BuzzerBeater Forums

If you're selling out most of your games, it's quite possible that you could raise arena prices, hire a higher level PR manager and increase your arena profits. But it's uncertain that you would increase your arena profits enough to justify the addiional salary you pay that guy.

That said, I generally agree that paying for higher level staff in the lower leagues is poor use of your funds. I think the number one goal of lower leagues is to maximize your profits. That's how you afford to expand your arena and purchase/afford the better players needed to win your league.

Well... not just the 1 player, since you can train 2 other guys with him.

But, in this sense, its easier/safer to do it in D.IV and D.V because its less likely you'll lose games when you have to train your player out of position to work on secondary skills.

What I meant "it wraps up too much of your total value and salary in one player" is that one of the more important resources a manager has to work with is the total value of your roster. If you have a trainee that is worth one million, and the rest of your roster combined is worth one million, your team will be a lot worse than another player with cheaper trainees and a two million dollar roster since so much of your roster's value is potential instead of ability. Similarly a high priced trainer will take away from the salary you can pay your team each week. My impression is that getting a better team and promoting faster (within reasonable limits of course) is usually the best way to improve revenue for DV/IV teams.

Also this post is targetted towards the advice people give managers in lower leagues, and because there is far far more users than there are NTs this means it will be impossible for most people to have players on NTs.

To be honest, a lot of teams expanded trough the creation of one star, a little like Lebron James allowed Cleveland to reach the Finals. You'll say that now he is gone, they are back to zero, but imagine that here, it's possible to negociate a good transition.

The reason that star players are so important in the NBA is that there is a ceiling on the amount individual players can be paid. If there was no cap and Lebron received his true value, he would command over half his teams' salary and they would probably be pretty average without the massive luxury tax. Also Lebron in this game would have a 600k salary.

Your first star will allow you to win D5 and D4 just by getting himself, then after that he will save you in D3 and you can start to think about the transition. Back in my days, a future French NT allowed me to go from D4 to D2, then make some money to get a nice team. With his money, I bought the current biggest salary of my team who ship me to three seasons in the D1 and could get me back there again this season.

You first made D2 in season 9. Stadiums are bigger now and the transfer market is cheaper. I do not doubt this is a viable way to build a team, but I am still not convinced it is the fastest (optimal) way. There are two main reasons:

First, training and money really ARE interchangeable because of the transfer market. There are certain trainees that will be undervalued relative to your needs, and certain trainees will be overvalued. Train and sell the overvalued ones, and then buy and train the undervalued ones. The transaction costs are low. Put another way, it is unlikely that the most profitable trainee will also be the trainee who is best for you, and at some point it will almost always be possible to swap the two while making a profit. Or better yet, buy oldish guys who depreciate less with the cash and just keep making money selling trainees.

Second, in my admittedly limited experience, the more balanced a team is the more likely it is to punch above its salary weight. It makes sense because of the exponential nature of skill cost: a 10k increase in salary will buy a lot more skills on a 15k player than it will on a 25k player. Now of course there are viable tactics and strategies that make certain players more important that can be quite effective, and I'm not saying your top 8 players should always have the same salary. But I think that especially for newer managers, a more balanced approach will win more games for the same salary most of the time.

Doctor

I will never play a game with a level 1 doctor. The game I do it'll be a 5 week injury to a star player/main trainee.

PR

but since I have been selling out almost all my tickets for a while this just never seemed worth it to me

Then you're losing income every game you don't expand. Expand until you're not selling out. Hiring a PR will make it sell out again (provided you won your away game).

Plus the specialty of PR is an easy few points per game at home or on the road for really cheap. A necessity for the playoffs or key games.

Trainer

Get one.
I have 1 player left over from when I created my team.
He has gone from a 5.0 rating in his first game to a 10.5-11.0 recently after 3.5 seasons, from a lot of 2 position training and some 1 position training. He should be an all-star candidate next year.

Doctor

I will never play a game with a level 1 doctor. The game I do it'll be a 5 week injury to a star player/main trainee.

PR

but since I have been selling out almost all my tickets for a while this just never seemed worth it to me

Then you're losing income every game you don't expand. Expand until you're not selling out. Hiring a PR will make it sell out again (provided you won your away game).

Plus the specialty of PR is an easy few points per game at home or on the road for really cheap. A necessity for the playoffs or key games.

Trainer

Get one.
I have 1 player left over from when I created my team.
He has gone from a 5.0 rating in his first game to a 10.5-11.0 recently after 3.5 seasons, from a lot of 2 position training and some 1 position training. He should be an all-star candidate next year.

For a brand new player, though, the thought of not paying for a doctor is not at all a bad idea. The new team should not have any players who are significantly of more value than others, nor any really high-dollar trainees, nor do the immediate season's results matter significantly, so an injury is annoying but hardly a concern to the team's long-term development.

I do think the idea of picking up a level 2 PR manager with the appropriate specialty for key games or the postseason is a good move when and if necessary. I don't imagine that the new team will have really any key games for quite some time though and I can also see the case for keeping a level 1 guy around and just picking up the 2 for those key games.

I have to agree that a trainer is almost mandatory - trainees are cheap and plentiful, and while one does not have to go for the super potential players who will one day become U21/NT candidates, picking up guys that they can improve and move up a level or two with is in a team's best interest.

I think this is a very interesting thread so well done in raising this topic however I disagree with your conclusions.

Doctor

Doctors don't do much but they are like insurance you hope to never use them but when you do you are happy. For a new team I think the critical thing is to get three trainees in place and try to promote from the bottom division in their first season even if it means geting relegated the season after. They will still get the promotion money, have had much larger revenue and then will potentially get a $1,000,000 draft pick. To do that they need their players functioning well. For that they need good game shape. New players that understand game shape and enthusiasm will wipe the floor of other new managers with much more expensive rosters. This is where a doctor comes in. One with massage speciality will help your players stay in top shape and that will give you more wins. Ever lost a game by a few points? A massage doctor could have changed that loss into a win.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level two doctor with massage speciality. $5,000 or less a week.

PR

I doubt a new team is going to get good value out of the PR guy getting an increace in merchandising but again I think the specialities are gold. They should look at their schedule and see do they need help with home games or away games and get a CI or NA PR guy. I like winning games and I assume new players do too.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level two PR with either national appeal or crowd involvement speciality. $5,000 or less a week.

Trainer
Training has been greatly devauled in the game by the crazy drop in player values but it is still one of the most fun parts of the game. It also binds players to the game when they have a particular player they identify with. There is little reason not to train unless you are trying to run a 5-7 man roster and just training game shape each week, New players usually don't do such pathetically unrealistic things (although the game rewards those that do but that is a different issue) so they should train. At the moment you can pick up a decent 19 year old with high potential or an 18 year old with good skills but low potential for basically nothing. Add in a level four trainer and you will be a very effective trainer and have a roster that by the end of the season is playing like players with a much higher salary.

Even better again there is the speciality. A lot of new teams buy old players. Skill drops are very painful. Why not reduce them with a career extention trainer. I don't like stamina drops so fitness is also great.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level four trainer with either speciality. $10,000 or less a week.

In total this is $20,000 a week which is not peanuts for a new team but it will equal more wins and wins are what new teams in the bottom division should be about. Add in some improved game shape, less of a penalty for away games, less skill drops on your old players and the training on your young players and your team must be at least 10+ points better a game by the end of the season. Well worth it.

So for any new team I would suggest getting a level four trainer with either speciality. $10,000 or less a week.

I don't disagree with the majority of your post, but the odds of ever seeing a $10k or less level four trainer are extremely low and if such a creature does ever come around, it'll cost a ton to add them. But bump it to $15k or less and it's quite a reasonable proposition.

That is true. I haven't actually searched for a level four for a long time, the 10-15,000 range there are 132 guys for sale but under 10,000 there aren't any.

I don't see training as a waste of money but even with a level 1 trainer, you can still improve players quite a bit. There's only about a 25% difference between a level 1 trainer and a level 4 advanced trainer but you'll probably save $11-14,000 a week in the process.

And most new teams aren't training anyone that is going to be a great player so to me, while training is worthwhile spending on a better trainer likely isn't.