Subject: I.1

i'm not gonna get that much money i fear.

teams never really get as much as they should for players lost at midnight due to teams going dead.

god i'm so angry too. John Field and David Allen both have 45% contract reduction factors from seasonal bonuses. Ted Keenan has 40%. Roland Benedict 30%. Leo Patel had 20%.

All are lost... uggggggggg.

This is seriously heartbreaking.

I dunno guys. I might not have the will to rebuild the team. I might keep logging in so i can come back if i get the itch... but i feel like this forced fire sale is going to be incredibly traumatic for me.

I'm not against doing the rebuild... but i would have kept those few tentpoles / franchise players and built around them if i were going to do it...

I realized that my 6 roster players that will remain after the purge form a perfect 6 man roster. I have 2 wings, 3 backs, and 1 pivot all with proper handedness to make a lineup with no penalties.

so basically i just need a capable goalie or two... and i will still have a "decent" team (it will be very defensive though, as only 2 of the 6 players are trained in shooting).

so.

I've sort of decided what i'm gonna do. ... maybe. depends a bit on how much cash i make from all these sales.

A. if i don't make much cash from the sales, I'll probably get depressed, lose interest, and fade away. GAME OVER.

B. if i make a decent amount of cash, I'll probably spend a bunch of it buying very good players to fill in the few holes i have and try to stay in the number 1 spot in our league. I'll keep an eye on my old forfeited players, and as they come up for free agency, i'll do my best to reacquire them. If i manage to keep my roster size small, and i can stay competitive, i should still make money, and my costs will be a lot lower than they have been recently...

If—
BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
"Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!


A little inspirational poem.
Would hope you try again.
Too few would make the effort these days.
Don't waste all that experience!
Good luck!

Thanks for the poem and the thoughtful, supportive words friend.

yeah... i think the last couple of days have been the worst of it, because i see everyone on sale every time i click on my roster. and many of these guys have been carefully nurtured since they were babies (I personally pulled all 14 of my USA-born players that will be sold in the purge). Many have been shielded with bonuses to protect them indefinitely and allow them to stay on my team into near perpetuity.

But i'll be losing them over ... essentially nothing. Actually it's worse than that. I'll be losing them over a manifestation of my (diagnosed) ADHD. I got distracted by things in life, lost track of how much time it had been... and when i realized it, i was just 2 days too late to stop the reaper.

I can't tell you how familiar it all is to me, and that makes it so much harder to swallow. This stuff happens ALL THE DAMN TIME for me. I've suffered a lot of financial stress in my life from being late paying bills, and having to pay fees / interest for insanely silly things. I once payed over 100$ for a 2$ soda. Long story short, I had a "free" debit account, which required a 100$ minimum balance in order to remain free. I had long ago put 100$ into it and just left it. But for some reason i had the debit card in my wallet along with my other cards that I actually used. Well... one day i used the wrong card to buy a soda at some vendor because i was distracted, and in the ensuing months, the bank charged monthly "account maintenance fees" since i was now below their threshold. I only realized what had happened when those fees had put my account in the negative and the bank called me for more money... because now they could no longer freely take the money and now they wanted overdraft fees.

This stuff happens to me literally every day. struggles with keeping up with relationships, with work, with responsibilities.

But this is more painful than any of that by far... because it's not something i can fix by talking to someone and asking for their sympathy. all that time I invested into these players... i can't get that back. i can blame only myself, and i'm really hard on myself when i mess stuff up because of my ADHD (because it's happened so many times before).

anyways... hopefully once all the players are swept from my roster, i'll be able to have some peace and it won't haunt me every minute of playtime (doubltful). If i can focus on a rebuild and do it in a way which i'm comfortable with, I'll stay. But if i'm forced into doing stuff i don't really want to be doing, i probably won't stick around long...

Too many ghosts...

p.s. it'd be really, really, really nice if I could participate in these auctions. I wouldn't be able to buy anywhere close to all of my guys back, but i'd be able to at least save a few... the few guys I really cherish maybe. Because of the way money works, I'd basically be paying myself (minus the "transaction fee", so it'd be largely a net neutral transaction, but I'd only be able to spend as much money as is currently in my account... so i'd be limited in how much I could spend nonetheless.

I feel like that'd be a cool feature for the game to have, but I'm not holding my breath for anything to be implemented in PPM anymore. it's just sort of general musing.

i don't know whats worse... coming back and seeing all my players listed for sale, or sitting here and watching it transpire, knowing that there's absolutely nothing i can do to stop it.

You might consider spending credits on advertisements to ensure you get as much as you can.

You should have a decent chance at flipping your profit for a similar player. Prices in handball are frequently lower than sellers would like, but that is a benefit for buyers.

I was thinking about it... but, i put stuff in the chat sections for every listed-for-sale player profile, and I posted a massive add in the player advertisement section of the forum, and linked to it from my profile page (which all of my 300+ friends can see).

I was considering messaging specific managers around the world, giving them personal heads ups ... but i think the turn out will be okay. Just in looking at the number of people who have "bookmark bidded" thus far, I'm hoping for decent turnouts.

The biggest trouble is ... that all the auctions end at once. So even if there's a hundred people, you can't manage 20 auctions all at once.

So what will likely happen, is people will focus on a few guys that they really want / need... and leave the other players to wheels of fate.

so... some of the average guys will likely go for wayyyy cheaper than they should... but i'm hoping the bidding for the superstars goes absolutely insane.

If John Field doesn't sell for at least 200m, there's something wrong in the world. To my knowledge he's the best 24 year old player in the world... and still getting better every day. Keenan should be worth at least 100m i'd hope, but he's more complicated by his remaining contract duration and eventual UFA status...

Some of the guys that are really flying right now, i don't really understand at all. Mike Reyes and Burt Whitney are okay, sure... but i never would've thought they'd be a combined 125m right now while Keenan is 9m...

uuuuuuggggg. why do people with shitty facilities bid on players still in development? The guy currently leading the Leo Patel auction has Training and Regen facilities at level 13 and 12.5...



If Leo Patel gets broken by a stupid person, i'll be very sad. Dude is made to be a one-two punch on the USA national team with John Field.

I see this all the time as the manager of the U18 National Hockey team. A solid NT player goes on the market, and some guy with level 1 facilities bids 20m. Alternatively, a team with decent facilities gets a player but doesn't bother to pay attention to training. Sometimes I wonder if larger countries have teams purposely bid on players from other countries to sabotage them.

Tell you guys what.

If any of you wins any of the following guys, in 50 days time I'll pay you 50m more than whatever you paid for them in order to buy them back.

This is a guarantee of return on investment for the following players:
John Field
Leo Patel
David Allen

yeah. that wouldn't surprise me tbh...

Bookmark bidding often seems conducive to better sales. If the price starts off too high, then the player often seems to get fewer bids while a player that starts low allows a ton of teams to schedule a reminder to bid at the appropriate time. The availability of numerous comparably valuable players should help to increase the motivation for people to show up on time.

Selling all at once might influence sales to some extent. Hopefully enough of the bidders will be adept at using ctrl+tab and ctrl+r to manage multiple auctions at once. Some people might drop out due to financial constraints, but the winners who use up their discretionary funds wouldn't have been able to bid on future players if the auctions had been scheduled sequentially instead. Also, as some auctions are finished, the losing bidders often seem to start to get serious about the remaining players.

I've bid in a handful of these sorts of firesales. While prices for some players inflate unreasonably relative to other players, the prices tend to normalize once the auctions start in earnest. If one player gets too expensive, and a comparable player is cheap, then bidders will shift over to the other player

right now Roland Benedict is selling for a loss. He currently stands to win me 6.6m in prize money for player stats this season (which i'll lose when he leaves), and he's only selling for 6.3m atm.

*womp womp*

but i'm serious on my prior offer. even if you choose to leverage up with a loan in order to stretch to buy them, it'll be a guaranteed profit making opportunity for you if you manage to buy and then resell me one of these 3 guys:

John Field, Leo Patel, or David Allen.

The rest of the players i can learn to live without... but those guys...