We'd need to see the description of this, just saying you need a 1st to bid on a 1st round pick is ridiculous. What if they are bid on with the last pick of the 1st round? There aren't any remaining 1st round picks, so you lose access to them??
I'd much prefer a system, where you can still match with whatever picks you have, maybe a bit of a move to reduce the value of picks greater than 50, but also adding in a change to the price you pay.
Something like, bid on with a 1st round pick, you can match with any 1st round pick then you either retain the discount, or perhaps just pay the same value with your later picks (ie. eradicate the discount). If you don't have a pick in the same round, then you pay some sort of value penalty, say 10-15% per round of where your next pick comes.
Lets say for example use the Jed Walter example from last year, they matched with 26, 30 and 32 and got back 57, for an overall price of 1,760 points.
In the scenario I have above with the 10% premium applied, then they would actually not have enough with the above as pick 3 is worth 2,234 points, so they would actually need to find an additional 2,457 points or close to an additional 700 points (pick 27) in order to match.
It makes even more sense when you then look at Ethan Read, which is a similar story a 10% premium would be applied rather than the discount.
Rogers would go further, as the 1st pick they could match with was in the 40's that was in the 3rd round, so their penalty would be increased to 20% etc.
I think it makes more sense, but maybe there is more to the story, but just going with a plain 1st round for a 1st round seems a bit dumb off the cuff unless its accompanied with more changes. I'd think just swinging the discount to a premium makes more sense personally, want to pay with a bunch of lower picks, go for it, but expect to pay more. For example, some of the trades GC did last yar generated gains of 300-500 points per trade, thats fine, but you need to expect to pay some of that back in terms of a premium. Maybe 10-15% is too high, maybe removing the discount and applying 5% per round from where the 1st pick you use comes from makes more sense, but this sort of system seems to work better in my mind, all that needs to be done is a flip of the discount to a premium pricing model.