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I´m happy with the new release of Free Agents because I think it is a good reaction to solve a problem that has been created at the beginning of this season with the new economic changes: Arena reduction, TV, merchandising and "something" related to salary that few people have been able to fully understand from the news.
Too many economic changes at the same time, and people in this game (including me) are usually slow in asumming and adjusting to the new changes, and with a high tendency to overreact (and react illogically) to changes. Suddenly we had to deal with a enterely new situation, new formulas and what it seems a general feeling: we all think we have more money, more capacity to save money and pay higher salaries.

In addition to this, I think there is a second important problem that it is not new: Communication. BBs really need to hire a PR manager (joke, ;-)). The BB News are always hard to understand (and as a LA, I always need to read them several times to figure out what do you exactly want to say). They are too long, trying to tell too many things at the same time, and written in a language that tries to hide more than show (similarly to the BB rules). Maybe it is just my problem, but it is also the problem of some spanish users that first thought it was a traslation problem, and then went to the original version to discover the same hieroglyphic expressions.

In addition to this, I think there is a second important problem that it is not new: Communication. BBs really need to hire a PR manager (joke, ;-)). The BB News are always hard to understand (and as a LA, I always need to read them several times to figure out what do you exactly want to say). They are too long, trying to tell too many things at the same time, and written in a language that tries to hide more than show (similarly to the BB rules). Maybe it is just my problem, but it is also the problem of some spanish users that first thought it was a traslation problem, and then went to the original version to discover the same hieroglyphic expressions.

I can sign this! Wanting not to reveal too much, they hide the actual meaning too much and it is a real problem to provide Czech users with satisfactory translation.

I see a few problems.

You say that Free Agents will benefit the poorer teams and will stop teams that benefit a lot due to market changes to do them. I don't buy those arguments. Free agents is something that really attracts daytraders. Usually they are on the market when no other player are there so will be too cheap. Usually teams are strategic when they transfer list their players but this is rarely the case with Free Agents. Maybe you will be strategic in this release?

You are blaming this a lot on the deconstruction of arenas. I am a new team in our second division and I have a weekly profit of over $200k and that is pretty much average for my division as well. I surely can see why there is such huge inflow of money in the game. If all teams makes such profit already at my level and there are such small availability of high salary players where should the money disappear? Sure, releasing Free Agents might help getting rid of some money but still there will not be enough players so that all teams in my division should have a salary of their players at $300k/week which would be required to have a balanced in and out.

Last season when I played in third division I only had a small profit but now with same team I make a profit of $200k. As I understood teams in third division won't make that much bigger profit this season either. How should teams be able to compete at a higher level if they lose $200k a week for every season they remain in lower division? Of course you need to invest your money wisely to get a profit at all. Inactive teams or teams that not been as good as me to use their money has besides a few seasons in a higher division a worse team than me but with their huge advantages that would not have been so if they been using efforts more wisely.

Maybe this effect is more obvious in smaller countries like Sweden but still I think that to blame arena deconstructions for the rise of prices on the transfer market to be to simple explanation to it.

I liked that Free Agents were removed because daytraders could benefit from it but if they are transferlisted wisely that might not need to be a problem at all.

Its like dating a girl; the news is not too revealing and mysterious. Thats what makes it interesting for me to find things out. If its an open book and too much revealing close to being naked. Than you are just too simple and boring for me...(unless your name is Scarlett Johansson). Seriously; I dont want the news to be like this: GUARDS train JS; Centers train rebounding; ARENA is CAPPED so dont built to much; dont buy staff too high, 3 million is too much.

I agree; the message has been set in a way its dubious or cryptic. But not too much cryptic that you wont understand what in between the lines. It is indeed a pain to translate though..

Respect for the LA.

Last edited by GM-Rijswijker at 10/5/2009 8:06:25 AM

But isn't it the role of the game designers to raise interest in the new challenges they set by mystifying these challenges a bit? This is different from the task for us users who could see our job in cracking the precise mechanics behind each new mystery...

For common users? Maybe. For translators? Not at all.

The solution is maybe too simple for BBs to do it that way: reveal the news for GMs and LAs two days in advance so that we can discuss the ambiguities.

Last edited by PunkFloid at 10/5/2009 8:18:53 AM

don't forget that newly promoted teams are supposed to have a sweet life financially, this is part of the announced season 10 changes. teams that are on a downward trend in their league seem to find things harder, at least that's what my very small sample suggests.

In my league the average profit is $200k so seems to be as big benefit also for the "older" teams in the economy. I do have an arena income of $35k more than average but e.g. merchandise is on average despite a PR manager level 5 and very high Fan Survey marks so does not look like an advantage to new teams. I have $10k lower in salary for both players and staff but that is due to a well balanced team and probably because I am more careful in swapping staff to avoid high salaries than some of the other teams.

One thing is to give some mystery to the News, and other is to write ambiguously and leading people to wrong conclusions. You have to think that the News are written for a very wide audience, including all ages and many different languages. So traslating this "mystery" to other languages is not an easy task, and LAs have often to "interpret" and "explain" more than "traslate" with the consequent risk of misunderstanding the actual meaning.

I don´t think this game should give advantage to english speaking users who are able to "read between lines", or to frequent users of the general english forum. News are for everybody and they should be concise, clear and self-explanatory. Then we have the forum to discuss about technical details.

That's my opinion, of course.

Last edited by Emilio at 10/5/2009 10:28:50 AM