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there's every possibility that the player wouldn't be trained

There is also the certainty that the player will not make the team because it's going bot or has been banned and his GS is horrible. Which means you're not going to be able to save him. And I'm talking about 15k+ 21yo trainees at the begeinning of their 21st year.

Before those who focused on cash instead of players profited, and of course that was pretty unpopular on the forums as well. I guess the economy is just too important to leave to the market. ;)

Yes, but not recognising that the conditions changed and making no adjustment is shortsighted. You don't have to wait for the problem to reach epic proportions only to then scramble to fix a solution changing something else in the game.

When I mentioned cash vs asset I just pointed out the most evident trade-off. However assets vs assets (and let's include both the players owned and the arena built) is also a problem. Younger managers are penalised on a general basis because they have less assets, because they can support fewer or less valuable assets (they don't earn as much). Therefore inflation in this game is especially bad for newer teams and lower level teams.

It sounds like the idea behind Marin's words is that they would like to force lower level and new teams to focus on training lower potential trainees because they are priced out of better options, not fully realising how this creates a problem in progression opportunities for such teams. Bottom-up movement should be encouraged not made increasingly difficult in my opinion.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 3/21/2015 8:50:23 PM

But the economy breaks down pretty simple - a 24 year old player with X skills will always have an intrinsic value based on his skills. Whether that breaks down to one game's arena revenue or fifteen just depends on the users in the game - when people train a lot of players, the cash value drops, and when people avoid training, it rises. To the extent that you choose to deal in dollars rather than players, you're ceding control to the other 20000+ users in the game - if they're all either training the next MVP/HOF guy to high salary levels or training GS every week because it's a waste of money to have a trainer, that'll certainly have an impact on your future purchasing ability.

What you say, it sound a bit like this to me: "the BBs really wanted to push training for all managers and on all sorts of players, so we like inflation because it penalises banking and buying rather than buying trainees and training them". That's fine in principle, but has some side-effects which I outlined elsewhere in this thread. If they wanted to make training more profitable or more palatable to everyone, they sure are choosing a very convoluted and potentially dangerous way to do so.

You know, it's like boosting OD over the top and changing the GE so that OD stops every single outside skill to stop R&G and ending up making all outside based tactics broken. Now you say they announced changes (boosts) to JR? I wonder if this would have been needed if they found a better and more balanced/flexible solution compared to making OD so good in the past. And what next? Since there is no testing whatsoever in 10 seasons they will have to change something else because this boost to JR was too much and created another unbalance? It's the same for inflation, using a solution with side-effects is never a good idea, especially if it's not clear what or how large those side effects are.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 3/21/2015 9:06:56 PM

there's every possibility that the player wouldn't be trained

There is also the certainty that the player will not make the team because it's going bot or has been banned and his GS is horrible. Which means you're not going to be able to save him. And I'm talking about 15k+ 21yo trainees at the begeinning of their 21st year.

And how common an occurrence do you really think this is? Seven players have been banned in the past 7 days. I don't keep track of how many go bot but it's hardly a huge number.

When I mentioned cash vs asset I just pointed out the most evident trade-off. However assets vs assets (and let's include both the players owned and the arena built) is also a problem. Younger managers are penalised on a general basis because they have less assets, because they can support fewer or less valuable assets (they don't earn as much). Therefore inflation in this game is especially bad for newer teams and lower level teams.

I disagree entirely with your conclusion. A new team, unlike an older one, will need to build their arena - at a cost that is entirely unrelated to the market. So in a hyper-inflated market, it might only cost the equivalent of one well-trained player with decent potential to come up with the cash to complete the arena. In a hyper-deflated market, it could take six or more highly-trained elite prospects to come up with the same dollar amount of cash. The more inflated the market is, the less valuable the higher division's revenue advantages become, and the easier it is for newer teams to generate the cash they need for the fixed costs of building the arena that ultimately is what allows teams to progress upward.

It sounds like the idea behind Marin's words is that they would like to force lower level and new teams to focus on training lower potential trainees because they are priced out of better options, not fully realising how this creates a problem in progression opportunities for such teams. Bottom-up movement should be encouraged not made increasingly difficult in my opinion.

The thing is, even in the deflation times, the high end draft picks were still going for exorbitant sums, though of course there was never hope to recover that investment. In the end, good managers will make their way up, poor ones won't. It's just the ones who relied on 2013's strategy of tanking, buying a roster and moving up that way are going to have to adjust to 2015.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 3/21/2015 11:06:44 PM

But the economy breaks down pretty simple - a 24 year old player with X skills will always have an intrinsic value based on his skills. Whether that breaks down to one game's arena revenue or fifteen just depends on the users in the game - when people train a lot of players, the cash value drops, and when people avoid training, it rises. To the extent that you choose to deal in dollars rather than players, you're ceding control to the other 20000+ users in the game - if they're all either training the next MVP/HOF guy to high salary levels or training GS every week because it's a waste of money to have a trainer, that'll certainly have an impact on your future purchasing ability.

What you say, it sound a bit like this to me: "the BBs really wanted to push training for all managers and on all sorts of players, so we like inflation because it penalises banking and buying rather than buying trainees and training them". That's fine in principle, but has some side-effects which I outlined elsewhere in this thread. If they wanted to make training more profitable or more palatable to everyone, they sure are choosing a very convoluted and potentially dangerous way to do so.

You are aware that the prices are being set by the market, right? It's not like BB-Marin clocks in on Monday morning, runs a report, and says "Oh, let's make players cost 14% more this week". For years there was a glut of players because of decreasing userbase flooding the market with FAs, and people deciding that there was no point in training since they could just go pick up a player at will from the TL. And this is the result - suddenly the player supply has dwindled, so unsurprisingly the prices have increased. Unless we eliminate the market entirely and just come up with a fixed price for players, or unless players are created out of thin air by BB whenever prices increase, this is the natural result of a sustained lack of training across the game's ecosystem.

What you say, it sound a bit like this to me: "the BBs really wanted to push training for all managers and on all sorts of players, so we like inflation because it penalises banking and buying rather than buying trainees and training them".

Well, it sounds like that because that's exactly what they're saying. They're so focused on training that they view the game from the point of view of a training sim and lose sight of the fact that this is a basketball sim. Training becomes God; it is the dog that wags the tail that the rest of the game becomes.

In a basketball sim there would be a balance between training players for your team and buying an occasional free agent for your team. Nowhere in the real world do basketball teams train players for the express purpose of selling them, with rare exceptions. Certainly nowhere does the entire economy of a league at any level on any continent work that way. The focus on training wouldn't be so omnipresent in a basketball sim.

You are aware that the prices are being set by "the market," right?

You are aware that it is not that simple, right? Because if the GM's aren't aware of that and the BB's aren't either, there is no hope. The level of prices is a result of the interaction of amount of cash chasing the players, and the quantity and quality of the players available. THAT is "the market." When that interaction results in a player that would be useful for a mid-level team or a lower-level team costing more weeks or games worth of income than the team can possibly manage, then the economy is broken, even if the top-level teams are flourishing in this economy.

Now to be fair I have to allow that you might be right in this: maybe only the managers of the top-level teams are intelligent, so the input from managers of mid-level and lower-level teams can be ignored and those managers belittled. It is also possible that BB would be more successful as a training game rather than a basketball game. I have to be open minded about those two possibilities ... but down deep I don't believe either one pertains.

I disagree entirely with your conclusion. A new team, unlike an older one, will need to build their arena - at a cost that is entirely unrelated to the market. So in a hyper-inflated market, it might only cost the equivalent of one well-trained player with decent potential to come up with the cash to complete the arena.

You're assuming that new trainers are able to benefit from inflation revenues-wise which is not entirely the case. It's like an inflation bubble on a specific part of the economy (say, the property market) in real life. If wages don't grow (here revenues from gates are fixed, they don't follow inflation of the transfer market etc) the wealthy are still ok because they had invested ior still have access to the inflated asset and the middle and lower 'class' are wiped out. Comparatively new managers are now worse off than before Utopia came to be, using Utopia as the starting point of prices finally spiralling out of control. Yes in time they might also be able to benefit from the inflation to cover the arena expansion cost, however my point was that those who already have the arena will be able to benefit much more than them.

In the end, good managers will make their way up, poor ones won't.

That's fine, but making it exceedingly difficult is not going to end well for anyone. It looks like the usual 'fixing by overdoing' strategy by the BBs.

You are aware that the prices are being set by the market, right? It's not like BB-Marin clocks in on Monday morning, runs a report, and says "Oh, let's make players cost 14% more this week".

I have no problem with this, but Marin says that he doesn't want to lower the eligibility criteria because he's happy with the inflation and it is his choice and his alone, that there must be no lower and medium salary players coming to the market via free agency. It's a bit like the Federal Reserve setting the refinancing rate: does the Fed also set the cost of lending the banks then charge to their customers? No. Does it affect the cost of lending? Of course it does.

So let's not kid ourselves here, the amount of FA and the price of the FA is not up to the market, but to the individual choice and preference of the BBs. Also the fact that you are unwilling to separate the problem between the availability and the cost of the free agents is key. People here are not asking to put every single player back into the market, but to have a pool which may serve managers from D3 and below (and incidentally saves young prospects who are still trainable). Affecting the cost (through taxes or starting price) of the free agents is the smart way of regulating the market, not closing a part of the market altogether.

Unless we eliminate the market entirely and just come up with a fixed price for players, or unless players are created out of thin air

You just refuse to acknowledge that those players already exist. Assuming the number of managers is constant, any time an old manager is replaced by a new one, you delete the players of the old manager (no FA) and you replace trained guys with untrained old players (who are worthless because they are usually bad and untrainable). So the new manager looks at the TL to find decent players he could use at his level, but guess what? There isn't any because the old team's players have all been deleted. Every time you replace an old team with a new one and eliminate players you are depleting the overall talent pool in the whole game.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 3/22/2015 7:40:39 AM

You are aware that the prices are being set by "the market," right?

You are aware that it is not that simple, right? Because if the GM's aren't aware of that and the BB's aren't either, there is no hope. The level of prices is a result of the interaction of amount of cash chasing the players, and the quantity and quality of the players available. THAT is "the market." When that interaction results in a player that would be useful for a mid-level team or a lower-level team costing more weeks or games worth of income than the team can possibly manage, then the economy is broken, even if the top-level teams are flourishing in this economy.

Right, the quantity and quality of the players available and the demand for those players is the market. It's not "BB thinks players aren't training, so let's jack up the inflation modifier." We had an environment where an outsized percentage of the populace focused on cash and not on creating players, and now we have an increased demand for players, which is boosted slightly by the number of teams added for Utopia, and teams that have spent the past seasons piling up cash.

The simple fact is that the game is always harder for new players. Inflation? Oh, they can't buy the players they need to catch up ... BB, DO SOMETHING! Deflation? They'll never be able to afford to expand the arena to afford the wages, while teams at the top can just keep getting cheap replacements and carry higher wages... BB, DO SOMETHING! Training too fast? It's too easy for the top teams to come up with players to be able to stay at the top longer... BB, DO SOMETHING! Training too slow? How will a bottom level team ever be able to make the players that will get them up to the top... BB, DO SOMETHING!

It's always raining somewhere, and where it happens, the sky is falling. Blessed be our forum weathermen, who see a bit of rain anywhere and fret that the sky is falling everywhere.

Now to be fair I have to allow that you might be right in this: maybe only the managers of the top-level teams are intelligent, so the input from managers of mid-level and lower-level teams can be ignored and those managers belittled. It is also possible that BB would be more successful as a training game rather than a basketball game. I have to be open minded about those two possibilities ... but down deep I don't believe either one pertains.

Hardly. It's just an intelligent manager at a lower level will come up with a plan to succeed regardless of the environment, and adjust that plan if 2013's master plan doesn't fit in with 2015. I presume intelligent managers in lower divisions would have prioritized training players once Utopia was announced, at minimum, and ones far smarter than I would have probably stocked up on the glut of mid-range players available on the list at the time and turned that into a significant economic edge.

The nice thing, though, is that training for your own team is always an option. If your team instead decides to rely on the market as either a source of revenue or a source of players, you've got to be able to project what's going to happen in the market to have your plans work.

I disagree entirely with your conclusion. A new team, unlike an older one, will need to build their arena - at a cost that is entirely unrelated to the market. So in a hyper-inflated market, it might only cost the equivalent of one well-trained player with decent potential to come up with the cash to complete the arena.

You're assuming that new trainers are able to benefit from inflation revenues-wise which is not entirely the case. It's like an inflation bubble on a specific part of the economy (say, the property market) in real life. If wages don't grow (here revenues from gates are fixed, they don't follow inflation of the transfer market etc) the wealthy are still ok because they had invested ior still have access to the inflated asset and the middle and lower 'class' are wiped out. Comparatively new managers are now worse off than before Utopia came to be, using Utopia as the starting point of prices finally spiralling out of control. Yes in time they might also be able to benefit from the inflation to cover the arena expansion cost, however my point was that those who already have the arena will be able to benefit much more than them.

I just glanced at the TL for allstar potential 18 year olds, and those prices are hardly out of control. I checked the TL for allstar potential for 22-24 year olds with salaries over 12k and those prices are very high (though of course, the quantity available is low because the thinking when those guys were 18 is "lol allstar".

The thing about the localized bubble effect - for it to affect new teams, it has to either be a player that a new team should be interested in buying, and therefore one that they should be able to build as well to take advantage of that demand.

In the end, good managers will make their way up, poor ones won't.

That's fine, but making it exceedingly difficult is not going to end well for anyone. It looks like the usual 'fixing by overdoing' strategy by the BBs.

So, just to be clear, when people say "are you going to do anything about inflation" and the BBs say no and do nothing insted, that's "fixing by overdoing"? I hadn't realized (or is it realised?) that. Funny how different the language became on this side of the pond.

So let's not kid ourselves here, the amount of FA and the price of the FA is not up to the market, but to the individual choice and preference of the BBs. Also the fact that you are unwilling to separate the problem between the availability and the cost of the free agents is key. People here are not asking to put every single player back into the market, but to have a pool which may serve managers from D3 and below (and incidentally saves young prospects who are still trainable). Affecting the cost (through taxes or starting price) of the free agents is the smart way of regulating the market, not closing a part of the market altogether.

The amount of FA is not up to the market, but for that to be a significant component of the market long-term would require that the market will only be functional as long as we get users to join, train those players, and then leave the game. That way people who plan on sticking around won't have to deal with all that nasty business, I guess.

So the new manager looks at the TL to find decent players he could use at his level, but guess what? There isn't any because the old team's players have all been deleted. Every time you replace an old team with a new one and eliminate players you are depleting the overall talent pool in the whole game.

If only there were a mechanism to turn players at one level into better players, which might increase the talent pool at some level, this hopefully coming up with an equilibrium.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 3/22/2015 10:05:48 AM

There is currently 470 players with a current bid (or starting bid) at 5000$ or less. People are still selling low end players.

Lots of good comments since I read this thread yesterday. Forgive me for going back to page 2 to respond to the comment above. I think this is important for illustration.

Perpete is correct. When I did this same search, I found 475 players with a bid of $5000 or less. But let's consider the following scenario:

I just got my new team today. I see a roster of "scrubs." My best players earn $3000 to $4000 a week. The new owner checklist wants me to go buy a player on the TL. OK. If I'm going to buy a player, I'm going to buy a better player than the scrubs I already have. So, I search for players who have a maximum bid of $5000 and a minimum salary of $5000. What do I find? Of the 475 players who have a maximum bid of $5000, only 73 have a salary of at least $5000. That means of Perpete's 470 players, more than 80 percent are players that aren't going to make any team better ... at least not right now. Also, I've read the game manual and I've learned that at age 34 players begin to lose their abilities. Crap, I don't want no old guy who's not going be as good at the end of the season as he is now, so I add a maximum age of 33 to my search. What do I get then? 22 players with a minimum salary of $5000, under the age of 34 and with a low bid.

And you are signing up some 200 new owners every week and this is what they have to choose from?

Now granted, you don't have to be so cheap when shopping for players. So, let's change our maximum bid to $100,000. New owners certainly can buy at least one player for that amount of money and still have enough left to start building the arena, pay for scouting, buy other players, etc. I still want a $5000-a-week player and I still want a player who won't start dropping in skill after I sign him so still a maximum of 33 years old. And the total is ... 107.

Again, you're signing up some 200 new owners every week and there aren't enough players on the market for all of them to be able to complete the dang checklist ... unless you expect them to sign some old fogey or some crappy player that is no better than the scrubs you handed them on their original roster. Any wonder why new owners don't stick around for long?

All of the other debate aside, the only reason this situation exists is the rule that excludes low-salaried free agents from entering the market.

Now, I'm going to propose a solution. I understand that BB wants to protect trainers, wants to ensure that they get a decent return on investment for training young players. However, eliminating all free agents whose salary falls below some arbitrary number has had an adverse effect on mid- and low-level teams. It has created a shortage of players on the TL and consequently has caused prices to skyrocket for players who are on the market in those salary ranges.

Rather than using a salary model for exclusion, I propose BB should consider an age model for exclusion. Exclude any player from a Bot team between the ages of 18 and 21 from entering the TL. That gives trainers up to four seasons to train and sell for a profit. Any player from a Bot team that is age 22 and up should be placed on the TL under the normal rules (minimum bid 10x weekly salary). What this will do will ease the player shortage at the low end of the salary scale and still provide some protection for trainers. Further, the influx of players will ease the inflation at those lower salary ranges. And finally, I believe this approach will lead to a greater retention of new owners as they find it easier to complete the checklist :)