BuzzerBeater Forums

]Nah you should apologise for the hypocrisy in your statements, mate. You can't have it both ways, I think you realise it too. So either FA has always been a minor part of the TL as you claimed on the back of what Marin said or it wasn't. It cannot be both at the same time and you (and Marin) will need to decide which narrative you prefer to carry forward.

How big a factor would free agency be if we went from 20000 teams to 2000 teams overnight and every player on those bot teams was placed on the TL? How big would it be if we lost 10 teams per week? If your expectation is that I have to say that it has the exact same effect in those scenarios and not doing so is, as you put it, "hypocrisy", I'm doubtful anything I have to say in response to any of your other comments is worth my time or yours.

It feels like this rock has been flipped and looked at so many times in thiis and threads just like it so many times recently. Seems like by the same people to.

Yes and those people were Perpete and hrudey. As you can see before I chose to reply I took my sweet time. I was one click away to reply to the same complaint by Perpete in one of the initial posts, but I refrained to do so for that long.

So they introduced free agents with pretty much no limits to what player was listed at all.
As that had been going on for a while prices hit rock bottom as you basically could find what ever player you wanted as a free agent and didnt have to pay a lot of money for them. Training wasnt even close to being worth it unless you trained players that you had drafted on your own or players with specific builds.
So they changed the FA criteria so that less players came back, and after that prices went up some.
After that Utopia and further changes in FA happened and prices went up a lot again.

So we're all (including you and hrudey) finally on the same page that FA do indeed affect prices and they are not as marginal as some people (including hrudey and Marin) wanted everyone to believe until not long ago?

Do we all agree that FA without restrictions would actually bring the prices down or not?

None of the three times i have described are good for the game imo. But i think that the absurdly low prices that was between the both peaks surely hurt the game and its economy in the long run then what the high prices we see now do.We saw constant GS training from most top teams and no training at all.

And at the same time nothing has been done to increase training appeal! What happened is that some other options have been limited or reduced so that the 'logical' choice would be training. Too bad people not always follow the 'logical' way and sometimes they prefer to wait for a change or quit.

Also as I've shown you this is also sort of irrelevant when you consider how few players each of us can build for ourselves and how this would leave us in a perennial state of shortage if there was no Free Agency and people using untrained players. So yeah, the truth is that the FA effect on the market in the past has been so huge that it overshadowed an obvious shortcoming in the game design.

We saw constant GS training from most top teams and no training at all.
...
I kinda wish we could get rid of GS training once and for all. Wouldn't that be the best motivator for training more?

Well according to Brambauti more people train GS now, if I understood him correctly. That aside, yes removing GS would 'remove' another factor that stands in the way of 'logically' opting for training. It might make the situation better indirectly, however I'd rather do without 'removing' features, if the alternative is encouraging people to train by 'improving' features. I think more people train today than 10 seasons ago, but it's still not enough and it will never be enough to prevent a game-wide drop in skills under the current training and FA systems.

None of the three times i have described are good for the game imo. But i think that the absurdly low prices that was between the both peaks surely hurt the game and its economy in the long run then what the high prices we see now do.

See, we all agree on this. You, Perpete, Mike Franks, anyone really. Too low = bad. Too high = bad. The problem is finding the right balance. And you'd think the FA policy is the best way to make quick adjustments. In fact, I think the FA policy shouldn't even be openly discussed: it should be used by the staff to direct prices where they think they should be, in any segment of the market they deem necessary. If even that's not enough (and I think currently it isn't), then you need to look to longer term changes.

So we're all (including you and hrudey) finally on the same page that FA do indeed affect prices and they are not as marginal as some people (including hrudey and Marin) wanted everyone to believe until not long ago?

Do we all agree that FA without restrictions would actually bring the prices down or not?

Since you've decided to continue to involve me, I'd like to set the record straight about my 'hypocrisy' and correct your misrepresentation of my statements and positions regarding free agency.

To be explicit, I am saying that the effects of free agency *NOW* would be very limited. We have a stable userbase for the most part, and the number of players lost hardly would move the needle. I also, simultaneously hold the belief that unrestricted free agency in the time where we dropped more than half of the teams in the game did contribute significantly to the rampant deflation in effect at the time. And it's not some opinion I've just come to (or, what, "finally on the same page" was it?).

For example, here's an excerpt from a conversation we had about this literally a year and three days ago:
(268316.25)

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.

Or this: (268635.89)

Anyway, yes, the reason FAs were restricted initially was that the market was severely deflating, so much so that there was a perception that the value of training and players was too low to justify continuing to do that. Instead, the value of dollars on the TL was so high that it was commonly accepted that simply refusing to compete, carrying a salary-floor level salary, and accumulating a season of cash and then splurging on more wages was the smart play. And it probably was at that point, which unfortunately is a pretty sad situation for a game to find itself in. Kind of like WarGames, the only winning move was not to play.

Now, of course, a year ago we had a sudden influx of new teams and new dollars, and they were all hot and heavy for the kind of players that teams had been avoiding creating because there was no profit in it. So the prices on the players who were available (many of whom were the old players who would have initially trained before the deflation took off) went way up. The price of trainers shot way up too because there were suddenly over a thousand new teams who had level 1 trainers.

Or: (268635.96)

That's why the limits are where they are - because previously when they were lower there was exactly the problem where there was too much talent on the TL via free agency and prices were depressed. At the risk of wearing my pessimistic hat and ruining my BB mama bear image, I presume if there was any real hope that the number of new users was going to surpass the number of users lost, and thus the demand vs. supply situation accelerate towards undersupply, Marin would likely have made some acknowledgement of that when asked in the thread rather than mention that he liked the rising prices.

There is plenty of room for disagreement in our two viewpoints in this, so there's no need to distort what I have said to create some discussion points. I don't think I need to cite my posts discussing that Free Agency wasn't going to be a cure to inflation then or now, though, as I think that's pretty well common knowledge.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 3/24/2016 3:35:41 PM

Well you should know that I have a problem with Marin's point that we should not care about Free Agency because it has a very limited impact. Marin and all the people supporting him in his assertions, such as yourself as you openly admit to.

So saying Free Agency won't solve anything because it has a very limited impact on prices, is almost quoting Marin literally. I'm lazy, but if I have to I will go and find the posts, as I remember more than one. This isn't opinions, it's facts.

I'll let people judge whether it's intellectually honest, blaming price deflation on FA rules and then saying that re-enacting the same rules will have no effect. Also someone should explain why when prices hit rock bottom FA rules were very loose and now that prices are sky high they are actually tighter. You see, you can argue all you want, but it will never logically add up.

To be explicit, I am saying that the effects of free agency *NOW* would be very limited.

Ok now I quoted you directly. Answer this question:
if *NOW* the impact of loose free agency would be limited as you say, what is the problem in setting back the rules as they used to be when prices hit rock bottom? And moreover, if free agents have limited impact why would Marin waste his precious time changing the ruls, at least 3 times in the last 5 seasons?

You know, maybe you're right: free agency *NOW* has very limited impact and Marin changed the rules because he wanted to support his narrative about training. It's very easy to prove what you say: roll the rules back and see what happens. If you are right no harm is done since the impact will be limited. If you are wrong no harm is done since prices will start to decrease a little. Perfect scenario isn't it?

Also we're 8 seasons past Utopia and people 8 seasons ago used to say: when Utopia's teams are done training their guys the market will stabilise. 8 seasons is enough to cap most players. Prices are still raising. Utopia only accelerated what would have happened anyway and, as customary to BB, because the staff refused to listen to people labelled as 'whiners' and 'complainers' seasons ago (I do remember also personal attacks by Marin to myself, which Perpete deleted), we're now late in dealing with the problem. Given the way some imbalances have been tackled in the past, I can totally see Marin taking action when the situation is going to be beyond control and overshooting the fix once again.

Last edited by Lemonshine at 3/24/2016 4:54:35 PM

I'll let people judge whether it's intellectually honest, blaming price deflation on FA rules and then saying that re-enacting the same rules will have no effect. Also someone should explain why when prices hit rock bottom FA rules were very loose and now that prices are sky high they are actually tighter. You see, you can argue all you want, but it will never logically add up.

You're suffering from hypothermia, so we wrap you in warm blankets and try to raise your temperature. A year later, you're running a severe fever. It's the same thing - your temperature is outside the normal range, at a dangerous level. Should we try to raise your temperature again?

And the rules aren't tighter or looser now, incidentally. Some players now that would never have qualified for FA before (guys above 60 TSP and who didn't make the old salary requirements but are under the 60k salary now). Other that would have been saved are now lost (the 60k+ guys).

Now, if you want to say that the current parameters of free agency are inadequate for a stated goal, that is fine. Heck, I wouldn't argue against it if my opinion were asked about adding every player into the pool. But if you seriously want to consider the topic of intellectual honesty, I suggest again that you consider how much effect free agency would have if we lost 10,000 teams in the next two seasons vs. how much it would have an effect if we lose 500.

Last edited by GM-hrudey at 3/24/2016 9:10:24 PM

It would be better than doing nothing.

Still don't get how you think training is king?? Have a look at any d2 team upwards in BB and I bet you no more than 2 of their starting five are homegrown players...

Sorry for the off-topic, couldn't help it
(91534)

I know about the incoming demotion, that was planned for this time.

In my league of 10 active users, only 3 are training players with any sense of purpose.

And here lies the real problem. We know that if everybody was training, we would be short in trained players. You estimate that only 30% of the teams you interact with are actually training. The logical conclusion we will all need to play with untrained scrubs at any level. Except for people who are a the luxury tax threshold and have loads of millions to spare.

At this point it should be clear that raising the salaries by changing the salary formulas at all levels would slow down the transfer market, so it's definitely a good idea. However it still does not address the underlying problem, that by default, without a significant influx of free agents, the game can't train enough players (even if 100% of the users were training and not 30%).

Last edited by Lemonshine at 4/6/2016 6:48:37 AM