I did not think this would be an issue until season rollover, but because of the way we launched the initial clubs with 23 players, there are about 30 clubs with negative cash.

What will happen - When leagues move out of the first transfer window and before league games start, there is an auto-correction for clubs that are under the minimum roster size (shouldn't be an issue yet) and clubs that can't afford their roster. For those clubs that have a negative balance, if you do not get your cash positive through transfers (not likely at this level of play) players will be removed from your roster to get you there. This happens when moving from week 10 to week 11.

Why you shouldn't worry - players' initial contracts are based on their initial demands and are only locked into a one season contract. Players are evaluated under the same formulas for these contracts, so if you have players that cost more, it typically means you have better players. Even after dropping a player or two, you will still probably have a higher payroll than those that went through the scouting process and signed players.

The bad part - this means you won't be able to perform scouting tasks and negotiate with players during that first transfer window.

The rest of the first season and ongoing seasons will correct itself to make up for the bigger initial payroll clubs. This should also no longer be a problem as new Clubs are created. Other than missing the activity in the first transfer window of the first season, there should be no adverse affects.

How do we sell a player? Do we have to wait for someone else to make an offer for them? And is negative money symbolized by parenthesis around it? Because it seems like my payroll is 30k higher than the 850k given out by the league, but in my balance it still says, (30,000). So does that mean that is the amount I am negative?

This SUCKS. My team is -62k. Why should I have to worry about needing to drop players at the start of the game? Doesn't this put my team at a SEVERE disadvantage by not being able to benefit from unsigned players? I suspect there's a few players out there that would be nice additions, based on their potential increases, that I won't be able to sign. The idea of adding and developing young players for low cost is key to creating an actual dynasty.

I also sort of agree with swez. Shouldn't we be allowed to cut 3 players in order to get to the same level as the other teams?

Edit: Althought I guess from hearing from other people no one really has a lot of money to spend. The first season will just sort of be to get money I guess.

Norbert, is there any way to predict which players will be removed after week 10 to balance our finances? Will I lose my star striker or a handful of benchwarmers?

Thanks.

I read the threads about negative cash with interest over the last few days. It seems the suggestions not to allow such a thing might have been the best suggestions after all.

I'm not for ignoring the financial aspect of the game. I think it's great.

I just think it would've been nice if they increased the starting balance for all of the teams so we can all at least see what is out there. Right now, I have no information on any players other than the ones on my roster. Isn't this something that maybe could've been forseen? Once a formula is created to determine salaries, couldn't the programmers do a quick check to see if the starting balances would be this negative?

Okay, let me readdress this so you understand what is happening and why it is not something I want to spend time developing a solution to.

When we fist rolled out the beta, clubs started with 23 players. After looking at the limit of 26 and how it impacts your club not only the first season but setting up your roster the second season and beyond, it was decided to knock the number of initial players down to 20. This gives room for another 6 but it isn't expected that everyone necessarily runs with a maxed roster the entire time. So it would be expected that you might pick up a couple when you first enter a league and leave room to pick up a few more as the season goes on.

Salaries are based on formulas to price each player for their salary demands as well as their initial first-season contracts. So all things considered, the first season payroll is based on the strength of your initial players. If your payroll is higher than someone elses, then you most likely have better players. You are not at a disadvantage even if you drop a couple players to get to under $850,000 payroll. Your players will still be dollar-for-dollar as good as the guy that starts with 20 players and under $850,000.

This is a TEMPORARY condition for clubs from the early beta. New clubs with the new player mix will not have this issue. So it will work itself out of the system after the first season, and really, with all things considered, it will be worked out after the first transfer window. After that, all clubs will be on even footing. For those negative right now, it's really like you got some players signed for free.

So what's the penalty? It's that you don't really have any control over which players get dropped. You might lose someone good, but I guarantee your club over all is just as good as your neighbors talent-wise. The "fixing" code will try to pick the minimum amount of players to get you with positive cash. So who goes and how good they are depends on how deep in the hole you are. For instance, if you are $50K over, it will look for a player that is closest to that $50K. So it is possible you lose a good player or even your star player, but now you have 22 players that are going to be better overall than someone that started with 20 and signed a couple players.

The formulas are balanced for clubs from here on, which is why some of these beta clubs snuck in higher payrolls. Everything was checked and tested with the latest clubs and player generation, and I didn't realize the early clubs were a little richer mix of players. Like I said, this is a temporary thing for those early beta clubs that will not be a problem after they get out of the first transfer window. If I would have noticed this I would have mentioned something or looked at ways to fix it, but now it is better to let everything play out.

Sorry I didn't catch this before the leagues started and can't manually fix it or put some special code in, but I hope you can trust me enough to understand that I've looked at it and know it won't be as big of an impact as it might seem. Sorry for the frustration it causes, but I think if you give it a chance, you'll see everything works out okay.

I understand what you are saying, but with well over a hundred exhibition games played, I know who I want on my team. Being 78k over budget, I'm looking at losing my goalie (54k), and perhaps my star striker. OR could I lose the three old, overpriced scrubs who would ride pine? It sounds like it is impossible to make happen, but to have control over who you lose is everything.

Is it not possible for managers to cut a few bottom feeders now?

If you think it's absolutely critical to sign free agents right away, think twice before you do.

I played the closed test, blew all my money on free agents right away just to see what it would do. They were clear upgrades at several positions on my test team. They did absolutely nothing to improve the team's performance.

I do think it would be good for us to be able to just cut the bottom few players on our teams as necessary.

agree with fish88....I'm going to lose my stud center mid....I want to be able to drop whoever I want...

When the club roster fixes happen regularly, it will be to fix rosters rolling over from one season to the next, and definitely if we have a club in that situations that has signed more players than they can afford, it makes sense that they don't get rewarded by selecting the players they drop. That would be allowing users that don't plan to be able to do something that users who do play couldn't do - drop a player's contract.

However, I realize this is a different situation. It's unique in that it only affects those early beta clubs where a club starts with 23 players. This will not be an issue going forward as clubs are now created with 20 players. In order to allow you to drop players of your choice, we would have to build something into one of the pages which would take considerable time and would be obsolete once these 23 man teams get worked out.

I will work on this today to come up with something to help out. I do not want to put out code that would be thrown away in a couple months and I do not want to rely on everyone sending in support tickets, so we really can't do anything to allow you to choose who you lose. However, since basically the 23 man teams have 1 extra F, M, and D, I can look at dropping a not quite random player from each of those positions on the 23 man clubs to get them even with the 20 man clubs.

Due to the randomness of player generation and the players sometimes being a little richer in those early 23 man clubs, some clubs are quite considerably in the hole. I'm not sure I can guarantee everyone that they will not lose someone they had played in exhibitions, but I will do what I can to get the lesser played players.

I've looked at the numbers for all the clubs. Basically every club that is currently in Leagues started with 23 players. It looks like the earlier clubs had a much larger range of player skill distribution, so when we set up the salary demands and initial contracts for those players, the range of total payroll varies quite a bit. This is not a problem for any clubs that started with 20 players, as they had tighter player generation and all fall fairly close to each other in payroll.

The payrolls right now vary anywhere from $170,000 under the $850,000 or $170,000 over the $850,000. About 3/4 of the current clubs in leagues are okay on cash. The other 1/4 are the problem.

What I wanted to do was develop a script to remove 3 players from all the clubs, but there is no way to do this that makes it work for everyone.

I am going to stick with the original plan of allowing the code that is in place to remove players from clubs as you move from week 10 to week 11. I know its not the popular choice, but I think it's the best compromise to be fair to everyone. What I am going to change is that the code will look to remove players other than just picking the top guy. So instead of dropping your star player to get you in positive cash, it will attempt to drop maybe 2-3 players to get you there.

Some teams have such huge payrolls that it might be necessary to drop some of the really good players.

Thanks for looking into this for us, Norbert. Each of my two best strikers (on paper at least) make enough to get my finances in order...but I'd sure rather keep the 23 year old over the 31 year old.

Even better, I like your idea of losing one each from F, M, and D... losing a lower level player from each position rather than one star player.