It's currently too easy to exploit the AI in contract negotiations

[Tyler87898]

Players should be asking for more money and there should be more competition in free agency. Players coming off of 6 or 7 WAR seasons at age 26 should not be asking for just 20 mil per year over 5 years.

I just feel like it generally needs to be a bit harder to sign players for cheap.

[RchW]

It could be a function of your financial set up. I have the opposite problem right now but I know it is cyclical and I have made an adjustment that generated higher demands.

If there is not enough money available players won't ask for it. I adjusted my financials in a long running league to generate a few $30M players. Prior to that no one made more than $22-24M.

[Tyler87898]

Originally Posted by RchW

It could be a function of your financial set up. I have the opposite problem right now but I know it is cyclical and I have made an adjustment that generated higher demands.

If there is not enough money available players won't ask for it. I adjusted my financials in a long running league to generate a few $30M players. Prior to that no one made more than $22-24M.

I think for now I will increase the value of contracts certain players will expect in the league settings. I just wish it was a bit more modernized by default.

[marc5477]

Originally Posted by Tyler87898

Players should be asking for more money and there should be more competition in free agency. Players coming off of 6 or 7 WAR seasons at age 26 should not be asking for just 20 mil per year over 5 years.

I just feel like it generally needs to be a bit harder to sign players for cheap.

I have never seen a problem with this in my games. The limit is always team finances not player demand which is exactly how it should be. If teams dont need him or have no money to spend then the player needs to wait for spring training and take a smaller offer or just not play. This has happens every year in my game and its true to life in my opinion.

Besides, I have found that super star FA are never worth it except maybe starting pitchers especially with the games injury rate. You are 100x better off saving for the draft and/or offering extensions to current player or picking up good left over FA's at spring training discounts to have a deep chart. This appears to be true in real life as well.

That said, if your teams have a ton of money and they are still not spending then that is a different issue altogether. I have never seen this though.

[Tyler87898]

Originally Posted by marc5477

I have never seen a problem with this in my games. The limit is always team finances not player demand which is exactly how it should be. If teams dont need him or have no money to spend then the player needs to wait for spring training and take a smaller offer or just not play. This has happens every year in my game and its true to life in my opinion.

Besides, I have found that super star FA are never worth it except maybe starting pitchers especially with the games injury rate. You are 100x better off saving for the draft and/or offering extensions to current player or picking up good left over FA's at spring training discounts to have a deep chart. This appears to be true in real life as well.

That said, if your teams have a ton of money and they are still not spending then that is a different issue altogether. I have never seen this though.

Well one reason I bring this up is because if I don't sign some expensive contracts I will have so much excess money to spend (100mil+) that it just seems too easy to play since I'll be able to spend monstrous amounts of money on free agents each year. I need to tell myself to stop offering team friendly contracts to my young superstars because I end up accumulating so much money, especially when I have a long history of winning (so I get a big budget, and market size/ fan loyalty increase).

[marc5477]

Originally Posted by Tyler87898

Well one reason I bring this up is because if I don't sign some expensive contracts I will have so much excess money to spend (100mil+) that it just seems too easy to play since I'll be able to spend monstrous amounts of money on free agents each year. I need to tell myself to stop offering team friendly contracts to my young superstars because I end up accumulating so much money, especially when I have a long history of winning (so I get a big budget, and market size/ fan loyalty increase).

Yes, with this I agree. I generally spend only between 50%-75% of my budget thanks to my farm and frugal FA policy. In my last game I looked around the league to see if it was just me and indeed most AI teams had very large player salaries in comparison. Only 2-3 had as much money as I did but those particular teams did not need the stars on FA.

The problem is the AI had too many contract obligations to players that have become mediocre. I have noticed the AI trying to trade away big contracts that are not performing but unlike us humans, it just does not make good decisions with its money and overpays a lot of so-so players. I restarted my game and turned trading up to hard and set the AI to favor prospects. This has made it a little better but still, there are usually 2-3 stars at the start of spring training but unlike previous games, they are all gone by start of season. You might want to try the extreme and let the AI greatly favor prospects to see what happens. I would love to see how your test goes if you have not tried it.

Here is another experiment that I am trying currently:

I noticed in my previous games that too many prospects make it to the bigs. The farm system is too easy especially if you pay a lot into development. I have never had a 1st round pick fizzle. Many 2-3 rounders also make it eventually. So I figure, we need to reduce the number of good prospects created. Disclaimer: I always monopolize the best coaches in the game so my farm is insane and I spend a lot on them. From a $30m budget, I spend about $9.4m on players, $3.5m on staff, $3.5m on dev, $3.5m on scouting, $3.5m on draft. I did not come close to using all my budget yet I went to the playoffs easily (lost due to injuries like always). I have the best hitter in the league (23 y/o on a $200k 5 year contract), the best pitcher in the league (28 y/o on a $750k 10 year contract), and a insane bullpen since relievers are cheap.

My theory is to reduce the number of players created each year, thus fewer good players to go around. I learned not to follow the recommended number of feeders after my 1st game. It made a lot of 4-5 star players every draft (not counting the international players who are also too good) and waaaaaaaaaay too many 2-3 star players. The league was insanely saturated with good to great players using the recommended number of feeders. In my new game I decided to minimize everything to see what happens. I set all international stuff to minimums and reduced the number of draft rounds and resulting feeder teams.

I have a 40 team major league and 7 minor leagues:

The game recommendation is to set the draft to 7x5=35 rounds. Instead, I set it to 25 and set the creation for 26 rounds. The formula I used to give cut precedence to AAA and R leagues because they are really the only leagues that get cuts. What happens in my farm is a player either moves up to AAA or gets pushed down to R. Most of my AAA players make it to the majors or get traded but some dont and get cut once they are over 26 y/o. On the other end, players who dont perform get pushed down to R leagues and is they are 24 in that league they get cut (very few exceptions). As a result, no one gets cut in any other league (not many at least) which made me think that the recommended game settings are not good since they assume 5 people get cut from each league team. I barely cut 15-20 total every year... I assume the AI cuts more but still, if you look at the FA pool mid year, there are too many people there.

So here is what I did. I gave different weights to each league. 5 players for AAA, 1 for AA, and 1 for the 1 A & S-A and 7 for R leagues. So the total was 5+1+1+1+1+7+7 = 23. I decided to punch it up to 25 just for the sake of the AI.

Next I set high school feeder teams to 35 player roster size limits and college to 50. I made 120 high school feeders and only 40 college feeders.

The difference is 40x25/6 = 167 feeders vs. the recommended 40x35/6 = 233 feeder teams. A change of about 28% in high school/college player creation. I still get about 1200-1300 players every year. Of that, the last two draft, only the 1st 10 rounds had players with ratings over 30/80 (minus the impossible prospects). Most are gone by 8th round.

So far, so good. I can update after a few more simed seasons.

[blasek0]

The extension logic is definitely team friendly, it's frustrating when I can sign a player to a 10-year, $140mil extension when as a free agent he'd cost 10/$350mil.

What I've ended up doing was playing a fictional league where every team has the exact same budget, and self-imposing a rule where my team must remain dead-last in payroll every season. Team #27 has $89mil in player payroll? I have to spend $88mil or less. While I can still abuse the extension logic, the artificial limitation on payroll at least forces me to make decisions w/r/t salary since there's only so many star players, even ones on team-friendly contracts, I can afford to keep while still staying the bottom payroll team.

[marc5477]

Originally Posted by blasek0

The extension logic is definitely team friendly, it's frustrating when I can sign a player to a 10-year, $140mil extension when as a free agent he'd cost 10/$350mil.

What I've ended up doing was playing a fictional league where every team has the exact same budget, and self-imposing a rule where my team must remain dead-last in payroll every season. Team #27 has $89mil in player payroll? I have to spend $88mil or less. While I can still abuse the extension logic, the artificial limitation on payroll at least forces me to make decisions w/r/t salary since there's only so many star players, even ones on team-friendly contracts, I can afford to keep while still staying the bottom payroll team.

I sort of try to do the same. What I do is limit my team to only 2 top tier rating players with over 75 current rating (not including relievers), regardless of money spent. The problem however, is that due to my crazy farm, I end up getting another 1-2 every year anyway... I suppose I can just delete them or release them. If I trade them, then i just end up in the same position a few years later due to the great trades I get from those prospects...

I am restarting my league again to try to help the AI a little more.