Well at the same time, inflation is getting out of control especially with the additional revenue people were getting from changes to the merchandise and TV contracts. I think it'll only be a temporary thing to increase the supply of players on the market hence reducing the prices.
We agree that prices need a small reduction, and that we both hope this change is a temporary adjustment. The extra influx of merch and TV money revenue and increased arena attendance were necessary changes, though. I found it nearly impossible to make money the past two seasons in DII, and I suspect most of my rivals had a similar issue. Player and staff wages were eating up every bit of income, and the staff got more expensive every week. The only thing that kept me out of the red last season was the increase in Cup income. After getting knocked out of the Cup, I was losing ~$20k/week, and ended up downgrading all of my staff so that I looked like a DIV team.
The inflation filters all the way through the whole BB economy from the top down. I don't know if people have noticed but players which I could get for <5k last season all of a sudden are now worth 20k+ or so. Now at the top end of the scale, the prices are jacked up even higher. This again attributes to the fact everyone has more money to spend so increasing supply of players seems like a logical choice to try bring prices back down.
I'm not going to get into an argument about economics, because I know next to nothing about the subject. (I can't even remember the PIN number for my debit card.) But if there is really a difference between paying 5k or 20k for a player, I've never noticed it. If you want to talk about <50k players now selling for 200k+, on the other hand, I'd be willing to listen.
Its just bad timing that you bought guys at a higher worth than they are now. Factors outside your control (i.e. BB changing the rules) directly affected this. But again, given time long enough it will all filter out and prices will readjust itself.
I'm not currently affected by this. My argument stems from the situation four or five seasons ago, when prices were much like they are today due to a massive influx of new players. If you bought an 18yo with decent potential at that time, then trained the kid for 3 seasons, he was worth about the same as what you'd bought him for in the first place (rather than being worth more due to a massive increase in his skill set). This made it next to impossible for lower division teams to improve their personnel, and created a huge gap between older top division teams and younger, lower division teams. The only folks that managed to bridge this gap in my experience were heavy traders and those lucky enough to be blessed with extremely good draft picks.
More money balances things out, particularly for the guys at the bottom of the totem pole, who can now get some real money for their trained players and really improve their teams.
I agree that things will readjust eventually, but I don't think that readjustment will really start to happen for another 5+ seasons, when all the original allstar* potential players are into their 30s. It will take a few seasons more for the first crop of new potential trained players to start feeling the effects of skill decay, which should finally bring about some semblance of balance among the player pool.
Of course, if the number of BB managers increases in size dramatically like it has in the past (there are something like 20x more people playing now than when I started BB), more adjustments will need to be made. ;)