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And for the person who said "don't blame the floor", explain to me why I had 0 problems last season before the floor raise.

You did have a problem. You only made 16k a week. Now you make 3k because of the floor increase. You could make 100k if you got rid of your staff until you can afford to upgrade, but you prefer to blame the system for your shortcomings.

Last edited by Perriwinkle Blue at 3/7/2016 11:27:09 PM

Also, after a quick search through your history, you wouldn't have been paying the salary floor until late last season or start of this season. Again, if you're only making 16k a week, it's not the salary floor that is the issue, especially when it didn't apply to you.

Fix your staff and you'll make more income than you have to date, even if they raise the floor by the same amount next season.

"They" like telling you there are almost an unlimited number of ways to play this game. Just not your way, with a $16,000 weekly profit.

I know nobody actually cares because I'm in like the 1% that this actually hurts... the owners around 2 years of experience who have to pay the floor yet aren't established enough to have a developed arena or any sort of real income. It's such a small deal, that it's considered insignificant. But it may be harder to keep users around past that first season because of crap like this. This isn't helping the game grow at all.

I don't know that it's fair to say nobody cares. I'm sure some people don't, but I'm not one of them. All I can do is give some advice based on what I've experienced in my time in the game, and then you're free to do with it what you want. The one "rule of thumb" advice that I will give first is that if you're anywhere close to spending more on your staff than you are on players, that's an entirely unsustainable model.

With that said, I wouldn't recommend firing your trainer either unless you had no alternative at all (e.g., you're approaching the bankruptcy limit and couldn't stop the bleeding otherwise) or if his salary was extremely insane. As it is, you're barely profitable so you should probably be able to float the trainer salary for a while if other things change. I would probably consider looking at advanced once you do get the money for a replacement, though - the difference between the levels is not significant (I think it's estimated at like 4% training speed) but the cost in salary and in bidding on them is quite hefty.

As has been mentioned, the PR is almost certainly something to not invest in significantly - generally speaking any gain in attendance/merchandising is not as much as the increased salary vs. a minimal PR guy. What I personally recommend is trying to find a cheap basic PR guy (or maybe competent with a low salary) with either National Appeal or Crowd Involvement, depending on your competitive situation - if you're winning almost all of your games, the CI specialty might help swing one of the road games, while if you're going to have a terrible season, maybe NA can swing a home game or two and keep you from relegating. If you have more money and weekly profits, you can actually switch PR guys on a game-to-game or as needed basis to maximize competitiveness - spending a small amount (~6k severance + a small bid) for an improved chance of victory in a close matchup is something I like.

Doctors, honestly, are kind of big money sucks too. I've had stretches where I had almost no injuries with a competent doctor for almost a whole season, and times where I had multiple injuries quickly with a superior doctor. If you're training someone absolutely irreplaceable (U21 candidate, or a high potential guy that can't miss training pretty much ever to reach your target build), carrying a higher level doctor makes sense. I would encourage you instead to in the short term play the odds by firing the current one, and try to find a cheap level basic/competent with the taping injuries specialty. That specialty doesn't activate exceptionally often (maybe 20% or so in my recollection) but it can help.

Just remember that salaries for staff members increase weekly, and higher staff require higher raises. My trainer right now gets an extra thousand dollars every week, which is a great gig if you can get it.

"They" like telling you there are almost an unlimited number of ways to play this game. Just not your way, with a $16,000 weekly profit.

Nobody's stopping this person or anyone else from playing that way. Anyone who can afford the initial purchases of staff can choose to play with $100k/week in staff expenses for as long as they can avoid bankruptcy; what they can not do is expect to receive the same profits as they would with 50k/week in staff expenses.

Well either way I can't even actually afford to fire a staff member (literally) at the moment because of the way timing worked out. Until I play another home game and go back into the positive balances, firing puts me more in debt xP

It's also really bad fortune that my schedule this season is wonky and I have multiple weeks where I have no home game, thus make no profit those weeks.

Means I sink further because of the 5% penalty, but not dooming because I'll never get anywhere close to bankruptcy. Still even with that said, I'm not willing to spend on anything while at a negative balance.

I guess I would have been in a better financial situation if I hadn't upgraded my stadium this season. It could take a full season of games for the difference in income to make up for the expenses to expand, so maybe wasn't the best move on my part.

The floor may not be the end all, but it does ruin one's plans when they're riding the line like I was. If I knew it was coming sooner and the effect of it, I would have re-done my staff ahead of time, I think. But I spent more on them because I could afford to and could use the benefits (at least in the Trainer's case... the other two are questionable)

Well either way I can't even actually afford to fire a staff member (literally) at the moment because of the way timing worked out. Until I play another home game and go back into the positive balances, firing puts me more in debt xP

You literally can fire a staff member if you're in debt. You can not bid on a new one, but you absolutely can fire one and have a minimum level staffer with the base 2k salary replace him. That does, naturally, add more debt immediately, but then replacing that weekly salary plus 2% increases weekly with a 2000 salary plus 2% increases of that means you come out ahead within two weeks.

It's also really bad fortune that my schedule this season is wonky and I have multiple weeks where I have no home game, thus make no profit those weeks.

That's true. The thing that many people don't realize is that the regular season is 22 games over 12 weeks, which means that your financial calculations have to include the fact that you pay salary for 12 weeks and only receive 11 games worth of attendance revenue.

I guess I would have been in a better financial situation if I hadn't upgraded my stadium this season. It could take a full season of games for the difference in income to make up for the expenses to expand, so maybe wasn't the best move on my part.

The floor may not be the end all, but it does ruin one's plans when they're riding the line like I was. If I knew it was coming sooner and the effect of it, I would have re-done my staff ahead of time, I think. But I spent more on them because I could afford to and could use the benefits (at least in the Trainer's case... the other two are questionable)

The thing is, I think investing in the arena was almost certainly a wise choice. The way you think about it is correct - the more income you have, the more salary and expense you can support, and you're trading an upfront amount of cash for a future revenue stream. (Or whatever the correct terminology will be, I am not an economist nor have I played one on TV). I think, however, as long as you're focusing on the floor as the cause of your problems, you may well continue to suffer from the same problems. The salary floor is costing you, what, $14k above your player salaries (based on your statement about profit going from 16 to 2 k, at least). I glanced at your roster and I come up with roughly 56k in salary (again, estimated, so I may be off a couple thousand, or more if I doublecounted someone or missed someone).

So, let's say that of your weekly expenses, fifteen thousand are because of the floor. You'd be paying a total of roughly 165k total (spitballed 56k salary + 14k floor difference + 93k and rising staff). The penalty of the salary floor is less than one tenth of your weekly expenses, so it's not what's weighing you down. If you shave the doctor and PR down and keep your trainer, that's probably at least 40k saved per week - by itself nearly three times the added cost the floor is causing you.

Look at it this way, maybe: you are talking about the lack of a home game being a significant drain - but if you sell out your arena as it *currently* stands, you pull in 98.5k. You're spending almost that much each week just on staff, which leaves TV revenue to balance out the salary floor (exactly, since the floor is 100% of TV revenue in IV). Merchandising gives you some cushion, though, unless you spend that money on scouting. That math can't work out for you in the long term, so the question is if you're going to just keep bleeding money until you've got no alternative or if you can cut down somewhat so that you can accumulate some cash to use for other things.