SP free agency

[stevew]

Admittedly I have not played a ton of SP. What I'm noticing is a dearth of good to great >50 rated guys hitting free agency after the initial 5 years end. I'm using default rosters and cap increases. I usually dabble in FA for depth but on occasion I will snag and dramatically overpay a player when he fills a need.

Perhaps I've missed it, but is 40 OVR equivalent to 60 OVR from previous games? Is my scout potentially this awful? Generally I do lean towards setting up a stars and scrubs type setup.

Any thoughts? Is the cap increase too high?

[Ben E Lou]

Part of this "issue" is really a good thing--the FOF7 AI is really good at cap management when it comes to keeping its good players around. That's great for having a competitive AI, but not as great if you want to be able to use free agency as the primary means to building a winner. ;)

For my personal tastes, I think it's great. You do see guys rated in the 60s and 70s in FA sometimes, but not every year. I don't think there's any denying that in both the SP and MP environments, drafting well is significantly more important than in FOF7 than it was in FOF2K7.

For what it's worth, my observation to date is that the AI does a better job of cap management than most humans do in MP leagues. As a result, there is almost always more talent available in MP free agency than in SP free agency.

[stevew]

Ok. Makes sense.

I'm also experimenting with a 4/3 for the first time ever and it at least appears like it's harder to get the type of stud D-Line you need outside of the top of the draft. Definitely noticing that those 4th and 5th round picks mean more in this version. Good to take some shots on d-line depth guys.

Also noticing the contract holdout AI finally gets it. Have been struggling to get a QB as the Bills and have already had two different mid to high 30s guys hold out after a solid season starting.

[aston217]

I haven't played SP, but I know in the last version of FOF the biggest killer of playing SP was by the second season, free agency was flush with 60-rated studs who would sign for low prices after Late FA.

There's one team in the OSFL that had the AI take over since FOF7's inception, and they ended up kind of getting killed for it. They had some big salary players that would get capped out year after year and wound up with way too much money in dead bonus to even deal with -- and more or less required AI assistance to fill their roster up to 46.

Largely, though, it does seem to do OK. And MP free agency to date has been quite flush with talent. Which I don't mind.

[molson]

I like that it seems to vary. There's years where there's a ton of teams struggling with the cap, but then there's other years where everyone is at least $8 million under, and there's nobody of value to spend the money on in free agency.