There is an idea I have been thinking about to maybe fix some of the problems in the community with trades. Feel free to give any feedback or criticism.

I'm proposing a slight change to way trades are processed. Instead of offers being "private" for only the two owners to see, I'm proposing a public list of all trade offers in the league. This list would be updated with every trade offer.

One way this could work is:

-Team A sends a trade offer to Team B.
(3rd round pick for Player)
-This offer shows up on list for all owners in the league to see.
-Team C sees this offer and is willing to offer more for the same player. They send a better offer to Team B.
(3rd and 4th round pick for Player)
-This offer is added to the "league trade offer" list.
-Team D sees these offers and decides to send a better offer.
(2nd round pick for Player)
-This would work similar to a public auction, with teams trying to out-bid each other. The team could accept any offer they choose, whenever they decide(if they decide to accept an offer at all).

It would look something like this:
Team A to Team B- 3rd round pick for Player
Team C to Team B- 3rd and 4th round pick for Player
Team D to Team B- 2nd round pick for Player


This could benefit the community greatly. Currently some of the biggest issues with trades are:

-A lack of time. Messaging back and forth is not only time-consuming, but peoples schedules can be hard to accommodate. With this method everything is streamlined and transparent for everyone to see. Sending a trade offer to all 32 teams is impractical, but with this method, one trade offer is essentially sent for all 32 teams to see. This could lead to a "bid war" while you're not even online! You could be at work, and other owners are sending you increasingly better trade offers.

-One-sided offers. Some owners have bad habit of "fleecing" inexperienced owners with lop-sided trades. This happens more often than we'd like to admit, and can really hurt a league. With a method like the one proposed, all offers are transparent BEFORE they're accepted. So other owners can chime in beforehand and let someone know that they're being ripped off. Or better yet, they can send a better offer and give the player a fair deal.

-Market Value. This can be hard to determine. In one league, decent QB's can be hard to find, in another league, there could be 5 great QB's on the trade block. Market value changes from league to league. Some leagues have a lot of talent in one position and a lack of talent in another. With the proposed method, the "free market" will determine the value of each player more directly. Having the ability to out-bid a trade offer will allow owners to freely give their own evaluation of a players value in real time.

-Social Issues. Some people are not as social as others. These people may be intimidated by some other owners and may be hesitant to send a message regarding a trade. With the proposed method, these people will feel less intimidated sending just an offer, than a message to an unknown owner. They can negotiate a trade with little effort on their part, they just have to send an offer better than the other teams or accept the best offer.

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The current trade system if fine, but I feel this would only make it better.
The only potential negative, would be taking away peoples ability to offer trades in "private", but this can be done through private messages.
Thanks for your time.

problem with this is that JDB is trying to keep MFN as real to life as possible and this idea goes directly against that, irl the only people who know a trade has even been offered before it goes through are the 2 teams involved and the league, sometimes the player doesn't even know till the trade has been finalized (there may be rumors of interest in a player by a team but no solid knowledge of a trade offer)

p.s. the only way more teams know of an upcoming trade beforehand is if a team shops around talking to different owners telling them himself what he has been offered in an effort to get more out of the trade, however this can backfire if he doesn't tell the other teams involved that he's shopping the trade around the league, here's an example

team A offers a player for trade to team B
team B likes the player and offers a trade
team A tells team B they like the trade but to give them a couple days to draw up paperwork
team A then starts calling other teams to drive up interest thereby increasing the price
in 2 days team A then calls team B and says due to interest in the player they are now requiring what was agreed upon + X
team B decides team A negotiated with them in bad faith and so cancels their trade offer and makes it known to the other owners they have done so(and may refuse further trades with team A for a while)
team A calls back the other owners and because of bad faith negotiation tactics gets low offers for the player
end result, they would've been better off going with the original offer from team B

TAFIV thanks for the feedback, and you are absolutely correct. The changes proposed are for gameplay purposes though, not realism. In real life, franchises have a team of front office guys to handle calls and deals all day. They can call and converse with any of the 32 teams at any time. Even with a ton of resources at their disposal, NFL teams can take days even weeks to finalize a deal. In MFN it's very difficult to match schedules with someone, and some owners aren't on the game on a daily basis.

Also irl, teams can have representatives call other teams and tell them what other offers they currently have on the table, but in MFN it can be hard to trust someone's word over the internet. I would prefer(as I'm sure most owners would) a way to know for sure.

Also everything you've said would still be possible with the proposed changes, but through private messages. Frequently trades in real life are very public and in the open, it's less often trades are discussed in private like your example. (Because if you don't shop around.... you might be missing out on a potential deal)

true enough, i suppose if you really wanted to try it you could always start a thread on your leagues trade block:
"Public trade of X please post all bids here" or
"Auctioning X please post all bids here"
would probably only work for picks or high value players though

then in the body of the post put down:
X picks for trade or
player cards of any players for trade

for those that don't know how to do player cards its:
[ player=ID# ]player position and name[ /player ]
(remove the spaces within [], Gustoon showed us this in mfn-19)
(ID# is the numbers after the last / in the address bar when you are on a player page, the address will also show on the bottom of most browsers when you mouse-over the view button on a player card)