The Guy You Want Already Belongs to Somebody

When we put a Claim button inside the player card, it fixed exactly one problem: the free agents. Tap a name nobody owns and you can bid on him then and there. Tap a name somebody does own — which is to say most of the league — and the card just sat there with his stats on it, admiring the problem. You knew who had him. You knew what you wanted. And the site's answer was to make you go find the Trade Builder yourself, pick his team out of a dropdown, then hunt his name down a roster you had already been staring at.

Now there's a second button. Rostered players get Trade for him, with the owner named right on it — "Build a trade with Vitside Mafia" — so you find out who you're negotiating with before you commit to the click. It opens the builder with his club loaded, him already sitting in the deal, and your team seated across the table. The first decision you make is what you're willing to give up, which is the only decision that was ever interesting.

The card knows which of three people you are. He's yours: nothing to offer, and no button pretending otherwise. He's unowned: the Claim or Bid button you already know. He's somebody else's: the handshake. You never see the wrong one, because the site works it out from the actual rosters rather than guessing from whichever page you happened to open him on — the same page can hand you all three in a row and get all three right.

AFL owners, the conference line holds, because your league's trades do. A player rostered over in the other conference isn't a trade you're allowed to make, so the button doesn't appear and doesn't tease you — what you get is the copy of him inside your own conference, if there is one, and the claim button if there isn't. Go browse somebody else's roster or run down the player list and start tapping names.