The number one complaint I get here an MFN is the fact that many people feel the trade balance bar is too restrictive in some cases and also lets too many lopsided trades through (sometimes both complaints being strongly stated about literally the same trade). There has been a lot of discussions on the forum about how to solve this, but the fact of the matter is no matter what as long as there are trades there will be people feeling like there are unfair trades happening. I've been trying to figure out an effective way to solve this. I don't want to eliminate trades altogether... for those who haven't seen a large amount of the discussion, here are pieces I'm seriously considering:
* Peer review for unbalanced trades. This would allow any trade to be submitted, but if the trade is beyond a certain point on the balance bar it would require a peer review. Once accepted there would be 24 hours for the community to accept or reject these trade. Once a certain percentage (probably 40 or 50%) of the owners in the league voted one way or the other the trade would follow that decision. If the 24 hours expires then the decision would be based on the current majority decision. Owners involved in the trade as well as any owners who share an IP history with an owner in the trade would be excluded from voting. In a tie, the trade would be accepted. Pros: All owners would get the chance to give feedback on controversial trades. Trade values could be debated in the forums before the decision was finalized, and newer owners could learn from these conversations. Cons: time-sensitive trades would be delayed, which could cause issues especially during the draft. Owners could try to reject an otherwise acceptable trade just because they have an issue with one of the owners.
* Limit trades for owners who have not purchased credits to 2 trades per season. Trades would not -cost- credits, but you would have to have a balance of 6 or more credits to participate in a trade beyond those 2. Owners would not be able to offer trades to other owners who are not eligible. Pros: this forces owners to have a vested interest in order to participate in a trade, and those who have not purchased credits would be forced to be a bit more choosy with trades they make. Cons: this skates on the line of pay-to-win which I am adamantly opposed to - although I'm not completely convinced that it does. It also reduces the number of potential trading partners.
* Limit 'trade value' per season - each player/pick/etc. carries a value which is used to determine the balance bar ratings. This idea would limit the total amount of trade value score an owner could participate in each season. What point this would be would still need to be hashed out, but it would probably limit trades containing 1st round picks to one or two per season. (Later round picks or lower value players of course would not rack up the points as much). A corollary to this idea is to just limit 'blockbuster' trades to one per team per season. Those 'blockbuster' trades are what get the most flack (no one really cares if you trade a 7th rounder for too many 50-rated players) but it would at least limit each team to executing one each season.
* Add premium leagues. I've actually thought a lot about the idea of premium leagues, which would require 6 credits instead of 5 to join/renew and would not be free to join one per day like all leagues are now. In premium leagues, there would be no restrictions on trading, as well as some other features - like, for example, 'practice' mode where you could run single plays using your offense vs. your defense. In hand with this would be a tighter trade bar on the non-premium leagues.
Some ideas that have been floated that I'm not keen on are:
* Make trades public before they are accepted - while fundamentally I'm not opposed to this, it does give an advantage to those who are able to be online all the time vs. those who only have a short time each day to play.
* League commissioner - This just feels like an administrative nightmare. First, finding enough users who would want this responsibility would be difficult enough, then the first time the commissioner approves a controversial trade we're right back where we were with the added accusations of a biased commissioner.