BuzzerBeater Forums

You can wade through global for all the whining about the salary increase... However, there was one post that BB-Charles made in the U21/NT forum that I thought everyone would find interesting. I also feel kind of vindicated, since I hotly debated this with one manager in particular last season on the off-site forum who said that soon, these highly trained NT monsters will be quite affordable:

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If you train a player, their skills go up and their salary goes up. This is true independently of changes in the salary curve. So, the players who are training had their skills go up and their salary go up. The multiskilled players who are not training had their salaries go up around 10%. The monoskilled players who are training also had their skills go up and their salaries go up. The monoskilled players who are not training had their skills stay the same and their salaries go up around 10%.

I agree with you that you are discovering that what is best for national teams is not what is best for club teams. All teams tend to want to train players who are slightly better than their opponents at everything - that's the best use of salary. This typically means that a top national team wants better players than a top club team wants.

In return, players who are playing on their national team generating merchanding revenue which helps to pay for their salary. When all teams are earning a ton of money anyway, this doesn't matter. But, when teams are spending most of what they take in, this extra merchandising money is quite valuable, which means that an owner with a national team-caliber player might be able to be talked into continuing to give him some training in return for getting him to play every week. Both sides have some leverage and both sides have to agree. Kind of like real-world club vs. country problems, huh?

I think what you are really reacting to is noticing that a division III team cannot afford to keep one of the top players in the game. This is by design. The truth is, a top division team *can* choose to pay $400k/week for a star player as long as they build their team accordingly. Is this an optimal team? Probably not, but it's a good way for somebody who just promoted to build a team strong enough to keep them in Division I because it's cheaper on the transfer market than buying 5 $80k players. This means that national teams are not going to be able to find Division V farm teams for their top players - they're going to actually have to make do with whatever players the top club teams are producing.

I'm sorry if this disappoints you, but it's been the inevitable result since national teams were introduced. We've been saying pretty consistently that the game needed to reach equilibrium and that until it did, there would continue to be adjustments. And that in the equilibrium state, we expect the top players to be affordable for top division teams only, but we also expect that top division teams will use their entire budget each season and therefore a newly promoted team will be able to buy enough players to compete. We're not *quite* there yet - the first generation of the most talented players has not quite yet hit their skill cap. But we're getting close to finally being in a stable state. The current top end of the salary curve is now very close to where it will be permanently. This means that next season, you'll probably see that players who train go up in salary and players who do not train go down a little in salary.

But if you're shocked and dismayed that players who train go up in salary, well, I'm afraid you're going to continue to be shocked and dismayed the rest of the time you play BuzzerBeater.

Thanks for posting this.

I am curious how you think this will affect the Canadian NT. I have a feeling this may be really good for our NT, as alot of the high end teams (Italy, Argentina etc) are going to have major issues. Most of there top guys are mono skilled monster who have had huge jumps in salary. Top end owners are not going to be able to afford having several of these guys on there club roster.

Personally thanks to some good advice from HPP, RiP and Mogul I have developed a balanced team that has kept it salaries down. I had a salary of 98K last season and will be around 145 this season. Obviously to get to the next level I am going to have to continue to train solid players, but as evident on several other teams salary is not everything.

I am curious how you think this will affect the Canadian NT. I have a feeling this may be really good for our NT, as alot of the high end teams (Italy, Argentina etc) are going to have major issues.

Maybe but I doubt it. These countries have a lot of monsters to work with and people who are willing to sacrifice club success for the NT. I care about the U21 and NT but I am not going to sacrifice my club team for them. And so far, I have yet to see evidence that anyone in Canada's Naismith would do it, either. AM may be the first to have to do so, if Moran continues to get full training. Maybe RIP will do it with his 9 season plan to train Abu-Kaleel, but that's a long time and who knows what will happen in between.

What I said on the forum was that we need to rethink our strategy as a country and to find people who are willing to train multi-skilled beasts. I think that's the only way we will be able to seriously compete. However, even in this respect we are already behind, as it was not exactly a new idea at the time.

Of course, RIP's opinion was that everyone in Naismith will eventually have a mono-skilled beast on their roster and that Canada's NT in the future will consist only of HOF and ATG potential players. Maybe if fully trained HOF and ATG players become common place, he will be right. But the way people are already trying to dump these players for virtually nothing on the TL, my guess is there will not be a mad rush to do this. So $550K salaries for the top players are likely to stay for some time, maybe forever.

Another one from BB-Charles in a fed that I am in:

There seemed to be an expectation by the BB's that the top teams would compete for titles by buying the highest salary players. That hasn't happened and the top teams are the ones that have built quality across their lineup more evenly.

Actually, our expectation was that top division teams would compete by buying the highest salary players - there's a difference. The idea is actually that buying a monster is a quick way for a team who has salary space but not a ridiculous amount of cash (i.e., a newly promoted team or one just avoiding relegation and ready for an upgrade) to quickly become competitive. My experience with one of the first of these one-player teams has been that it was a great way to stay afloat in USA's division II (when about 60% of my salary budget was for one player competing against teams on similar budgets) but was ultimately a strategy that would not let me progress further. To get better, I finally had to go backwards and lose some games while redesigning the team.

In many ways, it's like enthusiasm management that includes several regular-season crunch times. It's a good way to claw your way to around 9-13 and a decent chance to stay up, but it's probably not going to get you to the B3 anytime soon.

I expanded my arena as much as possible 3-4 seasons ago, so that when the time was right, I could afford to have a couple monster salary players on my team (as I do now). This season will be the first that I'm making nearly no money each week (unless I make changes). With better results, my team should be able to pull in more income... though had my team come in 3rd, 4th or 5th last season, I may have had to sell one of Domzal or Moran due to the weeks with no home games. However by coming 6th, I got over 800k in gate receipts from my relegation series with Molson Canadians... and I am able to finish in the black at the end of the season. However, I will probably need to try in my cup games this season, to offset the extra costs in player salaries... though I will continue to keep out key players in cup games, if they pull in too many minutes during my league games (as I did last season).

What sort of impact do people think this is going to have on the transfer market as a whole?
Obviously the mono-skilled monsters in the $100k+ salary range are going to be harder to move with their salary increases, but it looks like salaries went up across the board. Do people think that the $15k -$25k per week players will cost less on the transfer market in the immediate future? What about prospects?

I would not say that Moran is a "monster salary player", at least not yet. I think if you are in Naismith and you don't have at least one player like that, you are in a bit of trouble this season. Domzal I would be inclined to agree, though.

$100k+ salary range are going to be harder to move with their salary increases

I would go higher than that and again it seems to vary by position. I noted that one of the best PGs in the world still commanded over 9 million this week (with a salary of 300K+).

I suspect that everything will trickle down but it could take some time. I have certainly noticed a down turn in the market, even before the salary increase, but others said I was wrong. I personally think there is more supply than ever in the 80k+ range and that is probably reducing the prices more than anything. For example, I noted that prices for balanced PGs and PFs have basically not been impacted at all. But they certainly have taken a turn for SGs and Cs.

I think if you are in Naismith and you don't have at least one player like that, you are in a bit of trouble this season.

uh oh

uh oh

There is always at least one exception to the rule, though. ;-)

The New Brunswick Maddogs in II.1 just sold their 150k PG and he went for just over $9.5 million about 2 days ago. And I have Teo up to see what kind of offers I can get on him for the future