BZ 3465: Arbitration not working correctly in converted v9 online league

[bulldog55]

After several of my online leagues converted following the playoffs with no problem, I did the same with mine. Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky. Now the game does not recognize arbitration offers by other owners via export. It will export the team's roster and its arb offers, but then it just seemingly ignores them and determines contract values itself. Owners also can't see the default offers when they get the league file - everything is set to $0.

By the time I noticed it, we'd already simmed ahead and I made the (now regrettable) decision to not go back and start over. Now it's Opening Day and I really don't want to have to completely redo the offseason. But I've simmed ahead in tests and it never works in future seasons, so it's not a problem that's going to resolve itself. I tried saving the league as a template and importing into a fresh league, but the problem persists.

Is this a known issue? Is there any way that I can get this working in future seasons? Even if it takes some custom hacking of my league files by one of the techies around here? The only thread I could find that addresses this issue is this one, which seems to corroborate my problem but doesn't offer much insight.


League file: http://tcba.victory-league.com/tcba.zip (PM for password)

[bulldog55]

Ok, this issue has nothing to do with when I convert. I just took my old v9 file, simmed to the preseason and imported and I'm still having the same problems. Even if I just "act as" another team's GM, all arbitration offers are $0.

Clearly the problem is a more systematic one based on some specific aspect of my league. Are any other commissioners having this problem?

[battists]

Hi there!

Thanks for your post, and very sorry for the delay in getting back to you.

Well, you've explained it pretty succinctly, and posted your league file, so I've logged this as issue 3465, and I'll try to get Markus to take a look as soon as possible, and hopefully he can resolve your issue.

Thanks bulldog!

Steve

[bulldog55]

This is so weird. It's arbitration time again and so I was hoping the problem might have resolved itself, but it only partially has.

I can log in as other owners and see whether or not arbitration will work for them. Some owners will have the default arb values in there and others will have zeroes (which means the game will completely ignore any offers they do make, even if they hit the Submit button). It seems like the owners who can't use arbitration are the ones who have been around longer; it appears to work for newer owners.

What makes this stranger is that we have some very longtime owners who left the league for a while, but I kept their manager profiles. When they retured, I reassigned them to a team. Those managers can use arbitration. One of them has been around since day one. So it seems to be more a matter of when they were assigned to their teams, not when their profile was created. But if I take a manager for whom arbitration isn't working, resign them from their team, then reassign them, arb still doesn't work.

I'm going to keep troubleshooting this morning but at least I'm narrowing down the problem....

[bulldog55]

SOLVED!

I simply had to resign the owners and reassign them to their teams before the playoffs ended. Once arbitration has started, it can't be fixed, but if you reassign the owners before it gets there, it apparently resets everything.

So:
1. Log in as manager
2. Resign from team
3. Change to commissioner in manager options
4. Go to available jobs, reassign to team
5. Turn off commissioner mode

Arbitration should now work.

This doesn't answer the bigger question of what went wrong with my import, but running a 19th century league with a dozen minor and indie leagues and some atypical financial settings... there's bound to be something that didn't get properly tested. I have a knack for starting leagues that break OOTP. Maybe I should get back on the beta team next year.

[battists]

Glad to hear this worked out for you!

Since the arbitration issue has been resolved, I'm going to go ahead and close this out. We'd welcome you back on the beta team!

Steve