Asunto: II.1

Eh...

I completely disagree with you... but hey... that's what's great about this game... different strokes for different folks. Many ways to be successful.

For what it's worth... my ticket sales and media sponsorship have earned me north of $750m in revenue to date (including roughly $210m so far this season alone). So I'm not all that worried about how long it'll take me to recoup my costs.

Besides... my facilities are only about $60m behind yours... So I'd hardly say I've "skimped" there. I've spent about $200m more than you on my arena though... so in terms of "brick and mortar" investments, I'm actually ahead. And it's quite reasonable that I'll continue to stay ahead in the near future.

So sure, your roster is currently stronger than mine... but buying players on the market is probably the easiest thing to do. The easy things are what you take care of after all the hard things have been dealt with. Buying players on the market is the icing on the cake, nothing more, nothing less. In the meantime, I'm happy with my squad. It's good enough to bring in the money, and my average age, CL, OR, and AQ are quite competitive even among your division, so it's not like I'm exactly "skimping" on player quality either.

Oh... and my last post doesn't even mention the fact that getting to division I.1 is absolutely worthless if you don't have the infrastructure to back it up.

Sure you can go to the market and buy the best team money can buy. But if your facilites aren't top notch, your competitors will just "train past you" ... and the "assets" you spent your money on (the players on the market) will gradually depreciate and lose value... leaving you with nothing but a shell of a team that had success for a couple of seasons.

This is EXACTLY what happened to Wasupnerd's team. He had one of the best rosters in the U.S. for a season or two... but he spent so much money on the market that his facilities and arena dragged behind his competition, and everyone else just trained their players past his. By the end, he was so far behind in facilities, that even if he HAD tried to sell some players to boost his infrastructure, he would've been seasons or years behind you guys.

Buying players on the market is something of a short term fix. Or something you do to put your team over the top. It won't work miracles... but it definitely can be a disaster.

P.P.S. I challenge you to find more than a handful of teams that have spent more money on their infrastructure (arena and facilities combined) than I have.

- I've invested more than you (as noted before).
- I've somehow invested ~$195m more than the Shadow Babies (despite him netting ~$300m in the last 3 seasons selling players
- I've invested ~$120m more than Beer and Pizza
- I've invested ~230m more than Cunning Procrastinators (despite his flurry of arena investing this season).

From what I can tell, Fighting Okra and I are neck in neck, but aside from him, only 3 teams have spent more than me on infrastructure:

1) Emus is about ~$200m ahead of me
2) Bulls is about ~262m ahead of me
3) Mojo is about ~350 ahead of me

So I tend to think I'm doing something right, because that's pretty good company to keep.


Disclaimer #1:
This quick and dirty tabulation doesn't take into account what people have in cash on hand, but i think it's close enough to the ballpark to suggest that I'm not doing too bad.

Disclaimer #2:
These posts are not at all meant to be bragging (although I am quite proud of what I've been able to accomplish). They are meant to show that contrary to what you might think, investing in the arena can still be EXTREMELY beneficial (even for teams not named Mojo).

Wow. Not going to respond to all of that point by point or even share any of my strategic opinion on where we disagree. lanky, I was not telling anyone they're doing anything wrong, only stating my opinion. I'm not sure why you took my two posts as an indictment on your team or approach. Relax. Comments like "So I tend to think I'm doing something right" are unnecessary because I was not saying that you were specifically doing anything wrong. Cool?

I will state a few things to prevent misunderstandings:
- I did not state "buy players over investing in infrastructure".
- I do not equate arena with facilities.
- I do not believe Mojo is the only team that should invest in their arena. I was specifically referring to "maxing" their arena at this point.

Have a good day everyone!

lanky, take a breath. lol

Your AQ 14 683.9 My AQ 14 605.2. That is why you kick my Butt. I have no issue admitting your team is way better than mine.

I am hopeful with my 2 new sporting directors I can start getting better pulls. I have been getting dross since day one.


Plus, without Curley and his 69 exp in play, I had not thoughts of winning or being close.

There's been a lot of discussion about the benefits of investing in the arena. Generally, the the teams that developed their arena the fastest in hockey in addition to maintaining relatively strong hockey teams were the ones that became elite teams.

For the most part, the next best teams are the ones with good arenas. There is an exception though. The Mobile Rain have been a playoff team in I.1 for a long time with relatively weak facilities and a relatively weak arena. They have seemed to spend all of their money on buying players. This is a potentially good strategy, but a very difficult one. The only other team to be effective with this strategy in hockey is the Blue Mountain Rebels. This strategy has not really worked in soccer. In the long run, the Momentum will probably pass the Mobile Rain, but it will take a very long time to match their success.

kytihu might have a point with regard to ticket sales. I've also made the same argument that it takes time to actually start earning a profit with the arena in the past, though profit accelerates and makes big money after earning back the costs. Even so, earning a media sponsor that is equal to or greater than your general sponsor must also be considered. Ticket sales make up about half of the profit from the arena at best.

To some extent, I probably agree with zomg. Handball is my 6th on my list of priorities in PPM. I'm mostly coasting in division II while maximizing my earning potential. The players I had to work with, despite investing a lot in my sports academy early on, are not good enough to compete with division I teams anyway. While I could buy a bunch of $100,000,000 players, doing so would substantially set my team back if I didn't end up winning something in I.1. On the other hand, I will more easily be able to do just that in the future with this strategy.

I've also had pretty good luck with prospects and am relatively content with my players of the future (though none of them are $100,000,000 players).

lol sorry... I didn't mean to sound irate or confrontational. I just kept thinking of things to type haha. This is all just a game/leisurely pastime after all. I know it's not that serious.

I know what you mean... I have dropped off pretty hard in the other sports. Haven't been optimizing expenses, planning out purchases/investments, keeping track of training or really anything. Handball is the ppm sport I know least about in real life, but I just like the product/game the most so I've kind of lost focus on the other sports. I feel like it's just complicated enough, while not being overly so to the point that it becomes a burden/confusing.

Hockey is way too simplistic (the training seriously seems like child's play compared to the other sports) and it lacks some of the cooler innovations of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gen products (dynamics in arena and facility construction, increased staff requirements based on factors, etc.). Soccer training is way too complicated for a non-pro/casual user to keep up with. Basketball's seasons are too short for my liking. I feel like the game just started, and I already have some staff members getting ready to retire. That's annoying to me because it makes me wonder why I should bother creating a long term strategy, when things change so fast. Its' a shame... so many games are moving towards catering to short attention spans.

So handball has largely been my focus... and I've tried to be as efficient of an owner as possible because of that.

Regarding your point on ticket sales... I think if your average attendance for a season isn't at least 75% of your average arena capacity, kytihu may be right that it's worth considering other avenues to spend money in order to improve the quality of your team. That's just the threshold I've used for my own strategy, but I think it's a good target point.

But regardless... as Zomg and you have said, investing in your arena can never "hurt" over the long run.

I seriously can't believe how lucky I was to get Sławomir Kardyka for only $3,675,000 yesterday. His OR isn't as high as some of my other 17 year olds... but his AQ is the highest on my team, and top 5 in our division. Despite being only 4/6 CL, his eQ for offensive pivot is still 76! That's higher than the eQ for most of my 6/6 CL players!

And... while the 4/6 CL does sorta suck, I know exactly where he's at. There's no mystery. He'll be 4/6 at least until he's 21.

For the first time since I started playing the handball manager 7 seasons ago, I'm actually pretty happy with how my pivot position is looking.

I just got into a "bidding war" on the market with a total fucking noob and I'm so god damn annoyed. Seriously, the dude is bidding up this poorly trained, 19 year old that's not even 600 OR like fucking gangbusters, and for what? So his level 5 training facility can fix the guy's training ratios and make him into a superstar?

Please.

I fucking hate when people with crappy facilities bid the prices up on players that they can't even utilize properly. When they could/should just buy poor AQ players with higher OR for CHEAP and get the same (or better) benefit.

I only wanted the player as a backup for the next season or two in case injuries hit, but when the price hit double what I've paid recently for guys that are starters on my team, I decided to bow out. At that point, I was bidding over 5x what I believed the player's "maximum worth" was.

I'm surprised I even stayed in as long as I did... but I guess part of me was just so dumbfounded that the other manager thought he was worth that much. The money would've been a drop in the bucket for me (literally, I'll make it back in the ticket sales of a single home game), but it must've been a huge portion of his available funds (probably all of his sponsorship money and ticket sales for a week).

Fucking retard.

/rant

Hey! Thats not completely fair. We want players.

I get that... I totally do. But from a logical standpoint, it doesn't make any sense for a manager with shitty facilities to buy a player who's a 19 y/o with 575 OR with 82 AQ for $5m when they could buy a 24 y/o with 625 OR and 65 AQ for $10,000.

If your facilities suck that bad (level 5 as mentioned above), that 19 y/o old isn't going to get THAT much better. Especially since you're spending so much money on players that you won't even be able to improve your facilities that much.

Maybe he gains 100 OR over the next 224 days... if you're LUCKY. Assume that the 24 y/o gains 50 OR in the same amount of time. So it takes 2 seasons just for your 19 y/o (who is now 21 y/o and has probably dropped in CL) to be as good as the 24 y/o was from the start.

But guess what...? Now it's possible to buy 24 y/o players with 775 OR for $10,000 (because the good managers out there have focused on their facilities and infrastructure and are producing better players with every passing day).

Oh... and guess how much your shiny 21 y/o with 675 OR and 82 AQ is worth now? You guessed it... pretty much nothing.

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Summary:
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If you have crappy facilities, or are new to the game... buying high AQ players only ends up costing you exponentially more money to field a WORSE team... while also stunting your team's infrastructure growth.

But high AQ players are "pretty" right? *rolls eyes*

It's these types of managers that end up giving up and quitting, because they'll NEVER be able to compete in a meaningful way. And caught up as collateral damage are the players that they insisted on buying (even though it wasn't rational to do so), who see their potential absolutely wasted.

I pick up high quality low OR 15yo and train and sell em. Havent started selling yet but soon...soon.

But there's pitfalls with that strategy as well. If you are ONLY buying players to train and then sell for a profit (ie, you don't need them to fill some sort of role on your team), then you have to consider their daily cost as part of their expense in your profit equation.

So if it costs you $100,000 to buy a player on the market, and $500,000 to carry him on your team for a full season of training before you sell him. You'd need to sell him for $631,000 just to break even (remember, there's a 5% fee associated with selling players).

So... looking at your team... You have implemented this strategy on SO many young guys, that you're actually 7 players over the player cap. That means that including salaries and fees, those extra 7 youngsters (that you are carrying for no reason other than the hope of "flipping" them for a profit) are costing you (I estimate) roughly $35,000 / day EACH.

If you hold onto them and train them for a full season before selling them, that's $3,920,000 that you're paying them just to camp out on your team and soak up training. That means that even if the players were free to acquire (drafted or pulled from the sports academy), your break even point is at least $4.13m.

If you hold onto them for 2 full seasons, that expense number doubles (it probably more than doubles, because your salaries and fees will be constantly rising over time as long as you're carrying the same number of players), and you'd need to sell them for at least $8.25m more than you bought them for.

None of the players you're executing this strategy on are worth that kind of money... to me at least. Especially not right now. I'd rather wait until the new season starts and spend the money on a player of similar quality, who's a year younger.

It'd be one thing if the guys you were selling were useful to teams looking towards the playoffs... but they aren't. They're players that a team buys when looking long term. And the smart teams that are looking long term are just gonna wait until the start of the new season (at which point your players are going to lose a ton of value overnight).

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If you want my personal opinion, your execution with this is all off. If you're gonna do it:

1) Pick a few true gems (3-5 players) at most so that you don't go over the roster cap. This will minimize your expense and increase potential profit margins.

2) Focus more on buying players with decent OR rather than extremely high AQ. You're going to make MUCH better money at the end of a season on selling a guy who's 15 y/o, 550 OR, and 74 AQ than on a guy who's 15 y/o, 430 OR, and 83 AQ. Teams can pull a 430 OR, 83 AQ player from their sports academy ALL SEASON LONG. Nobody is pulling 15 y/o players that are 550 OR right out of the gate. It'll probably take YEARS for the higher AQ player to make up that much ground on the higher OR player.

3) Only buy players for this strategy that are 6/6 CL. That way, if you decide the timing isn't right to sell them, you can hold onto them for an extra season or two and sell them later. If you buy 5/6 CL guys, as soon as they hit 16 years old, they'll have an intrinsic "penalty" associated with them on the market, because smart managers will be concerned that they'll drop to 4/6 CL as 17 year olds. Even if a player has really high AQ, most managers will avoid them like the plague if they hit 4/6 CL as a 17 y/o.

/ my $0.02

I'm considering selling my 21 year old pivot because I have a younger offensive pivot that is almost as good at this point. He has qualities in the 70's and still has 5 CL. If I sell him, I would probably want to sell him before his CL drops to 4. He also has great experience but only 645 OR.

Does anyone that follows the market know if a player like this is worth anything at this point? I'd probably be willing to sell him if I could reasonably expect at least a few million.