3208 - Player releases - how do I...?

[Killebrew]

Player releases: How do I restrict teams from releasing albatross contract players with no penalty?

For online leagues (and solo play for that matter), it appears that owners may release all their players regardless of their current cash. For example, an owner with $20 mil in cash could release players with guaranteed contracts totalling $550+ million (there does not seem to be a limit here). These releases do not impact the teams cash reserves, just their projected budget room. That means the only penalty is that they can't sign free agents that year. Why would the game allow these releases if the team does not have the cash to cover the money involved?

Allowing the owners to do the releases from the game is a fantastic feature, but it would be great to find a way around the issue I have described above. It does not look like you can disable this feature for owners.

Any thoughts & opinions would be much appreciated.

[battists]

Well, they still pay for it, they just don't pay in cash.

Am I misunderstanding? The money comes out of their player expenses (middle column on the front office screen) and will affect their overall financial performance for the year.

[sporr]

OOTP has always treated player releases this way. Rather than having them hit cash, they are added to player expenses.

[Killebrew]

In the past I have either played in leagues that completely skipped the OOTP financials and did them outside the game, or set online league rules to not allow owners to release players. Since it looks like there is no option for that on v2007, how would an online leagues police this financial loophole? It seems to me the only way to do it is via arduous manual admin.

Maybe I am misunderstanding something, but it does not look like there is much of a penalty for this kind of action (xtreme player releases). $550+ million"paid out" in what appears to be invisible money the team did not have, then next year the team's budget is capped (think they can do extensions though), but 2 years later they can sign any free agents again.

I'm not sure if this is related, but I'm also wondering how a team can have a 90+ mil budget when there is a 70 million dollar salary cap in the league, or how a team in this same league can sign a player for 90 mil a season to go over the cap, then keep signing more players above the cap. Is the salary cap actually working?

Just trying to figure out the online league component of the game and trying to avoid what appear to be major loopholes like this. Advice, especially from online commishes, would be much appreciated.

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Maybe I am misunderstanding something, but it does not look like there is much of a penalty for this kind of action (xtreme player releases). $550+ million"paid out" in what appears to be invisible money the team did not have, then next year the team's budget is capped (think they can do extensions though), but 2 years later they can sign any free agents again.

Actually, the $550M deficit would remain until the team made enough in profits to cover it. At the end of each season, the +/- rolls to cash. So, the team's cash may not be affected the instant they release someone, but at the end of the season it will be tremendously. Here's a simplistic example:

Team releases $40M contract in addition to $70M payroll, but they only earn $80M per season Let's say they had $10M cash.

End of season of release:
Player Expenses: $110M
Revenue: $80M
Cash: $10M
Balance: -$20M

End of following season (all things equal):
Player Expenses: $70M
Revenue: $80M
Cash: -$20M (Prior year balance)
Balance: $-10M

As you can see, even after the 2nd season, the team is still in the red and it will take them another season before they break even. In your example, depending on how much revenue and expenses are, it could take them decades to pay off the balance.

There used to be an option that could be checked to allow or disallow teams making their own releases, but I can't remember off hand if that's still in there or not.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

how would an online leagues police this financial loophole? It seems to me the only way to do it is via arduous manual admin.

I don't think it would be too difficult to impose.

Make a rule and advise all owners that they are not to release players in the game.

Prior to each sim, just after importing rosters, check all transactions to look for released players.

If you find an owner is releasing players against league rules, apply the applicable punishment as set down in your league rules.

It pretty much comes down to trusting your owners to follow the guidelines laid out by the Commish, but you can police it as described above.


At the end of the day I personally don't know why you'd want to disallow an owner from releasing a player, he's going to pay for it over the long haul. I'm guessing you'd be running a league with a hard rule that says if you sign a player, you're stuck with him (barring a trade/waiver claim). Players get released or bought out irl all the time. But everyone has their own way of playing the game and applying specific rules.

[battists]

Killebrew, what those guys said (points up).

Don't get me wrong . . . if there really is a loophole in here, I'd like to find it and squish it. But, as far as I understand, there is no loophole. When you release a player, you are responsible for all of that money, and it will impact your year-end profits, which will impact how much money you have to spend next year, and so on.

Regarding the salary caps, one point of frustration for us has been applying a salary cap to start a league. The game builds player contracts after the initial draft based on their abilities. This can result in initial budgets over the salary cap. We've raised this with Markus, but he hasn't had a chance to resolve the issue yet.

After that initial league creation, teams SHOULD adhere to the cap, and if they are not, please log it in Tech Support.

[Killebrew]

Thanks very much for the helpful responses guys, I do appreciate it.

It appears to me like I could still use the new "1 click" commish sim feature, and just manually enforce (with a sim or 2 of delay) a house rule to try to prevent owners from releasing players except in their final contract year. OOTP 6.5 allowed a commish to prevent owners from releasing players themselves, so it seems to me we will require more trust from league owners in this version. The manual enforcement of a house rule for player releases should allow usage of the profit sharing feature without (what I would consider) the financial loophole in this area of the game - the no/low penalty albatross contract dumps. For anyone following this thread, here's a typical situation where teams would want to release a player early in his contract: Signing a 37 year old free agent to a 4 year deal in order to get him to sign with your team (over better 1 year deals), then release him with low/no penalty as soon as he starts his age-related ratings drop.

I hope that future versions of OOTP would enhance this part of the financial logic of the game. Maybe I am misunderstanding the issue, but it seems to me that if releases were fully covered by year-to-year team cash it would solve this problem.

Regarding the cap issue...

Originally Posted by battists

After that initial league creation, teams SHOULD adhere to the cap, and if they are not, please log it in Tech Support.

AI teams do seem to follow the cap very closely, but the game does not appear to enforce cap rules on human controlled teams. I'll spend some more time tonight going over all the ways a human owner can get around the payroll cap, then post the details in tech support. The way I tested this was to log on as a regular owner after already being logged on as the commish, so perhaps the problem is that some commish permissions carry over. I'll do my testing tonight logging in as a regular owner first and see if the game still allows the cap infractions.

[Stu]

In my league I just have a blanket rule that states a team must remain profitable. If not, they're in danger of being replaced. They all understand how releases work, so tend to avoid releasing players with large contracts.

The one guy who did it was so far in the red the next year that he had to reduce his payroll to $16 mil to make the money back, which he did. If he had continued operating in the red, I simply would have replaced him.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

I hope that future versions of OOTP would enhance this part of the financial logic of the game. Maybe I am misunderstanding the issue, but it seems to me that if releases were fully covered by year-to-year team cash it would solve this problem.

I for one would not want to see this. It would not be realistic and teams could wind up in a huge hole. When you cut a player or buy out his contract it becomes part of team expenses for that season, or if you really get into detail you can work that buyout over a number of years. Team expenses are covered by more than just team cash. Ticket sales, merchandise sales, play-off revenue just to name a few.

[battists]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

AI teams do seem to follow the cap very closely, but the game does not appear to enforce cap rules on human controlled teams. I'll spend some more time tonight going over all the ways a human owner can get around the payroll cap, then post the details in tech support. The way I tested this was to log on as a regular owner after already being logged on as the commish, so perhaps the problem is that some commish permissions carry over. I'll do my testing tonight logging in as a regular owner first and see if the game still allows the cap infractions.

That would be great, Killebrew. Obviously, there isn't SUPPOSED to a loophole, so if you were able to find one, it would certainly be high on the list of things to fix!

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by BruceM

I for one would not want to see this. It would not be realistic and teams could wind up in a huge hole. When you cut a player or buy out his contract it becomes part of team expenses for that season, or if you really get into detail you can work that buyout over a number of years. Team expenses are covered by more than just team cash. Ticket sales, merchandise sales, play-off revenue just to name a few.

You're probably right that using cash to correct this is probably not a good solution, but if teams are not financially accountable for ther actions then I hope something is tweaked in the game to either restrict the contracts they offer or increase the financial penalty of releasing players.

Again, maybe I'm wrong about this being a loophole, but holy - I'm talking about +550 million in released contracts, and the team continuing to submit big (10 mil+/season) contract extensions the same season, then back to offering fat free agent offers 2 years later. In other words - the game does not appear to make the owner accountable for his financial actions.

[RonCo]

The correct action would seem to me to add a capability to track the existing financial burden of released contracts to the financial model. If you release a guy with four $20M seasons remaining, you are going to incur that $20M cost each of the next four seasons. That would come directly off your cash on hand (or budget), and limit the resources GMs have on-hand to sign existing players.

[Hammer755]

I've not looked at the issue in 2007, but I think in V6 that it worked as sporr describes - the hit isn't taken instantaneously from cash, but it is at the end of the season. It adds the portion of the contract that is released to player expenses. At the conclusion of the year, any difference between revenue and player expense is then deducted from cash.

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by Hammer755

I've not looked at the issue in 2007, but I think in V6 that it worked as sporr describes - the hit isn't taken instantaneously from cash, but it is at the end of the season. It adds the portion of the contract that is released to player expenses. At the conclusion of the year, any difference between revenue and player expense is then deducted from cash.

I believe there used to be an OOTP financial engine limitation/feature that prevented teams from going below -$10 million in cash after the "proceed to next year", basically a cash loss cap. Any idea if that is still in the game, and if so, whether that has bearing on this conversation? If the game artificially limits the amount of money a team can lose in a year with a loss cap wouldn't that be a financial engine loophole?

[Killebrew]

Originally Posted by RonCo

The correct action would seem to me to add a capability to track the existing financial burden of released contracts to the financial model. If you release a guy with four $20M seasons remaining, you are going to incur that $20M cost each of the next four seasons. That would come directly off your cash on hand (or budget), and limit the resources GMs have on-hand to sign existing players.

Yes, that makes sense. That post makes me think that the game does not currently do what you describe, and that my concerns about an OOTP financial system loophole might be legitimate.

FWIW, in my equally limited understanding of FOF finances there is a serious financial penalty in releasing players that is immediately obvious to the user. In that game I believe the remainder of the owed future bonus money of the contract is paid in a lump sum the season after the player is released. Granted, that game models the unique NFL cap system, but I'm trying to use the OOTP payroll cap feature in a similar way.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

Yes, that makes sense. That post makes me think that the game does not currently do what you describe, and that my concerns about an OOTP financial system loophole might be legitimate.

FWIW, in my equally limited understanding of FOF finances there is a serious financial penalty in releasing players that is immediately obvious to the user. In that game I believe the remainder of the owed future bonus money of the contract is paid in a lump sum the season after the player is released. Granted, that game models the unique NFL cap system, but I'm trying to use the OOTP payroll cap feature in a similar way.

It should not come off cash on hand. It should be charged to player expenses, which is correct. A players salary is considered a player expense, and if you cut the player you have to "buy out" or absorb the remainder of his contract, which should go against player expenses.

I distinctly recall cutting players with big salaries in the previous few versions and noticing right away that my resources for future signings were affected. It does work correctly.

[Killebrew]

...(spoke too soon)...

[Killebrew]

Okay, more test sims in a new league & I think I found out what happened in my first couple of examples. This was a historical league in 1995 with the "import financials" unchecked, a salary cap of 70 mil, 25 mil in equal media contracts, and everything else at default level. There are some issues with player releases, and it is a financial loophole.

- FWIW, the max cap on an extension is $20,999,999 for the first year of the extension. Following years can be up to 10 million/year more via back-loading.
- If a team that is broke (and not allowed to offer any more extensions) releases a player they will then have money for contract extensions. If they use that money up (EG "$40 mil left for contract ext.") in new extensions, then wait a few days, they can then have that same amount of new contract extension money again (some sort of reset - not sure if it is related to the player accepting the extension offer after a few days). This cycle does not appear to have a limit (the $550 mil payroll example in a previous post).
- As could be imagined from the previous point, you can go well over the following seasons salary cap via contract extensions, the only real limit is that the games finances "turns over" once you get figures that are too large (this seems reasonable - there is no reason to expect that teams would be having payrolls this big... except maybe when testing the finance logic:-)).
- When you release $142 mil in 'contract value', the game says it will add only $127 mil to your player expenses - this figure is always about that % less than the listed contract value, not sure why (there might be a reasonable explanation). That number is correctly added to the player expense's and the projected budget room as some have mentioned in this thread.
- Team cash resets at the beginning of the season (January 1st) to a negative max of -$10 million.

That last point is the basis for my concern in earlier posts - the financial loophole when releasing players. The game does not make the owner accountable for his financial actions when releasing players.

Regarding the earlier mentioned salary cap concerns, I think there is a bug here, but probably not with the salary cap logic - the bug appears to be in the "money left for contract extensions" calculations that reset. I'll continue these tests before posting that issue in the tech forum. The issue with owners not being held accountable for player releases is a bigger design issue that wouldn't be a patch fix. It's probably been the same formula for the last 5 or more versions of OOTP, but IMO it would be worth looking at this during the development of future versions of OOTP.

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Killebrew

- When you release $142 mil in 'contract value', the game says it will add only $127 mil to your player expenses - this figure is always about that % less than the listed contract value, not sure why (there might be a reasonable explanation). That number is correctly added to the player expense's and the projected budget room as some have mentioned in this thread.

Thanks for helping to track this down. As for the comment above, OOTP player expenses accrue each day of the season. So in this case, some of the player's contract value had already been booked to Player Expenses, thus the $127M represented the remainder of the current season salary and all future years.

I honestly forgot all about the -$10M limit, but you're totally right that it's there. Usually at the end of every season, I go through and manually enter the correct cash amounts for teams that are way in the red because of this, but the game should really be handling this simple subtraction itself. Along with that, if revenue sharing is turned on then teams get set in $5M increments. So a team that finishes at -$7.3M might be put at -$5M and teams at -$2.3M might be at 0.

In regards to the apparent reset of money avail. for extensions, it sounds like once the player accepts the extension it somehow frees up the avail. money again? Are you seeing this avail. money go down at all during the season even in regular extension signings? Because if the game isn't properly subtracting extensions signed from the money available, it could affect a lot more than just teams that are way in the red.

TT 3208 by the way for the cash issue. If you have any more info on the Player Avail. Money issue, I'll log that one and more this thread over to Logged Issues.