BuzzerBeater Forums

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 :)

Wait... are you suggesting that CONSUMERS may have an inkling of responsibility for the market? GASP

If this was a basketball simulation then what happens in games would be what was the thing that only matters. However we're playing a basketball management simulation where we take the role of managers of a basketball club. Hence training becomes important as it made so that it is an important part of the game.
Luckily we are not forced to do anything as building our arena or training players. But it sure helps to do both.

Actually, training isn't an option, it is the only option. No one said anything is "bad about training lower potential players." Except, of course, for observations about how illogical training is currently set up (left over from the similarly illogical training in Hattrick). Maybe fixing that would make forced training a little more palatable.

Here are more important points:

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.

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.

You not only resist correcting the player market by adjusting the FA basement, you drain the game of players w/o replacing them. Steps in the right direction are resisted while steps in the wrong direction persist.

It's always raining somewhere…

… and no matter how much I like this game, I am smart enough to come in out of the rain. I’m smart enough not to waste my time butting heads against a stacked deck.

Here’s another guy who gets it:

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.

I 've been reading this thread the last few days. Since its talking about training, I might as well jump in the conversation.

When I started in season 19, I gone on a spending spree in order to make my team better. Yea, ultimately it was a bad idea but I can tell you prices were lower back then. Now to the run stuff.

I think training is vital to a team's success. Sure, some managers don't think training is great and all, but it does help your team to some extent. Last season I kept my 3rd round allstar drafted. I have trained him only for a little bit. but he already has 11 ID. I think training is beyond just looking at potential and saying "allstar, he sucks!" for the new crew of managers. I teach about a dozen guys who I got from another online site to play BB. Of those teams, only 3 has a MVP+ player that they are training. 2 other teams have USA U21 prospects on their team, and one has a Romanian U21 Star that he has trained on his team (20 yrs old at that too)

I taught them about training and such, and now they are all excelling, 2 of them are against ea h other fighting for promotion. Others are in the playoffs in their respective division. Now, if they didn't have a trainee, I can say that their teams would not be where th ey are now. Of course, a mentor helps, but even I got the hung of training for a short bit by just reading the manual.

The thing is most newbies don't want to read the manual because it is "boring" or "too log to read" and I can agree to that. It took my half a season to finally take my time to read it myself. We have one on one mentoring help on the help forum, and in the USA off-site. But.still there are teams leaving. Wonder why? Because in their starting teams they got a complete trash roster. Now, it helps GREATLY if you sign up right before the draft. But to the select people who didn't catch the draft time? They are stuck.

Now, I like what another person has said about implementing 22-25 year olds into FA. I have a suggestion myself...how about an expansion draft? It could only hold maximum salary of 8,000 and then it holds players ages 21-26. This gives new guys the chance to get at least someone to help their team win.

I personally think training provides a team at least 2 players in their starting 5 while they are saving cash for their stud free agent. There is a team in USA owned by fruity cakes. He has never made it out of d4. Wondeer why? He never takes the effort to train a player. If he had trained just one decent guy he would be in the right direction. Training may not be fun in some cases, but it's a highway to the right road. But what can I say? I'm tanking and I bought a trainee for 2.1 million bucks and he has only had 2 pops all year....

I bought a trainee for 2.1 million bucks and he has only had 2 pops all year....

Good endorsement of training .... but this thread is about "inflation." (with that term being misapplied)

Training effects inflation in a big way though. More players being trained, would equal more player s to choose from in the TL. Some guys still "daytrade" trainees with as potential. Some make a good profit, others don't. Some go on to keep getting trained, while others stay at their skillsets.

If people took more hand to training that would cool down these absurd prices. Back in the day a 50k guard cost only 500k. Now they cost 800k-a mil. Makes me just want to train one myself (already am training one.) And I know that you can make agood 40k.to 50k guard with AS potential. Could even make some noise in some d3 USA leagues.

If you train at the start, you can make some nice bench players as well for your team. 15k all you need for a good d3 bench.

Last edited by tough at 3/22/2015 8:34:38 PM