BuzzerBeater Forums

Having like 20 million in the Bank döes nothing good.

Interesting how the guy answered you with a rant but nowhere did he suggest $20m in the bank is good. So I guess he agreed with you.

Also, every team that enters bankruptcy has pumped more money into the game than it had -- that's why it goes bankrupt. So you have bankrupt teams pumping money into the game, new managers getting $300,000 free money, all causing money to flow into the game. There is no corresponding process to counter-balance this, and the problem gets worse and worse. Add to that top level managers blissfully riding the bubble. Add to that the sour attitude of GM's who cover their embarrassment at not understanding the problem with sarcasm. It's a steaming pile ...

$300,000 in free money plus 50k a week for the first four weeks for new non-Utopia teams, but that's the sort of detail I should leave for someone who understands the game experience for new players. I suppose the logical comment would be that it would be hilarious if you were arguing that the reason costs are too high for new players is that they're given too much money, so they should be helped by not getting money (though, of course, I would prefer to say that in a more humorous manner since I can't imagine you'd be believing that).

But you have a remarkable knack for simplifying everything down to one component and then focusing strictly on it. In reality, there are many factors which cause money to spring forth from outside the player ecosystem and to vanish from it, in addition to the money moved around between players. A probably incomplete accounting of these may include:

1. The $300k free money for new teams plus 50k/week for four weeks. This is money created from nothing.
2. TV revenue. Money created from nothing.
3. Attendance revenue. Money created from nothing.
4. Cup and promotion money. Money created from nothing.
5. Merchandise revenue. Money created from nothing.
6. Staff hiring costs. Money thrown down a hole.
7. Staff wages and severance. Money thrown down a hole.
8. Taxes on TL sales. Money thrown down a hole.
9. Player salaries. Money thrown down a hole.
10. Scouting points. Money thrown down a hole.
11. Arena expansion cost. Money thrown down a hole.
12. Interest on debt. Money thrown down a hole.
13. Overextension tax. Money thrown down a hole.
14. Team / arena name changes. Money thrown down a hole.
15. GM fines and transfer price adjustments. Money thrown down a hole, with the caveat that fines and TPAs can be appealed and so sometimes some of the money thrown in the hole may end up finding its way back out of the hole.

And then in an environment where there is that much money moving into and out of the system, there is one way of transferring money between players:
16. Player transfers. Money exchange, minus a percentage down the hole as noted above.

So if you're indicating there's no balance to counter the $300k money for free, that's absolutely incorrect - and really, it's an inconsequential amount compared to the money created from mist and evaporating back into mist every week. If you're focusing instead on there being no process to counter-balance the transfer prices specifically, that's incorrect as the market adjusts itself based on supply and demand, and there's nothing at all preventing you or anyone from supplying the players desired.

In the end, when users have increased, prices have increased. When users have decreased, prices have decreased. When people were training more players for a skill profile than were desirable, those prices fell. When fewer people were creating players for a skill profile than were desirable, those prices rose. When the market doesn't react thusly is when more intervention is required.

Are you going to require that people not evaluate, critique and discuss the individual components of the economy, but must instead merely list every single component they can think of and pretend that that qualifies as a rational analysis? Are you also going to pretend that components of the economy earned by managers or spent as the result of a deliberate decision are the same as components over which managers have no control whatsoever? Sorry, you are going to have a very poor conversation if you do that. Short, but poor.

Look, we all know the economy is out of kilter. Not many people are going to leave BB over that. But the attitude that people in position to do something about it don't give a rip, or worse yet just joke about it or mock those who make suggestions, THAT will do it. Who wants to waste their time on a site where that attitude prevails?

Last edited by Mike Franks at 4/8/2015 8:01:05 PM

Having like 20 million in the Bank döes nothing good.

Interesting how the guy answered you with a rant but nowhere did he suggest $20m in the bank is good. So I guess he agreed with you.

He did not agree - unless I have a different understanding of the english language.

I think that "economic success" has to be penalized as soon as it reaches a certain limit of stored money. Ususally Inflation works like that, but the BB-ecosystem just changed too drastically in the last few months, so what we see now are the aftershocks of all the changes that happened (shrinking userbase, Money influx from Utopia and so on).

@Mike I am debating economics and BB. Two things that I like to talk about. If you want to minimizing my comments, by labeling me a "ranter" and subscribing to some conspiracy about the GMs and BBs not caring about lower division managers, then I guess I can talk about this issue with the other posters in the thread. The one GM who is posting in this thread has for years helped out lower division USA managers, so lets talk about the actual content of posts rather than the posters in the thread.

Some guy tanking for 20 million in cash to go on a run to a DI title isn't really going to impact the lower division user. The only guys they are competing for are the 20-60k DI backups. They are going to be going for the highest possible TSP guys for the salary they can afford. DV/DIV teams dont have any reason to have these 110 TSP + guys. The richest teams will always be able to afford the best players. Thats just a simple fact. If you want one of these elite guys, you need to train them yourself.

The fact that BB has been decreasing in users means that in the long run, the addition of Utopia money and users will do more to balance out the economy in the long-run unless the game finds reverse the trend of people leaving the game. The BB economic is a complex system, not a simple one. Changing one aspect without looking at the whole system can result in unintended consequences that could have been foreseen.

@knecht: You are correct. I am not against some guy saving for many, many seasons to get $20 million. Nothing wrong with that. I am against daytrading and against tanking, which allows people to unfairly accumulate cash. If people don't have an incentive to tank and accumulate cash, they won't do it. Putting a tax on cash right now will actual make inflation temporarily worse because all the hoarders will have to spend their money or lose it to the tax.

I think you can do this by increasing the penalty to teams that go into the over-extension tax, changing the way the draft works, giving players an economic incentive to want to be in the highest division possible while fielding the most competitive team that they can afford.

Are you going to require that people not evaluate, critique and discuss the individual components of the economy, but must instead merely list every single component they can think of and pretend that that qualifies as a rational analysis? Are you also going to pretend that components of the economy earned by managers or spent as the result of a deliberate decision are the same as components over which managers have no control whatsoever? Sorry, you are going to have a very poor conversation if you do that. Short, but poor.

Only if that is relevant to what is being posted. For example, let us consider the following quote (with part of it bolded by me for emphasis) :

So you have bankrupt teams pumping money into the game, new managers getting $300,000 free money, all causing money to flow into the game. There is no corresponding process to counter-balance this, and the problem gets worse and worse.

In the last day, you've pretty much flat out stated I've made conversation worse by not putting enough detail into discussing an assertion of yours that I disagreed with, and now that I logically laid out a case that demonstrated unequivocably why what I bolded above is factually wrong, that's also causing the quality of the conversation to drop? Good to know. Is there an appropriate level of discourse that you would accept as constructive, or does the mere act of disagreeing instantly render the content useless?

Look, we all know the economy is out of kilter. Not many people are going to leave BB over that. But the attitude that people in position to do something about it don't give a rip, or worse yet just joke about it or mock those who make suggestions, THAT will do it. Who wants to waste their time on a site where that attitude prevails?

The economy is always out of kilter if you look at it from the right (or wrong, I suppose) perspective. For any given player skill level, if prices are rising, people who net consumers of players are disproportionately affected. If prices are falling, people who are net producers of players are disproportionately affected. If there were no mechanism for a manager to adjust by creating their own players or by choosing not to, as circumstances warrant, that would be a severe problem. Fortunately, in this case, there is every opportunity to react to a lack of talent by training said talent, either to improve one's team or to sell to others, or some combination thereof. Choosing not to do so is valid, but like going home-grown, all native, or any other self-imposed constraint, the decision has consequences.

... Only if that is relevant to what is being posted. For example, let us consider the following quote (with part of it bolded by me for emphasis) :

So you have bankrupt teams pumping money into the game, new managers getting $300,000 free money, all causing money to flow into the game. There is no corresponding process to counter-balance this, and the problem gets worse and worse.

In the last day, you've pretty much flat out stated I've made conversation worse by not putting enough detail into discussing an assertion of yours that I disagreed with, and now that I logically laid out a case that demonstrated unequivocably why what I bolded above is factually wrong, that's also causing the quality of the conversation to drop?

No, I think mocking sarcasm does not elevate the discourse. Considering and attempting to respond to my comments and the comments of others elevates the discourse, and thank you for that.

My point about the bankruptcy and replacement of teams was that nowhere in that process is there any counter-balance to the money it introduces into the economy. And there isn't. You rightly pointed out other factors. I think the bankruptcy/replacement of teams is under-appreciated as part of the problem. It is, of course, not the only significant contributor to the over-heated economy.

I like your posts because they look like prison jumpsuits.

My point about the bankruptcy and replacement of teams was that nowhere in that process is there any counter-balance to the money it introduces into the economy. And there isn't. You rightly pointed out other factors. I think the bankruptcy/replacement of teams is under-appreciated as part of the problem. It is, of course, not the only significant contributor to the over-heated economy.

Bankruptcy isn't injecting money into the game, but instead is another hole in the ground, since the only way to reach bankruptcy is through "fixed" expenses (i.e., you can not buy a player if that purchase will put you below zero). Of course, you can get down to zero either by spending all your money on transfer listed players (which recirculates that money minus transfer fees), or you can get there by overloading on wages or overloading on staff, neither of which recirculates money.

As far as replacement of teams, it depends - there is 500k "added" to the economy, and an amount of money removed if the team being replaced had a net positive balance.

In terms of the issue here, though, I don't see how these conditions would be related to one another. If the contention was that it was simply impossible to find a single player under 300k, and that was because new teams were blowing their initial cash on whatever they could find on the TL, I could agree. If players were becoming unaffordable because managers who routinely flip nearly worthless players for money from new teams were suddenly buying up all the players in a higher price band, there would be some correlation. In this case, though, I keep coming back to the concept that price is essentially demand divided by supply multiplied by some factor representing the overall fixed amount of money in the system. The number of things and the amount of money involved in the non-related factors I would think keeps that amount relatively low, and supply is slow to adjust since training players takes time, so unless a spike in prices can not be explained by a corresponding spike in demand, that is when the problem is something fundamentally wrong with the economy.

I like your posts because they look like prison jumpsuits.

I like your posts because there are few other people in the game who have played a game with me where both of us have combined to 100 points.

Bankruptcy isn't injecting money into the game, but instead is another hole in the ground, since the only way to reach bankruptcy is through "fixed" expenses (i.e., you can not buy a player if that purchase will put you below zero).

Wrong. A bankrupt team has poured all its money into the economy somewhere. It doesn't much matter where -- the money is in the economy. Then the team simply disappears (with a negative balance) but most of the money remains in the economy. No one goes around removing any of the money it injected into anything except what remained in the team, which was already a negative balance.

As far as replacement of teams, it depends - there is 500k "added" to the economy, and an amount of money removed if the team being replaced had a net positive balance.

No new team starts with a negative balance, so no money is removed from the economy in the formation of a new team. Rather, there is another $500k in the economy. And I'm talking about the replacement of bankrupt teams. Replacement of solvent teams is another matter altogether.

Overall, the bankruptcy and subsequent replacement with a new team is one factor in the overheated economy. I don't know why it is so important to try to disguise this instead of squarely facing it. How are you ever going to correct the overheated economy if you don't squarely face all of the factors causing it?