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OK so what happens if they overdid it and in 8 seasons we realise that having 20 SB and low OD will be fine because that will stop anything? What happens if it turns out that the benefits of JR and SB are not enough or cost too much for the levels you need to get to? We won't know for sure for many seasons, nobody knows.

So asking for more changes in those areas I think must be put off until we see a large number of people first taking advantage of changes already made

They are trying to address the problem by changing the cost of 2 skills and maybe more radically than they should have. They are effectively shooting blindly at a target hoping that it works for a period (I hope so too). It is more efficient to take a look at what people do and balance all the skills based on such analysis over time. A one-off reduction of the cost of 2 skills might a) be too effective or b) not enough effective. Without waiting many seasons we won't know for sure. This is exactly what happened with OD in the past (which we now agree to be greatly overpowered).

However, if you make the more common skills more expensive, you will reduce the number of teams who play and create cookie cutter builds, as such builds will gradually cost more and naturally become less salary efficient. LI being the cookie cutter at the moment would be hit the most in terms of salary increase. At some point you will reach a situation where the benefit/cost of training any skill is similar because you priced the skills the way the users implicitly believe they are worth. The more effective in the GE a skill is, the more you want it. The more you want that skill, the more you pay for it in salary. At that point I don't train OD anymore because it costs so much that in terms of salary you'd benefit more from adding other skills.

All that remains is free vs. cheap. Free still wins. Easier said than done though because of the way they scale the positions and how RB/JS work as sliders to determine which salary formula a player falls under and to make sure that players salaries don't go down with a skill increase.

This is why you need a basic statistical analysis to check what skills are used the most at which position. Instead of setting the skills and let users exploit that setting, you need to take what users use at each position on average and make that the basic skill configuration. Currently the formula just picks the highest possible salary, nothing would change in that respect.

Clearly you'd need do some overall rebalancing by position to keep the relative cost similar to what it is now, but it's a fact that by design this has already been done. The developers decided that big men must have higher salary than guards, so the concept is already there and it was used for a deliberate and arbitrary choice when the parameters were set originally (and then modified based on subsequent decisions).

Asking for a complete formula redesign is probably too much, so if possible, I hope they find a way to up that IS cost somehow.

What's the difference between adding IS to the guards salary formula and adding all other (currently missing) skills too and setting them at very low levels? I think SB should be added too, just in case it becomes the next great skill to have and we realise we can't make it cost anything because it's not in the formula.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 12/2/2014 8:40:07 PM

The response I get from many other users is that if people train more PA/flow shooting %s will get better. And well more JR obviously will help too....but still lots of players built with JS and or IS (lots of bigs with IS without DR to help even at lower levels) and so its players being built to jack shots, to be jump shooters...and jumpshooters naturally shoot lower %s and jumpshooting teams shoot lower %s than teams that move the ball, get open, attack the basket etc.

Well, I agree. That's why incentivising one behaviour (hey guys, train JR and SB, they're cheaper and SB's impact also got boosted) does not equal penalising another (you know what? I will make IS cost on guards and OD cost even more than today). You need both to change things. Or we can wait until some brave soul like Nachtmahr has OD and SB at any position and can confirm how he does. Most people won't even try this unless they have some reasonable assurance that it will be effective at any level (like a post by Marin saying: if it turns out we boosted SB too little we will boost it again in the future, but we want it to have this specific effect irrespective if you play in DV or in the B3).

Last edited by Lemonshine at 12/2/2014 9:07:20 PM

My concern is that currently, especially at elite levels, shooting %s globally are unrealistically low. The game may be balanced/fair but, its not simulating a realistic basketball game anymore.

And yet the range of final scores seems to be on the mark, players' statistics globally seem to be in the right range ... bottom line, the games go 48 simulated minutes to a reasonable result. If you jack shooting percentages won't you disrupt an equilibrium more than you improve it?

What I can say is that it would be a complete overhaul and reprogram of the salary formula, meaning everyone in the game would suddenly have the salary of all their players rehashed, all their training plans etc. scratched etc.

Whatever is currently not in the formula could start at a 0 or negligible weight towards the salary and reach a reasonable level over time. I'm completely opposed to abrupt decisions, because the effect on the game is unknown and people don't know how to react. It's the case for OD changes in the past and more recent SB changes. People have to guess and hope it works, gradual changes do allow for planning.

A complete rehash is the same as resetting the entire game almost if you think about it.

I disagree. I doubt that adding one skill (IS) requires a lot less work that adding 2 or 3.

This drives down the cost and value of such players. Naturally a high % of these cheaters were/are just building LI cookie cutters. Further driving down the cost and driving up the availability of LI only capable players.

I honestly don't understand how higher salary for cookie cutter builds can result in a player costing less money for a manager (the sum of the purchase price and the monthly salaries).

I suggested many times that they adjust their FA policy and that they BLOCK cheating teams training products from going FA/remove those players addhaste from the game. The player pool that exists now, that people complain about, would be different had they listened to me about their FA policy. They were wrong and the entire game is suffering for it.

Well I don't think they were wrong. Those players might have been in the NT. Those players might have partly trained by honest managers. Also, everyone has the same chance of getting those players. Finally, if you were already playing against them, nothing would really change even if japanese teams buy them all.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 12/3/2014 7:22:52 AM

Changing the salary formula is a delicate matter that needs thinking through many times. Even a small change can have a great impact on the game. And as you say adding every skill to every build would lead to us having a new game to figure out.
It may be to much as we don't know what effect it would have on the game and the economy.

You should have all the skills in and set them at 0 contribution if you don't want them to increase salary leaving everything as it is. It is a design flaw that they can't regulate how much skills are worth to a position by changing their salary impact. In fact they did change the salary contributions, but obviously only for skills which are in the salary formula (JR). This way of dealing with a problem with an imperfect tool might create further distortions.

I'm sure nobody could have foreseen that IS would be used in such a way, but the fact remains that they didn't think it was worthwhile (in terms of time and resources spent on additional code) preparing for such a possibility. Now because it's not possible to deal with the problem directly they are trying to fix it indirectly. And changing the GE (the impact of a skill on gameplay, what they have done with SB) is surely more challenging and requires more resources than changing the salary formulas.

I just think that simply propping up JR won't suddenly push people to go for 13/18 players. It costs time to build such player and it might well not be worth it considering the results. You need a progressive movement of JR (cost down) and IS (cost up) to change the situation. Small increments until, after many seasons, you have evidence people do not favour one over the other anymore.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 12/3/2014 5:44:05 AM

I've said this before and I will repeat it now. All skills should be included in the salary formula for each position, even if their impact is negligible. The proper way to set things up would be that after the initial settings decided by the devs, the salary automatically changes a little towards an equilibrium level. The equilibrium level is determined by how much of each skill (say, beyond respectable) can be found on players playing in a specific role. It needs to be gradual, but if everyone plays players with very high IS at PG then you either change the Game Engine or you make IS cost more for the position. In the R&G days, JS would have become increasingly more expensive too.

I've let this ride for a while to see if someone else would coment on some of the illogic here.
(1) "a specific role" is completely subjective, and at this point, undefined. The "specific role" could equally be "point guard" or "giraffe" until you define the roles you are talking about, and justify their inclusion in your design.
(2) Automatically making the most-used skills more expensive and the least-used skills less expensive just drives everything toward a mid-point. Who wants all 9-9-9-9-9-9-9-9 players, or all 18-18-18-18-18-18-18-18 players?

There are a couple of things in the posts I agree with, however. "All skills should be included in the salary formula for each position, even if their impact is negligible." "Whatever is currently not in the formula could start at a 0 or negligible weight towards the salary and reach a reasonable level over time." It should be done by logical design though, not just automatically.

Last edited by Mike Franks at 12/3/2014 2:31:23 PM