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a) Give new team MUCH better players to start with, so the gap to the old teams and also the money they need to spend just to reach the salary floor is reduced.
More detailed suggestion about this is here: (286547.1)
b) Put randomly generated players with 25+ years and salary around 20-50k on the market. This helps much quicker than better draftees.

I might have been a little narrow-minded when I wrote it was the only solution. I like your suggestions (and I read the suggestion you refer to and strongly support it) and they would be nice additions to a number of changes this game is in need of. I still think better draftees and better training options is a must though:

Better training: I'm not saying that an over radical change is needed. The maximum speed we have through 1-position training right now is fine in my opinion. The thing we need to look at is alternatives to 1-position training. Because at the moment you don't really have a choice if you want valuable results. Why not increase the speed of 2- and 3-position training? It would give users the possibility to actually make a choice about how they want to develop their players: you could choose to develop 2 or 3 great players, or you can make the choice of developing a few more players at a time and they would actually be useable but not superstars.

Better draftees: This goes hand in hand with the above. If we have an option to actually develop quality players through 2-position training then we would need more quality draftees to do so.

you could choose to develop 2 or 3 great players, or you can make the choice of developing a few more players at a time and they would actually be useable but not superstars.

It is already like that. 2 position training is faster than 1 position training as a whole: the penalty is around 25%-26%, so you can train 3 players at 100% (300%) or 6 players at 75% (450%).

The problem is:
- you get 6 players which look the same instead of 3
- it takes longer to get to the same skillset because the training is slower
- you need to sacrifice 2 positions for training instead of 1 (2 guards for OD or PA, 2 big men for ID or IS or SB), making it harder to compete, because you need to hide 2 players on defense instead of 1 and you need to play a big man at a guard position or play with no flow
- you won't be able to cap higher potential players (i.e. the ones that will help you in higher divisions)

I have done this at the beginning of Utopia and I still have 2 players with 74 and 83 TSP to show for it, they are well rounded but they don't excel at anything really. At the beginning of Utopia you could get away with it and compete because rosters were not that good all around.



Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 8:46:21 AM

This is exactly my point. Say you lower the penalty to 15%. You would actually be able to make pretty good players. They won't be as good as if they were trained with 1-position training, but they would be good enough to contribute, especially at lower levels.

- you get 6 players which look the same instead of 3

I don't see this as an issue. If you only have use for 2 of them, then you just sell the other 4. This would mean more players on the transferlist, and the manager would have money to buy players for the positions he hasn't trained.

- it takes longer to get to the same skillset because the training is slower
- you need to sacrifice 2 positions for training instead of 1 (2 guards for OD or PA, 2 big men for ID or IS or SB), making it harder to compete, because you need to hide 2 players on defense instead of 1 and you need to play a big man at a guard position or play with no flow
- you won't be able to cap higher potential players (i.e. the ones that will help you in higher divisions)

Well since this thread originally was about new users, this might not be that big of a problem. You don't need to cap high potential players at the lower levels. Capped starter/star/allstar potential players will do the trick. When you then need the higher potential guys you can switch to 2-position training, but that is a managerial choice which, in essence, is what this game is all about.

Increasing 2-position training speed would be a way to make new managers see progress faster and it would increase the number of mid-level players on the transferlist, which is what the OP is asking for.

I don't see this as an issue. If you only have use for 2 of them, then you just sell the other 4. This would mean more players on the transferlist, and the manager would have money to buy players for the positions he hasn't trained.

The reason why this is a problem is as follows. You get to the same skillset when the player is older so he will definitely be worth less than the same players 2 or 3 years younger. So you trained 6, but it's unlikely that any of them will go for a lot of money. There is a premium for youth and for having more of specific skills and constant 2 position training is in the way of both. It is possible you make more money this way, but you get the money much later on.And this is all assuming that you are training average potential players, starter, star, allstar, perennial allstar, because if you train higher potential players you will be probably be left with untapped potential.

Your reasoning would work if everyone was training 6 players, but virtually nobody does that, so your players will always be either older or undertrained compared to the average trained player. And with the money you will get from the sale, you can expect to buy equally valuable players (which really means subpar or older players).

Also keep in mind that the slower training has a ripple effect, it is effectively compounded. So the 25% will be a lot more after 6 seasons, due to the elastic effect and the speed decline linked to age. The 25% is valid in a vacuum, it's valid on the first session, after that the single position will always train with better elastics or a younger trainee or both.

The way I see it, this is only a viable strategy to make money and even then it's debatable that you can make more money that way when you take into account time. The choice might be between: train 6 PAS for 8 seasons and sell 4 or train 3 Superstar (because you buy 3 players you can get better trainees) for 6 seasons and sell 1. If you choose the former, you lose a lot more games, you cash 2 seasons later and the remaining players you keep are likely worse. The numbers aren't accurate but it gives an idea of the trade-off.

You don't need to cap high potential players at the lower levels. Capped starter/star/allstar potential players will do the trick.

It really doesn't. If you plan to progress through the leagues as your trainees come along then you need higher potential players. If you plan: ok I'm going from D4 to D3 with one set of trainees, then D3 to D2 another set of trainees etc, then yes, I would agree. It will also take you like 6-8 seasons for each batch of trainees and you may not be able to create D2 starters this way. As I said, there is also the problem of sacrificing 2 positions instead of 1, each game, which will have a significant impact on winning.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 10:35:46 AM

What's the difference?
I know you claim to be the one who knows the essence of the problem, to me the main issue is to get new teams competetive as soon as possible to make the managers stay! Changes in training still means they need to train first to get better players, which will still take a while. My suggestions have instant effect.

Well, I explained why I think that's worse than increasing training.

Let's say you create a 120 TSP 50k player (you easily can, all 3 my utopia trainees were about 50k when they passed 120) out of the blue and put it on the market, who will be able to afford it? Whoever has more money. Who has more money? Teams with larger bank account or, more likely, more valuable players, that they can sell in order to buy our newly created player. If you increase training instead, you put the ball in each user's court, those who train will benefit, those who don't won't.

And yes the essence of the problem is that even if you wanted, you cannot create 8-10 players on your own to compete for a D2 title. We may ask someone with a homegrown team what's the best that it's reasonable to expect. Now, since you cannot create 8-10 fully trained players players and nobody can, then as a whole the whole game is unsustainable unless there is someone who trains for others.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 3:13:13 PM

Sorry, I wasn't clear in what I wrote. All my arguments were assuming that 2-position training was more effective. 2-position training is rather useless at the moment, that's why I think the speed of it needs to be increased.

We were talking about new teams all the time, so I obviously meant the kind of players new teams would buy. Div3 starter level at best.

D3 have 50k starters, in Utopia they do and all of my trainees were around 120 or better when I relegated to D3. So yeah 50k salary can mean a lot of things, the problem is someone will have to decide where to draw the line. Do you want to trust the guy who first shut down free agency and retired U21 players (of the largest BB nation) and then made 60 TSP 40yo free agents? Let's be reasonable here.

No, that's not the essence of the problem. This game was never about training your whole team. It was always training and buying. Buying is the part that has gotten harder in the last seasons.

You're wrong. Let's say you start anew and everyone competes. Let's also assume that everyone trains and you can swap one trainee for another all the time. What kind of teams would you have? My answer is 6 trained players and 6 scrubs.

Remove FA for a second. There is only a certain number of players that can be created by teams training. Of course the actual number is lower because not everyone trains and that makes things worse. Now the question is: is that potential number enough to maintain the average skill level across leagues or not. My opinion is that it is not and therefore you have seen 2 things: skill level dropping and prices increasing. There is an equilibrium at the end of the tunnel. At some point teams will be so bad on average that you require very minimal training to reach the average skill level, but who likes a game where teams get progressively worse?

However it is important to understand that this situation is created because of the default limitations in the training system and because some people are not training (understandably in most cases). Most people are not training because of said limitations, so here lies the key problem.

Homegrown teams are a compass for the game. They are not able to compete not because they have 3 players that are similar, they are not able to compete because they can't train enough players. If you were able to create 3 guards, 3 big men and 3 SFs before they start declining you would be able to compete. At the end of the day, the userbase is the sum of 17k homegrown teams, we get the players that collectively we are able to create, no more and no less (except for Free Agency).

Does a D4 team really need "fully trained" players.
If an average Div2 team can be fully self-trained, that sounds like a good average. Some teams need better players than that, some can do with worse.

You're right and that's another problem that I pointed out some 10 seasons ago to Marin. Having 17k userbase is not the same as having 50k, because the league structure is dramatically different. DIV teams are a lot less relevant today. The number of teams in D4 or D5 is actually lower than those in D3 or higher. 85 nations out of 98 (pre Africa merge) don't have more than 336 members (16+64+256).

It is very hard to train an average D2 team be fully self trained. The salary average in my D2 is 340k. That means 3x3 players of ca. 38k salary. So you need to reach 38k by the 4th or 5th season of training (21yo-22yo) before someone starts declining. Most teams have 12 players, then the average would be 29k. So you'd need to create 29k players every 3-4 seasons (20yo or 21yo) before someone starts declining, which is harder.

Anyway, the proof that we users are not creating enough players collectively -either because of a default problem in the training system or because not enough people train- is in the state of transfer market. And keep in mind that there are MANY free agents nowadays, without them, prices would be higher and players available fewer. Whether you believe the cause is the former or the latter is irrelevant, because the solutions are the same. The only alternative is to let the average player skill level fall until it is bad enough.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 7:50:07 PM

Sorry, I wasn't clear in what I wrote. All my arguments were assuming that 2-position training was more effective. 2-position training is rather useless at the moment, that's why I think the speed of it needs to be increased.

Makes sense. Maybe if it was 10% slower, instead of 25% slower, more people would train 2 positions throughout.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 8/4/2017 7:52:24 PM