Hello everybody,

First of all - good luck to everybody who hasn't yet played the first match of the season!

Now, let's talk a bit about what you guys have been discussing quite a lot on the forum - the transfers, and the fact that human managers use it just to make some quick profit.

I've spent a lot of time this week (sorry for being a bit offline) thinking of ways to make a better system, without doing too many restrictions, and to keep a good flow to the game and to keep it fairly simple.

So, what I am proposing is this:

1. PLAYER VALUES
One of the main issues I found that is causing this problem is that the formula that generates the values of the players is too powerful. What I mean is that players that are very weak, are valued way too higher then what they should be. This makes selling the players a lot easier and teams can sell them easy.

So, what I did: I changed the formula so that player value grows in an exponential way (something similarly to what you guys have said).
The effect: Players that are good and have played consistently, will increase their value (the max I generated on my local environment went to around 7 Mil for the most valuable 2-3 players), while players that don't play or are free, have decreased by up 10 times. Eg. a player valued now at 2 Mil, went down to 200 K.
What changed: A lot more factors are taken into account now: The age, the contract length, the stats for up to 3 years (including current season), current and future potential, the position the player plays in.

I increased the ban from 20 to 30 days for players that are bought via the Transfer list.

As an example for the new system: If you try to grab a free player, depending on how good he is, you will pay around 10-100K. If you try to sell him, you might received bids between 100-130K. So the turnover rate for a transfer is way-way lower. If you indeed get a player, and you PLAY HIM, and use him as intended, if you sell him in a year or two, your profit will be indeed a lot higher, which is indeed something you would like.

This, coupled with the fact that you can take a limited number of players, the lower income + the large transfer ban should stop this farming of players.

2. PLAYER WAGES
Now, dealing with wages is actually more complicated.
First of all, the state of wages is actually a bit of an issue. Wages are actually way higher then they should, because they're supported by managers who sell for profit easily.

Once the new player values will take their place, and this profit stops, all teams will start having issues paying salaries.

So, I made a different formula to calculate wages, using a similar exponential formula, where the better a player is, the higher he will cost.

For smaller teams, this means salaries will actually go lower, as they won't be able to sustain themselves in 1-2 seasons. Higher teams will notice a smaller or similar salary cap.

A bit of context: I chose to keep prizes fixed, so that I can control somewhat the inflation of the game. Salaries as well, are calculated from a formula that is somewhat of a fixed base. Because of this, once transfers are out as a source of income, teams will struggle paying even salaries (espectially lower league ones).

3. FUTURE UPDATES I'M CONSIDERING
- I'm considering other ways to allow teams to increase income - either through updates to Facilities or increasing the prizes.
- I'm considering adding a tax at the end of the season, based on the profit (a Shareholder tax or something like that, in order to decrease inflation)
- I'm considering that teams that win trophies or complete their season goal, to offer player prizes or salaries increase at the end of the season.

And I'm looking into some other things, I'll announce at a future date :-)

This changes have not been implemented yet, and the examples given are from my local environment.