Quote:
Originally Posted by QuikSand
In the MP leagues I play in, among the bigger problems is that there's a pretty meaningful and continual drift of talent toward some of the better teams. I'd hate top think that every team that posts 12 wins or a title would now reap *extra* benefits in those leagues and start signing free agents more easily than the teams who really need the help.
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A possible way to balance this 'drift' of talent towards the top teams is to put in things that increase the cap hit for players already signed by the best teams. For example, performance-related bonuses (or salary increases) as part of contracts - for things like if the team wins the Super Bowl, a player makes an All-Pro team, participates in a specified number/percentage of plays or hits a statistical milestone (e.g. 4,000 yards passing, 1,500 yards rushing, 10 sacks, 5 interceptions, etc). The problem that I see with this, however, is that adding too many potential options of this nature could potentially make contracts very complicated very quickly, so there would need to be a compromise between realism and usability with this.
Another option could be to make it more likely for players on successful teams to hold out for a better contract, particularly if that player has been a big part of the team's recent success. (One possible way of doing this may be to have a hidden variable for every player (free agent or under contract to a team) that holds the player's current opinion on the salary that they should be making - this would be affected by a number of factors (like the player's recent performance, the team's recent performance, contracts/salary for similar/equivalent players round the league, the player's 'want winner' and 'loyalty' rating, and so on). This would be compared to the player's current salary/contract, with the player holding out (or expressing some other form of dissatisfaction?) if their current deal doesn't come close enough to their expectations.)
On a related point, it would be good to see the 'want winner' and 'loyalty' rating given more importance in the free agent/contract/salary cap process, e.g. players with high 'want winner' will be very unwilling to sign for a bottom-feeder team, and may be more likely to sign with a successful team (possibly on a reduced contract), players with high 'loyalty' are more likely to stay with their current team, or are more likely to agree to restructure their contract when their team is in cap trouble. This should ideally be coupled with improved feedback between player and team in contract negotiations, along the lines of the suggestions from gstelmack (e.g. 'While Team X are offering more money, I'm going to sign for your team because I see you as a playoff team, while Team X haven't had a winning season in 5 years.') At the moment, I suspect that many players simply ignore these ratings because they have very little
apparent impact on what happens in the game.
Martin