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Sorry, I wasn't clear in what I wrote. All my arguments were assuming that 2-position training was more effective. 2-position training is rather useless at the moment, that's why I think the speed of it needs to be increased.

We were talking about new teams all the time, so I obviously meant the kind of players new teams would buy. Div3 starter level at best.

D3 have 50k starters, in Utopia they do and all of my trainees were around 120 or better when I relegated to D3. So yeah 50k salary can mean a lot of things, the problem is someone will have to decide where to draw the line. Do you want to trust the guy who first shut down free agency and retired U21 players (of the largest BB nation) and then made 60 TSP 40yo free agents? Let's be reasonable here.

No, that's not the essence of the problem. This game was never about training your whole team. It was always training and buying. Buying is the part that has gotten harder in the last seasons.

You're wrong. Let's say you start anew and everyone competes. Let's also assume that everyone trains and you can swap one trainee for another all the time. What kind of teams would you have? My answer is 6 trained players and 6 scrubs.

Remove FA for a second. There is only a certain number of players that can be created by teams training. Of course the actual number is lower because not everyone trains and that makes things worse. Now the question is: is that potential number enough to maintain the average skill level across leagues or not. My opinion is that it is not and therefore you have seen 2 things: skill level dropping and prices increasing. There is an equilibrium at the end of the tunnel. At some point teams will be so bad on average that you require very minimal training to reach the average skill level, but who likes a game where teams get progressively worse?

However it is important to understand that this situation is created because of the default limitations in the training system and because some people are not training (understandably in most cases). Most people are not training because of said limitations, so here lies the key problem.

Homegrown teams are a compass for the game. They are not able to compete not because they have 3 players that are similar, they are not able to compete because they can't train enough players. If you were able to create 3 guards, 3 big men and 3 SFs before they start declining you would be able to compete. At the end of the day, the userbase is the sum of 17k homegrown teams, we get the players that collectively we are able to create, no more and no less (except for Free Agency).

Does a D4 team really need "fully trained" players.
If an average Div2 team can be fully self-trained, that sounds like a good average. Some teams need better players than that, some can do with worse.

You're right and that's another problem that I pointed out some 10 seasons ago to Marin. Having 17k userbase is not the same as having 50k, because the league structure is dramatically different. DIV teams are a lot less relevant today. The number of teams in D4 or D5 is actually lower than those in D3 or higher. 85 nations out of 98 (pre Africa merge) don't have more than 336 members (16+64+256).

It is very hard to train an average D2 team be fully self trained. The salary average in my D2 is 340k. That means 3x3 players of ca. 38k salary. So you need to reach 38k by the 4th or 5th season of training (21yo-22yo) before someone starts declining. Most teams have 12 players, then the average would be 29k. So you'd need to create 29k players every 3-4 seasons (20yo or 21yo) before someone starts declining, which is harder.

Anyway, the proof that we users are not creating enough players collectively -either because of a default problem in the training system or because not enough people train- is in the state of transfer market. And keep in mind that there are MANY free agents nowadays, without them, prices would be higher and players available fewer. Whether you believe the cause is the former or the latter is irrelevant, because the solutions are the same. The only alternative is to let the average player skill level fall until it is bad enough.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 7:50:07 PM

Sorry, I wasn't clear in what I wrote. All my arguments were assuming that 2-position training was more effective. 2-position training is rather useless at the moment, that's why I think the speed of it needs to be increased.

Makes sense. Maybe if it was 10% slower, instead of 25% slower, more people would train 2 positions throughout.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 7:52:24 PM

The point is not that you can go into a top league or not, the point is whether we can train enough players. The team you refer to is this (122945).

What we can see from a quick look:
1) This guy has trained only 3 guys out of 15 from day-1, one is 78k (24yo) salary, one is 48k (24yo) and one is 11k salary (27yo). I have more training exemption from a single trainee.
2) His transfer history is -9.4 million. In the last 12 months he spent 16.3-16.4 million, while cashing 5.5. What does it have to do with training?

He didn't get there because he trained he got there by saving money and building a LI cookie cutter (as Wolph liked to say) with limited rebounding and flow. And because Koorliga doesn't seem terribly competitive, he's able to stay at the salary floor while he does primary training on 2 of his guys.

As a disclaimer, I'm training 5 guys in D1. Five, not two.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/7/2017 7:02:03 AM

So he trained 2 players and now he is in "Kõrgliiga" so you can train enough players.

Look you chose the wrong example, all you've proven is that you need to save more than the opponents in order to buy players. So this is the thing. Train 1 or 2 guys, primary training only, buy high TSP low salary guys, stay close to the salary floor so you keep making good profits. Invest 12 million net in 4 seasons in players and you will be ok.

It doesn't solve the problem of the game as a whole, though. Because let's say he trained 2 or 3 players over the last 10 seasons. Assuming he always trained that would be a total of 4 or 5 players in 10 seasons.

Restart the game, erase the auction market and allow only 1 to 1 trades. After 14 seasons how many trained (let's say 35k-40k salary) players would you reasonably have? Then you have the answer: either many users training and selling to others while playing with scrubs OR the system naturally creates a shortage of trained players. The fact that prices started to stop growing when they massively increased Free Agency should explain all of this better than I possibly can.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/7/2017 9:06:44 AM

Ok sorry I misunderstood: you are saying, screw training, just save at least 12 million in your first 10 seasons, spend it in the following 4 and you can have a good shot at D1 in any country. Correct?

Basically your argument is cruise for 10 seasons or so, save enough money while competing or tanking, just save money, then buy players that can take you all the way up, especially if you don't train a lot out of position when you are in D2 and D1. The guy was in D4 after 5 seasons (the first was nearly a full season), in D3 after 10, in that last one he started spending and promoted to D2, then 2 seasons in D2 and now D1. He started spending after 10 seasons when he went for D3 promotion (let D4 alone, who knows how many bots he was playing there: even if you had 500 users, you'd have had 164 human managers in 64 leagues, so 3 or 4 per league).

The OP clearly stressed the problem is with new users, who cannot compete and cannot acquire talent initially because prices are too high and therefore quit. Your answer for that is: actually you only need to wait 30, 36 months and then all will be ok. I don't think waiting and saving money for 10 seasons is a reasonable answer. 10 seasons is 2 and a half years of real life.

Your reasoning is very similar to suggesting people should just tank (or daytrade, though impossible nowadays) for years until they have enough money...

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/7/2017 9:38:22 AM