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Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Oct 20, 2015 7:49:10 GMT -5
I need to figure out what is going on with the PBL because participation is down big time. Boards are quiet, we had 9 exports for the 2nd week of Free Agency, we got 5 open teams before F/A started and a 6th now the Cubs quit because of Zevin and not being able to sign the players he wants to sign (even though we agreed to a deal for Pinnock 14 real life days PRIOR the first FA SIM and he never input it).
People do not want to join the league because they are afraid of the Zevin process which is MIND BLOWING to me. Why would you not want a challenge, why would you want it to be so easy to manipulate the AI into signing players.
This isn't fair to me and most importantly this isn't fair to handful of guys who are still dedicated to the PBL on a daily basis.
The PBL has suffered through its worst season last year and I am 100% to blame for that, I had personal issues that I never spoke about. There were nights I slept in a car before working 14 hour shifts, nights between working back to back 16 hour days, I was up at 3-4 in the morning in huge arguments over things, a bunch of things have gone wrong in my life and I'll leave it at that for the time being but I still felt considering the circumstances, I did the best I could running the league and not making things feel neglected.
Right now the PBL is leaving a sour taste in my mouth. I don't feel the need to explain much more, I felt as though I did a fairly good job in the moment of keeping everyone in the loop and now I can't get close to 50% participation rates in return.
I'm going to think long and hard how I want to proceed with the PBL at this point because I don't want to continue to run a league that is only seeing a group of guy make an attempt for. I would rather start over somewhere else with a clean slate and end this on a high note if nobody wants to be part of it anymore than sit back and watch it suffer a slow, painful death.
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Post by Sean_RedsGM on Oct 20, 2015 8:39:31 GMT -5
I want to be part of this, and support you 100%.
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Post by AstrosGM_Shane on Oct 20, 2015 8:55:56 GMT -5
Sorry man. I know that sucks and I support you too man!
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Post by earlweaver on Oct 20, 2015 9:04:36 GMT -5
that's too bad. I obviously hope activity picks up. recruiting should also be helped along by us members. Sean posted a link to the ootp boards, and i was just to plain lazy to say anything. I'll head over there and try to help out.
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Post by earlweaver on Oct 20, 2015 9:08:27 GMT -5
Well, i went to post something, and the site says i dont have permission to post. I'll try again tomorrow
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Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Oct 20, 2015 10:26:22 GMT -5
I just want to make it clear, my dedication as Commissioner is not wavering, I have every intention of keeping the PBL going IF and ONLY IF people want it as well but not going to run it for 8 active teams. I'd rather step back and rebrand.
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Post by Dustin Ackley on Oct 20, 2015 10:55:37 GMT -5
I havent exported because I have no momey....
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Post by Dustin Ackley on Oct 20, 2015 10:57:17 GMT -5
Financially i think the league is in trouble. Personally I believe we should at least consider pumping some money into the league for some teams. I personally lost 50+ million from my budget it one season.
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Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Oct 20, 2015 11:02:04 GMT -5
I been thinking about the money aspect for quite some time and been wanting to pump money into the league but others suggested its not a good idea. There are some team budgets I simply don't understand.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2015 11:39:10 GMT -5
I know this my seem like I'm complaining but for me it is hard right now to get rid of any of my players after my budget dropped 20-25 million this year and no one is willing to take them or respond to trade offers. I feel we need to pump a little bit of money into all of the teams
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Post by Tim_GiantsGM on Oct 20, 2015 13:29:28 GMT -5
Derek, I am with you 100%. I would like the PBL to continue as a strong league for many years to come.
Regarding budgets and money, I am close to being in a position to post in-depth thoughts on these subjects. I have been collecting data gathered from my solo league. For the time being...
The most important consideration regarding budgets and whether they increase or decrease seems to be "season profit/loss" per the accounting page. This number is the same number as the "balance" amount listed on the team history page. I wish OOTP developers would be consistent in their use of terms.
The bottom line is this: When a team loses money, the owner reduces the budget.
Regardless of other factors working into the mix (win-loss record; winning; fan interest; owner characteristics; owner goals), the most important consideration seems to be net profit/loss. If a team loses money, it is a near certainty that the owner will reduce the budget for the next season. If a team generates a profit, the owner usually will increase the budget or leave it unchanged. This is not guaranteed, but it almost always happens.
More on this after I sim a couple of additional seasons and compile the results.
Regarding my Giants, last season I gambled by signing a couple of veterans late in the season hoping to make a push down the stretch and make the playoffs. After the signings I still had budget room available, but based on the projection in the accounting screen I could see that if I did not make the playoffs and earn playoff revenue the team would lose money for the season. If the Giants made the playoffs, I am confident the owner would have retained the unchanged budget that was being projected. Unfortunately we did not make the playoffs, we lost a relatively small amount, and the owner cut our new budget by $4m. I gambled and lost. This season I will simply need to work within the new budget and adjust factors that impact "the bottom line" to ensure that the Giants earn a net profit.
How did your team fare last season? Did you lose money? Is your new budget less than it was in 2035? If so, I strongly suggest that you focus on net profit. It is important to win - we all want to - but maintaining strong financial health via a net profit also seems to be very important.
Regarding the money situation, I don't feel we need to inject any additional money into the league. Teams earning a net profit should almost always be rewarded by their owners with unchanged or increased budgets. As budgets increase, GM's should have more funds available to sign free agents, fund player development, etc.
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Post by David_ExposGM on Oct 20, 2015 14:35:16 GMT -5
Just some thoughts... 1) The Commish did start another league semi-recently. While I hate to raise this, that would immediately roughly double his OOTP workload. It looks like it's on hiatus. Maybe we could recruit from that league to fill PBL and he could just go with one (if he hasn't decided that already)? 2) I still maintain a lot of the "Owner" problems are merely GM "decisions" that have not panned out, leading to reduced budgets. If activity on the trade forum is down because someone can't dump a costly, aging and poorly performing veteran, with little upside, so be it. We all live with our decisions and tackle challenges differently. And yes, it may indeed take a season (or five) to dig out. 3) When you gut your farm system, trade draft picks (if HIGH or FIRST OVERALL, meaning cheap, controllable superstars) and then get into money problems, of course you will be backed into a corner. NOT the "Owner's fault"! Especially when you trade for high priced talent that fizzles UNLESS YOU ARE ON THE VERGE OF A WORLD SERIES AND NEED ONE FINAL PIECE (purely in my opinion of course). 3) I would like to revisit this thread. I still don't think this decision works because we cannot police the numbers! I will stand corrected if I'm not seeing this right. There was a time when we could easily see whether every other team adhered to the PBL rule of staying green and we could call out a bad move that violated the rule. Now we can't. As SO MANY seemed to be in violation of the rule that it needed to be changed, the teams now having budget issues have likely been headed that way for several seasons. - Either dump the rule (need to be green) - which will require GM's to be fiscally responsible on their own - HA!
- OR use numbers that ALL can see so that we can police those that have no will power!
4) If Zevin is an issue in recruiting new GM's, or retaining new GM's that might not understand the idea until they eventually run into him, then maybe the concept should again be revisited. I'm not sure if that would help or further hinder forum activity, but the less GM's and more open teams we have certainly would obviously negatively affect activity.
*** Personally I have only had one worthwhile player I might have extended go to FA recently. I am nowhere near competitive, so simply do not feel the need to get into extension discussions and will instead take my chances with in-game FA and/or offers from other humans.
Other than that, not sure what would prompt inactivity?
And I would again like to voice my opinion that NO artificial financial help be injected into the PBL. If your team has budget issues........work through them, even if it takes a couple of seasons! OR, if they are still vacant, take over the White Sox!!!
The game can and does financially level things through the free agency and extension offers mechanism and yes, even with Zevin that should happen, even though the negotiations part happens outside the game. Therefore that again brings ME back to the GM being totally at fault for their teams performance (on the field and financially) even though the "Owner" might ultimately juggle the budget (downward, causing issues)!
Not sure if any of that helps or not, but I will still be here to support PBL in LA!
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Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Oct 20, 2015 15:33:26 GMT -5
With the craziness that became my life and my pledge to keep the PBL priority #1, I put the BLoA on the back burner for a long time now. I wanted to get that going so bad but PBL was and continues to be priority. Our only resources for recruiting at the moment is the OOTP boards and guys here who also are in other leagues who can help bring people over.
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Post by Derek _ Red Sox on Oct 20, 2015 15:51:44 GMT -5
I am lumping these two together because this is the problem. I'm betting we are looking at a 50/50 split or close to it for those who want to add money into the league and those who are against it. I also think both sides of the argument are pretty locked into their opinion and not willing to consider the alternative.
I agree 100% that the budget decrease is a result of your performance as General Manager. So yes, gutting your farm system, trading draft picks, taking bad contracts all contribute to poor performance and budget changes.
HOWEVER
This is simply NOT realistic.
I'm going to use Anthony as an example, just because he been with the Braves in the PBL for 25 seasons and nothing else. If he started in 2010 as the GM of the Braves in real life and did a good job by building up a solid farm system, making shrewd trades, great trades and wins a few playoff series and even delivers a World Championship to Atlanta. Then he picks a player with his #1 pick in the draft who suffers a CEI, he misses on a few trades, lost some players to FA signings and the Braves fall into downward spiral.
In OOTP what happens is the teams budget is slashed and then next year its slashed again and next year again which makes it tough for Anthony to turn it around OR if he were to leave then making it almost impossible on the next GM to come in and stay engaged in the league.
In real life if this scenario were to happen, do you think the GM is going to say to the GM "I'm slashing your budget and you need to start winning?" Then the same thing the year after and the year after and then after that as well so he continues to lose money, attendance starts to tank and his lifelong investment goes to shit ? Absolutely NOT! He simply fires the GM, keeps the budget at or somewhere near where its been and bring in a new guy to turn things around.
In the PBL guys don't get fired so teams continue to fall into a dark hole and its impacting the league. Salaries continue to rise AS THEY SHOULD but budgets continue to decline because the owner has no other way of showing displeasure and the game doesn't factor in inflation whatsoever.
I mentioned before the Red Sox are an example. The 2035 PBL Red Sox have a budget of $150 million. In real life 2015, the Red Sox PAYROLL (not budget) is $185 million. In PBL the 2035 Sox STILL have a very big market size, very good fan loyalty and a fan interest of 100 yet are to see a budget increase at all.
Since 2031 the Sox budget was: $140m $144m $144m $144m $146m $146m
The $140m was coming off a World Series victory and we seen a budget increase since then we have reached the playoffs every year except this year where we won 88 games, won 2 more World Series and the year after fell short in the ALCS. We were also seeing an ending balance of about $12m (average) but yet no increase.
I'm not sure the correlation is really that accurate to budgets being the deciding factor but I don't know what else it would be the main factors here either.
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Post by Sean_RedsGM on Oct 20, 2015 16:10:23 GMT -5
I am lumping these two together because this is the problem. I'm betting we are looking at a 50/50 split or close to it for those who want to add money into the league and those who are against it. I also think both sides of the argument are pretty locked into their opinion and not willing to consider the alternative. I agree 100% that the budget decrease is a result of your performance as General Manager. So yes, gutting your farm system, trading draft picks, taking bad contracts all contribute to poor performance and budget changes. HOWEVER This is simply NOT realistic. I'm going to use Anthony as an example, just because he been with the Braves in the PBL for 25 seasons and nothing else. If he started in 2010 as the GM of the Braves in real life and did a good job by building up a solid farm system, making shrewd trades, great trades and wins a few playoff series and even delivers a World Championship to Atlanta. Then he picks a player with his #1 pick in the draft who suffers a CEI, he misses on a few trades, lost some players to FA signings and the Braves fall into downward spiral. In OOTP what happens is the teams budget is slashed and then next year its slashed again and next year again which makes it tough for Anthony to turn it around OR if he were to leave then making it almost impossible on the next GM to come in and stay engaged in the league. In real life if this scenario were to happen, do you think the GM is going to say to the GM "I'm slashing your budget and you need to start winning?" Then the same thing the year after and the year after and then after that as well so he continues to lose money, attendance starts to tank and his lifelong investment goes to shit ? Absolutely NOT! He simply fires the GM, keeps the budget at or somewhere near where its been and bring in a new guy to turn things around. In the PBL guys don't get fired so teams continue to fall into a dark hole and its impacting the league. Salaries continue to rise AS THEY SHOULD but budgets continue to decline because the owner has no other way of showing displeasure and the game doesn't factor in inflation whatsoever. I mentioned before the Red Sox are an example. The 2035 PBL Red Sox have a budget of $150 million. In real life 2015, the Red Sox PAYROLL (not budget) is $185 million. In PBL the 2035 Sox STILL have a very big market size, very good fan loyalty and a fan interest of 100 yet are to see a budget increase at all. Since 2031 the Sox budget was: $140m $144m $144m $144m $146m $146m The $140m was coming off a World Series victory and we seen a budget increase since then we have reached the playoffs every year except this year where we won 88 games, won 2 more World Series and the year after fell short in the ALCS. We were also seeing an ending balance of about $12m (average) but yet no increase. I'm not sure the correlation is really that accurate to budgets being the deciding factor but I don't know what else it would be the main factors here either. Were you making a profit each one of those years? Just curious.
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