Inability to make trades

[Airdrop01]

Originally Posted by WarFisch

I am not saying it was fixed, just going by what I have seen around the boards about a new financials file in the patch. If that wasn't directed at me, sorry, but there seems to be an aweful lot of venom around the boards these days. It is getting old.

Not directed at you at all. No worries.

But, there are posters saying it was fixed, and no one from the OOTP development team said that, it hasn't even been acknowledged as an issue as far as I can see, and it's pretty much being ignored by Markus et al.

It is actually a real problem unless you want to totally disable financials, which makes contracts, free agency, and really, developing players, almost pointless. I suppose if you're playing as the Yankees, you wouldn't care, but what if you're playing as KC? Minnesota?

I would just like for someone to actually admit it is an issue and state that they will fix it. It actually is a game breaker and I wish I'd seen it in time to get my money back.

[megamanmatt]

Originally Posted by AC

Does the same problem exist in fictional leagues? This is a game-breaker for me as far as playing w/ real rosters.

I really don't understand how something you can easily fix is considered game breaking.... maybe I'm just old but in my day game breaking means "making the game unplayable".

[Airdrop01]

Originally Posted by megamanmatt

I really don't understand how something you can easily fix is considered game breaking.... maybe I'm just old but in my day game breaking means "making the game unplayable".

How can it be easily fixed? Seriously, I would love to know.

[megamanmatt]

After a few seasons on it's own the budgets vs payroll will even out to the point where you can make trades. However if you're using the MLB quickstart you can just alter the teams budgets to give them some room to work around so you can initiate trades during the '09 season.

[sfeldkamp]

I restarted an MLB Quickstart league after the patch and I can tell you that the problem persists into the 2010 season. Just started the 2010 preseason and only one team has any significant room under the budget. Most teams are several million in the hole.

With the patch, the budgets were better in 2009, but 2010 budgets suck. I wish I knew what the problem was, but I can't even understand the financials screen. It's absolute slag.

[jtnlange]

As fas as a fictional goes it is working fine. I am 27 years into a fitional with finiancials enabled and all the teams as in the green by a good margin and trading is going well.

I am using the finaincials.txt from an earlier post modified just a little. It is very close to the patched version.

Trevor L.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Airdrop01

But, there are posters saying it was fixed, and no one from the OOTP development team said that, it hasn't even been acknowledged as an issue as far as I can see, and it's pretty much being ignored by Markus et al.

It has been acknowledged by the beta testers that have worked or work with the financials as a problem in other threads. Me and Spritze have gone through quite a bit in another thread over these problems.

The financials in OOTP are a wild animal, no one knows what it'll do next... we just know what happens when it calms down.

There were several bugs found that were supposedly fixed for the patch. I haven't had a chance to look at it though (my life has been extremely busy and upside down for the last 9 months). If they were it should be a good step toward fixing some of the problems (and by the last post maybe it has). Spritze has played with the financial.txt file and hopefully it adjusts things more accurately now.

The problem may be solely in the MLB quick start now, and that's putting 2 wild animals in a cage together with nothing but a prayer.

The problem with the quickstart is that it's set up as MLB is now, as best as they can get in market size and budgets and contracts etc. The contracts that exist in real life don't mirror what OOTP would do (I can't imagine why the real GMs aren't mirroring OOTP, it seems only logical but...) and so the financials in OOTP have some problems dealing with them.
For example, no matter what you do, the Yankees can't maintain their 2009 budget in OOTP... it just isn't sustainable for the OOTP Yanks. So those OOTP Yanks will labor under some of those outrageous contracts until they're out from under them.

If everything is fixed and works correctly in a fictional and historical league now, you will see the quickstart even itself out over time. The normal balance time was 7-10 years before the wild animal settled down and became predictable.

In the mean time you can either fight with those budget problems (which isn't much fun), or transfer some of their cash into their budget (which is just increasing their budgets so they can more easily use the cash they're sitting on).


It is possible that the MLB quickstart would work better if started after the patch. It'll still have those problems though, just possibly to a lesser degree. The patch won't make an existing league instantly correct itself, but it will begin moving in the right direction in subsequent years.

[Wrigleyviller]

Originally Posted by tysok

In the mean time you can either fight with those budget problems (which isn't much fun), or transfer some of their cash into their budget (which is just increasing their budgets so they can more easily use the cash they're sitting on).

I've quick-started a game as the 2009 Cubs, and their starting cash for the year is $18,000. Besides being probably tens of millions less than the cubs actually earned in 2008, and millions less than the Cubs actually have in cash, that amount of money wouldn't allow me to hire a new janitor. It's a real problem.

[tysok]

Originally Posted by Wrigleyviller

I've quick-started a game as the 2009 Cubs, and their starting cash for the year is $18,000. Besides being probably tens of millions less than the cubs actually earned in 2008, and millions less than the Cubs actually have in cash, that amount of money wouldn't allow me to hire a new janitor. It's a real problem.

If you used a little bit to pay off your governor so you could ignore the child labor laws you may still be able to get yourself a janitor.

You can still increase your budget so you have some room. Especially if it looks like you're going to make good money this year.

The budgets aren't set to anything that really makes sense... it's not balanced against what you can expect to bring in (especially in that inaugural year).
The first budget number is based off the contracts you have, so one could see a budget of 50 million dollars (and nearly maxed out already) and bring in 100 million revenue easily. It will adjust itself up as that revenue level is sustained, but at the start the budget is only based off the contracts you have in house when it sets that number.

[Airdrop01]

Originally Posted by tysok

It has been acknowledged by the beta testers that have worked or work with the financials as a problem in other threads. Me and Spritze have gone through quite a bit in another thread over these problems.

The financials in OOTP are a wild animal, no one knows what it'll do next... we just know what happens when it calms down.

There were several bugs found that were supposedly fixed for the patch. I haven't had a chance to look at it though (my life has been extremely busy and upside down for the last 9 months). If they were it should be a good step toward fixing some of the problems (and by the last post maybe it has). Spritze has played with the financial.txt file and hopefully it adjusts things more accurately now.

The problem may be solely in the MLB quick start now, and that's putting 2 wild animals in a cage together with nothing but a prayer.

The problem with the quickstart is that it's set up as MLB is now, as best as they can get in market size and budgets and contracts etc. The contracts that exist in real life don't mirror what OOTP would do (I can't imagine why the real GMs aren't mirroring OOTP, it seems only logical but...) and so the financials in OOTP have some problems dealing with them.
For example, no matter what you do, the Yankees can't maintain their 2009 budget in OOTP... it just isn't sustainable for the OOTP Yanks. So those OOTP Yanks will labor under some of those outrageous contracts until they're out from under them.

If everything is fixed and works correctly in a fictional and historical league now, you will see the quickstart even itself out over time. The normal balance time was 7-10 years before the wild animal settled down and became predictable.

In the mean time you can either fight with those budget problems (which isn't much fun), or transfer some of their cash into their budget (which is just increasing their budgets so they can more easily use the cash they're sitting on).


It is possible that the MLB quickstart would work better if started after the patch. It'll still have those problems though, just possibly to a lesser degree. The patch won't make an existing league instantly correct itself, but it will begin moving in the right direction in subsequent years.

Thanks for the answer, TYSOK. I appreciate it. I guess I'll mess around with making a quickstart with edited budgets, etc. It just isn't much fun, of course! Thanks.

[AC]

Originally Posted by Airdrop01

Thanks for the answer, TYSOK. I appreciate it. I guess I'll mess around with making a quickstart with edited budgets, etc. It just isn't much fun, of course! Thanks.

If someone develops a template that they find works well, could it be posted? I played around a bit last night, but never got the numbers to mesh right and still had problems. Thanks.

[sfeldkamp]

I thought I had posted this...

It appears to me that the problem might be that the average ticket prices is too low. The Royals have a $15.50 average ticket price, the Yankees a $19.00 average ticket price. At 4.5 million fans a year, that only makes a difference of about $16 million for the Yankees. That's totally insufficient to support their huge budget, even with the extra media contract and merchandising revenues.

Maybe the teams will raise ticket prices as the years go by, but only slowly. As it stands now though it makes it a real pain to try to play the quickstart.

[Airdrop01]

Originally Posted by AC

If someone develops a template that they find works well, could it be posted? I played around a bit last night, but never got the numbers to mesh right and still had problems. Thanks.

I will certainly post one if I get it to work. It is honestly something that will take me forever because I have a 60 hour a week job, wife and three kids and I just laid off 3 people as is, so the chances of me working less to keep >100 people on payroll, who depend on it to support their families, are (edited from "is") small.

Thus, my frustration that this is something that the people I paid for the game didn't fix. (not testers, but the guy who is supposed to stop the buck).

[AC]

Does it help at all if you assign fictional financials to teams or make player contracts fictional before starting the league?