Talent Reductions Again! from somebody else's mouth

[Peter]

This is an idea that SXR, DJ and myself were talking about this afternoon and it really became quite refined and is by far the most fair suggestion to bring thus file back down to earth.

For beginning reference here is out settings and the stock settings on BM 12 (i admit that the beginning settings in bm 12 are low but we wouldn't be going that low regardless)

Our file
3.5 90's per team
16.7 80's per team
9.2 90's peaks per team
37.2 80's peaks per team

BM 12 stock settings
1.2 90's per team
8.3 80's per team
3.2 90's peaks per team
23.2 80's peaks per team

As you all know, in our file 90 means almost nothing and we have a ton of players underplaying their ovr's and vitals. In reality, 90's should be the all star players of the league but we have far too many in the file for that to be the truth. We are roughly double of where we should be according to the stock setting....saying this I am not suggesting that we will end up going all the way down to these stock settings. Onto the official suggestion that was the brainchild of SXR

Every player in the file gets a -1 on their predicted stats. What this does is roughly lowers their OVR by 2 points. This is fair because every player in the file would be getting the -1 on their predicted stats, thus not changing the relative value of any player in the file.
Ok now if you calculate how many 90's would be left if every player is brought down 2points. This would roughly leave us with 73 90's in our file and now we can adjust our leagues percentages of talent. The new calculation would be 2.4 90's per team which is much more realistic. You expect the 90's to represent the all star teams which would roughly be 60 players total which would leave us right in that ballpark of where our talent should be.

Ill repeat what I said before, every player in the league will get -1 on their projected stats so now you would do the same adjustment to all 80's and adjust the percentage of 80's per team (and also the adjustment of 80's and 90's peaks are also included). After doing this you would have brought down all the talent in the league back down to earth, and also by calculating the new percentages out of the final product of these adjustments, virtually eliminate future drops (unless of course that player was going to drop anyways)

I believe the advantages of doing this would be very beneficial to the league. Before you get too defensive about the topic, read thru this and understand how much better it is than any previous suggestion. The stats distribution will match the players skill sets finally (something this file doesn't do) and in the future should hopefully improve the competition of the league. please take a second to examine the percentages of players per team and understand how out of whack they are and here we have a very good solution to remedy this.

Also a lowering of the farm rating will help decrease the amount of "recycling" of players and should provide more realistic career paths

[AndyP]

There are a number of problems with this suggestion and it happens every time:

1) The overemphasis on overall rating. It's irrelevant. It really is, the problem with our file isn't that we have underperforming 80s or 90s. It's that we have a lot of untalented guys that have an overall of 80 or 90. Changes the percentages doesn't fix that.

2) Mogul, in our file, isn't following the caps we put on. We've done this before with the caps and mogul ignores it and keeps driving talent up. Why? Well on to number 3!

3) We have an enormous emphasis on prospect development in the name of league equity. We have our farm rate set sky-high so the file is constantly churning out good specs. The result is the randomn player drops (this idea would not fix that, not even at a minimal level) in order to at least somewhat stay within the talent ratios. If we really want to stop driving up the league talent, we have to reduce that number first and then reduce the talent ratings later. Doing this first before we do that will only punish talented teams now and cause the same problem in a few seasons when mogul far outpaces the ratios we set.

As Sean showed recently - the stat distribution is not that far off from real life. We have about as many 30 and 40 homerun hitters as we should. We have about as many true aces as we should. If you disagree...show me that our stats aren't similar to MLB. Because I don't believe it and as recently as a few seasons ago Sean showed it to be a problem of perception.

Again, what's driving this is completely ignoring the fact that mogul doesn't do stats based on overalls. The game does it based on vitals. Hammering overalls will change nothing. The better strategy was killing the phony 80s and 90s. Or reducing farm production. Not this.

[Peter]

There are a number of problems with this suggestion and it happens every time:

1) The overemphasis on overall rating. It's irrelevant. It really is, the problem with our file isn't that we have underperforming 80s or 90s. It's that we have a lot of untalented guys that have an overall of 80 or 90. Changes the percentages doesn't fix that.

2) Mogul, in our file, isn't following the caps we put on. We've done this before with the caps and mogul ignores it and keeps driving talent up. Why? Well on to number 3!

3) We have an enormous emphasis on prospect development in the name of league equity. We have our farm rate set sky-high so the file is constantly churning out good specs. The result is the randomn player drops (this idea would not fix that, not even at a minimal level) in order to at least somewhat stay within the talent ratios. If we really want to stop driving up the league talent, we have to reduce that number first and then reduce the talent ratings later. Doing this first before we do that will only punish talented teams now and cause the same problem in a few seasons when mogul far outpaces the ratios we set.

As Sean showed recently - the stat distribution is not that far off from real life. We have about as many 30 and 40 homerun hitters as we should. We have about as many true aces as we should. If you disagree...show me that our stats aren't similar to MLB. Because I don't believe it and as recently as a few seasons ago Sean showed it to be a problem of perception.

Again, what's driving this is completely ignoring the fact that mogul doesn't do stats based on overalls. The game does it based on vitals. Hammering overalls will change nothing. The better strategy was killing the phony 80s and 90s. Or reducing farm production. Not this.

Im going to take you advice and put it back onto you, you see something you dont like you say no hulk smash

1. This adjusts the ratings so we don't have useless 80's or 90's because that should NOT be the case in the file

2. We have 108 90+ players. At 3.5 90's per team we should have 105 per tea,, so do your research

3. do i agree that we should have Farm set to excellent, maybe not but thats a separate issue. that can also be adjusted if there is enough support for it

The purpose of changing the overall is to bring the file down to earth because it is clearly sky high ridiculous right now. I heard you out on the comp changes now seriously consider this because there isn't a negative affect to doing it. This approach avoids the hated random drops and keeps relative value of every player in check. Its truely a win win.

[AndyP]

Im going to take you advice and put it back onto you, you see something you dont like you say no hulk smash

The difference is that I offered an alternative. Cut the farm rating first, then suggest this. The suggestion is backwards, as I've told DJ before as well.

1. This adjusts the ratings so we don't have useless 80's or 90's because :

Have you not played single player? This happens all the time. Overall is irrelevant, being tied so heavily to it is why you don't see the underlying problems.

2. We have 108 90+ players. At 3.5 90's per team we should have 105 per tea,, so do your research

That hasn't historically been the case. We had to cut people to get to this. If you impose your plan again it will happen again because the farm rating is still driving the problem.

3. do i agree that we should have Farm set to excellent, maybe not but thats a separate issue. that can also be adjusted if there is enough support for it

This really shows why you're grasp on the problem isn't completely there. They aren't separate. The farm rating is driving the problem. It always has been. You won't fix the overall issue until you fix this. What you will do instead is cause chaos with established players dropping to make room for the next wave from the farm. You have to fix the virus, not the symptom.

This approach avoids the hated random drops and keeps relative value of every player in check. Its truely a win win.

No it doesn't. The randomn drops happen because that's how Clay programmed talent development. When you have a static talent rating, someone has to die to make room for the next jump. What you will do, by not dropping the farm first, is cause a rush of randomn drops to accomodate the usual swell of jumps.

Again, you're focusing on a symptom. Not the problem. I don't want to treat a symptom, I want to treat the problem. So when a suggestion comes out that first addresses the problem THEN the symptoms, let me know.

---

I'm going to say it as simply as I can, because we keep rehashing the same arguments because there is a fundamental misunderstanding:

1) Don't come at this with a "stats aren't distributing properly!" without some proof. The last time we had this discussion, Sean buried that argument in terms of homeruns. Show that it's true, or drop it. Tying stat productions to overalls makes me think your argument is amatuerish at best. We all know vitals drive production, so this whole line of argument is absurd without some facts.

2) I don't have a problem reducing 80s and 90s. I have a problem reducing talent without first addressing the source of the problem - our draft and farm settings. We're putting the cart before the horse. It's very simple. Fix that and then I'm on board with dropping the ratios. Until we do that, we're not solving anything. In fact, we'd make it far, far worse.

[Peter]

Overall is relevant in the sense that we have people that are rated 90's that absolutely no reason being a 90, it affects contracts with agents and plain doesn't make any sense. I absolutely understand that vitals run the player but we have so so so many empty ratings its ridiculous.

If you don't think the distribution settings have nothing to do with how good players get, your crazy. is it maybe only part of the problem, that is a possibility. players will still develop to fill the quota set by us and our file regardless of the farm rating,maybe it just won't happen in such glorious fashion.

The statement about random drops was in relation to fixing the talent ratings. obviously talent drops will still happen as i stated in my first post; saying this, the talent drops won't be related to this talent adjustment.

[AndyP]

Let me try by analogy or metaphor to show you and DJ (who shares the same misconceptions) the problem:

Let's say you wanted to cook a fabulous meal for FCM. Something delicious, but not too much food or too little. So you go out and spend $1000 dollars at the grocery store for just that one meal. You also go out and hire the three greatest chefs known to man. When the meal is ready, the feast is so overwhelming you feel it's a problem. You end up throwing out entrees, appetizers, and desserts because it's just way, way too much. You decide to solve this problem for the next day, that you'll just have your servers throw out the same number of things you did today at every meal.

My suggestion, is that if you stop spending $1000 every day and find a better amount (maybe 500, maybe 750) you may not have such an overabundance. It also might help if you don't have the three greatest chefs known to man, but maybe just an average one or two. From my perspective, the chefs are part of the problem, because if they were awful far less food would make it to the table or wouldn't be very good if it did. Likewise, even the three greatest chefs in the world can't feed 30 people with $1 worth of food.

Your plan, in some baffling way I can't comprehend, somehow feels the overabundant feast is a "separate" issue from the massive budget and super chefs you hire. I can't even fathom how you don't see the glaring problems at root in the start of your meal or connect the two.

To keep with the metaphor. I'll be happy to talk about the problems of the feast once we fix the obvious problems driving it in the first place. Until then, you'll create more problems then you solve by overlooking the real issues.

(Yes...I hate empty overalls, but they are a mogul reality. I'm ok culling these players too with a more surgical tact then the one you recommend. But you won't fix the problem (too much food) until you look long and hard at the real forces driving it (superhuman competence from your chefs and an overabundance of materials to work with). It's really that simple)

[Peter]

Andy I am not against lowering the farm from excellent, idk why you think I am. But along with that mogul is still going to fill the quota of talent set up by these percentages. and if they aren't adjusted, nothing significant will happen.

By turning that setting down less prospects will progress, veterans will be able to be contribute longer and the file will be better (and this is extremely unselfish because of my teams position) But turning this setting down alone is useless without also setting up the talent percentages to something not in outer space.

[AndyP]

The issue is which happens FIRST. If we turn down the farm settings first we will actually see BETTER sustained veterans careers. We can slowly adjust the ratios year by year and phase the change in. Again, we have to look at the horse, not the cart.

I'm suggesting we slow the horse down and then, subsequently, start to drop the talent ratios. You, and DJ in the past, have suggested the exact opposite. Which is, as I point out in the metaphor, baffling. Hell, you might even be able to do them at the same time, but you and DJ historically, keep arguing the matters are separate.

They're not, in fact, what you keep arguing to leave out of the discussion is precisely why we are having the discussion! (Plus the whole bizarre stat distribution argument which is nonsense)

You can't have a wildly unrealistic amount of talent developing after you already have an unrealistic amount of it coming in via the draft and then throw your hands in the air and act shocked that the file has an unrealistic amount of talent.

How in the friggin hell does anyone think that position is logical?

[mike]

Peter has hit the nail on the head here. Couple this with farm drops and you have the best possible idea. It's time that stat ditrubtion is deleivered properley again. No more 90 power guys meaning nothing.

[mattynokes]

The talent issue isn't anything overall rating related. It's the fact that random drops aren't really random, they're pretty much guaranteed. It seems that it's more random for a player to not undergo a random drop at some point during their career. Veteran careers seem to usually last about eight years. We've seen over the years people shy away from players who are 30+ and that shouldn't be the case.

The main issues are draft and farm system settings. Draft classes are well higher than what they should be. Prospects boom at too high of a rate. All if this makes random drops happen at a higher rate than what they should. Veterans should have a more stable career and prospects should be more of a risk.

Here's some numbers:

FCM Current Talent Ages:
Players 40+: 0
Players 35-39: 37 (18 Generated Players)
Players 30-34: 273 (263 Generated Players)

Mogul Default File Ages:
Players 40+: 25
Players 35-39: 159
Players 30-34: 542

I think with Mogul working how it always has, we're always going to see a lower correlation than in real life, but the difference we have is startling. As for the generated players, there probably aren't enough in the 35-39 age category yet, but we have a great picture as to what we'll be seeing in the future from the 30-34 age group, basically half as many 30-34 age players than there are on the default file.

FCM 2025 Draft Class Peaks:
Peak 95+: 2
Peak 90-94: 16
Peak 85-89: 24
Peak 80-84: 61
Peak 75-79: 62
Peak 70-74: 33
Peak 65-69: 12
Peak 60-64: 0

Mogul Default Draft Class Peaks:
Peak 95+: 0
Peak 90-94: 5
Peak 85-89: 16
Peak 80-84: 38
Peak 75-79: 48
Peak 70-74: 61
Peak 65-69: 38
Peak 60-64: 4

First off, let's check any arguments about peaks not being the only thing at the door. Of course we all should realize the value of vitals, but for purely looking at talent levels peaks are a good thing to look at.

In the late 3rd to early 4th round you can still find some low 80s peaks available in FCM. In a Default Mogul draft those would've been long gone from the late 2nd to early 3rd round. We're basically a round ahead of the default file.

Overall, I don't think drastic measures need to be done. The Farm System shouldn't be completely killed and the draft should look like what it does at default. A compromise would be very good for the league's talent issues.

Farm System: Dropped to Very Good (Possibly down to Average in future seasons)
Draft Talent: Dropped to a medium between FCM and Default
Talent Distribution: Slight drop in overall talent

The distribution I didn't talk about, but I think lowering that a little bit would be good since if we do nothing with it, Mogul will just randomly increase players to get back to those levels.