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Yes, I'm speculating. You're speculating. We're both willing to admit I'm speculating. You're using your speculation as the foundation of a multiple post campaign essentially calling the BB Staff liars, while simultaneously requiring me to back up with evidence a hypothesis that I merely advanced as a possible explanation. If you're entering a discussion with the preconception that whatever you believe is necessarily true, and anything that contradicts that opinion is necessarily false, it's no small matter that the discussion fails to be constructive.

Not quite: I gave you examples of players who are not gone to free agency (at the very least those who are still in their teams gone bot). My point is that young, high potential, high salary players are going bot while previously they weren't and this is the opposite of what the news said. Your point is that the News Announcement and the actual Free Agency policy are coherent, am I wrong? I think it's fair if I ask you or anyone else having this opinion to show us why with actual examples, because so far the only thing we have seen is examples this is not the case.

Note that I have been challenged by Marin to find more cases to back up my claim and then he would discuss if I did. Now that I found a lot more of these cases what do you expect me to do? Don't you think it's you who's being unreasonable here? I've done what your camp suggested, the ball is in your court mate.

You focus on "older" vs. "young" without having any grounds for knowing what those are defined as in this context, and ignore the "wide range of skills" that applies to "older" because you've decided for this case "older" is what you think it is.

I read the wording you provided and I simply stated the obvious: that sentence refers to old players. That's not what my opinion, that was literally written in your quote. Besides, I'm not the person who justified the change based on the fact that young players "were forever lost" in the previous system am I?

Marin should have just made the announcement with honesty saying that prices and rewards for trainers are still too low and so he has restricted Free Agency across the board, being more lenient on younger talent, which he kind of did here. And to be clear I agree with spirit of the Announcement and I disagree there was a need to reduce Free Agency across the board.

Besides we're not allowed to know the details of the new policy (for example Age impact) so I keep to what we know. Since Marin keeps stressing training, I think it's fair to assume that when he says "young" he means trainable players and not simply draftees. At least between me and you can we agree that it should be this way if the focus is to support players worth training through Free Agency?

I'll ask you 2 questions:
-Reading the news announcement, do you understand that more or fewer young players will retire?
- If you think the News Announcement means a higher number of young players will retire, do you think it's clear enough?


Last edited by Lemonshine at 5/29/2015 12:26:33 PM

Not quite: I gave you examples of players who are not gone to free agency (at the very least those who are still in their teams gone bot). My point is that young, high potential, high salary players are going bot while previously they weren't and this is the opposite of what the news said. Your point is that the News Announcement and the actual Free Agency policy are coherent, am I wrong? I think it's fair if I ask you or anyone else having this opinion to show us why with actual examples, because so far the only thing we have seen is examples this is not the case.

Let me quote the paragraph of the news.

The current system of Free Agency has been seriously overhauled. So far, only one criteria was used to determine whether a player will end up on the transfer market as a free agent or be retired: player salary. The result was that most free agents have turned out to be old and, in borderline cases, mono-skilled players. Young, high potential players, with a broader range of skills were forever lost. Therefore, we decided replace the current system with one that determines free agency eligibility based on a wider range of parameters like age, potential and a total skill point count, all the while making sure the cream of the crop doesn't end up retired, as the wouldn't in real life. Older players have a higher tendency to retire and enjoy their hard earned cash, which means that in order to be free transfered, they need to have a wide range of skills. However, young players compensate their lack of skills with high potential. This will surely change the range and flavor of free agents in the market, making them more spread out over the age spectrum, evening out some price discrepancies.

Now, you see that I have bolded a section. Please note that it's referring to a set of players (young, high potential, broader range of skills) as being forever lost in the old system. Your 22 year old SG with a 33k salary would clearly not have been lost under the prior system. None of the players you posted, would, in fact, be lost in the old system. Nor does it say anywhere that the intent is to save all players of trainable age, of a certain salary or skill set. It certainly appears instead that the goal is not to save everyone under 25, or 22 with high potential, but instead to eliminate the fact that all under-20s and almost all 20 year olds would be automatically retired, no matter what potential or training they had received.

If you consider 25 or 22 young, that's great. I've trained players older than that too. But those players were not the problem being addressed here, and they are instead older than the target group that was going to be saved by the new formula with potential adding extra weighting to the TSP calculation. And if they're not in this "young" group to be saved, I guess that would necessarily make them "older" with all that entails.

I'll ask you 2 questions:
-Reading the news announcement, do you understand that more or fewer young players will retire?
- If you think the News Announcement means a higher number of young players will retire, do you think it's clear enough?

I understand that every player under the age of 20 on the old system would have retired instead of choosing free agency. With the new changes, will the retirement rate of those players be more or less than 100%?

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 5/29/2015 1:02:08 PM

Your last paragraph simply isn't completely true.

That would have been more appropriate. The Cup was changed around season 6 I believe, so that's true. Manager turnover (the number of new signups essentially) and net userbase expansion should be the main reason for deflation, therefore the general point that the current environment is fundamentally different still stands, although I agree with you part of my reasoning was incorrect.

I'm reading this (152075.1), it has 654 posts so it will take a while.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 5/29/2015 1:05:59 PM

It certainly appears instead that the goal is not to save everyone under 25, or 22 with high potential, but instead to eliminate the fact that all under-20s and almost all 20 year olds would be automatically retired, no matter what potential or training they had received.

I agree. So your reasoning would be like this:
1) some young players with sub 25k-25k-20k-30k-35k were actually TSP monsters despite their low salary and now they will be saved. As you noted it's next to impossible for a 20yo player to exceed those salary limits
2) some young, high potential players, far above those salary thresholds were saved in the previous system irrespective of skills, these should have been fine since they are not mentioned.
I thought it is crystal clear that the news post only talks about young players falling under 1), it does not say anything anywhere about players under 2). Unless you're telling me that "old" players describes also 21-25yo players.

Old players in the game commonly refers to 33+ players. Even assuming he's referring to slightly younger players, we can agree that labelling 21-22yo HoF as "old" is not reasonable and is not what a normal user, speaking normal English, would understand from that news announcement.

So here we are. He writes more will be saved, but then the only thing we have evidence of is that many players from group 2 have been slashed. As I said, I think the intention has been all along to deceive whoever cared to read that announcement. The reality is that many players meeting the old criteria are no longer going into free agency, so, like for like, the new criteria is clearly more restrictive given the results. Marin admitted to it here above. Yes some draftee now might potentially make the cut, while he couldn't before (this is to be confirmed), but in general the number of free agents, also of young free agents, will reduce. This is what should have been written in the news post so that it was clear that Free Agency was reduced.

None of the players you posted, would, in fact, be lost in the old system.

Of course I only picked young, high potential players I was sure have been penalised by the change. That is precisely what I was trying to prove, you know.

I understand that every player under the age of 20 on the old system would have retired instead of choosing free agency. With the new changes, will the retirement rate of those players be more or less than 100%?

I see you try your best to avoid my question which is the real issue for me here (the announcement goes one way, the implementation another and no additional information is given to anybody). However unlike you, I have no problems answering a question.

The answer is I sure hope the retirement rate is less than 100% as it should be obvious from the announcement. Am I completely sure of that? No and in reality nobody knows, only Marin (presumably) does. For example if he set 70TSP/9POT for 18yo, 85TSP/9POT for 19yo, 100TSP/9POT for 20yo as thresholds, I dare say your question would be purely academic. Do you know for a fact he didn't set such limits? He won't say anything about it, as you know. So, once again, I invite you to provide evidence of young low salary players (group 1 in my first paragraph) are now being saved.

I have provided evidence that, counterintuitively, more 21-25yo players (group 2 in my first paragraph) are no longer going to free agency. This is the only fact here, together with evidence that the change has been done well before the news were posted. I know of some players who were already in bot teams (and they shouldn't have, because they met the requirements) after the draft on 28/04/2014.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 5/29/2015 2:39:48 PM

Now, you see that I have bolded a section. Please note that it's referring to a set of players (young, high potential, broader range of skills) as being forever lost in the old system.

So your reasoning would be like this:
1) some young players with sub 25k-25k-20k-30k-35k were actually TSP monsters despite their salary was too low and now they should be saved
2) some young, high potential players, far above those salary thresholds were saved in the previous system irrespective of skills
I thought it is crystal clear that the news post only talks about young players falling under 1), it does not say anything anywhere about players under 2). Unless you're telling me that "old" players describes also 21-25yo players. The post says that the change will save more young, high potential, skilled players compared to before, which is very welcome if true.

I believe what it said is:

The current system of Free Agency has been seriously overhauled. So far, only one criteria was used to determine whether a player will end up on the transfer market as a free agent or be retired: player salary. The result was that most free agents have turned out to be old and, in borderline cases, mono-skilled players. Young, high potential players, with a broader range of skills were forever lost. Therefore, we decided replace the current system with one that determines free agency eligibility based on a wider range of parameters like age, potential and a total skill point count, all the while making sure the cream of the crop doesn't end up retired, as the wouldn't in real life. Older players have a higher tendency to retire and enjoy their hard earned cash, which means that in order to be free transfered, they need to have a wide range of skills. However, young players compensate their lack of skills with high potential. This will surely change the range and flavor of free agents in the market, making them more spread out over the age spectrum, evening out some price discrepancies.

My interpretation is that when the message says "Young, high potential players, with a broader range of skills were forever lost. Therefore,..." that the intent of the changes is, primarily, to address that class of players specifically. My other interpretation, though I'm not as convinced of this, is that if they're talking about most free agents being old, that quite a large number of those players have been in the 23-28 range that falls outside the "old/young" discussion you're having.

You and Mike Franks are both reading a promise of "more" younger players or "more" free agents, when in fact that is never even stated, other than for the group that previously had a zero point zero zero zero chance of becoming free agents. Could it have been clearer? Absolutely. Is the fact that what happens isn't what you want the words to mean a sign of deception? Only if you really, really want it to be. The fact that the threads that were closed had the people who asked the questions disappointed but not foaming at the mouth while you, grullo and Mike Franks were convinced of a conspiracy to deceive the BB playerbase is unsurprising, and the vehemence of your positions combined with the utter lack of people chiming in to support these conspiracy theories is equally unsurprising.

I have no interest in playing your sentence parsing, rules lawyering game. I've said what I intend to say, not said quite a few more things, and wish you the best in enjoying a game other than who's got a bigger dictionary.

I agree with this, I didnt realize I may have overpay my starting center untill now. But now I realize that everything except for trainees is clearly overpaid. To some extent it is because I dont see how I would pay 200k for a mvp potential with less of a salary im exagerating here just a example.

Ive come to realize that its more about how you train than salary and or age. My team is under the age of 25 my first and second team are yet im 4th with my first team. Tie each game testing it out with bb for myself my 2nd game

Eh well played.

Could it have been clearer? Absolutely.

It's not a matter of being clearer, it's a matter of admitting you cut Free Agency across the board, while presenting it like you actually only have cut "old" players, which to any person playing this game does not mean "the near totality" of players, but rather 33yo+ or, at worst, 30yo+

You and Mike Franks are both reading a promise of "more" younger players or "more" free agents,

Well I certainly haven't read anything that suggested that as a whole fewer young players will go to the market until today...

Frankly, I'm also tired of semantics games. Any person with bare minimum knowledge of the English language is able to tell whether the news post means that change leads to a

reduction in the amount of players released by free agency

To be even clearer. I don't think we would be discussing here or elsewhere about the discrepancy between the news post and the implementation, if the announcement did say:

It functioned well before free agents were added. We had seasons where they were completely removed even after implementation. If they would have been removed again the BB world would adapt and survive, so there's no need to fear change. This total removal has also been considered but it was decided instead that they can stay in a smaller capacity and that they can be used as what they were originally intended for - as a market balancing tool.

Instead we need to push for this kind of confession and we have it on forums which get nowhere near as much audience as the New Season News Posts.

I specifically criticise that Announcement Post and I think it's been done in order to avoid people coming on the forums to complain. Mike Franks seems to be more concerned with the effects of the actual change. And he's not alone. After all it was not me who opened threads about prices and inflation being too high and it was not a single person who participated in them or suggested that a more expansive FA policy would help (did one of these). Give those people the correct story in the most visible piece of News in the game and we shall see if it's going to be the Unholy Trinity Lemonshine-Mike Franks-Grullo who is going to come after you criticising. I hope you do you realise that the secrecy from Marin mostly serves the purpose of avoiding discussions on the merit of the changes and avoiding people debating and complaining all the time.

You probably can't say, but I will ask anyway.

It seems to me that young players need very high potential and decent skills to finish up as a free agent, and older guys (23-28) have to be multiskilled to have a try at a free agency.

So going with this theory, 24y MVP center with 120k salary will retire beucase his guard skills are at a very low level and he doesn't match the multiskill criteria to become a free agent. I know BBs are pushing hard for managers to train multiskill players; elastic effect and cross training are the prime examples and I think multiskill now also affects free agents-to be.

I think the problem many users have with this is that it creates inflation. Based on your post, you seem to want this as it will encourage more managers to train. I can't argue with your logic that low prices lower a manager's incentive to train. I think, however, that not only are there more effective ways to promote training, but also, this low price low training problem could have sorted itself out without the rule change.

As you mentioned, these recent low prices were due to a mass exodus of users combined with low FA requirements. Basically there was the same amount of talent as when there were 60k teams, only now it was concentrated amongst 20k teams. Now, the user number has essentially stabilized, so even with the old FA rules there were fewer FAs than before and prices have seen a modest rebound. Think back to previous eras where the number of users was stable or even rising; FA requirements were even more lenient than before: players only needed a 10k salary to become a FA, yet prices were far higher than what they are now. This suggests that the root cause for low prices was not low FA criteria, but rather a sharply declining user count. With a stable number of users, there are fewer FAs on the market and they have a smaller impact on player prices, acting simply as you say "a market balancing tool."

If you had not changed the FA rules and these low prices are in fact discouraging managers from training, in the long term, this would only reward teams who continued to train, provided the user number remains stable. As players get older and their skills start dropping, managers would look for replacements. But since so few users choose to train during this time, the supply of skilled players would be much smaller and, thus, their value would skyrocket. Unless the user number is in steep decline, there would not be enough FAs to counteract this effect. With player values being so high, more managers would return to training.

In short, the fewer managers who train, the more valuable players will be. If every user focused on training, there would be such an abundant supply of players that most would be practically worthless. Only very salary efficient, highly skilled players would be of any significant worth.

If what you want is for more managers to train, there are more direct ways of going about it. For instance you could make out of position training 100% effective or give every team a "training game" each week.These changes would make training so easy that it would be foolish for managers not to train. As well, it would allow teams at all levels to put a heavy focus on training without sacrificing competitiveness.