Challenge Questions & Feedback Thread

[rocker87]

I had same problem with my Pens game in 2067. Regens ask lower wages, I never had guy with more then 6,5M salary and cap was 70.2M with Manimal 5.0. In RL, you have a almost every top 6 guy on 3.75-5M minimum wage, mostly on 5-7.5 in most teams. Players are not greedy enough, in my opinion. If they'll ask 10-15% more for salary, it'll be far better.

[bruins72]

t's a good thing to keep in mind. Of course, this being our first challenge using a save instead of a fresh start, it's a learning experience.

[batdad]

Yeah, in no way was that a criticism of anything in any way. Just a suggestion for the future.

[Salming]

I am starting my 5th seson with bruins 2024 challange, by november only 5 teams are over the salaty floor. This have the effect that 24 teams in leauge basicly refuse to trade. Threre younger player are UNT or upsided by their gms and only way to trade with em is to trade supergood players for their lesser good players if they got alot lower salaries

[jesterx7769]

My observations so far of using the save since we're now talking about it...

Pros:
-Harder first season to start with than normal rosters
-Better rookies, they seem to actually develop/be better so more useful ( I have several nhl ready guys in only year 2/3)
-Fun seeing different players/team builds

Cons:
-Easier to rebuild since guys have matured/at full strength
-Near impossible to trade/be different with cap floor
-You hit that loaded/poop team margin the further you go in years


My suggestions for all challenges, not just future ones is

Option A) Remove the league cap floor: It serves no purprose in the game other than to restrict what teams you can trade with. The AI clearly doesn't care if it hits it or not and they don't care about any sort of penalty compared to what would happen in real life. Some tests would have to be run first to make sure teams don't go super cheap, but as shown in the current game teams are willing to go under the cap and not care about competing.

Option B) Go home grown: No trades, no FA's, this would be harder but stick with the challenge curriculum. As I mentioned above I think the future save game players would cater to this much better. I also liked starting the game before the draft so we could choose those players to help the rebuild.

Option C) Get rid of Trades, Add an FA: Since trades are problematic if we don't want to edit the salary cap floor but don't want to go full home grown we could add an FA signing. For example you have the current 1 player at 3m but then you can also sign another for 2m or 1m (w/e people decide) or possibly get a waiver pickup if you don't use it. This would still give you the chance to add someone like a trade but perhaps in an easier/more options kind of way.

Option D) 2 For 1 Trades: If we want to keep the trades a 2 for 1 system could be introduced, for example using the player for player normal trade but adding that 2nd round pick in it. Or just allow any 2 for 1, this would allow to add a more expensive player into a deal with a prospect in order to help the trade partner stay above the cap.

[bruins72]

Those are some good points, Jester. I'm sure in the next challenge we'll be going back to running a challenge from a DB like normal but I'll have to ask Manimal if it's possible to remove the salary floor from the DB for future challenges with a simmed forward game.

One other thing I like about everybody using a save is that we're all starting out the same, there's no random PAs or anything random. On the other hand, I found out that Mac users couldn't load the save, so that excluded them from the challenge. That's not good.

[jesterx7769]

Yeah I really liked using the same game, that way for example in the Lightning game, you don't get a Drouin with a PA of 110 or 160. It might be a good idea for you to do that every time and that way you can remove the cap floor via save game editor (if tests prove right). However we would have to work on some sort of Mac solution as I have not been involved in those threads despite owning a mac (don't use it for ehm)

And of course they're all made as friendly suggestions not hate or complaints

[batdad]

The problem with the floor is that it is artificially raised like the cap in this DB. IT is actually at or close to the level of the original Salary Cap in the original "boxed" version of the game.

I have never understood the raising of cap and floor in this game. Never. The salary demands of players are designed for the original cap, and the rate of inflation and/or the rate of revenue in the EHM version of NHL DOES NOT increase like it does in real life. It stays flat.

If Kesler asks for 8 million in 2014, he is asking for 8 million in 2019 and things are not changing. HE is not asking for 15 million becuase the cap is at 150 mill, he is still asking 8 mill.

So...there is no point to changing the salary cap in this game, as the economics are constants.

All you have to do to make this work right is lower the cap to the original levels, and the floor will go down with it as I believe it is set at the original levels. The teams are spending to the original cap, which is now the floor, and they are doing exactly like they would if the cap was at original level.


This challenge would have been awesome had we known that the cap was raised in the DB. It serves no point to raise it and makes things in the game too easy. Can offer anyone big $ and get the superstar team too fast.

Again...just pointing it out not criticizing. It was a decision to raise the cap and this has been happening all along in the DB renewals. But the game does not follow real life economics. So to make it like real life cannot increase the cap and floor.

[bruins72]

But if the cap isn't adjusted along with the DB, I think many teams would be over the cap to start. Then we'd have teams waiving stars to get under the cap and nobody would be able to claim them because they'd all be over the cap. Then all of those waived players that went unclaimed would get buried in the minors. That would really throw things out of whack as well.

[batdad]

True maybe. I had not thought really of that.

Doing away with salary floor may be the way to go if that is the case. OR maybe decrease the cap some but not all the way.

Anyway..has to be a way to deal with it in all that the boys have come up with.

[jesterx7769]

I'm not concerned about the cap space ceiling as much as the floor. When you play the game the cap ceiling never comes into play too much for me unless you are trading for lots of people with existing big contracts. otherwise you can usually find good/similar people for much less money. In this current challenge, the ceiling was never a problem, which indeed takes out some of the challenge but isn't game breaking. Since you can't sign anyone for big money in a challenge anyways it makes it easy to stay under.

The cap floor on the other hand prevents trading, which is a some what game breaker.

[bruins72]

With our limited trading and UFA signings, I don't think the cap is really an issue for us. If it was, we could always implement a challenge budget. Didn't we used to do that in the old days? The cap floor is definitely an issue though.

[rocker87]

Those are some good points, Jester. I'm sure in the next challenge we'll be going back to running a challenge from a DB like normal but I'll have to ask Manimal if it's possible to remove the salary floor from the DB for future challenges with a simmed forward game.

One other thing I like about everybody using a save is that we're all starting out the same, there's no random PAs or anything random. On the other hand, I found out that Mac users couldn't load the save, so that excluded them from the challenge. That's not good.

I think it's more fun to start from save then from original DB. Maybe start without RL names would be good also. Or you make fantasy draft and then give us a save. Without RL names also.

The problem is, regen will ask less money then original player will. Also, UFAs ask less as well. Pretty bad. I will repeat it, we need more greedy players and maybe more ambition players, who will ask for trade if you don't put him in the top lines or something like that. Ask for trade because of new ambition is also one of the things we need to be more common.

Game is pretty easy and we need more challenges. Let say, you need to waive one guy from your 23 roster every year, or something like that.

Roster creators need to make them harder to manage.

[Manimal]

Or maybe we could lower salaries by the same percentage we lower the cap(if it goes back to original db level) ?

[rocker87]

Salary Cap or floor is not a problem when player is asking normal amount of money. I never need to offer any of players 8M per year. Why? They don't ask and they accept lower salary raise. Now you have a lot of players over 7M in RL, but in regens situations, you have very few of them asking more then 6M. Or you can sign them lower then they ask, and still lower then 6M.

[batdad]

It is a problem when you cannot make a pick for player deal. Also it is a problem for comp level of the game itself. If I pay to the salary cap, and all others below the floor, pretty easy to get an all star team together. that is the issue.

I like Manimal's suggestion...but then we get 10000000 complaints about salaries not being "True to life".

[rocker87]

So, if the salary cap can't be lower, because of RL salary cap complains, players wages could be higher. Then it won't be a problem right? If you can't pay 10 players minimal wage and some other players on 1-2M and you need to pay them higher, because they're top 6 players, we will be ok. Also, star players in AI clubs should be resigned frequently, because, in this situation, we have 10+ star players on UFA and not any of their teams are near cap.

EDIT: Or they can make database for our challenge needs with lower cap.

[batdad]

AI teams will NOT spend to a higher cap once you are a few seasons in. They only spend to the original cap area in general. At least that is what seems to be happening in the challenge. The floor is basically the original cap and the teams do not care to spend over the floor. Very very few do.

Budgets may also be in play there.

The game lets stars sit on the sidelines no matter what the cap is, no matter what the floor is. Just the way the game has been from day one. one of the flaws that TOO MANY guys have that happen. It happens to a few every season, but never 28 year old stars. Langenbrunners and Arnott types sure.

Salary cap can be lower, but the problem may be that will not affect how AI teams do business, and if lowered too much could result in issues of waiver claims re using real life salaries right off the bat.

game does not work like real life.

[rocker87]

They can't make different AI behavior in their new database because it's coded into the game?

[batdad]

yeah. AI behaves the same regardless of database.

[rocker87]

Well, then we need original salary cap for challenges at least. The problem will be in original salaries, then. Looks like we don't have good solution.

[jesterx7769]

I am going to run some db tests this weekend bc I am sick of the salary cap issues in the game. I plan on running two tests

1) Does Ownership/management attributes effect salary cap? i.e. if we put everyone as willing to spend will all teams get over cap floor and close to ceiling?

2) If we remove the floor all together will teams still spend reasonably after a few years? Or will some drop down to only paying like 10m. I feel like a lot just try to get as close to floor as possible so I'm curious what no floor does after 5 years with determined owners.

I'm not concerned with using the salary cap as a way to make things harder in the challenge. In my experience the cap ceiling is a non issue in challenges due to restrictions on player acquisitions until season 4 when you can spend 5m.

My bigger concern is being unable to trade with the majority of the league being under the floor for the challenges.

We aren't going to get realistic salaries no matter what since the game is old and goes off the old cap and salary demands.

[bruins72]

I'd be very interested to hear what you discover in your tests. This could be quite useful not only in future challenges but also roster updates.

[nino33]

I'd be very interested to hear what you discover in your tests.

Me too!

[jesterx7769]

Here is the graph from my first round of tests (sim takes too long to do more

http://i355.photobucket.com/albums/r461 ... e0280a.jpg

Couple of key things:

- I plotted points for salary cap after 1 year and after 5 years. I did 3 tests, two were standard, one was without a floor. I was hoping to find some consistency in the two standards between Owners but couldn't really.

-I highlighted 40m as the cap floor

-Without a cap floor there were more "bad" teams (30m) but overall about the same number of teams under the cap.

-I did this with the sole purpose of trading in challenges, not getting realistic caps or making it harder to budget

-My concern with the no cap floor was that many teams would drop into/below the 20m range but it did not happen.

-While there were a few bad teams as noted, other teams could also be that bad in the normal cap floor

-I can run another test or two (wanted to enjoy my sunday ) but it seems for challenges getting rid of the floor is more realistic. I think the trade off of being able to trade with EVERY team, outweights the con of having two-four "awful" teams as cap alone doens't show the quality of a team (as mentioned regens/rookies have lower salary)

edit: just realized the X axis is labeled wrong so ignore it