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I think the fact that we have had to spend so much time on economics in the news posts is because Charles and I understand how basketball works, and what basketball should look like, and how to design a system in which a game looks like basketball.. but we aren't economists.... i mean... we clearly don't think about money that much.. we are both graduate students. And so we've had to spend more time tweaking the economics than basektball.

But I think you are being a bit too unkind to say that we haven't been working on the basketball as well.

We have tweaked the end of game coaching logic, we have changed the rebounding model, we added matchup ratings, we added alternative defensive matchups, we tweaked outside shooting, we added help defense, we tweaked the importance of passing and outside defense, and i'm probably forgetting some things... this season we've announced we are working on more tactical options.

Keep in mind whenever we make any change, people get up and yell because they made a strategy and designed their long term plans around one set of things, and when we change something they feel betrayed. So its difficult to do a ton.

It was by no means my intention to be unkind in my 'yell'! I accept there have been numerous improvements to the basketball side and i guess the majority you mention are less visible to me (which doesnt of course detract from the fact they are still changes that have been worked on and implemented.)

Sure, I/we have adapted to the way that player skills are represented in the game engine but Im sure you'd agree that from a new players perspective the match-up ratings carry less assistance than previously and again for newer teams this is a grey area as they won't have what many considered a decent barometer to check how their training is effecting their improvement.

I know that the fundmentals of the game are solid and don't require changing - but I always comment using my own situation and that of someone who could be starting out (in Japan I hope!) and I guess the overall point I was trying to make is that certain aspects of the game are now being solved (not neccessarily 100%, but close) so the variable factors that led to the disparity in performance/growth of franchises before is far less likely now and future success is based more on an economic formula that you have to follow using the players as pawns. Sorry again if this sounds crude - its ironic cos at the beginning of the game I myself viewed each player as a financial asset and now I'm at the stage where I don't wish to. Of course the counter argument is that everyones training methods will vary and this will result in different teams failing and succeeding but as we've seen before when transfer fees are rangebound with a topside of $7-8mil vs a topside of $12mil, each training skill up carries less monetary reward and you are likely to be able to throw a net over teams that start in a certain era and again the luck of your global position is then based entirely about which country you sign up in.

I don´t like at all the idea "people are crying because they don´t want to sell their expensive players". I think this is something that may be considered as offensive.

Of course managers do not want to sell their stars, because this is not only a economic game. It's basketball and you want to build "your" team, and one of the coolest features in BuzzerBeater is that you can design your own players in your way.
Some people may have wrongly trained their player and make them too expensive. But others had long-term plans to build a key player with very finely adjusted salary. But these plans are useless if every year we have this kind of economic adjustments. We are talking about a 10-15% increase over the expected salary increase due to training. This is destroying people's plans, so I don't think it is fair to say that people are crying because they don´t want to sell their players.

In addition, these adjustments seem to be based on the income/expense balance mainly dominated by the economy of many small countries in the game. Each new country in BuzzerBeater is a new source of economic imbalance. Because you get new users with lots of economic resources, fast and easy, and very low knowledge of the game: In Spain we call them "New rich people". This is the main economic problem of BuzzerBeater, to have a global economy with mixed conditions (the so-called Small Countries Advantage). We play different games but we share the global economy.
So, it results that some spanish users will have to sell their player because the salaries increased too much (with respect to the normal training update), because the users in small countries have an imbalanced economy... and in addition they are blamed because they don´t want to sell, and also we can´t complaint about the small countries advantage.

The BBs don´t want to understand this, and all the time they are hiding behind a set of raw and biased global numbers, but it is clear that the existence of these small economies, which grows at the same speed that the large ones but without a real competition, is responsible of all the economic problems, whereas the large countries are mostly self-regulated because of the high level of competition in the top divisions.

The prices inflation of 2 seasons ago, and probably deflation of this season will always hurt the weakest teams. Do you really think that in the real world, a rich person is seriously damaged by an economical crisis? Of course we are all affected, but it will always be more harmful for the poorest people. I don´t think this can be argued.

teams spend only 70% of their income on salaries.

My only question about this is if that stat is based on total income/revenue for the season or is it a snapshot of the weekly average during the season?

There are only 11 guaranteed home games but 14 weeks of paying players. Most teams don't make a lot of money in the PO's, usually only the teams that make the finals. So you have to take into account the 3 weeks you wont be making the normal attendance, if any at all.

In my original message I asked whether the differences between large/small countries has been considered when designed the global self-regulation system. That's my main point. I´m curious to know this and I did not see an answer to this clear question.
The question is not how many users come from a large/small country, but the amount of money they can make. The fact is that there are much more users in the top leagues of small countries than in large and competitive ones.
I don't have access to the data, but I´m sure that in Spain, those teams in D3 which spend only 70% of their income on salaries, don´t do it voluntarily. They are forced because if they really want to improve their team, they must save money to pay the transfer of new players. The competition is high enough at this level and we don´t need any imposed regulation.
A regulation is required in those small countries without real competition, because they can make money as easily as a first division spanish team, but without real competition in their local league.

Of course, we will survive to all these adjustments because in Spain we love this game. I´m not telling that the salary increase will lead most spanish D3 teams to bankruptcy. I say that in Spain we have to deal with a high level of competition (which does not mean a high level of player skills or team ratings), and we have to deal every season with these economic adjustment for which we are not responsible at all.

You know my proposal in the Small Countries Advantage thread. It was not considered because the BBs deny that such problem with small countries exists. But the BB economy is globally considered, and things happenning in other leagues are affecting to us.

I don´t know how hard is to manage the economy in your league, but in Spain we have to be very precise and you will pay with a lower competitiviness every mistake you make.

Last edited by Emilio at 3/26/2010 8:46:27 AM

this was based on a single week late in the regular season before the playoffs last season.

The weekly totals are a bit misleading for another reason. There are other sources of income/costs that do not occur on a weekly basis: profits from training and staff bonuses.

I think your argument is really part of the much longer standing debate about small versus large countries... which is another larger design issue. You could indeed imagine somehow scaling income more dramatically according to country size and league salaries... but we already do this to a large extent... Spanish D2 for example makes about 20% more than Hong Kong's D2. Now its still true that Hong Kong D2 teams spend even proportionally less than spanish d2 teams.... but this is a bit odd because its had to say Hong Kong teams have a strict advantage, in that spain has more money to spend on players, and clearly has the more talented players... but yes Korean teams clearly have it an easier time of competition.

So on one hand, Spanish teams are all on the same boat... i again would argue that we haven't made it impossible for a spanish d2/3 team to compete. On the other hand it has always been true that you need less of a team to win in Hong Kong than Spain.... then again, Spanish teams are going to beat Hong Kong teams from the same division.... so .... its hard to say that Hong Kong really has an advantage... though an equally skilled manager probably does have an easier time being successful within hong kong.

The best solution to this is not a dramatic re-imagining on the Buzzerbeater economy.. but rather growing smaller countries, and with increased competition, you'll get a balancing out of the competitive levels.

I'm sorry that my language was offensive, I should be more sensitive.

But, I feel like your first paragraph seems to indicate that you didn't really listen to my point about the best players in the world. Given that we have chosen to have a game with a tiered economic system, we cannot have players getting better over time, and getting paid more over time for those increased skills, and have a system where it makes sense for a team to have a "long-term plan to build a key player" because eventually if the team is in a lower division, that player will cost too much for them to afford.. regardless of the salary tuning formula... which again ... was 5-10% depending on salary level (lower for lower salaries/lower divisions). The vast majority of salary increases this season are due to training, not due to this salary formula adjustment.

So that's not really the best representative of what percentage of income is spent on expenses. Spending 70% per week during the regular might seem conservative, but if you include the offseason weeks that jumps to 90%.