davo >> sunday february 24 - 05:38, Edited sunday february 24 - 05:41

I know that this keeps coming up over and over again, but here goes:

The transfer market is almost completely dead for good quality players. It is now virtually impossible to sell a good player as there is so little available money in the game.

An example of how dire the situation is, there is currently a 7.25 talent ST MF on the market, with one bid on him. He has a value of 350m and is up for sale for 480m. This is quite a rarity to actually see a player having a bid above his value. Prior to the introduction of the YA/FA there would have been 10 teams bidding him up to probably 2bn.

Non STs, it's not even worth listing them.

The economy of this game is in ruins. With no option to sell a player, other than for 25m to the bank, it has become a game of build up your facilities and play the had that you are dealt with youths.

This is not helping anyone. It is not helping the  big clubs who are quickly approaching break-even with massive maintenance costs and stupidly astronomical wages. It is not helping the smaller clubs as before you could get lucky with a ST, cash in on him and finance upgrades.

It is probably not possible to fix the financial  side of the game anymore as it has been ruined by a series of poor judgement calls aimed at appeasing the newer clubs, which ended up disadvantaging them the most and making it impossible for them to catch up.

My suggestion is to reduce dramatically the maintenance costs and building costs, reduce the wages to something manageable, increase the sell to bank option price significantly.

The game used to be so much more interesting when there was an active TM. I havent bought anything other than an emergency backup player for 10 seasons. 

PMK >> sunday february 24 - 06:55, Edited sunday february 24 - 07:01

Salaries are a big problem. The game becomes too difficult for new players to stay. There should be a salary calculator that estimates the salary of a player at its peak. Why? How much will cost 15 players YA3 trained at FA5? I bet around 1M each. In total 15M weekly just for salaries. 

So what can a team do with such high salaries? Sale the players or downgrade facilities. And then the game will come to balance again. But there won't be any users left till then. 

The "board" should protect users from such threads and not just forbid you from playing  with more than 3 youths in your squad.

edit: health centre is a joke 

Boy >> sunday february 24 - 07:19, Edited sunday february 24 - 11:38

So you have not bought a player for 10 seasons and you say the market is dead? 

Well i agree that the market is dead but those judgements call were not to appease the newer clubs, but instead to appease the bigger clubs who had nothing to do with their pile of money. And guess what they did? They didnt buy players anymore on the market but instead invested in buildings to get a bigger advantage on their competitors. Which is normal by the way.

They didnt need anything anymore from the market, with the exception of ST players or very good Star players. Higher YA and TA meant that they could make quality player of their own , so why buy?

The newer clubs didnt have money anyway because of the catching up proces they were in so they were happy to buy some better players for lower prices now and then.

But please dont say that wages or maintenance costs have to drop for bigger/rich clubs. It will make the gap between big clubs and newer clubs even bigger and the bigger clubs wont invest in the market anyway. They will build improved buildings and look out for the occasional super ST and spend big for such a player. One thing we know is that such a player will not be provided by a new or smaller club.

And, again, yes i agree on the market being dead

Numpty >> sunday february 24 - 09:52, Edited sunday february 24 - 09:54

The problem that you have described is that the big clubs generally don't find it necessary to buy players on the transfer market. 

Changing the economy is not necessarily the right solution. 

The simple answer is to make it much harder for the big clubs to produce their own talented youngsters.

Then they will have to buy good talents from other clubs.

This would also be much more realistic, as in real life the big clubs do  buy talented players from the smaller clubs.

The question is how to make it harder to produce great talents? Either increase the costs for the Youth Academies or downgrade the improvements they give, or both. 

For instance, instead of the maximum talent levels increasing by 0.3 per level they could perhaps only increase by 0.1, like so:

• Youth Centre 10 - Maximum talent 5.0
• Youth Academy 1 - Maximum talent 5.1
• Youth Academy 2 - Maximum talent 5.2
• Youth Academy 3 - Maximum talent 5.3
• Youth Academy 4 - Maximum talent 5.4
• Youth Academy 5 - Maximum talent 5.5
• Youth Academy 6 - Maximum talent 5.6

This would have the following effects:

1. Upgrading the Youth Academies would be far less attractive for the costs involved.
2. Lower level talents around 4.9 to 5 would become more interesting.  
3. Supertalents produced by the lower level clubs would now be much more valuable - and highly sought after. 

davo >> sunday february 24 - 10:24

Well speaking as a bigger club, I can tell you that the entire reason that I did not buy any players was because I knew that I had to save every dollar for upgrades.

@Numpty, your idea would probably have worked as nobody in their right mind would have upgraded their YA. It would not be fair to retrospectively nerf peoples YAs, unless they return the money and give a credit for the time it took to build them.

The issue is that almost every manager that does not have more than enough money to upgrade everything to the highest they can afford to without running at a loss - which is generally a max of YA4+FA4 / YA5+FA3 / YA3+FA5 - will aim to upgrade to those levels. This will result in a zero budget for transfers. This is why the TM is dead.

Ar4ers >> sunday february 24 - 10:37

Low player prices no problem, problem is high construction costs

Numpty >> sunday february 24 - 10:51, Edited sunday february 24 - 10:53

The thing to do is to focus on achieving the best solution. Whatever that might be. 

Getting there from where we are now is another matter. It's simply a case of finding the right way forward that would be fair to those who have already invested. 

The YA's could possibly be nerfed at a given date in the future, with the option of downgrading and getting some or all of their money back - and they will still have benefitted from the highly talented youths already produced. 

A game where everyone just keeps building and the biggest, highest level  building wins is extremely boring.

The best possible game should be where the good managers make the best judgements because there are many complications and it requires a good strategy.  So it's right that there should come a point where having the biggest buildings are not necessarily the best way to play. 

Otherwise it's simply a game of build, build, build. 

We have to stop the constant building. Making the very highest level buildings unattractive is therefore necessary.

Costs, if anything, should rise not decrease.

otario007 >> sunday february 24 - 10:56

"It is probably not possible to fix the financial  side of the game anymore as it has been ruined by a series of poor judgement calls aimed at appeasing the newer clubs, which ended up disadvantaging them the most and making it impossible for them to catch up."

Lets see: 

Before new facilities: Market not dead

After new facilities: Market dead

I think I see a correlation between new facilities and the dead market, and unless you are telling me that the new facilities are for the new players (which if it is, lol), then the market is dead because Vincent catered to the old players.

davo >> sunday february 24 - 11:06

I completely agree. The change was an attempt to limit the money of the rich and to take excess money out of the game. Problem is that it just resulted in the richest clubs having more benefit and being even harder catch. I dont think that it was the intention, but it was definitely the result.

PMK >> sunday february 24 - 11:13

Vincent didn't catered to the old clubs. He wanted to take money out of the game. The upgrades at the future will indeed help new players as the older ones will have to downgrade their facilities and lose money if they continue building or if they make a team with high salaries.

Numpty >> sunday february 24 - 11:16, Edited sunday february 24 - 11:17

"Problem is that it just resulted in the richest clubs having more benefit and being even harder catch. I dont think that it was the intention, but it was definitely the result."

Yes, I agree. 

The real problem is even with the higher costs there is simply much too much benefit. So everyone just keeps building.

What needs to be changed is the benefit/cost ratio. 

Kupus >> sunday february 24 - 12:06

The market exactly as in real life and perhaps is not as dead as you say.

Super players cost a lot of money.

Then it is a huge gap to normal players that today with the bosman go for moderate money.

Big talents always cost a lot of money.

Perhaps the market is just as it should be?

Ar4ers >> sunday february 24 - 12:21

But un real life there are also arab and russian oil oligarchs who buy clubs and invest billions

Sir Alex >> sunday february 24 - 13:31

Of course Vincent can't change the YC/YA benefits now.

Dragontao >> sunday february 24 - 13:33, Edited sunday february 24 - 13:38

Previously I would have said new players could catch up. albeit very slowly, and the challenge was worthwhile.

Now it will be virtually impossible with the state of the transfer market and the cost of facilities.

It's not a challenge for new players anymore, it's a hiding to nothing.

VIP is virtually worthless. Saving credits to create players isn't any use with the new facilities.

Attendance boost and selling tickets is of little consequence when saving to build facilities is such an arduous task and maintenance costs are so high  anyway. It maes little difference.