[kaosfere]

Alright, first of all let me apologize if I ruffled any feathers last night. I certainly did not mean to discourage people from voicing problems with the rules or other GMs behaviors.

I've played, run, and developed online games for so many years now that I've seen the same pattern over and over again of a small disagreement in something that has not been considered in the rules turning into a big kerfuffle, and I was trying to avoid that.

I thought muns came on really strong for no good reason last night. He and I talked via PMs, and I understand now why he had the reaction he did. I was simply trying to short-circuit any escalation of the argument, and inadvertantly made things worse. My bad.

As for the issue: I do think it's a problem. There is a reason that so many online leagues enforce limits on back-loaded contracts and unrealistic incentives. I really don't see any reason we shouldn't, here.

As a first pass at a guideline, I would try considering disallowing any contract for which any two years are separated by > 50% of the mean annual rate. As a brief sample, this would allow a three-year 4/6/8 contract (50% mean = 3 million), but disallow 4/6/10 (50% mean = 3.33 million).

An incentive limitation could be a simple percentage of, say, the maximum year. What's a rational percentage? How much should a player making 10 million a year be allowed as a bonus?

I also think, if we're going to disallow release-and-signs, we should also disallow void-and-signs. Either way, they're both methods of using the loopholes in the AI, magnified by the time-staggered nature of an online league, to give yourself a potentially unfair advantage in signing a player without the ability of other GMs to get an offer in.

But I cast no aspersions upon anyone who has done this to date. They were playing within the rules as they existed at the time, and that's fine with me.