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So let me try to address spain in particular, and not make general claims, as you seem to be worried about general claims averaging over individual differences (which is a legitimate potential concern).

In spain, what we see is that top division teams earn more, and are spending a smaller percentage of their income on salaries... though not that much smaller... about 7% less than a division 2 or 3 team. (63% vs 70%)

Salaries for Division 2 team are 68% of D1 salaries, and D 3 are 45% of D1. So lower division spend less... and make less... and end up spending just slightly more proportionally than D3 divisions. Now we raised salaries proportionally... so even if we had done it in a way that was proportionally flat, i don't see how we could have made things significantly worse for D3 teams than D1 teams. Of course we actually raised salaries more on a percentage basis for upper division teams, so this is even less possible. Also we don't see evidence that d2 and d3 teams cannot afford the players that they are paying...and the obvious question if we did see that would be... why aren't they cutting their salaries.. they can't afford players that expensive, they should be employing less talented players.

Now this gets at the heart of what I think is actually going on with everyone freaking out about increased salaries. At the start of the season, all the increased talent you now have on your team gets their salaries adjusted to their new levels. As a result, players are going to get sometimes significantly more expensive, as they are more talented. These players are suppose to be moving up to play in higher divisions... eventually an 18 year old drafted by a d6 team, should get enough training to be one of the best in the world.. and that player is suppose to play on a D1 team probably.

Its maybe difficult for owners to accept that a necessary part of the new season is getting rid of players that don't make sense to have on your roster anymore, so that your financial situation is on even ground. You think, damnit i'm not going to be able to compete when i cut my roster, but the truth is that everyone is going to have to go through the same thing. This is always going to be more true for lower division teams than upper division teams, because what we've said is that we want to keep the salaries of the best players in the game roughly constant once we have the economy in balance and don't have massive inflation (we think we have accomplished that now). So as the best players in the game get better, their salaries will not increase that much in the future... but the 18 year old superstar potential who went from making 5K to making 35K in one season will always maybe not make sense for a dIV team to hold onto once he makes that jump.



Last edited by BB-Forrest at 3/25/2010 9:13:29 PM

I guess thats the real nail on the head.

The enjoyment factor might go out the window for those that want to keep the players they have so carefully trained. If a IV team takes 6-7 seasons to promote to a II league (i assume realistic?) then if they have put in 4 seasons of training of an 18/19 to find out that they cant afford to see him grace the court wearing their own jersey and he will have to be sold only to benefit someone else because they arent in a league where their income is high enough to employ him.

This now reminds me of the time we all had allstar caps put on the players we hoped would be with us for their careers. In order to improve beyond this we have to build a roster of higher potential players because there are severe limitations as to how many skill ups you can give to an Allstar. Now we have a scenario where if you have 5 trainees greater than Allstar potential which we can now train as we first envisaged we are being told 'hang on' it is now not intended for us to afford them!

This is why I question the need to continuously add more countries and why we dont all go into one big melting pot. A Division 1 Macau sign up will never have to make the choices a V Series new manager has to make. He can buy keep and train almost anyone he pleases where as the lower league manager has to continuously cut his cloth which often means sacrificing players he has trained (which I imagine is the one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game.)

I applaud your restrain and vision - I just cant help but feel that giving managers 'shiny new toys' and then not letting them keep and play with them

Its evident this is much more than a Basketball sim and economics plays a crucial role in somebodies success/failure. I work with numbers for a living and I'll run with whatever is thrown but do you not feel that for the last 4-5 seasons the large majority of news items have revolved solely around 'finances' with no real enhancement (bar some match engine tweaks) on the basketball content?

Its now gone beyond a simple pick up and play online game which is ok for those that have played for some time now. For new users there are pitfalls that they would be unlikely to forsee at such an early stage and with money even harder to come by in any division these days, it would be a shame to see people view this game as more an economics sports sim with a basketball flavour as opposed to a basketball sim with a need for some basic economic skills.

In other words to be at the very top of your league/division you are now having to calcalute to the $ what skill ups equate to what - what additional output you get from each skill up - even the replacement of coaches has formulas worked out for the optimum time to replace..... this is all well and good for anyone willing to put in the time.. those that dont and dont watch the pennies (and there is a difference between ensuring you never spend more than required vs spending frivoulously) are never going to get ahead. Before it was if you spent more time on the transfer market you could forge a competitive advantage - now its if you use the JosefKa spreadsheet and various other BB help tools you automatically give yourself a leg up over Joe Casual.

I agree economics plays a big part in having a sucessful BB team, and particularly important for the new players. I can't see any problem with having tools and spreadsheets for the game though. A simpler game like hattrick has all sorts of tools to play around - it's a sign that the game is popular and it's bound to happen. It helps those who are more willing to dedicate to play this game and naturally they are more successful than those casual players. What's wrong with that?

I think the fact that we have had to spend so much time on economics in the news posts is because Charles and I understand how basketball works, and what basketball should look like, and how to design a system in which a game looks like basketball.. but we aren't economists.... i mean... we clearly don't think about money that much.. we are both graduate students. And so we've had to spend more time tweaking the economics than basektball.

But I think you are being a bit too unkind to say that we haven't been working on the basketball as well.

We have tweaked the end of game coaching logic, we have changed the rebounding model, we added matchup ratings, we added alternative defensive matchups, we tweaked outside shooting, we added help defense, we tweaked the importance of passing and outside defense, and i'm probably forgetting some things... this season we've announced we are working on more tactical options.

Keep in mind whenever we make any change, people get up and yell because they made a strategy and designed their long term plans around one set of things, and when we change something they feel betrayed. So its difficult to do a ton.

It was by no means my intention to be unkind in my 'yell'! I accept there have been numerous improvements to the basketball side and i guess the majority you mention are less visible to me (which doesnt of course detract from the fact they are still changes that have been worked on and implemented.)

Sure, I/we have adapted to the way that player skills are represented in the game engine but Im sure you'd agree that from a new players perspective the match-up ratings carry less assistance than previously and again for newer teams this is a grey area as they won't have what many considered a decent barometer to check how their training is effecting their improvement.

I know that the fundmentals of the game are solid and don't require changing - but I always comment using my own situation and that of someone who could be starting out (in Japan I hope!) and I guess the overall point I was trying to make is that certain aspects of the game are now being solved (not neccessarily 100%, but close) so the variable factors that led to the disparity in performance/growth of franchises before is far less likely now and future success is based more on an economic formula that you have to follow using the players as pawns. Sorry again if this sounds crude - its ironic cos at the beginning of the game I myself viewed each player as a financial asset and now I'm at the stage where I don't wish to. Of course the counter argument is that everyones training methods will vary and this will result in different teams failing and succeeding but as we've seen before when transfer fees are rangebound with a topside of $7-8mil vs a topside of $12mil, each training skill up carries less monetary reward and you are likely to be able to throw a net over teams that start in a certain era and again the luck of your global position is then based entirely about which country you sign up in.