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given that salary will not be directly related to skill.

Is that true? I thought salary would still be related to skill, but just not in the same way as it is now.

From a recent News item:
Player skills will continue to develop normally, but each offseason the players union will scale salaries to match the total revenue available for them to distribute.

This obviously means that the salary of any given player might change regardless of whether his skills have changed. Obviously, players of comparable skill will still cost about the same.

The difference is that up to now, if you have trained a player, say 2 levels in a skill, his salary would increase by approximately X dollars (hence, skill and salary were _directly_ related). I don't think this will hold anymore with recalculation in every offseason.

No, there is no guarantee a player will increase in salary year over year if he increases in skill.

However, my interpretation is that the salaries will still be skill based. So that, by and large, the players with the highest skills will still have the highest salaries. It is just that the salaries will be "scaled" as they say in the news post, so we will no longer be working with the same scale that we have now. Also, there will be an X factor depending on your division level and (maybe?) country.

No, there is no guarantee a player will increase in salary year over year if he increases in skill.

However minimal, there should be a salary increase if any skill increases. I am pretty sure this doesn't apply to Stamina, and I am not sure about Free Throws.

However, my interpretation is that the salaries will still be skill based. So that, by and large, the players with the highest skills will still have the highest salaries. It is just that the salaries will be "scaled" as they say in the news post, so we will no longer be working with the same scale that we have now. Also, there will be an X factor depending on your division level and (maybe?) country.

If salaries are scaled (which is population-relative), then what changes a player's salary is how he compares to the rest of the population. This means that the salary of a player who didn't receive a single minute of training can increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on what has happened to the rest of the BB player population. Which makes salary only loosely related to skill.

Last edited by GM-kozlodoev at 9/27/2009 7:30:28 PM

so how do we reasonably plan for the next season? if salaries are no longer directly tied to skill (and we managers control skill levels through training), but now are tied to global (or at least national) economic conditions, how do we plan? or are we talking about relatively modest adjustments, say less than 5% fluctuation from what we have grown used to?

we aim to make this transition a smooth one.. there should be little instantaneous change in salaries, but if you zoom out and think about how salaries have been evolving over time in the past, that longer time scale view will change.

The best players in the game were getting more and more expensive each year, that growth is going to slow, and will eventually stop. It was always going to stop eventually when we reached an equilibrium point of skill improvement, but that balance will be occurring sooner.

No, it's not scary. Quality players are supposed to be expensive.

On the other hand, since players are expected to train and sell players, I don't see how this can be a problem. You sell for more, you buy for more.

You are a never ending surprise.
I wonder why the BBs are putting so much effort to make a long term stable economy. Who cares if there is huge inflation followed by huge deflation and so forth. You sell for more, you buy for more... you sell for less, you buy for less, that's it.
-.-

The BBs are putting effort in a self-regulating system so that they have an environment in which it is easy to control for unexpected changes in market price.

Hopefully you notice the difference between that and a one-time, expected, and announced an ample time in advance rise in prices (more or less inevitable in this situation).

No, I don't.
And as I stated before, it was announced nowhere that the changes on TV contract, merchandise and arena income would increase the amount of money put into the game, and would increase it so severely.

I know that the latest changes were made to give an economic balance among countries and divisions with different competitiveness, etc. But that could have been done without adding extra money into the game (or at least just a small amount to compensate for the players' salary increase).

However minimal, there should be a salary increase if any skill increases.

No there shouldn't, at least according to the formulas calculated by Josef Ka (46657.42).
All skills with a 1.000 parameter have no impact on salary.
This is of course only valid as long as the suggested position does not change.

Well, that's not exactly how I understood the changes. Especially since I think the keys for me would be that teams in lower divisions would get a bit of a break on salaries. But as I have said before, I will wait to see the details.

I just wanted to point out that your reasoning seems contradictory to me:

However minimal, there should be a salary increase if any skill increases.

This means that the salary of a player who didn't receive a single minute of training can increase, decrease, or stay the same, depending on what has happened to the rest of the BB player population. Which makes salary only loosely related to skill.

Why would a player without training be so unpredictable, but a player with even just a bit of training you can guarantee a salary increase? In my mind, whether a player goes up or down in salary would all be relative to what happened to the rest of the player pool. So it would be difficult to make any accurate predictions, whether a player is trained or not.

I think we're saying the same thing just going about it in a different way. It just really depends how they program it. You see the model changing based on the population. I see a model that is independent of the population but just with a factor that can be adjusted to alter the "scaling". However, the result is the same, the highest skilled players will still have the highest salaries.

I think we're saying the same thing just going about it in a different way. It just really depends how they program it. You see the model changing based on the population. I see a model that is independent of the population but just with a factor that can be adjusted to alter the "scaling". However, the result is the same, the highest skilled players will still have the highest salaries.

But, probably that factor would be determined based on population parameters. In the end, irrespective of the chosen mecanism, salaries would be adjusted upon population changes. And probably, also on incomes and expenses globally obtained.

first, we did state the the merchandising info would result in an increase in money of up to 10-20% depending upon the makeup of the team.

second, the TV contract money increases offset continued increases in player salaries. previously we had reduced the revenue sharing tax as the mechanism to increase revenues as salaries increased. That mechanism ran out, and so we had to create a new one.

Rather than continue to adjust the total amount of money in the game we decided it was better off to figure out a way to reach equilibrium faster, hence the upcoming adjusted salary scale. As long as salaries were continuing arise, we would necessarily have to find a way to increase revenues in the game or else the best players would not be employable.

Finally, the change in arena's attendance were not designed to increase or decrease the net amount of money in the game, rather reduce the variance in the amount of money earned by top division teams in particular in order to assure that it continued to be possible for promoting teams to compete and not have an insurmountable amount of arena building between them and a competitive revenue stream.

You seem to be upset at the steps we took, but you haven't expressed an alternate solution to the broader macroeconomic concerns we were addressing in each case.

But, probably that factor would be determined based on population parameters. In the end, irrespective of the chosen mecanism, salaries would be adjusted upon population changes. And probably, also on incomes and expenses globally obtained.

What I am saying is that it doesn't matter how the model is constructed. The highest skilled players still have the highest salaries. The all-atrocious guys out there will still be paid the least. So therefore, skill level is still the most important factor in determining salary.

When people start to say that skills won't matter (or matter very little) in determining salaries, that's where I start to get nervous. I don't want to see my bench player become so expensive that I can't afford him anymore. I also don't want to lose the competitive edge that I have gained by training players that are multi-skilled (and therefore have lower salaries).