I want to think about a new formula for the market value, but this is a sensitive change since it will probably change the actual value of the players.

I'll see if I can think of a good way to implement a change like this. Anyone got some ideas about this?

Maybe have a second value (for display only) for one or two seasons so everyone can get used to the new value and see if it makes sense before anything is actually changed. This second value could then be adjusted freely a few times till it makes sense.

I am still very much opposed to this idea, and this change. In my perception of real life soccer, an older player will from a certain age not be transferred anymore, but at a certain point end his carreer as a professional player. I have always acted on the assuption that someone will pay for a players last transfer, and will get nothing in return since the player will end his carreer at that club. This is adequately represented by the fact that older players are in fact unsellable, with a few exceptions, just like in real life.
Since my initial comments in this topic unintentionally hurt a few feelings, I will try to put it more diplomatically, but the bottomline remains the same:
Making this change means to me that players who have hung on too long, or bought older players, could have known they would become worthless at some point, and have, knowingly or not, accepted that fact. Players who have followed strategies to prevent this, have sold players (just) in time not to get in that situation, and that has the direct effect that they have not profited from the best years of that player. Reinstalling worth to old players is quite a big gift to the first group, without any comparable advantage for the second.
I have noticed that my opinion did not find any support at this topic. That can either mean that nobody shares my view, or that those who do are not really interested in a topic about players they do not have. I feel that before making such a drastic rulechange, it would make sense to check if I am completely wrong, or that only the people who bump into this problem make themselves heard.

@Vincent When you say "change the actual value" do you mean reducing their skills?

@Vincent.. wouldnt it be simpler to let players be sold at any value when they reach a certain age.. ie. 28? So instead of selling my 1.3m value player at 1.1m minimum (rough figures).. the system would instead let me sell for 500k?

@Vincent.. Not really sure a big valuation change needs to happen? And I would rather no change if this was the only option, especially if it effects other players or skills of players as this would stop people buying them completely and make them even more unsellable?

@Koen.. Not sure I really understand your concerns as managers are looking to sell players for alot less than their worth.. surely this would be a good thing for the liquidty of the game? A manager with your strategy would make more money selling younger players while managers selling older players get less.. not sure why you would be so against it as their is no financial advantage for people to keep their players longer?

While I can appreciate your position on this issue and think it could be valid to some extent, I think it is misaplied here overall.

At a certain point in their careers, players will become worthless. The problem is that the players at issue actually are not worthless. They are just rendered worthless as a side effect to an artificial market system. It's natural and actually realistic that a player will have decreased value (sure, I'll concede that a superstar will not play for pennies for a new team at 40 years old, but that is only one minor consideration). For a sense of realism, the market should decide when a player becomes worthless, not the artificial market system that highly discourages buying any old player at all (while making it almost mandatory to buy young players).

Though I ultimately found a buyer for my player which had this issue to contend with, it took me 3 or 4 tries (only one person bid at the minimum price). Even so, this player was definitely not even close to being a worthless player who couldn't help a team. This player would have been the best defenseman on the majority of teams in the United States - I just happened to have 4 younger players that had caught up or passed him. He might have even been on the national team under a manager that just blindly chose the players with the most value without consideration for age, potential, main attributes, etc.

Once players like him get older, they will eventually become worthless (if not, then the developers might have to adjust the aging factor). By losing market value, the team he plays for will have in fact assumed the consequences from using an older player - the team won't be escaping from taking responsibility for their effective decision at all.

Another problem with leaving the values as they are is that players useful to new teams will be unable to be used. This will have the effect of even further entrenching the top teams.

With all that said about making the market realistic and preventing entrenchment, even though I disagree about the definition of a "worthless player," you probably do have a point about a player not wanting to play for a much weaker team at the end of their careers (in many cases). Perhaps there should be a floor on decreasing the value of a player (as a percentage of the player's maximum value); alternatively, the value can stop decreasing as of a certain age. Alternatively, a player could just be made more likely to refuse a transfer at a higher age (and could be made untradeable if they refuse a transfer at least x times after turning y years old). I would suggest the third option if it is not too difficult to implement (relative to its utility).

It is possible that the aging factor will not sufficiently eliminate players from being useful at the age where most players should retire (unless retirement at a certain age is made mandatory as in rocking tennis) if this change were to be implemented. I don't think artificially high market prices (though they may help to simulate unwillingness to move) should be the solution to this particular problem, though another solution will be necessary in 5-10(?) seasons.

Honestly, my concern isn't as much about retaining the apparent value of my older players as it is about not wanting to be forced to fire useful players.

@ Vincent: I like the idea to include a non-functional alternative market value to test a potential change for two seasons.

@Kezza: 1) Whatever the reason for the current floor on value, they are still relevant as players age. I assume that they are meant to prevent managers from cheating by offering players at unfairly low prices (decreasing the potential maximum sale price) to preferred managers.

2) Agreed that it would be bad if the change effected skills and star value (though I hope that the suggested change would just apply to the monetary market value).

3) I think that Koen is worried about managers getting profits that they otherwise would not have gotten and should have planned not to get in addition to the realism of players moving to new teams frequently as they become older. Even so, I still agree that increased liquidity would be a good thing.

@Zsone: I like the suggestion to retire players and make them coaches.

@Pepe: this is a good solution for now, though it would tie up your training facilitiy.

It might be a good idea to take a poll on the potential change if it would be that substantial. There will be a problem with people that invest significantly in players before becoming aware of the change which might cause them to suffer a loss (maybe they might even want to quit).

@Ulysses

That's why I dont think changing their value is such a good idea.. but if thats the only way to get the change I guess I would be for it for one

I don't mean to change the actual skills, but I do think the star rating formula could use an update. This is unrelated to the issue of the market value, but since a change in the star rating would also affect the market value the changes could be combined.

When I look at the transfer list now I see a lot of very expensive midfielders for example with a lot of power and scoring but relatively little passing. I have a feeling these star ratings are too high and they would never justify their current market value and star rating.

Changing the formula will cause their owners to seemingly lose a lot of money, so I see this is sensitive. On the other hand, it is important that the star value gives an impression of how good a player is.

@Vincent I would lose alot of value, but maybe it needs to be done (for the good of the game).. I think it's important the * value reflects how good a player is. No one wants to buy a 5m player who plays worse than a 1m player :o)

++ If this decreases the transver value of older players.. even better :o)

I agree with Kezza.

well...maybe it's not that bad that their value don't represent the true quality of the player.That's why it's the managers job to take a look at their fix features and trainable features and decides is he realy worth that much,that's how im thinking at least.Something must be done with these older players,but if value will 100% show how good is a player,than managers will not have to "think" just check out the values and buys the highest.

It will never be 100% accurate, it's too complicated for that. I do want it to be an indication though, and right now I feel it could be done better.

When you want to know if you have a chance at beating an opponent you'll first look at the stars. If you have a lot of extra training in power and speed and a lot of experience in secondary skills that may never or rarely be used (like scoring for midfielders) your team may look a lot stronger than the opponent while in fact you're worse. I think a lot of people won't understand why they lose if this isn't improved.

There will still be enough nuances for a good manager to decide on.

Actually I have noticed that midfielders tend to have higher values and that comparisons between different types of players tend to be misleading.

I guess I should also take from this thread not to train my midfielders in scoring so much...

The discussion has moved beyond my last post, but I would like to answer yesterday's post by Kezza and Ulysses.
@Kezza: To answer the question you asked in the third post from the top: There are two main reasons for being so against it. The first is the gamemechanics will be drastically reformed. Up until now, we all have been busy putting extra players in the game, and players exiting the game has not really been an issue, and that's what we are being confronted with now. The oldest players leaving the game can be done in two different ways. Their carreers can end abruptly, or they can fade out slowly. In the current system, the better old players carreers will end abruptly. He will be used up by his owner, and fired if his salary outweighs his benefits for the team. Making older players sellable, means they stay in the game longer, will be sold to weaker teams, and eventually botteams. A slow process. The first way, a good old player is the topteams problem. It is the owner of a topteam that will have to decide sooner or later if he will keep the player to make full use of his stars by winning prizes, championships etc. at the expense of not being able to sell him, and losing the transfermoney. That decision is a strategical one. Keeping the player comes at a price.
If old players can be easily sold, there is no price to pay for succes. Players can be used at their prime almost without a loss.
And it's this difference that I find so crucially important. For the overall gameplay, the best teams will buy the best players in order to win prizes. If these best teams do not stumble into any kind of problem, they will remain the best teams simply because they started the game first. For the dynamics of this game, the best teams need to have a problem substantial enough to give some counterbalance to the 'free' extra championsleagueincome. And I thought that not being able to sell prime players of a generation was a cleverly thoughtout way to make sure the game remains dynamic.
Second: I cannot look into peoples heads and see whether managers who own old players now and would like to be able to sell them more easily, made a strategical decision to do so at a cost, or stumbled into a situation they did not take into account. The only thing I do know, is that those who did take it into account and tried to avoid this situation, did so at a huge cost. And that's the only group who would not benefit from this rulechange, which feels rather unfair.
About liquidity: I would say that the rate at which money flows into this game is so high that liquidity can never be an issue. But maybe I dont understand exactly what you mean here.
@Ulysses: To answer your third point in the fifth post from the top: Well, I wouldn't say 'worried'. As mentioned above, it's about feeling. There is a group that made a decision to go for the prizes and succes now, knowingly abandoning transfermoney. There is a group that did not realize they even had a problem, and there is a group that payed a handsome price not to get into this trouble. With this rulechange I would say the first group is lucky, the second might even argue that 'a problem is being solved' and the third one is worst off, and at the same time the only group of which you can prove they took the problem into account. Worry? No. It's just such a moment at which I really wonder why I spend so much time minding small details, when a simple rulechange results in that there is a group of players being way better off while they had no clue about what's happening. Im sure we have all been there, a moment that you would like to shout 'It's not fair!!'...

I think liquidity refers to an interpretation of the main issue in this thread as older players becoming illiquid assets.

I agree with your concern to some extent, yet I also think that the question of fairness does not need to be framed in such a limited manner.

Players will have to take responsibility for their decision by losing potential market value (the question is whether they will lose it to an extent sufficient to compensate for having received the extra benefit of using the player).

In addition, there is the time value of money to consider. Having $1 million (or the equivalent in another currency) during your first season is much more valuable than having it during your fifth season. A player that forgoes such an opportunity gives up the option to get better players that are trained better sooner. A player also forgoes the opportunity to sell a player, buy 10 better than expected younger players, and then sell those younger players at a much greater profit.

Third, the current market is flawed in that it discourages managers to buy or keep older players while making it almost mandatory to buy, train, and sell younger players. This market is not very realistic.

Fourth, in another game that I've played, older players do sell for lower prices. By making these players available, newer teams are able to load up on a bunch of older players and be competitive sooner. The older players from max youth centers and training facilities will probably be just as valuable as young players when the time comes; until then, the flawed older players that are surpassed by younger players should be able to be passed down to the next tier of teams. This will help to prevent entrenchment.

Personally, I sold my 31 year old CD because I randomly decided to buy a slightly younger and better CD for $2.5 million during the last transfer window (he also happened to be an important member of the national team that I manage, so I wanted to make sure he ended up on a decent team). I guess that I wrongly assumed that some botteam or newer team would pick up the player. Again, I don't really mind forgoing potential profit by choosing to keep a player, I just think that useful players should continue to be available to the teams that could use such players. In a way, I agree with your concern, just not your solution.

With all of that said, I do think that your concern should be addressed. The market price should be decreased to an extent such that the managers who keep older players too long are forced to pay to compensate for the benefit received.

Perhaps a good compromise would be to go ahead with the plan to reduce the value of older players but limit the amount of money that their managers can receive. For instance, a player that originally cost $3 million that due to the change is sold for $1.5 million might only generate $500,000 for their manager. Alternatively, perhaps the solution might be to allow the players in question to become free agents. This way, their managers won't unfairly benefit from the change, but the players could still become available at lower prices to newer teams.

Finally, the players in the game should eventually start to reach a point where they train their attributes to the maximum value (if not, then the maximum might have to be lowered). These players, like in Rocking Rackets, will not be able to improve and will eventually become worthless in their old age. In Rocking Rackets, players tend to become unable to compete at 34 years old and worthless as they reach their 40's (when retirement becomes mandatory).