Online League Free Agency: Let's Improve It

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by McExpos

I'm new to OOTPDev (well, not really, but I honestly only did post twice back in 2005 and forgot I had an account until today), but are all of the answers to questions, "Your GM screwed up"?

Honest question.

No, they're not. But huge amounts of cash on hand will cause huge free agent demands. How do we know this? The designer told us. It's a feature and not a bug.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

No, what you're proposing is a whole lot of complexity that isn't required. Why can't you use the tools already available to get the settings you want?

Option 2 is certainly not how it works now.

Bluenoser has nailed it.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by McExpos

"That's just the way it is, and either learn to deal with it or change your league," then that's a disincentive for me to continue being part of the OOTP community.

A lot of things in gaming - not just OOTP, but all of gaming - are that way, and so is reality. Adapt and overcome.

And if the members of this board started leaving the community because the game wasn't designed specifically to suit their style of play there'd be nobody left here but the mods and the bear. Talk to LGO some time about the changes he'd like to see. Or Endgame. Or even me.

[MrGreenGenes]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

No, they're not. But huge amounts of cash on hand will cause huge free agent demands. How do we know this? The designer told us. It's a feature and not a bug.

Is it also a feature that free agents take four weeks to actually respond to an offer, then one day to sign? Because if so, I'd like to talk to the person that decided that was the best strategy to bring to free agency.

[Isryion]

Originally Posted by MrGreenGenes

Is it also a feature that free agents take four weeks to actually respond to an offer, then one day to sign? Because if so, I'd like to talk to the person that decided that was the best strategy to bring to free agency.

I personally haven't seen this occur, at least with any frequency that I remember it.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by MrGreenGenes

Is it also a feature that free agents take four weeks to actually respond to an offer, then one day to sign? Because if so, I'd like to talk to the person that decided that was the best strategy to bring to free agency.

Been playing since 6.5 and have never seen this.

[Buane]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

No, they're not. But huge amounts of cash on hand will cause huge free agent demands. How do we know this? The designer told us. It's a feature and not a bug.

I'll ask you the same question I asked earlier: what is the downside to a free agent system where the player simply accepts the best offer he receives during free agency?

[RchW]

Originally Posted by MrGreenGenes

Is it also a feature that free agents take four weeks to actually respond to an offer, then one day to sign? Because if so, I'd like to talk to the person that decided that was the best strategy to bring to free agency.

Hasn't happen in any league I've played.

[MrGreenGenes]

Our league has experienced this multiple times already this offseason. Unless you're going to pin it as user error with the GMs (which, as has been stated already in this thread by others, is a cop out that avoids actually addressing the problem), there's something seriously wrong.

[kon6749]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

It's a feature and not a bug.

So because the game was designed that way makes it right?


I’m sure over the 13 versions of OOTP there were no purposeful design 'flaws' that needed to be corrected or ‘enhanced’ over time.


You should be more receptive to being given constructive feedback with solutions presented in a professional matter.


It’s embarrassing to read the responses dodging the questions and putting the blame back on the consumer.

Lastly, I still haven’t read an intelligent response to the other major issue brought up from the original post.

Originally Posted by Buane

It seems a new feature of Free Agency is that some players will collect a number of contract offers and leave them all "pending" for a number of weeks before finally making a decision to sign. They make that decision without allowing any of the other teams a chance to up their offer.

[Tavarin]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Been playing since 6.5 and have never seen this.

Well, it hadn't happened until the league went to 13, and has since happened multiple times in the first full offseason since moving over. It certainly could have been part of 12 since we skipped from 11 to 13 though.

[Jontler]

It seems to me that the problem is still being misunderstood or miscontstrued, so I'm going to approach it from yet another direction to try and properly characterize it: The Tangible Example (TM).

Behold, Henning Neef! Originally a member of the European Baseball Federation, this Dutchman came over to the RSL in 2024, signing an almost 60 million dollar, 4 year deal with my glorious Spectres.

Henning had a great deal of success in his first three years in the RSL, but things kind of started to go to hell in 2027 (with Neef and the Spectres, unfortunately ), and so I sent him packing, salary paid for, as part of a package to get something valuable back. He signed a one year deal with Baltimore late in 2028's free agency, had a pretty rotten year with them, and went back onto the market.

Entering 2029's free agency, Henning's demands were in the range of 8 to 10 million a year over a six year period. Now, he's entering his age 33 season and he's coming off back to back declining seasons. Yet, probably because I have almost an entire roster to sign (the decisions that put me in this position are not relevant at this time), I want Neef back to man the hot corner. Or stand there with his glove and hit once in awhile, as the case may be.

Anyway. I'm not giving him six years. That's ludicrous. I offered him 4 years at 6 million per, with a team option for the fourth year. I'm not 100% comfortable with this, but if it goes way south I can at least stomach it.

Of course, he's displeased with this offer. He doesn't outright break off negotiations, but he does demand more money and more years. Neef counters with 7.5 over 6 years. Well, forget that buddy. I'll look elsewhere.

As free agency goes on, I keep my eye on him. He knows what offer I last gave him, so he's still sitting there with the same counter offer. However, as many of you have noted, as free agency continues and he gets no offers acceptable to him, his floor demands lower.

This is the important part of the story, folks. His floor lowers to new bidders but not to me. He still is offering up the same counter to me, and I'm none the wiser.* Eventually, Neef signs with the hated San Diego Seamen** for four years, 5.75 per, with two team options with buyouts included.



This is the crux of the problem. Neef's demands lowered, but because of what we perceive to be a flaw in the implementation of free agency, he took less money than was previously on the table.

This has nothing to do with bloated finances. It has nothing to do with too much cash on hand, or even with players demanding way too much money. Those problems are all workable, or 'features', or whatever, and having an option to make it simply so that free agents favor whatever the best offer they currently have and allowing the market to dictate how high it goes seems so obvious and simple and easy of an optional solution that I just can't fathom how anyone would be against it.

The implementation would be slightly more complicated, of course. Don't be dumb and oversimplify it. Free agents should not sign the first small offer to hit them four days after they get it. They should take just as long as they did previously sitting on their offers, waiting it out, but if preseason is about to start and still nobody is trying to go higher then maybe it's time to take the offer on the table.

It's hard to imagine any of you seriously arguing for a system where you would prefer a player take a 4 year, 5.75 million dollar AAV deal with two team options over a 4 year, 6 million dollar AAV deal simply because they were timed differently. That doesn't fit anyone's definition of realistic or reasonable, and if it does then I feel very strongly that you're trying to fit square pegs into round holes while arguing for a silly status quo.

So yea.

*This was pieced together through several irc sessions after the fact. It's not like we have some magic way of knowing what other owners are bidding during free agency.

**The Spectres have a franchise 0-0 record versus the Seamen.

[MrGreenGenes]

Originally Posted by Jontler

**The Spectres have a franchise 0-0 record versus the Seamen.

Philadelphia average win total in the past five years: 87 wins, three seasons with less than 90 wins and only one playoff appearance
San Diego average win total in the past five years: 96.6 wins, five consecutive playoff appearances

Try winning some games and free agents might want to sign with you :smugdog:

---

No, seriously. That post sums up the flaws with the current free agent system perfectly. It's had this problem for a few versions now, and I'm not entirely sure how other "new" features get added while problems like this don't get fixed.

[Isryion]

A couple things.

One, I realize not everyone here has been exactly sympathetic, but some of us are legitimately trying to help and we have very little to go on, so it's good that you put the details up of one example.

However, the original problem was listed, in bold, as "unrealistic demands." This doesn't look like a case of that. IMO, this example does not at all match most of what Buane as pointed out ("I just want Free Agents in my league to be able to sign at the price that the GMs are willing to pay for them. I don't think this is unreasonable.")

He also mentioned that he'd like FA to take the best offer they get, and maybe that's what you're getting at here, but this may be a game mechanic issue. I'll try and explain why I don't see what Neef did as that unreasonable or out of whack.

Your best offer to Neef was $6M for 4 years and he took 250K p/year less than that. Yours was the best offer, you're right, but he came back early in negotiations saying that wasn't enough. This (in-game) essentially cancels the offer as far as I understand, and you need to make a new one. At this point, and I'll assume it was weeks or even months later, he never received another offer from you if I'm reading correctly. Had you made your offer again, he very likely would have accepted it, though it's also possible he wanted more from you because he had a completely different attitude toward your team (due to the trade).

Maybe the game should implement something where Neef would have come back to you, though I've no idea how tough this would be to program, considering a lot of other offers he may have received and then seen withdrawn.

And I'll still go back to the idea that the reason free agents aren't signing earlier is because of the amount of cash available. Had there been less money in the league, Neef might not have taken so long or set outrageous demands in the first place. When they reject or demand more money, negotiations are essentially broken off from their side and they need to be re-offered again. They're more likely to do this with a lot of money floating around in my experience. I'm not blaming your commish or your GMs, but the game takes all that money into account, as Markus pointed out. If it didn't finances would be even more out of whack and FA signings you'd likely see the opposite problem with other leagues. It's essentially meant to evolve to your league world, while GMs often expect it to continue to mimick real life salaries.

People from your league want to be able to offer the most money and get the free agent. As I eluded to, this game engine isn't programmed to work that way every time (as that's not how it works IRL). Just like draft picks have differing desires to sign with different teams, so do players. If you want the system to work that way, without the hassle of negotiations, you'll need, as someone else suggested to take it offline.

That said, I'm not saying FA is perfect -- I'd love to see a feature where you can offer three similar players contracts (like with MR) and then end negotiations with the other two when one agrees to sign so that it doesn't tie up all that money.

[Isryion]

Originally Posted by MrGreenGenes

Philadelphia average win total in the past five years: 87 wins, three seasons with less than 90 wins and only one playoff appearance
San Diego average win total in the past five years: 96.6 wins, five consecutive playoff appearances

Try winning some games and free agents might want to sign with you :smugdog:

---

No, seriously. That post sums up the flaws with the current free agent system perfectly. It's had this problem for a few versions now, and I'm not entirely sure how other "new" features get added while problems like this don't get fixed.

Knowing this, I'm really not surprised Henning signed with SD, especially as he was previously traded from Philly, which can certainly affect a player's morale negatively. Is it totally out of whack for a player nearing the twilight of his career to take a lesser offer (though not drastically lower) for a more likely shot at the playoffs? To me, though it was good to see a specific example, this isn't significant enough to warrant the cries of "FA is broken!" when you start to look at other variables, which this game does take into account.

[Buane]

Originally Posted by Isryion

That said, I'm not saying FA is perfect -- I'd love to see a feature where you can offer three similar players contracts (like with MR) and then end negotiations with the other two when one agrees to sign so that it doesn't tie up all that money.

I appreciate everyone who has weighed in with their suggestions/opinions. The problem is that I guess I'm not really looking for an explanation. As I said before, we've worked with and around these problems for a long time now. We know what they are and we've done what we can to minimize their effect.

The new wrinkle we ran into in OOTP13 was the issue with players taking so many sims without giving any responses and then signing with a team when they did send out the "you'll need to beat this offer" notifications. I figured that was the sign that Free Agency was getting worse and I should do something to try and bring some of these issues to light.


So...I guess the point of all of this is really not "why is this happening in my league" and more of "wouldn't this way be a better way to do Free Agency?"

I think that a system where free agents simply took the best offer they received during the whole free agent period is a simpler system, makes more sense, AND has the added bonus of avoiding any problems where different leagues see different results depending on their different financials. It's a one size fits all system! Now even if some league lets their finances get completely out of whack, the GMs can still be the ones that drive the market, keeping the league tenable.

And if other people, for whatever reason, were uncomfortable with that becoming the norm, then I don't think an option to toggle that system on or off would be asking for too much. I hope!

[Buane]

Originally Posted by Isryion

Knowing this, I'm really not surprised Henning signed with SD, especially as he was previously traded from Philly, which can certainly affect a player's morale negatively. Is it totally out of whack for a player nearing the twilight of his career to take a lesser offer (though not drastically lower) for a more likely shot at the playoffs? To me, though it was good to see a specific example, this isn't significant enough to warrant the cries of "FA is broken!" when you start to look at other variables, which this game does take into account.

I think that Jontler's point was that since he had submitted an offer previously, when he returned to negotiate with Neef he was receiving the same counteroffer that he received from the point of his initial offer onward. Meanwhile, as Free Agency moved along, Neef's negotiation demands were dropping with everybody else who had not yet made any kind of previous offer.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by kon6749

So because the game was designed that way makes it right?

It's the way it is. It's the way it was designed to be. Deal with it.

Originally Posted by kon6749

You should be more receptive to being given constructive feedback with solutions presented in a professional matter.

LOL. If I was the angry type this would have started a flamewar. Instead, I found this really funny coming from someone who has trouble coping with game design decisions.

Like it or not, the game is the way it is, and that's the way Markus made it. Adapt and overcome. Failing that, lobby Markus to change it. But trashing the game for doing exactly what it is designed to do is pointless at best.

Originally Posted by kon6749

It’s embarrassing to read the responses dodging the questions and putting the blame back on the consumer.

What, you think I'm Markus writing under an alias? I'm a consumer, too, and I have to work around all manner of things that irritate me and negatively impact my enjoyment of the game (world.xml file, anyone?). Some of the things that I have issues with go back a long way. Some of them may - or may not - be fixed in OOTP 14. But what I do is to ask Markus to see what he is willing to do about them - or ask Endgame to ask Markus - and in the meantime I adapt and overcome. And sometimes Markus just says no. I deal with that, too. You see, just like you, I'm only a consumer, and sometimes that's what consumers have to do.

Good luck with your lobbying efforts. In the meantime I say it again: adapt and overcome.

[MrGreenGenes]

Not sure how you keep missing the point, but this has very little to do with cash on hand, or even the initial demands that the players have. The real problem is how OOTP processes the offers that players receive, and how different people have different counters from players based on where they are in the bidding process and how far into FA it is. Everyone should be pretty much on the same page when it comes to free agents, but currently, that isn't the case.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by MrGreenGenes

Not sure how you keep missing the point, but this has very little to do with cash on hand, or even the initial demands that the players have. The real problem is how OOTP processes the offers that players receive, and how different people have different counters from players based on where they are in the bidding process and how far into FA it is. Everyone should be pretty much on the same page when it comes to free agents, but currently, that isn't the case.

Gee, that struck me as a secondary point. Good luck lobbying Markus on this one too.