OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - Should free agents demand bigger contracts?

JeffR · 05-30-2019, 02:12 AM

(Posted this on /r/FranchiseHockey on Reddit as well, but I'll repeat it here, some of it covers the same ground I mentioned above)

We tried having it increase every year in a previous version. The problem is, people's frame of reference for salary values is very firmly anchored in the present. And when you increase the caps and salary standards by even 5% a season (roughly the avarage amount the real cap has increased by under the current CBA) that increases salaries very rapidly - a player worth a $3 million salary in 2019 will expect $7.5 million in 2039 after 20 years of compounded 5% increases, and that, understandably, looks very odd. It generated a huge amount of complaints, so we went back to keeping everything in current-day dollar values.

And, as I said in the forum post mentioned above, another lesson we learned early on is that it's much better to err on the side of salaries being a little lenient, than it is to risk running into a severe shortage of cap space leaguewide. That makes it very difficult for teams to dump salary, which leads to a lot of bizarre-looking player moves as teams try to scrape out cap space by using the small amount of relief ($375k) you can get by burying a higher-salaried player in the minors. If you look at the early FHM forum comments, you'll see a lot of complaints about stars getting sent to the minors and teams filling rosters with minimum-salary players. That was being driven by salary standards leading to excessive cap space use, so I toned those down, and the problem hasn't reoccurred since then.

I'll be revising the standards salary levels upwards a bit for FHM6, but I want to see what happens in July 1 to get an idea of how the current free agent market pricing looks this year. And I think we also may be changing the free agent mechanics a bit to make the signing process a little more competitive, which should push up prices. But I'll always be cautious about getting into a situation where salaries run too high, because I know that the consequences are game-breaking.

05-30-2019, 02:12 AM	#9
JeffR FHM Producer Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Kelowna, BC Posts: 16,625	(Posted this on /r/FranchiseHockey on Reddit as well, but I'll repeat it here, some of it covers the same ground I mentioned above) We tried having it increase every year in a previous version. The problem is, people's frame of reference for salary values is very firmly anchored in the present. And when you increase the caps and salary standards by even 5% a season (roughly the avarage amount the real cap has increased by under the current CBA) that increases salaries very rapidly - a player worth a $3 million salary in 2019 will expect $7.5 million in 2039 after 20 years of compounded 5% increases, and that, understandably, looks very odd. It generated a huge amount of complaints, so we went back to keeping everything in current-day dollar values. And, as I said in the forum post mentioned above, another lesson we learned early on is that it's much better to err on the side of salaries being a little lenient, than it is to risk running into a severe shortage of cap space leaguewide. That makes it very difficult for teams to dump salary, which leads to a lot of bizarre-looking player moves as teams try to scrape out cap space by using the small amount of relief ($375k) you can get by burying a higher-salaried player in the minors. If you look at the early FHM forum comments, you'll see a lot of complaints about stars getting sent to the minors and teams filling rosters with minimum-salary players. That was being driven by salary standards leading to excessive cap space use, so I toned those down, and the problem hasn't reoccurred since then. I'll be revising the standards salary levels upwards a bit for FHM6, but I want to see what happens in July 1 to get an idea of how the current free agent market pricing looks this year. And I think we also may be changing the free agent mechanics a bit to make the signing process a little more competitive, which should push up prices. But I'll always be cautious about getting into a situation where salaries run too high, because I know that the consequences are game-breaking.