Draft picks weighting

[dbfinch]

I've noticed the weighting on 1st round picks seems to have an unrealistic drop-off.

For instance, in my game in 2029, I can offer a 3* goalie and 9th overall for a 4*, 20-year old Dman and the trade feedback is "a lot to like here". Yet if I offer the same goalie for the same player, and instead change the 9th overall pick to 11th overall, it becomes "seriously unbalanced". Even if I add 13th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 18th overall to the same offer, it remains "seriously unbalanced". Similarly, if I approach the team with 10th overall and offer them 9th overall for 10th, plus their 1st round picks in four and five years, they're willing to make that trade. Yet if I offer them 11th, 13th and 14th overall for 10th overall (and nothing else) they "don't like enough about this offer".

I've noticed this in the past, too, although frustratingly I can't remember if the drop-off is between 9th and 10th or 10th and 11th. But there seems to be a huge decrease in value between either the 9th and 10th or 10th and 11th picks, to the extreme that the AI will make trades with one but shoot down any trade offer with the other. Think it needs to be looked at and adjusted.

Edit: Just adding to my own post a little, people have done research into this kind of thing (the value of each draft pick) and tried to give them a weighting. Usually you do see a drop-off in the higher picks, i.e. between #1/2 and #3, #3 and #4, #5 and #6, but once you start getting towards the lower half of the top ten and beyond then the difference in the value should become less and less.

[Riz Remes]

Yes, the draft picks are weighed within the first round, so this is possibly something that can be tweaked in the long run.

[Mars_Blackmon]

Here's a good article for reference on the subject matter. (which gives links to different studies)

When I looked closer at the model in their study, it said that the 2nd pick plus the 210th pick was worth more than the 1st pick, which doesn't seem remotely true.

a lot of people have tried to figure out what teams should pay when they trade picks, but I haven't seen anything trying to estimate what they actually pay. That is, instead of looking at what the fair price is by looking at how likely a pick is to turn into something useful, I wanted to look at what the market price is by looking at what teams have actually had to give up.

http://www.broadstreethockey.com/2013/4/25/4262594/nhl-draft-pick-value-trading-up