Contract evaluation in FOF 9

[QuikSand]

I figure this usually turns into a fairly rich subject, so rather than trying to drop a nugget here or there in a generic Q&A thread, I'd start one on this specific subject.

Topics for this thread:

-the in-game process for free agents to receive, consider, and decide among contract offers

-any insights/details into how this works, as a guide to us as FOF 9 players

(reserved for future use)


Topic not for this thread:

(reserved for future use)

[QuikSand]

I will start with some generic thoughts about how the community consensus saw this process working in FOF 8 (and, for most purposes, prior iterations of FOF as well):

In FOF 8 open free agency:

FA players submitted a publicly available, and sortable by total, roster demand. On the player page was a detailed breakdown indicating the exact contract sought - duration, bonus amount, and annual salaries.

Most FA players of any reasonably quality also indicated a preferred stage. (I think I'm solid in what follows here, but am open to refinement/correction) The player would very, very seldom agree to a contract before that stage. Sometimes, he would fail to decide in the preferred stage - typically if he had received multiple offers. But in the sizable majority of cases, the player would decide in the indicated stage, as long as he had at least one qualifying offer from any team, AI or human-run.

I believe players who were cut after the very first stage or two of free agency would not be assigned a preferred signing stage. I suspect there is a formal cutoff/rule here, I don't have it chapter and verse but mid-offseason cuts typically just dropped into the FA pool without any timing.

As the stages of free agency progressed, the player demands would erode - I believe always just in dollar amounts, but not duration. This applied even to a player who had indicated a late stage as their preferred signing window.

In FOF 8 early free agency, 12 stages, Stage 10 was a hard deadline - EVERY player considering at least one qualifying offer by that stage would decide on his best offer and accept it in that stage.

[QuikSand]

When offering a contract to a FA in FOF 8:

It seems that the game operated using a sort of flowchart-style logic, I'll try to illustrate below.

Q1: Does the contract offer violate a hard-wired rule programmed into the game? (Examples: declining base salary, base salary below minimum for that experience, bonus exceeds limit set by team owner based on team profits)

...if YES, generate an error text box indicating the error, offer ignored and does not register, no effect on asking price or player temperament

...if NO, advance to Q2


Q2: Does the offer extend more years than the player prefers? (by some non-obvious calculation in-game)

...if YES, generate feedback indicating the player doesn't want to extend that many years, offer ignored and does not register, no effect on asking price or player temperament (in this case it was at least possible to change the player's mind on duration with sufficient extra money)

...if NO, advance to Q3


Q3: Does the offer fail the player's minimum standards to considered? (Typically had to be at least a sizable fraction of the player's total request, though this was not easily identified perfectly)

...if YES, specific message generated saying player "would rather consider offers closer to his asking price," offer ignored and does not register, no effect on asking price or player temperament

...if NO, we received an additional verification, and if approved the contract would formally register with the player. He would be unwilling to listen to an additional offer that stage.

[QuikSand]

Players considering more than one offer, or whether an offer is "good enough" to consider at all

In FOF 8, I think the veteran community consensus was something like this:

-players REALLY like bonus money
-players like early salary next best, but it's well behind bonus
-players like later salary least of all

And, not fully intuitive but definitely a real and predictable thing: players of all ages basically assessed the value a contact based on its value per year, with money sorted out by the hierarchy above. But a 2y deal and a 5y deal with precisely the same values in each year would be basically in a dead heat, regardless of whether there was some age-drivel logic for the player in question to "obviously" prefer a shorter or longer deal.

[QuikSand]

I have yet to get into the FOF 9 game very much, for a variety of reasons. My first foray into free agency suggested to me that the general framework for this cycle is largely the same, btu I detect:

-obviously there's the calendar day-by-day rather than stages, just a semantic difference

-it seems like offending the player/agent is FAR more present in this game, and is a much more significant consideration ... lowball offers that fail (guessing here) tests Q2 or Q3 from above have some chance of rendering the player no longer willing to speak with you... until at least one day/stage has passed (that's the only repercussion I saw in my limited fiddling, I suppose there may be further degrees of it)

-it also seems like the threshold for Q3 above (minimum standard to even be considered) is a substantially higher fraction of the player's current demand than in FOF 8... just idly making the sort of standard "ought to be just good enough" offers I have been used to in FOF 8 I got hammered with rejections and the "wait until next stage" nearly every time

[Ben E Lou]

I pretty much agree with everything I read in the above posts except maybe this...
-it also seems like the threshold for Q3 above (minimum standard to even be considered) is a substantially higher fraction of the player's current demand than in FOF 8... just idly making the sort of standard "ought to be just good enough" offers I have been used to in FOF 8 I got hammered with rejections and the "wait until next stage" nearly every timeHave you played much SP FOF8 lately? I picked it up again a fair bit this summer and early fall, and I had forgotten how much this mechanism differs in SP in MP. MP has more of a "I'd rather take that deal than go sell cars" feel for it. In SP FOF8, you really couldn't lowball much at all. I'm not seeing a big difference between SP FOF8 and FOF9 here. (Of course, the other possibility is that you found an angle in FOF8 SP that I didn't, so....)

[Ben E Lou]

-obviously there's the calendar day-by-day rather than stages, just a semantic differenceAnd to emphasize this one as being semantic, it does appear that the overwhelming majority of players sign on the day that they say they will.

[QuikSand]

I pretty much agree with everything I read in the above posts except maybe this...Have you played much SP FOF8 lately? I picked it up again a fair bit this summer and early fall, and I had forgotten how much this mechanism differs in SP in MP. MP has more of a "I'd rather take that deal than go sell cars" feel for it.

I have definitely lost any sort of rhythm and feel for how SP FOF 8 works, so I'm open to this being the correct diagnosis. Apples/oranges problem if so.

In SP FOF8, you really couldn't lowball much at all. I'm not seeing a big difference between SP FOF8 and FOF9 here. (Of course, the other possibility is that you found an angle in FOF8 SP that I didn't, so....)

Got it. I'll work with this as my operating theory for now. Demands are close to what they sound like in single player.