FOF 2004: Salary Cap & Roster Turnover

[Robbiero67]

I'm currently in 2009 of my career and have seen more then a few teams have trouble with the salary cap (myself included :)). Several teams have lost draft picks due to this mismanagement of funds. For my 2009 draft, SIX teams have lost third round picks. This seems to be way too high. I could see this happening to a team or two every few years, but this seems a bit unrealistic.

Also connected to this sal cap difficulty has been its effect on free agency. Most teams heading into FA this year have just 16-20 players under contract. I know there is a great deal of turnover in the NFL annually, but that does seem a bit excessive. Does all of this seem normal to all of you? If not, is it just a side-effect of making this game more challenging?

[PunkyQB]

I agree completely. This has plagued me in each of the last two versions. Teams become utterly unrecognizeable year to year in my experience once the league gets a decade in. It feels more like a fantasy football keeper league than a professional football league sometimes.

To be clear, I absolutely love playing the game ... this is just an impression I'd like to express.

It's still fun, but I enjoyed the FOF series the most a few versions back when the roster turnover was substantially less.


I know, I have the same complaint about the real NFL ... but to a somewhat lesser degree. I wish it was possible to user-customize this aspect of FOF ... I'm still not completely settled on what effect messing with the salary cap inflation setting has on this except that you can increase the roster turnover using it.

[Hurst2112]

What difficulty level are you playing? I am about as far as you are in my career on wal street level. I have had numerous salary cap issues with the steelers but have avoided any penalties in loss of draft picks. I do see that there are at lease 2 teams each year that are losing picks.

Though I have not lost picks, I have lost a lot of hair trying to keep a winning team and staying under the cap. I have concluded that it is just part of the difficulty in trying to win and make money. What is fun is realizing that there are teams in your universe that ARE winning bowls and not getting penalized for cap overages. It's the classic "how the hell are they doing that" scenario for me.

I understand where you are coming from though. I guess it all comes down to how each person perceives how their career should pan out. I look at it as a challenge to put a quality team on the field without giving up the farm all the time. When things are in place, when I am pretty close to maybe "winning one this year", that's when I think about sacraficing my cap and doing something drastic.

Let it be known that I have not won a bowl yet, and have made it to the AFC Championship only once.

I am sure that Jim will take a look at the percentages of these things when he works on the patch.

Rock on!

[Robbiero67]

My team has actually been free of cap penalties, it is the CPU teams that I was referring to (I've just had some difficult decisions to make concerning sal cap issues). I was just trying to evaluate the situation in comparison to the NFL itself. I'm not sure of the exact average of player turnover each year, but it just appeared to be higher then IRL. I can deal with the roster turnover and the tough sal cap, those challenges make the game more difficult and more fun. I am certainly not asking for the game to be devolved into a more basic product. I just thought that the number of players under contract from year to year seemed to be low, as did the number of teams succumbing to penalties for cap overages.

[BigJohn&TheLions]

I've just always hated how players ask for too much and then sign with another team for a one year minimum. QB's d it way too much. I had Aaron Brooks win 3 straight MVP's with three different teams on minimum salaries!

[amdaily]

What is the normal roster turnover in real life. Going into free agency most teams have only 18 players on their roster with 60% of cap room available. Without the facts in front of me, doesn't that seem a bit off? Could the AI do a better job of extending contracts prior to their expiration?

[RPI-Fan]

Try raising the inflation rate.

[Barkeep49]

Well for me playing on Wall Street (with 0 inflation) I'm ok with the CPU forfitting picks, because some team is routinely kickin' my rear. While it isn't very realistic, as a gameplay mechanism it turns out ok all things considered imo.

[sabotai]

Did you lower the rate of inflation? I wonder if that's giving the AI trouble.

[PunkyQB]

For what it is worth, I've been spending time tinkering with the inflation rate to try to make things a little better in terms of roster turnover.

To my surprise, it doesn't seem to work. I don't have enough time to put together any kind of study at this particular moment, but my observation is that just about any attempt to give the computer ai an easier time maintaining some roster continuity collapses completely after about 10-15 seasons of play, sometime with totally chaotic results making rosters even less stable than without tinkering.

It is possible to impose roster stability for the first decade or so of a league by messing with the initial salary cap setting in a custom player file and the inflation rate, but it completely falls apart after 10-20 years and sometimes goes pretty crazy.

One observation is that the computer will spend money up to the limits of the cap, REGARDLESS of the team's balance books. Thus, imposing a $1 billion salary cap just results in players asking for, and receiving, $300 million salaries and such ... after a decade or so, you get the same cap dynamic as you would otherwise in the game (with the small caveat that the league's minimum salary will not catch up as quickly ... but this doesn't come through in helping increase roster stability).

A second observation is that maximizing the inflation rate of the salary cap seems to have a neglible impact on the computer trying to re-sign its own players. In fact, I ran a test fictional league with a $10 million cap and $10 million cap increase yearly (every player starting at ultra-minimum salaries) ... I thought this would be promising for at least a few decades of increased roster continuity in the league, but after 15 seasons I have 1/3rd of the teams actually turning over their ENTIRE starting lineup in the offseason ... so, there is clearly more to this than I understand.

But what I do know is that it looks grim for being able to play in a league where the teams around me don't change their identity completely every year or two with the customization options made available.

I don't expect this is an issue that is very important to many people, but ... for the little it is worth, I'd have so much more fun with this game if I could temper the computer roster turnover a bit somehow … any way at all.

Well, thanks to anyone who reads this. I love the game, but it would be so much more immersive if the teams I competed with had some continuity, that's all I'm trying to express.

[GabeRivers]

I'm going into my 4th season and during free agency I've noticed the same situation that amdaily described: most of the AI teams only have around 20 players on their roster with significant cap room available. In fact, I'm at the bottom of the cap room list with $16 million, staring up at teams with mega-millions. I'll echo amdaily's question: shouldn't the AI do a better job with contract extensions?

[ozias]

I guess it would also have to do with how many players have the BIG contract that costs to much to cut or trade that player.

I have had myself over the cap and lose a pick here and there, but that was my own doing by signing a couple of awesome FA's that were available.:D

The past couple of seasons while trying to recover from cap hell, I have had 14 players and 20 players left on my roster at the beginning of the next season...the good side of this is I finally freed up some cap room to spend on those awesome FA's again:D