Teema: Open Letter to PPM Staff

I think what you have to ask is this. Can you still have fun? They are not going to change it. Selling the top spots is an income resource.

Been an issue since season 2 in hockey, and as you can see. No announcment for changing Basketball. Which will open faster then you think.

To be clear, the advantage has been there. No idea if they sold the top spots in Hockey or Soccer.

They did not sell spots in hockey or soccer. But it seemed to be a big money maker for them in Handball (in some countries), so it'll probably happen in every other sport.

Mapping out expenses through 7 seasons is kind of insane. o_O

And I thought I was an OCD planner with this sim.

I'm not surprised that something unexpected happened. Even with my planning (usually 2-3 seasons in advance) there's unexpected things that pop up (for good and bad) that throw the whole estimate out of whack.

But with seven seasons... I mean how do you estimate sponsorship deals even remotely accurately that far out?

There are so many great balancing ideas in this post, I feel like PPM should ad you to their development team (an no, I'm not being at all sarcastic).

At the end of the day, the best thing PPM could figure out how to do is make the game comparable for the person who starts on the first season of a sport, with the person who starts in season 10. If they could figure that out, they'd have a real winner.

Just thinking about how other games that have had a "ladder" system have done it, a few possibilities stick out to me:

1)
There's the Diablo 2 model (where you rush to max out your player and then after a year or two they reset the ladder and everyone starts over). That would breed contempt in this sim though, as who wants to work hard (and spend money on credits) upgrading their facilities and team, only to have their progress reset after a certain amount of time?

They'd have to reward high ranking players somehow when resetting (maybe give credits to players so that they can use pro pack for free through the duration of the next ladder?). At the very least, they would have to allow them to keep all of their credit upgrades (arena spraypaint, uniforms, etc.)

2)
There's the free-to-play-browser-town-building-conquer model (where the game starts players who sign up at around the same time in divisions with other similar people. Each player has their own "space" so to speak, and isn't really even confronted with (attacked by) the long time users (who are on a different island of sorts). This would require PPM to beef up their user base significantly though. At least in the US divisions, there's no where near enough active users to justify this format.

3)
Then there's the model that I think might work best, which is somewhat unique to ppm and other sims like it. Tweak the season length or tweak the ages of players such that players reach free agency sooner. Free agency led to the manager of one of the best US managers in hockey quitting the sim because he couldn't afford to keep all of his guys (that he'd likely had for 10+ seasons or more). He quit because "rebuilding" wasn't a necessary (instilled) part of the ppm dynamic.

That's a great capping dynamic to create balance and competition. If it instead happened in 5-8 seasons or something instead of 13-15 seasons, you'd see way more competition i think.

Even if they just instituted a salary cap of some sort or something, that'd be a great long run solution in my opinion.

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Anyways... I think some of those elements or some combination of them, could really help the ppm project in the long run.

Because the fact is, as soon as someone joins a sport a few seasons in and realizes that they can never be competitive unless (basically) the players who started ahead of them all quit, they'll lose interest and probably leave (hence why there's so many start-up and stop teams in my opinion).

PPM can keep coming up with new sports to release (which is a finite solution to the problem, as there are only so many sports to pick from), or they could think of ways to make their existing model better/lasting for each sport they do have.

And I'm fine with them raising money for their project. We're all here because they do the work and keep it online, so I'm fine with them being paid.

But be honest about it.

If you have to pay to be competitive, just come out and tell people that... instead of trying to act like it's not necessary.

I have a problem with the dishonesty/false advertising more than I do the fact that they want people to help them fund their project.

(I mean heck, I'm a pro-pack owner myself, so clearly I'm fine with paying them for putting out a good product).

I based the income on : tickets, souvenirs and kept the media and general at what I am getting for season 2. Expenses were the cost to update and the length of time to complete the upgrade. Ticket sales covers salaries and maintenance. The rest covers upgrades. Any extra goes to player purchases.


I find with these games the initial group that gets to the top and maintains it will play until it becomes apparent that they cannot maintain the top. Then they follow 3 paths. 1. quit. 2. retool and maintain 3. rebuild and work their way back.

We are seeing that now play out in hockey as the second and third generation teams are now starting to gain equal footing.

That seems like a rather interesting balance sheet estimation tactic.

I feel like while it's conservative, you're also discounting one of your larger income sources in future seasons though(the escalating sponsorship offers).

I try to get my estimates as "conservatively accurate" as possible. I have player and staff costs escalate daily by a small percentage to simulate escalating contract costs, I factor in exact facility and maintenance costs (without the maintenance/custodian discount), and even I plug in a conservative (in my opinion) estimate for increase in sponsorship deals (I use a baseline of 1.5x per season).

The sponsorship is where my model takes on it's form though, as I also do some scenario analysis and stress testing (ie, what happens to my model if I get only a 0x increase or a 1.25x increase in sponsorship income? Or what happens if I get a 1.75x increase or a 2x the sponsorship income?)

In each of the 5 scenarios (0x, 1.25x, 1.5x, 1.75x, 2x), I'll have a plan of action for that coming season, complete with construction, expenses, and income for that year.

So my analysis splits apart like a tree (5 paths after 1 season, 25 after 2 seasons, 125 after 3 seasons)... which is why I don't go more than 3 seasons out. As it is, I only actually plan construction up through the 25 scenarios (the 125 is for balance sheet estimates only). I feel like I'm covered very well for anything and everything in those 3 seasons though... and the model is constantly updated with the new "ACTUAL" values at the start of each season, so that it remains as accurate a 3 year outlook as possible.

While player sales, etc. still provide some unknowns, I'm happy to at least have things somewhat realistically planned out.

The youth School is the biggest Problem when it comes to differences between Teams.
Some are lucky and are pulling twice as many good youth Players than other Teams.
I would really like to know how such big differences can happen when your facilities are at the same Level?

I speak about GS:130-160/one star and on the other Hand GS:240-290...4 stars more than once.

Nobody can explain that. It doesnt make sense.

That's the way it's supposed to work. It's random. Most teams will get the same kinds of players. But since it's random, there will always be some teams getting more good players than everyone else and there will always be some teams getting fewer good players than everyone else. That's how random works.

I don't know tujague.

1) It's hard for me to believe it's completely random, given that the players with the best pulls time and time are the teams in the upper leagues.

2) Besides... even if it is random, as you suggest, I think the system is still broken. I've seen some teams recently post SA results that are absolutely horrid (worse at level 8 and 9 than we even saw at level 2 and 3).

I have a feeling that the setup works something like this:
lvl 1:
min OR = 120
max OR = 145 (average of 132.5)

each level max OR increases 25 points, while min OR stays the same.

Therefore, level 10 would be:
min OR = 120
max OR = 345 (average of 232.5)

That average improvement looks great, but the range/standard deviation is just crazy... One person will get a guy that's 311 while another person with the same level SA gets a guy that's 137 OR. "Random" doesn't always equal "fair."

I'd rather have something where the min AND the max increase each level (say +5 to min and +15 to max).

Using the previous example level 10 would instead be:
min OR = 165
max OR = 280 (average of 222.5)

The results are similar to the first example (what I imagine the status quo is), but it eliminates some of the crazy outliers that can make things unbalanced.

Just my $0.02

I agree with you,i would even think for example Level 10 could be: min OR:190....max OR:290
now ist just crazy and unfair.
I know Teams who are pulling twice as many good youngsters (OR:220-290) than others in the almost 2seasons now.

Yep... it's frustrating because the same thing has happened here in the US leagues too. I look at some of the teams that I might have to compete with next year (and beyond) and just shake my head. Sure they've been managed well and everything, but nothing makes managing your team easier than "randomly" getting really great players early on.

For instance, it allows you to sell players on the market, while others can't. It allows you to win season and playoff prize money. It allows you to do well in the national cup (possibly giving you access to revenues from the cup winner's tournament). And so on.

I think the goal should be a system where things are more fair when everything is equal.

So basically, a team that started on day 1, and has the same level of facilities, should be able to compete and win (to some degree) against another team with the exact same conditions.

There are teams out there right now that would blow me out regardless of what I do that are pretty much mirror images of my team (except for our players).

I can't complain too much because I've had fairly average pickups this season (most random rolls so far have been between 180 and 215, with several lower and a few in the 215-250 range). I haven't gotten any of those horrifying 124 OR pulls that I've seen other (comparable) teams get... but I've had my fair share of heartbreaking pulls that make me wonder why I even try.

Problem is that, people who get beter players when others are realy happy and they do not whan any changes, so we have same system all time long...

haha... but ppm has made changes before that people didn't like. They raised the cost of credits before. I'm sure nobody liked that... but yet they're still here.

Some people might complain about changes... but tweaks that make things more competitive are a good thing in the end.

Anyone who is getting great players now, and prefers the easy winning isn't much of a manager at all. A real manager should want good competition.