[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

The biggest diappointment to me was that there were not improvements to the financial side of things.

I suspect not all that much will progress on that front until I sit down and write my comprehensive financial system design proposal document. I've been thinking about the financial aspect for a long time—indeed, I still think about it now. I've done a ton of research. I've got some stuff figured out, others I'm not as sure about. Just recently I was mulling over ideas on how to incorporate the aspect of premium seating (i.e. luxury suites and club seats).

To put everything into a single design proposal would be a beast to do. An absolute beast. There are so many areas connected to the financial aspect that need to be considered and factored into any proposal. The result would practically be a book.

I'm dreading sitting down to do it because I know how much work it'll be to write up properly. It'd probably take months to complete... so don't expect to see anything any time soon. Maybe next year...

Originally Posted by Honorable_Pawn

Things such as concessions, advertising, income statments, balance sheets, utilities, rents/leases/television contracts, agents, etc.

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

In and of themselves, inclusion of these things is not a bad thing. However, if they're ever going to be options in the game, then they have to matter when enabled. If they're just window dressing (like I remember them being back in one of the old Madden games), then there's no point.

Well, yes and no.

One of the fundamental issues is that, in terms of expenses, OOTP really only accounts for one main thing: player salaries. But in real life player salaries are only part of a club's expenses; there are lots of things that must be paid for such as travel, spring training, minor league operations, ballpark operations, advertising, pensions, general & administrative, etc. The result is that if one tries to have realistic levels of revenues in a league, the lack of those many other real-world expenses means clubs in OOTP will tend to rack up cash. So one must use artificially reduced amounts of revenue to compensate for the simpler expense side of things in OOTP.

I think it's better to put in some additional expense items, even if they can't be affected by the user nor exert any influence on operations, simply because it allows expenses to be brought into balance with revenue in terms of realistic figures. Which in turn makes it easier to compare the game's results to real-world data as a check on fidelity.

And with realistic revenue and expense levels, realistic salary totals and amounts should follow since all three are related to one another.

(Here's a fun hypothetical to ponder: what would have happened with player salaries had free agency been enacted in MLB in the 1920s? How high might salaries have gone? Would the same rate of player salary growth seen in real life since free agency began in 1976 been recreated in the 1920s? Or would something else have happened?)