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pleflar
Joined: 08/15/2014
Posts: 32

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Broken Bat Baseball
I'd like to add that if the franchise fee was instituted in order to address some economic inequality in the system, which I'm not sure of, then it seems to me to be the wrong way to go about that. The fee appears to be a flat tax, within any league level each individual/club pays the same fee no matter what their reserves are.

This system not only fails to deal with any inequality that might exist between 'rich' and 'poor' clubs it actually reinforces any such inequality. Since all individuals pay the same amount the poor pay a larger % of their total wealth than the rich do and so the poor lose wealth relative to the rich. If there is some inequality that needs to be addressed then there needs to be a graded fee/tax system that does not reinforce said inequality.

However, returning to my previous post, I'm uncertain that there is any significant inequality that adversely impacts the game because of the way that player transactions are handled. Anyway, that's my $0.02
gadzooks
Joined: 05/11/2014
Posts: 54

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Broken Bat Baseball
If all serious established teams are loaded with cash and can do whatever they want roster-wise then salaries and finances are irrelevant to the game. Roster and salary management are an important part of all sports management games and the game will be better if most everyone had some financial pressure. Obviously its a tricky situation to manage at this point. A luxury tax is probably the best solution in the long term but in the short run it would give more advantage to the older teams. The best thing would probably be a hard reset of finances combined with a luxury tax to re-level the financial field going forward but there may be too much complaining for that to happen. The amount of money in the game is crazy though. I made $12M last year in VI in my first real season last season and that was despite dramatically underestimating what my attendance would be.
gadzooks
Joined: 05/11/2014
Posts: 54

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Broken Bat Baseball
Just to be clear, by luxury tax I mean that there is a soft salary cap for each level of play, and every dollar spent above that cap is taxed at some rate (e.g., .50 on the $1). Not sure if it had been discussed in this thread or not and I realize not everyone may be from the US and familiar with the MLB salary structure.
Meccanodonte
Joined: 04/21/2014
Posts: 370

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Broken Bat Baseball
But most teams (yours included) have huge stores of cash. You could go 10-15 seasons losing ~$3M and not have it affect you.

I don't think this is a good reason for me to be calm about 10 "winning-losing" season. After those, how could I invert this trend?
And what if, instead of winning season, I'd go through bad results? Will I lost 10M/season?
Mig2012
Joined: 09/26/2012
Posts: 547

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Broken Bat Baseball
Roster and salary management are an important part of all sports management games and the game will be better if most everyone had some financial pressure.

I strongly disagree with this.

As has been pointed before, every other sports management game that has financial pressure ends up being just a financial game. Broken bat doesn’t need that. Don’t ruin it.
Holmes
Joined: 11/07/2013
Posts: 1175

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Broken Bat Baseball
With the pay for three players, who are hard to replace right now but won't be around next season because of age, anyway, totally going overboard, I was budgeting for a deficit this season, hoping to make the playoffs and then consolidate my finances next season. Decent, but, compared to long-term top teams probably not huge reserves allow you to pull that stunt and go through such a season. With an additional 15 million in franchise fees, however, that takes a huge chunk out of my reserves, and, what's worse, even with young talent replacing some of those big contracts, I don't see how I could become profitable again if those franchise fees are here to stay.
So, in short, I think most of us discussing here will have no problem surviving one season with franchise fees, if your idea is to reduce the reserves saved up (then, the question really is, what for?). What many will have a problem with is to see their reserves being drained season after season - and some have smaller reserves than others. After all, there was never that much incentive to build up such large reserves, and at the moment, that's pretty much impossible to turn around, simply because we have no other handle to reduce the deficit than to cut key players.
As opposed to some others posting in this thread, I have no problem with more economic challenges in the game. But if the money gets tighter, we need more economic handles to adjust, as well: ballpark investment rather than just maintenance cost, setting player salaries by bidding, possibly some pseudo-trading (against the bank) as an alternative way to get players for certain positions, managing player cost by long-term contracts, cosmetic things for rich teams to display their status, and many other things would be possible.
Currently, our economics reminds me of the last years of East Germany: Everybody has the pockets full of something worthless called money, and for the only interesting goods you could buy, you have to wait in line until you're lucky. Just starting to empty the pockets doesn't fix that. It just spoils the fun for those whose money runs out first.
Mig2012
Joined: 09/26/2012
Posts: 547

Inactive

Broken Bat Baseball
Not everybody here has pockets full of money, or there wouldn't be these many complaints about franchise fees.

Regardless of that, the game is better off without all those economic challenges, handles and whatnot.

On top of what already has been said about them, it would be too much depth and it would make the game cumbersome and not fun, especially to those who are here mainly for the casual baseball fix, and don't care about running a corporate business.

There are already other games that have all that and more (OOTP comes to mind). Broken Bat has it's own merits. It doesn't have to copy the other games and follow the same battered path.
admin
Joined: 01/27/2010
Posts: 4981

Administrator
Broken Bat Baseball
Basically, in Broken Bat, there is one commodity that you can buy with your earnings – that’s higher player salaries. At present, since there is too much money out there, player salaries are irrelevant. I don’t want the game to be like others whereby the very best players become unaffordable even for the top teams…but I do think salary should be some factor in the management of the team. So we’re moving in that direction.


Steve
Meccanodonte
Joined: 04/21/2014
Posts: 370

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Broken Bat Baseball
I agree with you, Steve.
But I don't think that drain money with a flat tax is a good choice to do it. In this way, at least.

A luxury tax would be a better choice, I think.

Updated Saturday, November 1 2014 @ 2:20:21 am PDT
Seca
Joined: 05/05/2014
Posts: 5194

Waterloo Dinosaurs
Legends

Broken Bat Baseball
I think the somewhat ironic thing about the franchise fees is that they may make managers even stingier with their cash.

I'm sure its been suggested before, but I think part of the solution is shifting a bigger proportion of team income from the variable sources (ticket income) to the fixed sources (tv & radio contracts). There is so much attendance delta between 1st and last and between tiers.

This would also make the only economic decision other than players salaries (stadium size) a little less agonizing.


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