Teema: Players' starting OR imbalance

Seems there was a change not so long ago on new teams. Players' starting OR was basically doubled, to 500-plus from the 250-275 range.

This might make sense by itself, now the game has reached a certain age and the average OR across all players is higher than ever.

But the OR on academy grads was not changed to follow suit. This means my level 13 academy is still producing grads under 300 OR -- even the better ones. Which means they won't be any use to anybody for a VERY long time, even with good qualities.

Not to beat up on new teams -- older teams will beat up on them anyway -- but it just seems to me that the reasoning for boosting the starting OR's should apply in both cases, or neither.

Thoughts?

Initial OR of players on new teams is based on the skill of teams in their league. The reasoning is, this way they won't be consistently blown out time and time again which causes a lot of newcomers to leave.

The academy shouldn't have the initial OR of players raised... it already produces too good of players too fast in my opinion. It should be hard (economically and roster-wise) to field a team full of stars.

sub-300 OR players can be useful. I have several that are now on NTs. You just need proper training facilities to manage them. As a new team, you should use the market not the SA to build your team anyway.

"Team full of stars"?! By my count it would take about 18 real-life months to train up my best academy grads enough to be able to compete for a spot on my FOURTH line.

This is with level 13 training and academy. And on a mediocre team playing at the third tier.

If 18 months to make the fourth line on a third-tier team is "too good too fast," then I'm pretty much flabbergasted at how long people are expected to commit to playing this game.

Newer teams are still getting slaughtered by older teams anyway. The reasoning for raising starting OR's MUST be the average OR of all players in the game, and that has to apply to academy grads equally as to new-team players, or you have an imbalance.

DaveM, are all these 500+ OR players also 15 years old?

New teams get players 18-20-something years old.

Then I don't see the issue here.