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I think this discussion is helping me clarify my view to myself so I'll keep going with one more round, no hostility intended at this point.

Me as well, and I appreciate your insights and discussion points. I am not just posting to talk, I am trying to learn.

Re (iii): I don't see how this is a problem with the changes. The changes ensure difference between divisions. They do not address how quickly you can make up that difference. Provided the BB monitor this, I am fine.

I have read in other posts, and mostly from other large countries like Italy, that if you get demoted from I good luck coming back up. I believe before these changes there is allready a gap forming. This game is still relatively new, and the small trends we see now will only amplify in the future. More separation. Now these changes reward those with superstars and high payrolls with more money than before. If the gap is allready widening, these changes will accentuate this. This can literally be translated to 'The rich get richer'. For those who have opted for a more well balanced roster instead of a 'stars and scrubs' approach, punishment awaits.

I have read in other posts, and mostly from other large countries like Italy, that if you get demoted from I good luck coming back up.

Not sure what that's based off of, but already there's been three teams demote from the NBBA and come back up within 2 seasons or less. I know of two teams that demoted into the same conference in division II and prob the biggest reason they didnt come right back was due to the difficult of that particular conference (big 8 in II.4, loaded from top to bottom). Many of the early season demotees quit before they tried to promote back up. The rest that went down are still competitive but havent been able to move back up which is a testament to the growing difficulty in II.

In short, I dont see this trend in the US.

If I new more about football I would use that as an example, but I just dont unfortunately.

Using American sports as an example, it is a rare case to see a player from another country not be equally embraced with similar skilled local players. I own 4 NBA jerseys; Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and Peja. 2 Europeans, two Americans. I could care less about a player Nationality, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual orientation. If he helps my team win I love him, if he helps my rival win, I hate him. I hated Shaq in Orlando, Miami, and Phoenix, but loved him with the Lakers.

Anyone out there own a Manny Ramirez or Albert Pujols jersey? Maybe Johan Santana, Pedro Martinez or Fernando Velenzuela one?

8 of the top ten MLB Jerseys sold last year were non-american jerseys. When Wayne Gretzky came to the Kings, do you think anyone in LA cared he was Canadian? I answer with an emphatic 'Heck No, just win baby!'

I think we could have explained the logic of this decision a little better, but we also wanted to do the style of making the explanation in real world terms.. maybe just for stylistic reasons. Here is the straight economic balance logic behind it.

Salaries are going up as we have a set model for how a players skills/experience/whatever translate into salary. Either we had to change that model, which would break the continuity of peoples understanding of what salary means, or we have to increase revenue in order to keep the economy balanced. Up to this point revenue was too much, especially for higher divisions, hence the revenue sharing. Now that that is over, we are going to start to swing into revenue being too little and so we needed a mechanism to regulate revenue, and we are doing that through the tv contracts. Our aim in setting revenue is to make there be a gap between divisions, but not such a gap that moving between them is impossible. Having this knob allows us to directly control the differences in resources between divisions and between big countries and small countries.

We think this is better than having teams have to invest lots of money in big arenas to make big revenue when they are in large divisions, as building big arenas takes too much time and so would make it harder for teams to compete when they promote.

I think those who say the devil is in the details are correct, we need to tune this knob correctly such that the game stays balanced, and that is what we aim to do.

by doing the changes in the economy, which stops the point of spending for arena and now the tv contract is up.

in truth i have yet to see this, but the way im seeing it could it be that spending money now will be more on buying players and staff?

next thing ill see in the prices again will balloon for players and staff.

next question when you say negotiation for the tv contract does this mean

1. we get to have a series of offers, like 1 at a time, we can reject on our own expense an offer and agree only when we feel its ok. is there an indication that the contract is good or bad which by the way can be a good job for the PR guy, is there a limit time frame to choose offers ? or we see numbers of offer all at once and choose one base on merits or so?

2. with the merchandise sell, your already going to soon charge teams additional 10% increase in their salary and even though our jersey sales doesnt get to even reach it potential due to his not local? are we even entertaining racial discrimination?

basically we watch basketball games is not just about watching someone shoot the ball alone, but to be entertained. as fans we enjoys this team who has players that makes us stand on the stands and shout or in your living room at the edge of your seats and tense.

its not about his foreign or his american bad ass or his a german that has a problem with choosing a women in his life. its about if his able to carry his team in an awesome way that makes you say " damn he was the only difference why his team is so good"

i think it would also be fair for us or maybe supporters to have the ability to see or have a indication that their players level of popularity, like unknown then newspaper star then tv star etc etc etc

Last edited by Shoei at 6/3/2009 6:39:56 PM

Forrest you're my BB preferred You're the only one that speaks clearly and this is important for everyone I think. The problem is economic but I think you know very well that next season there will be another time the same problem when some players will earn 400k/week. The decision to reinvest the money earned on the market instead of the arena is the best choice, from my personal point of view I will change again the taxation on the players bought; 70% in the first week, 80% on the second week, 85% on the third week and 90% after one month. The taxation that we have today is a penalty for the day traders but also for all the other managers; one month on this game it means about 6 games/month excluding the cup matches.
So at the end, imho it could be ok to pay the best palyer 4m and not 1 $ more but this market seems frozen and this cannot be good

Salaries are going up as we have a set model for how a players skills/experience/whatever translate into salary. Either we had to change that model, which would break the continuity of peoples understanding of what salary means, or we have to increase revenue in order to keep the economy balanced..

So having gone from -40% (was it 40?) to 20% to 10% to now 0 arena income tax is it likely to simply be an approx. case of 10-20% higher from now (with the variables being the competitiveness of the league/local stars etc)

I am hoping that the mono-skilled players that in some cases find their way to lower leagues are priced out of the market altogether so that in seasons to come managers wont even consider training them. It has already been proved that you can train some great players over 4 seasons or so....

My only q. is how the formulas value the different BB Nations. I would hope that it could be done by calculating the relative strength of the teams that occupy the positions in the league in which case a ranking system of sorts might be beneficial.

Or is this formula also going to remain under lock and key?!! As Shoei has said I think those of us that have tried to make informed decisions (and when you are contemplating to sell or purchase of a $100k+ salary player you need to have some understanding of whats around the corner) based on assumed future income.

It would be nice to be able to continue to make decisions like this without fear of the reprucussions if we are proved completely wrong.

I dont think we are going to lay out the formula for you, we have simply outlined the principles we are going to use, i think the mindset you should have for making the decision is something like....ok.. my tv money is going to be set and will be the same for everyone i am competing for, i dont know exactly what it will be....though i can do some research/speculate etc and come up with my best guess and make a decision based upon that.... i mean.. essentially that is the same process you go through in all the other parts of the game, you dont know how the game engine works exactly, but you listen to our general guidance, and come up with your own model etc, and make decisions based upon it. this is not a perfect information game, and shouldnt be.

Last edited by BB-Forrest at 6/3/2009 4:21:23 PM

It will be interesting to see how the changes work out. Nobody but the devs have any idea how it will end up. I'll take a wait and see attitude.

I doubt the Arena changes will make a big difference to me. As long as it's aimed at huge stadiums and not attendance all around, that's ok.

Don't really have a problem with the idea of rewarding teams for having home grown players. In other games I play, there are either foreigner restrictions or increased salaries. At least this is a reward and not a penalty.

However, the draft concept really needs some work. It's easily the weakest part of the game. I've drafted one decent player in 3 seasons and his height is a real liability for his position (PF). For the amount of money I've spent on scouting (5-10k a week), it's been a horrible waste of money. This season I managed to pull a 6th man with the #10 pick. Given that all my scout ratings were 4-5 balls for that position, it's really disappointing to get a lousy player that high up. It's more cost effective to scout no one and pick up trainees in the "backdraft" (when everyone throws their draftees on the TL). It would be so much better to have a youth academy. I'd pay twice the price for it.

I dont think we are going to lay out the formula for you, we have simply outlined the principles we are going to use, i think the mindset you should have for making the decision is something like....ok.. my tv money is going to be set and will be the same for everyone i am competing for, i dont know exactly what it will be....though i can do some research/speculate etc and come up with my best guess and make a decision based upon that.... i mean.. essentially that is the same process you go through in all the other parts of the game, you dont know how the game engine works exactly, but you listen to our general guidance, and come up with your own model etc, and make decisions based upon it. this is not a perfect information game, and shouldnt be.

No - understood... It wasn't meant to read that I was after specifics because as you say at the moment the decisions are based on perception of future changes and trends.

I will simply assume that the divide in TV contract money is not overly different and hopefully done on the relative strength of teams not the amount of users a nation has.

Lets see!!