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Got to disagree on these 2 since one begets the other:
Though many of these tie into one another
as in spend to earn
as individual stand alone they are as you say but they are not stand alone
that is too simplistic

11. Arena expansion cost. Money thrown down a hole.
3. Attendance revenue. Money created from nothing.

higher player salaries = more wins = higher attendance revenue
add expansion to the above = even higher attendance revenue

Scout players - hire good staff and train = better players
better players = more wins, well you get the idea

I'm afraid to respond because the thread's blown up over the weekend and I can only imagine what's going on now, but in this case I didn't mean money thrown down the hole is being wasted. I just meant that the dollars you spend on arena expansion don't end up in another person's pocket, who would spend them and continue the exchange of those dollars in the economy, with all the residual effects thereof.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 4/13/2015 9:55:16 AM

This part in bold would be particularly useful at increasing overall supply of players. Heck, to be honest, I'd love it if the cut off on Center salaries coming in off of bot teams was $15K instead of $35K. Even in DII you can use some nice backup bigs with salaries in the mid 20's.
As a recap for everyone (just in case there are some new folk reading along), players on a team that go bot only hit the transfer line if their salary is over: $20K for SF, $25K for Guards, $30K for PF, and $35K for C. Players that get fired from an active team hit the transfer line if their salaries are half that or greater. I'd like it if players from teams that go bot had the same filter as players fired from active teams.
However, I certainly think that there was method behind instigating these limits, and I'm pretty sure that there are factors and data being watched behind the scenes that we are unaware of that the Buzzerbeater Executive Team uses to determine when a shift needs to take place.

First, I'm not sure if there is an Executive Team in charge of that or if Marin decides unilaterally or if it's like the South Park episode where they cut a chicken's head off and see where he drops to decide what to do. ;)

Anyway, yes, the reason FAs were restricted initially was that the market was severely deflating, so much so that there was a perception that the value of training and players was too low to justify continuing to do that. Instead, the value of dollars on the TL was so high that it was commonly accepted that simply refusing to compete, carrying a salary-floor level salary, and accumulating a season of cash and then splurging on more wages was the smart play. And it probably was at that point, which unfortunately is a pretty sad situation for a game to find itself in. Kind of like WarGames, the only winning move was not to play.

Now, of course, a year ago we had a sudden influx of new teams and new dollars, and they were all hot and heavy for the kind of players that teams had been avoiding creating because there was no profit in it. So the prices on the players who were available (many of whom were the old players who would have initially trained before the deflation took off) went way up. The price of trainers shot way up too because there were suddenly over a thousand new teams who had level 1 trainers.

So where are we now? We can probably all agree that at some point before Utopia existed, prices were "too low" for a healthy game. There is a fairly strong consensus that prices now at some levels may be "too high". So the question is, on the assumption that the prices are too high, how does one fix that?

Of course, widening free agency is a temporary patch and may alleviate the pressure somewhat - though it probably would needed to have been done right when Utopia started to mitigate the initial surge in demand. But the problem with that as a solution is that it relies entirely on people leaving the game, which is as unappealing a situation to me as the WarGames dilemma from before. If the game can't be balanced without having to push people out to achieve the balance, it's probably too far gone to be saved in the first place.

If it were my game, I think a combination of massively increased training speed for low potential players, plus a guarantee they can reach a decent skill level (e.g., 10 in any main skill, 7 in any secondary) and improvements in the draft (add some older, "finished" 10-15k players who can't really be trained much further to replace the low end guys) would be a sustainable solution. It probably would end up going too far the other way, but if those players stop being worth much on the TL at least they'd be so quick to create that actually building your own improvement players would be more feasible.

First of all, thank you for participating in this thread in a constructive manner.

There is a fairly strong consensus that prices now at some levels may be "too high". So the question is, on the assumption that the prices are too high, how does one fix that?

Thank you also for acknowledging what has long been pretty obvious to so many. You are probably right that "widening free agency" would have been more effective when Utopia was initiated. (Utopia unfortunately being merged with the rest of the game instead of being its own world made a number of problems, but that is water over the dam.) It would still help greatly. No reason that I can see to call it a "temporary" fix ... perhaps you can elaborate on that. There are also ways to slowly take some of the excess cash out of the economy, though some people would only want that done in ways that apply to others and not their own team.

Improvements in training could accompany these measures, so in that you have a good idea. However, relying solely on training may not be enough unless training is also made logical. Leaving it illogical as it is and forcing an even greater reliance on it could be a disaster.

Leaving it illogical as it is

How is it illogical?

That would be a topic worthy of a thread all its own. I don't want to hijack this thread.

Thank you also for acknowledging what has long been pretty obvious to so many. You are probably right that "widening free agency" would have been more effective when Utopia was initiated. (Utopia unfortunately being merged with the rest of the game instead of being its own world made a number of problems, but that is water over the dam.) It would still help greatly. No reason that I can see to call it a "temporary" fix ... perhaps you can elaborate on that. There are also ways to slowly take some of the excess cash out of the economy, though some people would only want that done in ways that apply to others and not their own team.

Improvements in training could accompany these measures, so in that you have a good idea. However, relying solely on training may not be enough unless training is also made logical. Leaving it illogical as it is and forcing an even greater reliance on it could be a disaster.

I didn't say I share the consensus, or that it's a majority opinion, but that there are certainly are plenty of people who feel that way. ;)

The reason free agency is a temporary fix is exactly that is what it is. In the long run, if people keep expecting there to be free agents and more of them dumped onto the market every time prices rise above some inflection point, then you're never addressing the primary root of the problem - that people are not creating these players any longer because it's cheaper to simply pick up a FA.

In that you or anyone believes training is illogical, of course, you have every right to do so. And yet, it also has to be conceded that there simply does not exist a player in the game with a skill level in any of the main skills above 8 who was not trained in some way to reach that. So recycling more free agents by itself simply gives some short-term relief, but in the end to have a continuous pool of free agents, you need to have people training the players to become free agents in the first place - and then, of course, have enough people leaving the game to keep releasing those retreads.

But of course, it's kind of hard to find a scenario where training players can be rewarded while not training players is not disadvantaged. For the health of the game, I'm always going to prefer that those who do train are benefiting from that, and that of course it never becomes too easy to win and train optimally at the same time, because then it really is just about who has the money to buy the best trainees and usually old money would win that really fast.

If we are going to discuss increasing the number of FAs added to the Transfer List, I'd argue to move away from using salary as the deciding mechanism entirely. As any experienced user knows, salary can be a poor method of evaluating players in BB. Plus it means that the FA who do go into the pool are largely players who either belong on upper level teams, or who are poorly built players with high salaries who may do more harm than good to lower level team who purchase them off the TL.

One possible alternative approach would be to use a combination of TSP and age. In that way, the FAs would actually be the more talented players, rather than just the ones with higher salaries. I haven't really thought too much about what the numbers should be, but for example, say an 18 year old with 50 TSP, a 19 year old with 55 TSP, a 20 year old with 60 TSP, and so on, with the TSP level eventually reducing the amount it increases as age increases. The TSP number should be high enough so that the market doesn't get flooded with FAs and that player probably should have been received some training. Which is why I started with 50 at 18 and 55 at 19 - it's possible for a draftee to meet those numbers but not very common. Perhaps the numbers should be higher or lower; perhaps the difference between ages should start at more or less than 5.

The reason free agency is a temporary fix is exactly that is what it is. In the long run, if people keep expecting there to be free agents and more of them dumped onto the market every time prices rise above some inflection point, then you're never addressing the primary root of the problem - that people are not creating these players any longer because it's cheaper to simply pick up a FA.

In that you or anyone believes training is illogical, of course, you have every right to do so. And yet, it also has to be conceded that there simply does not exist a player in the game with a skill level in any of the main skills above 8 who was not trained in some way to reach that. So recycling more free agents by itself simply gives some short-term relief, but in the end to have a continuous pool of free agents, you need to have people training the players to become free agents in the first place - and then, of course, have enough people leaving the game to keep releasing those retreads.

But of course, it's kind of hard to find a scenario where training players can be rewarded while not training players is not disadvantaged. For the health of the game, I'm always going to prefer that those who do train are benefiting from that, and that of course it never becomes too easy to win and train optimally at the same time, because then it really is just about who has the money to buy the best trainees and usually old money would win that really fast.

I forgot that you are in the "training above all" camp. As far as that goes, I grant that you are right that training up capable players and the availability of players in the FA pool are related. However, "...more of them dumped onto the market every time prices rise above some inflection point" -- indeed a temporary, and repeated, fix -- is not optimal compared to simply adjusting the entry point for free agency to a stable level that is more constructive than it is now. For that matter, with some care and attention there can be occasional adjustments made so that "dumping" is never required and the TL is always adjusted well. Logical training would certainly deserve a cornerstone place in BB, but a constructive and fairly-priced Transfer List does, too.

One possible alternative approach would be to use a combination of TSP and age.

And that's not a bad idea.

I forgot that you are in the "training above all" camp. As far as that goes, I grant that you are right that training up capable players and the availability of players in the FA pool are related. However, "...more of them dumped onto the market every time prices rise above some inflection point" -- indeed a temporary, and repeated, fix -- is not optimal compared to simply adjusting the entry point for free agency to a stable level that is more constructive than it is now. For that matter, with some care and attention there can be occasional adjustments made so that "dumping" is never required and the TL is always adjusted well. Logical training would certainly deserve a cornerstone place in BB, but a constructive and fairly-priced Transfer List does, too.

That's why the limits are where they are - because previously when they were lower there was exactly the problem where there was too much talent on the TL via free agency and prices were depressed. At the risk of wearing my pessimistic hat and ruining my BB mama bear image, I presume if there was any real hope that the number of new users was going to surpass the number of users lost, and thus the demand vs. supply situation accelerate towards undersupply, Marin would likely have made some acknowledgement of that when asked in the thread rather than mention that he liked the rising prices.

As far as a fairly-priced transfer list does, I suppose in the end it comes down to determining how much a fair price is for someone spending the time needed to create a "useful" player, considering the cost of the trainer prorated over the number of trainees, plus any lost revenue generation from having to train them instead of playing a full-strength competitive lineup. When that number is too high, people who want players suffer, and when it's too low, people who make players suffer and eventually stop, and then everyone suffers.

I think it was you who asked about the illogicality of training as it is currently set up. Here, from Hrudey's post, is just one of the illogical points:

having to train them instead of playing a full-strength competitive lineup