[Ben E Lou]

Ben Lewis Senior Text Sims Editor "Ben E Lou"	This has been the subject of much discussion in my MP leagues, and I have several thoughts. First off, here are some things that I like: I like that bonus and first-year salary are by far the most important factors in getting players to sign, and that therefore backloading just doesn't work any longer in the MP environment. Players want guaranteed money. Makes sense. I like that money is more important than the other aspects. If I'm going to pay a guy three times what my opponent is offering, he should sign with me, trumping playing time, loyalty, desire to win, and all other matters. I like that signings do not appear to be random, but make sense from a financial perspective. So, as a whole, I like the financial model with regard to signings. There are some things that could use tweaking in the model (primarily the way the mid-to-late career guys evaluate short-term vs. long-term offers,) but I firmly believe that they're secondary to the primary issue at hand. I see the primary issue as being not so much why they sign, as the amount of money that's available to be thrown around to get them to sign. We don't see factors like "loyalty" and "wants winner" coming into play in multiplayer because there seems to always be someone out there with the cap room and game savvy to offer a *lot* more money than the next guy. In the FOFL's recent free agency period, coming off of a 13-3 season, I had all of my key pieces returning, and over $60M in cap room (roughly 45% of the league's cap) available to me. I have two very good starting wide receivers, but I threw $17.5M for one season (over 10% of the cap) at a guy to be my third wide receiver, simply because I could afford to do it. And this isn't an isolated incident at all. Here's the WOOF's cap situation at the beginning of FA1 yesterday, with a $135.9M cap: So, roughly half of the league has more than 25% of the cap to play with. And this is in a league that uses house rules specifically designed to reduce the amount of available cap room. There would be a good bit more available money if those rules didn't exist. I'd love to see things like loyalty, desire to play for a winner, and expected role (starter/main backup/etc.) be factored into free agency offers, but those should always take a back seat when a team offers a lot more money than anyone else. And in a MP environment with that much money to be thrown around, it's going to get thrown around. There's a wide gap in how humans handle all the money. Some owners look at the player demands and dutifully offer a little more than they're asking. ('He's not worth more than that.") Others put together spreadsheets to figure out exactly how much cap room they can afford to spend, and completely ignore the asking prices. ("He's worth x% of my available cap space. Unused cap space does me no good whatsoever.") The latter group will always win out over the former. I do have some suggestions that I believe would help alleviate the financial issues at hand in MP FA. Most have to do with shrinking the available cap space. 1. Increase asking prices across the board for renegotiations. It's just too easy to renegotiate your way to lots of cap space. 2. Young players who have never been full-time starters need to "test free agency." Either they should flat-out refuse to renegotiate, or (better, in my opinion,) only sign a contract if it's equal to or better than, say, the average of the top 15 contracts in the league at his position. In other words, if you want your good young WR3 to stick around for another season as WR3, you should have to pay him starter money. 3. Eliminate the mechanism of renegotiation asking prices being tied to how many games a guy started. It's just too easy to play a good young ratings-creeper at nickel CB or WR3 or RB2 for a few years, then sign him to a cheap long-term deal. I'd consider having the reneg requests tied to true ratings instead. (This might also help those who don't understand the creeping mechanism well to identify, "hey, I'll bet this guy is good. Look how much he's asking to stick around!" There's a gap there that could stand to be closed a bit.) 4. Increase the trivial bonus amount required to get a guy to sign a multi-year deal. Right now, savvy players are routinely signing backup/mentor types to three-year deals for minimum salary and $10K per year in bonus money. 5. Once the available cap room is reduced sufficiently, include "promised playing time" as a factor in some way. I can see two ways to handle this. The first would be to include a mechanism by which the offering team has to promise "starter, well-used backup, backup, role player" or something like that. And if the promise isn't kept, it would impact future free agents' willingness to sign, and the morale of the guy who did sign. Maybe have him become a red flag player until you do for him what you promised, cut him, or trade him. The other method would require the gamer to do less: have the player look over the offering team's roster to determine what his likely role is going to be. ("Gee, Ben has 75/75 Doug Johnstone and 60/60 Justin Horn at WR. I'm a 53/53 guy in my 5th year. I'm not gonna start for Charleston. I'd rather take a shorter contract for a bit less money per year to play for Chespeake where I'd be the clear WR2 so I can showcase my talents, play every snap, and get a fat deal when that one runs out.") In either case, the gamer would need more feedback as to what is going on. (EMAIL FROM BILLY ROYE: "Sorry. I know you offered a little more money, but I will get to play full-time in Chesapeake, and I will still be in my prime when their deal runs out and should command even bigger dollars then.")
Dave Lint Writing Staff "Lintyfresh85"	Free Agency: What I would like to see different? - Currently, it’s a guessing game. I’d love to see something that gave an idea as to what the player is interested in. It could easily tie into their personality ratings… does a player want more playing time (i.e. Matt Cassell, Scott Mitchell) or is he looking for a long term deal? I know that most will sign with whatever amounts to the most money poured into a signing bonus for the least amount of years… but I’d like to see some sort of personality scale tied into FA as to give the smaller teams a chance at a decent to good player. What I like. - I like that it is a clear cut, visual, example of what other teams are offering the player. In OOTP, you never know who you are negotiating against, and you don’t know how high/low you have to go with the offer. I think when you can see other teams offers, it really gives you, as an owner, a strategic advantage/disadvantage for every player. Do I spend more on Joe Blow because he’d be easier to sign, but not as good… or do I throw a huge offer at John Doe just to make sure my bitter rival doesn’t scoop him up? It’s another part of the game to compete against your opponents, and I really enjoy that aspect of it.
Bryan Estrella Writing Staff "Bryan_Estrella"	Sorry if this is long, but as a long-time FOF player I feel obliged if not honored to offer some thoughts on this and I’m glad that Jim is making an effort to seek opinions on improving the FA process. I apologize if you’re seeking more of a multi-player’s perspective but this is coming from an exclusively single-player opinion on things. Anyway, to start I must acknowledge some of Linty’s great thoughts. In particular I am in agreement with his idea of further utilizing the various unique player personalities (leadership, intelligence, loyalty, play to win, personality) already present. It is also a smart one because all of those elements can have a potential impact on many different factors when signing a player including their preferred salary (amount/length), their championship aspirations/current stage in their career, (Are they a veteran willing to take cheaper salary to win a SB now? Or someone simply looking for the biggest contract) their preferred coach/team philosophytheir preferred/expected role on team (will they be content to get paid a ton if they are relegated to a back-up spot?) and team reputation (Dysfunctional franchises will never be considered by some no matter how much they offer, while others could be attracted to that dysfunction). I know that FOF already tracks some of these intangibles but it doesn’t hurt to expand on this front. The good thing is that these ideas aren’t all pie in the sky wishes as I can draw on some previous games that have already included some elements mentioned above to use as examples to consider. For instance, I know that in the NFL 2K franchise mode some free agents flat-out refused to negotiate with losing teams. For example, in a past game I took over a hapless Cardinals team, entered free-agency looking for a savior at QB, found that Peyton Manning was available (that part isn’t realistic I know) and was rebuffed with extreme prejudice. On another note, NFL Head Coach did a passable if inelegant job of displaying the importance of team schemes and the tangible effect that had on a player’s ratings as well as their overall happiness on a team. Some other games such as Football Manager, OOTP (and to a lesser extent, NBA 2K) do an admirable job of showcasing how the concept of defined player traits/roles can be an important consideration when adding players to a roster. For instance in FM, if you sign too many players at a certain position, you’ll sometimes have players complaining about their place in the squad or demanding equal pay to the new signings. Regarding the actual free agent process, I agree with Linty in that the set-up of showing the player what offers are being made is the best way to reduce player frustrations, as a guessing game is never really fun. But the system does need a good shake-up, as the overall goal in the single-player game should be to shoot for the feel of a living world/environment ala multi-player. It shouldn’t feel as though the whole football universe rests upon your shoulders and other consequences are only a result of your actions. One option to remedy this constraining feeling would be to simply improve upon the FA methodology framework used in past FOF games and was present in NFL Head Coach. The way things worked out, most big-name players still signed almost immediately out of the gate, however, not every player did things that way, as many of them preferred to wait things out until the middle and latter stages of FA. That variation in how/when players made themselves available spiced things up considerably and stretched out the entire process. Most importantly, it also really made you plan out your overall FA strategy beforehand. In past games you could be done with your big-name signings right away and just skip through the rest of the weeks but now you had to figure out who you wanted to target beforehand, and do you splurge now or conserve your money for later? This could also be a great way to further tie the role of agents into free agency as they could be a concrete way of implementing the role of player personalities mentioned earlier. The agents could also provide a vital function of offering you simple written summarizations on what a player is thinking in regards to their various wishes/demands/intentions on signing with you. By doing this you can take all the numbers, really boil things down to a transparent level for the user, and give the player a concrete framework from which to work with. Just look at the new assistant manager match feedback option in FM 09 for an example of this at work. Anyway, this would be an improvement towards realism as agents (for the majority of players) do act as representation/mediators in the FA signing process and this is something that has been missing in many other games in the past. And because agents have already been included in past FOF games you have an opportunity here for a more immediate development on that front. Lastly, I’d also add that one vitally important place where I feel FOF can excel and offer a truly fun experience is in the area of computer GM AI. I truly feel that this is really the best and only way to remove that “house-rule” effect because no matter what else you do, if you can offer a league of unpredictable, adaptable & intelligent GM AI to compete with you’d go a long way towards offering that frustration-free experience you seek. Wow, I’ve written way too much and I know, I know, it is easier said than done regarding many of my suggestions, but I’d still like to read what y'all think of this, it could/should be an interesting discussion.