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Sure because you have better players - I would say the same thing to a person who was complaining about a bunch of mediocre and inepts.

Sure because you have better players - I would say the same thing to a person who was complaining about a bunch of mediocre and inepts.

Actually, you have a team that could compete pretty readily with his...

the idea behind the economy is that you have rich teams down to poor teams,and how rich you are is MOSTLY a function of your division level so that their is a significant advantage to being promoted. Now rich teams are suppose to be able to afford the best players in the game, the poorer teams are not, but that eventually their should be a spectrum of players available at all levels and that all teams should be able to improve their RELATIVE economic position in order to buy a RELATIVELY improved player.

The system we have setup has flooded the market with some 4K players, which are currently amognst the best in the game. naturally, the richest teams are the only ones who can afford them. This won't always be the case, as players in general improve the best player a starting team gets will not be the best player available in the game and the richest teams will not be interested in them... and contrary to a previous point that was made, they won't be able to buy them and sell them again at a profit since the only real demand is coming from the poorer teams and the poorer teams can't afford the price the richer team bought the player for.

It was indeed our intention to hasten the improvement of specifically the richest teams because that is the part of the economic/player ability spectrum that needs to be filled out the best.

Ideally, all players would be re-cycled. If 10 clubs go into receivership, and 10 new clubs start up within days, the players from the bankrupt clubs would simply sign on with new clubs, some might move to existing clubs and others to the new clubs.

It's not a good idea to have the very best players going to start-up clubs, so it makes sense to let them be FA. The money doesn't have to be lost to the overall economy. It can be redistributed in all kinds of other ways.

Right now, many of the players who are being FA listed are not players that were given to a team 5 weeks ago, but are players who have had a little bit of training and started last season. As the salary threshold increases, it will be much rarer for the players being FA listed to be those that were assigned to a team and never having played.

And other players can be recycled as well. In some cases, they could simply take on new identities - countries and names, or if they have been playing BB for some seasons, let them keep their personal history. These players can simply be distributed to new clubs. Over time, this will gradually upgrade the talent given to new clubs to reflect the actual distribution of skills produced by training, and so that the new clubs don't start as far behind existing clubs.

Your response is exactly why people are not staying and playing the game. I liked this game because I was getting in early (unlike HT where it's so developed) so I could have a team that could compete and have fun.

The fun factor is not gone for me yet, but understand what you are creating at the expense of a nice product you have put out on the web.

Further, think about the supporter you want to have support the league that you just told he is not in your best interest. I understand there needs to be a difference between the levels, but in time that will occur naturally. It just seems like a rush to get old before the game has matured.

Edited by gdonovan (11/27/2007 5:04:08 AM CET)

Last edited by gdonovan at 11/27/2007 5:04:08 AM

Your response is exactly why people are not staying and playing the game. I liked this game because I was getting in early (unlike HT where it's so developed) so I could have a team that could compete and have fun.

The fun factor is not gone for me yet, but understand what you are creating at the expense of a nice product you have put out on the web.

There is an underlying economic model that has been specifically designed for this game. The developers have consulted experts in the field to gauge what can work and where the pitfalls of a potentially large economy are to be found. I, myself, am no expert in the field, but I trust in the opinions of the people that know what they're talking about.

The economy part of the game should just work without managers and users having to think too much about why it works. It all boils down to considering why certain things are misfiring in other online games and what we can learn from that.

These current steps are intended to bring the economy into a state of equilibrium and lower the prices for the quite frankly awful players on the transfer market. We all have awful teams, so the quality of what you can buy isn't up too much notches - when the really decent players start coming through, the current prices will be seen for what they are - vastly exaggerated.

Further, think about the supporter you want to have support the league that you just told he is not in your best interest. I understand there needs to be a difference between the levels, but in time that will occur naturally. It just seems like a rush to get old before the game has matured.

We think the model we have is a better long term solution than in other games, but
for it to function properly, it also needs to have a certain level of maturity in many respects - which is something that is currently not the case. If the situation is left to continue then the gap between the levels will just increase as the top teams have more resources to outbid anyone and everyone. As players on the market are much the same at the moment, the net effect is that poorer teams can only afford players that are pretty awful and not much better ( if at all ) than those they have, and the richer teams will buy anything that's trainable or less crappy than the absolute minimum offers on the market.

Recycling the better players gives the teams with more money something to spend their mountains of cash on and leaves the rest of the average players for the poorer teams to actually be able to afford.

These measures are designed to give new and poorer teams more of a chance in the game, helping them to be able to afford things that they currently can't. Additionally closing the gap between the league levels that is currently growing.

This is where thinking about supporters and everyone in the game comes into play. We do see the big picture and do see what is going on beyond the confines of our own teams. We want everyone to have fun, but currently new managers are really struggling because everything is out of their reach - we need to address this and we are currently doing so by trying to balance the market.


Further to this, removing better players from bot teams weakens the bots slightly, which is also been a problem over the last weeks. Bot teams are insanely hard to beat for players that are finding their feet. Remove the better players from those teams and you go a long way to resolving that problem too.

I'm not saying that it's the case right now. I'm saying that it might happen when teams have accumulated enough money. It happened in bigger games than BB i've played. It even happened in World of Warcraft. You can't compare BB with normal economics.

Imagine E-bay being our only way of buying. And e-bay only acutions let's say, horses. Every week there will be a new batch of horses available to you. About 90% of them are stronger faster and more healthier than the ones on the market. The rich people will buy all of them. There will be none left of the new batch of horses. Either they get re-auctioned or they replace their existing horse who will be then auctioned for a similar price. You'll see that the replacements will replace the new batch for the same price. How is that not a way of controlling the market?

Sure, it's not happening now, but it might happen.

I keep hearing that these players are not that good, saying they are not double prominents or whatever. The fact that there rarely are double prominents is what make these players good in the eyes of smaller teams. You can't deny that these are one of the best players of the moment. Why not do this botification TL when these players are seen as mediocre at best in the eyes of ALL players. Not the ones in div 1. Like i said this is just boosting the natural growth of the game. Divisions will be divided let's say in season 8, natually. But with this feature it might happen in season 5. That's too soon since the game has a relative small community. Would you really want to give the new teams a sense of defeat right after they signed up? There is a chance that they will be placed in one of the high divisions competeing against allround resp. players with a mix of inept/awful/mediocre players. Losing doesn't really motivate the team to stay and continue.

I agree.
In fact, barely one season in, and I've yet to see a reason to go onto the transfer market and replace any of my players.
All I've done since join is sell and sack a few players.

I don't know whether I was particularly lucky with my starting roster, but if it weren't for the television games my club would fold (it appears to be quite difficult to sell out and cover expenses when you first start off, I have only just filled my arena the last game I had (unexpanded), and even then I'm not even close to covering fortnightly wages - once that 50k/week disappears, noobs are struggling).

You are struggling to survive. Meanwhile the top teams have it rather luxurious... They can throw money away like it's lunch money., because they'll earn it back easily with just 1 or 2 home games.

Edited by Riceball (11/27/2007 1:02:03 PM CET)

Last edited by Legen...Riceball...Dary! at 11/27/2007 1:02:03 PM

Recycling the better players gives the teams with more money something to spend their mountains of cash on and leaves the rest of the average players for the poorer teams to actually be able to afford.

The conseequence of this will be that money flows from new (poor) teams to old (rich) teams. Because the poor teams will buy players from the rich (thus giving them money), while the rich will buy from "outer space" thus not recycling any money to the poor team. In essence it is the kind of pyramid scheme economy that almost killed Hattrick.

Now, everyone knows that a pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model, so in the long run this would kill the BB economy too. However, I guess that it can be a good model to use during a short expansion phase, if the transission to a new model is made on time and this transission and model is known beforehand by the users. Is this how you plan to do it?

Because the poor teams will buy players from the rich

You'll also see that the premium cost is for players that are, again, really not that good. I slightly upgraded non-trainee positions at the expense of downgrading trainees, and overall it was a bit of a wash financially.

In essence it is the kind of pyramid scheme economy that almost killed Hattrick.

Killed hattrick? Sure the economy was unstable, but the relative purchasing power on the transfer list remains about the same. Now they just artificially injected money into the system which is driving some extreme, hopefully short term, inflation.

Training of mono-skill players, over-emphasis on one aspect of the game engine (midfield), and other issues, in my opinion, are much bigger and they are just now addressing them.

Seems like BB has set up a good foundation to avoid most of these pitfalls.

Edited by brianjames (11/27/2007 4:53:15 PM CET)

Last edited by brian at 11/27/2007 4:53:15 PM

You'll also see that the premium cost is for players that are, again, really not that good. I slightly upgraded non-trainee positions at the expense of downgrading trainees, and overall it was a bit of a wash financially.

If the players are really good or not isn't really important in this case, it is the actual flow of money from lower to higher levels that is the subject. Actually one of the distinguishing features of pyramid schemes are that the "product" often is of limited or no value.

I agree that there are a bunch of problems in HT that BB has handled, so it is looking promissing. However, the transfer crash did not have to do with single or multi skills it was simply a natural consequence of the pyramid scheme (even though the actual timing of the crash was influenced by the issues you mention). It will be interesting to see if they managed to put in their panic break just in time to save the game or not. But, let us leave that for the Hattrick conferences.