I think its important to remember "please continue to offer ideas and don't be afraid of counterpoints to your arguments" In everything.

That being said I understand how seeing a division rival steal a first round pick, 80+ player, or a plethora of picks that I would have loved to stock my roster with... this can spoil the fair play feeling... (It's a competitive "sport").


The solution... 4 fold, but is not perfect.

A Public trading forum to generate bidding and average current values is a great first step. History of previous trades should have some weight in valuation.

A dialed in rough trade weight like I suggested. Personally I really would like this if everyone would buy into my player valuation model;)

A veto vote triggered if one gm says "hey, this needs a vote", along with a forum to state your case.

A limit on future trades tied to seniority. Cap at 3 or 5 as needed.

I propose these amendments would go along way to making this a feeling like its a rival thing vs cheating thing.

I generally like the approach.

That could (guessing) easily be implemented as we already use that in free agency.

Something else that should maybe used in trades is strength of team, eg: A higher ranked team should have to part with more to a lower ranked team. Also any player traded can't be then traded that season and not back to the former team the season after.

I want to apologize for my outburst on this subject as it is just my opinion. I love this game and just dont want to see it being ruined and or being manipulated. If you agree that these are the right kind of trades for the game or dont its every ones own opinion I guess.

There are a lot of good suggestions here and I dont want to see trades taken away from the game or even have it so you cant even make trades at draft time, a lot of trades happen at the last minute during the draft that are really good trades for both sides.

Again sorry for my outburst on this

My own 2 cents:

The years in advance (up to 3-5) being linked to years in league is a brilliant idea that will also protect new players from being taken advantage of by unscrupulous vets.

Link draft pick value to a draft pick value chart (ie http://walterfootball.com/draftchart.php).

By that valuation the trades that sparked this thread would NEVER happen. NEVER. It's insanely bad value, and I'd argue it's even more true here. Like I said in the other thread, currently two sevens are considered equal value to a future first. That should be blocked as too unbalanced. If we can just link them to a valuation chart, those two sevens would equal to 28 points AT BEST, whereas the WORST first round would be equal to at least 590. Future picks should be considered at a something like a base -10% (projected based off prior season) value, decreasing by 2% for each extra year out it is.

At the very least, Swish, put your **** picks up for sale before dealing them out five years in advance! I would give you way better value than what you're receiving from King in every league you two share, and I'm sure there're lots of others who'd throw their hats into the ring as well.

I can say that i dont like the seniority of being in the league should have anything to do with trades, all that does is give veteran players a trading advantage over newer players and again will chase them away if they can not make the same trades.

The best way to handle draft pick trading would be to limit it to the current season and upcoming season but also make it so you have to be signed up for the upcoming season. This way even in the free leagues you can still be signed up for the upcoming season so the even trade option is available but if you dont choose to extend your ownership then you are putting yourself at that disadvantage.

I do like that link Ares provided for trade value of draft picks now if there was a way to also include player value also but by doing this you would also need to take into consideration the teams need in that player and I dont know if you can actually determine that as each owner will have different standards when players are involved

Great approach if only current or near term draft picks are involved. Perhaps the difference in draft value can be no more than a chosen percentage, such as 10%. This would give the trade participants some leeway.

For example, a 1.31 draft pick (worth 600 points) could be traded for one or more draft pick worth between 660 and 540 points.

If a player or players are involved for a draft pick or picks (or some combination of players and draft picks), then either we find a protocol for the league to approve or disapprove the proposed trade (which I support) or we just leave the whole topic alone (which I would rather not do). I am less concerned about straight player for player deals, but others might feel differently.

Great discussion otherwise.

I think this is an interesting idea, but I'm not exactly catching your idea as for how to present it. Are you envisioning something like an accepted trade going into "pending" status to give other GM's a chance to match the offer? I do like that idea but my concern is that it would delay the trades especially during the draft where you are wanting to trade up and don't have a lot of time to do so.



The draft picks themselves are already based on the chart here (for the balance bar):

http://www.draftcountdown.com/features/Value-Chart.php

For future picks, the rounds are broken up into 4 quarters and each team is assigned a quarter based on their previous season's results; each quarter is given the median value in the chart. I do like your comments about revisiting the player weights vs. the pick values, right now I've tried to fit them to a curve but may need to do a more linear range within each grouping.

The challenge with making a tight requirement to fit this, too, is that often times an owner will be willing to give up more than fair market value to get a player/pick that otherwise wouldn't get traded, so there has to be some leeway with the trade balance. That's the purpose for the balance bar, but I have a pretty large window of what the system will allow.

Now, maybe if the bar is out of balance beyond a certain point the trade doesn't go through automatically, but instead is given 24 hours for, say, 25% of owners to reject it. That way we could tighten down the balance for auto trades but still allow for out of balance trades. We could even require each team to enter an explanation about why they think the trade should go through as part of the submission process.



Here's where I'm leaning at the moment, in order of priority, some are derivatives of what have been discussed and others are ideas sparked more indirectly by comments in this thread. Also please note that when I'm referring to hypothetical trades, I'm not talking about the ones that kicked off this thread as much as just what I've seen here and in other sims I've been a part of over the last decade.

1) Reduce the future seasons available to 3, period. Why? Because I really don't know that in real life we ever see any rades further in the future than that, and it reduces the time that someone can bankrupt their team - intentionally or accidentally.

2) Limit the amount of players/picks one side can offer beyond what the other side offers to 2. I.e, you can trade 1 pick for 3 picks, 2 picks for 4 picks, etc, but not 1 pick for 4 or more picks.

3) This one's a new one I thought of this afternoon - limit the number of trades between two teams within a single season. I'm thinking as low as 2 or 3. You rarely see NFL teams make many more trades than that with a given team. Not only would this prevent one owner for taking advantage of another owner time and again, it would encourage owners to contact other owners outside of their regular circle and hopefully help guys get to know one another better and build a stronger community.

4) Mentioned above in Davesgang's suggestion, but here it is again - re-evaluate the values of players vs. draft picks.

Items I'm still considering:

5) Allow trades beyond a certain point in the balance bar only after 25% of the owners have not rejected the trade.

6) Require some measure of experience in order to trade. This would be either first year players only being able to trade picks from the first year, limiting the number of trades you can make in a season to how many seasons you've been in the league, requiring you to be registered beyond the current season in order to make trades, or something similar.

Thoughts?

I like these ideas. and personally I think this will add more realism/depth to trading in the game. +1 for me

I haven't been involved in a lot of trades, but have diligently followed this thread to see to where it would go. I liked a lot of the ideas I saw posted by jdavidbakr, particularly limiting the number of trades between teams. I also like the idea of making only significantly out of balance trades up for review and have the traders give their rational at the trade submission for why the trade should go through. I think when a significantly out of balance trade occurs, a notification of the trade should be sent out, with the option to vote to overturn it if the reasons given for the trade are not good enough. I think both these together will cut down on trades that are suspicious or trades where people are taking advantage of another persons ignorance of the game.