Financial Model

[cprongs2]

In general, in what way has the financial model been improved/tweaked?

It seemed like in 2006 the financials were difficult to figure out (I had teams accumalating mass amounts of cash and it was difficult to find the right settings.) It was a good game, but I eventually ended up shelving 2006 because of this. I did see one item in the changelist that has free agents basing their salary demands on the current market.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by cprongs2

In general, in what way has the financial model been improved/tweaked?

I second this question and am eager for the answer. It does not have to be definitive at this point, but is the topic receiving attention?

EDIT: I don't know about cprongs2, but I'm talking about the Front Office Finances Page, how to understand that better, not necessarily the entire underlying financial module.

[battists]

Well, one of the first things to do is look at the screenshots page. There is a revised Front Office page there that makes MUCH more sense. Give that a try.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by battists

Well, one of the first things to do is look at the screenshots page. There is a revised Front Office page there that makes MUCH more sense. Give that a try.

Okey doke. Didn't think of that, thanks. Maybe cprongs2 will come back and clarify his question if necessary.

[battists]

More specifically:

http://www.ootpbaseball.net/screensh...en&gid=26&id=3

[cprongs2]

Originally Posted by 1998 Yankees

I second this question and am eager for the answer. It does not have to be definitive at this point, but is the topic receiving attention?

EDIT: I don't know about cprongs2, but I'm talking about the Front Office Finances Page, how to understand that better, not necessarily the entire underlying financial module.

I spent a great deal of time on 2006 trying to figure out how the bottom line was being calculated, not saying it wasn't being calculated right, but I think there were always $$$ being added/subtracted in the budget for trades, players being released, etc. that wasn't always visible on the financial page. However, after looking at the screen battists pointed too, I think this is/will be more clear this go round.

The issue I eluded to in my previous post was that franchises, after simming a few years with the game's no revenue sharing feature turned on (I believe), could accumalate huge amounts of cash after simming about 3 or 4 years. AI GM's would have their budgets set at $300,000,000 or so. The only way to balance this was to every year cut back on merchandising revenue, media revenue, etc. until you found a balance. If you cut too much monies out of the franchises' cash flows, you'd end up with a number of great players left in free agency because there was no cash left in the GM's budgets to sign them. This was also due to the fact that a player with a certain level of talent demanded a certain level of $$$$ (which was editable, but a bit tedious when trying to find that 'financial balance.')

I think with players now adjusting their salary demands with the current market may take care of most of this. (I definitely can't wait to try it out.)

With regards to revenue sharing, it seems that franchises that were over spending at times were actually being rewarded with revenue sharing $$$ by teams who could balance their budget. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this one, I only tried revenue sharing a few times)

So, I'm curious as to know if any other financial tweaks/improvements/additions there are to make a more user friendly and workable financial model. There wasn't a section dedicated to financials on the changelist, so it made me a little curious.

[jarmenia]

I can tell you players now adjust their demands based on the amount of cash available in the "universe". That helps to keep the cash from building up.

[Raidergoo]

Originally Posted by cprongs2

In general, in what way has the financial model been improved/tweaked?

It's under very close scrutiny. Making forward progress.

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by cprongs2

The issue I eluded to in my previous post was that franchises, after simming a few years with the game's no revenue sharing feature turned on (I believe), could accumalate huge amounts of cash after simming about 3 or 4 years . . . With regards to revenue sharing, it seems that franchises that were over spending at times were actually being rewarded with revenue sharing $$$ by teams who could balance their budget.

I guess I never understood why a salary cap does not take care of such things. I mean, if some teams accumulate wads of cash but can only spend so much on payroll, what does it matter? I have a lot to learn about the financial side of this game and I intend to apply myself to that this year.

[Caporegime]

Is it still necessary to starve lesser leagues of cash & attendance in order to prevent top-notch stars from higher leagues in their prime from defecting to the lesser leagues?

Is there some sort of league prestige rating, similar to the player popularity rating, which will enable lesser leagues to enjoy reasonably high attendance without reaping the financial rewards that enable them to sign star players away in the first place?

[cprongs2]

Originally Posted by jarmenia

I can tell you players now adjust their demands based on the amount of cash available in the "universe". That helps to keep the cash from building up.

WOW! That would truely be the "invisible hand" at work.....the financial system would be self correcting.

Another issue I was having with 2006 is that when teams would accumalate $$$$, and when a ton of high priced talent would come available during free agency, the team would sign them to high $$ long term contracts because the Owner would set the GM budget real high, and as a result the franchise would be in financial ruin in a couple of years...hahahaha....but, maybe this would be corrected now.

This sounds like to me that this would do away with the salary 'tiers' per talent level altogether as well?

When I saw the list of changes, I assumed this was getting a lot attention but I didn't know. I'm glad to hear it is.

[Syd Thrift]

Another thing that's gonna help is that you now have the option of allowing visiting teams to take a percentage of gate receipts. That was the earliest form of revenue sharing baseball ever had, and it led some teams (the 1890s Washington Nationals and 1899 Cleveland Spiders, most notably) to stop scheduling home games because they'd pull a better profit on the road.

[Matter2003]

ermmm...its improved, but we are still working at taking care of some things in this area---I think this could be the area where we see the greatest improvement over the next month or so...we are really trying to get some things incorporated in here....

[fhomess]

I've been involved in testing the front office functionality and I can tell you that the financial engine of the game hasn't changed dramatically to this point. The front office screen has been reworked to be more intuitive, there are some enhancements to the contract AI, and there's a new setting to give the road team a percentage of the attendance revenue at games.

Part of the reason that there hasn't been a huge amount of change is that Markus hasn't had time to do it given some of the other things he was addressing. There have been a number of suggested enhancements to the financial model, but they haven't made a lot of sense unless there was time to address many of them together. The potential for throwing the whole model further out of balance was certainly there.

All that said, there's still a large potential for getting unbalanced finances if the league settings aren't configured correctly. I'm currently in the process of working on suggested financial settings that will help create a balanced financial universe under a variety of styles of play. I hope to make this available to the OOTP community when the game is released.

At this point, the game functions relatively well with certain settings, but goes out of balance when those settings are changed. This is something I hope my suggestions can address by the time the game is released. There's also a group of rather dedicated beta testers in addition to myself who continue to scrutinize the current model to see if we can make suggestions that we can get in the game. Markus is still tweaking, after all.

One thing final comment. This type of thing happened in 6.5, too, so it's not new to the OOTP franchise. I think the standards for what is acceptable have gone up, though. In either case, the use of the cash max field in league setup is currently the best method of preventing this problem from happening, just as it's always been. It's not an ideal method, but it works.

[Le Grande Orange]

The thing to remember in the OOTP financial model is that, while the revenue side is represented fairly accurately, the expense side isn't. Real-world teams have lots more things to spend their money that do teams in OOTP. That'd be things like taxes, front office overhead, stadium operations, travelling costs, insurance, just to name a few. In OOTP, just about the only expense you have is your player salaries.

From a game play standpoint, this makes sense. The main thing about being a GM in the game is not worrying about how much your money you're spending on road trips or how big a slice you have to give to the tax man, it's about juggling the money available to payroll and signing the best players.

However, due to the mismatch between income and expenses, you can end up with teams swimming in too much cash because they don't have the additional expenses that real clubs do. The upshot of this is that, while the salaries may look realistic, your ticket prices or media contracts may have to be set to what looks like unrealistic values to compensate.

Seems reasonable enough to me, given the constraints of the current system and the game play elements.

Hopefully for next year more expenses for clubs can be worked in so that both sides of the financial equation can use realistic values...

[1998 Yankees]

Originally Posted by fhomess

I'm currently in the process of working on suggested financial settings that will help create a balanced financial universe under a variety of styles of play. I hope to make this available to the OOTP community when the game is released.

That would be appreciated very much, thanks. Maybe ask for it to be stickied.

Originally Posted by fhomess

In either case, the use of the cash max field in league setup is currently the best method of preventing this problem from happening, just as it's always been. It's not an ideal method, but it works.

This dovetails with my comment above. I have always played with a cash max and salary cap, and I guess I have not noticed problems with my financials other than I had less cash to spend on free agents when my receipts were down from poor years, which I understood and accepted.

[cprongs2]

Originally Posted by fhomess

All that said, there's still a large potential for getting unbalanced finances if the league settings aren't configured correctly. I'm currently in the process of working on suggested financial settings that will help create a balanced financial universe under a variety of styles of play. I hope to make this available to the OOTP community when the game is released..

Suggested financial settings would be very much appreciated! (if the financial system isn't improved significantly....)

Originally Posted by fhomess

At this point, the game functions relatively well with certain settings, but goes out of balance when those settings are changed. This is something I hope my suggestions can address by the time the game is released. There's also a group of rather dedicated beta testers in addition to myself who continue to scrutinize the current model to see if we can make suggestions that we can get in the game. Markus is still tweaking, after all.

One thing final comment. This type of thing happened in 6.5, too, so it's not new to the OOTP franchise. I think the standards for what is acceptable have gone up, though. In either case, the use of the cash max field in league setup is currently the best method of preventing this problem from happening, just as it's always been. It's not an ideal method, but it works.

The cash maximum option is a great way to handle this, it made 6.5 very playable with regards to the financials. However, in 2006, you couldn't use the cash maximum option if the revenue sharing option was off. So, $$$$ were accumalated over time in 2006, where in 6.5 the surplus money just vanished. If the financial system isn't significantly improved, I hope this makes it back into 2007, it was a great way to control financials.

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

The thing to remember in the OOTP financial model is that, while the revenue side is represented fairly accurately, the expense side isn't. Real-world teams have lots more things to spend their money that do teams in OOTP. That'd be things like taxes, front office overhead, stadium operations, travelling costs, insurance, just to name a few. In OOTP, just about the only expense you have is your player salaries.

From a game play standpoint, this makes sense. The main thing about being a GM in the game is not worrying about how much your money you're spending on road trips or how big a slice you have to give to the tax man, it's about juggling the money available to payroll and signing the best players..

I couldn't agree more. I don't want to set the price of hotdogs and soda pop if you know what I mean. To me, it's not important how many different categories there are to accumalate revenue, or how it is expensed. What is important is a financial system that makes it challenging to put together a good ball club, so that I can't sign the 20 best players in the league because I've obtained hundreds of millions of $$$$ in revenue.

Originally Posted by jarmenia

I can tell you players now adjust their demands based on the amount of cash available in the "universe". That helps to keep the cash from building up.

jarmenia, I'm VERY interested in hearing more about this!!! Can you elaborate on how this effects the cash build up? It seems to me this would take care of most of the money issues.

[BusterKing]

"However, due to the mismatch between income and expenses, you can end up with teams swimming in too much cash because they don't have the additional expenses that real clubs do. The upshot of this is that, while the salaries may look realistic, your ticket prices or media contracts may have to be set to what looks like unrealistic values to compensate."

A quick solution for this would be to create a new expense field called "Other expenses" and give it a randomized percentage based on the teams asset. After all, in RL no one really knows exactly all that needs to be spent and total final cost.

It would work.

[fhomess]

Originally Posted by BusterKing

"However, due to the mismatch between income and expenses, you can end up with teams swimming in too much cash because they don't have the additional expenses that real clubs do. The upshot of this is that, while the salaries may look realistic, your ticket prices or media contracts may have to be set to what looks like unrealistic values to compensate."

A quick solution for this would be to create a new expense field called "Other expenses" and give it a randomized percentage based on the teams asset. After all, in RL no one really knows exactly all that needs to be spent and total final cost.

It would work.

That's actually been proposed under the heading "Operating Expenses". I think it could be a nice balancing factor but it also needs to make some sense in the way it's implemented.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by BusterKing

A quick solution for this would be to create a new expense field called "Other expenses" and give it a randomized percentage based on the teams asset.

That's a workaround, but it's just as easy, if not easier, to simply cut back on the ticket price and media contracts — no extra programming or screen revisions needed.