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Those sound like parts of the same thing to me.

Sure the seller gets more as the market goes up, but in a steadily rising market it means nothing to get more because you can do less with your money. This leaves us back in the original scenario of playing the market becoming the dominant strategy.

Your numbers of 70-80% and 80-100% demonstrate the problem exactly. In a stable market product is sold at a relatively constant rate. There can be surges, and fluctuations, but those don't really matter at this point.

When day traders will bid up to 80% on a player 80% becomes the starting point for regular bidders. This limits the number of players that will be sold, as permanent players, below the 100% threshold because once an auction starts there is only 20% of value left to go before you have crossed it. That value you gave of 80% is the key. If day traders stopped at even 50% the entire scenario might be different, but you can hardly ask someone to limit himself that way, it wouldn't be practical.

If the number of trades allowable is limited then less players will be pushed automatically to that 80% point and the market has a chance to level off at values nearer to what supply/demand ratios would predict.

In short: If I want a player, I know that traders will autmatically push his price to 80% of what I should expect to pay for him. Once that point is reached I have to then bid against any one else who wants that player. This invariable pushes prices over the threshold.

Markets trend in the direction they are already moving without outside influences. If players were regularly available at 80-100% of market then prices would be trending downwards. Instead they are rising, and this is because of inflation due to massive market speculation (ie: day trading) pushing prices up to at least 110-120% and at times even higher.

No, buying a player at 80-100% would not be a bad deal, but that doesn't happen because the regular bidding starts so high.

I didn't say players are available at 80% of their market price. This a logical nonsense, since market determines the prices. All I am pointing out is that traders will always drop out at 80% of the price, since they can't make any profit. The final sale price is then determined by how much buyers are willing and able to pay.

Traders cannot 'push the prices above the threshold' this way. Not everyone lists at 0. Plenty list at the market rate. Plan and simple, if someone is willing and able to pay more than you for a certain player on a regular basis, you have underestimated the market price.

And no, inflation is not because of of 'intense market speculation'. BB is 3 seasons old. Prices are still in flux: this is partly because teams are accumulating wealth, and because they are still developing players.

Hi Charles,
I actually like the first 3 proposals (more or less in the same order you wrote them down).
Number 1 is my favourite, cause it still allows the trading but reduces a lot its impact on the gameplay. Number 2 is also good, but if it's not well implemented it could lead to big problems to teams in bad financial conditions. Number 3 cannot really stand by itself, cause money are usually stronger than teamspirit; also, after a couple of season of trading without caring about results, one could have really a lot of money. Number 4 is a very bad idea, and i'm not gonna take it into consideration ;-)
The others are more or less all related to a "compare transfer" feature, which in my opinion is not easy at all to implement and could bring people to confusion.

I understand your reason to keep a little bit of trading, and i appreciate a lot your efforts to try to improve this game with the community. Keep it like this ;-)

Last edited by ringo™ at 3/10/2008 9:06:26 PM

3 followed very closely by 2....

these to me are logical and necessary steps... new players do take time to adapt and certain departures will naturally cause fellow team mates to lose enthusiasm.

4. ;)

1,2,3 i dont care if it makes people happy just do it...

5. a transfer compare isnt a bad thing if you can get something like this working, it would help people a lot...

6 and 7 doesnt sound good to me and i think it wont help atm coz there is many high skilled individual players which probably hard to trace in this.

8. im sorry i got no ideas.

ps. i dont waste any time in the forum no more to make as much profit as i can before any changes happen ;)

have you heard of the game musical chairs?

when the music stops..... dont be the last man standing...

3) Just implement it... it seems strange to have it for NT and not for club.... i know its to stop the NT manager just browsing thru everyones roster but at least for club it has some meaning and logic that applies to everyone...

I am against transfer compare and i would imagine this is very offputting... when you have played the game a while you know what you think is a fair price to pay.... giving people a guideline during periods of inflation/deflation is not going to help.

Encourage people to watch the trends of players more in the tutorial or rules dont just slap prices on them unless you can come up with a very accurate and far superior tool to the HT nonsense.

I think those taxes are ridiculously high, they would kill the transfer market.

How about making it so that you cannot transfer list a player until he has been in your squad for 6 weeks?

Also, I think players should be cup-tied - if they have played for any team (in any country) in the cup, they should not be allowed to represent other teams in the cup at a later date...

Also, I think players should be cup-tied - if they have played for any team (in any country) in the cup, they should not be allowed to represent other teams in the cup at a later date...

Don't you think that is a little harsh?

How about making it so that you cannot transfer list a player until he has been in your squad for 6 weeks?

The game Battrick does something similar where once bought, the player is under contract with that team for 42 days. 6 weeks might be a bit long considering our season length. I'm leaning more towards a heavy tax(maybe not 10%) for people trying to sell players right away. Not only will it deter day trading, but it will also make others think more before bidding on players.

Last edited by Vikman at 3/10/2008 10:40:51 PM

As far as the economy is concerned, I would say BB is structurally very similar to Hattrick (which is probably a feature). I've been around Hattrick since 2003, so I've had the chance to follow the economic phenomena there a bit. As an economist (I'm a Ph.D. candidate at Clark Uni in Worcester, MA), hopefully I can provide an insight or two that can be useful.

To boot, I completely agree with your assessment about game calibration. A thing to have in mind is that BB is somewhere in its late infancy, as far as game maturity is concerned -- both in terms of number of seasons and number of users. I would expect at least 10 or 15 seasons before things start clearing up a bit.

My take is that trading should be regulated naturally (taxes on transfers, team chemistry drop), not artificially. This means one should probably avoid stuff like direct wealth tax and limitation of the number of transfers, which will be, by definition, arbitrary. Put structural limits in the transfer system and let the market play it out.

An implication of having multiple trained skills is the fact that any sort of transfer compare will be hugely ineffective. For one, there will be a huge price volatility for the same level of primary skill(s) based on secondaries. Consequently, market scanners are almost guaranteed not to work due to the lack of enough comparable transfers. For those who play HT, the situation will be comparable to the TC for wingers -- they compare 5 skills, and there are barely ever enough matches for a meaningful comparison. And HT is significantly bigger in terms of transactions.

Likewise, I am also skeptical about an automatic bidder and its ability to assess prices correctly. Not to mention that it will needlessly complicate the market.

I think 3) is almost a necessity at some point, and one might also play with the magnitude of the transaction tax to reach a good trade-off between financial gain and team chemistry penalty. However, it should be structured in a way, in which one shouldn't be able to offset the enthusiasm drop with the ability to purchase and maintain the wages of significantly better players.

What has to be considered for the long run, though, that once teams 'saturate' with players to the level where all their income goes for wages, the economy will be hit by a sharp liquidity crisis. As in, the more saturated teams there are, the less disposable cash there will be out there for transactions on the transfer list.

There isn't really an easy way around this structural flow. HT regulates by counting on having enough 'unsaturated' teams and a good amount of new teams, which inject fresh liquidity on the market. However, this approach is only of limited use, as multiple ticket price increases were needed over time in order to maintain a healthy amount of cash fluctuating around.

Maybe one of the solutions will be to introduce a luxury tax type of feature in the end of season. I haven't thought about this much (and it will likely have to work exactly the opposite way that real NBA luxury tax works), but I guess I can post again when have I spend some time rationalizing this idea in game terms.