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Ive come to realize that its more about how you train than salary and or age. My team is under the age of 25 my first and second team are yet im 4th with my first team. Tie each game testing it out with bb for myself my 2nd game

Eh well played.

Could it have been clearer? Absolutely.

It's not a matter of being clearer, it's a matter of admitting you cut Free Agency across the board, while presenting it like you actually only have cut "old" players, which to any person playing this game does not mean "the near totality" of players, but rather 33yo+ or, at worst, 30yo+

You and Mike Franks are both reading a promise of "more" younger players or "more" free agents,

Well I certainly haven't read anything that suggested that as a whole fewer young players will go to the market until today...

Frankly, I'm also tired of semantics games. Any person with bare minimum knowledge of the English language is able to tell whether the news post means that change leads to a

reduction in the amount of players released by free agency

To be even clearer. I don't think we would be discussing here or elsewhere about the discrepancy between the news post and the implementation, if the announcement did say:

It functioned well before free agents were added. We had seasons where they were completely removed even after implementation. If they would have been removed again the BB world would adapt and survive, so there's no need to fear change. This total removal has also been considered but it was decided instead that they can stay in a smaller capacity and that they can be used as what they were originally intended for - as a market balancing tool.

Instead we need to push for this kind of confession and we have it on forums which get nowhere near as much audience as the New Season News Posts.

I specifically criticise that Announcement Post and I think it's been done in order to avoid people coming on the forums to complain. Mike Franks seems to be more concerned with the effects of the actual change. And he's not alone. After all it was not me who opened threads about prices and inflation being too high and it was not a single person who participated in them or suggested that a more expansive FA policy would help (did one of these). Give those people the correct story in the most visible piece of News in the game and we shall see if it's going to be the Unholy Trinity Lemonshine-Mike Franks-Grullo who is going to come after you criticising. I hope you do you realise that the secrecy from Marin mostly serves the purpose of avoiding discussions on the merit of the changes and avoiding people debating and complaining all the time.

You probably can't say, but I will ask anyway.

It seems to me that young players need very high potential and decent skills to finish up as a free agent, and older guys (23-28) have to be multiskilled to have a try at a free agency.

So going with this theory, 24y MVP center with 120k salary will retire beucase his guard skills are at a very low level and he doesn't match the multiskill criteria to become a free agent. I know BBs are pushing hard for managers to train multiskill players; elastic effect and cross training are the prime examples and I think multiskill now also affects free agents-to be.

I think the problem many users have with this is that it creates inflation. Based on your post, you seem to want this as it will encourage more managers to train. I can't argue with your logic that low prices lower a manager's incentive to train. I think, however, that not only are there more effective ways to promote training, but also, this low price low training problem could have sorted itself out without the rule change.

As you mentioned, these recent low prices were due to a mass exodus of users combined with low FA requirements. Basically there was the same amount of talent as when there were 60k teams, only now it was concentrated amongst 20k teams. Now, the user number has essentially stabilized, so even with the old FA rules there were fewer FAs than before and prices have seen a modest rebound. Think back to previous eras where the number of users was stable or even rising; FA requirements were even more lenient than before: players only needed a 10k salary to become a FA, yet prices were far higher than what they are now. This suggests that the root cause for low prices was not low FA criteria, but rather a sharply declining user count. With a stable number of users, there are fewer FAs on the market and they have a smaller impact on player prices, acting simply as you say "a market balancing tool."

If you had not changed the FA rules and these low prices are in fact discouraging managers from training, in the long term, this would only reward teams who continued to train, provided the user number remains stable. As players get older and their skills start dropping, managers would look for replacements. But since so few users choose to train during this time, the supply of skilled players would be much smaller and, thus, their value would skyrocket. Unless the user number is in steep decline, there would not be enough FAs to counteract this effect. With player values being so high, more managers would return to training.

In short, the fewer managers who train, the more valuable players will be. If every user focused on training, there would be such an abundant supply of players that most would be practically worthless. Only very salary efficient, highly skilled players would be of any significant worth.

If what you want is for more managers to train, there are more direct ways of going about it. For instance you could make out of position training 100% effective or give every team a "training game" each week.These changes would make training so easy that it would be foolish for managers not to train. As well, it would allow teams at all levels to put a heavy focus on training without sacrificing competitiveness.

But the thing is that this game is powered by training and there is no way around that fact.

Yes, that is the conclusion I have reached, too.

I think honesty here would have gone a long way. He should have just stated from the beginning that the rules for free agency are a lot stricter than they used to be and most players that used to go to free agency now will retire irrespective of age, potential and salary, although the effect is more severe for older and lower potential players. This would have been representing the situation and the change for what it is.

True, but that's water over the dam. Marin's most recent post seems genuine to me. I commend him for that. I think he has a different vision of the game than you or I do, and he is calling the shots. He wants high prices, we'll get high prices. Where there used to be balance in building a roster through drafting/training AND the transfer list, now we're going to have to build our rosters mainly through drafting/training.

(1)Training is a big and very important part of BB. ...

(2) Some managers will always lean more on training, some more on trading, there's no way around that, but the general idea of the game is that training is more important than trading. ...

(3)it was decided instead that they can stay in a smaller capacity and that they can be used as what they were originally intended for - as a market balancing tool.

Marin, thank you for your thoughts. I appreciate that you did that. I appreciate the way you address the matters on their merits as you see them. That is what I hoped for a few pages back when I invited a GM to contribute constructively (the one who beat his chest and threatened me -- not exactly constructive).

I have considered your whole post, and there are three points (above) that I would like to address. (1) I understand now that training is at the apex of this game. (2) Managers utilizing many different approaches, each with an equal chance of success if they do it equally skillfully, would seem ideal to me, rather than favoring one to the exclusion of others. (3) We'll see if the market is balanced. My perception as manager of a lower- and mid-level team was that the market already favored training over transfer by a wide margin, and the recent change has further imbalanced it. We'll see.

Again, thanks for your post.

People in this thread be like:



I trust in Marin, and think with productive discussion going on, things can get worked out to be liked by everyone. I personally think the current system is okay, but could still be modified a little bit, as other managers have suggested (although some not in a very positive manner) to get the ideal FA situation setup. Go team! I'll be following these threads and giving some more input when I have time.

I specifically criticise that Announcement Post and I think it's been done in order to avoid people coming on the forums to complain. Mike Franks seems to be more concerned with the effects of the actual change. And he's not alone. After all it was not me who opened threads about prices and inflation being too high and it was not a single person who participated in them or suggested that a more expansive FA policy would help (did one of these). Give those people the correct story in the most visible piece of News in the game and we shall see if it's going to be the Unholy Trinity Lemonshine-Mike Franks-Grullo who is going to come after you criticising. I hope you do you realise that the secrecy from Marin mostly serves the purpose of avoiding discussions on the merit of the changes and avoiding people debating and complaining all the time.

I agree that someone could reasonably read the news and interpret it in the way that you did. It's quite likely many people could. And if that was truly what you were looking to point out, I'm sure it would be appreciated by all. Indeed, even a "look, BB-Marin's communications are unclear again, the BB staff are not good at expressing themselves" would have been a reasonable response. I mean, I feel for Marin and I can still agree that the communications are often not clear, and perhaps that's something that might be worth him looking into.

But, of course, all of that requires a reasonable read of the news story. What you post instead is things like:

So he either thinks we're all stupid and illiterate or he doesn't know what's going on or he was lying. Since I don't think we are all incapable of understanding the news message and he also arrogantly confirmed multiple times that everything is working as he wants it to, then the logical conclusion is that the last option is true, don't you think?

I believe he thought he'd outsmart everyone claiming something he knew to be false or at least extremely misleading, but that was a more palatable change for the community, so that people would agree with the news and not pay attention. After all, who tracks free agency, really? I did my analysis on the players who retired only because he was extremely arrogant, otherwise I would have probably just let it go. This kind of behaviour and dishonesty is utterly disappointing coming from the person running the show.

It's patently obvious that you, for whatever reason, feel that the message is deliberately crafted to deceive. And if you have such a negative opinion toward the management of the game itself, it's not like there's anything I or anyone with a tainted staff hat could say that wouldn't be treated with the same skepticism of any of Sepp Blatter's cronies.

It certainly appears that you've passed a line that would have sent me from the game long ago. I can disagree with how things are implemented, how effective the staff is (I know how ineffective I am, for example!), how things are communicated, and even some fundamental aspects of the game simulation itself and still consider the game worth playing and even paying to support. If I ever felt that the people behind the game were out to actually deceive the player base, though, I would be gone. Your problem is not this news announcement, but that you fundamentally distrust Marin and this news post is just the latest vehicle for you to express it. I am afraid that there's nothing I can do to help you with that issue, other than hoping you can find something to actually enjoy, be it here or somewhere else.

I appreciate the way you address the matters on their merits as you see them. That is what I hoped for a few pages back when I invited a GM to contribute constructively (the one who beat his chest and threatened me -- not exactly constructive).

You hooked me again. You're getting good at this.

And if you want the merits, here they go:

This is a basketball manager sim. Not a basketball sim. Note there's one word in one description and not the other. In one, you would have your roster, pick your lineup and tactics, and do whatever the game allows in game to affect the outcome. You wouldn't do things like player acquisition, arena building, economic modeling, etc. in a pure basketball sim. Nor would you do training, of course.

But that's not what this is. From day 1 (well, day negative whatever when the game was first being designed), there was no free agency, but training was mostly as it is today. So with all due respect to your opinion, you are not losing "your basketball sim" -- instead, OUR (22k+ users) basketball management sim is adjusting one component of one feature not even in the original design.

The thing is, I can respect a desire to play the game a certain way. On Hattrick, I decided I wanted a team that was all offensive and refused to carry even a mediocre goalkeeper, even as far as the top league in the USA. Here I decided that I wanted a team focused on defense and team balance, with an outside focus, with American and mostly home-trained players, and I pushed to see how far I could go with that (and had I been a better manager or avoided a two flagrant foul in one minute situation in a finals game, I would have done so in the top league). People play the game with homegrown players, others play with trainees, some play it as a market game while others use the market sparingly or not at all, and all choices are valid. However, that doesn't mean that they will or even all should have the same probability of success.

The simplest way of putting it is that if it is possible to succeed just as much without training as it is with training, for a given team, then training is by definition a worthless addition for that game. And this game was designed so that training is a key feature. If you don't like it, that's fine, if you want to suggest ways to improve it, you know where those go, but if you're hoping for a game where training is not a key part of the game's design, you're not likely to find that happening here. And on the other hand, a key concept in good game design is meaningful choices - if training were a simple "click here to gain one week's training", everyone would be doing it and there would be no strategy to it. So for training to continue to be a key design feature of the game (as it was intended) and for it to be something that requires there to be meaning behind it, there must be some factors that stop it from being an automatic decision, as an automatic decision is no decision at all. Which leads back to the 'illogical' training that you clearly dislike - no, it's not realistic, but it's the mechanism chosen by the BB staff when they designed the game to make sure that training has at least a minimal downside so that it doesn't simply become something everyone does and those with more money do better.

2) Managers utilizing many different approaches, each with an equal chance of success if they do it equally skillfully, would seem ideal to me, rather than favoring one to the exclusion of others.

It's simply not possible. If the market is very low, buyers have a huge advantage over trainers. If the market is very high, trainers have the advantage. Short of fixing prices, even putting aside the above stuff, it's not going to be possible to ensure equal probability for all player choices. What needs to be assured is that the skillful player can correctly assess the market conditions and make the choices to succeed in that market condition.