Suggestions: Front Office Finances

[Cornroe Wallace]

Add an assistant g.m. to the mix. If I want the AI to handle trades as g.m., I should not have to assign that to the team manager. Managers do not handle trades unless they're Connie Mack. An assistant g.m. would be ideal.

[snarl_jones]

Suggestion
Allow the option to display finances in graphical form over verying periods of time: 3, 5, 10, 25, 50 years, etc.

Reason
Immersion, ease of use

Priority
low, but very pretty

[beorn]

Suggestion: Fix the abusive tactic of extremely high ticket prices.


Reason: At present, it is extremely effective to set ticket prices in the thousands of dollars. Although attendance will be low, you will still make out very well. Simple solution: an upper limit,preferably in the league setup options


Priority: High

[JB1983]

A salary floor. To allow leagues to make sure teams spend a certain amount each year. Otherwise, you have teams hordeing cash and there is no way of doing anything about it other than to maybe play in god mode and make them spend.

[ootpFox07]

Suggestion: Add a monthly report card e-mail to GM's which would show:

• Months attendance and a percentage rating against the YTD attendance (going up or down).
• Player Transaction amounts and totals
• Revenue projections and expect profit or loss
• A realistic view of what $$$ you have to spend on free agents and extensions for players and staff
• Reminder on players who are upcoming free agents

Reasoning: It's nice to have a brief summary of the organization financial health and how things are looking overall so you know if you can sit back and relax or get off your keister and start making some deals to get back in the black. A message from the owner on his view of the situation and expectations is a nice motivator too.

Priority: Medium-Low

[ChuckB]

Note: Not sure where else to place this.

Suggestion: Allow a player to be placed on the Disabled List retroactively (the day after the last time they played).

Reasoning: This would allow a GM to see if a player is healing by sitting him as opposed to just dumping him immediately on the DL when his injury might take two weeks, but also might take five days. This could be accomplished simply by looking at the last date that the player played when the GM finally decides to assign him to the DL, and making that date the first day he's effectively placed on the DL.

Priority: Medium/Low, but it would be more realistic if it could be done.

[ChuckB]

Note: Not sure where else to suggest this.

Suggestion: Have a players popularity decline as his performance declines (either through age or ratings or simple performance).

Reasoning: It seems unrealistic that I can sign a high popularity guy who's well on the decline to a minor league or minimum salary contract just to boost my overall popularity. Player's popularity in real life is based on performance (somewhat, as there are exceptions, but I can't think of a guy who's on the downside of his career and destined for the minors or part-time status being 'extremely popular'). As his ratings/performance declines, his popularity should too, to varying degrees (could be based on career success/stats, for example. Derek Jeter will forever be popular to Yankee fans, but a 38-year old Derek Jeter who's hitting .210 wouldn't be as popular as someone else, nor ever be labelled as 'extremely popular' anymore).

Priority: Medium-High, as it does affect the realism.

[sdctitans]

Suggestion: Allow trading overpaid veterans to other teams. Having a bad contract is too hard to get rid of. I've tried offering the team more money than the player is owed and still they would not take it. Just allow a more realistic trading AI, you should be punished for a bad contract, but the player is still tradable.


Reason: If you have a bad contract, its impossible to do anything with him, even trade for an even worse contract, just because the AI is set to absolutely not take them.


Priority: HIGH

[sdctitans]

Suggestion: Have ballpark costs effective. Options like field upkeep, staff and maintanence. A better staff keeps the ballpark clean and better maintanence keeps the building looking good. Thos things would tie into getting better vendors and shops, therefore creating mroe revenue due to more attendance. An option to build a new stadium too. So in a nutshell, " A Ballpark Financial Model".


Reason: No one wants to go to Florida or the old Montreal. Bad sight lines, old buildings and things like that should take effect. Attendance is not 100% about the team. New stadiums sellout for a while and bring in more revenue adn better services, which i think could be worked into finanacials.


Priority: Medium

[sdctitans]

SUGGESTION: Make the DL stint retro-active to the last day played

REASON: some times it says 1-2 weeks, you place him on the DL and he is only injured for 8 days or so. Also he could be injured for 13 days and you'd like to be able to wait until you know how long it is for sure before placing him on the DL, if its 13 days, losing him for the other 2 days (15 day DL) would not be a bog deal.

PRIORITY: HIGH, its in the Majors, and needs to be in here too.

[Killebrew]

Suggestion "Other Owed Contracts" info textbox on the Front Office screen. This displays the dollar amount of outstanding money the team owes on released player contracts. This needs to carry over from year to year, so if you release a player with a 4 year contract at 2.3 million per year, this textbox would display the remainder of this seasons owed money immediately, then display at least 2.3 million in each of the next 3 seasons. Ideally this would display all future financial obligations - example:
Other Owed Contracts
2008 (current season): $4,225,000
2009: $7,865,000
2010: $1,290,000
2011: $1,290,000
Note: This suggestion is related to battists' suggestion below.

Reason You increase the immersion factor of the game when you display the results of poor financial decisions of seasons past, and that would improve the financial aspect of OOTP play. Without this information the "available money for contracts" number often appears incorrect and users will continue to post this as a bug (and it might be - without this info it's sometimes impossible for users to know if that figure is correct or not). This suggestion is a key feature of a competing sports sim Front Office Football and I think it would go a long way to improve the confidence of the OOTP financial engine to OOTP fans and newcomers to OOTP.

Priority High

Originally Posted by battists

Suggestion
Devise SOME way to make it crystal clear how much money you can spend on free agents and contract extensions, and make the numbers that make that up visible somehow.

Maybe an "accountant's summary" page, that wouldn't be right in your face, but you could dig into it if you wanted the detailed numbers.

Reason
Despite the strides made in 2007 in the front office area, it's just STILL too darn hard to understand why you have the amount you have.

In Tech Support and on the boards, there's still just way too many cases where it's very difficult to explain why the number is what it is.

Priority
High

[Killebrew]

Suggestion Make Merchandising revenue editable/adjustable just like Media revenue. Or, failing that, maybe consider combining the two forms of outside revenue into a single Media/Merchandising revenue field.

Reason If you want to create a 'good old days' historical league or a modern semi-pro or amateur league you still get MLB sized revenue from merchandising, which does not make sense. It also prevents running leagues like this with accurate finances (along with the hard coded minimum attendance per game, which I'll mention further in another post). I don't understand why this is not adjustable now - I believe this is the only financial element of the game that is not so it seems like an oversight.

Priority High.

[Killebrew]

Suggestion Allow low average attendance per game. Currently if the user inputs an average attendance of below 5,000 the game will ignore that input and default to 5,000/game. (Note: This change is related to my previous post - allowing users to edit merchandising revenue).

Reason Markus - I know you play baseball. Wouldn't you like to create an amateur or semi-pro league in OOTP 9 that you could imagine yourself playing in? Currently some of the OOTP finance logic will not allow those kinds of leagues to be set up, at least not with any kind of remotely accurate finances. There's the uneditable Merchandising revenue (mentioned in my previous game suggestion) and then the biggest hurdle - OOTP's hard coded 5,000/game attendance minimum. I bet a lot of users would like to set up OOTP leagues that match their amateur or semi-pro leagues, or even High School/College intramural or mixed slo-pitch leagues. This is not even mentioning the OOTP users that love historical play. I'd like to create some of the 1940's-1950's short season semi-pro leagues where players might earn $50 for a season. I want to pay beer league players $1 for a season (representing a free beer at the year end party) and I want the average attendance to be 12 people per game (spouses & kids waiting to use the field!). Modern unaffiliated pro leagues like the Northern league would average well under 5,000/game as well. How about just basic MLB turn of the century seasons, many teams of that era did not average this amount of customers per game either and I bet this change might get the most support from those kinds of OOTP fans. I could be wrong about this, but I suspect this change (along with editable merchandising revenue) would be a pretty hit with many different kinds of OOTP users and make the game more versatile and impressive to existing users as well as potential new customers.

Priority Very high.

[Killebrew]

Suggestion: Tweak the 'typical salary' options in the league setup screen so they have more impact in the game.

Reason: They are in the game but don't appear to work. Apologies for including this suggestion here, but it's too late to post bugs and for any leagues that use a cap it's important that this feature is working when the new game is released.

Priority: High.

[jbrabham]

Suggestion: Adjust payroll year to year not only up but down sometimes. Markets fluctuate year to year and payrolls follow.

Reason: You win for a few years in a row and your payroll gets to be around $100 million and then you can cut your payroll down and never have to worry about money again. If after a year, the payroll all of a sudden was cut because the "owner" decided to reinvest elsewhere or there was an "ownership" change, it would provide additional challenges that are more akin to the real world.

Priority: Medium

[jbrabham]

.

[Cowboy2007]

why not have the Finacials for all leagues done not just the major leagues

[Muzamba]

Suggestion:
Each offseason, allow us (or the Team President/CEO) the opportunity to request financing for a new stadium or renovations to the existing stadium. A bar graph on the Front Office screen would show both public and government support for a new stadium or renovations. The higher the support by each, the better the chances of getting approval. This would be affected by several factors: regional economy, team success, age of the stadium, etc. Assuming support is high enough, the team may submit a proposal that includes design specs, as well as how much of the financing would come from the team, the league, local government, local businesses, taxpayers, PSL sales, and naming rights.

Reason:
Realism and immersion for those who wish to have more control over their baseball universe than just what goes on in the GM's office or on the field.

Priority:
MEDIUM-LOW. Eventually, this aspect of Baseball should be developed in OOTP.

[Muzamba]

Suggestion:
Give us the ability to sell stadium naming rights and ad space/sponsorship to help raise our team's revenues. There would be a list of bids from local "businesses". (Fictitious company names could be generated in the same manner as player names, using two separate .txt files, e.g. American...Motors, Pacific...Airlines, United...Bank, etc. Of course, each name could be edited to allow real companies to be included.) Every business would show a bid including the amount of money and years offered, plus a rating for its size, stability, and reputation. Businesses with lower ratings would routinely submit higher bids, making the choice more complicated and potentially risky. Businesses that secure ad space would pay significantly less, but would be mentioned in "commercials" during the play-by-play.

Reason:
see Stadium Construction/Renovation above

Priority:
MEDIUM-LOW

[Muzamba]

Suggestion:
Give us the ability to sell broadcast rights for local and cable television coverage, as well as radio coverage. This would be handled in the same way as Naming Rights/Sponsorships above, submitting bids for specific amounts of money and years. (Random call letters would be assigned, depending on location.) However, instead of size, stability, and reputation, these stations would show their market share and whether they're trending up or down. Incidentally, these "stations" would carry the play-by-play and be mentioned therein.

Reason:
see previous postings

Priority:
MEDIUM-LOW