinion but still

Different people different approaches, I was reading up Bruins 72's blog and found many similarities to my perception (although I'm way worse at it

) that's why I'm not keen on trade limits. It's the most important part of the game to me, alongside finding the right lines and right tactics for them.
As far as the blacklist goes I'd support that idea partially, someone who would desperately want a player off the blacklist still could try to sign him but this player would add a fictional 2m* to his salary cap, or you couldn't include any draft picks in trades that get you blacklisted players. If someone still signed a player off the blacklist he would have to provide a screenshot of the trade info.

Anyway just my 2 cents

*It doesn't have to be 2m, just an example

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 6:32 pm

I'm all for anything that encourages people to try players they might not normally use. While I like the idea of a blacklist, I wouldn't expect to see many names on that list, just a handful. Anyhow, we've done so many challenges here that adding little clauses to a challenge just makes things a little more interesting, that's all.

Joe · Post by **Joe** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 6:37 pm

Danny wrote:Newbie here so bear with me, my opinion might not be as important as some veteran member's opinion but still

Different people different approaches, I was reading up Bruins 72's blog and found many similarities to my perception (although I'm way worse at it ) that's why I'm not keen on trade limits. It's the most important part of the game to me, alongside finding the right lines and right tactics for them.
As far as the blacklist goes I'd support that idea partially, someone who would desperately want a player off the blacklist still could try to sign him but this player would add a fictional 2m* to his salary cap, or you couldn't include any draft picks in trades that get you blacklisted players. If someone still signed a player off the blacklist he would have to provide a screenshot of the trade info.

Anyway just my 2 cents

*It doesn't have to be 2m, just an example

It doesn't matter if you have 2 posts or 942 posts, everyones opinion is equal on this board

Anyways, basically it sounds like you're talking about a sort of penalty for signing/trading for a blacklisted player. Not a bad idea. Another way we could go about penalizing people is by taking away points when it comes to scoring the challenge stats.

Post by **timmy_t** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 7:55 pm

I'm all for anything that encourages people to try players they might not normally use.

This is exactly my point. What fun is playing a Blue Jackets challenge and a Kings challenge with pretty much the same team?

I don't like the idea of a blacklist, and I think that one trade per month would be enough to get who you want.

I've been out of the last few challenges, and I stopped playing my Fantasy Draft challenge before I finished the season. If some of you remember, my team was composed of all Americans. Because I had a limited talent pool to work with, I couldn't get a lot of the players I used in the Montreal challenge. Now that was difficult!

I know we've tried to continue the challenges for additional seasons, but most people lose interest after the first season.

What can we do to make the challenges more fun?

Post by **Minstrel** » Fri Feb 23, 2007 8:34 pm

I think the more rules you slap onto it the less fun it becomes, and it especially creates a handicap for new players which goes strongly against what we shoot for in the Challenges which is an even playing field for all players.

Also any kind of 'blacklist' or trade limit brings in issues of regulation. As our rules are now it is very easy to require/get the infomation we need to check if we think someone isn't following the rules.

So, while both ideas have merit I'm not sure they wouldn't create more problems than they'd "solve".

I always "reinvent" my Challenge teams and tweak until they are successful and I'm not simply recreating the same team each time. I'm creating the same style of team but I use many different players along the way, influenced by who we start with. I think putting limits on trades or players basically punishes people for knowing the game and it's players and being good GMs. And it's about starting with the same conditions and players and seeing who can get the best out of their team.

We have the limits to trading away picks already and it's easily verifiable. A limit of trades would be unfair to a team let's say they make all their designated trades and then have three players go out for the season in October, will that GM continue to play his team if he can't make trades?

As always, any of these kinds of ideas are fine among veteran EHM players and veteran TBL Challenge vets but that's not what the Challenges are designed for, their best quality is that anyone at any level of experience can join them and understand them.

I think the Challenge Salary Cap addresses the issue as much as possible in a way that easily manageable and able to be enforced. Maybe we lower that to force people to be more creative with their rosters.

We can't force people to play multiple seasons, all we can do is what we do, tell people they should take into the Challenge the thought that they will be running this team for at least three years.

Post by **Calv** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 1:57 am

It's nice to see people voice their opinions about the challenges, as it creates some more interest. I do however feel that their should not be any sort of black list or too many trade restrictions as we'll be losing some of the fun out it, which is the main idea behind these challenges. I'll be having a look at the salary cap and seeing whether we need to change anything with respecto that in a different thread. As for this thread your ideas are always welcome so feel free to keep them coming!

Post by **Calv** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:23 am

One slight change to the challenges is, instead of scoring more powerplay goals/conceeding fewer pp goals, points will now be given for higher PP% and higher PK%

Krieger99 · Post by **Krieger99** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 3:21 am

bruins72 wrote:That's an interesting idea, timmy. I'm all for limiting trades to some extent. I'm as guilty as anyone when it comes to trading out most of my team to get who I want. In reality, no GM is going to be able to completely revamp his team to that extent. It just wouldn't happen.

I do think that the challenges are suffering from too much of everybody having almost the same team. A couple people figure out a good player to get and then it seems like every team has that same player. Either that or everybody goes after a player that gets waived or traded cheaply at the start of the season in every game. Look at John Madden in the last two versions of the game. I know every time I start a new game I pillage the Washington Capitals and unload all of my over-inflated contracts on them. Every game. Who doesn't go after Niittymaki whenever they take over a team with weak goaltending?

Me. I got Toskala instead.

Post by **timmy_t** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 2:21 pm

Maybe we can look into having a challenge with a team in another league (instead of the NHL) ??

Post by **Calv** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:02 pm

I was definitely going to suggest some non-nhl teams for the next challenge, however I'm not sure how many people would be interested in it

Post by **CatchUp** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 6:04 pm

Calv wrote:I was definitely going to suggest some non-nhl teams for the next challenge, however I'm not sure how many people would be interested in it

I would definitely be up for a CHL (OHL, WHL, QMJHL) Challenge! I'm know there are a few others here that play junior leauges regularly (if not all the time!) I haven't dabbled too much outside of North America though, so I'm not too familiar with the Euro leagues.

Cheers.

Devils88 · Post by **Devils88** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 8:32 pm

just my two cents:

a chl challenge would be very interesting (you can't trade your 1st Round Pick),
but i would suggest a challenge that lasts 5 seasons. also for nhl. if you play one season you don't have to worry much about the cap. you can have 6-7 young on your roster, but after 1 or 2 years they want significant salary raises so you have to change your team. also drafting would matter more.

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 10:52 pm

I like the long-term challenge as D88 suggested. We've got a solid group of people who all seem to do the challenges regularly. Why not give it a shot?

I've never really played a CHL team. I tried very briefly once but I had absolutely NO CLUE as to what I was doing. I guess I could try it for a challenge though.

Post by **Calv** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:12 pm

I'm just worried that if we do a 5 year challenge, that some people will drop out in the 2nd/3rd years, it's hard enough to get people to carry on to the second season. we would have to do a bit of a rethink to the way we score it as well, it's definitely something for the future though

Post by **batdad** » Sat Feb 24, 2007 11:20 pm

On the long term idea. With the Blue Jackets one, I fell in love with the team...I am now playing my 5th (2010-11) season with them. I could see this happening again with this game for me. I could see though the issue that Calv raises causing a problem too.

Post by **Minstrel** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 2:02 am

D88 and I have kind of semi-agreed to take our Blogged teams out at least five seasons... as our kicking around ideas for a longer term idea was actually what sparked me to start working on putting together a blog solution. So, if a group of people wanted to agree to and run a long term Challenge I think using the blogs is a good idea

Post by **Calv** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 2:56 am

What about a 5-year challenge, say with bonus points being given out at the end of every season rather than after 20 & 60 games. With improvement points being given out along the way as well?

bruins72 · Post by **bruins72** » Sun Feb 25, 2007 3:31 am

I know what you mean about people not carrying on to second seasons, never mind third ones. I'm wondering if we could do better with that now? It seems like since EHM stopped development, TBL has gotten even busier. It's like the EHM community found a home where they could keep the game alive. Maybe with the recent influx of members and the popularity of the blogs we could make a longer challenge work? Calv's ideas for scoring changes sound good to me too.