FOF 5.1a Bug - Showstopper in Single and Multi-Player

[Pyser]

it seems that the majority of players in 5.1a will accept any contract offer of any value, so long as you dont change the signing bonus. even if you offer them the minimum salary for a number of years. for example:

kyle turley wanted a deal that looks like the one on the left, and signed the one on the right


.............................his asking.................what he signed for
signing bonus.............$10,200,000............$10,200,000
year 1.......................990,000..................990,000
year 2.......................5,450,000................990,000
year 3.......................5,760,000................990,000


this seems to work with any player asking for a 3 year deal, and certain players asking for 4 or 5 year deals, too (but not all).

like an idiot, i tried this out on my multiplayer league, and pretty much ruined it until we go back to 5.0d or get an update from jim (if one is deemed needed). i signed multiple players to 3-5 year deals with big bonuses, but only the league minimum for every years salary.

can anyone else confirm this?

[stevew]

Maaan, we were just starting to do free agency in wigfl too.

[VPI97]

I just confirmed it through my own tests with IHOF files. This is very serious, indeed.

[JeeberD]

Crap. I don't like the sound of this... :(

[Cap Ologist]

I'm so tired of reinstalling and having to go into reshacker to get things back the way I like them.

[VPI97]

This is as designed. Bonuses mean everything in the NFL, and players do not value raises very highly because they can be released in any year.

If you want to take negotiating to the extreme and offer minimum salary in every year, that's up to you. Jim, Every example I have tried results in a player accepting an offer for his bonus + minsal for three seasons. This is by design?

[Solecismic]

This is as designed. Bonuses mean everything in the NFL, and players do not value raises very highly because they can be released in any year.

If you want to take negotiating to the extreme and offer minimum salary in every year, that's up to you.

[yabanci]

bonuses do mean a lot, but it's entirely unrealistic to suggest that salaries mean absolutely nothing and that all players will accept the veteran's minimum salary.

[Pyser]

Oh. Sorry, Jim. That's definitely not what I expected to hear. Um...yeah. I've never seen anything near that extreme in real life, but as you say, FOF isn't entirely based on real life.

[Cap Ologist]

But isn't there a rule that by the third year, the base salary has to be equal to a certain percentage of the signing bonus. I think it's called the Deion rule, because when Jerry signed him, he paid him a big bonus, but then minimum base salaries for the first couple of years.

[Nwobhm]

It might be a good design if the player needed a much higher bonus than he was asking for, for him to accept the league minimums. As is stands now, this is unrealistic and clearly needs fixing. Players in real life might accept a smaller overall package if there was more guaranteed money, but this is extreme.

[Solecismic]

So, Pyser, you're privvy to negotiations between players and teams?

I've heard of the Deion rule, but haven't seen it written out, and it isn't implemented in the game. It certainly isn't exactly that. Take a look at any rookie's contract - it's minsal for the first four-five years. This is the trend in the NFL, and so I've placed the movement that once was across the contract more in the salary end.

[stevew]

Is the "excessive backloading with small bonus", ala the "Chubby Contract" now unacceptable to a player, or not valued by them as a plus?

[VPI97]

Here are a couple that I've seen:

current contract = 1 year left with $1,070,000 + $40,000 bonus
Asking Signed
Bonus $5,390,000 $5,390,000
Year 1 $710,000 $570,000
Year 2 $2,470,000 $700,000
Year 3 $3,080,000 $700,000
Year 4 $3,690,000
Year 5 $4,560,000
Year 6 $5,250,000

current contract = 1 year left with $1,260,000 + $40,000 bonus
Asking Signed
Bonus $110,000 $110,000
Year 1 $700,000 $700,000
Year 2 $1,000,000 $700,000
Year 3 $1,400,000 $800,000

[Cap Ologist]

A quick google search produces:

hxxp://www.vertgame.com/sal_cap.html

NFL Salary Cap and Minimum Salary Scale http://www.vertgame.com/images/graysqua.gif



Rookie salary pool (http://www.vertgame.com/rookie_pool.html)

Note: the 2004 salary cap is $80,582,000 per team, compared to last year's $75.007 million.<!-- The 2005 cap is expected to be between $78.7 million and $79.2 million per team, subject to adjustment after the league's final gross revenues are determined. -->



The NFL salary cap is the absolute maximum each club may spend on player salaries in a capped year. For 2003, that amounted to 64.25% of league-wide "Defined Gross Revenues" (divided by 32 teams), made up of preseason, regular-season and postseason gate receipts and radio and television rights. For 2004 it rises slightly, to 64.75% of said revenues. The salary cap remains in effect at all times, although certain exceptions may make it appear as though it's not being applied at times. (See below.)

A team may not exceed this cap with the salaries of players that are under contract and on their roster. If a team does exceed the salary cap at any time, the NFL can waive players from the team, starting with those earning the lowest salaries, until the team's payroll has fallen under the cap. In addition, the NFL may fine a team up to $1 million per day for exceeding the cap.

Teams must spend at least $67.3 million under the cap rules.

Only players under contract count toward the salary cap. Free agents do not count toward the cap until they sign a contract with the team.

Often it may appear that the cap is not in effect. How, for example, can teams have up to 80 players on the roster (in training camp) yet not exceed the cap? Here's the explanation.

From the day free agency begins—this year, that's March 3, 2004—to the day before the season begins, a club's top 51 salaried players count towards the cap, plus pro-rated signing bonuses, incentives, etc., but not base salaries of other players on the roster up to 80. Thereafter, all salaries on a club's roster count towards the cap.

To get around the cap, teams typically structure their player contracts in such a way that much of the money is designated as "signing" or "roster" bonuses, or "incentive clauses." A signing bonus or roster bonus does count toward the cap but is prorated over the length of the contract, even though the entire bonus has been paid in cash 'up front' to the player. When you read about a player and team agreeing to restructure a contract, it virtually always means that the player has agreed to convert at least a good part of his coming season's base salary into a signing bonus.

Incentive clauses are often made easy to reach as an indirect means of playing a player more while keeping his "base salary" low. Too easy to reach, however, and they're likely to be considered salary by the NFL, which must approve all contracts. For instance, if Drew Bledsoe, who's big and known for being immobile, had an incentive clause paying him $1 million for each game he started, the NFL would almost certainly rule that such payments are salary rather than genuine incentives, since Bledsoe has been a starter for many years. But a clause paying Bledsoe a bonus if he rushes for 500 yards would be legitimate, since he's known for his lack of mobility.

There are many additional rules, some of them highly technical. An example is the so-called "Deion Sanders rule" that was enacted after Dallas owner Jerry Jones gave Sanders a (then-)astronomical $13 million signing bonus, combined with base salaries of the then-minimum salary of $178,000 for the first three years. The new rule states that the first three years of any player's salary must equal the prorated amount of the signing bonus. The intent is to restrict circumvention of the salary cap.

Here's another little-known technicality. Those "likely to be earned" incentives mentioned above? Well, when they're not reached, they become cap credits the following year, which can mean a hidden bonanza for an underachieving franchise. A team that plays poorly, and which writes incentives into many of its player contracts, may actually reap a reward the year after. Case in point: the 2004 Vikings, who are an astounding $33 million under the cap. In actuality, the Vikings' cap is almost $95 million, because Minnesota gets more than $14 million in cap credits this year for "likely to be earned" incentives that weren't earned by their players in 2003.

Player benefits currently are $12,156,000 per club above the salary cap number.

[Pyser]

i never claimed to to be privvy to negotiations.

I just can't recall a top tackle signing a 3 year, $13-mil deal, with $10-mil being a signing bonus. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong.

I see rookies sign those deals all the time. But not top veterans. That's what I was trying to say. I guess I don't understand why it's up to us to determine what a fair contract is. The goal of the salary cap is to charge your players as little as possible. Why do they even ask for $5-million if they'll settle for less than $1-mil in every year?

[Solecismic]

Yes, that strategy would not work well. It really didn't work all that well after 5.0b.

In case people didn't notice, renegotiation was broken in version 5, period. Players never accepted anything less than they wanted unless you really jacked up the salaries. So what you're seeing is 1) a bug fix and 2) a much greater emphasis on bonus money.

Before you declare it broken, understand that it was broken in the past, and I never got a single bug report on it.

[VPI97]

All I'm saying is that it seems weird when all you have to do to renegotiate is give the bonus + minsal. Anytime negotiations seem to boil down to a steadfast rule like that indicates to me that it's likely a bug.

[yabanci]

Here you can look at the salaries of any player in the NFLPA:

http://www.nflpa.org/members/main.asp?subPage=Active+Player+Search

[Pyser]

i labelled it a bug because a good number of people in my MP league immediately complained about my renegotiated contracts, and asked me to post about it here. and others in the thread certainly seem to agree. if this is the way the game is intended to be, im sure my league, and others, will have to institute house rules.

[stevew]

I dont have FOF working right now, my windows computer is currently broken. In a multiplayer situation, say if one team was to offer the min sal plus the guys desired bonus, and the other team was to offer one million less than the desired bonus and the desired salaries, which would the player choose.

[Pyser]

steve, with unrestricted free agents, id assume it works like normal. the most upfront (bonus+first year) money generally wins the player.

we are talking more specifically about renegotiating players on your own team.

[Solecismic]

I have been reviewing the code over the last hour. If there's a bug here that's been revealed by fixing the bug that essentially prevented renegotiations, I'll find it.

VPI's examples don't seem too serious to me - the player isn't giving back a lot when you look at it based on guaranteed money and money per season. The Turley one, though, is a little odd in that I'd be okay if he were willing to drop to about $3 million in years 2 and 3, but what's being reported seems like it might be outside what I programmed in as the lowest valuing possible of this type of contract.

[Eaglesfan27]

There are literally dozens of contracts like the Turley one in our MP league, as Pyser renegotiated his whole team to similar deals. Only a few players said no.

[yabanci]

Where you really see the effect of this is when you have good young players late in their contracts.

I have a 4th year quarterback, one of the best to have come through our drafts, and he's willing to do a 6 year deal with a $5 million bonus. That means I can lock him up for career years 4-9 for just $1.7 million per year. He's demanding $30 million, but under the new system I only have to pay him about $8.5 million

I also have a 5th year running back in the last year of his contract. He wants a 5 year, $40 million deal, but now I only have to pay him about $13 million, which would be about $2.6 million per year during years 5-9 of his career.

In other words, under the new system I can buy a total of 11 prime years of service at two of the most expensive positions for just $22 million instead the $70 million I normally would have had to pay.

I have a 3rd year LT, picked #7 in the draft, with 3 years left on his rookie contract. After I renegotiate to give him 2 more years, I'll save money on each of the three existing years and in years 6 and 7 of his career I'll only have pay him about $1.2 million per year. A top LT in years 6 and 7 of his career being paid only $1.2 million.

The effect is that you can lock up all of your players for so little money that the salary cap, which assumes players are actually being paid salary, becomes irrelevant. Our salary cap is $105 million now. Three years from now it will be $126 million and I'll be paying my QB, RB, and LT a combined total of $5.5 million. I have a bunch of other positions I can lock up for dirt cheap also, and everywhere else I'll be able to save loads of money by eliminating salary.

Another example from pyser's team. He has a 5th year RT, rated 50/55, a starter for the last four years. He was signed to a 5 year, $6.19 million contract. That's five prime years at an average of about $1.24 million with essentially no risk because the max cap hit if something went wrong would be a little over $2 million, which is irrelevant when all your players are so cheap.

The examples are endless, but one thing that's for certain is the financial ramifcations of effectively eliminating salaries from the game are huge. I've been looking at this for hours and all I can see is that our league will go haywire if we go forward on 5.1a.

[Buzzbee]

we are talking more specifically about renegotiating players on your own team.
Just to clarify, is this ONLY with renegotiations, or does this happen with free agency as well?

[Samdari]

VPI's examples don't seem too serious to me

Except that they violate NFL rules for player contracts.

"the first three years of any player's salary must equal the prorated amount of the signing bonus."

Thus, if the contract is three years or less, the salary must equal the bonus.

[gstelmack]

I'd have no problem with this if it is happening in Free Agency only. Other teams can step in and offer more than the minimum salary and steal the player away if you're trying to get away with just min sal.

If I can renegotiate a guy in his last year to bonus + minsal, that would be a much bigger deal, as it will greatly reduce the number of free agents and make it much easier to keep a team intact. I don't know how much the new financial model will kick in to counter this, though, so it's hard to gauge the full impact. And I'd have to know if guys expect a larger bonus to sign an extension vs. sign in FA where they have the potential to earn more (i.e. if the same player wants an $8mil bonus during the season but only a $6mil bonus in FA, that means he is wanting more to extend).

As to why no one "noticed" in the last version, I actually remember it being commented on (guys just won't reduce their demands much), but no one complained hard because it made signing people more difficult and made the game more of a challenge. This issue seems to swing in the other direction.

Of course, people were also griping that the big names wanted astronomically ridiculous salaries and were taking up too large a chunk of the salary cap, and this would sure fix that problem, wouldn't it?

So my conclusion after all that rambling? I think we need to play out some seasons to see if this has a real impact or not.

[Warhammer]

Just some stuff I found from doing some digging on St. Louis Rams contracts:

Players playing for league minimum, or close to it:
Torry Holt
Marc Bulger
Kyle Turley

Players playing for more than vet minimum:
Isaac Bruce (4.7 mil)
Marshall Faulk (2 mil)
Aeneas Williams (2 mil)
Orlando Pace (6 mil, but he was franchised)

I think the one thing that all of these point out (with the exception of Bruce), most of the players are paid far below what I would consider an average salary. Some of their bigger name players are playing for the league minimum. I think this backs up Jim fairly well.

[Chubby]

Come on I want this to be "Chubby's Front Office Football" not Jim's vision of the game. I want 5 pt field goals and 5000 sack LBs every season, I demand a fix to the "bugs" that prevent these.

[cthomer5000]

Come on I want this to be "Chubby's Front Office Football" not Jim's vision of the game. I want 5 pt field goals and 5000 sack LBs every season, I demand a fix to the "bugs" that prevent these.
It's nice that we always have your cool head to contribute to these situations.

You're arguing making it "more realistic" over on the IHOF boards, but some have pointed out that this allows contracts that violate NFL rules. To me (and apparently others), this seems like much top big a swing in the other direction as far as contract negotiation.

[Samdari]

It's nice that we always have your cool head to contribute to these situations.

You're arguing making it "more realistic" over on the IHOF boards, but some have pointed out that this allows contracts that violate NFL rules. To me (and apparently others), this seems like much top big a swing in the other direction as far as contract negotiation.

I think that having players consider the bonus plus first year as most of their decision on which contract to accept is accurate. I just think that the Deion rule quoted several times here limits the amount of time before owners have to make hard decisions about players (or simply renegotitate). This is, IMO, a good thing and more accurately models the decisions NFL GM's need to make. THAT is what those of us who consider this a problem are looking for - simulation of those kinds of decisions. I think most people who are looking for that feel that FOF is the best such simulator, but there is a clear, defineable failure to achieve that goal in this case.

[Blackadar]

Come on I want this to be "Chubby's Front Office Football" not Jim's vision of the game. I want 5 pt field goals and 5000 sack LBs every season, I demand a fix to the "bugs" that prevent these.

Don't troll. 'nuff said.

[Abe Sargent]

I consider it a showstopper as well.

-Anxety

[cuervo72]

In case people didn't notice, renegotiation was broken in version 5, period. Players never accepted anything less than they wanted unless you really jacked up the salaries. So what you're seeing is 1) a bug fix and 2) a much greater emphasis on bonus money.

Before you declare it broken, understand that it was broken in the past, and I never got a single bug report on it.

We certainly had an owner in FOFL bitch about it stage after stage of failed negotiations (not sure why he didn't report is as an official bug).

[sachmo71]

That's a huge exploit...especially since salary is often converted to bonus dollars as a term of renegotiation. If a player only has a minsal salary every year, the need to renegotiate disappears - and renegs that do happen are as cheap as possible.


I agree.

[Subby]

That's a huge exploit...especially since salary is often converted to bonus dollars as a term of renegotiation. If a player only has a minsal salary every year, the need to renegotiate disappears - and renegs that do happen are as cheap as possible.

[Warhammer]

Another thing though, by having everything based upon minimum salary and a big bonus, you will not gain much, if anything by further renogtiations.

[cuervo72]

Oh, how I love renegotiations...I have a 6th year RG who is rated by my scout at 79/83. He is making $10M/$11M the next two years, half of that in bonus. He wants to renegotiate a new deal for $4.4M over 3, saving me $4M this year, $5M next, and getting a year added to his deal for $2M.

Behold, the power of loyalty (82)! :D

[Suicane75]

As someone in a MP league, this really worries me, it seems as though a league could be brought to a dead stop if this is exploited as far as Free Agency goes.

[RealDeal]

Sorry, Jim. But this just wasn't a good idea.

[stevew]

I did think that contracts didnt work all that well before, but i thought it was just "in my opinion." So i started just offering guys what they want so that i could get a deal done. I suppose what I'd be looking to see is a combo of the old way to extend, and the new way. Guys wanting a Big bonus, but maybe half-3/4 of the contracts they signed previously.

I think one of the issues is that in real life, a team and a player may agree on a 3 year 15 million dollar contract, with a 10 million bonus, but it will be reported as like a 5 year 27 million contract for the papers & salary cap.

That type of situation is probably impossible or very hard to code.

[Gallifrey]

When there are talks about salary and bonus money in the NFL I remember what my late father in law who played in the league for six years told me;

'It is all about the bonus. ***k the salary, you might cut me and I'm screwed. Give me the money up front and it is you (I think he was saying 'team' here) who is ***ked if you cut me'.

Those old school football guys were a trip.

[Abe Sargent]

When there are talks about salary and bonus money in the NFL I remember what my late father in law who played in the league for six years told me;

'It is all about the bonus. ***k the salary, you might cut me and I'm screwed. Give me the money up front and it is you (I think he was saying 'team' here) who is ***ked if you cut me'.

Those old school football guys were a trip.


Heh, that's a good story.

To those who are unconvinced, you can build a super-powerful team because the overall cap impications are reduced significantly. One of the main reasons for this, in fact, is that it is unrealistic. There are very few cases where a player wants a contract with 50 million dollars, 12 million of it as a signing bonus and just agrees to the signing bonus in full and an additional 2 mill in salaries over four years. You can cut ALL requested salary by any player no matter the demands. That's broken folks.

-Anxiety

[amdaily]

Can't believe it took someone so long to notice this. I've just be negotiating as usual, and hence never came across a problem like this.

It could explain why a handful of AI teams have 20% of the cap room free each season and another dozen have about 10% free. I don't recall that being as issue before.

But on another note, I consider this an exploit, especially in single player, as the AI doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the "bug fix." They still sign both their free agents and renegotiated deals to more traditional contracts (2 years at minimum, 3-4 at a high salary).

[Icy]

Probably the best would be a mid term, players giving a big value to bonus but also to the salary after the two first years.

[Thul]

But in this version, will there be any salary to convert? You can never get rid of bonus money. Renegotiating is just going to pile it on. The problem comes, because most leagues have "old version" contracts with high bases and low bonuses, which don't convert well to the new version. As those phase out, and as competition rises (raising bonus money), I think this will begin to even out.

I agree with Jim's point on the spirit of the change, even if it's a bit extreme at the moment. Bonus should count for something, and it didn't in the previous version.

There have always been quirks we've had to adapt to. Being a player who jumped from FOF 2 to FOF 2004, I'm glad to see him bring up the point that the previous negotiation code was downright broken. I never understood why I couldn't negotiate downwards at all...except maybe 500k or so. It took me a long while to adapt to that version's quirks. I finally realized that, in the previous version, bonus money was really undervalued. All I had to do was pump up the base salaries and the contract would be more attactive.

At any rate...being able to offer the min base in all cases is extreme, but I'm not sure its a game stopper anymore than the past quirks were. House rules may be needed until some of the old contracts phase out.

Edit: Of course, the one flaw in my logic is that there will be competition in the first place. I'm seeing now that players may never get to the point of going to free agency so that competition can kick in.

That's a huge exploit...especially since salary is often converted to bonus dollars as a term of renegotiation. If a player only has a minsal salary every year, the need to renegotiate disappears - and renegs that do happen are as cheap as possible.

[stevew]

Are holdouts signficantly upped? Them being upped would at least make this more realistic.

[chinaski]

I dont see how this could be considered anything but a show stopping bug. When a player will automatically accept any offer, as long as his bonus demands are met, thats a major flaw. In solo leagues you could get by on a house rule, but this is unpolicable in multiplayer leagues.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Some thoughts...

In the NFL, the ridiculous backloaded years of player contracts (usually the last couple of years) are as a rule never paid, as the contracts are either renegotiated at that time or the player will be released. In one sense, they are meaningless, in that they will never be paid.

However, they do serve a critical function in that they determine, de facto, the length of the contract. If a quarterback sings a five-year deal, with the last two years at a ridiculous salary, in essence, the contract becomes a three-year deal, with renegotiation happening at the end of the third year. In FOF, if quarterback accepts any salary amount for the last few years, he is essentially agreeing to a five-year deal with great advantage going to the signing team, as there is no reason the team would want to renegotiate the last two years if they are at minimum salary. This, IMHO, would have a huge impact on the game, especially if the human player does this and the AI doesn't. In essence, it serves to lengthen contracts by a significant amount and make them cheaper for the team.

Having said that, in single player, I don't allow myself to renegotiate contracts, so this isn't a problem for me personally.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Dola...

I'm not sure how I see this as being a showstopper in multiplayer. Everyone will do it, no? So isn't the playing field the same for everyone? I could see it creating problems in leagues where some teams are run by the AI, but aren't most FOF leagues at full capacity?

Could someone explain in what ways it ruins multiplayer, if the league is full?

[cwilloughby]

Dola...

I'm not sure how I see this as being a showstopper in multiplayer. Everyone will do it, no? So isn't the playing field the same for everyone? I could see it creating problems in leagues where some teams are run by the AI, but aren't most FOF leagues at full capacity?

Could someone explain in what ways it ruins multiplayer, if the league is full?

I agree that it doesn't affect the FA stages because of competition over a player.

BUT... By allowing everyone to be renogotiated to league minimum, it pretty much eliminates the salary cap. That means that no matter what you sign a free agent for, you can resign him to league minimums next year, you just have to guarantee his contract.

[stevew]

Dola...

I'm not sure how I see this as being a showstopper in multiplayer. Everyone will do it, no? So isn't the playing field the same for everyone? I could see it creating problems in leagues where some teams are run by the AI, but aren't most FOF leagues at full capacity?

Could someone explain in what ways it ruins multiplayer, if the league is full?

Just one quick example. For instance in the WigFL one of the top QB's in the league was demanding a 6 year 100 million dollar contract with a 20 million signing bonus. Now granted that might be excessive, but this guy should be making a whole lot of money. Now, he is likely to take a deal for that same 20 million dollar bonus, hell even if it is now a 30 million dollar bonus, he would be able to sign a contract of 6 years, 36 million dollars. Thats a 64 million dollar swing.

[stevew]

Just one quick example. For instance in the WigFL one of the top QB's in the league was demanding a 6 year 100 million dollar contract with a 20 million signing bonus. Now granted that might be excessive, but this guy should be making a whole lot of money. Now, he is likely to take a deal for that same 20 million dollar bonus, hell even if it is now a 30 million dollar bonus, he would be able to sign a contract of 6 years, 36 million dollars. Thats a 64 million dollar swing.

Dola, and i could give a shit about free agency, and how it affects that cause its an open market, but as far as renegotiations go, that is what is gonna concern me.

[Warhammer]

But on another note, I consider this an exploit, especially in single player, as the AI doesn't seem to be taking advantage of the "bug fix." They still sign both their free agents and renegotiated deals to more traditional contracts (2 years at minimum, 3-4 at a high salary).

I don't agree with this. I have seen the AI take advantage of it, 3 yr. minimum salary with year 4 going up to 5 mil or something. As long as you renegotiate in year 3 you don't see the year 4 salary hit the books.

Also, I have seen more holdouts in my current career then in the pre 5.1a careers.

[Samdari]

Dola, and i could give a shit about free agency, and how it affects that cause its an open market.

Not if players automatically accept renegotiated contracts with the requested bonus and minimum salaries. No top-notch players will ever make the open market. The renegotiations will have a tremendous impact on FA.

[stevew]

Tripledolawigfecta

If a ton of people held out every year, it wouldnt be as big of a deal. Cause you would have to keep pumping bonus money into guys, it would be about the same as it was before.

[cthomer5000]

I meant to say that earlier. It won't be a problem on the open market (because human owners will dictate the value), but it would probably keep a LOT of players from ever reaching free agency in the first place.

[Syrinx]

Jim - I'm in the same League as Pyser and ran into a different problem related with re-negotiations in our first stage of Free Agency. While you are in that section of the code, perhaps you could please look into this:

{Coppied from the eNFL Board}

So I encountered something very odd this stage, that I don't recall ever seeing before.

I had 7 content starters, all turn down offers that matched exactly what they were asking for on the contract negotiation screen. And of course, since the game offers no feedback here in multiplayer, I have no idea why!

I'm a bit worried, because I don't know what to offer them now. All of them are in the final year of their contracts. Combined, their renegotiations would have easily brought me down under the cap for the year, so that I could start bidding in this free agency stage.

Has anyone seen this before, or more specificaly in the stage we just ran? I wonder if it's a new 5.1 "feature"? I know that Jim was going to tweak this part of the game to allow for more flexibility, but if content players aren't going to accept the deals that they are asking for, that seems like a problem to me.

[QuikSand]

So I encountered something very odd this stage, that I don't recall ever seeing before.

I had 7 content starters, all turn down offers that matched exactly what they were asking for on the contract negotiation screen.

Just a thought here, as I haven't seen this problem.

Remember that in 5.1a, after you have submitted one contract offer to a player, the "offer" area no longer defaults to the player's demands -- but rather it defaults to the offer that you have made. Is it possible, then, that the person submitting this (couldn't tell if this was you or someone else) was simply re-submitting the same already-rejected offer, since he has overwritten the original player demands?

Just a thought...

[Godzilla Blitz]

Not if players automatically accept renegotiated contracts with the requested bonus and minimum salaries. No top-notch players will ever make the open market. The renegotiations will have a tremendous impact on FA.

Ok, I see. Makes sense. Something like the following, maybe?

The cost of signing your own players goes greatly down. The cost of free agents, relatively speaking, just got a lot more expensive. Hence, everyone resigns their own players. Free agency dries up. Cap problems disappear, because everyone's average salary goes way down. Any disgruntled free agents that make it to free agency will have their salaries bid sky high because lots of teams can take the salary hits.

To a certain extent free agency negotiation may change greatly as well, no? Once you sign a player to a ridiculous contract, you'd want to renegotiate as soon as possible to get them back down to a seven-year, min-sal contract.

This all assumes that the amount of bonus money players are demanding in renegotiation is the same as it would be in free agency, correct? If players demand huge bonuses in renegotiation and smaller ones when in free agency, players resigned would not necessarily be cheaper than free agents.

[Hates_Cakesniffers]

I stumbled upon this with my stud WR. I had cap problems and wanted to try resign him. I used my old "save and reload" test to see if there was any point to even trying to negotiate. I wound up with a seven (the max on the screen if less) year deal with a huge bonus and vet min salaries. I thought it odd, but I was in heaven and didn't try it with anyone else (since my cap problem was now solved).

However, the next season he was a veteran training camp holdout, and I had to give him close to market. So I thought there was no bug.

[stevew]

I stumbled upon this with my stud WR. I had cap problems and wanted to try resign him. I used my old "save and reload" test to see if there was any point to even trying to negotiate. I wound up with a seven (the max on the screen if less) year deal with a huge bonus and vet min salaries. I thought it odd, but I was in heaven and didn't try it with anyone else (since my cap problem was now solved).

However, the next season he was a veteran training camp holdout, and I had to give him close to market. So I thought there was no bug.

The fact that he held out, is great to me.

[Samdari]

When I try to sim the week, however, I get an error saying that I need 7 active players in my backfield. For the record, the following folks are active:

3 QB
3 RB
2 FB


I have gotten this error before and 'backfield' happened to be referring to the defensive backfield.

How are your CB's/S's? Do you get an error on that depth chart screen?

EDIT: God Bless this post order thingy we have here :)

[flere-imsaho]

I've encountered another show-stopping bug:

In a SP career, in 2010, I'm 12-3 and going into a game in Minnesota. When I try to sim the week, however, I get an error saying that I need 7 active players in my backfield. For the record, the following folks are active:

3 QB
3 RB
2 FB

I even tried releasing a FB and resigning another one, but to no avail. Anyone had anything similar?

The depth chart screen throws up no warning, btw.

[chinaski]

Dola...

I'm not sure how I see this as being a showstopper in multiplayer. Everyone will do it, no? So isn't the playing field the same for everyone? I could see it creating problems in leagues where some teams are run by the AI, but aren't most FOF leagues at full capacity?

Could someone explain in what ways it ruins multiplayer, if the league is full?
I think the main point people are missing is that you can sign any player for drastically cheaper for what they are asking, and they will accept it no matter what. Also, if everyone is doing it, that cant possible justify it. Whats the point of having a contract if the bonus is the only thing that matters? The player is flatout ignoring salary and only considering bonus.

If teams are competing for a player in FA, thats great and that will normalize the salary somewhat, but its pretty rare to have more than 15 players in FA that teams will get in a bidding war over. meanwhile, that leaves all the other FA's. Players who are all good/good rated, and all will sign for the league minsal +wanted bonus. Many players sign within the first 3 weeks, so unless you have 30 owners who send in an export every FA stage, your gonna many teams with major talent and plenty of cap space.

Then you have to think of renegotiations, where your star players is asking 80+ mill a year and you sign him for 40 million, just because you gave him the bonus he wanted and the league minimum salary over the rest of the contract.

I think people are over thinking this problem, its a fact that a player will sign with you for ANY amount, as long as you give him the bonus he wanted. This is a bug, either a bug in logic or a bug in the code, there is no other way to look at it.

[amdaily]

I don't agree with this. I have seen the AI take advantage of it, 3 yr. minimum salary with year 4 going up to 5 mil or something. As long as you renegotiate in year 3 you don't see the year 4 salary hit the books.

Also, I have seen more holdouts in my current career then in the pre 5.1a careers. Not exactly.

The AI will redo the contract in year 3 or 4 when the high salary kicks in - and thus avoid paying an enormous sum on the cap. But herein lies the problem - the "dead" bonus money is going to accumulate for the AI teams if they keep shelling out bonus money to a player ever 3 years. Due to the new system, the human can just sign a 5, 6, or as mentioned earlier, a 7 year minimal deal and be set. The AI cannot.

Either the new system should be swung back in the direction of the old, or the AI should be offering 5, 6, and 7 year minimum deals during their renegioations.

And I haven't seen anymore holdouts since 5.0.

[chinaski]

I've encountered another show-stopping bug:

In a SP career, in 2010, I'm 12-3 and going into a game in Minnesota. When I try to sim the week, however, I get an error saying that I need 7 active players in my backfield. For the record, the following folks are active:

3 QB
3 RB
2 FB

I even tried releasing a FB and resigning another one, but to no avail. Anyone had anything similar?

The depth chart screen throws up no warning, btw.
If one of your QB's in injured, make sure he is selected as the 3rd QB in the depth chart.

[CraigSca]

I stumbled upon this with my stud WR. I had cap problems and wanted to try resign him. I used my old "save and reload" test to see if there was any point to even trying to negotiate. I wound up with a seven (the max on the screen if less) year deal with a huge bonus and vet min salaries. I thought it odd, but I was in heaven and didn't try it with anyone else (since my cap problem was now solved).

However, the next season he was a veteran training camp holdout, and I had to give him close to market. So I thought there was no bug.
THIS is interesting. Has anyone tried this renegotiation technique and moved on to the next season? If all these players are holding out, I don't think this is a bug at all.

[Ben E Lou]

I don't have time to do it right now, but I'd like to know more about whether or not these guys will hold out. If they do on a fairly regular basis, then it is a whole new ball game.

That being said, I really feel for Jim in all of this. The guy makes a large free update. Someone posts about an issue in the first incarnation (5.1) and as a result, very few people use 5.1 it at first, and because of that, some other bugs slip through the cracks. He thinks that 5.1a is the final version of the game, and is ready to move on to the next game, but now this shows up.

Lesson: No beta team can catch every single bug/issue in a game, especially the relatively small beta teams that are inherent in a niche product. As a community, we need to give the developer feedback in a timely fashion--particularly when he's released a free update to the game such as this one, and needs to move on to generating revenue again. Sometimes, giving that valuable feedback might mean continuing to play a first release of an update even when in some seasons of free agency, no one will sign when we want them to.

I'm not picking on anyone or calling anyone out in particular, but I did feel like a lot of people waited after 5.1 was released, then 5.1+, then have just recently picked up the game at 5.1a. It has been nearly a month since the release of 5.1, and this is just now coming up, and a few other little minor things that surely would have shown up had people been playing it. Heck, it took over a week with 5.1 before anyone notice the obvious problem of the punt stats column problem. 3 1/2 weeks ago, people were so thrilled at Jim doing this for us that they were willing to donate money to him. My suggestion is that we should have, in a sense, "donated time" to him by helping him make sure this was a rock-solid long term version of the game, and allowing him to spend time on the next Solecismic masterpiece, rather than further stretching out the amount of time that he has to spend on 5.1.

Just my $0.02.

--Ben

[flere-imsaho]

I have gotten this error before and 'backfield' happened to be referring to the defensive backfield.

Yep, that was it. Thanks Samdari! :)

[chinaski]

THIS is interesting. Has anyone tried this renegotiation technique and moved on to the next season? If all these players are holding out, I don't think this is a bug at all.
Ive done it for 3 straight seasons, they do not holdout.

[gstelmack]

I'm not picking on anyone or calling anyone out in particular, but I did feel like a lot of people waited after 5.1 was released, then 5.1+, then have just recently picked up the game at 5.1a. It has been nearly a month since the release of 5.1, and this is just now coming up, and a few other little minor things that surely would have shown up had people been playing it. Heck, it took over a week with 5.1 before anyone notice the obvious problem of the punt stats column problem. 3 1/2 weeks ago, people were so thrilled at Jim doing this for us that they were willing to donate money to him. My suggestion is that we should have, in a sense, "donated time" to him by helping him make sure this was a rock-solid long term version of the game, and allowing him to spend time on the next Solecismic masterpiece, rather than further stretching out the amount of time that he has to spend on 5.1a
One fact of life in software development is that one serious bug can hide other bugs, and you have to "peel away the layers" before you get them all.

I don't play FOF single player anymore, but when I do I don't think hard about negotiations. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, not many people are going to stumble across this in typical SP career play. But in multiplayer, people are playing these phases of the game much harder thanks to the slower pace. And the 5.1 bug was definitely a show-stopper for multiplayer, especially since so many of the leagues were in their offseason free agency stage (no one wanted to risk the league by hitting a point where no one would sign). Most teams were also over their major renegotiation stage by the time they went to 5.1a; this bug had the potential to not be noticed for 3 or 4 more months, until the leagues hit their next offseason. I think we're "lucky" it turned up as soon as it did.

That being said, I also agree with all the points that this may not be as big a deal as the initial reaction indicates. Especially if the players take the big bonus and screw you over next year http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.gif There may well be no reason at all for Jim to touch anything.

Jim has discovered one of the "joys" of supporting a multiplayer game. It's much easier to reach a stable single player experience than to reach a stable multiplayer experience. Check the readmes for patches for your favorite games sometime and see how the proportion of multiplayer to single player fixes changes over time in them. Players in multiplayer work much harder to find exploits and loopholes in the system, and those have a much greater impact when found because they adversely affect other players. House rules are easy to play by in a single player game, but very difficult to police in a multiplayer environment.

[CraigSca]

Ive done it for 3 straight seasons, they do not holdout.How many guys have you given these types of contracts to? Starters? Premier players in the league?

Logically, I can see that the player renegotiates and gets a huge bonus with a small minimum. If the holdout kicks in after a few years, that would be a good thing, and not a bug.

Here's what I'm thinking... A starting player gets a $25 million bonus with a minimum league salary for 6 years. After one year, the holdout AI sees $25 million divided by one year - no reason to holdout. Year two - the AI sees 25 million / 2 = $12.5 million a year. Again, no reason to hold out....flash forward to year 5 = he's now averaging $5 million a year and thinks this is too low. IF a holdout is triggered here then I see no bug here. You're essentially renegotiating the contract for 3-4 years if the player decides (eventually) to hold out.

Admittedly, I'm not sure this is how it works...Chin - can you play a couple more seasons and let us know if anyone holds out?

[Ben E Lou]

I don't play FOF single player anymore, but when I do I don't think hard about negotiations. As was pointed out earlier in the thread, not many people are going to stumble across this in typical SP career play.Oh, I agree with you for the most part, but I guess what I'm saying is that Jim went out of his way and did something he really didn't have to do by giving us a free and significant update. Perhaps if more of us had gone out of our way from the start, the experience would have been a much better one for him. Yes, this would be more likely to show up in MP, but it sure shows up in SP as well.

Of course, there's always the other option: that one or more people actually DID notice this before now, and elected not to tell Jim about it or post it publicly because they were hoping for an advantage in their multiplayer league. I say this because I myself noticed something that was clearly a bug (ie--something definitely not working the way Jim intended it to work) in a past version of FOF5, and my first reaction was to be tempted not to mention it to anyone, because I could have exploited it for a slight extra advantage if I was the only one in our league aware of it. In the end, I did send an e-mail to Jim about it, and he fixed it.

[jbmagic]

skydog

on your current dynasty (5.1, 5.1a)

i know you play several season now, you didnt notice this bug people are talking about here?


and probably alot of people play a slower sim, and probably didnt get to the end of there season or re-sign any of there players yet... when 5.1 was out and shortly 5.1a came out after.

[stevew]

Since this might be a broader bug thread, not that it matters too much, but i dont think the draft order works again. In the current wigFL draft im picking 25, and had a record of 10-6. A wildcard team was also 10-6 and is picking 24. Im pretty positive that in a tiebreaker situation to determine draft order, the playoff team should choose in a worse position than the nonplayoff team. I would never have noticed this in single player, its just that im playing multi a lot more in depth.

[gstelmack]

Of course, there's always the other option: that one or more people actually DID notice this before now, and elected not to tell Jim about it or post it publicly because they were hoping for an advantage in their multiplayer league. I say this because I myself noticed something that was clearly a bug (ie--something definitely not working the way Jim intended it to work) in a past version of FOF5, and my first reaction was to be tempted not to mention it to anyone, because I could have exploited it for a slight extra advantage if I was the only one in our league aware of it. In the end, I did send an e-mail to Jim about it, and he fixed it.
One of the other joys of multiplayer support http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.gif Yes, I agree that this is not only possible, but likely.

In this case, Jim is fortunate enough that most FOF discussion occurs here on this board, but it's always fun to get a support e-mail (or see a forum post) that asks when bug or exploit X that the community has known about for months is going to get fixed, but that's the first you've ever seen it reported because it was posted on a forum (or worse, just discussed during in-game chat) that you don't visit regularly...

[Ben E Lou]

skydog

on your current dynasty (5.1, 5.1a)

i know you play several season now, you didnt notice this bug people are talking about here?Of course not. I'd never try to exploit the AI like that in a serious career. My point is that I should have done something like that when I was just messing around to see how things worked with the new patches.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Lesson: No beta team can catch every single bug/issue in a game, especially the relatively small beta teams that are inherent in a niche product. As a community, we need to give the developer feedback in a timely fashion--particularly when he's released a free update to the game such as this one, and needs to move on to generating revenue again.

My suggestion is that we should have, in a sense, "donated time" to him by helping him make sure this was a rock-solid long term version of the game, and allowing him to spend time on the next Solecismic masterpiece, rather than further stretching out the amount of time that he has to spend on 5.1.

Just my $0.02.

--Ben

While I agree with you in principle, I think there are some issues with this bug that make it unlikely to be found right away. IMHO, one month is actually not bad, given the number of people playing the game.

Some thoughts on finding the bug...

1. You'd have to be actively renegotiating with your players. I get a sense quite a few people don't do that here. You might spot this in multiplayer sooner, but those leagues move a lot slower, and haven't many of them been waiting for the most recent patch before updating?

2. I'm not sure if renegotiation works the same way in FOF2005, but I remember from older versions of FOF that when your player accepted one offer, trying to lowball him with another offer would tend to piss him off and make him less likely to accept the initial offer. Once I got a player to accept an offer, I would almost always go through with it. I'm sure I would play the same way were I renegotiating with players now.

3. To catch this bug, you almost have to deliberately lowball your renegotiation salary offers and leave the bonus intact: in essence, you almost have to be "playtesting" rather than "playing". If I were renegotiating with players, I might never find this bug. If I'm lucky, I might stumble onto it after a half dozen seasons.

4. Mass-produced games have bugs that take weeks to uncover. Madden 2005 has that goofy formation reset bug that wore down the defense, and I don't believe that was found until a few weeks after the game was released. This happened despite the volumes of pre-release playtesting and multitudes of people playing the game non-stop after release. CM 03/04 has had a few bugs that only showed up after people got a dozen years into their games. Bottom line: obscure bugs can take a long time to find.

The problem with this bug is that once found, it appears to dramatically alter the mulitplayer game.

[sabotai]

I know the issue here is not how it effect the FA process (maybe for some), but I just tried to do this with a player on the FA market and his response was "My client would prefer to wait for offers closer to our asking price. The most important parts of our asking price are the bonus, followed by first-year salary." You can't offer less from year to year. The only way to renagotiate those to min. sal would be to eat a huge prorated bonus twice, since he's sure to ask for a huge bonus again.

I can easily see how through renegotiations, prorated bonuses can start to pile on and people could find themselves in cap hell very easily.

As for the resigning, I just ran a season. I started a game, offered some of my top players the Huge bonus, min sal contracts. Surely enough, after the first season, I had a holdout. My pretty average (81.1 Rating) QB was holding out. He would have cost me about $5mil in cap money for the next two years. Doing the Bonus + minsal again would have him cost me $7.3mil in the next two years.

And that's just a QB that's very average (didn't receive a huge bonus to begin with). Imagine having to do that with a guy already costing you $8mil or $9mil in cap room.

I should also point out that in one of the attempts, my owner bitched to me that he was only allocating so much money for signing bonuses. "Your owner has set a limit of $25,330,000 for bonus offers of any kind."

[Solecismic]

What concerns me here isn't the fact that good players are taking minsal deals. It's how much they're giving up to take minsal deals.

Someone made the comment that this could invalidate the cap in a league. And I think they're right to a certain extent. While in SP mode, it's easy to say "don't do that", in MP you need to initiate some form of house rule.

This isn't like the coaching salary situation, where some leagues saw that the rules didn't make a lot of sense, so they added a coach cap. I didn't get complaints there, because it wasn't such a crucial part of the game. The salary cap is vital to the game, so it must work.

I'm not going to go into the Deion rule. I can see from notes in my salary files that it is not as simple as laid out here, and it wouldn't add a lot to the game.

The fact that renegotiations were broken in the past, and no one reported it tells me that the piece that's vital for the MP game is the cap itself. So, at the very least, I need to determine at what point this problem is breaking the cap.

I've found a piece of this which is working as originally intended, but was never adjusted to reflect my additional emphasis on bonus money in this version. So I'm going to try adjusting that and see what happens in my own tests.

[Ben E Lou]

Thanks, Jim. Your continued support of this fine product is much appreciated.

--Ben

[sabotai]

Season 2 of the test league. My team had just gone 11-5 and lost in the 1st round of the playoffs.

My star FL is entering his last season. Time to do the Bonus+minsal deal.....nope. "My client is reluctant to sign more than a two-year deal at this salary level." I tried to offer 3 years of minsal. I should note that doing this will cause my FL to take up $8.46 mil of cap room in the first season, but drop down to $3.32mil cap room for years two and three. But, I had to pull back and just make it a two year deal, meaning he's now going to take up $9.7mil of cap room and $4.56 of cap room next year...when I'll have to renegotiate with him again.

But I didn't have any holdouts....

EDIT: I had this happen to me several times at the beginning of the season. The only way to resign them with minsal was to make the offer for 2 years or jack up the bonus money.

[VPI97]

Thanks Jim.

[Kozure]

This seems to be a big big change, but it is a change that applies to everyone, meaning everyone can offer the big bonuses and compete with each other for players. Everyone at the same level.
Does this make sense?
BUT, and this is a very important BUT, I think it is a little sad that base salaries do not seem to mean squat anymore. If you offer a contract with a 21 mil bonus and 40 million in base salary, i think it is very unrealistic that a player will take a contract with a 22 mil bonus and 15 million in base salary. <---- from what I am hearing, is this how a player will react to that situtation?

[Flasch186]

This seems to be a big big change, but it is a change that applies to everyone, meaning everyone can offer the big bonuses and compete with each other for players. Everyone at the same level.
Does this make sense?
BUT, and this is a very important BUT, I think it is a little sad that base salaries do not seem to mean squat anymore. If you offer a contract with a 21 mil bonus and 40 million in base salary, i think it is very unrealistic that a player will take a contract with a 22 mil bonus and 15 million in base salary. <---- from what I am hearing, is this how a player will react to that situtation?

True, it is technically fair since it effects everyone BUT when renegotiating on your own players you have a crazy advantage during the season and therefore less and less quality FA's will be available in the long run.

[sabotai]

One thing I am noticing is that I have a ton of contracts to renegotiate each year because in order to do this Bonus+minsal deals, a lot of them will only do 2 year deals.

[sabotai]

Another update. In doing the Bonus+minsal deal in which all I did was lower the yearly salary, I have had a few demand more bonus after doing it.

[Godzilla Blitz]

Another update. In doing the Bonus+minsal deal in which all I did was lower the yearly salary, I have had a few demand more bonus after doing it.

Good stuff. This is sounding as if the extent of the bug may have been overstated.

[yabanci]

Jim - I'm in the same League as Pyser and ran into a different problem related with re-negotiations in our first stage of Free Agency. While you are in that section of the code, perhaps you could please look into this:

{Coppied from the eNFL Board}

So I encountered something very odd this stage, that I don't recall ever seeing before.

I had 7 content starters, all turn down offers that matched exactly what they were asking for on the contract negotiation screen. And of course, since the game offers no feedback here in multiplayer, I have no idea why!

I'm a bit worried, because I don't know what to offer them now. All of them are in the final year of their contracts. Combined, their renegotiations would have easily brought me down under the cap for the year, so that I could start bidding in this free agency stage.

Has anyone seen this before, or more specificaly in the stage we just ran? I wonder if it's a new 5.1 "feature"? I know that Jim was going to tweak this part of the game to allow for more flexibility, but if content players aren't going to accept the deals that they are asking for, that seems like a problem to me.

FYI - I think it's been confirmed that this was due to being on 5.1 instead of 5.1a.

[sabotai]

I signed a stud QB in the FA process one year. The next, I renegotiated him to a long term, big bonus but minsal contract (6 years I think). Of course, 2 years into it, he held out. I'm also getting very close to the cap limit

[Flasch186]

so where do we stand now? Is this a critical bug that we need to hold up the league(s) for, make house rules, etc. Or should we move forward knowing that safeguards in place can take care of the problem through, owners requirements, holdouts, cap limitations, etc.?

[yabanci]

I signed a stud QB in the FA process one year. The next, I renegotiated him to a long term, big bonus but minsal contract (6 years I think). Of course, 2 years into it, he held out. I'm also getting very close to the cap limit

How many years have you played and how many players on YOUR team have you lost because you couldn't afford them?

[JonInMiddleGA]

I'm not picking on anyone or calling anyone out in particular, but I did feel like a lot of people waited after 5.1 was released, then 5.1+, then have just recently picked up the game at 5.1a. It has been nearly a month since the release of 5.1, and this is just now coming up, and a few other little minor things that surely would have shown up had people been playing it.
Just my $0.02.

Then again, I suspect a lot of people went through roughly the same thought process that I did, the one that applies to pretty much any game from any developer that's in a playable state -- game currently works, if I install a patch before reading the feedback, it may not work ... so WTH would I want to take that chance?

There's always a supply of "early-adopters" who seemingly can't wait to be volunteer beta-testers. Having BTDT (usually unwillingly, because of program issues) enough times in my life already, I've reached the point that I'm not particularly willing to go through it again. Mind you, I've done it in the past, it's just not something that I generally do anymore, I have neither the paitience for it nor the desire to do it.

While typing this reply, it struck me that we may have hit a relatively new issue for the gaming industry (or at least the text-sim segment) to consider -- the "graying" of it's audience, if not supplmented/replaced adequately by a new generation of gamers, may find it difficult to get enough early adopters to generate the amount of feedback/testing they're used to.

I have a tough time believing I'm the only person who has pretty much gotten tired of being a de facto beta tester ... so tired of it in fact that it's been a pretty significant factor in my move back toward tabletop gaming & away from computer gaming (recent sessions with TPB2k5 not withstanding). At least with dice-and-chart, I know the game isn't going to lose functionality if I decide to tweak the rules or the process, I can always just tweak 'em back.

Just another .02

[sabotai]

How many years have you played and how many players on YOUR team have you lost because you couldn't afford them?

I quick simmed about 6 or 7 years. I didn't really pay attention to how many I couldn't afford, since I was just worrying about getting to the next season, but my team had more than half of it's roster composed of 1-year deals with rookies, 2 and 3 year players, so I wasn't resigning my mid-level talent. I'm sure my cap situation would have been worse if I had a lot more veterans signed.

Unless Jim comes on soon and announces another fix, I'm going to do a much more detailed test. This one all I did was renegotiate with my star players to see if they would hold out (I had 3 hold outs in total, 2 times my QB and once a WR). I let a lot of things just go (in fact, during the first 2 or 3 years, I forgot to let the AI sign my rookies, so all of the draft picks for the first few years went unsigned. Big "oops" on my part. Probably enough to invalidate a lot of the test early on since I didn't have any expensive 1st and 2nd round picks on my team).

So far, my biggest concearn with the new renegotiations is that a lot of the players don't seem to be asking for enough bonus money. A lot of the players I resigned only wanted 1 or 2 mil in bonus money. And these guys were big portions of my team. Maybe they had high loyalty ratings though.

[DolphinFan1]

Just wanted to through my .02 cents in here.

Jim, thanks for a great game and the free updates. I don't think there is much of a problem here, (Of course I suck at the game), but thanks for looking into this for everyone else's sake. Keep up the good work.

[PSUColonel]

was playing a game with the Cowboys when my CB Tyrone Williams went down with a serious injury. He was already playing with a minor knock, but this one put him out for the year(ruptured achillies) Funny thing is this however...later in the game he was making tackles. How can this be? If the guy is out , he's out right? I think this is clearly a bug. I don't know if Jim will address it however.


While Jim is here, I firured I'd ask if this was a bug or not? Love what you've done with FOF Jim..it's terriffic. The only thing I could think of to be worked on would be this issue to some extent and perhaps a player history log..otherwise...thumbs up

[sovereignstar]

*sigh*

Too bad one of our owners couldn't have gotten in touch with Jim. Sure looks like he's known about it for a couple of weeks.

[Solecismic]

You think that's bad? Someone in IHOF claims he knew about the problem with determining 3-team non-divisional tie-breakers when only two of the teams have played each other going back to FOF 2.

[Solecismic]

was playing a game with the Cowboys when my CB Tyrone Williams went down with a serious injury. He was already playing with a minor knock, but this one put him out for the year(ruptured achillies) Funny thing is this however...later in the game he was making tackles. How can this be? If the guy is out , he's out right? I think this is clearly a bug. I don't know if Jim will address it however.


While Jim is here, I firured I'd ask if this was a bug or not? Love what you've done with FOF Jim..it's terriffic. The only thing I could think of to be worked on would be this issue to some extent and perhaps a player history log..otherwise...thumbs up

Unfortunately, the design of the game as it stands now requires that once the depth chart is created within the game, all healthy players at the start of the game could return. I will check to see if the injury threshhold setting is working properly. It would help to know that setting on your game, and to know whether Tyrone Willliams actually sat out any plays.

Player history logs would be a signficant new feature requiring significant data structure changes, so that's out of the realm of what I could do with a patch.

[jbmagic]

You think that's bad? Someone in IHOF claims he knew about the problem with determining 3-team non-divisional tie-breakers when only two of the teams have played each other going back to FOF 2.

wow

i am hoping peopel speak out , when they see something not right and post here in the forum as soon as possible..

i guess some people are afraid to speak out when there a bug...
Maybe we should add a BUG forum thread...and if anything is wrong they can post there..keep it all in one place..

i love this game ..

i jump aboard with FOF 5.1...wish i got this great game a long time ago...

Jim thanks for the great support

[PSUColonel]

One observation I had; Isn't what is going on in regard to negotiations really what the "cap out" offer is supposed to be?

[PSUColonel]

Unfortunately, the design of the game as it stands now requires that once the depth chart is created within the game, all healthy players at the start of the game could return. I will check to see if the injury threshhold setting is working properly. It would help to know that setting on your game, and to know whether Tyrone Willliams actually sat out any plays.

Player history logs would be a signficant new feature requiring significant data structure changes, so that's out of the realm of what I could do with a patch.


settings were: wall street, injury:200, unfortunately I don't have the log, so it would be tough to know if he saat out any plays or not

[cthomer5000]

You think that's bad? Someone in IHOF claims he knew about the problem with determining 3-team non-divisional tie-breakers when only two of the teams have played each other going back to FOF 2.
That wasn't the impression I got from that post. I thought he was stating that that bug existed in FOF2, and had appareantly re-appeared post 5.1a.

[cthomer5000]

post edited. I'm no longer sure it wsa a bug, as VPI figured just ran the exports again and it didn't produce the same issue.

[yabanci]

One observation I had; Isn't what is going on in regard to negotiations really what the "cap out" offer is supposed to be?

No, because it's not converting salary to bonus, it's eliminating salary with no request for extra bonus.

[Celeval]

post edited. I'm no longer sure it wsa a bug, as VPI figured just ran the exports again and it didn't produce the same issue.
Goody, goody. :)

[yabanci]

okay, here is an example of what happens when this exploit is used aggressively in a real life multiplayer league, not a single player test case or conjecture.

Keep in mind that example is from the team that went to the front office bowl two years in a row (winning once) and the championship game last year. The team is loaded with stars, probably the strongest roster in the league. He had 44 players under contract going into the free agency stage. After using this exploit to renegotiate 34 of his contracts, here is how those 34 players are being paid:

< $1m - 18 players, average cap cost of $0.73m
$1-2m - 8 players, average cap cost of $1.39m
$2-3m - 3 players, average cap cost of $2.16m
$3-4m - 2 players, average cap cost of $3.39
$4-5m - 0 players
$5-6m - 1 player, cap cost of $5.18m
$6-7m - 2 players, average cap cost of $6.07m

These 34 players inlcude just about every one of his starters, including some of the best players in the league (his 82/82 OT and 82/82 OLB are the two making over $6m). He still has 10 more players to renegotiate, but they should fall in the $1-3 million range at most.

And these numbers are even inflated because many of them are bonuses on top of pre-5.1a bonuses. In nearly all of these contracts, the cap cost actually goes DOWN over time, yet the salary cap will keep driving up.

As I said before, I don't see how the salary cap remains relevant under these circumstances, and it looks to me like free agency will basically die because teams won't have to let players walk because of cap problems. It's good to see that Jim is working on it.

[Flasch186]

i hate to be this guy but, its critical at the stage the USFL is at so I ask the dreaded question, that everyone is afraid to ask:

Jim, should we pause, and await a fix [that you are working on] or are you going to let sleeping dogs lie and not have a fix out? If you are can we have a guesstimate of the extreme(s) for a window, ie. in an hour to in 2 weeks?

I would be willing to completely pause the USFL if a fix were in the offing.

[SegRat]

USFL is in stage 4 of free agency.

[VPI97]

What stage are you in?

[VPI97]

IMO, you have a three options:
- Continue with FA signings while outlawing renegotiations for the time being
- Continue with FA signings and have an outside 'standard' for your owners to follow regarding renegotiations
- Wait

[AlexB]

Been reading this with interest since I spotted it at work yesterday: is this a major problem as long as you discipline yourself to follow the 'Deion rule'? First chance to look what I've done to ease my cap worries in my career, and as luck would have it I don't think I've broken this rule...

Some thoughts: if you get a player asking for 5 million bonus over 3 years, and make sure you offer him salary equivalent to this, you're not really getting the player on the cheap at $3.33m cap hit per year. Especially as the better players seem to ask for much higher bonuses than this, and so the cap costs rise accordingly if you work out the minimum over the 1st 3 years...

Plus the better players seem to want longer than 3 year deals, and keeping the latter years at the minimum 3rd year level as per above does not seem to be particularly attractive to the players who want multi-year deals (e.g. Mike Vick, a 2nd yr RB 86/86, and Montrae Holland, a 62/62 (and increasing) guard), although they will accept the high bonus & 3 yrs min sal...

So - my question, if you stick at least to the Deion rule for players wanting 3 yr contracts, and do not shorten the contract lengths of those asking for multi-year deals and ensure the NFL rules are being followed, would this be a satisfactory self-imposed check that would not unduly affect salary cap room and free agency?

Out of interest, on one and two years deals, does the Deion rule still apply? I often pick up players after the roster cuts at the start of the season, and the only one I'm sure if it's an illegal contract or not is a center with a base salary but $1m plus bonus on a 1-yr deal (refused lower offers, but I've got the cap room (just) this season, a fair bit more space next and if I franchise him the next season's salary is only just over $2m anyway - hopefully will negotiate him to a longer term deal then)

Actually that last paragraph has got me wondering if even by self-imposing the above rule, will overall salaries decrease and therefore also the franchise values as well, affecting this area of the game...

[Warhammer]

And these numbers are even inflated because many of them are bonuses on top of pre-5.1a bonuses. In nearly all of these contracts, the cap cost actually goes DOWN over time, yet the salary cap will keep driving up.

As I said before, I don't see how the salary cap remains relevant under these circumstances, and it looks to me like free agency will basically die because teams won't have to let players walk because of cap problems. It's good to see that Jim is working on it.

The reason why the cap number go down over time is they have a portion of the previous contract's signing bonus in the first few years of the contract. That results in a balloon at the end of the old contract, and a big cap drop in the next year of the contract.